Some Sunny Day (20 page)

Tears pricked her eyes again. She wondered if
the lovingly selected gifts had been meant as a peace offering, as a sign that he wanted to start over.

In the other parcel Rosie found what she guessed had been her father’s Christmas present for her: stockings, a lovely soft tweed skirt and a bright red sweater, along with some scent and a pair of lovely soft kid gloves.

Once she was dressed, Rosie went back downstairs, feeling a bit self-conscious in her new clothes, especially her new underwear.

Ignoring the disapproving look her aunt was giving her, she went over to her father and kissed the top of his head.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said softly.

‘I hope that you’ve left my bathroom properly clean,’ her aunt demanded.

‘Of course she has, haven’t you, Rosie?’ her father answered for her. ‘She’s a good girl, is my Rosie, and the two of you are going to get on a treat. Why, I reckon the next time I come home on leave you’ll be telling me, Maudie, that you can’t imagine life without my girl.’

‘We’ll have to see about that. Christine was never much of a housewife – or any kind of wife at all so far as I could see – and I doubt that she’s taught Rosie the way I’d have taught a daughter of me own how to go about things.’

‘That’s enough of that, Maude.’ Rosie was surprised at how very stern her father suddenly sounded. ‘I’ll not have you speaking ill of the dead.
My Christine’s gone now, God rest her.’ Rosie’s own eyes filled with tears when her father stopped to withdraw his handkerchief from his pocket and blow his nose fiercely. ‘Christine did her best and I don’t want to hear another bad word about her.’

Rosie could see her aunt wasn’t very pleased.

‘Well, you’ve always bin a loyal husband to her, Gerry. But there’s something else I am going to have to say,’ she continued defiantly. ‘We have standards up here in Wavertree so there’ll be none of that getting overfamiliar with young men I’ve heard goes on in some places these days.’

‘Rosie’s young man is a very good sort, Maude. You’ll like young Rob.’

‘He isn’t my young man, Dad,’ Rosie protested, red-faced. ‘He’s just a friend, that’s all.’

‘Well, whatever he is, if he comes calling round here you’ll only see him under my supervision. Now what arrangements have been made about the funeral? It’s going to be very difficult to do things properly with it being Christmas.’

Rosie had to fight hard to hang on to her temper and to keep the hot words she longed to utter to herself for her father’s sake.

‘The undertaker told me that they were busy, on account of the number of deaths caused by the bombs,’ she told her aunt expressionlessly. She turned to her father. ‘I didn’t know what you’d want, Dad, so I’ve asked if Mum could be buried at the church where I was christened, seeing as you and Mum married in Manchester.’

‘Aye, lass, that’s a good idea.’

Rosie could hear the emotion thickening her father’s voice. As bad as this was for her, it must be so much worse for him. She reached out and took hold of his hand, ignoring her aunt’s disapproving glare, glad that she had done so when he returned her gentle touch with a warm squeeze of his hand.

‘They…they asked me about clothes…but…I’m to go tomorrow to the shelter and the WVS woman said she’d bring our things back then, washed. She did say that they have some secondhand clothes but—’

‘Don’t you worry about it, Rosie. I’ll make sure it’s sorted out and that your mum has something pretty.’

Rosie gave her father a grateful look.

‘I’ll put you in the front bedroom, Gerry. Rosie, you’ll have to sleep in the boxroom.’

‘Maude, why don’t you give Rosie the front bedroom? I’m only here for a few days. I can manage in the boxroom; it will be bigger than I’m used to on the ship.’

Rosie could see that her aunt wanted to argue but before she could say anything they heard knocking on the door.

Her aunt got up to answer it and when she came back she had Rob Whittaker with her.

‘I’ve just explained to your friend, Rosie, that I would have preferred it if he had called first during the daytime.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rob said, red-faced, his embarrassment making Rosie feel angry with her aunt and protective towards him. The sight of his familiar face was such a welcome relief after the turmoil of the last twenty-four hours that she reacted far more emotionally to seeing him than she was used to. Now she could really see how much she cared for him, how kind and compassionate he was. But could she love him? That was a different matter.

‘There’s no need to be sorry, lad,’ Rosie heard her father reassuring Rob. ‘I’d have thought the worse of you if you hadn’t come round just as soon as you could to see how Rosie is. I wanted to thank you as well for making sure they knew what had happened down at the shipping office.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, but I was on duty. How are you, Rosie? Mrs Norris said you’d been round. I’m sorry about…about the room and everything…’

‘That’s all right, Rob. I quite understood.’

‘What’s all this about then?’ Rosie’s father demanded warily.

‘Rob suggested that I might be able to lodge with his landlady, but she wasn’t able to help. There’s so many people homeless now,’ Rosie answered him vaguely and, she hoped, diplomatically. But she could see that her father was frowning and looking upset.

‘Why would you go asking strangers to take you in, Rosie, when you’ve got family nearby?’

Rosie avoided looking at her aunt as she said
quietly, ‘I thought it best not to bother Auntie Maude, Dad, and…and…well, at least with Mrs Norris I’d have been nearer to home and to…to Mum.’

‘Aw, lass, I’ll never forgive meself for not being there with you,’ her father told her emotionally.

‘It’s not your fault, Dad.’

Father and daughter looked tenderly at one another and then fell silent.

‘How is everything…the arrangements and that? I mean, if there’s anything I can do…’ Rob broke the sad silence awkwardly.

‘A funeral is a family affair, young man, and I’m sure that my brother doesn’t need any help from outsiders to do what’s proper.’

‘Now then, our Maude, there’s no call for you to go speaking to the lad like that. I appreciate your offer, young Rob, and I’d appreciate it too if you wouldn’t mind doing what you can to help Rosie when I have to go back to sea.’

‘You don’t have to ask, Mr Price,’ Rob answered immediately. ‘There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Rosie.’

‘Rob…’ Rosie protested, but she could see that her father was relieved.

Typically, her aunt didn’t invite Rob to sit down or offer him a cup of tea, and when Rosie got up, intending to see Rob to the front door, she stood between them in a very pointed manner until Rosie’s father shook his head and said gently, ‘Let them have a few minutes on their own, Maude. Rosie’s a good girl.’

‘Well, if that’s true it will be a wonder with that mother of hers as an example,’ Rosie heard her aunt mutter as she escaped from the parlour with Rob and went with him to the front door.

‘I’m right sorry about Mrs Norris refusing to take you, Rosie,’ he whispered fiercely when Rosie opened the front door. ‘She didn’t mean anything personal by it.’

‘But now that Dad’s home he’d have wanted me to come here to my auntie’s anyway.’

‘Have they set a date for the funeral yet?’

‘It’s to be in a week.’ Rosie bit her lip. ‘Dad doesn’t know yet about…about everything and I don’t want him to find out just yet unless he has to. He’s got enough to cope with…’

She could see Rob’s Adam’s apple moving in his throat as he battled with his emotions.

‘Well, it won’t be me that tells him, Rosie, but there has been talk.’

‘What about…what about
him
?’ Rosie asked in a low voice. ‘Only even though I didn’t want her seeing him, I wouldn’t want to think that…and then there’s his wife…’

Rob reached for her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Rosie, she’s to be told that he had gone round to see your mum because she’d gone home from work sick. You don’t need to worry yourself about it, although it’s typical of your sweet nature that you should care.’

Rob had been gone less than half an hour when the air-raid siren broke into her aunt’s monologue
about the unfairness of the rationing system when it came to single people.

Rosie’s father promptly stood up and refused to pay any heed at all to his sister’s insistence that she wasn’t going to go into a public shelter, somehow managing to usher both Rosie and her aunt out into the street and then down it to the shelter close to the allotments shared by some of the residents.

Rosie, who had grown up hearing her aunt boasting about the exclusivity of where she lived, was pleasantly surprised by how warmly she and her father were welcomed by her aunt’s neighbours, especially the pretty young woman who smiled at her and introduced herself as Molly Dearden.

‘We live over the road and down a bit,’ she explained to Rosie, having made room for her to sit beside her. ‘Me sister would be here but she’s away on her honeymoon at the minute. Oh, hello, Sally,’ she smiled, welcoming another young woman who hurried in carrying a baby. ‘Sally lives further down a bit. Sally, this is Rosie.

‘You’re Mrs Sefton’s niece, aren’t you?’ Molly continued cheerfully, ‘only I’ve seen you calling there. My sister’s mother-in-law lives opposite her.’

‘Yes,’ Rosie acknowledged.

‘Staying over for Christmas, are you?’ Sally asked conversationally as she quietened her baby.

‘Yes.’ Rosie bit her lip, realising that she had sounded unfriendly. ‘We…I…we were bombed out last night,’ she explained in a low voice. ‘My
mother was in the house at the time and I was on fire-watch duty. They said that she wouldn’t have known anything about it, that it would have been so quick.’

As Rosie swallowed back her misery, Molly reached out and took her hand tightly.

‘We lost our mother when I was little. Have you got any brothers or sisters?’

‘No, there’s just me and Dad.’

Everyone ducked instinctively as they heard the sound of a bomber low overhead, but within seconds it was gone, and one of the men stood up and called out, ‘Come on, everyone. Let’s get singing like the government have told us to do.’

‘That’s my uncle,’ Molly explained to Rosie. ‘He’ll get everyone going, just you wait and see. He’s a real card and no mistake.’

Rosie soon discovered that her new friend was right, and even her aunt thawed enough to join in the rousing Christmas carols Molly’s uncle was exhorting them to sing, although Rosie noticed that her mouth pursed up primly when someone suggested they open a bottle of beer and pass it round.

Her father had joined the other men and she could hear him singing.

‘My mother would have loved this,’ she began to tell Molly, and then stopped.

‘You talk about her if you want to, love,’ a kind-faced older woman, seated close to Molly, encouraged her.

‘That’s our neighbour Elsie,’ Molly informed Rosie. ‘She’s been like a mother to me and my sister. You need people like her in times like this. I hope you have an “Elsie”.’

By the time the all clear came, Rosie had begun to feel better about moving in with her aunt than she would have believed possible. Far from being the snobbish types she had expected, her aunt’s neighbours were friendly and kind-hearted.

Rosie couldn’t ever remember feeling so tired, she decided a couple of hours later, lying in the icy cold sheets of her aunt’s boxroom bed. Her aunt had got her own way, and in the end her father had given in and allowed his sister to put him in the larger room, leaving Rosie with the small boxroom. Not that she minded. Just having a room to herself with a bed in it was wonderful after last night, and after thinking that she’d be spending another night homeless.

‘Will you be all right then, Rosie?’

Rosie could hear the awkwardness as well as the kindness in Enid’s voice. ‘Yes. I’ll be fine,’ she assured her.

‘Because if you’re wanting me to stay with you for a bit…’

‘No, honestly, I’ll be fine,’ Rosie repeated. The truth was that she actually wanted to be on her own.

It wasn’t that the girls she worked with, and Mrs Verey herself, hadn’t been kind and understanding – they had, fussing over her the minute they had learned what had happened and Mrs Verey giving her as much time off as she needed to get herself ready for tomorrow. It was just that right now she welcomed the solitude of the workroom and the chance to give in to her emotions instead of having to put on a brave face.

Christmas had come and gone, and although Rosie had longed to have her father to herself,
she hadn’t complained about the way her aunt had monopolised him, not even when she had insisted on taking his arm on Christmas morning when they had gone to her church when Rosie had wanted so much for just the two of them to go to the place where her mother was to be buried so that they could mourn their loss alone together.

It was Rosie’s opinion that her aunt was a mean woman in a variety of different ways: mean in her kindness to others, mean with her affection and her money, mean with her food, and Rosie had endured every one of those meannesses over the last few days. It had been a relief to her to go back to work after the Christmas break. She felt starved of food and warmth and love, all the things she had taken for granted in the chaotic comfort of the house she had shared with her mother, and which were so very lacking in her aunt’s. Her mother had her faults, Rosie didn’t deny that, but she had had a warmth that Rosie now missed desperately. But the trouble was that her mother had not been able to keep that warmth just for those she should have done. She had shared it around where she shouldn’t have done, and the knowing looks Rosie had seen being exchanged after her mother’s death had made her even more determined that she wasn’t going to follow her mother’s example.

Her mother! A part of her still couldn’t believe that she was dead. But the mourning clothes she had had to buy when she had gone out to replace her bomb-damaged wardrobe were real enough.

It had been Enid who had told her hesitantly about the second-hand clothes exchange run by the WVS.

‘You’ll be wanting something for the funeral, Rosie. It’s only right that you’ll want to show respect. I’ll go with you, if you like.’

Rosie had nodded her head and the two of them had spent their dinner hour going through the neatly organised racks of clothes until Rosie had found a black skirt that fitted her and a black coat to go over it.

It was Mrs Verey who had offered the little hat with its black spotted veil, saying quietly, ‘I had it for my own mother’s funeral, Rosie.’ And Rosie had decided that her own grey sweater, salvaged from the rubble and washed, would have to do on top of the skirt.

Her father would wear a dress uniform he had managed to borrow from another seaman, and because there was a war on, the hearse was going to be drawn by traditionally plumed black horses instead of a car. The funeral procession would start from outside the old house and the mourners, led by Rosie’s father, would walk behind the hearse to the church. Much to her aunt’s disapproval, Rosie had insisted that there was to be a proper wake afterwards.

‘Well, I’m not having it here,’ Aunt Maude had refused angrily. ‘I do not hold with that kind of thing.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to,’ Rosie had told her
fiercely. ‘I’ve already arranged with Father Doyle for us to use the church hall at St Joseph’s.’ With the Holy Cross church being bombed Father Doyle had suggested to Rosie that her mother be buried at St Joseph’s which was the nearest Catholic church to Holy Cross. ‘The neighbours are going to provide the food, Dad. It won’t be much, but I know it’s what Mum would want.’

‘Aye, your mother always liked a bit of a party, Rosie,’ her father had agreed heavily.

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t be having the wake,’ she had worried to Rob the night before, when he had met her after work. ‘It might come out about Mum and
him
.’ Rosie just couldn’t bring herself to use his name.

‘No one will say anything about that to your dad, Rosie,’ Rob had reassured her. ‘Not at your mum’s funeral.’

Mercifully Hitler’s bombers were leaving them in peace, giving everyone some much-needed relief.

Rob had asked Rosie to go with him to the New Year’s Eve dance at the Grafton, and at her father’s insistence Rosie had agreed.

‘It won’t be respectful for me to be going out dancing with Mum only just buried,’ she had protested.

But her father had told her firmly, ‘Sitting in moping won’t bring your mother back, Rosie, and no one doubts how much you loved her.’

Except herself, Rosie thought. If only she’d been more understanding of her mother’s loneliness,
talked to her instead of judging and admonishing her, perhaps she’d still be here.

Unlike the other girls at the shop, though, Rosie could not get excited about the dance and what she would be wearing.

Mrs Verey had given her leave to go home early on account of the funeral, and although she hadn’t expected him to be there, when she left the shop she found that Rob was waiting for her.

‘I came by on the off chance,’ he told her.

‘You don’t have to fuss around me so much, Rob.’

‘Happen I want to do it.’ He reached for her hand and reluctantly Rosie let him draw her arm through his.

There were so many servicemen home on leave that the city seemed full of men in uniform and she saw the way Rob looked at them.

‘You’re doing every bit as much for the country as they are,’ she insisted, reading his thoughts.

‘Mebbe, but don’t tell me that you wouldn’t rather be going out with a chap in a uniform than a fireman, Rosie.’

She stopped walking and turned to him. ‘That’s not true.’

‘No? Then why are you always so cold towards me? I’m sorry,’ he apologised gruffly immediately. ‘It’s just that when I see other chaps cuddling up to their girls I want to do the same with you.’

‘I’ve told you before that I’m not that sort,’ Rosie reminded him sharply. ‘I’m a respectable girl,
Rob Whittaker, and that’s how I intend to stay. Just because my mother—’

‘Oh, don’t talk so daft, Rosie. No one who knows you would ever think of you as being like your ma, but there’s nothing wrong with a couple enjoying a bit of a kiss and a cuddle, especially now.’

‘It’s all right for you to say that. That’s what all the men say to their girls, but that doesn’t make it right.’

‘So when am I going to get a kiss from you, Rosie?’

‘When I say and not before,’ Rosie told him sternly.

‘I don’t know about you worrying about folk thinking you’re like your mam; it seems to me that you tek more after that auntie of yours,’ Rob grumbled as he walked her home.

‘No I don’t. She can’t cook, and I can,’ Rosie told him, tongue in cheek, peeping up at him and smiling when she saw that her comment had made his own mouth curl in amusement.

‘Well, one day, when you’re Mrs Whittaker, I’ll put that to the test,’ he told her meaningfully.

Although he had made it plain that he wanted them to be serious, this was the first time he had gone so far as to mention marriage. But even though marriage would confer respectability on her and on their relationship, Rosie didn’t feel the enthusiasm and excitement she knew she should. It was probably all this worry about her mother and Dennis
that was making it hard for her to think about her and Rob sharing the same kind of intimacy she knew they had done. It just didn’t seem right, somehow.

‘There’s no need to come any further with me,’ Rosie told Rob once they had reached Edge Hill Road. ‘I know you’re on duty tonight.’

Once she had left Rob, Rosie started to walk more slowly, reluctant to return to the cold hostility of her aunt’s house. Her father had been given compassionate leave until his ship returned to Liverpool, well after the funeral, but he had taken to going round to one of his sister’s neighbours, an old Red Duster man himself, now retired, who lived on his own. Rosie guessed that they played cards and enjoyed exchanging yarns over a bit of a drink, and she certainly couldn’t blame her father if he found his new friend’s company more congenial than that of his sister.

As she turned into her aunt’s road she saw Sally Walker coming the other way with her baby. Rosie smiled at her and they stopped to exchange pleasantries.

‘I hope it all goes well tomorrow. Are you bearing up all right?’

‘I’m fine. The girls at work have been really kind and Mrs Verey, who owns the shop where I work, has even lent me her own hat.’

‘I’d come and walk with the procession but for baby here,’ Sally told her. ‘You know you can always come round for a bit of a chat if you want
to, do you not? It can’t be much fun for you living with your auntie. June says that she’s even more of a dragon than her husband’s mother. Whoops. I hope I haven’t spoken out of turn.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘Her and me have never really got on. She doesn’t…
didn’t
like my mother and she didn’t want Dad to marry her. You and Molly and June have been ever so kind to me since I came to live up here, Sally. I’m really grateful to you all.’

‘Aw, Rosie, there’s no need to thank us. You’re a smashing lass, and with June and Molly having lost their own mum as girls, they understand how you’ll be feeling right now.’

The funeral was at one o’clock so that everything would be done before the blackout and the possibility of an air raid. Rosie hadn’t been able to sleep and now, at just gone six o’clock in the morning, she was sitting in her aunt’s kitchen, white-faced and sick to her stomach with dread over what was to come. She heard the tread of feet on the stairs and swung round to face the door as her father opened it.

‘I guessed it would be you,’ he told her.

‘I’m sorry if I woke you, Dad.’

He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t sleep neither. Is that pot still hot?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of the teapot.

Rosie touched it with her hand. ‘No. I’ll make a fresh brew.’

‘Me and your mother would have been married twenty years come this next June,’ he commented whilst Rosie filled the kettle and struck a match to light the gas. ‘I thought I was the luckiest lad alive when she agreed to have me. Nagged her for weeks, I did, until she gave in. She was that pretty and lively that she had lads buzzing round her like bees round a honey pot. Allus laughing and singing, she was in them days, Rosie. Of course, I didn’t realise then…’ He broke off and shook his head, as though shaking away something he didn’t want to see, whilst Rosie’s stomach muscles cramped. What had he been going to say? That he hadn’t realised then that her mother wasn’t the sort of girl a sensible man married?

The kettle was boiling so she went over to the stove to pour the water onto the carefully measured-out tea leaves. Her aunt didn’t do with waste. ‘I’ll just leave it to brew,’ she told her father.

‘I never thought it would end like this,’ he said gruffly. ‘I thought that I’d be the first to go, not her. She was allus that full of life, allus wanting to go out and have fun. It just doesn’t seem right.’

Rosie shivered as she poured his tea. Her father must never know about the kind of ‘fun’ her mother had been having whilst he was away. Somehow she felt as though she was not just the guardian of her mother’s public respectability but also the one who was responsible for her betrayal of her marriage vows. She hoped that when they laid her mother to rest, the past could be buried as well.

‘I still can’t believe she’s gone,’ her father was saying in a heavy dull voice. ‘Not Christine. It just doesn’t seem possible.’

Rosie saw the tears trickling down his face. Quickly she went over to him and hugged him tightly.

‘There, lass. I’m sorry, upsetting you like this. You’ve had a lot to bear, I know. But you’ve got a fine lad in young Rob – make sure you grab the chance of happiness with him with both hands. He’ll look after you. Thinks the world of you, he does.’

‘Oh, Dad…’ Rosie protested, about to tell him her confusion about Rob, and then stopped as she heard her aunt coming downstairs. She couldn’t tell her father how she really felt, not with her aunt there.

Rosie and her father went alone to the funeral parlour. The coffin was closed now, but Rosie knew that her mother was wearing the pretty red twinset her father had bought her, along with a white-patterned skirt she and her father had chosen from the second-hand clothes that were available. Rosie had washed and ironed it herself, unable to comprehend the thought of her mother’s cold, stiff body wearing it as the iron travelled over the pleats.

The horses drawing the hearse had black silky coats and cockades of black mourning feathers. The funeral director and his assistants dressed in their mourning clothes, with their top hats and gloves, were ready to walk sombrely behind the
hearse as it made its way to the street where Christine had died.

‘All right, lass?’ Rosie heard her father asking her as they took their places behind the cortège.

Rosie nodded. Her second-hand coat was a bit too big, and it had the greenish tinge of something that had not been well dyed, but Mrs Verey’s hat added a touch of elegance and glamour to her appearance that she knew her mother would have loved.

As they made their sombre way to their old home, people stood in respectful silence to see them on their way, heads bowed in recognition of their loss. It was cold and damp, with a rawness to the air that stung Rosie’s face and throat.

Their neighbours were there to greet them as the cortège turned into the street. The first person Rosie saw was Rob, wearing a black suit he must have borrowed from somewhere. He fell into step behind them, followed by others who had known Christine. Someone – Rosie suspected it must have been Rob – had placed flowers outside what had been their house at the exact spot where her mother had lain. Others were joining them now: the hairdresser for whom her mother had worked, and some other women Rosie vaguely recognised as pals of her mother, the small procession swelling as they made their sad way towards the church.