Some Sunny Day (18 page)

Rosie might not be as worldly as some of the girls she worked with but she wasn’t so completely naïve that she didn’t know what the sounds she could hear meant. Nausea gripped her stomach and filled her throat as she recognised just what was going on upstairs in her parents’ bedroom. With a small choked cry, she ran back into the kitchen and out of the house, angry tears burning her eyes.

‘Here, Rosie, what are you doing home at this time of the day?’ she heard one of their neighbours call out to her, but she didn’t stop to answer her. She couldn’t. Her head down, she kept on walking, ignoring the cold wind and the curious looks she was attracting as the tears ran down her face unchecked.

Rosie walked until her feet ached, locked in her own thoughts of grief and despair, oblivious to everything but her own inner turmoil.

She hadn’t even realised that she had walked down to the docks until she dragged herself out of her misery and looked up and recognised her surroundings. She couldn’t bear to go back home. She couldn’t endure the thought of seeing her mother, knowing what she had been doing. She shivered violently, her teeth chattering with a mixture of shock and cold.

It was growing dark and she couldn’t stay out much longer. She could only hope that by the time she got back her mother would have left for work, because she didn’t trust herself to be able to see her without telling her what she thought of her. She was no better than Sylvia. In fact she was worse. Sylvia at least was free to cheapen herself and carry on with Lance.

It had started to rain by the time Rosie got back home, the fine drizzle causing her hair to curl wildly. She had managed to repair her damaged coat but the damp was bringing out the smell of the shelter and evoked everything that had happened in it, curdling Rosie’s stomach and plucking at her fraught nerves.

‘Rosie, is that you?’

She froze as she heard her mother’s voice coming from the hallway when she stepped into the kitchen.

‘What’s all this I’ve bin hearing about you being caught in that Technical College bombing?’ her mother demanded. ‘Is it true?’

‘He’s gone then, has he?’ Rosie demanded, flatly ignoring her mother’s questions.

Christine’s face paled. ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean. He – your –
him
.’ Rosie’s voice betrayed her misery as she emphasised the word. ‘He’s been coming round here whilst I’ve been at work, hasn’t he? Don’t bother denying it, Mum. I heard the two of you –
upstairs.’ Her control broke. ‘How could you?’ she cried. ‘How could you do that?’

‘Rosie, keep your voice down. Do you want the whole street to hear you?’ her mother demanded.

‘Why not? They’ve probably heard the pair of you – I certainly could,’ Rosie told her brutally.

She could see the shock and fear in her mother’s eyes but they no longer had the power to touch her. She felt as though her mother had become a stranger to her; worse than a stranger because she actually felt as though she neither cared about her nor even liked her any more. All she knew was that she felt desperately alone and equally desperately angry with and disgusted by her mother’s behaviour.

‘What are you going to do?’ Christine was asking her in a high panicky voice. ‘You can’t tell your father; you mustn’t. You’ll upset him terribly if you do, Rosie.’

‘I’ll upset him terribly?’ Rosie laughed mirthlessly. ‘That’s so typical of you, Mother, blaming someone else for your own sins. And as for me telling Dad – I won’t need to. You can bet that someone else will and before he’s so much as got his foot inside the door.’

Christine’s face blanched but the protective pity Rosie would once have felt for her had been deep frozen by her own trauma.

‘What am I going to do?’ Christine whispered helplessly. ‘Your dad’s a good man, Rosie, I know that, but I’ve been so lonely. I love Dennis and he loves me.’

She looked and sounded like a child caught out in some misdemeanour and afraid of the consequences of her own actions. Rosie’s anger softened as other emotions were stirred up inside her by the sight of her mother’s fear.

‘Mum, he’s married and so are you. You’ve got to give him up,’ she told her mother tiredly. ‘There’s no other way. And you’ll just have to hope that no one says anything to Dad in the meantime.’

‘I’ve really enjoyed tonight, Rosie.’ Rob squeezed Rosie’s hand meaningfully as they left the cinema, and then determinedly kept hold of it. ‘Will you let me take you to the Grafton on Saturday?’

Rosie hesitated, and then nodded her acceptance. She liked Rob and she had enjoyed their evening out together. She liked the way he treated her with courtesy and respect, and she liked as well the safe comfortable feeling he gave her of knowing that he wasn’t the kind to try things on. Other girls she knew might laugh at her for those feelings and swear that she was missing out by not wanting the excitement of falling passionately in love, and all the special intimacies that went with that. All the girls at work were talking about how the war had changed everything and now it was a girl’s duty to see her lad off to war happy, knowing that she had committed herself to him, even if they hadn’t had time to legalise things by getting married.

‘There’s no point in telling your lad “no” and
hanging on to it when he might not be coming home,’ Phyllis Brookes, one of the seamstresses, had said bluntly when they had been talking about such things. ‘Me, I’d rather know I’d given my chap summat to remember me by if he shouldn’t make it and come back. And I do not care what anyone else says. After all, it’s not as if I’m one of that sort that is cheapening themselves with every lad that looks at them. No, what me and my Percy have is summat that’s only for him.’

Phyllis had spoken with the kind of passion Rosie had yet to experience, a passion she didn’t think she felt for Rob. She wanted to feel safe and to be able to hold up her head in public and, above all, not be like her mother.

‘You’d better let go of my hand,’ she warned him, ‘otherwise people might see and get the wrong impression.’

‘And what impression might that be?’ Rob teased her.

Rosie gave him a reproving look. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean, Rob Whittaker. You and me aren’t a couple.’

‘Not yet, but I don’t mind admitting that I’d like us to be, Rosie. There’s no one I’d sooner have as my girl than you.’

Rosie could feel herself blushing, Rob was making her feel so confused. Of course it was lovely to be courted, and by such a decent lad, but Rosie was wary of what was happening. Wary and worried that she didn’t have the kind of feelings
for Rob that she had heard other girls describing with such breathless delight. She liked him, but liking wasn’t love. Maybe she just wasn’t the sort of girl who would fall recklessly in love? She wished helplessly that there was someone close to her who she could talk to about her confusion and her uncertainty. But there wasn’t.

‘It’s too soon for that kind of talk,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’m happy to go out with you as a friend, but that’s all.’

‘Saving yourself for someone special, are you then, Rosie?’ he challenged her jealously. ‘Someone with plenty of money in his pocket perhaps, like your m—’

Immediately Rosie swung round to confront him. ‘No I’m not and I won’t listen to any of that kind of talk,’ she told him fiercely.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No you shouldn’t,’ Rosie agreed. Her heart was thumping with anxiety and she wasn’t really comforted by the regret she could hear in his voice. She hated knowing about the talk about her mother that must be going on behind the blackout curtains in the other houses in their street. It made her determined to make sure that she didn’t give anyone any cause to talk about her like that. It would be so awful for her dad if he were to hear that both his wife and his daughter were gossiped about as having loose morals. She intended to make sure that he would be able to be proud of her and hold his head up high, instead of being shamed by her
behaviour. It was as though she felt she had to do everything she could to counter the damage her mother was doing to their family name. It made Rosie shudder with revulsion to think about people describing her as ‘her mother’s daughter’ in that knowing way that gossips had.

‘You’ll still let me take you to the Grafton, won’t you?’ Rob begged her, worriedly.

‘I’ve said I’ll go and I don’t go back on my word.’ Rosie had pulled her hand free of his now and she pushed it into her pocket, refusing to let him take hold of it again. Knowing what her mother had done was ruining everything.

It was the Saturday before Christmas and the shop had been busy all day, mostly with lads in uniform coming in, hoping to buy something for their ‘girls’ although, to Rosie’s relief, Lance hadn’t been one of them.

‘You going down the Grafton dancing tonight, Rosie?’ Fanny asked.

‘No I can’t. I’m on fire-watch duty tonight.’

‘Pity, it’s Mrs Wilf Hamer as will be conducting tonight and she’s allus good.’

‘I dare say Rosie won’t be too disappointed; not if that handsome fireman wot’s bin meeting her from work is going to be helping her with her fire-watch duty,’ Ruth teased whilst Rosie’s face went as pink as her name.

‘Are you and him sweethearts, then, Rosie?’ Fanny asked.

‘He’s just a friend, that’s all,’ Rosie answered her quickly.

‘Oh ho, and since when did friends grab hold
of your hand and hang on to it like they was never going to let it go, like he was doing when the two of you was at the Grafton the other week? He was dancing with you like he was more than just a friend from what I could see.’

‘Give over teasing her, Fanny,’ Enid remonstrated. ‘Rosie’s got more sense than to go flinging herself at a lad, not like some as I could name. Have you heard about that Sylvia, Rosie?’

‘No,’ Rosie answered her truthfully. She missed Sylvia and her fun-loving ways, and she felt very sorry for her. Lance had taken advantage of her and Sylvia had been too young and naïve to see the truth about him. Now she was the one left having to pay the price for that. Rosie wished that there was something she could do to help Sylvia, but she knew that there wasn’t.

‘I saw her sister Bertha the other week and she was saying as how there’s bin a real to-do. Seemingly the daft thing thought that Lance meant it when he said he would marry her, and she’s bin letting him carry on wi’ her like they was already wed. Then she found out he’s bin seeing another girls as well, and she carried on like you wouldn’t believe. Her Bertha said she was so upset that they’ve had to pack her off to live with some cousins in Wales.’

‘Oh, poor Sylvia,’ Rosie sympathised, and wondered if she would be getting Sylvia into more trouble if she tried to make contact.

‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bit
more to it than Bertha was saying, and the reason they’ve packed her off is because she’s got herself in the family way and with no ring on her finger or proper marriage lines,’ Enid said disapprovingly. ‘It’s girls like her behaving like that – and not just
girls
neither – wot give the rest of us a bad name.’

Was she being oversensitive in thinking that a couple of the girls were looking embarrassed and uncomfortable and they made a point of not looking in her direction, Rosie wondered miserably, or could they have heard about her mother?

‘Well, I hope Hitler gives us a rest tonight and we do not get no more of his ruddy bombers coming over,’ Evie grumbled, thankfully changing the subject. ‘The air-raid warning went off at half-past six yesterday tea time and it was gone four o’clock this morning before the all clear finally came. The little ’uns next door have been crying their eyes out in case Hitler drops a bomb on their presents, bless ’em, not that they’ll be getting much this year.’

‘I heard that the Adelphi Hotel got badly hit, along with the town hall and the landing stage.’

‘Aye, and what about what happened in Bentinck Street? Took a direct hit, them railway arches down there did, and I’ve heard as how they can’t get the blocks of concrete off as is under them no matter how they try. Lucky it hasn’t disrupted the train services too much.’

Rosie turned away, not wanting to be reminded
of her own recent ordeal. Being trapped like she had had left her with a fear of enclosed spaces and sometimes she even woke up in the night, terrified of the darkness surrounding her until she was awake enough to know that she was safe in her own bed, and not trapped beneath the ground.

Once she was outside the shop on Bold Street, she gulped in a breath of cold air, as Rob materialised at her side out of the darkness.

‘Rob,’ she protested, ‘you didn’t have to come and meet me. You’re on duty tonight.’ She felt both pleased to see him and yet anxious because she still didn’t feel that her feelings for him were as strong as they ought to be. Could liking and love be the same thing? Maybe she just wasn’t the kind of girl to get all excited about a lad. Even when Rob held her hand, although it felt nice, it didn’t make her go all daft like she had heard other girls describe. ‘I’ve got to walk back by St John’s fish market to collect the turkey we’ve ordered for Christmas Day.’

‘You’re still hoping that your dad will make it back in time for his Christmas dinner then?’

‘Yes. He said that he would before he sailed. What about you? Have you changed your mind about staying in Liverpool and not going to the Wirral to be with your family?’

‘There wouldn’t be time. I’ve volunteered for duty over Christmas. For one thing, it gives the men who’ve got families a chance to be with then and for another…well, Christmas is about being
with the person you love, isn’t it, Rosie? And since you’re going to be here in Liverpool…’

‘Rob, you promised me you wouldn’t say any more about that,’ Rosie reminded him uncomfortably. ‘It’s like I said: you and I get on well and I like you a lot, but I don’t want to go rushing into something we might both regret just because there’s a war on.’

The closer they got to the market, the busier the Saturday evening city streets became, as housewives hurried towards the poultry-crammed stalls, eager to enjoy the treat of a traditional Christmas dinner after the privation of living on the ration. Rosie was forced so close to Rob by the press of people that she could feel the warmth of his body next to her own. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, she had to admit.

‘I wouldn’t regret it, Rosie. I know how me feelings are, and…’

The sharp warning wail of the air-raid siren cut across whatever he had been about to say. They looked at one another in alarm. There was a flurry of activity in the street as people hurried to find what shelter they could as the glare from the searchlights started to crisscross the night sky and the ack-ack guns swung into action, the staccato rattle of their gunfire mingling with the deadly throb of the incoming bombers’ engines.

‘There’s a shelter at the other end of the street,’ Rob began, but Rosie shrank back as he tried to grab hold of her hand and hurry her to safety.

‘Rob, I can’t,’ she told him. ‘Not after…’

The rattle and whine of the bombs being dropped on the docks made it impossible for them to speak, so instead, Rob hurried her into the nearest doorway. A warehouse, receiving a direct hit, went up in flames, followed by another, and then shockingly up ahead of them the market itself suddenly took the full force of an exploding bomb. Rosie cried out, covering her mouth with her hand, her whole body trembling whilst, through the screams and shouts and the smoke, the smell of roasting poultry and duck filled the evening air.

‘Bloody hell, there won’t be no Christmas dinner for us now,’ a woman standing in the next doorway to them grumbled.

‘Come on,’ Rob urged, and somehow or other, against the backdrop of the noise from the bombers overhead, the ack-ack guns valiantly defending the city and the dull deadly thump of the exploding bombs, they managed to make their way back to their own local air-raid shelter.

‘Get inside, quickly,’ Rob begged, but Rosie shook her head.

‘I can’t. I’m on fire-watch duty tonight. Don’t worry about me, though; I’ll be fine…’ She could see the anxiety in his eyes. ‘Go,’ she repeated. ‘You’re on duty, remember…’

Rob nodded, and then before she could stop him, he leaned forward and pressed a clumsy kiss on her lips.

He had gone before she could remonstrate with him, leaving her to take up her position on the flat roof of a nearby building along with her co-fire watcher, an elderly neighbour, Mick O’Brien, who had served in the First World War. He rarely spoke about what had happened to him then, but Rosie had heard her father say that those who had gone through the First World War had had a much worse time of it than they were doing now.

‘Jerry’s got it in for us tonight,’ he told Rosie grimly as they both kept watch on the streets below them, ready to call out a warning to those waiting below should they spot any incendiaries.

Rosie gasped as a bomb hit the chemical factory on Hanover Street, resulting in an explosion so loud that it numbed her ears and left her unable to hear anything for several seconds.

‘Ruddy hell,’ Mick swore. ‘That felt like they’d blown the heart right out of the city.’

In the distance a shower of falling incendiary bombs caught St George’s Hall but none of the bombs was landing close to their own area until suddenly they both heard the low thrum of a plane and then saw the incendiaries falling from it.

‘They’ve got the church,’ Mick called out. ‘They’ve got Holy Cross…I’ve seen it all now. Come on.’

Rosie needed no second bidding to scramble down after him and hurry towards the church, along with others who had seen the bombs falling.

It only took them a matter of minutes to reach
Great Crosshall Street but by the time they got there the church was already well alight.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ Rosie heard someone breathe close to her as they all stood and stared in shocked disbelief at the old church. Then John Kinsella from Standish Street yelled out, ‘Come on, don’t just stand there!’ And everyone rushed forward to do what they could, whilst Father Doyle and Father Morrison stood there, tears running down their faces as the flames ravaged their beloved church.

They seemed to have been battling the heat and speed of the fires for ever before a fire crew finally arrived. Rosie turned round half expecting to see Rob come striding towards her whilst the man next to her said bitterly, ‘At bloody last.’

‘Haven’t you heard the news?’ the fireman nearest to them demanded tersely. ‘We’ve lost an engine and its crew on Roe Street. Hit a bomb crater in the road – eight men dead.’

Rosie trembled and almost lost her footing, someone calling out to her, ‘Watch out…’ Numbly she bent to take the bucket of water being passed to her along the human chain, endeavouring to save the church whilst she prayed that Rob hadn’t been part of the lost fire crew. Her heart felt like a dead weight inside her chest whilst a sense of doom tightened her skull until her head was pounding with a dull remorseless ache of foreboding. She couldn’t leave her post, though, not even though fresh bombs were falling and
exploding all around them, not even when after what felt like hours of battling against the fires, the roof timbers finally gave way.

‘Get back. Get back, everyone,’ one of the fire team warned. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

John Kinsella, his face streaked with soot and tears, called out above the roar of the fires, ‘We’ve got to save the vestments and the sacrament whilst we can,’ before plunging into the church.

Rosie’s arms ached from passing the heavy buckets of water.

Another fire engine arrived and, unbelievably, through the smoke she saw Rob walking towards her.

‘Rob…’ Half running and half stumbling she hurried towards him, not resisting when he caught her in his arms, as she sobbed, ‘You’re alive. Thank God…oh thank God.’

He held her tightly, rocking her in his arms whilst she laughed and cried, light-headed with exhaustion and relief.

‘We couldn’t save the church,’ she told him. ‘We tried but we couldn’t…’ She was crying more than laughing now.

‘No, I know.’

Something in the sombre starkness of Rob’s voice made her push back to look up at him.

‘Something’s happened,’ she guessed. ‘What is it? Tell me…’

‘Rosie…’

‘What is it? Tell me.’

‘The street’s caught it,’ Rob told her gruffly. ‘A parachute mine.’

‘The street?
Our
street, you mean…?’

There was something in the way he was looking at her, a mixture of pain and pity, that caught at her heart and stopped its beat, and immediately she knew.

‘The house,’ she whispered. ‘It’s hit our house.’ She whirled away from him, catching him off guard, and started to run whilst he ran after her, calling her name. The cobbles were slippery with a mixture of water, smoke and soot, and several times she nearly lost her balance but finally she rounded the familiar corner and then skidded to a halt. In the light from the torches of the heavy-duty damage team she could see the empty space where her home had once been. The crater made by the bomb had spewed out bricks and roof timbers into the street, the force of the blast tearing the roof off two other houses, shattering windows, to leave the street full of broken glass and the side of another house without an entire wall so that the rooms gaped open.

‘Rosie, don’t go any closer,’ Rob shouted behind her, catching her up and reaching out to pull her away. But it was too late. Rosie had already seen what the men were removing from the wreckage.

‘No! No!’ she screamed as she pushed Rob out of the way and, ignoring everyone, ran to where the men had placed the lifeless bundle of what looked like rags on the ground. Only it wasn’t a
bundle of rags, Rosie recognised, it was her mother. Her mother!

Rosie kneeled down in the street next to her. Her mother was covered in soot but there wasn’t a single mark to be seen on her face once Rosie had gently cleaned it with her handkerchief. Her eyes were open wide and staring into nothing. Rosie’s hand trembled as she closed them, and tried to ignore the jagged wound she could see on the side of her head.

‘Rosie…don’t…’ Rob begged her, but Rosie ignored him.

‘She wouldn’t have felt anything,’ one of the rescue workers tried to comfort her. Rosie couldn’t say anything. Her throat had closed up too tightly around her pain. Several yards away in the rubble where the men were still working she could see something that looked like a male hand and an arm, a wedding ring gleaming on one finger. She stood up and started to walk towards it, only Rob wouldn’t let her, and started dragging her away.

‘That was him, wasn’t it?’ she demanded tonelessly. ‘He was with her. She died with him…’