Rose in the Blitz

by Rebecca Stevens

  ‘What is it to you anyway?’ he said. ‘Why do you care so much?’

  Tommy growled again.

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I saw nobody. Nobody! And I’ve got better things to do than stand here being interrogated by a kid like you. So if you don’t mind . . .’

  He shook her hand off his arm and walked away. Rose and Tommy stood there and watched him go.

  ‘Can you tell me the way to the nearest hospital?’

  The old man at Clapham South station wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and stared at Rose for a long time before replying. ‘You looking for someone, love?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My—’

  And then she stopped, not knowing what to say. What was Betty to her? She was Aunt Cosy’s little sister, so that made her another aunt in a way. But that was too weird. She couldn’t say that.

  ‘She’s my sister,’ she said. ‘My little sister.’ It felt as if it was true.

  ‘What about your people, love? Mother? Anyone?’

  ‘She’s with her,’ Rose said. ‘She went in the ambulance. I need to find them.’ She felt the panic rising in her chest and tears prickling her eyes. ‘I don’t know where they took her.’

  ‘You could try St Thomas’s, that’s the most likely.’

  ‘Is that the one by the river?’ Rose had been there once to visit Grandad when he was poorly; she and Mum had brought him grapes and a copy of The Daily Mirror and he’d made jokes and flirted with the nurses.

  The man nodded. ‘Do you know how to get there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You’ll need to get a bus,’ the man called as she and Tommy turned to go. ‘Or the tube!’

  But Rose didn’t have any money so they set out on foot. They headed north, beyond the common, past boarded-up shops and bomb sites, great craters gaping in the middle of the road, glass everywhere, swept into piles like ice. A house that seemed to have been sliced in half by a giant displayed its rooms with all the furniture intact, the pictures on the walls, sunlight reflecting off a mirror hanging on a bathroom wall. It was like a city in a dream, smoke hanging in the wintry sunshine, burnt wood and brick dust and everywhere that sweet chemical smell of nail varnish remover. People were behaving like they did in dreams too, in strange and unpredictable ways. They passed a woman pushing a dog in a pram and a man who stood in the middle of the road and laughed at nothing. Little boys dodged round them chasing each other with invisible machine guns – BAM-BAM-BAM! BAM-BAM-BAM! – and when they turned a corner into a side street, two men appeared from a ruined house carrying an old-fashioned gramophone between them.

  ‘Fancy a dance, sweetheart?’ one of them said without taking his cigarette from his mouth.

  Rose shook her head and hurried on, her heart thudding in her ears. As she got to the end of the road she heard the gramophone start up and turned to see that an old woman had come out of her house and was dancing to the music in her apron and slippers.

  The damage got worse the closer they came to the centre of the city. An entire street was reduced to heaps of rubble, with just one house standing alone in the middle, like a single tooth in an old man’s grin. The house was completely untouched by the destruction around it – its windows were intact and its front garden neat with clipped hedges and snowdrops in bloom. There was even a bottle of milk on the doorstep. Next to it, a group of rescue workers in overalls and tin helmets was working in the ruins of what had been the house next door, digging in the rubble. Rose didn’t want to be there to see what they found.

  ‘It can’t be far now, Tom. We’re getting near the river.’ Rose’s feet hurt and she felt close to tears, but she wasn’t going to admit that; not to herself, not to Tommy. They had to find Rosemary and tell her what had happened. Johnny hadn’t been there. He hadn’t come as he’d promised. Then they could decide what to do, she and Rosemary together.

  The hospital didn’t look like the shiny modern one she remembered. It stretched along the south bank of the river, a big, old-fashioned place built of stone, one part of it in ruins where it must have been hit by a bomb. It was very busy, though, far busier than it had been when she and Mum had visited Grandad. Ambulances were lined up along the road and people were coming in and out of the main entrance, nurses with heavy blue capes over their uniforms, women and children, men in boiler suits and tin helmets that Rose now recognised as wardens. But who could she ask? Who would know whether Betty was here?

  ‘Tommy?’ He pricked up his ears and gave her his most interested look. ‘Tommy, stay!’ That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, she knew that, but he couldn’t come in with her. Dogs weren’t allowed in hospitals. He was looking at her as if he didn’t understand.

  ‘You’ll have to wait here, Tom. Dogs can’t—’

  But he was gone, shooting off up the steps into the hospital as if he was chasing a squirrel.

  ‘Tommy!’ Rose yelled. ‘Tommy! Come back!’

  She ran after him, into the tiled and echoing space at the top of the steps. Nurses turned and stared at her, people sitting on wooden chairs along the sides of the room looked up with tired faces as Tommy clattered up the big wooden staircase that led up from the entrance hall.

  A little boy who’d been waiting with his mum shouted, ‘Dog!’ and joined in the chase.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rose said to all the faces turned to her. ‘I’ll get him. I’m sorry, he’s not normally . . .’ She gave up trying to explain and ran after him. ‘Tommy!’

  At the top of the stairs, two porters were wheeling a trolley out of a lift. Tommy ran underneath it, followed by the little boy, but Rose had to dodge around it, being careful not to look at the person who was lying on top.

  ‘Tommy, stop!’

  The little boy had skidded to a halt at the feet of a man wearing a white coat. A doctor, judging by the stethoscope around his neck. Tommy was sitting upright, looking up at the man’s face as if he was expecting a treat.

  ‘Whoah!’ said the doctor. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘I’m looking for a girl.’ Rose fought to get her breath back. ‘Betty. Her name is Betty Miles.’

  He looked at her and she realised how silly that sounded. How could one doctor in the whole of this huge hospital know about Betty? She might not even be here. They might have taken her to any hospital in London, not just the nearest.

  ‘She’s a little girl,’ said Rose. She took a deep breath, feeling the tears bubbling up behind her eyes. ‘Her mum and her sister will be with her?’

  The doctor shook his head. Rose tried again.

  ‘She was brought in during the night? Injured?’

  ‘Have you checked the casualty department?’ he said. ‘If she was injured—’

  A woman had stopped beside them, a nurse. She put a hand on the doctor’s arm.

  ‘Betty?’ she said, looking at Rose. ‘Elizabeth Miles? Five years old?’

  Rose’s heart lifted with hope. And then she saw the look that passed between them, the doctor’s face with a question, the nurse replying with a tiny shake of her head. They both looked at Rose.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the nurse.

  Rose stared at her face. It seemed unnaturally clear against the background of the corridor which had become misty and out of focus. She bit her lip so hard it started to bleed. That was why her aunt never talked about her little sister, the one who had first called her Cosy. She had been killed in the war. When she was only five.

  ‘Where are they?’ she said. ‘Betty’s mum, I mean, and her sister? Can I see them?’

  ‘I think they left,’ said the nurse. ‘I remember the sister saying she was going to take her mum out of town for a while, to relatives in the country. I expect you’ll know . . . ?’

  Rose didn’t know. How could she? She backed away.

  ‘I’m really very sorry,’ said the nurse again. ‘Will you be—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Rose. It wasn’t, of cou
rse, but what could she say? ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  The nurse and the doctor shared another look and then moved off in separate directions, leaving Rose and Tommy in the corridor. They had other patients to look after, she knew that. To them, Betty was just one little girl among thousands of others who would never grow up to dance the night away in every city in the world and wear lipstick and earrings and a beautiful red dress like her sister.

  Rose didn’t know how long she stood there in that chilly corridor, trying not to cry. People walked round her, nurses and doctors and porters with patients on trolleys and in wheelchairs. Some of them looked at her curiously, but none of them stopped. Betty was gone, and Johnny and Rosemary were separated for ever. And now Rosemary had left London, leaving Rose trapped there, alone in the web of her aunt’s memories. Where was Aunt Cosy? Why had she brought her here and then disappeared?

  And what was Rose supposed to do now?

  They walked in the thickening dusk, back through the ruined streets of the shattered city, all the way back to the house on Nightingale Lane. Rose didn’t know what else to do.

  It was getting dark by the time they arrived and although the front door was locked (in her hurry to get to the common that morning, Rose must have slammed it behind them), the back door had been left open and was banging in the wind. The door of the Andersen shelter was open too, the doorway gaping like a toothless mouth at the end of the garden. It was very cold.

  ‘Come on, Tom. In we go.’

  As she followed Tommy indoors, Rose realised she hadn’t been in the kitchen since Betty’s accident. It didn’t look any different, not really. There was the same clutter of saucepans over the cooker, the big brown teapot on the draining board, the greyish dishcloth hanging over the tap . . . but it felt like everything had changed. The air seemed to hum with the terror and pain of that moment, the moment that Betty’s mother knew that something terrible had happened to her little girl. Rose looked at the half finished cup of tea on the kitchen table, the spilled sugar, the chair knocked over on the floor and thought, This must have been where she was sitting. Where she was sitting when she heard . . .

  She couldn’t bear to think about what Betty’s mum had heard, so she pushed the thought away and made herself remember what Rosemary had said: ‘We’ve got to keep on going, haven’t we? No matter how bad things get. Just put one foot in front of the other and keep on going.’ She picked up a grain of sugar on the end of her finger and licked it off, then found a tin bowl and gave Tommy a drink of water.

  But she couldn’t bear to stay in that kitchen a moment longer. The radio was still on in the front room, talking to nobody, so she went through.

  She hadn’t really looked at the room till now, not properly. It was familiar but not familiar. Aunt Cosy’s special chair was in its place by the fire, and although it was covered in a faded flowery fabric, its same-old shape made Rose feel a bit better. The fire was a little electric thing, like the one in Rosemary’s bedroom, but the big gold-framed mirror was there above the fireplace, and the glass-fronted cupboard that held Aunt Cosy’s collection of glass paperweights was in the same place in the corner by the window. And there, face down on the rug in front of the fireplace, was Munk-munk.

  Rose picked him up. He looked terribly empty without Betty’s hand inside him, making his head move and his paw wave, so she slipped him on to her hand.

  ‘Hello, Munk-munk,’ she said. He nodded his head to her and they touched noses. Tommy watched, wagging his tail, interested and confused at the same time, and Rose sat down in Aunt Cosy’s special chair and closed her eyes.

  ‘Goodnight, children everywhere,’ said the voice on the radio. ‘Goodnight.’

  Bring-bring. Bring-bring. Bring-bring.

  Rose was dreaming she was in the house on Nightingale Lane and the phone was ringing but she didn’t know where it was. She was running from room to room, opening doors, looking in cupboards, lifting up cushions . . .

  And then she was awake, heart pounding and panic roaring in her head. She opened her eyes and waited for the room to come into focus. But it didn’t. The room was completely black. And the phone was still ringing. Perhaps it had been ringing all night.

  How could this be happening? Did they even have phones in 1941? Perhaps it’s over, she thought, hope rising in her chest, perhaps I’m back, back in the twenty-first century. It was the eleventh of May and her mum was getting married today. There had been no Betty, no Billy, no Johnny. She had never met her Aunt Cosy as a girl and watched her fall in love with a boy she’d never kiss.

  And then, as she stared into the particles of tingling darkness and smelled the musty smell of the old house, Rose realised it wasn’t over. She was still there, sitting in Aunt Cosy’s special chair with Tommy at her feet and Munk-munk on her hand. The war was going on in Europe, bombs were being dropped on London and, in the house on Nightingale Lane, the phone was still ringing.

  Rose left Munk-munk on the chair and felt her way through the darkness to the window. When she parted the heavy curtains, she’d been expecting daylight, but instead found herself face to face with the moon. It was just as huge and bright as it had been on the night she’d left, the night she’d followed Aunt Cosy out of the house and down Nightingale Lane, chasing her memories down the escalator of Clapham South underground station. She closed the curtains again and felt around for the light switch. The room sprang into light, making Tommy look up from his place in front of the fireplace.

  Bring-bring. Bring-bring. Bring-bring.

  Where was that phone? She looked around the room. There was the scuffed floor, the gold-framed mirror over the fireplace, the big old radio . . .

  Outside in the hall perhaps. Rose opened the door and the sound leapt into the room, twice as loud as it had been. She looked left, towards the front door where there was a big heap of mail, letters and stuff, piled up on the doormat and spilling across the floor. She picked up one of the letters, hoping to see a date on the postmark or something. It was a brown envelope, a bill by the look of it. Another, with a typewritten address, to Mrs M Miles. That would be Rosemary’s mum. She couldn’t read the date, and there was no time to think about that now. The phone was still ringing, more insistent than ever, so Rose dropped the letter back with the others and turned away from the door. She saw the phone straight away. It was a heavy-looking black thing with a separate handpiece and a dial, squatting on a little low table by the kitchen door and demanding to be answered. What a weird place to keep a phone, she thought as she hurried over.

  Bring.

  It stopped. Rose turned to see Tommy watching her from the door of the front room and shrugged. Well, what could she do? Whoever had been trying to get through had obviously given up. And then she heard a key in the front door.

  Tommy had heard it too. He was standing quite still, watching the door, wagging his tail gently. Rose put her hand on his head.

  ‘Who is it, Tommy? Who’s there?’

  Whoever was behind the door had got it unlocked now and was struggling to open it, pushing the big heap of mail that was piled against it to one side.

  ‘Oh, botheration . . .’ It was a voice Rose recognised.

  One more big push and the door was open. It was Rosemary.

  She was wearing the dark trousers and jacket Rose had seen her in before, but she looked very different. Her hair and her clothes were grey with dust, there were dark shadows under her eyes and no bright slash of lipstick to brighten her white face. She closed the door behind her and leant against it. And then she saw Rose.

  They both stood there for a second, staring at each other, unable to speak. And then Rose held out her arms and Rosemary walked into them and they stood there together in the hallway of the house on Nightingale Lane, faces hidden in each other’s hair, while they both pretended not to cry. Then they started talking at once.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I’ve been walking,�
� said Rosemary. ‘From Victoria station. Couldn’t find a bus. It’s terrible out there, Rose, a man at the station said it was the worst night so far.’

  ‘But where have you been?’

  ‘Dorking,’ said Rosemary. ‘Mother’s got a sister there, my Aunty Vera. I had to get her away. After . . .’

  Rose nodded.

  ‘You know what happened?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘So you can see . . .’ Rosemary’s voice cracked as she struggled to hold back the tears. ‘This house – you know . . .’

  Rose did know. The war wasn’t halfway over and the house was already too full of memories. Munk-munk was sitting on the chair in the front room and Betty was still outside, dancing in the moonlight.

  ‘But I had to come back,’ Rosemary was saying. ‘I couldn’t stay there, out in the country, with everything that’s been going on in London. I would’ve felt like a coward. This is where I belong.’

  And where Johnny is, thought Rose, unless he’s already gone off to join the RAF. But she didn’t say that.

  ‘What about you, Strange Girl?’ Rosemary tried to smile. ‘What have you been doing since that night?’

  ‘That night?’

  ‘The last time we saw each other, you know. New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘What? Well, it’s May now, the tenth of May. So that’s what, four, five months?’

  Five months?

  A misty look had come over Rosemary’s face. Rose knew she was thinking of Johnny and knew what she was about to ask. ‘Rose? Did you—’

  Rose shook her head. ‘He wasn’t there, Rosemary. He didn’t come.’

  ‘What?! That’s not possible.’

  ‘It’s true. I’m really sorry. I was a tiny bit late, but Billy was there and he—’

  ‘Billy? What was he doing there?’