Birmingham Rose (4 page)

‘Geraldine!’ her brother said. ‘Everyone’s looking.’

‘You’re both daft,’ Sam said. ‘Dream away. I’m going to be Rudolph Valentino. But it’s only dreams. People like us don’t ever do anything different, do we?’

This dampened Rose’s enthusiasm straight away.

‘Who d’you know who’s ever been anything special then?’ Sam continued.

‘Mom says Dad was doing all right before he went to the war,’ Rose said.

‘It was still the factory though. And nothing’s the same now, is it? That’s what Albert says.’ Sam always looked to his older brother, whom they scarcely ever saw, as the source of all information and authority. ‘Anyhow, you have to stay on at school to be anything special, and there’s fat chance of that.’

Rose felt very down in the dumps after that. Was Diana going to stay on at school? No one she knew in the court had carried on after they were fourteen. She’d never questioned it before, how you couldn’t do anything much with your life unless you had money.

Rose knew that some time during the morning her mom would bundle up Sid’s Sunday suit and shoes and they’d be down to the pawnbroker’s at the end of the street until Friday when she got her money from the factory. Sid joked grimly sometimes that they ought to get 2d extra for the shoes because he only ever wore the one. Rose wondered if her mother was going to pawn her new dress.

That day she stared adoringly at Miss Whiteley as she stood in front of them next to the blackboard, the portrait of the king behind her head. She imagined Diana standing there with her curls tied back, telling them all about rivers and jungles and the kings and queens in history books. And then she tried to put herself in the same position, as she had on her walk to school before all the things Sam had said. All she could think of now were the thick darns on the elbows of her cardigan and her faded old clothes and the way she spoke, which was different from Diana.

I could never be like Diana, she thought.

As she turned from chalking up some names on the blackboard, Sarah Whiteley noticed Rose at her wooden desk wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffing.

‘Are you feeling unwell, Rose?’ she asked kindly.

‘No, Miss Whiteley,’ the girl said quietly, and she blushed such an embarrassed pink that the teacher decided not to pursue it just then.

When school finished Miss Whiteley said to her, ‘Rose, would you come here a minute?’

Geraldine whispered to her, ‘You’re for it now. I’ll wait for you outside.’

‘No, you go home,’ Rose replied. ‘And take Grace with you or Mom’ll be on at me.’

She stood solemnly by her teacher’s desk when all the others had made their way noisily out of the room. She could hear them laughing and yelling as they trailed off down the street.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ Miss Whiteley asked, sitting behind her big table at the end of the classroom. ‘It’s all right, don’t look so worried, you’re not here to be punished. I saw you crying earlier. Is everything all right at home?’

‘Yes, Miss Whiteley,’ Rose said.

The teacher looked at the serious brown eyes which were gazing apprehensively at her and she smiled suddenly. She had a soft spot for Rose.

‘Are you happy at school?’ She was sensitive enough to realize that something was going on inside Rose, and she also knew that whatever her disadvantages in life, this was a child with potential.

Rose just said yes again. She liked Miss Whiteley and trusted her, but standing alone in front of her she felt small and shy. She kept her eyes on the scuffed wooden boards of the classroom floor and her even more scuffed boots.

Sarah Whiteley decided to try once more. She came out from behind the desk and brought her chair up to sit next to the child.

Rose looked into Miss Whiteley’s lovely plain face with her round pink cheeks, quite unlike Miss Smart’s angular, rather pretty face, which was so often full of spite and irritation. Miss Whiteley seemed to give off comfort, like someone handing out buns.

‘What if I wanted to be a teacher?’ Rose blurted out. ‘’Cos Sam says people like us don’t do things like that and it’s daft of me to think of it. Only my friend Diana’s going to be a teacher.’ And without expecting to she found she was telling Miss Whiteley all about the storm and Diana and how different her family were from Rose’s own.

Sarah Whiteley was startled. This was not what she had expected at all. She’d thought perhaps things were especially difficult for Rose’s family, as they so often were in the homes of the children she taught. She had met Dora Lucas a number of times and had taken a liking to her. She’d found her brisk, with the kind of hardness of someone who has no energy left to spare for niceties. But she isn’t rough, Sarah thought. Just worn down. And again, Sarah had perceived intelligence. She hadn’t met Rose’s father, but she knew he had been injured in the war and could not get work.

With these thoughts in mind she struggled for words to answer Rose’s eager questions. She wanted to be positive and realistic at the same time and the combination was not easy.

‘Whether you could be a teacher is not an easy question to answer. I think you’re a clever girl and you do well in your lessons. But I expect you’ll have to leave school to go to work soon, won’t you?’

Rose nodded miserably.

‘But perhaps what you can aim to do is get the best work you can. If you do well at school we might be able to find you something in an office, and you never know what opportunities might come your way. And there are such things as evening classes where you can further your education if you have the means when you’re older. But you’ll have to be very determined. Do you think you’re very determined?’

‘I dunno,’ Rose said. ‘But I don’t want to be like my mom, always sick with having babbies.’

Sarah Whiteley felt tears slide into her own eyes at the thought of women like Dora Lucas with their relentless lives of childbirth and worry.

Rose noticed her emotion and was alarmed. Blimey, what had she done to upset her?

But all her teacher said, quietly, as if to herself, was, ‘Well, I suppose if you want to do anything else with your life it doesn’t really do to have children.’ Then she smiled and looked at Rose. ‘Cheer up. You don’t need to worry about it yet, do you? And you never know what might happen.’

She stood up and said, ‘Come along, your mother will be getting worried. Shall I walk a little of the way with you?’

Delighted, Rose felt her dark little hand being taken by Miss Whiteley’s soft pink one. The woman strolled along beside her, pointing out things on the way – a police car, a magpie, white clouds all piled up to one side of the sky – until they reached Catherine Street. Miss Whiteley leaned down and, to Rose’s astonishment, kissed her cheek before she said goodbye. Rose couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given her a kiss. The walk had made the afternoon feel very warm and special.

But when she got home her mother was tense and furious and snapping at everyone in sight. She’d hung her sheets across the yard as usual and the younger Pye and Donaghue children had been running muddy hands all through them and flicking water up from the puddles. She’d had to rinse and mangle the lot again, and as a result was behindhand with everything else.

‘Don’t tread on the floor!’ she shouted unreasonably as Rose stepped into the house. ‘Where the hell have you been? No – don’t tell me. Just get scraping these.’ She pointed to a pile of carrots. Grace, confined to a sheet of newspaper on the damp floor, had already started on the potatoes.

Dora bustled about rearranging washing on the backs of chairs and over the frames of the mirror and their two pictures: one of Sid’s mom and dad and one of the king and queen.

‘I’ll make sure those little bleeders don’t get at it this time,’ she said. ‘Come on, set to it, Rose, and stop dreaming.’

Rose picked up the peeling knife in silence and mulled over what Miss Whiteley had said. All I can do, she thought, is try as hard as I can. Try and try and try.

That night, when she and Grace and the boys were in bed, Rose heard sounds coming from down in her mom and dad’s room. It wasn’t the strange, rhythmic noise she sometimes heard, with her mother gasping, and at the end of it a cry from her father as if he’d stubbed his toe on the leg of the bed. This time she knew it would end differently, because he’d been down the Catherine after raising a few coppers selling kindling.

Sid turned to look at his wife as he undressed in their room on the middle floor. She was lying on her back, her face grey with fatigue. He could see clearly the lines that had appeared and deepened between her brows and round her mouth and he felt a moment of tenderness watching her there. Now she was able to rest she looked a little more like the lovely girl he’d courted and married, with her sheet of chestnut brown hair, thicker then and glossy, which he’d smoothed over his face during their lovemaking like a silk scarf.

Remembering this, he wanted her. She’d be out working the next four nights and he’d have to sleep alone. He always felt sorry for himself when she was away at night. It seemed to reinforce his sense of helplessness.

‘Dora?’ He pulled himself over to her on the bed and leaned on his good arm. Suddenly he felt nervous, and then angry because of it. She was his wife, wasn’t she? He shouldn’t have to beg any favours.

‘Come on,’ he said. He put his mouth to hers, feeling how rough and dry her lips were. He felt himself harden gradually. In the old days he had only to look at her. This was the one thing he had left – that he could make her produce children.

When she felt him moving against her, a wave of despair came over Dora. How could he do this when he knew she’d be up all the next night? But she always felt guilty when she refused him. It was the only thing which made him happy for a short time.

‘I need some sleep,’ she said without opening her eyes. ‘I’m on again tomorrow night. Some of us have to work, you know,’ she finished, rather spitefully.

He always took rebuffs badly. ‘That’s right – and I’m no bloody good for nothing, am I?’ he shouted, sitting up again. ‘Your bleeding cripple of a husband. That’s what everyone says about me, ain’t it?’

‘I didn’t say that – just don’t keep on. Get into bed and let me sleep.’

‘Open your eyes.’ His voice was still loud and full of hurt and anger. ‘At least open your bloody eyes, woman!’

Dora dragged her eyes open and half sat up. She pulled back the covers and patted the bed. ‘Just come and lie down, Sid, please.’

Sid could feel the great dark surge which sometimes forced its way through him, a violence of anger and despair which he could not put into words. He ached to spend himself in his wife, to feel her body moving under him.

‘Dora, please. Do it for me tonight.’

‘NO!’ Dora shouted.

Then Rose heard her mother’s screams as he hit her twice, three times, giving her the bruised cheek and cut lip which would be there for all to see in the morning.

‘You selfish bitch!’ she heard.

Rose screwed up her eyes tight and pushed her fingers into her ears. But she could still hear the next part – what always came next. The worst part. Her father’s remorse, the sobs which burst from his body alongside her mother’s own crying, and eventually Dora’s voice trying to calm his anguish.

Rose slipped out of bed and fetched the little elephant from its hiding place. She lay stroking it in the dark.

‘Try,’ she said to herself. ‘Try and try and try.’

Dora Lucas was sitting at her table with a cup of mint tea in front of her. Often now, when she had a spare moment she sat, her eyes not fixed on anything, her limbs slack and her mind numb.

She was forty-one and exhausted, like an old woman, yet she was soon to give birth again. Her belly already felt tight and heavy with the child which nudged insistently under her ribcage so that she had to keep straightening her spine to ease the discomfort.

Beside her, three-year-old Violet was clattering pebbles on the tiled floor, involved in her game and singing quite tunefully.

‘Do it a bit quieter, can’t you?’ Dora snapped at her, without really having intended to. Weariness and irritation seemed to be all she could manage.

The others would soon be home from school. And Sam – bless him – from work. After the four grimmest and most despairing years of Dora’s life they at last had a regular wage coming into the house. How she would have got by without the neighbours she’d never know – Theresa and Gladys especially. The final humiliation had come when they had been forced to go on the Parish. First there was the gruelling session in front of the board. Dora’s innards turned just thinking about it. She’d remember the cold, gimlet-eyed woman there till her dying day. The board, which executed the Means Test, decided whether she was worthy of their meagre allowance of food and coal.

Sam, Rose and Grace had become familiar, sad little figures outside factories as far away as Cheapside and Moseley Street, greeting the men who came off shift with persistent cries of ‘Have you got a piece for us?’ They’d run after the men until they handed over any leftover portions of bread from their lunches.

On Saturday nights they would hang about in Smith- field and the Market Hall until the stallholders were packing up, and then walk home exhausted, carrying a piece of knockdown meat and bags of bruised fruit and veg. Rose would fall asleep with her head full of visions of pyramids of apples and oranges lit by the the naphtha flares which hissed next to the stalls.

The shame and desperation of those years had nearly finished Dora. When Violet was born she had haemorrhaged so badly that she’d been ill for weeks and had had to give up her night job in the metal stamping factory. They’d had Sickness Benefit, and by the time that finished she was pregnant again, but she miscarried in the third month. Again she was left weak and drained.

Dora had been desperate not to get pregnant again. She tried to fight Sid in bed, and kick him off. But even with only one arm he was stronger. He begged her and then slapped her about, and most often now pushed into her with a force which frightened her and left her sore, sometimes bleeding, and with an overwhelming sense of shame as if she had done something wrong. When she had the strength, she crept out in the dark afterwards and fetched a pail of cold water to wash herself with.