Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  ‘Let me nurse him,’ Grace would say, when she was home. ‘He’s a lovely babby, Rose.’ And sometimes Rose felt reluctant to hand him over, but Grace would take him and cuddle him close, singing softly to him until he cried to go back to his mother.

  With three babies in the house, Dora and Rose were both sleeping downstairs on makeshift beds on the floor. One night as they were getting settled down, Sid came in and lurched awkwardly over to Rose. She looked up warily at him.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to bite you,’ he said roughly. And then out of his pocket he pulled a small wooden object. ‘I made this for the kid,’ he said. ‘Here. Come on – take it.’

  Rose found she was holding a little wooden horse, rather rough and misshapen, but still obviously a horse, with a little spot of black paint on each side for its eyes.

  ‘Here Joseph, this is for you,’ she said to him. His blue eyes were open, staring over at the gaslight on the wall. ‘Your grandad’s made you a little horse. Are you going to say ta?’ It was a relief having Joseph between her and Sid, to use the child as a way of communicating with him. Since Joseph was born he had been gentler with her, as if he could cope with her now she was doing what a woman was intended to do.

  ‘Thanks Dad,’ Rose said, feeling unexpected tears fill her eyes.

  ‘No need to make a fuss,’ Sid said awkwardly, going to the stairs.

  Mother and daughter spent most of the night up and down feeding the babies. If it wasn’t one it was another.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Dora said one night. It was well into the small hours and she was sick with fatigue. ‘These two babbies are going to have to do everything at the same time or they’re going to finish me.’

  The boy, Billy, was yelling loudly for food. Dora woke the little girl, Susan, and latched the two of them on, stuffing a couple of pillows under her arms for support.

  ‘Pour me a drop of milk, will you Rose?’ she said. ‘I could do with something on my stomach.’

  Joseph was asleep, so Rose got up and handed her mother a cup of milk in the candlelight. ‘I hope he’s all right,’ Rose said, frowning down at Joseph where he lay tucked up on the floor. One of his hands was clenched in a tiny fist next to his cheek. ‘He’s not feeding as well as he was.’

  ‘Can’t say the same of these two,’ Dora said wearily.

  ‘Here,’ Rose went over to her. ‘Give one over here. Joseph’s not interested yet and I’ve got enough spare.’

  She took Susan off her mother and held the unfamiliar body of the little girl. Even being a twin she felt rounder and heavier than Joseph. Having been able to rest more than she had during any other pregnancy, Dora had carried the two of them almost to term. They were good-sized babies. Rose sighed and looked over at her little son.

  ‘Be right as rain in the morning,’ Dora said. ‘He’s just tired I s’pect.’

  By the end of the night they managed to get some sleep. Rose lay down next to Joseph with her nose against his soft scalp, hearing his quick little breaths. Now her life before him seemed even more like a dream. The days and nights felt almost indistinguishable with the round of feeding and changing his napkins and waiting for him to sleep. Joseph had happened to her, and he was not just a part of her life – everything she did was connected inextricably with this tiny person next to her.

  Rose was dreaming. Dreams came rarely with all the broken nights, but this one burst in on her, vivid and clear.

  She was with Diana on the tram which ran south along the Bristol Road out as far as the Lickey Hills. They had done that ride together a few times, Diana treating her at weekends. The tram lurched along the tracks down the middle of the road with the hedges separating them from the traffic on either side. When they had travelled that way in reality the tram had been crowded full of people, but in her dream it was empty. She and Diana had seats right at the back, looking down the deserted carriage. When they swayed through Bourn-brook the tram passed the red bricks of the university, its pointed clock tower standing tall and elegant above the buildings around it.

  ‘I’m going to go there,’ Rose said. And then suddenly she was chanting,

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

  I’ve been up to London to visit the Queen . . .

  And Diana sat beside her, her pink cheeks streaming with tears. ‘I don’t want you to go, Rose,’ she begged. ‘Stay and be my friend, Rose. Please stay.’

  And then they were both crying and holding on to each other and the tram rolled downhill, down and down, and they didn’t know or care where it was going any more.

  Rose woke, tears wet on her cheeks. Diana had felt so close to her again, and she knew with a physical ache how much she missed her and how ashamed she felt. All the letters Diana had sent, full of hurt, begging Rose to write and not to forget her, were upstairs, lying unanswered in a cardboard box beside the little wooden elephant which had put the seal on their friendship. How could she reply to those letters now?

  As she lay wretched in the grey dawn light, one of the twins started stirring and began to cry. She saw Dora pull herself up off the floor, still stunned by tiredness.

  Perhaps Joseph would eat a little better this morning? During his first week he had thrived, but over the last fortnight he had sucked at her breast for a time and then given up to lie listlessly, as if the effort was too much.

  She turned to him to enjoy lying with him while he was still asleep, trying to forget the memory of Diana’s distraught face in her dream. Very gently she stroked Joseph’s soft baby head with one of her dark fingers. His skin was so much paler than hers! He felt cold and anxiously she searched out his hands. They were chilled.

  ‘Come here,’ she whispered, and turned him to cuddle and warm him.

  His tiny body was stiff. Looking at his face, she saw his lips were still and blue.

  Rose jumped up as if she’d been bitten, her lungs constricting so she could hardly breathe. ‘Mom!’ she gasped. ‘Something’s wrong with him. Quick – come here!’

  Dora hastily put Billy down and rushed over. She picked Joseph up and Rose saw her face tighten. She listened to his chest and rubbed him vigorously. Then she put her mouth over his tiny one, breathing into him again and again to rouse him. Finally, with her head down, she laid him on Rose’s bed, instinctively drawing the covers over him. Very slowly she turned to her daughter, who was standing still as a rock beside her.

  ‘There’s nothing else I can do, Rose,’ she told her. ‘He’s gone.’

  A man had died in a neighbouring court and Dora arranged for Joseph to be carried on the hearse the next day. When the horse clattered to a standstill outside, Rose was still holding the little body to her as if her arms would be fixed forever in that position, even after he was taken away from her.

  ‘For God’s sake get him off her,’ Sid said to Dora upstairs as they readied themselves for the funeral. ‘I can’t stand to see it any longer.’

  ‘D’you think I’m enjoying it?’ Dora snapped. ‘She’s just parting with the child in her own time.’ She remembered how her own dead children – the twins, Violet – had been snatched speedily away from her by everyone around, who thought it for the best.

  Downstairs, Marj had arrived from Sparkbrook, dolled up in a smart black dress with a full skirt and a hat with a wide sloping brim. ‘Make us a cuppa tea, Grace,’ she said, sitting herself down with exaggerated relief. ‘I’m worn out already after carting all the way over here.’

  Sam turned his head in surprise as Grace replied, ‘There might be a drop left in the pot, and if there is you can get it yourself.’

  Marj pulled herself to her feet, murmuring huffily about what a welcome she got in her own home nowadays.

  ‘You’ve not been so keen to look on us as your family when it didn’t suit you,’ Grace replied.

  ‘Now, now,’ Sam said. ‘That’s enough of that.’ He looked at Rose. She didn’t seem to be listening to the conversation at all. She sat with her eyes fixed
on her little son, as if she was intensely afraid that she would forget what he looked like.

  Grace went up to her timidly. ‘They’re here, Rose,’ she said. ‘The undertaker wants to know if he can take him.’

  For the last time Rose slowly kissed the boy’s cold cheek. She ran her finger along the line of the tiny nose and soft lips.

  ‘I’ll take him,’ she said, and the others moved back to let her through.

  She walked outside and handed him over to be laid in a small box that Sam had nailed together for him. The undertaker placed it on the step of the hearse, close by his feet.

  A crowd was gathering in the street. The coffin lying on the hearse was draped with a Union Jack; the dead man had served in the war. As the horse began to move off, Sid solemnly saluted it, standing as straight and upright as he could manage.

  The children started spitting on the ground and chanting,

  Catch your collar, never swaller

  In case you catch a fever;

  Not for you, not for me,

  And not for any of my family.

  Rose stood tearless and in silence. She thought of all the times as a child that she had joined in the superstitious rhyming. And what good had it done her? Every step the horse took seemed to tear her further apart.

  Suddenly she heard Marj’s voice in her ear. ‘It’s all for the best you know, Rose,’ she said in a knowing whisper, as if imparting a morsel of gossip. ‘You’ll get over it soon enough. And who really wants a babby at your age? Now you can get back on with your life, can’t you?’

  Marj would not easily forget the look of bitter hatred that her young sister turned on her that morning, or the adult hardness that she suddenly saw in her brown eyes.

  A very thin, subdued Rose Lucas went back to her charring job at the Dog and Partridge. She could easily fit back into all her old clothes, although she felt like an impostor wearing them.

  She started work at nine in the morning, walking into the smell of stale beer and smoke. When she got home she helped Dora, handing over all her meagre wages. She shopped and cooked, gave a hand with George and Harry and, as she had continued to do since Joseph died, she helped to feed the twins. They were the main comfort in her life. Her body was still poised to do all the things for which nature had prepared it. At least she could sleep next to Billy or Susan, cuddling up to them, and hold and feed them.

  ‘She’s lost her spirit, Mom,’ Grace said one day. ‘She could get herself a better job again now. She don’t want to be charring all her life. I mean I knew I was going into service, but our Rose always had her eye on something better, didn’t she?’

  Dora sighed. ‘It’s early days yet,’ she said. ‘Give her time.’

  Grace tried getting through to Rose, but never felt she got very far.

  ‘I’m earning a wage, aren’t I?’ Rose would say woodenly. ‘What more’s anyone s’posed to want? What’s the use of having dreams of doing something else? It’ll only bring trouble.’

  And in her head a voice kept saying: I’m not worth it. I’m cheap and dirty. I’m a slum kid with a dead bastard baby.

  Grace looked at her reproachfully. ‘You’re still cleverer than me,’ she said. ‘You could do better for yourself.’

  Rose just shrugged.

  As autumn came round again, Alfie appeared once more in Catherine Street. He’d tried going out with other girls, but none of them could erase the image in his mind of the dark, vivacious girl he’d seen the autumn before walking to work. He had to speak with her, and he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she had another sister and it was her he thought he’d glimpsed looking out of the upper window that day?

  He came on a grey Saturday afternoon, with rusty leaves whirling along the pavement.

  This time it was George who saw him and came running into the house as Alfie approached, slamming the door behind him. ‘It’s that Alfie again – the bloke that’s after Rose.’

  Rose automatically fled to the stairs.

  ‘Mom,’ Grace said. ‘Ask him in. He seems a good bloke, I reckon. I’ll go up and talk her round.’

  She found Rose sitting nervously on the bed. ‘What’re you doing hiding up here?’ Grace demanded.

  ‘Well, I can’t let him see me, can I?’ Rose replied with nervous irritation.

  ‘Why not? You’re not expecting any more are you? If you straighten yourself out a bit and put a decent frock on you’d look a picture again. He’s all right that Alfie. So why keep yourself hidden away? If I had him following me around I’d jump at the chance. You could do a lot worse.’

  Rose sat thinking for a moment. Grace’s last words had hit home. What was she really hiding for now? Waiting for a prince to come along? Grace was right. She could do worse, and she wasn’t likely to do any better.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Grace gave a little skip and ran smiling downstairs. She found Dora handing Alfie a cup of tea. He was talking rather bashfully to her.

  A few moments passed before Alfie finally saw the thin, beautiful girl he remembered emerging slowly, almost reluctantly, from the stairs. She’d brushed out her hair and pinned it back loosely so that it waved softly round her face, and she had on a cream dress of Diana’s with a pattern of navy dots on it and a swinging skirt.

  She came towards him and gave him a rather stiff smile. ‘Hello Alfie,’ she said.

  Eleven

  1 September 1939

  The long line of children standing in pairs snaked along from the gates of the railway station and curved around the wall outside. They stood in almost eerie silence as the teachers counted and recounted them to make sure there was no one missing. In one hand they each clutched a bag of the most basic belongings; round every neck was tied a piece of string to which a large luggage label had been tied bearing its owner’s name. The children waited to be loaded on to the carriages which would take them to places which few of them had even dreamed of. Many of them had scarcely travelled any distance from the streets where they had grown up.

  Rose stood near George, anxiously watching his tight-lipped, mutinous face. She was glad that Alfie stood reassuringly beside her. He was seeing off his younger brother and sister, Tom and Bessie, both still at school.

  ‘Some of them think it’s just a spree,’ he said. ‘Look at their faces.’

  ‘Not George,’ Rose said. ‘He’s played hell over being sent off. It’s a good job they only announced it yesterday.’

  The van had come round the day before, the big rectangular loudspeakers like wide, merciless mouths crackling out the announcement. All children of school age were to be evacuated to places of safety, away from the centres most likely to be bombed, when – and it now seemed to be when and not just if – war broke out.

  Immediately the mothers in the court banded together for mutual advice and support, on what would ordinarily have been a beautiful late summer day.

  ‘Not the kids!’ Dora cried. ‘They can’t split up families like that. How do we know where they’re sending them? We’ll never have a wink of sleep worrying.’

  ‘What if Adolf Hitler starts throwing bombs down on us?’ Mabel demanded grimly, leaning her meaty arm up against the brewhouse wall. ‘Then you’d be bad with worrying about them all being killed in their beds. It’s for the best, you know.’

  ‘There’s not going to be bombs, surely?’ Gladys asked, puckering up her face in concern.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Mabel said. ‘What about Czechoslovakia last year?’

  ‘And now they’re after Poland,’ Mabel went on. ‘Things ain’t going to get any better I don’t reckon, so you might just as well get used to the idea.’

  The rest of that day the families could think of nothing else. For the first time in years Dora turned to her husband for advice when he came in. ‘What’re we going to do?’

  ‘Asking me are you, all of a sudden?’ he said sourly, swinging his good arm back and forth to relieve the muscles after suppor
ting himself on the crutch. ‘If they say send them, then do it. They’re best well out of it.’ He sat down heavily. ‘We should’ve finished them off properly the first time round, when we had the bloody chance.’

  ‘I’m NOT GOING!’ George shouted.

  Sid took off his cap and flung it over on to the table. ‘If we say you’re going then you’ll go!’

  ‘What about Harry?’ Dora said. She turned to put the kettle on, trying to steady herself. ‘I can’t send him away – or the twins. Not that young.’

  ‘Couldn’t Edna have Harry for a bit?’ Rose suggested. ‘After all, most of hers are grown up and gone now. We’ll club together for some money for the fare.’

  Dora’s sister in Alcester seemed, out of the few choices, the most reassuring one. Dora got Rose to write to her straight away.

  ‘But the twins stay with me,’ Dora said. ‘And that’s that.’

  They’d got George ready the next morning. He soon realized there was no point in arguing. Dora tidied him up to go down to the school, tugging his collar straight and giving his face a wipe.

  ‘Go on,’ she said to him, rather roughly, to stop herself blarting there on the step. ‘Don’t give anyone any lip and make sure you write and tell us how you’re getting on.’

  As soon as he was out of the court, walking with bravado beside Rose, Dora sank down at the table, laid her head on it and wept.

  Now George stood at the station in front of the two Meredith kids, all with their little paper parcels of ‘iron rations’: a small can of corned beef, a packet of biscuits, a pound of sugar, a tin of evaporated milk, a quarter of tea and – George’s eyes had lit up for the only time that day – a half-pound block of Cadbury’s chocolate.