Rose in the Blitz

by Rebecca Stevens

  ‘Goodnight, good luck!’

  Nobody knew what they’d have to face on the way home. Nobody knew what they might find when they got there. Rose hoped it was going to be a happy new year for them all, but she didn’t think it would be. The Blitz wasn’t over, not yet, she remembered that much from History at school and what Grandad had told her – the war would go on for another four years and many more people – millions – would be killed, maybe some of the people she’d met. Some of the boys she’d danced with tonight . . .

  ‘Rose! Are you coming with us or not?’

  Rosemary had found their coats and they stumbled out together into the night. Billy trailed along behind them with his trumpet case as they groped their way through the twinkling darkness to the tube station, avoiding the stumbling drunks and kissing couples. Neither of them said anything. They didn’t need to. They both knew that something had happened tonight.

  And now they were on their way home, feeling lucky to have found a seat in the crowded train. There was a group of Scottish soldiers in kilts standing nearby who swayed and laughed every time the train lurched round a corner. Two young women in khaki uniforms were fast asleep on the seat opposite, their heads on each other’s shoulders, and a middle-aged couple in evening dress looked on disapprovingly as a young white man in the same uniform as Ali, but wearing a hat with a red pom-pom, sang something in French.

  ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon—’ he sang.

  ‘Whoaaah!’ went the Scottish soldiers as the train swayed.

  Billy was standing in the aisle, his trumpet case in one hand, staring at nothing, and Rosemary was quiet, glowing with a sort of shining happiness. It was Rose who wanted to talk.

  ‘What did he say?’ she asked. ‘Rosemary! Are you going to see him again?’

  Rosemary turned her gaze on Rose, as if she was surprised to see her. ‘What?’

  ‘Johnny . . . !’ said Rose. For a brief second she wondered why Billy’s mouth twisted in an ugly way when she said the name but she was too keen to hear Rosemary’s news to think about it for long. ‘Have you arranged to meet?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Rosemary. ‘Yes.’ She nodded to herself as if she had only just remembered. ‘Yes, we have. We said tomorrow. I mean, today.’

  ‘New Year’s Day.’

  Rosemary nodded, stretching out her feet in front of her and smiling at her shoes. ‘Twelve o’clock. At the bandstand on the common.’

  I’ve done it, thought Rose. I’ve helped reunite Aunt Cosy with her lost love. Everything’s going to be different now – they’ll get married and live happily ever after and Aunt Cosy won’t spend her life alone. And if that was the point of her bringing me here, then maybe, just maybe, it means we can both go home . . .

  She didn’t feel so bad about the wedding now. It was like Aunt Cosy said, Mum had to grab her chance of happiness with both hands and hang on to it for dear life. Rose knew that now. It was just a shame that she’d blown her own chance when she sent that message to Fred . . .

  But she wasn’t going to think about that now. ‘Where’s he from?’ she said. ‘He’s not a Londoner, is he?’

  ‘British Guiana.’ Rosemary pronounced the name carefully.

  ‘Where is that? Part of Africa?’

  Rosemary shook her head. ‘South America. He came over with a bunch of others. To help us fight the Nazis.’

  ‘So he’s a warden, like Billy?’

  Billy’s mouth twisted again at the mention of his own name. Rosemary shook her head again.

  ‘Fire service, stationed in Soho.’

  ‘He’s right in the middle of things then.’

  Rosemary nodded. ‘But he’s applied to join the RAF, now they’ve dropped the colour bar.’

  ‘Colour bar?’ Rose looked at her. ‘Does that mean what I think it does?’

  ‘Mm?’ Rosemary smiled at her vaguely. ‘I don’t know. I think you used to have to be what they called “of pure European descent” or something. Silly.’

  Rose couldn’t believe she was so casual about it. ‘It’s not silly! It’s disgusting! Especially when you think about what they’re fighting against!’

  Rosemary shrugged. ‘They’ve changed it now.’

  ‘Only because they need more people to fight!’

  ‘Johnny wants to be a pilot.’ Rosemary smiled and Rose felt her anger melt away. She knew Rosemary was thinking about how handsome Johnny would look in the blue-grey uniform of the RAF. She thought back to the newspaper cutting in Aunt Cosy’s memory box. It was an RAF uniform Johnny was wearing in the photo, she realised. So he’d got his wish and became an airman. But maybe that wouldn’t happen now. Maybe now she’d helped bring them together, Johnny would stay in London to be with Rosemary? Maybe she had changed the course of history . . .

  The train rattled on, past the stations she knew so well. The windows were covered in a sort of mesh, but you could see where you were when the doors hissed open and people stumbled off and on: Embankment, Waterloo, Kennington . . .the familiar names made Rose feel safe. It was still the same old London, whatever century she was in. It was still home.

  ‘Are you all right, Billy?’ Rose surprised herself by starting a conversation. She was usually shy with people she didn’t know very well (particularly boys), worried that she wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say. But she felt sorry for Billy as he stood there staring at the blacked-out windows, his face white and greasy-looking in the blue lights in the carriage, his eyes red and bloodshot as if he’d been crying. Billy didn’t reply.

  ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon . . .’ sang the French sailor.

  ‘Whoaaah!’ went the Scottish soldiers.

  Rose tried again. ‘The band was good,’ she said and then felt silly for saying something so obvious. ‘How long have you been playing the trumpet?’

  ‘Long enough,’ he said, without looking at her.

  Oval . . . Stockwell . . . Clapham North . . .

  ‘L’on y danse, l’on y danse . . .’ sang the sailor.

  ‘Shh! Shh! Shh!’ The Scottish soldiers were tiptoeing past the sleeping girls. One big man with fair hair stopped and looked down at them.

  ‘Ahh! Aren’t they sweet?’

  ‘SHHHHHH!’

  Clapham Common. The soldiers tumbled out on to the platform and the French sailor sat down and stared at the sleeping girls, before falling asleep himself.

  ‘Next stop,’ said Rose. Then, ‘Do you think Betty will be awake when we get in?’ She hoped she would be. She was looking forward to watching her face while Rosemary told her about their evening.

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Rosemary. ‘She’ll be awake all right. Mother won’t have been able to get her to sleep. She was on at me to let her come, you know, when you were getting changed.’

  ‘What, Betty?’ said Rose. ‘She wanted to come to the dance?’

  ‘Oh, she always wants to come to everything. “When you’re a big girl, Betty,” I said, “you can go to all the dances you want, you can dance the night away in cities all over the world, because the war will be over and you will be a grown-up lady with lipstick and earrings and a beautiful red dress like your sister. But for now, you’ve got to stay at home and look after Mummy.”’

  Rose laughed. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said it wasn’t fair and Munk-munk thought I was a stinker.’ Rosemary shook her curls and laughed as the train rattled to a halt. Clapham South. The doors sighed open and she got to her feet.

  ‘Are you coming, Billy Boyce?’ she said. ‘Or are you going to stay on this train all night twiddling your thumbs?’

  He turned to look at her, his mouth a thin, straight line. ‘That colour bar was there for a reason,’ he said as he followed them off the train.

  Rosemary and Rose both stopped dead in the middle of the platform.

  ‘What?’ said Rosemary, turning to glare at him.

  ‘What?!’ said Rose.

  Billy’s eyes flicked nervously. ‘Well, they’re not British, are they?’ he
said. ‘Africans, people like that. Infantry is all very well for their sort. But the RAF?’

  Rose felt her cheeks get hot with fury, but Rosemary was icily calm.

  ‘For your information, Billy,’ she said, spitting out his name as if it disgusted her, ‘Johnny is not African, he is from British Guiana. But even if he was, it would make no difference. You would still be an ignorant little blighter and he would still be a thousand times the man you’ll ever be. Rose?’

  Rose took the arm Rosemary offered and they stalked off together to the creaky wooden escalator that carried them up to the ticket hall. It was only when they reached the top and were sure Billy was out of earshot that they dared to look at each other and exploded into giggles.

  ‘Whoah!’ said Rose. ‘You told him!’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ Night, Albert!’ Rosemary threw one of her smiles at the old man who was checking tickets. She seemed to know everybody. ‘Happy New Year!’

  ‘Goodnight, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Stay lucky.’

  Rosemary blew him a kiss from the tip of her finger and took Rose’s arm again as they left the station. The night was still and clear and cold and although the searchlights were moving gently over the sky above the common, there was no sound as they set off down Nightingale Lane. It had been a peaceful night in south London.

  ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go,’ sang Rosemary, putting a little skip into her step.

  Rose joined in, laughing. Rosemary’s happiness was catching.

  ‘It’s 1941, Rose!’ she said as they turned the corner. ‘And today I’m going to meet my—’

  And then she stopped.

  The whole of Nightingale Lane stretched out in front of them into the darkness. There were no street lights, of course, but Rose could make out the silhouettes of the houses at either side of the road and the lamp posts and trees reaching up against the stars. She could also see the dark shape of a vehicle parked halfway along. Two vehicles, their dimmed headlights just visible in the blackout. Voices, giving instructions. A door slamming. Dark shapes moving, men. A woman’s voice, raised, anxious, questioning. A stretcher.

  A stretcher?

  Rose felt a deep thud of dread in the pit of her stomach.

  Rosemary said, ‘Betty.’

  And she started to run.

  ‘Rose. Tell Johnny.’

  Rosemary’s face was white in the darkness. A woman who had to be her mum was getting into the back of the ambulance. Rose couldn’t see her face. She didn’t want to. She looked at Rosemary instead. ‘I will, Rosemary. I promise.’

  And so it had happened. While they were dancing at Covent Garden, Betty had been hurt, badly by the look of it. Rose had just caught a glimpse of her little face above the white nightdress as they put the stretcher into the ambulance. Her eyes were closed.

  She had been dancing in the garden, the man had said, the warden who had come when her mum had gone screaming out into the road. There’d been no heavy bombing in the area that night but the sky had been alight with incendiaries and flares and gunfire from the common as a squadron of bombers passed over. It was like a firework display, he said. Or a ballroom with a mirror ball twirling, Rose had thought, feeling sick as she remembered the vision she’d seen from her bedroom window. It was a piece of shrapnel, perhaps, the warden said, from one of our guns even, a chance in a million, she didn’t feel it, almost certainly didn’t even know—

  ‘That does not help!’ Rosemary had shouted in his face. The man had looked away. And now:

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘I promise,’ Rose repeated. ‘You go. Just go. I’ll be all right.’

  Rosemary held out her hand. As Rose took it, Rosemary’s face crumpled for a second, but she didn’t cry. She squeezed Rose’s hand and then turned away and got into the back of the ambulance. Rose watched it drive away into the darkness.

  ‘You’ll be all right, love?’ The warden looked too tired to care much. His face was grey with dust and sorrow. He had other people to look after, other bad news to share.

  Rose nodded. The front door had been left open and she could see Tommy waiting for her in the hall. As the warden got into his van she saw Billy Boyce watching from across the road. Their eyes locked for a moment and then he turned and walked off into the darkness carrying his trumpet case. Good riddance.

  Rose closed the door on the night and buried her face in Tommy’s fur. She didn’t think she could bear this without him.

  ‘What are we going to do, Tom?’

  The cuckoo clock on the wall had stopped at ten minutes to midnight. Was this when Betty was . . . hurt? Rose wondered. She hadn’t even been able to see the New Year. But she’ll be all right, she told herself. They’ll take her to hospital, where they’ll look after her. She’ll probably be out in a few days, and be back to her old self, playing with Tommy and teasing her sister about Billy Boyce.

  Rose went upstairs with Tommy and headed for her old room, Rosemary’s room now. She pulled the blue dress off over her head and flopped on to the bed in her underwear, too tired to sleep, to think, to feel . . .

  She never knew what woke her. She’d been dreaming that she was chasing Aunt Cosy through endless dark alleys where the air slithered past her like black jelly and her aunt was always disappearing around the next corner, and her heart was pounding with panic and—

  She stared into the darkness. Where was she? What was going on?

  And then she felt the comforting weight of Tommy on her feet at the end of the bed and smelt the musty dampness of the old house and she realised. She was still there. It was New Year’s Day, 1941, and she was still there, lying on Rosemary’s bed in her old room in the house on Nightingale Lane.

  And she had to be at the bandstand on Clapham Common by twelve o’clock.

  She sat up, heart pounding with panic. Tommy looked up from his place at the end of the bed and thumped his tail and she relaxed. It’s all right, she thought. It’s still dark. There’s no hurry, the day hasn’t started yet. I can sleep a bit more.

  And then she heard the chirrup of a bird outside and saw the daylight seeping through a gap at the window and remembered the heavy blackout curtains that Rosemary had drawn when they were getting ready to go out and she leapt off the bed and threw open the curtains. Light flooded the room. What was the time?

  She ran out on to the landing, downstairs into the hall. The hands of the cuckoo clock hadn’t moved from ten minutes to midnight.

  What was the time?

  And then she heard a voice coming from the front room. It was a man, posh, sounding as if he was lecturing someone, telling them off, like the kind of teacher at school that nobody likes. Someone was in the house.

  ‘Wuff?’

  Tommy was at the top of the stairs, looking down at her and wagging his tail. He didn’t seem afraid or suspicious. Perhaps there was nothing to be afraid of. Rose took a deep breath.

  One. Two. Three—

  She opened the door. The room was empty. And the voice said, ‘This is the BBC Home Service . . .’

  It was the radio. It must have been left on all night, but she hadn’t heard it because there were no programmes on until the morning.

  ‘Here is the news at midday on Wednesday 1st January 1941 . . .’

  Midday? It couldn’t be!

  Rose took the stairs two at a time, back to Rosemary’s room and grabbed her own clothes. They were stiff with mud from the night at Balham station and she had to hold her breath as she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, but at least they were dry. Then she shoved her feet into her boots and her arms into her parka, and started to run.

  Down the stairs and out of the house, Tommy behind her, down Nightingale Lane – past the school, the pub where she went for Sunday lunch with Mum and Sal and Leo – round the corner towards the tube station – past the sad sweet shop, its shutters closed against the chilly sunshine – across the road, a bus roaring past, a man shouting ‘watch it!’ – over the grass . . .
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  Why was Clapham Common so big?

  Past the allotments, beyond the trees . . . the big guns in the distance, the barrage balloons like floating silver elephants . . .

  Rose could see the bandstand now, at the end of the path and—

  There was nobody there.

  Rose climbed up the three steps on to the bandstand and stood there with Tommy, looking at the common stretched out around them, sparkling with frost under the cold white sky.

  She could see a man walking a dog, some boys kicking a football over by the trees. There was no sign of Johnny. Perhaps he hadn’t arrived yet . . .

  But there – sitting on one of the benches near the bandstand, smoking a cigarette – there was a figure she knew.

  ‘Billy?’

  He squinted up at her in the sunshine. ‘What? Oh, it’s you.’ He sounded disappointed, but not surprised.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ said Rose, hurrying down the steps toward him. Perhaps he’s seen Johnny, she thought, hope rising in her chest.

  Billy made a big deal of looking at his watch, narrowing his eyes as if he was having trouble making out the time. Rose could see that it was now twenty past twelve. Twenty past! How could she have overslept like that? How could she?

  ‘Half an hour or so,’ Billy took a drag of his cigarette. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Have you seen anyone else?’

  He shrugged. ‘Couple of old dears out for a stroll. A few kids. Why?’

  Rose’s heart clenched. ‘You didn’t see Johnny? The boy Rosemary met last night at the dance?’

  Billy shook his head. ‘Nope.’ He got to his feet and took a last drag of his cigarette, then threw it on the gravel, next to several other dog-ends.

  It’s not possible, thought Rose. Johnny wouldn’t break his date with Rosemary. He must have been here, he must have. Then, an awful thought: Perhaps he got hurt, caught in a raid on the way home from the dance, perhaps—

  She shook the thought away and grabbed Billy’s arm as he started to walk off. ‘Are you sure? Billy, this is important!’

  Billy stopped and looked down at Rose’s hand on the sleeve of his coat and then into her eyes. His pale blue eyes were bloodshot and his face was close enough for Rose to smell the sour scent of the cigarette on his breath. Tommy growled softly and Rose flinched, but she didn’t look away.