Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  ‘Still warm from the factory,’ one of the teachers joked.

  As the kids piled into the railway carriages, Rose tried to give George a goodbye hug, but he pushed her away with his wiry arms. ‘Don’t go getting all soppy, Rose.’

  And Rose, like her mom, held back her tears until they’d waved goodbye to the children, all crowded up by the windows of the train, some looking excited, others forlorn and bewildered. The train gave a loud shriek and puffed out of the station, the smoke and smuts rising in clouds to the wide arching roof. Rose waved her hanky at the little dot she thought was George until the train was out of sight, and then used it to wipe her eyes.

  ‘They’ll be well looked after, you be sure,’ Alfie said. ‘And he’s got Tom and Bessie for company. He’s a tough lad your George. He’ll be all right.’

  ‘It’s so horrible not knowing what’s going to happen,’ Rose said as they walked out of New Street Station. ‘I know it’s an awful thing to say, but if there’s going to be a war, I wish they’d just get on and get it over.’

  ‘Some of the lads got their call-up papers today,’ Alfie said.

  Rose went quiet. Alfie and Sam were both nineteen and had not yet been called, but the shadow of war, of families being split up even further, hung over all of them.

  ‘Come on,’ Alfie said. ‘It’s no use getting all down in the mouth. I’ll take you for a cuppa. Lyons or the Kardomah?’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ Rose said. She always let Alfie make the decisions.

  ‘The Kardomah then.’

  He took her arm and led her along New Street. It was as busy as ever with trams and buses and people shopping or standing at bus stops. But there was a different atmosphere. The news from Europe was on everyone’s lips. Everything felt precious, Rose thought. As if the threat from Germany had made the things they had always known sparkle and shine.

  Along the street they could see preparations going on in the offices and shops for blacking out the windows – assistants trying the large black rectangles for size against the panes of glass. And already groups of people were filling sandbags and stacking them against the sides of buildings. They heard the raucous newsvendors’ voices shouting, ‘Germans overrun Poland! Get your Mail here!’

  ‘Blimey,’ Alfie said. ‘He really means it, doesn’t he?’

  Rose felt her stomach tighten with a mixture of dread and excitement.

  ‘I should get back to work,’ she said, as she and Alfie found a table in the Kardomah amid the comforting smells of roasted coffee and warm rolls.

  ‘They gave you the morning to send off the kids, didn’t they?’ Alfie said. ‘Come on – have a cuppa tea and calm down. The Co-op’ll survive for half a day without you!’ He grinned and, leaning across the table, chucked her lightly under the chin. ‘That’s my girl.’

  Rose smiled back dutifully and sipped the tea he’d bought for her.

  Alfie sat back in his seat, looking at her. As usual he felt pleased with himself for just being with Rose. Even though he’d been walking out with her for almost two years now he still couldn’t believe his luck, that this beautiful girl wanted to be with him. He’d heard some gossip about her of course, but that was all in the past and he preferred not to know about it. He was going to believe the best of her. And she seemed to have quietened down since he’d first seen her, which was no bad thing. Who wanted a loud mouth on a woman? She was his girl and he was dead chuffed with her.

  Alfie himself had filled out over the past two years. His hair was just as unruly above his pale face, but he looked less lanky and more substantial. His shoulders had grown broader and stronger from his heavy work. And the fact that he’d been luckier than many in the trade and had been in work more than out of it had done wonders for his sense of himself. His blue eyes looked directly at people now and he was much less hesitant when he spoke – especially with Rose on his arm. What a picture she was in that red frock she had on! Soon, when he’d maybe managed to save a bit, he planned to make her his wife.

  Alfred and Rose Meredith, he thought. That sounded truly grand.

  Rose stood preparing butter in the Co-op that afternoon dipping the wooden pats in the jug of cold water and teasing the yellowish lumps into shape. She was partly mesmerized by the movement of her hands and by the rhythmic click and whirr as the money cup shot along its overhead wire to the little cash office at the back of the shop.

  ‘Come on, Rose, wake up! We need three pound of sugar over here!’ the woman in charge of her called over. ‘I dunno what’s got into that girl today.’

  Without speaking, Rose moved over and began to shovel out the sugar into the blue paper bags. Then she went back to sort out the butter and bacon again.

  What had got into her was that she had, for the first time since Joseph’s death, begun to allow herself to think properly. It was not something she decided to do; the thoughts just seemed to come upon her, long-buried feelings nudging for her attention.

  She had been grateful in one way for the problems in Europe, for the looming war. Since they had waited tensely through the last threat, the crisis in Czechoslovakia the year before, it had all helped to take her mind off her own sorrows. And, she thought, it’s brought me closer to Alfie – hasn’t it?

  They had things in common to talk about now, important things. Before he had talked about football or the latest murder trial.

  ‘Have you heard about the one they’re doing at the Old Bailey this week?’ would have been the conversation before. Then he’d give her a long and gruesome description of the crime.

  They’d shared a lot of experiences over the past months: the flicks and walks and family meals. Changing jobs. But had they shared the experience of falling in love? The question wouldn’t leave her alone that afternoon, try as she might to put it out of her mind. Was what she felt for Alfie what people would call love?

  From that day when he had turned up again in Catherine Street, she had tried to close her mind to everything that had gone before – to Joseph, Diana, Michael and everything about Lazenby’s. To her dreams. She tried to be someone with no past. From now on she was going to be sensible and down to earth and take whatever came along.

  He’s made me feel better, there’s no doubt, she thought. He’s kind and generous and he loves me. What more could I want from anyone? I’ve already got more than me mom.

  When she first went out with him she had felt relieved and grateful. Here was someone who wanted her and thought highly of her – she who at fifteen felt so old and soiled and washed up. And she was especially grateful to him for not probing into her past. He was prepared to accept her just as she was.

  Those feelings she had had for Michael, the electric excitement in his presence – that was all airy-fairy nonsense, not real life. What she had with Alfie was real, like married people had if they were lucky.

  She knew one day he’d ask her to marry him. That was another thing she’d tried not to think about. As long as they stayed as they were she didn’t have to decide or face up to things. But the threat of war was overturning everything. For a moment she had an overwhelming feeling of panic. All her life – forever – spent with Alfie. Nothing else? Then she pushed the feelings away.

  What’s got into me? she thought. He’d make a good husband and he wouldn’t knock me about. That’s what matters.

  Of course it made sense to marry Alfie, she said to herself. Perfect sense.

  In early December the government extended the call-up age to men between the ages of nineteen and forty-one. Both Alfie and Sam received their papers almost immediately.

  ‘At least I’m sure of a job now!’ Sam joked. ‘So you can keep the wireless.’

  After they’d heard the soft voice of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain crackling out of the Pyes’ old wireless set, Sam had rashly gone out and bought one for their own house, with its battery and accumulator. Now, at almost every news bulletin, some member of the family was listening in.

  When the broadcast fini
shed that Sunday morning, the distant voice informing them that ‘consequently we are now at war with Germany’, Sid had pulled himself up abruptly and left the house.

  Grace watched him out of the window. ‘What’s got into him?’ she said.

  ‘Leave him,’ Dora said.

  Out in the brewhouse, Sid Lucas stood propped on his crutch next to the old stone sink, his whole body trembling. The build-up to another war had set his fragile nerves on edge. Breathing in shuddering gulps of air, he tried to steady the emotions aroused by memories of the last war that suddenly sprawled out in front of him like fresh corpses. After the war to end all wars, here it was beginning all over again.

  Dora looked out and saw the shadow of her husband’s hunched figure. She could guess what was going on in his mind, but she had her children to think of now, their survival and their future. That was what mattered.

  It was Grace who slipped outside and went to him. As she walked quietly into the brewhouse she knew immediately that her father was weeping. All through her childhood she had heard this sound through the floorboards from her parents’ room, but she had never seen him with tears on his face before.

  ‘Dad . . . ?’ She went and put her work-roughened hand on his heaving shoulder. He didn’t throw it off. He didn’t move or turn to her.

  ‘I’ll be all right, Gracie.’

  ‘It’s the war, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. After a moment, he said, ‘I’m fit for nothing. The last war saw to that.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Grace said. She took his arm. ‘Come on. I’ll leave you if that’s what you want, but it’s best you come in. We’ve all got to stick together now there’s a war on, haven’t we?’

  Sid took out his grubby handkerchief and wiped his eyes in a way that made Grace’s own fill with tears. At that moment he looked so much like a child.

  ‘Come on now, Dad. Come in and have a cuppa tea.’

  The evening before Alfie was due to leave, he and Rose walked slowly back from town in the blackout darkness that had overtaken the city. They had been to the flicks at the Scala and then Alfie had treated them to a hot pork sandwich from the Market Hall, so despite the freezing evening they felt quite warm and well fed.

  Now and then people loomed up out of the cold, foggy darkness, close enough to touch almost before you could see them. A few were carrying small torches so you could make out little lines of light moving towards you.

  ‘I can’t get used to the dark,’ Rose said. ‘If it wasn’t for this mist you could see the stars.’

  ‘I s’pose it’s a bit daft making you walk instead of catching the tram,’ Alfie said. ‘But then we’d have got there too quick. I wanted to spend all the time I could with you.’

  Rose felt her stomach plunge at the thought that Alfie would be gone the next afternoon. She kept forgetting, and then something reminded her again, like the muffled lights on the few cars that passed them, which gave you a tiny glimpse of something before the darkness fell back over everything again.

  ‘It feels like the end of the world,’ Rose said.

  Alfie grinned in the darkness. His Rose said the queerest things at times.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘We’ll show that Adolf Hitler feller in no time. They’ll get us all trained up and it’ll be time to go home again. The lights’ll be back on and we’ll be right as rain, you’ll see.’

  Rose said nothing, wondering how much Alfie believed of what he was saying.

  He peered at her, trying to make out her expression. ‘You’re not scared, are you? Here, stop a tick.’

  Alfie pulled her arm and guided her over to the dark factory wall. He pulled her close to him. She looked up, just able to see his eyes and the outline of his angular face.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ he said. ‘You know how much I love you, don’t you?’

  She looked guiltily up at him. ‘Yes. Of course I know.’

  She knew he was waiting for her to tell him the same, how she would long for him to be there, how she couldn’t live without him. But the words wouldn’t come. It would be stepping over a cliff if she said more than she meant tonight of all nights, when things were so serious. Once the words were spoken, she could not take them back.

  Alfie leaned forwards and began to kiss her. She felt his soft, familiar lips on her mouth, and all the warmth and sincerity going into that kiss. She kissed him back, trying to summon up all her gratitude to him. She had got over his touching her reminding her every time of Mr Lazenby. Alfie had always been very gentle and never demanded anything more of her. She didn’t feel revolted by him. She didn’t feel – the thought came to her like a cold shock – anything. And inside, her heart was pounding with a sense of panic she could not explain even to herself.

  ‘Rose – I wasn’t going to ask you yet. I’d planned to save it. But now things are different – you know . . .’ He stumbled over the words, unused to expressing his feelings. ‘What I mean is, would you – will you marry me, Rose? We could have a wedding when I come home next. There’s bound to be some leave in a few weeks around Christmas, and it’d give you time to get sorted out a bit . . .’ he babbled on nervously.

  Rose felt an almost unbearable sense of tension inside her, as all the feelings she’d been keeping at bay for the past months flooded into her in conflict and confusion. Should she be content, accept what was being offered by a good, kind man whom she could at least like? Or should she listen to that part of her which as a young girl had clamoured for fulfilment?

  In utter vexation with herself she dissolved into tears.

  ‘Hey, Rose,’ Alfie said tenderly, holding her again. ‘There . . . don’t upset yourself. I know I’m asking a bit sudden like, what with going away in the morning. But I’ve put a lot of thought into our future, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Rose said sobbing. ‘You’re so good to me. I don’t deserve it.’

  Alfie stroked the soft, dark head that was pressed against his chest.

  ‘What d’you mean? How can you say that? My God, you’re the most fantastic girl I’ve ever seen in my life, and it was a miracle when you said you’d come out with me. And now you’re saying you don’t deserve me?’ He laughed. ‘You’re a case, Rose Lucas, you really are.’

  Rose calmed herself and stood sniffing and wiping her face. After a few moments she said with unexpected resolve, ‘We’ll have to ask my dad.’

  ‘Right,’ Alfie said, and she could hear the jubilation in his voice, so at odds with the flat sense of inevitability she was feeling herself. ‘It’s not too late. I’ll come and ask him now.’

  ‘No. You can’t.’

  Rose and Alfie looked at each other, dumbfounded.

  ‘But—’ Alfie said.

  ‘But nothing. You heard what I said.’

  ‘What the hell’s got into you, Sid?’ Dora gasped. ‘You’ve always said Alfie were a good lad!’

  ‘And we’re promised to one another,’ Alfie said, his voice starting to tremble.

  ‘You can promise what you like,’ Sid shouted, slamming his newspaper down on the table and standing up. ‘But you’re not marrying my daughter one day and going off to get yourself blown to buggery the next.’

  ‘But—’ Alfie said again.

  ‘Look at me!’ Sid’s voice rang round the walls of the small room. ‘D’you want to give your wife a husband in a state like this, who can’t keep his family and’s no bloody good to anyone? Do you? I’m not making one of my kids a war widow or marrying her off to a wreck like me, so you can forget it.’

  Rose and Dora stared at him, both rooted to the spot. Sid seemed bigger and broader than they’d ever seen him. And Rose was aware, while feeling sorry and angry on Alfie’s behalf, of a warm sense of relief spreading through her.

  ‘Get married after the war’s over if you come back in one piece,’ Sid was saying more quietly. ‘But don’t ruin her life by rushing into things ’cos you think you’re going to be a hero. There ain’t no heroes in a war, lad – only blokes getting
killed all around you.’

  There seemed no more to be said. Alfie whispered to Rose, ‘I’ll come round and say goodbye tomorrow if I can.’

  And she watched him walk, crestfallen, out into the darkness.

  There was silence except for the clock ticking on the mantelpiece and Dora’s coughing. Rose was still standing where she had been since they started talking, and Sid sank down into the chair again.

  ‘Anyroad,’ he said, looking up at her with defiant eyes. ‘You didn’t really want to marry him, did you?’

  Twelve

  May 1940

  Rose sat, bleary-eyed, drinking a very welcome mug of tea as Winston Churchill’s gruff voice growled at them out of the wireless.

  ‘I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our Empire, of our Allies, and above all, of the cause of freedom . . .’

  ‘Well – he sounds as if he might know what he’s on about. Not like the last one,’ Jean said, stirring sugar into her tea.

  Rose was sitting in her brother Albert’s house in Erdington with her sister-in-law Jean, a plump, rather plaintive woman whom Rose was quite glad she only saw for limited parts of the day. Jean was about to give her full opinion of Neville Chamberlain, but Rose raised her hand to quieten her.

  ‘Ssh. Let’s hear the end of it.’

  ‘Today is Trinity Sunday,’ the voice was saying. ‘Centuries ago, words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of truth and justice: “Arm yourselves and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict, for it is better to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.” ’

  ‘Ah,’ Jean said, shifting her wide hips on the chair. ‘Ain’t that nice? He can string together a good lot of words, can’t he?’

  Rose had felt a thrill, a sensation which raised goose-pimples on her flesh on hearing the commanding speech. With all the grimness, the increasingly terrible news which greeted them daily from Europe, she had been unprepared for the exhilaration she felt at the challenges with which war had presented her.