‘Yes?’ she said hopefully.
‘Hello,’ Kitty’s voice said.
‘Kitty? How are you?’
‘Not so bad,’ Kitty said. ‘I’m gettin’ the hang a’ this marriage lark now. How’d’yer like ter come an’ ’ave tea wiv us Easter Sunday?’
‘Yes. ’Course,’ Rosie said, although she didn’t like the idea of having to endure another meal with the Monster. ‘What time d’you want us there?’
So the arrangement was made and when Jim got home that evening Gracie rushed at him to tell him they were going to have tea with Aunty Kitty. ‘Wiv or without the Monster?’ he asked Rosie.
‘With, I suppose.’ Rosie said, and when he grunted. ‘Maybe he’s mellowed.’
‘What monster?’ Gracie wanted to know.
‘I bought current buns fer our tea,’ he told her, waving a paper bag at her to deflect her question. ‘Who wants one?’
‘What monster?’ Gracie said.
‘The one in the fairy story,’ Rosie said. ‘Let’s set the table shall we.’
Gracie persisted. ‘What fairy story?’
‘We’ll read it after tea. Come an’ get the plates.’
That evening, when his daughters were safely asleep, Jim was able to laugh at the mistake he’d nearly made. ‘That kid’s a darn sight too cute,’ he said, as he got into bed.
‘’Course she’s cute,’ Rosie said, brushing her hair. ‘She don’t miss a trick now. She’ll be five in May, don’t forget, an’ off to school come September.’
‘Just as long as she behaves ’erself when we’re wiv the Monster. That’s all I want.’
‘You worry too much,’ Rosie said, grinning at him. ‘They’ll be fine.’
‘You comin’ ter bed?’ Jim said, making eyes at her. ‘Or are you gonna sit there all night whackin’ yer barnet with that brush?’ One of the few good things about Kitty leaving home was that they got a bit more privacy at night.
The tea party started easily enough because it was nice to follow Kitty on a tour of the house and admire it and tell her what a fine place it was, but once they were at table it was a sticky party in every sense of the words. Both the girls ate a slice of Kitty’s Simnel cake and got their fingers in such a mess she had to rescue them with a flannel, while her husband pursed his lips and looked disapproving, and from then on, he dominated the conversation, bragging about the new car he was thinking of buying and going into exhaustive detail about what a demanding job he had and how well he was doing it. They were very glad when it was finally over, and they could escape and catch their tram home.
‘Come an’ see me durin’ the week,’ Rosie suggested as she kissed poor Kitty goodbye. ‘Thursday maybe. We can walk down the market an’ see Jim and then you could have tea with us. Be like old times.’
‘I’ll try,’ Kitty said. ‘I’ll ’ave ter make sure I’m back in time fer his supper though. He’s a bit partic’lar about his supper.’
He’s a bit partic’lar about a sight too much, Rosie thought. He could be partic’lar about this an’ stop you coming. But she didn’t say so. ‘You won’t be late,’ she promised. ‘We’ll watch the clock. An’ if anything comes up and you can’t get here you can always phone an’ tell me, can’t you?’
She wasn’t a bit surprised when the phone rang on Wednesday morning. ‘There you are,’ she said to Jim, putting down the teapot. ‘He’s stopped her. What did I tell you?’
But it wasn’t Kitty. The voice on the line was male and asking if he could speak to Helen of Troy. ‘Good heavens,’ she said. ‘It’s you. When did you get back?’
‘If I asked you sweetly,’ Gerry said, ‘would you lend your lissom body to an old biddy who has need of it?’
He’s been away all this time and he hasn’t changed a bit, Rosie thought. He’s still talking in riddles. ‘What are you on about now?’ she asked.
Her brusque tone made him laugh. ‘It’s my latest commission,’ he explained. ‘A doting husband who wants a portrait of his wife as she was when they met. Your body, her face. It will be a peculiar portrait, but I aim to please, and he’ll pay well. Will you do it?’
‘When?’
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
‘I shall have to bring the girls,’ she warned.
‘Not to worry,’ he said, expansively. ‘I’ve got young Joan ready and waiting.’
‘That was Mr de Silva,’ she said to Jim as she hung the receiver back on its hook.
‘Yeh. So I gathered,’ he said. He’d enjoyed the rather dismissive way she’d said, ‘Good heavens. It’s you.’
‘Now we can pay the rent,’ she said, realising it as she spoke. ‘Oh Jim! We can pay the rent.’
It was pleasant to be back in the luxury of Gerry’s Chelsea house, being admired. The girls played with the toys laid out for them and behaved themselves, the sun shone through the long windows, and she and Gerry had their usual disjointed conversation while she posed, and he painted.
Once he said, ‘Head up just a trifle.’
And she answered, ‘Like that?’
Ten minutes later he said, ‘Drop your shoulders. You’re hunching them.’
And she obeyed that too, smiling at her daughters.
But when Joan had taken them off for a walk by the river, the talk got more personal.
‘I’m quite surprised at you, you know,’ he teased, peering at her round the side of the easel. And when she scowled at him, he gave her his most winning smile and went on, ‘I thought you’d have had another baby while I was away. Or two even.’
‘I’m not a breeding machine,’ she told him sternly. ‘My poor old Ma might have been, well she was, poor woman, but I’m not. I’ve had enough babies for one lifetime. Don’t misunderstand me. These two are lovely. I wouldn’t be without ’em. But I ent gonna have any more.’
He grinned at that. ‘You sound very sure of it.’
‘I am sure of it,’ she said trenchantly. ‘I’ve taken steps.’
‘An emancipated woman bigod,’ he said. ‘Well in that case we must use our time to advantage. What do you think?’
‘And that’s another thing,’ she said, keeping her pose but making her intentions clear by her tone. ‘All that is over. You can’t walk away and leave me without a word and then expect to come back and pick up where we left off.’
‘Ah!’ he said, thinking he would have to play this extremely carefully. ‘Would it make any difference if I said I was sorry?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t. It’s all gone much too far for that. I’ll model for you whenever you like but nothing more.’ She spoke so firmly he knew he had to accept her decision, at least for the moment, though he would do whatever he could to make her change it.
‘Very good,’ he said, lightly and picked up his brush again.
The next day he was careful to keep the conversation as light as his brushstrokes. If he was going to win her back, he needed delicacy. He even offered to let her go with the children when the nursemaid took them out for their morning walk, ‘as it’s such a lovely day. I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied.’ And when they came back and she took up her pose again, his conversation was deliberately fitful.
‘I like the new haircut,’ he said at one point.
‘It’s easier to dry when I’ve been swimming,’ she told him. ‘We go swimming quite a lot now, don’t we girls?’
There was a long pause. ‘So you’ve got a swimming costume?’ he said.
‘’Course,’ she told him, laughing. ‘I could hardly go swimming in my clothes.’
Another long pause. ‘You’ve given me an idea for the Summer picture,’ he said. ‘That’s the next thing I’ve got to do. I can’t put it off for ever. How about you and the kids on the beach? You wet from the sea, sitting on a breakwater, them making sandcastles. What do you think?’
‘In Worthing?’ she asked.
‘If it’s got a good beach.’
So Worthing it was, and that summer she and her girl
s spent more days than she could count out in the sunshine playing, while he sketched and painted. Edie came down to the beach to join them on their third trip bringing her little Frankie. He was fifteen months old by then and had grown into a sturdy little boy, a little in awe of his older cousins but a dab hand with a spade. On their fourth trip Tess turned up too with Anna, who was a plump ten-month-old in a frilly sunhat, which she removed at regular intervals and flung as far away from her head as she could so that Tess had to spend most of the day retrieving it. The group at play in the painting got more complicated with every trip, but it was Rosie who was at the heart of it, sitting on the breakwater with her long brown legs stretched out before her, the sun glinting on her bobbed hair and her face turned up to the sky. The sight of her made Gerry more determined than ever to get her back although he was careful not to say anything. But really, she was altogether too beautiful to go to waste.
For Rosie, her days on the beach were a glimpse of paradise. She enjoyed everything about them, the amazing blue of that huge sky over her head, the long, slow days when she was absolutely idle, the beautiful expanse of sand at low tide shimmering like mother-of-pearl and ridged under her bare feet, even the shock of cold when she waded into that green sea. She had sisters to gossip with and ice cream to refresh her and on her seventh visit she learnt to swim.
September came as a shock to the system for all of them. The sisters missed their days together by the sea. Gracie and Mary missed the sandcastles and paddling and Sno-frutes and Uncle Gerry’s picnic basket. In fact the only one pleased to see the season change was Jim and he was secretly cheering because he’d got his life back to normal and could walk home from the market every evening knowing they would all be in the flat waiting for him and not gallivanting about with that poncy artist. There were changes of course but they were the kind of things he was used to. Like the arrival of the first blackberries and a new Charlie Chaplin film coming out, and his little Gracie starting at Lant Street school.
Rosie was far more concerned about that than he was. It seemed such a formidable building to swallow up a child so small, all that soot-blackened brick and those dominating windows rising above their heads. But Gracie wasn’t deterred by it at all and walked boldly through the gate on her first morning as if she’d been doing it all her life. By the end of the week she was an old-timer, reporting that they were ‘learning us our letters’, adding with easy confidence, ‘I know mine already,’ which was perfectly true.
‘She’s took to it like a duck to water,’ her father said happily.
‘Well naturally,’ Rosie said. Whatever else I’ve done, she thought, pushing away the knowledge that she should never have started her affair with Gerry and she really ought to have stopped Kitty from marrying the Monster, I’ve made a good job of bringing up these girls.
Gracie’s first year of school progressed in a steady, easy rhythm and she was soon learning to read. Rosie modelled for a series of pictures purporting to be studies of Gypsy life and Gerard taught her to drive which she found remarkably easy and rather thrilling. Mary grew out of her boots twice in twelve months and started to learn her letters too. Kitty visited every week. That Christmas they had roast chicken with all the trimmings and Rosie bought books and colouring pencils for her daughters.
Change, when it came, arrived in a storm.
Chapter 20
Rosie woke with a start in the middle of the night. It was the beginning of January and bitterly cold; rain was pattering against the windows like grit, a banshee wind screamed down the chimney and she could hear her babies crying for her. She got out of bed at once, calling, ‘I’m coming!’ and went to comfort them. They were sitting up in bed huddled together and wide eyed with alarm.
‘Shove over,’ she said and got into bed with them, one on either side of her so that she could cuddle them both because they were very cold.
‘Is it the monster?’ Gracie said, fearfully, as the wind roared again.
‘No, my lovey,’ Rosie said, stroking her hair. ‘It’s just that ol’ wind making a row. That’s all. It’s a storm. All be over by morning. Snuggle down and get warm.’
But although the storm subsided just as she predicted, when seven o’clock struck and they woke for the second time, the news of the night was alarming. Jim went down to get his paper, just as Mr Rogers was tuning the wireless in, so the two of them stood on either side of it and listened to the news together, as they often did. What they heard gave them a shock. The Thames had flooded its banks during the night and seventy-five feet of the embankment near the Tate Gallery had collapsed and been swept away. The Houses of Parliament were flooded and so was the Tower of London. There was, as the announcer said in his lugubrious voice, ‘considerable damage throughout the city. Some streets are under four foot of water. Rescue teams are at work along the north bank.’
‘That’ll be all them little houses up Marsham Street, I’ll bet,’ Jim said. ‘Jerry built, they are. Wouldn’t stand an earthly in a flood. If ol’ Manny’s agreeable, I shall go down an’ lend a hand.’
‘I would an’ all,’ Mr Rogers said, ‘only someone’s got to keep shop.’
Jim picked up his paper. ‘Give us a shout if there’s any more news,’ he said. And went upstairs to tell Rosie. It took a bit of doing because Gracie was still very alarmed and asked anxious questions at every stage of the story. ‘What’s the Tate?’, ‘What’s a gallery?’, ‘How big are four foots?’ and finally, ‘Can I stay at home today Mummy?’
‘I wouldn’t send you out in all this,’ Rosie said, frying the last egg. ‘Anyway the school’s closed. You’ll have to come with me to Uncle Gerry’s if he wants me to model but you won’t mind that, will you.’ She slid the egg onto Jim’s plate alongside his bacon and sausages and urged them all to eat up. ‘We’ll need a good inner lining on a day like this,’ she said. It wasn’t even half light outside the window and the yard was shrouded by river mist and looked icy.
‘Goin’ in car?’ Mary hoped.
‘Yes,’ Rosie said. ‘Providing he wants us and providing you’re a good girl and eat up your nice egg.’
Jim was mopping up the last trace of her fried egg with a piece of bread and posting it in her mouth, when the phone rang.
It was Gerry, sounding very excited to tell her the roads were two feet deep in water round his way and that the Tate was flooded. ‘I heard it on the wireless,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to get the pictures out. I shall don my wellington boots and my sou’wester and go and give them a hand. We can’t have the Turners ruined. They were his bequest to the nation.’ Then almost as an afterthought. ‘You’re all right, are you?’
‘We seem to be,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well look after yourself.’
‘Right,’ Jim said when she came back to the kitchen. ‘I’m off. Are you going to de Silva’s?’
‘No,’ she said and explained as she poured herself another cup of tea.
‘Good,’ he said, heading for the door. ‘I’m glad to hear it. See you tonight then. Keep in the warm.’ And he was gone.
Gracie and Mary were rummaging in the battered cardboard box where they kept their toys. ‘Shall we have Billy Goats Gruff?’ Gracie said, waving it aloft.
It was bitterly cold out on the streets that morning and there was a powerful stink of river water that grew more foetid the nearer Jim got to it. The market smelt exactly the same as it always did, of sweat and naphtha, fish, sawdust and potatoes but Mr Feigenbaum’s stall was poorly stocked because the vans hadn’t been able to deliver his order.
‘I can’t see much doin’ in the vay a’ trade,’ he said when Jim asked him if he could go and help out. ‘Go, my son. They need all the help they can get, poor souls. Vat times ve live in! Some food you vill take?’
‘I’ll come back fer food,’ Jim promised.
But he didn’t, for when he reached Lambeth Bridge and saw what was happening on the other side of the river, the sight put all thought of food, hi
s job and even his family right out of his head. The Thames was running swiftly and so high it was still slopping over the embankment and pouring along the street. It looked muddy and oily and extremely threatening, and Millbank was completely under water. A bit further west, past the Houses of Parliament, Grosvenor Road had become a torrent, rushing inland at every turning. The railings were still visible, protruding out of the dark water to mark where the river edge had been and there was an incongruous line of city workers in waterproofs and trilbies struggling eastward along what used to be the road, holding onto them to keep their footing. The whole area was dark, dangerous and evil smelling and there was something ominously familiar about it.
Jim took a breath to steady himself and waded into the extended river, pushing through the icy water until he reached the corner of Marsham Street. At that point the onrush had slowed, and it was moving sluggishly because it was full of debris, broken planks and lathes, chunks of filthy plaster, old rags, downtrodden shoes, broken bottles and crushed tins, all being tossed about and flung against the walls, which were crumbling and falling as he watched. He could hear voices calling out to one another and saw that there was a gaping hole just ahead of him where several ramshackle buildings had fallen down, so he pushed on and scrambled over the wreckage to see what was happening on the other side of it. He found himself in one of the tenement backyards. It looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake. The roof of the building had collapsed and lay in a misshapen heap, shedding tiles. Two doors had been ripped off their hinges and flung aside like so much cardboard and standing in the mud and muddle of the debris were four women looking stunned and a little girl, who made him think of Gracie. They were calling for Peggy.
‘Hang on!’ he called. ‘I’m coming.’ And as he got nearer, ‘D’you know where she is?’
Everybody's Somebody Page 24
