Gull Island (22 page)

Travelling at night he made contact with three other Englishmen intent
on escape. For two days they hid near the coast, Luke selling his overcoat and shoes in exchange for motor fuel with which they would pay for their passage. They were taken on board a rusting, foul-smelling boat and sent on their way with the fishing fleet.

The boat was old and barely seaworthy. The tackle was red with rust and unmovable, having been left without attention for several years. The wood was so weak Luke found he could dig out chunks with a fingernail. The nets were rotten and fell to pieces when touched. If the Germans stopped them they wouldn’t have a chance of bluffing them.

‘It’s going to be a race between which gets us first, the Germans or the sea,’ Luke said grimly. But it was their only chance if they were to escape capture and imprisonment. Luke could face anything but being locked up.

The
Mouette
– The Seagull – was a cranky craft, low at the sides, high in the bow, with a determination to list to port that gave her an odd
appearance
. Miraculously, after libations of oil, the pump still worked, and pushing and pulling the handle was a continuous task. In mid-Channel they doubted if they were keeping pace with the water seeping in through the weak and uncaulked timbers.

The weather was kind, and fortunately they weren’t spotted by aircraft wearing roundels or swastikas, either of which might have fired on them without investigating too carefully who and what they were. Two more days and Luke was standing in his bookshop, smiling at his partner Jeanie, once more without shoes.

T
HE DAY WAS
very warm, the sun beating down from a sky that was too blue to see. The crowds strolling through the main shopping street in summer dresses and short-sleeved shirts seemed in no hurry to reach their destination. Time and again, Rosita sighed with impatience as people blocked her way: standing idly around, looking at the
temptations
offered in shop windows, choosing comic postcards to send back home or just stopping to talk to a friend in the middle of the pavement.

Petrol was free of rationing at last, five years after the end of the war, and already an increased number of holidaymakers were flooding into the town. Most foodstuff was still on ration and the cafés were doing a good trade as people enjoyed a meal without using their precious rations. Queues of customers spilled onto the pavement waiting for tables to be free, adding to the crush.

Rosita looked at her cocktail watch, a present to herself to celebrate her first shop. Her hair appointment was in less than five minutes and she hated to be late, to have to rush in, be fitted with a gown and sit in a chair without taking a moment to compose herself and decide what she wanted the hairdresser to do.

Monday morning wasn’t normally a busy time – in fact, most salons were closed, so it was unlikely that the hairdresser was so busy she would have to wait, unless the holidaymakers were queuing there too. The seaside town welcomed and valued its summer visitors and the trippers who came for the day, but there were times when Rosita wished they had chosen a town other than her own!

She saw Auntie Molly Carey approaching and darted into a shop doorway. Later she wanted to see her, but not yet, not until she was ready. The elderly lady walked past and Rosita hurried on, thinking that her much-loved friend was now past the age for retirement. Goodness, how time had flown.

It was June 1950 and she reminded herself with a frisson of concern that she was approaching her thirty-third birthday. It was time she had made
her mark and settled into the kind of life she wanted. Thirty-three was an age when most of her acquaintances were head of a growing family. Auntie Molly Carey had had ten children. She shuddered. That prospect was too horrifying for words, and far from the life she wanted for herself. She wanted success and money and a position of importance in the town. Today would see a big step taken towards that goal.

She reached the salon and went gratefully into the coolness and sank into a chair, putting the bag that held her new hat on the small table beside her.

‘We are ready for you, Miss Evans, if you please,’ the assistant said. ‘Cutting, is it? Or just a shampoo and set today?’ She pulled out a chair.

‘A light trim, please, Megan. And I’ll sit at this mirror, in the best light. I need to look my very best today.’ Her voice was clipped, authoritative. She had an air of importance that made everyone, including the hairdresser, defer to her wishes.

Megan moved the tray of curlers from the place she had intended to use and moved to the place chosen by Rosita. Bending her client’s head forward, she began washing her thick brown hair. Cut well it fell in a short under-roll, it held its shape well and always looked immaculate. Megan wondered about the important meeting that justified the extra appointment that was making Miss Evans a little on edge, but she dare not ask. Miss Caroline Evans did not encourage chatter.

An hour later, with her hair shining and in perfect shape, swinging below a hat of navy blue straw that tilted at an attractive angle to one side of her forehead, Rosita thanked the girl and left. She wore a smart linen suit of pale buttercup yellow that consisted of a button-through dress reaching just below the knee and a straight matching jacket with neat reveres and outside pockets that gave it a tailored look.

Nylon stockings flattered her shapely legs with a blocked heel and a clear, straight seam and her small feet bounced confidently in pale navy sandals that matched the hat. She looked what she was determined to be: a confident and successful businesswoman.

Her appointment was with the bank manager and he showed her to a chair and ordered tea. While he waited for it to arrive he chatted amiably about the weather, the crowds at the Pleasure Beach, which was ‘doing better trade than usual with the holiday season hardly begun’. Rosita nodded politely although her mind was not on what he was saying but on the interview to come.

‘Well, Miss Jones, about this loan.’ She had used her own name for
business
transactions although no one, apart from Miss Grainger and the Careys, knew her other than Miss Caroline Evans. She noticed his voice had changed. Pleasantries finished, they got down to business.

Unperturbed by the briskness of his manner, Rosita gave him a brief outline of her plans and less than fifteen minutes later she left the quiet office with an agreement to borrow
£
600, with her shop as collateral and Miss Grainger as guarantor for the rest.

She telephoned her friend and told her the news and they promised themselves an evening of celebration: a theatre followed by supper
somewhere
grand and very expensive.

With the agreement clutched in her small hand, she caught the bus and, dressed as she was, so unsuitably, she caught a train and went to sit on the beach miles out of town which was so strongly associated with her blighted childhood.

The water was blue, reflecting the clear sky above, and looked tempting, although sea-bathing had never really appealed to her. She took off her sandals and stockings and walked to where the Careys’ old house still stood: ruinous, in danger of collapsing at any moment. Sitting on the worn step where the Carey children had often sat to eat their meals, she thought back over the past years.

So much had happened since she had left the home and begun to live her own life. Years in which she had caught occasional glimpses of her mother but had never made herself known. Once, she thought her mother had stared straight through her, but the smart clothes, the glasses and the short hair had fooled her. Her mother and her half-sisters, Kate and Hattie, had left the town now and Rosita had no idea of their whereabouts. She didn’t even know if they had survived the bombing during the war. They were part of the unpleasant past. The folded paper on which was written the agreement to borrow
£
600 was the future.

She had stayed in the dress shop until war had interrupted that
comfortable
existence and she’d had to choose whether to go into the forces or into a factory making munitions. She chose the factory simply because it offered more money. From the time she had escaped from the home, money had been her god.

Saving, and at the same time managing to give the impression of being used to better things, she ignored girls with whom she had to work, refusing to be accepted as one of them. The time in the factory was time in limbo, a time that had to be lived through before she could make progress.

As soon as war ended and people began to rebuild their lives, she had bought a small newsagents in Station Row and, while still working at the factory, gave a retired Miss Grainger the job of running it. With a young man dealing with the early hours between 5.30 and nine, and giving herself an hour each evening to deal with the books, they had managed very well.
With takings of
£
38 a week it wouldn’t make them millionaires but it was a good beginning.

The sun reflecting off the sea hurt her eyes and she closed them. The warmth made her drowsy and she relaxed. The sea, high on the narrow beach and not far from her feet as she sat on the steps of the derelict house, soothed her like a lullaby. After the sleepless night and the anxiety of whether or not she would convince the bank manager of a woman’s
suitability
to borrow money, she fell into a deep sleep.

She dreamed of Richard Carey, seeing him as the man/child who looked after his family when his kind but ineffectual father could not. He had been so strong and if he had been her brother she would never have been sent away, put in that home away from everyone she knew and cared about. But as she slowly emerged from sleep and dreams, to semi-alertness and fact, she remembered that today she was hoping to cheat him, just a little, and hoped that one day he would forgive her.

Her first thought when she was fully roused after lying for half an hour on the uncomfortable step was whether she had ruined her skirt. Feeling weak and foolish for succumbing to the temptation of a daytime doze like an old man, she looked around hoping no one had witnessed it. Then she rose, put on her stockings and sandals in the ruin of the Careys’ old home, and walked briskly to the station.

It was after 5.30 when she went into the Careys’ shop. They usually closed at six and Auntie Molly Carey was busy with a last-minute flurry of customers. Rosita stood near the door leading to the living rooms and waited. She looked cool as she always did but her heart was racing with anxiety.

‘Go through and put the kettle on while I see to the till, will you,
fach
?’

‘I’ve brought some cakes.’ Rosita waved a paper bag. ‘How many are home? I hope I’ve brought enough.’

‘Only me and you and your Uncle Henry Carey,
cariad
.’ Mrs Carey finished serving the last customer and closed the shop door, leaning on it with a sigh of relief. She looked tired, smaller and more frail every time Rosita called to see her. Rosita told herself she was doing the best for them. The very best.

She put the cakes she had bought onto a plate and looked at the name of the bakery on the torn bag: ‘Rees’s Fresh Cakes.’ But the shop next door was in the process of closing down. Like two others in the same block, it had been sold and awaited its new owner. Rumours wove themselves around the prospective buyers but no one knew for certain who would be coming there when the last cake was sold.

‘It’s strange how sometimes things go in patterns,’ Mrs Carey mused. ‘All
the shops have remained practically unchanged for years, more than three generations some of them, and now it seems that the whole block is in the process of change.’ She felt a stab of panic. Looking at the young woman beside her, she asked anxiously, ‘You are sure, love? What if you’re making a mistake? What if the area changes so much the business fails? Success or failure is such a precarious thing. If the mix of shops is wrong, the area won’t attract regular customers, and none of them will do well. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

Rosita licked her fingers inelegantly, savouring the smudge of cream from the cake, and took a deep breath. She felt a cheat, not being honest with Mrs Carey about what she had learned of the changes, but keeping your mouth closed was essential at times like these. This venture would succeed. She, Rosita Jones, had made sure of that.

‘Have you and Uncle Henry Carey discussed it fully?’ she asked when she was sitting with both of them later, a second cup of tea in front of them.

‘I’m almost seventy,’ Henry said, looking at his wife. ‘Molly and I both think you’re right. It’s time we put our feet up and took things easy.’ His thin face wore a martyred expression and silently Rosita thought he had rarely done anything else except take it easy! But she smiled, patted his hands sympathetically and agreed.

‘You’ve worked hard all your lives. Now you can enjoy yourselves. I’ll buy the shop and you can find a decent place to live.’

‘I already have.’ Molly smiled. ‘Henry and I closed the shop for an hour at dinner time and went to look at it. Down overlooking the sand at Red Rock Bay it is, where we can go for walks, or sit and watch the children playing. Lovely it’ll be.’

‘Missed the sea, I have,’ Henry said with a hint of the offended martyr in his voice again. ‘All them years on the beach. Lovely it was, mind, even though it was a bit lonely. I missed it something terrible when we left there, you know. Beautiful it was, living at the edge of the sea. I only came here because it was best for the family.’

Uncle Henry’s words left the usual irritation. She loved him dearly but had never been blind to his laziness. It was typical of the man to marvel over what he had gladly left behind years ago instead of appreciating what he had been given, Rosita thought.

‘Must have people round us now, though,’ Molly Carey added. ‘After the years in the shop we’ll need company, won’t we, Henry?’

‘We thought we’d get a dog, now dear old Patch has gone,’ Henry added.

‘I’ve seen to all the business side of things,’ Rosita said. Then, crossing her fingers in child-like fear, she went on, ‘You haven’t been in touch with Richard, have you? Oughtn’t he to be told what you’re going to do?’

‘The business is mine,’ Henry said with pride. ‘The whole bang lot! Richard hasn’t been home since I – he got this place for us.’

Molly shook her head sadly. ‘Went away before he was sixteen. Get a letter we do, from time to time, and always a card on birthdays and at Christmas. From somewhere up London way they come. But never a sight of him. Not even when he sent the money to buy the property after we’d rented it for years. It was all done through the banks and a solicitor. Not a sight of him, not once.’

Rosita sighed with relief. The last thing she wanted now was Richard Carey turning up and telling her she couldn’t buy the place.

They all met at the solicitor’s office a few days later and the sale was completed. Rosita went back to the house she and Miss Grainger still shared and told her of her success.

‘I agreed that for a month Auntie Molly Carey can stay. They’ll continue to run the shop and, during that time, they can get their own house sorted.’

‘You still intend to run the shop yourself once they move out?’ Miss Grainger queried.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s very long hours and unless you close for an hour or so for lunch, you’ll be on your feet from 5 a.m. until 6 p.m.’

‘It will be hard, but until I find someone really suitable, that’s what I intend doing. I’ve found someone to help you and I’m looking for someone to do at least part of the days for me.’ Her eyes glowed as she turned to look at Miss Grainger. ‘I’ve been so very lucky to have your help all these years.’ In a rare moment of emotion, Rosita hugged her friend. ‘We’re on our way up now, and without you we couldn’t have done any of it.’