At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  Already that goddamn busybody, Gallagher, in Local Administration, is getting busy sharpening his knife, asking questions about Art, our friend in planning. Do you remember him? Had some kind of a soft spot for those revolutionaries in Russia in the thirties. He’s got a wife and kids now. Doesn’t think of politics any more but this LA is really sniffing. Does he think that there are Reds under every bed or something crazy like that? Even came round to the newspaper offices asking how long Frank had known him.

  But, let’s not go on about that now. I guess Christmas without you has made me mope. I can’t tell you how we miss you. We took a ride into town. It wasn’t the same.

  We’re off skiing for a week at the end of January but that won’t be the same either, without you. Sandra is busy, having a good time as always. Talking without drawing breath. We see Joe from time to time. He’d like a job on the paper. Maybe he will, but we’d rather it was you.

  How are things with you, Rosie?

  All our love,

  Nancy

  Rosie read the letter standing in a queue during her lunch-hour hoping that at the end of it there would be some sort of meat. But there wasn’t and she walked back to Woolworths, her feet cold in her Wellingtons even through the thick socks she had knitted from a pulled out jumper.

  It hadn’t mattered until she read the letter, saw the round handwriting, remembered the feeling of Nancy’s arms, the smell of Frank’s pipe. Perhaps it would be better if they didn’t write, didn’t stir up memories, but then she shook her head. No, her feet would still freeze and she wanted to feel Nancy reaching out to her.

  She shook her head at Norah and Mrs Eaves as she went in.

  ‘The soldiers couldn’t get through with it. They’re slower than the lorry drivers. Maybe tomorrow.’ She shrugged and pushed her numb feet into her shoes before taking her place behind the counter, feeling the letter in her pocket.

  She wrote back to Nancy that night telling her that the road haulage workers were on strike, the meat was rotting in the warehouses, the soldiers were slowly getting it through. She told her how they thought they’d bought some from a guy called Jones at the pub who had meat which would otherwise rot, but he took their money and ran. We never seem to learn, she wrote.

  She told Nancy how the greengrocer was rationing potatoes to two pounds a head a week. But there was corned beef – ‘So we party every night, Nancy. You’d love it.’

  She switched out the light and lay back in her bed. Did her letter sound angry or just plain tired? She felt both as she lay here listening to Grandpa moving about beneath her. She sat up, read the leader column of The Times, and analysed a report which Frank had enclosed for her as practice. Wrote it up. Transcribed her shorthand because there was no time to waste. It was 1947. She was moving forward. She had to keep telling herself that.

  She had said it as she heaped the fire with ash before she came upstairs, banking it up, hoping it would stay in until the morning. They were wrapping coal in soaked newspaper to make it last longer and Jack’s wood from the bomb site helped.

  She lay down and pulled the blankets up round her ears not thinking of the food in the American shops, not thinking of the skiing slopes. Beating back the anger at the ease of the world which she had left behind.

  Maisie hadn’t been any luckier with her meat queue either. Lee had been so cold after two hours she had come home and Rosie had rubbed his hands between hers to warm them up. She listened to his crying and coughing through the wall.

  He was ill, his temperature was high. She put on the light again and added to her letter, telling Nancy that on New Year’s Day flags had been raised at all Britain’s collieries as they were nationalised. It hadn’t meant more coal though, not yet. A fuel crisis was threatening.

  Here Rosie put down her pen. Lee was still crying and now she could hear Jack’s voice, soft and gentle, and Maisie’s too. She listened, wanting to speak through the wall to Lee, to reach out to him, but she didn’t, she just waited until there was no more sound and then she wrote again, wondering how long it would be before the new National Health Service took effect. She did not mention the Local Administrator or Eastern Europe and the Iron Curtain. It was too far away, too trivial against Lee’s cough and the bitter cold.

  The next day Jack came round. It was Sunday and Lee was a bit better, he told her, his muffler up round his mouth, his dad’s old coat worn at the cuffs, the belt missing. Rosie nodded, heaping Grandpa’s sheet from the sink into a bowl, drying her hands, pulling down her sleeves, throwing her coat around her. The accidents had begun again, but Jack was here and nothing else mattered.

  Jack carried the sheet into the yard and they each took an end, twisting it, hearing the water pouring on to the yard, seeing it begin to freeze even as it hit the concrete. Again they twisted. The water splashed on his coat.

  ‘Why are you wearing that thing?’ Rosie asked. ‘It’s so darn big.’

  Jack just shrugged and grinned. ‘Makes me look older. Maybe those tarts up West would take me on now.’

  Rosie looked at his face, then flicked a corner of the sheet, splashing him. ‘There’d have to be a pretty thick fog, and a Derby win to make it worth their while.’

  She carried the sheet in and Jack hung it over the airer which hung from the ceiling above the fire while Rosie lifted out the other sheet from the sink. They did the same a second time and Jack asked how Nancy was, and Frank. As the cold sliced into her wet hands she would not let herself think of the skis which would be propped up in her old bedroom. She would not let herself think of the central heating, the washing machine, the hamburgers oozing out of toasted buns. Nor would she think of the Local Administrator, or Art, or Frank, because as dawn had come she had realised it wasn’t trivial, or Frank would have written himself. Nor would she think of the big coat that Jack was wearing because she thought she knew what it meant.

  She made mugs of tea with twice-used leaves and they cupped them in their hands, Grandpa too, his eyes not meeting theirs because he was ashamed. Jack pulled a newspaper out of his pocket.

  ‘Ollie sent it round. He’s stuck on the crossword. Wants you to finish it, if you’ve got the time.’

  Rosie smiled as Grandpa took it, concentrating on this, not that land across the sea.

  ‘Number five down. Can’t get that at all. None of us can.’

  Grandpa took the stub of pencil from Jack, read the clues, knew the word and they all smiled as his eyes met theirs.

  ‘Hypothermia, that’s what it is,’ he said.

  Rosie looked at Jack. He had known all along, she could tell from his eyes.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, blowing on the pale tea, feeling the steam damp on her face. The room was damp from the sheets too.

  Jack drank his tea, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Nowhere today, Rosie. I’m a bit busy.’ He reached forward, giving her his mug. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

  She had known he would say that. Ever since Jones had taken the money and not brought back the meat, she’d been waiting for this because she had seen the anger in his eyes, and knew it was reflected in hers. And today he was wearing that coat which would cover any amount of meat.

  ‘I’ll come.’ Rosie was up again but Jack was at the door now.

  ‘No, you won’t come. Stay here. I’ve just got a bit of work to do.’

  He didn’t turn back as he moved quickly through the yard, stepping over the ice from the sheets, slamming the gate behind him. But then he heard the latch lift and she was there, shaking in the cold, her coat slung over her shoulders. There was a freezing fog coming down now, its droplets were on her hair.

  ‘Rosie, get the hell back in the house. Do as I ask, just for bloody once.’ His voice was angry but she looked so small, so cold, and so he came to her, taking her in his arms. ‘Go on now, get back in. It’s nothing. Nothing, just a job.’

  ‘Like the cheeses?’ Her voice was indistinct, muffled by his coat.

  He laughed. ‘Yes, a
bit like the cheeses.’

  She stood back from him now. ‘Well, I’m coming. He owes my grandpa too. And we should do this together.’

  Jack looked at her. ‘You’re crazy. You won’t give up. I’m getting it for all of us. Let me and Dad do it. You don’t have to be involved. Just go back in and wait.’

  But Rosie was walking into his yard now. Didn’t he know that waiting was too hard?

  Ollie drove out of London, grinding the gears of his friend’s car but using kosher petrol. ‘Don’t want to be stopped before we start, do we?’ he said as he wiped the windscreen again, scraping his frozen breath from the screen, passing Jack the rag. ‘Here, you keep at it. Make sure I can see my way. And you keep quiet in the back, Rosie. You shouldn’t be here anyway.’

  Jack looked out through the small patch he had cleared for himself, scrubbing the windscreen in front of Ollie. The fog was freezing on the screen, the wipers were scraping some of it away. His dad was peering down at the map then out again at the road signs. Fog was seeping thickly around them now.

  ‘Don’t matter. It could help,’ his father murmured, pointing to a turning on the pencil-drawn map. His nails were thick with dirt from the tyre they’d had to change ten miles back. They turned at the next crossroads. There were factories either side, flat-roofed. Two in ruins, burnt out by incendiaries. There was another old three-storey building with blackened bricks. The edges were indistinct, the fog was thicker now.

  ‘Bert said it’s along at the end. Might be guards though. Do you want to go through with it?’ Ollie was looking at Jack now.

  No, I don’t want to go through with it. I’m frightened. I want to go home. I want me mum, I want to turn round and take Rosie back with me. I don’t want the bloody meat. But all he said was, ‘Course. Why not? That old bugger should have let us have it. He took our money.’

  He wiped at the windscreen again. Lee needed it. He needed some good red meat inside him. He was pale, his cough was bad. It was crazy to let the meat stay in there – and besides Rosie was here. She had made him bring her. She wouldn’t give up. It warmed him, made him smile, gave him courage.

  They were close now and it was quiet as Ollie turned off the engine and drifted into the side of the road. Had old Jones posted guards? Jack wondered. He must have known that if he cheated them they’d come after him. He knew Ollie too well, didn’t he?

  ‘He did the same with the Wind and Flute regulars. Took their money, said they could come and transport their own meat, then said the meat had gone off. They’d paid their money, it was their loss, the old devil said.’

  Ollie was tapping the dashboard, peering through the fog. Jack wound down his window. He could hear nothing but church bells. He looked at his watch.

  ‘What time are the others supposed to be here?’

  ‘By now,’ Ollie said. His voice was short. His eyes darting to the mirror and then to the front again.

  ‘What if the meat has gone off?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Then we’ve done all this for nothing but at least we’ve tried. You see, he stamps on us, that bugger, always has. Runs the Pawn, runs the betting shop, thinks he runs us. Someone pinched two of his cheeses, you know. Upset him for weeks that did.’

  Jack nodded, remembering Rosie walking beside him with a swollen stomach and now, as he leaned his head out of the car, he grinned, banging lightly with his hand on the side of the van, hearing her knock back.

  She was his past and his present. She was everything and she was tired and hungry because Grandpa had all that she could spare. Rosie had never told him that, but she didn’t need to, he had seen it for himself.

  Ollie pressed his mouth to the grille between the cabin and the back.

  ‘We can’t wait any longer. You come through to the cabin,’ he called softly to Rosie. ‘Keep a look-out for the cops, for anyone. If you see them, come and get us, don’t hoot the horn.’

  Jack followed Ollie from the van, walking on the grass to deaden the sound of his footsteps. They could see the fence ahead. There was barbed wire on the top. Ollie gestured and Jack crept round to one side, Ollie to the other. There was a gap, but it was too small for Ollie so it was Jack who went through alone, carrying cutters for the padlock, carrying his fear.

  The fog was thicker now, he could taste the sulphur in his mouth. It stung his eyes and was thick in his throat. His feet were frozen in his plimsolls but they were quieter, like the GIs’ rubber-soled shoes had been, like Ed’s had been in the Somerset village. Had they worn them in the Ardennes? Had Ed been frightened? Had he shown it? He’d always said there was nothing wrong with fear. It kept you alive. Why had he never written? Why do I think of him so much? Why do I lie awake at night and think of him?

  He stopped, gripped the cutters. Keep your mind on the job, you bloody fool. He listened again. Had there been a noise? He waited. No, nothing. Fear kept you alive, Ed said. He repeated it to himself. There was nothing wrong with it. The door was ahead, the padlock dripping in the fog.

  He eased the cutters round the chain, bending his elbows, putting his weight behind it but it was no good. He tried again and they slipped and fell. He froze, his breath loud. He couldn’t hear. He breathed through his mouth. That was better. There was nothing. No one.

  He stooped and picked up the cutters, tried again, and this time fear had put strength into his arms and he ground the cutters through, catching the chain before it fell, laying it gently on the ground. Ed was right, it helped. He took the sack from beneath his coat, opened the door, and crept on, into the cold store. Looking. Listening. Breathing. Christ, why was he so loud? He could see his breath. He had seen Rosie’s in the yard. Shut up, concentrate. Listen. Look. Breathe.

  There were carcasses hanging on hooks, others cut into joints. He took only what they had paid for. There was no rancid smell. This meat was good. He turned, easing his way back out, shutting the door, running now, back to the fence, but where was the gap? He edged along. The fog was thicker now. He couldn’t see. The meat was heavy in the large pockets inside the coat. His hands were numb, his feet too.

  ‘Dad,’ he whispered. ‘Dad.’ But there was no answer, there was just a noise behind him, an arm round his throat, a fist hard into the side of his head and pain which for a moment crushed him but he didn’t drop the cutters because he knew they could be traced back to Ollie.

  There was another punch and he felt his lip burst. He spun round, out of the grip because he didn’t want to be locked up, he didn’t want to be kept from Rosie, from Lee, from his mum, from Dad.

  No, he didn’t want to be kept from his dad and he swung his fist at the large dark man whose face he couldn’t see in the fog. He felt the shock of contact up into his shoulder, saw him fall, begin to rise. He swung at him again. Rosie needed her meat. Lee needed his.

  ‘Dad,’ he shouted. ‘Dad.’

  But his father was already there, the fence planks that he had torn away thrown across the yard.

  ‘Get out now, son.’ Ollie was struggling with the guard, his breath coming in grunts, warding off the blows, parrying, grabbing an arm, twisting it up behind the guard’s back now, bringing him to a standstill.

  ‘Quick. I’ll cover you. Get to the van. If I don’t come, drive off. There might be more than one.’ He was tying the guard’s arms together.

  Jack ran off through the gap, the meat heavy in the coat, but then he stopped and waited by the fence. His dad had come for him. His father was putting the guard into a hut.

  ‘Out of the cold,’ he told him as he ran back. Together they went to the van, pushing the meat beneath sacks, keeping Rosie in the cabin. Together they drove until they found a phone box. Then Ollie rang the police, telling them that there was a guard tied up in a shed in Jones’s warehouse, nothing more. They drove back, neither speaking, scared the police might see them, might stop them, but they didn’t.

  They threw the sack into the back yard, then drove the van back to Bert. They were stopped and searched but Rosie had wiped t
he blood from Jack’s face with her handkerchief moistened from the yard rainbutt and there was nothing to be seen but the sweat on the palms of their hands, the fear in their eyes.

  That night those who had paid Jones received their meat and Jack held Rosie and told her that he hated the cold, he hated to feel such fear, but Ollie had been like he was before the war – strong and reliable – and it had been worth it for that. She kissed his bruised cheek, his swollen lips and remembered that she had never been able to see him hurt, even when they were children.

  That night she wrote again to Nancy, asking about the Americans’ fear about Russia. Asking about Frank and the Local Administrator because she couldn’t bear to think of Frank being hurt either.

  As January turned to February the cold was like nothing anyone could remember. The snow heaped itself in drifts over the roses and up against the windows. They dug paths through to the road and walked in the gutter. They slipped and fell but went on and heard in the grocer’s queue that Mr Philips’s son, a conscript, had been killed in Palestine.

  Nancy wrote that it was suspected that the Polish elections had been rigged to allow in the Communists and that the United States Government feared that the Soviets had atomic secrets. Would they too build a bomb? Would the Government feel forced to stand out against the Communists?

  Rosie didn’t want to read this. She wanted to read words of love that she could hug to herself at night, keeping out the darkness of the winter, the worry that the world was going crazy again. That there might be war. Is that what they were saying? Hadn’t they all gone through enough in the last one? Weren’t they still going through it?

  Wasn’t it enough that there was snow and that there was a fuel shortage? That there was no power during the morning and afternoon at home, so Grandpa had to go to Maisie’s to huddle round one fire, and one set of candles? For Christ’s sake, wasn’t that enough?