Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  ‘Rose – my dear!’

  A moment later she was being drawn into the arms of Catherine Harper-Watt.

  Thirty-Eight

  Rose could hardly take in Catherine’s sudden appearance. Here she was, thinner but still beautiful, her thick hair arranged in an elegant chignon and wearing an obviously expensive suit tailored in slate blue and black checks and all nipped in nicely at the waist. She sat on the old wooden chair by the table in Grace’s poor kitchen looking quite at ease as she might anywhere, so accustomed was she to mixing with anyone and everyone. Sid and Grace had taken their meal over to eat with Alfie.

  Rose began to chop off florets of cauliflower for cauliflower cheese, waiting for the pan of water to boil.

  ‘I know this’ll sound rude,’ she said. ‘I’m ever so pleased to see you. But why are you here tonight suddenly?’

  ‘No, it’s a good question.’ Catherine remembered that even as a child Rose had always gone straight to the heart of things, no messing about. ‘The practical truth is that I’m here in Birmingham because I was sent down to a meeting in the Town Hall. More of my organizing and interfering with other people’s lives.’ She smiled.

  ‘I have to admit this isn’t by any means the first time I’ve been back, and I’ve thought of calling in on you. I came this evening to see if anyone could tell me your address, and to my astonishment I find the person I’m talking to is your father! But I’m sorry not to have warned you, Rose dear. I had fully intended to write you a better letter after you wrote to us so kindly during the war. And to have come and looked you up much sooner. But I just – even now it’s . . .’ She laid the palms of her hands flat on the table in front of her. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’

  Rose put down her colander, realizing with consternation that Catherine’s voice was breaking up with tearfulness. She reached out to provide the family comforter. ‘Let me get you a cup of tea while we’re waiting.’

  ‘I knew I must at some point,’ Catherine told her, accepting the cup of strong tea. ‘When we moved to Manchester and got settled in, Diana made a lot of friends, of course. She was always that kind of girl – you remember how open and friendly she was. But you know, despite all the differences between you two, I don’t think there was ever anyone she cared for as much as she did for you. Perhaps we make very few real friendships in our lifetime. When I think of Diana’s childhood now, that’s the first thing that comes to my mind – you and her.’

  There was a moment of silence. The two women looked at each other across the poorly lit kitchen and Catherine saw that Rose’s brown eyes were full of tears.

  ‘It’s ten years since she died, and it’s taken me all this time. Only . . . I know I’ve got William and Judith, and they’re a great support to me and both doing so well. But losing Diana, losing any child is just . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Rose said gently.

  ‘You poor girl, what a time of it you’ve had. Here am I, carrying on. Of course you know how it feels.’

  ‘You know I met Diana. At New Street Station?’

  ‘She told us. She was so delighted. You see she thought she’d done something terribly wrong when she didn’t hear from you. After she got your letter I remember her saying to me, “If only Rose had told us. Why d’you think she felt she couldn’t? I wanted to be her friend whatever.” It’s all right’ – Catherine stood up and took Rose by the shoulders, seeing her really beginning to cry on hearing this – ‘she understood. You poor child. You were young and afraid, and so . . .’

  ‘Ignorant,’ Rose finished for her, sniffing.

  ‘Well, yes, you were in a way. But so very bright and lively with it.’ She embraced Rose briefly, and then the two of them carried the food to the table.

  ‘I haven’t talked about Diana,’ Rose said as they ate. ‘Not for years. There’s been no one I could tell. No one round here would want to know anyway.’

  ‘I should have done this years ago!’ Catherine said later as she laid down her knife and fork. ‘What a chump I’ve been, thinking it would all be terrible and gloomy. You won’t be able to keep me away now, Rose. But for tonight’ – she looked at her slender wristwatch – ‘before I have to go I want to hear a lot more about you.’

  Their shared memories allowed Rose to open up and relax in a way she had not done for years. The Harper-Watts’ talent for helping others to confide and Catherine’s motherly concern for her made her feel she could say anything.

  She told her about Dora’s death, about her war and Sam and Grace and Grace’s fiancé; about the factory at Castle Bromwich and about the ATS. And to her own relief, pleasure in fact, she told her about Italy and Il Rifugio and the drops, and quite straightforwardly she told her about Falcone. She explained too how things had been since the war, with Alfie and Hilda and her work, and Alfie’s illness.

  ‘So at least I’ve got myself a more decent job,’ she finished, ‘which means we’re doing a bit better now. But Alfie’s very bad. No one thinks he’s got long, to be honest with you. To tell you the truth, Mrs Harper-Watt—’

  ‘Call me Catherine, please.’

  ‘Well, Catherine then. The one place I always hoped I’d get away from was Catherine Street. I had all these ideas. And here I am. Square one.’

  Catherine smiled sadly. ‘You had so many dreams, both of you, when you were children.’ She watched Rose’s face carefully as she asked the next question. ‘And this man, this priest. He was something very special to you?’

  Rose paused. ‘He wasn’t a priest then. But yes. Like no one else, ever.’

  ‘Oh Rose!’ Rose saw the sympathy in her eyes.

  Catherine suddenly started and looked at her watch again. ‘Heavens, I shall have to go.’ She got up and put on a soft grey wool coat, belting it round the waist. ‘The time has gone so quickly,’ she said. ‘Now listen, my dear. Thank you for feeding me at such short notice. And please thank your family for putting up with this disruption. It was most kind of them all.’

  As they stood at the door, she said, ‘I’m so glad I came.’

  Rose nodded with pleasure, not sure what to say, and Catherine kissed her quickly on the cheek. Smiling, and suddenly elated, Rose watched her smart figure disappear quickly out of the court.

  *

  Two days later when she arrived back from work she found a long white envelope waiting, addressed in black ink in Catherine’s beautiful italic script. Under their Manchester address on the thick, white paper she read,

  My dear Rose,

  I hope you will not take this amiss. I am not at all sure whether I conveyed to you when we parted on Tuesday just how much our meeting meant to me. You and Diana were so special – but then I think I have said all that.

  I should be most grateful if you will accept the enclosed. It is not meant to be seen as charity or anything you need take offence at. You’ll know I have always had means of my own, and I should love you to think of yourself as something of a daughter who need not feel ashamed of accepting a gift from me. I should like to think that as soon as circumstances allow, you, who were such a dreamer as a child and whose dreams have been so consistently pushed aside by events, might be able to put this little offering towards fulfilling those dreams in some way, whatever that may be. I would gladly give you more if you were not too proud to ask. I can’t do anything for Diana, but I have at least found you.

  I told Ronald about my visit to you and he was overjoyed (a very Ronald word!) and sends much love to you, as do William and Judith.

  I do hope to see you again before long, if you don’t mind.

  With much gratitude and affection from us both, Catherine H-W.

  Folded in the sheet Rose found ten £10 notes. The moment she had read through the letter and had re-read it in wonder, she pushed both it and the money hurriedly back inside the envelope. Pulling out one of the loose bricks from round the fireplace she arranged the envelope neatly behind and replaced the brick. No one else need see that money just now.

  But she
thought about it endlessly as she got on with the evening’s chores. Dreams? What dreams did she have left that were not buried almost deep enough to have been forgotten? She had no clear idea what she might do with such a sum of money. Except for one thing.

  ‘I’ll do something special for Grace,’ she thought. Grace, whose life had been so lacking in excitement, who had always stood by her and helped out when she was needed, even if she did have a good moan about it. She’d think of some way, however small, to pay Grace back. She deserved it.

  ‘He ought to be in hospital,’ the nurse kept saying, tutting over Alfie. ‘He’s in a terrible state! Look at those sores, and hark at his chest!’

  ‘We’ve done the best we can,’ Rose told her exhaustedly. ‘And he doesn’t want to go.’ Even Alfie himself had tried to impress this on the nurse in his more lucid moments.

  The new doctor who had started coming supported Alfie’s wishes, rather to Rose’s surprise. ‘You know that your husband has not much time left?’ she told her gently.

  ‘So everyone keeps saying. To be honest with you we’ve all wondered how he’s kept going this long with what he’s been through.’

  As Sid had put it only yesterday, ‘You’d never have thought that weak little runt’d have held out like this, would you?’

  The past weeks had, of course, prepared Rose. Several times she had walked warily over to Alfie, her own breath stilled in her throat, thinking he’d stopped breathing altogether. But each time there had been a pause and then his loud, laboured breathing had started up again. They could talk very little now. Mostly his eyes were closed, so he did not take in what she or Hilda were doing. But paradoxically her life revolved round him more and more: on his washing and feeding routines, or simply being there as much as possible, even though the nurses were spending more time there during the day, and one neighbour or another was constantly with him.

  For the first time she had seriously begun to think how she would feel after he died, and again to her surprise, the thoughts which came filled her with apprehension verging on panic. For what was her life now without Alfie to care for?

  Hilda had begun to say to her at night, ‘Will Dad still be here in the morning?’ The mother of one of her classmates had recently killed herself and it was always on Hilda’s mind. And people kept saying Alfie hadn’t long.

  ‘I hope so,’ Rose would tell her, with decreasing certainty. ‘Don’t get all worked up about it. Just go and give your dad a kiss, love.’

  The night he died, Grace was there as usual. They took it in turns, each sleeping half the night in Rose’s bed, and sitting for the remainder downstairs with Alfie. It was agonizing and exhausting. Each of his breaths seemed to demand from him such effort. And his poor, contorted body looked so corrupted by the illness. Occasionally Rose allowed herself to think of him as he was when she had first met him before the war, and she would weep at the sight of him now. He had become such a strange thing in the room, his unconsciousness a mysterious barrier against them all. Was it simply sleep, or had he already begun to leave her behind?

  Grace ran up the stairs and pulled on Rose’s shoulder, rousing her from a light, confused sleep.

  ‘What? WHAT?’ She sat up at once.

  ‘It’s just – he’s changed. I can’t tell you. You’d best come and see.’

  The two sisters skimmed down the cold stairs again in their nighties.

  Alfie’s breathing had grown even louder and more irregular. Watching him from the bottom of the stairs, Rose felt he might rise bodily off the bed in his attempt to capture his next vital lungful. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, the rasping breaths hauled in and out. Then they stopped.

  Hypnotized by the rhythm, for a moment both women carried on staring at him. The silence continued. They looked at each other, unable to move.

  Then Rose rushed over to the bed. She took Alfie’s emaciated wrist and felt for a pulse. For a few seconds the tips of her fingers felt for the delicate blood vessel. Nothing.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said solemnly.

  It was Grace who fell to her knees by the bed wailing ‘Oh Alfie!’ and laid her head down on the covers beside him.

  The burial took place in the cemetery where they had laid Dora. Unlike the overcast day in 1940 when Rose had stood beside Grace and Sid at that graveside, the day was a crisp, bright one in February, with the old rusty leaves of autumn crackling underfoot. The beauty and calm of the cemetery with its mature trees and sloping green areas dotted with the silent stones moved Rose. Alfie’s death and all the suffering of his life weighed heavily on her. She had lost a friend, and the focus of years of care and energy. The future lay blank in front of her. But what felt worst was the knowledge of how little of herself she had really given to him. Everyone kept telling her how marvellous she’d been, what a staunch wife. And it was true that she had served him and cared for him in his physical need. But no more.

  After the ceremony, Rose held Hilda’s cold little hand in hers, with Grace supporting her on the other side, as they followed the slow progress of Sid and Mrs Meredith along the curving path. George had not made an appearance. Grace’s face was as drawn with misery as Hilda’s and Rose’s own.

  ‘A couple of days more,’ she said softly to Rose, ‘and he’d have died exactly a year after the old king.’ She seemed to find this comforting.

  Rose nodded, squeezing her arm. A little further on she said, ‘Grace, if he’d asked you – back in the early days – would you have married him?’

  Grace kept her eyes down, looking at the dry twigs and pine needles along the path. ‘You know I would. And not just then either. Any time. Right up to the end.’

  Then she looked round at Rose with a most wistful smile on her thin face. ‘But it was only you he had eyes for. Ever. You know that, Rose.’

  And then she stroked her sister’s arm as Rose finally began to break into sobs beside her.

  Thirty-Nine

  August 1953

  For months after Alfie’s death Rose felt tired to the very core. It seemed a huge task just to get to work in the morning. Through the end of the winter and the lightening days of spring she dragged herself around feeling only half alive, as if Alfie had taken a part of her with him, her own youth seeping away gradually through his illness.

  She missed him more than she had ever imagined possible. One thing had been certain, ever since she moved to Moonstruck House: that Alfie would always be there. Whenever she came down in the morning or in from a class or work, there he was, almost as she had left him. Wakeful and watching her, providing as much conversation as he could manage, or dozing, semiconscious – but there. Now, just as certainly, the room was empty of him.

  But like a gift, from somewhere within her, her vitality and zest were returning. She had other things to think about. George for a start. And, with a certainty which increased with each summer day, she knew what she was going to do with her money from Catherine Harper-Watt. One of the things that she had thought most unattainable, that Laurence Abel had talked of yet still sounded like a fantasy, was now within her grasp. Italy. She would go back, and she probably even had enough money to take Hilda.

  ‘It’s a barmy thing to do,’ she thought to herself, almost giggling with excitement. It was a baking hot Saturday. On the sunny side of Court 11, near the brew-house, Rose was standing bent over an enamel bucket, swilling through some of Hilda’s clothes. A few children were listlessly playing marbles in the shade. ‘I could do up the house, move out even. I could buy us all new clothes or furniture, or just put it away for a rainy day. But I’m damned if I’m going to!’

  Italy was her dream now, and Catherine had prescribed the money for a dream. She could go and visit Margherita and Francesco. She still received cards from them at Easter and whenever they had had another child, always with entreaties to visit. It was clear to her that this was what she must do. Just as her idea of what she could do for Grace had come to her with equal force a couple of months earlier. />
  As June approached, coronation fever had struck the court, the city, the entire country and, of course, Grace, who showed the kind of excitement that only a royal occasion ever brought out in her.

  ‘A queen!’ she cried. ‘Oh, isn’t it going to be lovely to have a queen for a change! Elizabeth the Second. Doris at work says it’s going to change everything. Things’ll never be the same again. Oooh, what I’d give to live down London!’

  For weeks beforehand the talk and activity all centred round bunting and flags and plans for street parties and big celebrations with brass bands and fireworks.

  ‘What if you could go?’ Rose said to Grace one day in May. ‘You know, go down and really see it, in London?’

  ‘I’d give my right arm,’ Grace replied. ‘But we’ll hear it all. And we might get a sight of one of them televisions somewhere. And all the pictures’ll be in the papers.’

  ‘No,’ Rose told her. ‘You’re to go. Down to London, on the train. It’ll be my treat.’ She blushed at sounding like Lady Bountiful with her sister. ‘Look – you’ve done nothing but help me over the past few years. I’d like to pay you back a bit. One way I can think of anyway.’

  Grace’s face had gone pink with excitement. ‘But – you can’t afford that, can you? It’d mean the price of the train and . . . and new stockings, and . . .’

  Rose grinned. ‘That’s all right. Listen. No one else need know about this, but when Mrs Harper-Watt came she gave me a bit of money. It doesn’t matter how much, but take my word for it, it’s enough for you to have a new frock and your rail ticket. And I’ll stand you taking Doris as well if you like.’

  Grace was flabbergasted. ‘But why don’t you come? If you’ve got enough money for the two of us?’

  ‘I’m not that keen really, you know that. Go on – go with Doris and get into the spirit of it. You’ll have much more fun with her.’