Rose in the Blitz

by Rebecca Stevens

  The shoes were neat black lace-ups with a small heel. They were nothing like anything Rose would wear normally, but they fitted and, unlike her boots, they didn’t smell. She put them on and together she and Rosemary looked at her reflection again.

  ‘Hm,’ said Rosemary. ‘You need something. I know!’ She went over to the dressing table and scrabbled about among the pots and jars there. ‘Lipstick!’ She held up a small gold tube. Rose felt a stab of recognition as she realised it was the one from the memory box.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, backing away. ‘You’re not going to put that on me.’

  ‘I am! Believe me, it’ll make all the difference. Stay still!’ She grabbed Rose’s chin in one hand and with the other applied the lipstick, the tip of her tongue protruding from between her own lips as she concentrated. ‘There!’

  Rose stared at the unfamiliar figure in the mirror. She had never seen herself like that before.

  ‘I look . . . I look . . . grown-up,’ she said, and watched a slow, delighted, lipsticked smile spread across her face.

  ‘You look beautiful!’ Rosemary’s face appeared in the mirror beside her. ‘Doesn’t she, Tommy-dog?’

  Tommy wagged his tail and looked from one girl to the other, not understanding, but pleased because they were pleased. Rosemary bent down and planted a kiss on his head.

  ‘You see, Strange Girl?’ she said. ‘You shall go to the ball!’ And she waved an imaginary wand over Rose’s head. ‘Ting!’

  The night was cold and clear and glittering with ice and stars and broken glass. Rose was shivering in spite of her parka, which she was wearing over Rosemary’s blue dress. She knew it didn’t look right, but who cared? She could take it off when they got there.

  ‘All right, Rose?’

  They had come into central London on the tube and Rosemary was leading the way to the opera house at Covent Garden, shining her torch on the pavement in front of them as they picked their way between piles of rubble and broken glass.

  ‘It’s so dark.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it. Stick close to me and you’ll be all right.’

  ‘What happens if there’s an air raid?’

  ‘We can go to a shelter, if we feel like it.’ Rosemary looked back over her shoulder. Rose saw the gleam of her grin in the dark. ‘Or . . . we just keep on dancing!’ She looked up at the sky and shook her small fist at an imaginary plane. ‘Do your worst, Adolf! London can take it!’

  They stumbled on. Rose stood on a piece of glass that crunched under her foot like snow. A dark shape in a doorway turned into a man as a match flared, lighting up his face. He looked at Rose from under his hat, his mouth twisting into a crooked grin, before the flame went out, leaving just the glow of his cigarette in the darkness. There was a cackle of female laughter and a burst of singing from an unseen pub.

  ‘Come on!’ Rosemary took Rose’s hand and pulled her away. ‘Billy said they’d let us in at the stage door. It’s this way.’

  As they turned into the alleyway, a door flew open and two young women wearing some sort of uniform tumbled out in a gust of laughter and cigarette smoke, then stumbled off into the darkness, their arms round each other. In another doorway a couple were kissing. A black cat scuttled through the beam of Rosemary’s torch and somewhere a trumpeter played a few sorrowful notes.

  ‘This is it.’

  Rosemary had stopped outside a door in the wall. She shone her torch over chipped green paint and a sign that read ‘STAGE DOOR’. As she lifted her fist to knock, the door opened, spilling light into the darkness and revealing the outline of a tall man whose shadow shot out in front of him on to the greasy black pavement.

  ‘Ladies.’ He showed them his teeth in a creepy smile and held the door open for them. He was wearing a black suit and bow tie. One of the musicians? thought Rose. He looked like a figure from a bad dream.

  Rosemary stepped into the light. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and pulled a ‘yuck’ face at Rose behind his back as they went through.

  Inside, an elderly man in a flat cap was sitting in an ancient armchair, reading the paper in front of an electric bar fire.

  ‘Hello!’ Rosemary gave him her biggest smile. ‘We’re friends of Billy Boyce. He’s with the band and he said—’

  The man jerked his head down the passageway that led away into the darkness. ‘Number eleven,’ he said, without looking at them, and went back to his paper.

  The walls of the passage were brick and lined with doors that seemed too close together to have rooms behind them. There were sounds of instruments warming up and the occasional burst of smoky male laughter. A door opened suddenly, revealing a man with a small moustache that crawled along his top lip like a caterpillar.

  ‘Good evening, laydeez!’ he said without removing the cigarette that was clamped between his teeth.

  ‘We’re looking for Billy,’ said Rosemary. ‘Billy Boyce? Plays the trumpet?’

  The man turned back to the room behind him. ‘You’re in luck, Billy Boy!’ he said. ‘Visitors!’

  Billy’s face appeared as the man moved off down the corridor. He looked different from the last time Rose had seen him, smart in his black suit and bow tie. His spots had cleared up too.

  ‘You came!’ he said, running a finger round the inside of his collar as he looked at Rosemary. A hot blush spread from his neck up to his face.

  ‘I did, Bill,’ said Rosemary. ‘And I brought my friend, Rose.’

  ‘So I see.’ Billy gave Rose a quick nod and took a drag of his cigarette. ‘Look, we’re on in a sec, Rosemary, so—’

  ‘Just show us where to go and we’ll be out of your hair. Can we leave our coats?’

  He nodded again, and when they’d loaded him up with their coats, showed them to the door that took them through to the auditorium.

  Rosemary looked at Rose. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  It was like opening a door into another world. After the scuffed, smoky gloom of the backstage area, the vast auditorium of the opera house shone with gold and glittered with glass and light. The rows of seats at ground level had been taken out and replaced with a dance floor, which was encircled with tier upon tier of balconies rising to the enormous dome of the roof. People were sitting around the edge of the dance floor and in the first balcony, smoking cigarettes and drinking and making each other laugh. It was like fairyland.

  Rosemary smiled at Rose’s astonished face. ‘Like it?’ she said.

  Rose nodded, unable to speak. She’d been inside old theatres before, to watch pantos at Christmas with Mum and Dad, but she’d never seen one as amazing as this. Then an awful thought hit her like a slap: ‘Do we have to dance?’ she said. She’d seen the kind of dancing they did during the war and there was no way she’d be able to do it.

  Rosemary shrugged. ‘If somebody asks us. It would be rude to say no, don’t you think?’

  This was what Rose had been dreading. ‘But I can’t. I don’t know—’

  She was interrupted by a flurry of movement and a murmur of expectation from the crowd. The band was coming on.

  ‘There’s Billy!’ said Rosemary. ‘Look at him with his trumpet, thinks he’s everybody. Come on, let’s find a good place.’

  She led the way across the room as the band started to play and couples stood up to dance. Most of the men and a lot of the women and girls were in uniform. Rose recognised the khaki of the British Army and the blue of the RAF, but there were others, too, that she couldn’t identify, which had to be from different countries. Rosemary stood out in her bright red dress. They watched as the couples started to move, circling the room as if they were all part of one huge machine.

  How did they know how to do that?

  Rose was silently praying that nobody would ask her to dance when she realised that someone was already talking to Rosemary. It was a young man, a boy really, with curly dark hair, wearing a navy blue uniform with wide trousers and a sort of tight-fitting tunic – a sailor, perhaps? Rosemary was l
aughing and shaking her head, looking over at Rose. The young man shrugged and smiled, then indicated a boy standing behind him, who was wearing the same uniform. Rosemary looked at Rose and grinned: Shall we?

  No, thought Rose, trying to communicate with Rosemary through her eyes. Please! Nonononono!

  But it was too late. The dark-haired boy had whisked Rosemary away and they were disappearing into the crowd. She saw Rosemary’s face over her partner’s shoulder for one second and then she was gone. Rose was alone. She longed to get out, find the loo, something, anything, but there was no escape. The other boy was smiling at her, pulling a ‘what can you do?’ face. She couldn’t just tell him to go away, could she? As Rosemary said, that would be rude. She thought of all the times she’d been mean to boys, not because she didn’t like them or wanted to hurt their feelings, but because she was scared. She didn’t want to be like that any more. So she forced herself to smile back at the boy and was amazed to find it wasn’t that difficult after all.

  He pointed to his chest. ‘I. Can. Not. Speak,’ he said.

  ‘Oh! I’m really sorry!’ Rose was horrified. ‘How awful for you.’ Is that all he could say? she thought. Has he been injured in the war, perhaps?

  And then she realised he was laughing. ‘No!’ he said. His teeth were very white against his brown face. ‘No no no! I. Can. SPEEE-EEAK . . .’

  What?!

  He shook his head and pointed to his chest again. ‘French!’ he said.

  ‘Ohhhh.’ It was just that he couldn’t speak English! Rose would have been embarrassed but the boy had such a nice face that she laughed instead and pointed to her own chest. ‘English!’ she said.

  He nodded and pointed to himself. ‘Ali!’ This was becoming a game.

  ‘Rose!’ said Rose, doing the same.

  This seemed to make him very happy. ‘Engleesh!’ he said. Rose realised that he wasn’t much older than she was. ‘Rose!’ he repeated. ‘Engleesh Rose! C’est parfait!’ And he held out his hand. Rose took it and he whirled her away into the crowd.

  And it was fine, actually, much easier than she’d expected. Grandad had tried to teach her to waltz once, at a wedding reception when she was little. But she’d never got the hang of it. He’d put her off with all his ‘ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three’s and his ‘Come on, Cabbage, you can do it, keep up!’ and then she’d stood on his bad foot and they’d had to stop.

  But this was different. It was as if the music was controlling her feet – or maybe just that Ali was a better dancer than Grandad. Rose seemed to float around the room in the whirl of people and the speckles of light thrown by the giant mirror ball that hung from the ceiling, conscious only of Ali’s hand on her back and her hand in his hand and the smell of sweat and cigarettes and perfume and happiness. And a thought dropped into her brain—

  I’m happy, it said. I, Rose, am happy.

  You don’t usually notice it at the time, she decided. You might think afterwards: That was a lovely afternoon. I was really happy then. But you don’t when it’s happening. You’re too busy being happy. But this time, she did notice and she was glad. She decided that she’d try and notice more often.

  And then the number had finished and everyone was clapping. Rosemary appeared at her elbow.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘I told you it’d be fun!’ And then she looked at the stage and her face dropped. ‘Uh-oh,’ she said. ‘What’s he up to now?’

  Billy had made his way to the front of the stage, trumpet in one hand, looking self-conscious and important. He cleared his throat into a microphone.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to announce that our usual singer can’t be with us tonight.’

  There were a few groans and shouts of ‘shame!’

  ‘But!’ Billy held up his hand to silence them. ‘We are lucky to have with us in the audience a friend of mine who might just be persuaded to take her place.’

  A murmur of interest ran through the crowd. Rose looked at Rosemary. She had her eyes shut like a little girl who was pretending she wasn’t there.

  ‘Rosemary?’ Rose hissed. ‘Does he mean—’

  Rosemary screwed up her face even tighter and shook her head.

  ‘She’s been down in the shelters singing to the people since the start of the Blitz,’ Billy was saying, ‘so I think we can persuade her to join us onstage for a number tonight.’

  ‘Rosemary?’ Rose said again. She had never thought her brilliant, extrovert friend would be nervous about going onstage.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Rosemary. She still had her eyes shut. ‘Not here, not now. Not with a band.’

  A spotlight was swinging over the upturned faces of the crowd, searching for her. As Rose looked up, she saw its beam brush past a tiny upright figure in a silky blue dressing gown, watching from the top balcony. So Aunt Cosy was here. She gave Rose a little wave, and blew a kiss from the end of her finger. Rose blew it back, then turned to Rosemary. Everything had become very clear.

  ‘Rosemary,’ she said. ‘You must.’ She didn’t understand why, but she knew it was very important that the girl who was to become Aunt Cosy got up onstage and sang tonight.

  Rosemary opened her eyes and looked at her, astonished. She had never heard Rose so determined before. Neither had Rose, actually.

  ‘If you can sing in an underground station that’s been hit by a bomb, you can sing with a band.’ Rose grabbed Rosemary’s hand in case she decided to make a run for it. ‘You can, Rosemary,’ she said. ‘You know you can.’

  Rosemary opened her mouth to object, but it was too late. The spotlight had found her. As it lit up her face it was as if another light went on inside her and she became a different person from the frightened girl she’d been a moment before. She looked surprised for a second and then smiled as if to say ‘What, me?’, before starting to make her way through the crowd towards the stage, turning only to stick her tongue out at Rose over her shoulder. When she reached the front, Rosemary took Billy’s outstretched hand and he helped her up the three steps on to the stage. She whispered something to him. He nodded and spoke to the band leader. Then slowly, very slowly, Rosemary turned and faced the crowd. There was an expectant hush as someone slid the microphone stand in front of her. And then she started to sing.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places . . .’

  The piano joined in with her first, following her as she sang. She was in charge.

  ‘That this heart of mine embraces . . .’

  Her voice was sweet but husky, different from the clear sound when she had sung the other song.

  ‘All day through . . .’

  As the rest of the band joined in, Rose realised the French boy was still there, next to her. He smiled and took her hand, then turned back to watching Rosemary. Everyone was watching Rosemary.

  ‘I’ll find you in the morning sun . . .’

  And then she stopped. The musicians exchanged looks. The spotlight continued to sweep over the heads of the crowd. Rosemary started again.

  ‘I’ll find you in the morning sun . . .’

  She faltered again as she looked out into the audience. And then Rose realised. Rosemary had seen a face in the crowd. A face that she knew. The face that she had been waiting to see again.

  ‘And when the night is new . . .’

  Rose stood on her toes and tried to see over the heads of the people. Where was he? Where was he? Where—

  ‘I’ll be looking at the moon . . .’

  Rose squeezed the French boy’s hand and then let it go, so she could move to a better position to see who it was that Rosemary was singing to.

  ‘But I’ll be seeing you . . .’

  Rosemary had come out from behind the microphone now and was making her way down the steps into the crowd. And Rose saw. She’d known who it was all along, whose face Rosemary had seen out there, the boy that she was singing to. This was why Aunt Cosy was there. This was what she wanted Rose to see.

  The crowd parted i
n front of Rosemary as she walked across the dance floor, never taking her eyes from his face, the face that was now lit up by the spotlight and was looking straight back at her.

  Johnny.

  Rosemary took his hand, and, as the band took up the melody again, they began to dance.

  After a few more dances with Ali, Rose had danced with an English soldier who looked about fourteen and asked her if she’d ever been to Manchester. Then there was a boy with very light-blue eyes who couldn’t speak any English at all who she thought might be Polish, then an Australian who trod on her feet and made her laugh and told her he was from a place called Wangaratta, and a Nigerian with sad eyes who told her all about his girlfriend back home, and then Ali again. They hadn’t all danced as well as him but Rose didn’t care. She’d forgotten everything as she whirled around the dance floor – her dad, Fred, Mum’s wedding day, the row with Grandad. The fact that she was stuck in the wartime London of her aunt’s memory and had no idea how she was going to get back. None of it mattered any more. There was just her and the music and the lights.

  And Rosemary? Rosemary had just danced with Johnny.

  And when the band had stopped playing and everyone had counted down to midnight and cheered and kissed and hugged with a kind of desperate intensity because they knew they might never see each other again, and Ali had kissed Rose’s hand, Rosemary and Johnny had just stood there looking at each other, a still point in the heart of all the whirling excitement.

  And then it was over. It was 1941. The band started packing up and people drifted away. Rosemary kissed Johnny’s cheek and he stayed quite still in the middle of the dance floor and watched her as she ran over to Rose in a glitter of joy and they made their way to pick up their coats. They went back though the door by the stage, leaving the shining splendour of the dance hall for the dingy backstage muddle of beer bottles and cigarette smoke and musicians, laughing and saying their goodbyes before the journey home.

  ‘Happy New Year, mate, good luck!’