Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  ‘It’ll have to do us,’ Rose replied flatly. ‘I can’t keep up the rent where we are.’

  Like number five, Moonstruck House had been soled and heeled. All the windows were in, the doorframes had been replaced and the roof fixed. But on the inside it was a different matter. The smell of damp was unmistakable and there was mould growing all along the walls under the windows. In the downstairs room there was still some paper on the walls – a yellowish colour with clusters of dull pink flowers and a border of green cheese-plant leaves a few inches from the ceiling. A few sections of it near the floor had been ripped off upwards, and in other places the corners were curling back.

  Upstairs, both rooms showed the barest traces of paper. Otherwise it was bare plaster, some of which had fallen or been gouged out in places where through the holes you could see the bare brick. In the second-floor room the floorboards opened up suddenly to the stairwell which plunged down in a corner. It was bleaker than number five had ever been.

  ‘Never had anyone in long enough to take a pride in it. But you could soon cheer it up, give it a lick of distemper.’

  Rose nodded absently. Mabel noticed how painfully thin she had become again. Even her pre-war clothes hung on her now and her eyes seemed more prominent in her face.

  ‘He’ll have to have a bed downstairs,’ Rose was saying. She was grateful to Mabel for sticking around to talk things through. ‘I can’t get him up the stairs of a night. And anyway,’ she added resignedly, ‘it’s hard to get him out of bed in the first place nowadays.’

  ‘Like that is it?’ Mabel shook her head sympathetically. She felt suddenly rather maternal towards Rose. ‘Well, you’ll have to make it as easy on you as you can. You working and night school and that. Don’t worry’ – she patted Rose’s shoulder with her thick hand – ‘we’ll see you through. Your mother would’ve done the same for any of us.’

  There were tears of gratitude in Rose’s eyes as she turned to her old neighbour. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know she would.’

  They did fix Alfie up with a bed downstairs, along the wall away from the front window. Rose put up some net to stop people gawping in. The Pyes lent her a hand one weekend in filling in the worst holes in the walls and giving the place a couple of coats of whitewash upstairs. Rose scrubbed down all the floorboards with disinfectant and laid down what she had in the way of old peg rugs and little off-cuts of carpet they had acquired in Moseley.

  Alfie half sat, half lay watching her one Sunday morning as she attempted energetically to carry on turning the place into somewhere they could call a home. It was cold and she had built a fire and was sweeping up the scullery.

  ‘You should get out of bed,’ she told him patiently. ‘You know what the nurse said about you getting sore if you lie about all day.’

  Alfie looked up at her languidly. ‘It’s so cold,’ he protested, in the strange, slurred voice he spoke in now. ‘And you’ve got too much to do already, Rosie.’

  ‘I can do that later,’ Rose said, growing impatient. ‘Come on – let’s get you up.’

  Hilda appeared from upstairs as Rose was preparing a bowl of warm water to wash her husband. ‘What can I do?’ she whined.

  ‘D’you want to come and help me give your dad a wash?’ Hilda had grown very used to seeing her father’s body since he had been ill. His place at the centre of all that was going on made his a very public illness.

  ‘No,’ Hilda said, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs and kicking at the wood with her heels. ‘S’boring. And smelly.’

  ‘Well go out and play then,’ Rose said, trying the temperature of the water in the bowl.

  ‘Don’t want to.’ Hilda’s face twisted into the expression of stubborn sulkiness she often wore nowadays. ‘You’re just trying to get rid of me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose snapped. ‘I am. Sitting around moaning at me. Now do as you’re told and get out there with the others.’

  ‘Me dad’d never be so horrible to me,’ she said snidely as she pulled her old coat on.

  Silently Rose began soaping Alfie’s scrawny white arms. He had lost all the muscle tone that his building work had given him, and the translucent skin seemed to cover bone and little else. His arms had become stiff and awkward, and she had to lean on them to bend them. She washed under his arms, the light brown wiry hair turning white with soap. She’d tucked a towel under his shoulders so as not to wet the sheets. Gently she wiped his face, and then slid her hands flat under him to turn him so that she could wash his back. The nurses had showed her how – the lifting and bed baths. How to position a little container between his legs to catch the urine which dribbled from him beyond his control.

  When she had turned him back over and was washing his chest she realized he was watching her, and that tears were rolling down his cheeks. She stopped what she was doing and stroked his hair which was rather greasy and needed cutting.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rose.’ The sobs shook his body, his thin, gentle face growing pink and streaked with the tears. ‘You shouldn’t be having to do all this.’

  ‘Ssshh,’ she said, trying to soothe him, tears of sorrow and pity filling her own eyes. ‘Don’t say that. I’ve told you. I’m your wife, aren’t I? Who else should be looking after you?’

  ‘But living back here.’ Alfie’s voice came out horribly slurred from the disease and his distress. ‘It was the last thing you wanted. I was going to do so much for you, Rosie, give you so much. I’m sorry . . .’

  In the early days, when she had first begun caring for him, he had wept like this often, full of remorse, frustration and fear as to what was going to happen to the family. He had worried how they would live on sickness benefit alone. About how Rose would manage, and what would happen to Hilda. And in sheer horror at what was happening to his body. Worst of all had been the times when, at first, he had still wanted to make love to her.

  ‘Rosie, come here,’ he’d beg, wanting things to be all right, for at least that to be possible between them. She would lie in his arms as he took her breasts in his hands, touching her, kissing her desperately, trying to force some sensation into the limp lower half of his body. Sometimes he would say, as he had never done when he was well, ‘Will you help me? Will you touch me?’

  Pityingly she had taken him in her hands, trying to kindle him, caressing the soft, small part of him which could feel nothing, and trying, more for his sake than for her own, to arouse him. He would lie watching her with a fixed expression of concentration on his face, longing, willing himself, and it was that desperation she saw in him which made her cry, and his failure and shame which brought on his own tears, so that they would end up lying in distress in each other’s arms, in a strange way closer than they had ever been before he was ill.

  They no longer attempted lovemaking now. Rose cared for him and he, most of the time, just accepted that this was how it had to be. Seeing him in this broken state she grew to realize how grateful she was to him, and that she did indeed care for him, not as a lover – which she never had and never could – but as a kind, familiar friend, and the way she would care for a child or any sick, fragile creature.

  As she dried his tears that cold morning, he appealed to her in a whisper, ‘Give us a kiss, will you?’

  She bent and kissed his lips, smelling the rather stale, sour smell of him despite the wash. When they had kissed she smiled kindly at him. ‘I’ll change your sheets again. Come on – let’s get you into a chair.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she told him, touching his bony shoulder. ‘Look – it’s all right.’

  In a way it was. Her feelings at that time were so mixed, so mercurial that at times she could barely make up her mind what she felt about anything.

  Moving back into Catherine Street had symbolized for her the end of any aspirations of her own. The circle had closed. Now she was back just where she began and could hope for nothing
better. But in another way it had been a relief to see the familiar old faces and know she could always rely on them for help. At that moment that was her greatest need.

  At other times she was overcome by an extraordinary exhilaration, even through all the tiredness. It was like a resurgence in her of someone entirely forgotten. There was the thrill of risk, and the challenging sense that she was in charge. She could no longer be dependent and passive. She began to experience some of the zest for life she had felt in the army. Now at last she could do something.

  ‘I’m going to have to earn more than the odd bob or two,’ she had said to Grace. ‘I’ll have to learn how to do something. I’m only fit for the factory floor or a shop.’

  So she had started the evening classes. She signed on for three evenings a week at Sparkhill Commercial School over on the Stratford Road. English, typing and shorthand, she decided, would stand her in the best stead for the future. Meantime, whatever job she got they would have to make the best of it until she was trained to do something better.

  She applied for a job working in the offices of a firm in Burton Street, only a couple of streets away from home: Turner’s Metal Smallware.

  Since it was so near at hand she was able to run home in the lunch hour and give Alfie a few moments’ company as well as hastily making Hilda something to eat. The rest of the day either Mabel or Gladys Pye saw to her and she played with the other kids in the court who were too young for school.

  Her duties at Turner’s ranged from seeing to the outgoing post, of which there was a great deal to be sealed and stamped on the cranky old franking machine, to helping actually to pack the goods: shining piles of hairgrips and hairpins and metal coathangers and straight pins, which were boxed up and sent out to shops all over the country.

  Though the work was often tedious and she felt guilty leaving Alfie and Hilda, the fact was she had no choice in the matter if they were all to eat. As her mother had done before her, she was going to keep her family, though at the moment the money was never enough. Mrs Meredith helped them out a little when she could, but it was the kindness of the neighbours which really kept them going: Gladys popping in saying, ‘Look – we’ve a couple of portions of stew left over. You have it, Rose. It’ll go bad else’; or Mabel coming by with a loaf or a cake or a pat of margarine. Even the neighbours whom she had not known all her life pitched in. Rose sometimes wept at their unquestioning generosity.

  Often in the evening, when she had walked the couple of miles to Sparkhill after a hasty bite to eat, she would sit for two hours learning the intricacies of Pitman shorthand, her whole body throbbing with tiredness. Despite that she was one of the best in the class. She practised at every opportunity. Whenever she had to write something down she would think how to do it in shorthand.

  ‘Some people have a natural bent for shorthand,’ the tutor told her, smiling. ‘And you’re certainly one of them.’

  Rose beamed with delight at learning something new and being praised for it.

  One evening, when she had been going to Sparkhill for a few months, she walked down the front steps of the school with some of the other girls from the class. They were chatting, groaning over their typing speeds on the heavy Underwood machines. It was a warm evening, still light, and the air was soft and still, scented with fading laburnum and lilac. Occasionally a car passed by on the Stratford Road.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Rose sighed as they reached the pavement. ‘I’ve a good mind to get on the bus and to hell with it.’

  ‘Money down the drain,’ her friends reminded her cheerfully. ‘Bus or bread.’

  Rose smiled. ‘It’s a good job you’re here to keep me in line. Anyway, by the time I’ve been into town and out it’ll take me just as long. And at least it’s still light.’

  They said their goodbyes and set out in different directions.

  Rose turned, still smiling from the friendly company, to walk towards the side street where she would turn off towards home. She caught a whiff of roses from the gardens and breathed in the scent, so different from the usual smoky smells of the city.

  Just before she turned off the Stratford Road, wondering whether Hilda had played Grace up about going to bed, she felt a hand settle firmly on her shoulder. Startled, she turned with a gasp, and behind her she found a handsome, and suddenly familiar face grinning at her.

  It was Michael Gillespie.

  Thirty-Four

  March 1952

  Again she woke from a vivid dream, those dreams which came only occasionally now. She realized her face was wet with tears. It had been so vivid.

  They were in Il Rifugio, alone in the storeroom where she had first seen Falcone on the maize-straw mattresses. The others may have been around somewhere but the two of them were alone, and knew they would not be disturbed. She did not recall any particular words, or that they had spoken at all. What was most overpowering was the atmosphere of tenderness and passion as they loved one another. She remembered his body, slim and strong and dark, in every detail, as if they had only truly been together the night before. And the look on his face, his delight in her and care for her and her own sense of giving herself unreservedly and with joy.

  For a moment she lay wiping her eyes, still completely taken up in the mood of the dream. Then other thoughts forced themselves into her mind, thoughts which filled her with excitement, but at the same time with strong pangs of guilt. Michael. She had agreed to meet Michael tonight. Though her conscience and common sense cried out not to do it, she knew that she would go.

  She had seen Michael a number of times, at first only occasionally and seemingly by chance, after their first meeting. Seeing him there had truly delighted her.

  ‘Michael!’ she’d cried in wonder. ‘You’re alive. All this time you’ve been alive!’

  He’d laughed at this, bending his strong body down to give her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Oh, I’m alive all right. Even survived the River Po and that’s saying something, I can tell you. Sea of corpses it was when we crossed.’ His expression lost its exuberance at the memory. ‘But that’s long in the past, and we both came through it, eh?’

  I was never in much danger down there,’ Rose said. ‘Hell of a lot quieter than it was here really.’ She stood staring at him, amazed at the thought that the last time she had seen him had been outside the stables at Caserta. And it was so precious, that memory, that link with the war. Just those few minutes when they had stood together with Tony. Someone else who would remember him, remember the place.

  ‘You living round here?’ Michael asked.

  ‘No. Been to school.’ She outlined briefly what she was doing, told him about Alfie and Hilda.

  Michael let out a whistle of sympathy. ‘That’s really rough. You poor kid. I thought you wasn’t looking as bonny as when I saw you in Italy. But you always did have guts, I’ll say that for you, Rose. Can’t see my wife getting out earning a living.’

  ‘You’re married then?’ They were still standing where he had caught up with her, Michael pressing one of his shiny black shoes up against the wall facing him as they talked. A tram made its way noisily along the road.

  ‘Oh, yes. The wife and I live on down there a way. Edge of Hall Green.’ He pointed down the Stratford Road. ‘Mary her name is. Good Irish girl. I’ve a lad too – Joseph. He’s two.’

  Rose felt a pang at the name Joseph. For a second she calculated how old her own Joseph would have been now. Fourteen this year. A grown lad, perhaps just starting out on a job.

  ‘I’ve got the bookies down the road,’ Michael was saying proudly. ‘My own little outfit. Gillespie over the door. Doing well. You know how it is with a growing family. We’ve another on the way – due in October.’

  ‘I’m glad. It’s really good to see you.’

  ‘Listen – come for a drink with me,’ Michael urged. He went to put an arm round her shoulders and usher her along. ‘Jesus, you’re skinny! We can have a quick one in the Mermaid.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Rose
told him regretfully. ‘Sorry Michael, I just can’t. I’ve left my husband and kid all day.’

  ‘OK,’ Michael said easily, removing his muscular arm from her shoulders. ‘Then let me walk you home.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Rose hesitated. ‘That’d be nice. But what about your wife? Weren’t you on your way home?’

  Michael made a quick, dismissive gesture. ‘Oh – she’ll be off to bed any minute. She gets tired, what with the babbies and that. Anyroad, I’m out most nights to tell you the truth. She never kicks up a fuss.’

  All the way back to Catherine Street they chatted and reminisced. Michael told her he had met Mary, his wife, three years ago.

  ‘It was one of these Irish dos. Lots of booze and the music going and all the couples dancing and all the old’uns getting sick for the home country. She was fresh over here and she stood out. Really pretty face she had – well, she still has, except she’s got a bit of fat on her after having Joseph, of course. But she’s a good lass. Looks after me all right.’

  ‘Bet that takes some doing,’ Rose teased him. She realized, as ever with Michael, that she had begun to flirt with him. ‘Not sure I’d fancy the job myself!’

  ‘Would you not?’ Michael sounded mock wounded. ‘I’d’ve said we’d have made a pretty fine team, you and me, Rosie.’

  Rose realized he was not entirely joking, and she blushed in the dusk. Guiltily, she knew she had not felt so alive, so stimulated by anyone’s sheer presence, in months and months. She steered the conversation on to less personal things.

  When they said goodnight at the end of Catherine Street, Michael gave her another kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Come for a drink another time,’ he called, turning back towards Sparkhill.