Rose in the Blitz

by Rebecca Stevens

Aunt Cosy shook her head. ‘My Johnny? No, sweetheart. I never saw him again, not after that night. The Longest Night they called it, the worst night of the Blitz. It was never so bad again.’

  ‘Do you think he was killed?’

  ‘I don’t know. When Billy showed me the piece in the newspaper, about him being missing, I feared the worst.’

  ‘But he would’ve come back, wouldn’t he? If he’d survived, I mean, been taken prisoner or something?’

  Aunt Cosy shook her head. ‘No, sweetheart. They were repatriated, you see. After the war ended.’

  Rose felt a hot stab of fury. ‘What?’

  ‘The non-Europeans, colonials as they called them. They were sent home. Back to their own countries. Johnny would’ve been sent back to British Guiana.’

  ‘But that’s disgusting! They came over to help and then just get sent back, like—’

  Aunt Cosy patted her hand. ‘It’s all right, Strange Girl. I didn’t really lose him. He’ll always be here.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘And now he’s here too.’ She tapped the side of Rose’s head and gave one of her smiles. ‘Safe. Shall we go home now?’

  Mum was in the kitchen making coffee when they got back. She was wearing an old dressing gown of Dad’s over her pyjamas and her hair looked mad.

  ‘There you are!’ She folded Rose into her arms. ‘We were worried when we got up this morning and you weren’t here. Sal said you’d probably taken Tommy out, but he’s gone off to look for you anyway. Why do you smell of bonfires?’ She released Rose and looked at her, holding her at arm’s length. ‘And why is your face all black?’

  Rose rubbed her face on her sleeve and looked at Aunt Cosy for help. She didn’t know what to say. How could she explain what had happened? She didn’t know herself.

  ‘We went out for a little walk, didn’t we, Rose?’ Aunt Cosy came to the rescue.

  Mum stared, noticing for the first time that the old lady was in her dressing gown and slippers. ‘Did you go out like that?’

  Rose pulled a face and nodded.

  ‘Did I?’ Aunt Cosy looked down at herself. ‘Oh dear! Not really dressed for a walk, am I? Or a wedding, come to that! So, if you two lovelies will excuse me . . .’

  Mum waited till Aunt Cosy had sailed out before turning back to Rose. ‘She’s getting worse, Rose. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I think she’ll be all right now, Mum.’ Rose was at the sink filling up Tom’s water bowl. She put it down for him and he drank in big slurping gulps.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ said Mum.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just something she said when we were out.’

  ‘Oh good. That’s good. Very good.’ Mum tried to smile, but couldn’t.

  ‘Mum—’ Rose stopped. Mum’s face had crumpled up like a little girl’s who was trying not to cry. She sank into a chair and hid her face in her hands and when Rose put a hand on her back, she felt it shaking. ‘Are you OK?’

  Mum took a deep shuddering breath and looked up at her. ‘Yes!’ she said. Then, ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’ She drew an S on the table in a puddle of spilled milk.

  Rose sat down next to her. ‘What’s up?’ She touched the sleeve of her dad’s dressing gown. It was an old-fashioned one, brown and red checks, a bit scratchy. It might even have belonged to Grandad once. Mum used to wear it in the months after Dad died, but she hadn’t got it out for ages.

  ‘I’m scared,’ said Mum.

  ‘Of?’

  ‘This.’ She gestured around her. ‘Everything. You. Sal. Leo.’ She looked at Rose. Her lip trembled. ‘Your dad.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Rose put her hand over her mum’s hand. ‘Dad’s not gone away, not completely. He’s still here.’ She touched the side of her head, like Aunt Cosy did at the bandstand. ‘And here.’ She touched the side of Mum’s head. ‘And you getting married again isn’t going to change that.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ Mum looked at her. He eyes were wet. ‘It’s you, love. Are you OK with it? Because if you’re not—’

  ‘I am,’ said Rose. ‘I’m more than OK with it, Mum. I’m happy. Really, really happy.’

  ‘Rose?’ It was Sal. He’d come in the back door, his hair wild, his eyes worried. ‘Is everything OK?’

  Rose got up from her chair. ‘Yes, Sal. Everything’s fine.’ She put her arms round him and gave him a hug, breathing in his smell of woolly jumpers and coffee and the stuff he put on his beard and wondering why on earth she’d ever thought it was weird. Then she turned to her mum.

  ‘Come on, Mum. Let’s do something about your hair.’

  So Mum had got in the shower and Rose had helped her into her dress and blow-dried her hair and painted her fingernails with dark-grey nail varnish, which Mum thought was strange, but Rose knew looked stylish. Then, she and Aunt Cosy went out into the garden with Tommy and picked sprays of purple lilac from the tree near the Anderson shelter and sprigs of rosemary from the bush by the back door because Aunt Cosy said it was lucky. And at the last minute Rose had rushed into the shelter and grabbed the lipstick from the memory box, and Johnny’s ring.

  And now she was in her room. Her phone was charging by the bed and she’d had her shower and put on the purpley-blue dress that had been waiting for her behind the door. Her bridesmaid’s dress.

  ‘What do you think, Tom?’ He had a sprig of lilac stuck in his collar for his role as official bridesdog and was looking important and embarrassed at the same time. Rose looked back at her reflection. ‘It needs something.’

  Her eyes rested on the little gold lipstick on her desk. But before she could pick it up, her phone buzzed.

  It was Fred, a message from last night that had only just come through.

  Too late rose, it said. I’m on way to airport see you tomorrow like it or not hahaha x

  And Rose replied:

  I do like it fred sorry for before I was stupid xxx

  As she pressed send there was a tap at the door.

  ‘Cabbage?’

  Grandad was wearing what he called his ‘one good suit’ which made him look like somebody else.

  ‘Oops,’ he said, pretending to back out. ‘I’m so sorry, madam. I seem to have got the wrong room. I was looking for my granddaughter. She’s a scruffy little oik who never combs her hair, not an elegant young lady such as yourself—’

  Rose hugged him to shut him up. ‘Grandad, I’m so, so, sorry. About Fred, I mean.’

  He drew back to look at her. ‘You are?’ he said. ‘It’s me that should be sorry. I should never have—’

  ‘Well, he’s coming anyway, so you can shut up and take Tommy for me.’

  ‘Is he now? Well well well!’ He clipped on Tommy’s lead and laughed. ‘Is he indeed?’

  ‘Brian!’ Rose pointed to the door.

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll say no more. Come on, Tommo, looks like we’re not wanted, mate.’

  When the door was shut behind them, Rose picked up the lipstick and turned to the mirror. How did Rosemary put it on without smudging? It wasn’t as easy as it looked, but after a few attempts, Rose got it right. She stood back and looked at herself in the full-length mirror.

  She was perfect.

  And then it was over. Promises had been made, papers had been signed and Sal and Mum were officially husband and wife. Tommy had been good, Leo hadn’t lost the rings (he was his dad’s best man) and Grandad had been put in charge of Aunt Cosy and had sat beside her during the ceremony and made her laugh. Fred hadn’t arrived, but Rose wasn’t too worried. She knew there’d be a good reason. She knew he’d get there when he could.

  They were at the reception now and Rose was sitting between Grandad and Aunt Cosy. The meal had been eaten, the speeches were over (Mum’s had been particularly funny even though her hair had gone back to looking mad, in spite of Rose’s best efforts with the hairdryer) and the dancing was about to begin.

  ‘It’s good to see your mum so happy, isn’t it?’ said Grandad. His tie was crooked and the white
rose in his buttonhole was looking a bit droopy. ‘Sal’s a lovely bloke, you know. I think your dad would have approved.’

  Rose nodded and looked across at Mum. She was talking to Sal, looking very serious and tapping him on the back of the hand to make her point. He was trying hard to listen, but then suddenly kissed her on the end of her nose. She looked cross for a minute and then burst out laughing and kissed him back.

  Rose smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is. I’m really glad.’ She was too. ‘Oh, Aunt Cosy, I nearly forgot.’ She felt for the signet ring in her bag. ‘I thought you should wear this. As it’s a special day.’

  Aunt Cosy looked at the ring in Rose’s hand, her face soft with memories. ‘But, sweetheart, I told you. It’s too big for me.’

  Rose took off the chain round her neck, the one that Mum and Dad had given her all those Christmases ago, and threaded the ring on to it, then fastened it round her aunt’s neck.

  ‘What’s this, Cose?’ Grandad twinkled at her. ‘A lover’s token?’

  Before Aunt Cosy could reply, there was a ripple of sound from the stage as the band appeared. A buzz of expectation went through the crowd as they played a few tentative chords.

  ‘Oi-oi,’ said Grandad to no one in particular. ‘Heads up, people, dancing’s about to start. First dance for the happy couple!’

  Rose could see Sal looking across at Mum, but she was doubled up laughing with her friends and hadn’t noticed that she was expected to take to the dance floor with her new husband.

  ‘Best go and have a word, pet,’ said Grandad. ‘Your mum seems to have lost the plot.’

  Rose nodded and was just about to get up when she realised that Sal was onstage, tapping the microphone.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he said. ‘Can I have your attention, please?’

  The laughter and chatter faded.

  ‘Before we all take to the dance floor, I want to thank you all for coming and introduce a special guest.’ Sal looked at Mum and grinned. This was clearly a surprise that he’d been planning. ‘Many of you have known this lady far longer than I have,’ Sal went on. ‘But in the short time since she welcomed me and Leo into her home, I’ve come to love and respect her as much as I know you do.’

  Rose looked at Aunt Cosy. She had taken her hat off and was sitting very upright, her eyes fixed on Sal as if she knew exactly what was coming.

  ‘What I’ve only recently found out, however, is what a wonderful singer she is. So please, will you welcome to the stage, our lovely Miss Rosemary Miles!’

  Aunt Cosy didn’t need to look at Rose for reassurance this time. There was applause and some cheers as she got to her feet and made her way to the stage. Sal bent to kiss her on the cheek before leaving her alone with the musicians. And then she began to sing.

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

  The pianist picked up the melody, just like at Covent Garden.

  ‘That this heart of mine embraces . . .’

  The rest of the band followed as she sang on.

  ‘All day through . . .’

  Grandad took Rose’s hand. She saw tears glistening in his eyes. Dad had always said he was a sentimental old fool.

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

  Rose felt the air in the room change as Aunt Cosy faltered. Just like before, the musicians exchanged glances and the pianist played a ripple of notes. The old lady was standing quite still, looking over the heads of the people sitting at the tables, towards the door. Rose was afraid to follow her gaze. But she did.

  And there he was.

  Standing in the doorway, transfixed by the electric beam of Aunt Cosy’s gaze, was an old man in a grey suit. His hair was white but he was still upright, still slim, still handsome. And in his hand was a dirty, crumpled white card with faded gold writing . . .

  The invitation Rose had left in the pocket of her parka seventy-five years ago:

  WE’RE GETTING MARRIED!

  Please join Elizabeth, Sal,

  Rose, Leo, Rosemary and Tommy

  at 2.00 p.m. on 11th May 2016

  at the Windmill Inn, Clapham Common

  to celebrate our wedding!

  It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But it was.

  It was Johnny. He had survived after all. And now he’d come back to London to find his long-lost love.

  People were murmuring to each other and shaking their heads. They could tell something was happening but they didn’t know what. Grace was looking across at Rose, pulling a ‘what the . . . ?!’ face.

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

  Aunt Cosy was singing again. But not as Aunt Cosy.

  ‘And when the night is new . . .’

  She was the young girl again, in her scarlet dress, singing to the boy she loved. She was Rosemary.

  ‘I’ll be looking at the moon . . .’

  ‘Who is that, Cabbage?’ said Grandad in Rose’s ear. ‘Do we know him?’

  ‘It’s Johnny,’ said Rose. ‘His name’s Johnny.’

  ‘But I’ll be seeing you . . .’

  Aunt Cosy had come down from the stage and was making her way through the tables to the doorway. She took Johnny’s hand and led him on to the dance floor.

  Grandad was looking over at the door again. ‘Oi-oi,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’ve got another late arrival.’

  Rose felt Tommy’s tail thumping against the floor from his place under the table at her feet as Grandad nudged her. Fred was standing in the doorway.

  ‘I knew he’d come,’ said Rose. She watched him for a minute as he scanned the room, looking for her, pushing his fair hair out of his eyes with one hand. And, just like she did at the dance at Covent Garden all those years ago, she thought:

  I’m happy. I, Rose, am happy.

  And then Fred saw her and his face lit up into a smile as he made his way over and Rose’s happiness was complete.

  ‘I am sorry to have arrived so late,’ Fred said in his careful English. ‘My flight was delayed. I hope I have not missed too much?’

  ‘Nothing important,’ said Rose. ‘Shall we dance?’

  Like most stories, Rose in the Blitz is a mixture of things that happened and things that are made up; places where I’ve been and places I’ve only heard about; people I’ve known and people I’ve only met in dreams . . .

  And I think that’s what our memories are like too. We remember the important bits, the meaningful things, the times that were particularly happy or scary or sad; but we also remember smells and feelings and sights and sounds that don’t seem to have any particular meaning and sometimes might not even have happened at all. Sunny days in photographs and scary first days at school our parents told us about; the smell of our grandma’s house or a pet rabbit’s clean fur; the sound of seagulls or the feel of our best friend’s hand . . .

  You might have noticed that this book is dedicated to the memory of my mum and dad. They both died, as very old people, in 2014, the year I finished writing my other book about Rose and Tommy (it was called Valentine Joe). You might also have noticed that, like the characters in this book, my mum was called Rosemary and my dad, John (though he was always known as Jack).

  That doesn’t mean my mum and dad were the Rosemary and Johnny in this book. Mum had trained as an actress and, like Rose’s ‘aunt’, she was known as Cosy in the family and was a bit of a show-off. Like Aunt Cosy, she also owned a Chinese jacket made of black silk and embroidered with birds and flowers and dragons that she brought out for special occasions (I’ve got it now). But she was only eleven when the Second World War broke out and she didn’t live in Nightingale Lane, Clapham. She lived in Worthing. Like Johnny, my dad joined the RAF at the age of nineteen. His plane was also shot down over Europe and he ended up in a prisoner of war camp. But he didn’t come from British Guiana (it’s called Guyana now and isn’t British any more). He came from Ipswich. He survived his time in the POW camp and, when the war was over, he was brought home,
where a few years later he met the girl who was to become my mum.

  Like many men who’d been through either of the two World Wars, my dad never talked about his experiences (partly because I think he felt it would be showing off), but Mum did. She loved to tell us about keeping chickens in the garden and the shortage of sweets and always hoping that the air raid warning would go off during maths so you could go down to the shelter and sing songs instead of doing sums; about her dad being away and her brother being in the Home Guard and being woken up in the middle of the night by a loud bang and her mum saying, ‘Go back to sleep, dear, it’s only a bomb.’; about being evacuated to a family with a big house in Yorkshire where there were ponies and servants and you had to say prayers before breakfast; about soldiers everywhere (she always thought how boring life would be without soldiers!) and seeing the Emperor of Ethiopia walking along the promenade at Worthing with his family, and barbed wire on the beach and girls being allowed to wear trousers; and then, on the day that the war officially ended, going up to London with her mum on the train and dancing in Trafalgar Square and spending the night on a bench in St James’s Park because they’d missed the last train back to Worthing . . .

  All my mum’s memories became part of my own memory and my life. They still are. So, when Mum got really old and, like Aunt Cosy, started to show signs of memory loss, I wanted to try and make sure they would never be forgotten. But I wasn’t sure how to do it.

  And then something else happened. Mum started to see things that weren’t there. It’s not particularly unusual for people with memory loss and can sometimes be quite scary. It wasn’t with Mum, though. She used to see two little boys out of the corner of her eye who would follow her around and appear at inconvenient moments when she was in the Co-op or having her eyes tested. I got intrigued by these little boys and used to ask her about them, and then started to wonder what it would be like if I could see them too. If I could see what my mum was seeing, I thought, then maybe I could really be part of her memories and share the things that had been most important to her throughout her life, before they were lost for ever.