At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  She and Luke spent one evening a week with Jake, coaxing, nagging, drawing him on, because now they were both convinced that his playing could be brought up to the standard of the others, but still it was not quite right. She wrote again to Uncle Bob, telling him that Luke’s group was almost ready. That he would want them when he heard the middle range, the melancholia, the dexterity, the heart.

  She went to the clinic and they said she was underweight but the baby was strong. They gave her more iron. Mrs Orsini gave her soup, sandwiches, salads, but she was too tired to eat and Mario couldn’t understand the circles under her eyes and neither could Mrs Eaves. She didn’t tell them about the bar work, they wouldn’t understand how necessary it was. She said nothing to Luke either, or to Sandy, who made her sit down now when she phoned because her legs were trembling for much of the day and so were her hands.

  She still pulled pints though, in the evening, and it was here one night that Luke found her, pale, tired, bending, stretching, and he waited outside until the doors were locked and the customers had left. He waited beneath the street light, his leg crooked up behind him, until she came out of the side door and for a moment she thought he was Jack and ran towards him, but then stopped.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Luke said, his arms crossed, his voice hard. ‘You’re more than seven months pregnant. Are you mad?’

  The light cast shadows on his face and Rosie walked past him. She didn’t need this. She needed money for her baby. She needed a future. Not this. Not now. She didn’t turn but he followed her, grabbing her arm.

  ‘Are you mad or just greedy? Why this on top of everything else? What do you want to do? Go back to America a rich woman? Show off to your friends about how well you’ve done? You’re killing yourself. You’re killing the baby.’

  She pulled from him. The stars were clear in the sky. There was no cloud, no breeze. She would think of that, not his words.

  ‘I’m going home because for now and for now only it is home. When the baby’s born I have to leave. I have nowhere to go, no one to go to.’ She wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at the sky above the rooftops. ‘That’s why I’m working. I’ve got to pay for the goddamn Home, I’ve got to survive afterwards until I can work. I’ll see you tomorrow, Luke.’

  She walked on, back to the house by herself, climbed the stairs by herself, but then the baby stirred and she smiled. No, not by herself.

  Luke didn’t come into the café the next day, or the pub in the evening. Neither did the rest of the group, or Sandy. They didn’t play on Thursday night but it didn’t matter, because the new group did and the applause was loud, though Rosie had been too tired to tap her foot. Too tired to feel the hurt of Luke’s rejection, because that is what his absence meant.

  Mrs Orsini was quiet too, and busy. There didn’t seem time for her to smile and Mario was in and out. Rosie served coffee, made phone calls, took phone calls, added gigs in the book, totalled up the figures. Served spaghetti bolognese to Mrs Eaves who came and smiled but left quickly with Mrs Orsini, and Rosie told herself it didn’t matter.

  She served in the pub that night and she had never been so tired. The Chinese and the North Koreans had been held on a line to the north of Seoul and the Han River. Where was Jack? Was he safe? Would he write?

  As she left the pub she looked towards the lamppost but Luke wasn’t there and the walk home was cool and quiet and empty. But the wire box for letters wasn’t.

  There was one from Frank saying that Joe was coming over to cover the Festival of Britain which had started at the beginning of May. He was also coming to hear Luke’s group and to see her, to put their minds at rest that she was well and happy. Frank wanted her to write a feature on the Festival as well since she was doing freelance features in Britain.

  Rosie read it again, lying fully clothed on the bed, then she tore it up, into smaller and smaller pieces. How could she hide this baby now and why was there no letter from Jack? And she hadn’t written anything since she had left the magazine – her skill had gone, absorbed by the life she now led.

  She slept, dragged herself from the bed when the alarm rang at seven a.m. She made tea and toast but couldn’t eat, she was still too tired. She pushed her swollen feet into her shoes, and took her coat because the wind was still cool. The landlady was by the front door, holding it open for her.

  ‘Made other arrangements yet?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve had my rent until the end of May,’ Rosie said, pushing past her, buttoning up her coat, knowing that the hem rose at the front and dipped at the back because she was so large.

  When she arrived at the café the Closed sign was still up though the door was unlocked. The chairs were still upside-down on the tables and she moved slowly, setting them down, thinking of Joe, working out the letter she would write to stop him coming, the extra lies she would tell, but then Mario came into the room, his white apron smudged, and Mrs Orsini was behind her with Mrs Eaves.

  Mario took the chair from her, set it down, took her by the hand, led her behind the counter, through the kitchen, up the stairs. Past the Orsini flat, right up to the top where the attic was. He said nothing and Rosie was too tired to ask.

  He opened the door to the rooms which had housed packing cases, old chairs, rubbish. Luke and his band were there, with Sandy too. There were no packing cases any more. There was a carpet on the floor. There were chairs, a table, a cooker. Mario showed her this and the bathroom with the white suite. Light flooded in through the eaved windows.

  There was another room with a white-sprigged muslin bedspread draped over a bed. There was a dressing-table. No one spoke. Rosie turned. Mrs Eaves had followed them up and stood with Mrs Orsini.

  Luke said, ‘This is yours, Rosie.’

  Rosie stood but her legs were trembling, and now Luke moved over to the side of the bed where a sheet hung over something. He pulled it back and there was a cot with blankets cut down and freshly ironed sheets.

  ‘And this is the baby’s,’ he said.

  She walked over to the cot, stroked the bedclothes then the headboard. Frank’s grandfather had carved the headboard on her bed at Lower Falls out of maple. She heard again the jazz from the open window flowing across the shadowed lawn.

  She turned. ‘I don’t deserve it.’ She laid her hand on her stomach. ‘I can’t take it.’

  The sky was blue behind the rooftops and the chimneys. There were white clouds. How strange. There had only been darkness for so long.

  She said again as they all stood, silent but smiling still, ‘I can’t take it.’ But how she wanted to be able to.

  Mr Orsini spread open his hands. ‘Then you look for another job, my Rosie, because the person that works with us now has to live above. It is better for business. We are putting a phone up here.’ He turned, the others were grinning now. ‘But, you want to leave. You leave. We want you to stay. We want the baby too. We want you live here. Work here, with baby.’

  Mrs Eaves came then, took her arm, moved her through into the other room, pushed her towards the chair beside the fire which had been hidden beneath an old sheet up to now. It was Grandpa’s.

  ‘We brought it over from Norah’s. Harold helped us.’

  Rosie sat. She looked at her own hands clutching the arms of the chair which his had held and now she looked up. His books were here too, on shelves along the wall.

  ‘Thank you.’ It was all she could say, but it was enough because there were so many tears in her eyes and everyone else’s and she wanted to hug them, tell them how much it all meant to her. Mrs Eaves stooped and kissed her head.

  ‘We know, my dear,’ she murmured.

  Mr Orsini clapped his hands and laughed. ‘Good, good. Now downstairs, everyone. The café should be open. There is much to do. You too, Rosie, and there will be no more job at pub. There will be no more nasty woman at house. There will be no talk of Home for you and baby.’

  He was taking her arm, helping her up while Mrs Orsini nodded and Mrs Eav
es smiled. They followed Luke and the group down the stairs and everyone was talking at once but Rosie listened to Mr Orsini. ‘You will go now to clinic. You will have baby in nearby hospital. You will come home to us.’ He put up his hands. ‘No arguments. That is as it should be. We help until Jack comes back.’

  Rosie walked to the clinic and there was blossom on the trees, there were children running in the streets, laughing, shouting, as she and Jack had done. As their child would do, and one day they would take her to the hills of Herefordshire and the lake in Pennsylvania.

  On 20 May Rosie went to the market for vegetables. She chose spring greens, with the dew still on the leaves, carrots, onions but left the potatoes for Luke to bring later. She listened to the man who sold crockery, dipping his hands into the money pocket of his apron. He wasn’t as good as Jack.

  She stopped, bought a paper and read of the British and Australian troops who had defended their positions and thrown back the Chinese. People pushed past her. They didn’t care that there was a war on. Rosie put the paper into the litter bin and looked up and down the street. Was there fresh spring growth where Jack was? Was there blossom against blue skies as there was here? Was he thinking of her?

  She walked on. She knew he wasn’t dead. Ollie would have had a telegram and so she thought of him as she had known him, selling his plates, laughing, throwing the cheeses over the wall, and the sun was warm on her face and she didn’t see the dog until it was too late.

  It ran at her, caught her behind the knee. She fell, the carrots bursting out of their newspaper as her bag fell with her, and for a moment there was no pain, just surprise, just dirt on her hands and in her mouth. Then there were hands lifting her, voices, faces that cared, that were worried, shocked, and now the pain came, passing over her in waves.

  ‘Sit down, missus.’ Someone brought a chair out of a shop and an ambulance was called but the carrots were still all over the pavement. Someone must pick them up. The newspaper was lifting and flapping. It was dirty. Her hands were dirty and her mouth. She could taste the grit.

  At the hospital she held out her hands through the fog of pain. They were dirty, so dirty, and the Sister smiled and washed them and asked how they could get hold of her husband.

  ‘Jack’s in Korea,’ Rosie whispered because there was too much pain to use her voice properly.

  The doctor tried to stop the baby coming because it was four weeks too soon, but the contractions were stronger, coming too quickly, and Rosie lay on the bed and called for Jack, again and again, because his baby was coming too soon. Mrs Eaves and Mrs Orsini came and patted her hand, soothed her forehead but they weren’t allowed to stay.

  ‘We’ll be in the corridor. We’ll wait,’ Mrs Eaves said and there was a smile on her face, but not in her eyes.

  The pain came again. ‘Don’t go,’ Rosie called. ‘Everyone goes.’

  Lucia Anne was born at one a.m. She was small, but strong and beautiful, so very beautiful, and Rosie held her before they took her to an incubator. She stroked the small hands, the perfect nails, the soft hair, the skin. She kissed her cheek. Mrs Eaves and Mrs Orsini saw the baby too and cried when they heard the names because they were theirs.

  The Sister came into the ward the next day, her face stern, her lips thin. She pulled the screens round the bed. ‘There is no husband, is there?’

  Rosie shook her head.

  ‘Then you should have the baby adopted. It would be better. There would be two parents, a settled home.’ The Sister straightened her apron. ‘You’re young enough to start again. Forget all about this.’

  ‘I have a home. The father will come back from Korea. I know he will.’ Rosie turned away to face the screen and would say nothing else.

  At visiting time the husbands came and she looked away, out of the window at the blue sky. She was glad she had been to see Grandpa when he lay in hospital. She was glad she had carried the roses until her hands were raw because there was a loneliness here like no other.

  Mario came, and Luke, and then Mrs Eaves and Mrs Orsini and they said they had told Norah. She did not come. The doctor spoke to her the next day about adoption but Lucia Anne was hers, she told him. She loved her.

  ‘But my dear, love is not enough,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Love is everything,’ she replied.

  She took Lucia home and there were flowers in the flat and light, so much light. And there was love. So much love, from them all. But Jack wasn’t there.

  And Joe was coming soon and what would happen then?

  CHAPTER 20

  Jack’s long march to the ‘safe rear’ began at seven p.m. as spring edged into the summer of 1951.

  ‘To prevent strafing from UN planes,’ the Chinese guard said.

  They carried sacks of sorghum and Jack and Steve helped Nigel, who was stronger now but his arm was swollen and stiff. Jack still couldn’t smile at the American, because he was a Yank like Ed, but he took the help he gave because the Yanks had taken so much from him.

  They marched through mud and the Sergeant at the head of the column set up the rhythm and it helped, it made them feel human after the Korean children had giggled and stared and the North Korean guards had spat.

  The mud dragged at their boots, Nigel lost the rhythm. Jack chanted left right, left right, and the Korean guard lunged at him with his rifle butt, screaming.

  ‘OK, buddy, keep your shirt on,’ Steve drawled and the guard turned on him and thudded the butt into his ribs.

  Jack kept silent because the American had taken the blows which should have come to him. The bruises would have been easier. Steve kept silent too and now Nigel was back in rhythm, they were all in the rhythm, cursing with each step, cursing, counting, cursing, counting, but only in their minds, and Jack thought of this, not Steve and his long loping strides in which he saw echoes of Ed.

  Trucks passed them, their lights picking out the road, spewing up mud, leaving the sickening smell of gasoline hanging on the air. Planes sometimes soared above, dropping flares which illuminated the road and adjacent hills, and each time the men had to break and scatter into the roadside ditches, sinking into the stinking mud as rockets hit the hills and the road. Then, as the planes disappeared, they clambered out again, marching on in sodden clothes, which rubbed against their skin. Christ, how they rubbed.

  All along the hilltops bordering the roads the Chinese air-raid wardens fired rifle shots into the air when other planes were sighted and again and again they were back in the ditches, cursing the American air crews but cheering them too, if only in their minds.

  They crossed bridges and were made to run for the length of them, their breath jerking in their chests, the sorghum sacks breaking their backs, deadening their legs. Jack could hear Nigel groaning but the guards couldn’t hear above the thud of boots.

  ‘Better than the assault courses,’ he said as they ran. ‘Do you remember? Just keep going.’ And Nigel did.

  Their mouths were dry. There were no drinks, but the guards had nothing either and they carried packs too.

  They halted in a village before it was light, crouching in the centre, their bodies cooling quickly in the morning chill. Nigel was groaning but Jack gripped his good arm.

  ‘In your mind, Nigel. In your mind.’ Because the prisoners who had been in the Japanese camps in the last war could understand the North Koreans. They understood that the ox-cart which followed them meant death for the injured placed upon it.

  Steve checked Nigel’s wound. ‘It’s OK. The maggots are in it now.’

  Jack nodded, swallowing. He couldn’t have lifted the bandage, seen the writhing mass, but he wouldn’t think of that. He would think of his mouth which was dry, of water which had not yet been given. He would think of the stream below the hop-yards, of Rosie standing, letting the water ripple about her legs.

  The Chinese officer was shouting at his men and there were bullfrogs in the paddy fields which lay all around them. They were given water to drink and hot watery sorghum to
eat, then herded up into the hills before dawn broke and there they lay during the long daylight hours.

  They slept on the sandy ground, sheltered from planes by rocks and shrubs, and in the village he could see trees with white blossom bursting from their branches, symbols of stillness. He thought of Suko and the avenues of trees he had not stayed to see in Japan. But most of the time he thought and dreamed of Rosie and hated himself for hurting her.

  But then the Chinese would come and sit and talk of their sins, of their crimes against the Korean people, of the right of the Chinese people to Formosa, and all the time the North Korean guards sat and lay on the perimeter, watching the men, fingering their guns, their knives, and no one tried to escape on that first night or day, or indeed the whole journey.

  They marched again at seven p.m. when the rain was pouring. It was in their eyes, their fatigues, their mouths and so they weren’t thirsty, but tired.

  ‘So goddamn tired,’ Steve drawled and Nigel nodded, but Jack looked straight ahead.

  They stopped in the morning and this time there was room to stay in village shacks but it enabled the Chinese to talk to them more easily. A smooth-faced lecturer in well-pressed olive greens came by truck and harangued the prisoners as they slumped with knees crossed on the floor, looking out of the door at the blossom.

  For two hours they sat and listened and their backs ached, their heads too, and then they were allowed to rest but the children of the village threw stones into the shacks, then beat sticks on the walls so there was no sleep for any of them. They marched again at seven p.m. and the lice were itching.

  By ten p.m. they were lying in ditches, scattered before a strafing plane, its roar filling the air which was full of flying cartridge cases. One guard was killed and two prisoners. They were so tired, they barely noticed, but when they arrived at the next village they turned their clothes inside-out and squashed what lice they could between their fingernails.