At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  The store was bright and warm in a world that was cold, empty and dark. Glenn Miller was being played by a girl with neat peroxided hair and Mrs Eaves saw her, waved, took her by the arm to her office. Her keys jangled as she walked. They talked and Rosie cried again and said that Frank was better but Jack had gone. Hating her, loving her, unable to decide.

  ‘But he’ll write. I know he will,’ Rosie said, watching as Mrs Eaves nodded, pressing out her cigarette in the ashtray which had Margate written on the edge.

  ‘Of course he will, but it’ll take time. And if he doesn’t it’s not the end of the world.’

  But it would be. Rosie knew that, though she said nothing.

  She did still have her job, though, and they liked the piece she had written about small-town America. Its fears, its guilts. Its hysteria. They edited it down to half and ran it. For a few days that took her mind from the ship that was taking Jack to Korea but for no longer than that. But now at least she would not hope to see him come towards her as she walked to the bus. Now he had gone but he would be back. She had to believe that, she told Mrs Eaves.

  She wrote to Frank and Nancy, telling them that Jack had volunteered, that he was on his way.

  She didn’t tell them that he might never come back to her because she didn’t dare to write the words. She loved him in spite of the pain, the anger. She would never love anyone else and all his love couldn’t just disappear, could it?

  The day she wrote her letter to Frank she received one from them and read it in her lunch break sitting on a bench in the park.

  Lower Falls

  26 September

  Dearest Rosie,

  We miss you so much. How are things? Is it sorted out with Maisie? How did Jack take it? You must not think it is your fault. You couldn’t babysit the situation for ever, you know. I trust that Jack understands that.

  Here’s good news anyway. Frank has had details through of the Inchon landings. It seems MacArthur got it right. He came in strong, surprising the North Koreans but had to ride out a typhoon on the way. They had to time it exactly to land during high tide or they would be wading ashore in mud. As it was, some Marines had to do just that as they attacked Wolmi-do which guards the approaches to Inchon.

  There were fierce battles as other forces landed on the mainland but they advanced rapidly, as you will know. Those in the South East are on the offensive too.

  This success seems to have quietened down the zealots in our area which is a good respite for us both. Frank continues to do well. McCarthy is still stirring things up nationally.

  Come back, my dear, whenever you can, whenever you want to. We love you so very much. We miss you. Give our love to Jack. Bring him too. Joe sends his regards to you.

  Nancy

  Rosie tore it up, dropping it into the bin over by the seats. She didn’t want to read about the war, not now, not ever, because Jack would be there soon. She wanted to go back to Frank and Nancy, to their arms and their gentle voices, but not yet. Not until she heard from Jack. He might write. He would write. He might be injured. She must know. She must stay, and fear began, at last, to dull the anger.

  In the second week of October, Sam and Ted were buying a record of Frank Sinatra’s in Woolworths when they saw her. They came over, laughing, joking. They were older, much older. They were men but Jack was a man too.

  ‘Ollie says he’s gone, the daft bugger,’ Sam said, his smile wide but his eyes serious.

  Rosie took the ribbon the salesgirl handed her. It was blue and wide.

  ‘Yes, he’s gone. He is a daft bugger.’

  ‘Ollie says his missus has gone?’ Ted was looking at her now. ‘Wasn’t your fault. Everyone knew. You couldn’t stay with her for ever, you know.’

  Rosie touched the ribbon. It was soft and cool. Write to Jack, tell him, she wanted to shout but couldn’t. She knew now that he must realise that on his own.

  ‘Come up the Palais. It’ll be like old times,’ Sam said, looking at the ribbon. ‘Not your colour,’ he added.

  They went that night but it wasn’t like old times. Sam and Ted drank beer. She drank sherry. It was too sweet. They danced but Sam and Ted met girls they knew and she was one too many but they had been kind and they knew Jack and for a moment it had been good.

  At the end of October she received a letter from Nancy telling her of the UN advance in Korea, and how the North Korean forces had crumbled in the face of the UN forces. In the space of a few short weeks the UN had occupied virtually the whole of Korea.

  ‘Frank is worried that MacArthur cannot now be reined in. He might try to end the threat that Communist China poses to American interests in the Far East by not stopping at the frontier. Truman has to insist that this is a “limited action” against a specific Communist act.

  ‘Maybe it will be over by Christmas. If so, Jack won’t fight. He won’t be there long enough. Keep hoping, my dear.’

  The Features Editor had been working her hard. She typed, took shorthand, read the slush pile, wrote short pieces and slowly the career that she had always striven for was within her reach, and that, at least, gave her pleasure, gave her purpose.

  She took the letter into the park and read it again. Even though it was cold she brought her lunch here every day. It gave her some peace. An elderly woman sat next to her, eating ham sandwiches. She wondered where the pig had come from. There was almost no bacon or pork left in the country, or so it seemed. She looked at the snoek between her bread. The Government was pushing these tins offish at a protein-hungry public but the smell made her feel sick. The taste was rank and salty. It had upset her for days. So had the whalemeat which Norah kept for sandwiches. The taste of cod liver oil was too strong.

  The old woman saw her looking, smiled, patted her leg and passed her one.

  ‘Thanks,’ Rosie said. ‘But no. I’m not very hungry.’

  But the old woman insisted and she took it and tasted the fresh ham, but she felt the nausea begin again. She waited until the old woman had left the park, then fed it to the birds, watching as they flapped their wings, listening as they squawked.

  The next morning she woke early, eased herself from the bed, put on her coat, crept down, heated the kettle, and ate a biscuit, but it didn’t work. She rushed to the privy, leaned over the pan, and vomited. She leaned back against the wall, sweat-drenched, cold; the sickness was in her stomach, her throat. She vomited again and again, but quietly. For God’s sake be quiet. She pulled the chain to drown the noise.

  She dressed, and made bread and marge for her sandwiches, ignoring the snoek tin with its blue fish, ignoring the whalemeat and the cheese. She worked, and came home through the fog which was sulphur thick. Slept. It was the same all that week and the next but there was no letter from him. Still no letter.

  There was one from Frank though.

  Lower Falls,

  1st November

  My dear Rosie,

  I got it wrong. I thought things were cooling down a bit. I’ve been pulled up before the Un-American Activities Committee. Interviewed, hectored, treated with contempt, shouted at until I couldn’t think straight. It’s this Anti-Nazi League thing and because I know a Hollywood screenwriter who’s been blacklisted. You know. You met him.

  They wanted me to name friends of his and mine that we knew at College. How can they do this? How can people believe all this garbage about good people? He claimed the 5th Amendment. He hasn’t worked for four years as far as they know. But he writes for me under another name. They don’t know that of course. Thank God. But am I a coward for saying that?

  I thought things were improving. I guess they’re not. McCarthy is still fuelling the fire with that goddamn bulging briefcase of his which never actually pulls in any ‘spies’. Just ruins good folk. Thank God I don’t have an employer. I would have been sacked. People think you’re guilty if you stay silent. Have they all gone mad to believe this bunch of lunatics? Haven’t we just spent years fighting this in Europe?

  Have y
ou heard from Jack? Things still seem to be going OK out there. You are our bright spot. My health is OK so don’t worry. I’m just mad.

  Maybe you can come out for Thanksgiving, or Christmas? The fighting will be over by then, the troops will be home.

  Our love always,

  Frank

  But Rosie couldn’t go. Two days later, on 17 November, she fainted as she shopped at Woolworths, and Mrs Eaves took her into the office and pushed her head between her legs.

  ‘When did you last have a period, Rosie?’

  She was stroking Rosie’s hair, her other hand was on Rosie’s wrist. It was a plump hand, like Nancy’s, and now Rosie leaned her head against this woman and wept but said it was only the snoek because that had to be the truth.

  That afternoon they took two hours off and travelled by taxi to a doctor that Mrs Eaves knew. There was a brass plate on the wall, polished so that the letters were smoothed almost to flatness. The bell didn’t sound outside but a nurse opened the door, showed them upstairs, and gave them magazines to read while they waited on amber-covered chairs.

  Mrs Eaves didn’t come into the consulting rooms with her. She went alone. There was a large desk, a letter rack, a blotting pad. There was no ink on it. It was white, pure white. The man who rose and shook her hand was Ollie’s age. He had a bald head, a moustache, and kind eyes beneath full, bushy brows. How could someone with no hair on their head have so much above their eyes? Rosie wondered, sitting down, feeling too tired to be here. To be anywhere.

  ‘So, we have a problem, eh, Miss Norton?’ The man steepled his hands, rested his mouth on his forefingers, pressed his lip up into his moustache.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rosie, bunching her hands inside her coat pockets. She felt nausea rising. She swallowed, watching the signet ring on his little finger.

  ‘Let’s have a look shall we?’ he smiled, pointing to the back of the room. ‘Just leave your petticoat on. The nurse is there waiting.’

  She lay still on the couch behind the curtain at the back of the room, looking up at the coved ceiling, feeling strange hands pressing her. She lifted her legs as he asked. She answered his questions, not looking at him. Tracing the crack which wound up the wall, beneath the coving, then on to the ceiling until it was finished. This could not be happening to her. This man wasn’t real. The nurse, who would not meet her eyes, wasn’t real.

  She dressed, and walked to the chair again.

  ‘Well, my dear. You are almost certainly pregnant. We’ll run a test, just to confirm, but there’s really no need.’

  His hands were steepled again. He tapped his teeth this time. She watched that, listened to that. She didn’t think of the words which had been in her own mind for six weeks. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. What would she do? For God’s sake, what would she do?

  She stooped to pick up her bag from the floor. She said nothing. She couldn’t speak. There was too much fear.

  ‘There are things that can be done.’ The man was playing now with a paperknife, turning it over and over, the light flashing on its blade. He stopped, looked up at her. ‘You aren’t married?’

  Rosie covered her left hand but then said, ‘No.’ He knew that already. He had called her Miss Norton. Oh God. What would she do?

  ‘How will you support the child?’

  She shook her head. Until those words she had not thought of a child, only of the shame.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The doctor hesitated, looked at her, then down at the desk. ‘I can help but you realise it must be discreet. It would be quick and painless. Not in a seedy room in some dirty street. But it will cost a hundred guineas.’

  Rosie thought of the hop-yards, the sticky smell on her hands, the gypsies who brewed potions. The Welsh girl who had drunk some on a hot and heavy night and then screamed in pain all night but smiled for the rest of the picking because there would be no disgrace, not this time.

  But Jack had been at the hop-yard, Jack had smiled and held her. Jack had thrust himself inside her on the cold damp moors and she had wanted him. Not like that, not in that way perhaps. But she had wanted him and she loved him, even if he no longer loved her. This child was part of him. She counted the breaths she was taking, they were in time with the clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Rosie stood up, handing him his consultation fee. The movement made her feel faint. She sat again. He came round the desk, put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Will the father marry you?’

  ‘I will be quite all right, thank you,’ Rosie said, rising, but slowly this time.

  She went to the GP. The next week she collected iron tablets from the chemist in her lunch hour and nodded to Mrs Eaves.

  ‘The baby is due at the end of June,’ she said quietly.

  Mrs Eaves told her she must sit with her feet up and rest as much as she could at work. She must carry nothing heavy, but a shorthand pad wasn’t heavy, neither were the articles she had to sift. Mrs Eaves also said she should go back to America but Rosie said she couldn’t. Frank and Nancy had enough to worry about and she couldn’t face their disappointment, the ending of all their hopes for her.

  ‘How would Jack find me, when he comes home?’ she said and wouldn’t allow herself to see the doubt in Mrs Eaves’s eyes or acknowledge the same doubt herself.

  It was at night that the fear grew and cut the breath in her throat, when she was away from the lights of the office and the smiles of the other girls. It was when she was alone that she allowed herself to think of the child that was growing and she didn’t know if Norah would let her stay until Jack came back at Christmas. Because she had to believe that he would, just as she had to believe that he would write. Goddamn it, Jack, write. You must write. Because there was still an anger that swept her as well as fear and love and it helped to keep her strong.

  In the first week of December Frank wrote with the details of the Chinese assault which had pushed the UN forces back, slaughtering them in the narrow valleys, even though they marched on only a handful of rice. How Mao’s men had marched on through the snow, capturing, fighting. How the British Forces had carried out rearguard duties. How brave they had been. Had she heard from Jack? Was he all right? They would not now be home for Christmas.

  Rosie went round to Ollie who opened the door, his face setting when he saw her.

  ‘Is he all right?’ she asked because there was no place for anger or her own fear. There was only the thought of Jack and Korea.

  Ollie looked at her. ‘I’ll let you know if he isn’t.’ He shut the door.

  That night she fainted as she stood to take her plate to the sink. Her cheese was still on the plate. She hadn’t been able to eat. Harold carried her to the armchair by the fire, Grandpa’s chair, and Rosie cried, her head down in her hands, because Grandpa wasn’t here and neither was Jack. But Norah was, standing in front of her, her stockings rolled down round her ankles, her slippers trodden down at the back.

  ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ Norah’s hands were on her hips.

  Rosie wiped her face with the back of her hands and nodded.

  ‘Does that Jack know?’

  Rosie shook her head.

  ‘Then you’d better write and tell him.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Norah slapped her face then hard, catching Rosie’s hair, jerking her head to one side.

  ‘You’re a bloody little slut. Why not? Isn’t it his? Is it that Joe’s?’

  Rosie gripped the arms of the chair. She pushed herself back into it, away from Norah who was leaning forward, her face ugly. She would stay in Grandpa’s chair, then she would be safe. It would all go away. All of it. It would roll away to the time before all this.

  ‘Go on then, whose is it?’ Norah insisted.

  ‘It’s Jack’s, but I can’t tell him. He’s left me. He wants to make up his mind whether he loves me. He’d come back if I told him, but I’d never know whether he wanted to.’ Rosie reached out
her hands. ‘Can’t you goddamn understand? I love him. I can’t do that to him.’

  Rosie looked at Harold now. He was kind sometimes but now his face was filled with contempt.

  ‘So you’re alone. Lovely little Rosie hasn’t anyone to love her. Now you’ll know what it’s like.’ Norah was reaching down, pushing at Rosie, pulling at her, forcing her from the chair. ‘I was left with you and Grandpa. I was alone.’

  Rosie clutched at her, she felt sick again. ‘But Grandpa loved you, and Grandma. You know they did. Grandma most of all. What the hell are you talking about?’ Norah was still pushing her out of the kitchen, towards the hall, and Rosie didn’t have the strength to stop her.

  Norah shouted in her face now, pulling her back, jerking her to a stop. ‘But you had the best. You still have. You go to America, you bring back candy. Push it in my face. You little slut. Well, you’ve got more than you bargained for out of all this love, haven’t you? You’re an alley cat.’ She pushed her towards the foot of the stairs.

  Rosie felt her legs growing weak, her head heavy. The blackness was gripping her again. Sweat drenched her body. She clung to the banister, sank on to the stairs.

  ‘Get out by the morning,’ Norah hissed, standing above her, watching.

  ‘I can stay as long as I need to,’ Rosie said, anger driving the sickness back, but only for a moment. She leaned her head down on her knees. ‘Grandpa said.’

  ‘And what do you think Grandpa would say to this bastard you’re bringing into the world? You don’t think he’d want it in his house, in his neighbourhood. Where it’d bring disgrace. Where his rose growers would know.’

  Norah left her, went back into the kitchen, shut the door. There was no light left. Just darkness. And Rosie knew Norah was right. There were too many memories here. There was too much of the past which needed to be guarded for Grandpa. She must go. It was Christmas in three weeks and it was time for her to go. To find some privacy.