At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  They didn’t call to one another again, but they shuffled their feet or they coughed and that was enough. And it was enough, too, for Jack to sit still now and hold his body upright, to ignore the bindings and think of blossom, Rosie and the cool of England.

  After two days the guards untied their arms, but pushed them back down again into the pit. There were deep raw grooves in their skin from the rope but these didn’t touch the thoughts inside Jack’s head, the memories, the echoes of the life he had lived, the people he had loved.

  In the second week he pictured the pebbles in the stream below the hop-yards. He picked them from the water. The water was cool, the pebbles wet. He built a pyramid. The pebbles dried. He walked amongst the cool green fountains of hops, and saw the yellow dust beneath his fingernails. He picked the hops, flicking them into the bin. He smelt them, felt them. Kissed Rosie, laughed with Ed, smelt the lavender on Maisie’s neck, threw Lee up into the air, heard his laughter. Heard Ollie’s too.

  In the third week he breathed slowly, emptied his mind, and on each trip to the latrine he coughed with a dry throat, and each time he heard Steve do the same he knew he could go on. They were released at the end of August.

  Jack could barely stand. The light hurt his eyes as it had hurt them each time he had walked to the latrine. He was marched back to the compound, through North Koreans who threw stones at him and called him a murderer.

  They did the same to Steve, whose beard was dark against his white skin. Jack rubbed his own beard. He watched the stones hit his friend. But Steve didn’t notice. He was thin, his legs trembled as Jack’s did. They met at the gate, nodded, smiled, held one another’s arms.

  ‘The war must be nearly over,’ they called to a prisoner who brought them water. They lifted the cans to their lips.

  The young boy shook his head. ‘New POWs in say the talks will go on and on, maybe for years. There’s no truce, only more fighting.’

  They felt sick with something deeper than anguish and couldn’t move as they watched the boy walk on, his head down, dust scuffing up with each step. The hop-yards were fading. Jack couldn’t hold on to them.

  They walked towards Nigel’s hut but he wasn’t there. He had been moved to the officers’ camp, another prisoner told them.

  ‘He didn’t want to go. He wanted to wait for you, but he had no choice. They’re trying to destroy the old leadership system, demoralise everyone, so the officers have been separated from the ranks. He died there last week. We’ve only just heard.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Joe came at the beginning of June, when Rosie had only been home a week. He walked into the café as Lucia slept in her pram outside the kitchen door in the small sunswept courtyard. Rosie was talking on the phone to a promoter who wanted Luke at whatever cost.

  ‘Though within reason, my dear.’

  Rosie laughed. ‘Twenty pounds. Excluding expenses. I don’t think I can be more reasonable than that, Harry.’ She knew he would take far more in profit for she had been to the function room behind his pub, seen his gold rings, his expensive watch.

  Rosie grinned as he sounded her out about a national tour for the band. She turned to write the date in the book. Joe moved and she looked up, saw his blond hair, his tanned skin, his white teeth. She saw the watch which gleamed against his skin. It was new. Everything went quite still and then jogged into motion again as she put her pen down, carefully. There was ink on the nib. It had smeared her finger.

  She didn’t kiss him but shook his hand, feeling cold, wishing he hadn’t come. Her world had been intruded upon. The lies were about to be exposed and she was ashamed. For the first time for weeks she was ashamed.

  He grinned, looked around. ‘So this is it?’

  ‘Yes, this is it.’ She poured him coffee, nodded towards Luke. ‘We’re on for Saturday. Expenses excluded. Twenty pounds!’

  Luke whistled and Joe looked at her. ‘From what Frank said I imagined the restaurant would be bigger.’

  ‘Remember you’re in little old England now,’ she said, wiping the counter.

  ‘You’re looking good.’ He sipped the black coffee as he leaned against the counter.

  Rosie didn’t know what to say to this man who didn’t belong here. Who shouldn’t have come. ‘You must meet Luke,’ she said, her voice cold and crisp, because she could remember that the hand that lifted the cup had stroked her breasts. It had been a mistake.

  Joe arched his eyebrows. ‘Have I said something wrong? Burst in on you? I should have rung. I didn’t think.’ He looked unsure suddenly. She hadn’t seen this in him before and she smiled, reaching out her hand, touching his.

  ‘No, I’m just busy. Too much to do, too little time.’ She had pushed the thought of his trip away, unable to think of any lies strong enough to make Frank change his plans, too engrossed in Lucia. And now she relaxed. What did it matter? Lucia was with her, safe, beautiful. That was what was important.

  ‘Luke,’ she called. ‘Meet Joe. Uncle Bob’s scout.’ She laughed and Joe relaxed, shook hands and passed Camels round while Rosie collected cups, took orders, and passed them through to Mrs Orsini.

  She then took Joe out to the yard. There was no point in wasting time but she had to make sure he didn’t tell Frank and Nancy.

  She walked to the pram, and pulled back the blanket. ‘This is my child. Jack’s child,’ she said.

  She watched Joe flush. He looked from the baby to Rosie but said nothing. He just stood, his hands in his pockets, and then he murmured, ‘Quite a surprise. No wonder you didn’t want to visit Frank and Nancy. They’ve got quite a bit on their plates already. This might shake them up a bit.’

  Rosie touched her child’s hair. It was always so fine, so soft, so warm. ‘I’ll tell them when things are easier for them, but you must say nothing. You must promise me that.’

  She waited, wondering whether he would agree, wondering how she could make him, if he refused. But he agreed and she was surprised, but why should she be? He was kind, wasn’t he? He had sent her money to go over to Frank. But she was still surprised and didn’t know why.

  Joe touched the baby, who woke.

  ‘I thought you hadn’t heard anything from Jack?’

  ‘I haven’t. He doesn’t know, but I’ll tell him, when he writes, because one day he will.’

  He laughed as Lucia gripped his finger. His shirt was so white against the tan of his skin and he had promised he would say nothing. Rosie was grateful. He had touched her child and smiled and she was pleased.

  He didn’t stay long but came again in the evening to hear the band. Luke played while Joe drank Coke and listened, his finger tapping on the glass. Luke’s band played for an hour and the music was good, mellow, haunting, penetrating. They listened to the chord held at the end of the chorus, heard the crescendo as Luke led the band into an all-in section. They heard the growl, heard his improvisation but it was a carefully planned one. He was so good, and Jake was better. So much better, but he still needed to go a little further.

  ‘He’ll get there though,’ she told Joe. He nodded.

  Luke sat with them in the interval. There was smoke in the air and candle wax on the table. Rosie checked her watch. Mrs Orsini was looking after Lucia but she would need a feed at ten.

  ‘Great, really great. This club is good too, better than I expected,’ Joe said, and Rosie winked at Luke, who sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘You’re right, Rosie. Bob’ll really go for this. It’s what he’s been looking for. The guy on sax will have to go though.’

  Rosie felt cold. It was as though there was no laughter in the room, no murmur of voices. Hadn’t he heard her? Hadn’t she just said that Jake would make it? Joe was still smiling, lifting the glass to his mouth, and she could picture him at the Lake Clubhouse, smart, adored, arrogant, ruthless. But he had agreed to keep her secret. There must be some softness there, maybe?

  ‘But Jake is almost there. He’s getting better every day,’ Luke protested, and Rosie nodded, looking at
their clothes, looking at Joe’s. But no matter how slick he was, he was wrong.

  ‘He’ll make it. I’ll stake my reputation on it. I’ll pull in favours from Uncle Bob,’ she added quietly.

  Joe put the glass back on the table, and looked towards the group who were edging their way back through the tables.

  ‘Look, Luke, you’re a commodity. Bob can package you but you’ve got to get rid of the weak link. There’s no room for feelings in this game.’ He turned to Rosie. ‘This is business. You need to toughen up, Rosie.’

  Rosie stared at Joe, then at Luke. She waited.

  ‘No,’ Luke said getting to his feet. ‘Thank you, Joe, but no. We all go, or no one goes. No package without Jake.’ His smile was ironic.

  Joe shrugged. ‘I think you’re wrong.’

  Rosie put up her hand to stop Luke. She could fight for Luke now that he had made his decision. And she would fight because there was more than one way of doing business. You didn’t have to be hard, just fair, and Joe could be fair. He had shown her that this afternoon.

  ‘He’s not wrong. Bob thinks of his bands as people. You’re wrong, Joe. Think of the group who played at the barbecue, Bob nurtured them. Jake needs confidence, that’s all, and a little time.’ She wanted to shout at him, but she kept her voice calm. ‘Bob wouldn’t thank you if you passed this group over and they made it elsewhere, because they will.’

  She watched him as he crossed his legs, picked at a thread on the sleeve of his jacket, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. His nails were short, clean and square.

  ‘Have you a lot invested in these guys?’ Joe asked her quietly, leaning forward, talking behind his glass.

  ‘A lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of pleasure. Why not give them until you leave England? See what happens.’ Why did he equate everything with money? She thought of his family. How could he be otherwise? But he could learn. She remembered his hand on her child. She still held on to Luke’s jacket.

  Joe looked at her and grinned. ‘Why not? Bob’s in no rush. OK. You got a deal. Just one condition.’

  Rosie felt Luke relax, she let her hand drop from his jacket, feeling the relief surge in her too. She nodded. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got to write a feature for Frank on the Festival. You’re expected to send one back too. Show me round. Let’s have some fun.’ He was smiling, his voice was lazy again as it had been on the beach by the lake.

  She didn’t want to celebrate while Jack was fighting, but she nodded. He knew about Lucia. He was going to report to Bob and he had been fair. There was no choice, but they wouldn’t be alone. She would take Lucia, Jack’s child.

  But before she went anywhere, with Joe or anyone else, she took Lucia to Middle Street one morning when Norah would be at work. She pushed the back yard gate open, and picked up Lucia, taking her to Grandpa’s roses, their fragrance heavy on the mid June air.

  She walked along by The Reverend Ashe, took a matchbox from her pocket and tipped out the ladybird she had found, easing it with her finger on to the underside of the bud where too many greenfly were flourishing. Poor Grandpa.

  ‘This will never do, will it, Lucia?’ she said softly, bending to kiss the head of the sleeping baby. She heard the back door open and turned. Norah wasn’t at work, she was standing in the doorway with a mouth like a sparrow’s bum. Nothing changed.

  ‘Hello, Norah.’

  Her sister looked her up and down and then the baby in the fine white crocheted shawl which Mrs Eaves had made.

  ‘I heard you’d had it.’ She stood with her arms crossed over her breasts.

  Rosie moved closer. ‘I thought I would bring her to see Grandpa’s roses, and now to meet you.’

  Norah shook her head. ‘I don’t want to see your by-blows and now you’ve fiddled with the roses you can go. That fool Harold spends enough time on them as it is.’ Her face was tight.

  Rosie gently brushed away a bee that was hovering over Lucia. No, nothing changed. ‘I’m sorry I bothered you.’

  She reached out and picked the dark red rose from the raised bed. It was loosely budded. She smelt it, put Lucia back in the pram, and laid the rose on her blanket. Before she left she turned. ‘There have been no letters for me then? No news for Ollie about Jack?’

  Norah shook her head. ‘He won’t come back for you. You’re on your own now.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘I’m not on my own any more, Norah.’ She looked at Lucia, then pushed her from the yard, towards the rec where she sat on the swing with Lucia in her arms and watched the children playing, the mothers sitting knitting, talking. Thinking of Lee and of herself. Of Jack, of Norah. Listening to the echoes.

  Norah sat in the kitchen, stirring her tea. The door was shut against the sun and those bloody roses. Shut against the sight of her sister with the baby that she and Harold seemed unable to produce.

  Yes, there had been a letter from Jack. She had destroyed it. Yes, there had been a letter to Ollie informing him that Jack was a prisoner of war. She had told Ollie that Rosie had been informed.

  She sipped her tea, looking at the space where Grandpa’s chair had been, at the shelves devoid of books. How dare she take things from this house? How dare she have a child and a new white shawl? How dare she be loved, because Norah had read Jack’s letter before she had burnt it. How dare she be loved when Harold no longer sat opposite her in front of the fireplace, and instead went out rubbing brasses or pruning roses. How dare she?

  It was a hot day when Joe and Rosie went to the Festival, and as they approached the South Bank and the Skylon that seemed to hang in the air above them, Rosie said, ‘I wonder if this isn’t some sort of paternalistic exercise in educating the masses. There are so many exhibitions here which seem designed to present British Society as a family divided, not by class, but by a rift between the imaginative and the practical.’

  Why was she talking like this? she wondered. Lecturing and pointing towards the twenty-seven acres which lay between County Hall and Waterloo Bridge.

  ‘Casson and the other architects have laid it out like a miniature wonderland. It’s crazy when there’s still so much hardship, so much ruin. There’s still so much fighting in Palestine and Africa and Korea.’

  That was why she was lecturing. Because she was with another man and that man was pushing her child. He had been kind, and it was good to have someone with her, but it should have been Jack.

  There were thousands of others strolling with them, stopping, investigating here, by the red, white and blue awning, the role of the British in exploration and discovery. Over there, by the yellow stand, was the geology of the country. Over there by the brown was the history of the monarchy.

  ‘This is some kind of a pat on the back, is it?’ Joe said, cupping his hand round the cigarette in his mouth, protecting the match from the wind which lifted his hair. He stood with his back to the crowds, one of whom nudged him. He dropped the match. Began again.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. We deserve it. You just have to look around.’ Rosie pushed Lucia on. ‘You haven’t got this kind of damage back in the States, have you? You don’t have to queue for basic foodstuffs. You just call in your loans.’

  Joe laughed, drew on his cigarette, flicked the match into a litter bin. ‘Point taken. But this really is quite something.’

  He was taking photographs now, of the piazzas, the terraces, the murals and modern sculptures. Rosie looked in one pavilion, saw the new design in furniture, the chairs with spindly legs and the spidery staircases rising into the air. They looked as though they would take no weight.

  An exhibitor smiled and called her over. ‘Come on, madam, try the chair.’

  She looked at Joe, who nodded. ‘Go on then.’ He took a photo and she pulled a face and then another and he was clicking all the time and then they were laughing.

  They looked at the plan of the exhibits, following the red dotted line with their fingers, and Joe said they must retrace their steps and start at the beginning or they wouldn�
��t get any sort of an article out of all this.

  They began then at The Land of Britain and Rosie took notes on how the natural wealth of the British Isles came into being. She told Joe that she was going to slant her feature by comparing the new architecture – the piazzas, the modern sculpture – with damaged Britain, utilitarian Britain, the Nissen huts, the pill-boxes. He called her a ‘goddamn pinko’. They laughed and she waited but he didn’t tell her how he was going to write his feature.

  They moved along, listening, looking, writing, talking, and he told her that Frank was well, much better than anyone had hoped.

  ‘More important, though, are the circulation figures. They’re right up again now that he’s started using a pseudonym. The money’s rolling in again.’

  Rosie looked at him, at his smiling face, his assured manner, the hands which carried his notepad. A woman was in the way of the pram and Rosie stopped, waited.

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ Joe called. ‘We’re trying to get through here.’

  The woman turned. Rosie smiled. ‘Don’t hurry, we’re looking too.’

  She was embarrassed that Joe had wanted to force his way through. They had all day, there was no panic. She looked at the small models of the Skylon, the symbol of the Festival, which a trader was selling. Rosie bought one, and put it on the end of the pram, and the woman came over, looked at Lucia and smiled.

  ‘You’re a lucky couple, she’s lovely.’

  Rosie nodded and Joe flushed. ‘I know,’ Rosie said and it was only later as they were looking at the photographs representing the wide range of British manufacturers that she said gently, ‘You said that the circulation figures were more important than Frank and that the money is rolling in. I hardly feel that either of these things is more important than Frank. Now I must find somewhere to feed Lucia.’