Rosie’s War

‘I’d be obliged if you’d make yourself scarce till it is over. But you can put the kettle on. I need some more hot water. Leave a full pot outside the door for me, please.’

Trudy looked at her patient as the door closed. The girl was fidgeting on the protective rubber sheet, making it squeak. The afterbirth was about to be expelled. After that it would be time to set about tidying up the new mum; Trudy hoped having a wash and a brush through her hair might give the poor thing a boost.

Rosie Deane didn’t look more than nineteen and was as slender as a reed. She had battled to get the baby through her narrow hips and finally succeeded after a lengthy labour.

‘Here … have a cuddle … she’s fair like you …’ The midwife placed the baby against Rosie’s shoulder, hoping to distract the young woman from dwelling on her sore nether regions.

‘Take her away from me. I don’t want her.’ Rosie’s hands remained clenched beneath the sheets and she turned her face away from her firstborn.

‘’Course you do; just got a bit of the blues, haven’t you, love? Only natural after what you’ve been through. All new mums say never no more, then quickly forget about the rough side of it.’ Trudy knew that to be true, but not from personal experience. She had no children, but she’d delivered hundreds of babies over more than a decade in midwifery. Some of the women on her rounds in Shoreditch seemed to knock out a kid a year, even into their forties. Mrs Riley, Irish and no stranger to her old man’s fists, had borne fifteen children, twelve of them still alive, and eight of them still at home with her.

Trudy was about to say that the pelvis opened up more easily after a good stretching in a first labour in the hope of cheering up this new mum. Then she realised the remark would be insensitive. The girl’s father had told her that Rosie’s husband had been killed fighting overseas only months ago, so Trudy kept her lip buttoned. In time Rosie would probably remarry and go on to have a brood round her ankles. She was plainly an attractive girl, despite now looking limp and bedraggled after her ordeal.

‘You’ve got a wonderful part of your husband here to cherish.’ Trudy glanced at the child her patient was ignoring. She pushed lank fair hair from Rosie’s eyes so she could get a better view of her baby. ‘See, she’s got her eyes open and is looking at you. She knows you’re her mum all right …’

‘I said take her away from me.’ Rosie levered herself up on an elbow, grabbing at the child as though she might hurl her daughter to the newspaper-strewn floorboards. Instead she held the bundle out on rigidly extended arms. ‘Take her … give her away … do what you like with her …’ she sobbed, sinking down and turning her face into the pillow to dry her cheeks on the cotton.

‘Come on, love; don’t get tearful.’ Trudy placed the baby back by the bed’s wooden footboard then gave her hiccuping patient a brisk, soothing rub on the back. ‘Just a few minutes more and we can give you a nice hot wash down. You’re almost done now, you know.’

‘Almost done?’ Rosie echoed bitterly. ‘I wish I was. It’s all just starting for me, Nurse Johnson …’

CHAPTER TWO (#u6ea850f4-5fc7-5a18-b4a9-14062a3abf77)

‘You don’t mean that!’

‘If the girl says that’s what she wants to do, then that’s what she wants to do,’ Doris Bellamy stated bluntly. ‘A mother knows what’s best for her own child …’

‘I’ll deal with this,’ John Gardiner rudely interrupted. Doris was his fiancée, and a decent woman. But she wasn’t his daughter’s mother, or his grandkid’s nan, so he reckoned she could mind her own business and leave him to argue with Rosie over the nipper’s future.

‘You won’t change my mind, Dad. I’ve already spoken to Nurse Johnson and she says there are plenty of people ready to give a baby a good home.’

‘Does she now!’ John exploded. ‘Well, I know where that particular baby’ll get a good home ’n’ all. And it’s right here!’ He punched a forefinger at the ceiling. ‘The little mite won’t have to go nowhere. She’s our own flesh and blood and I ain’t treating her like she’s rubbish to be dumped!’

‘She’s not just our flesh and blood, though, is she, Dad?’ Rosie’s voice quavered but she cleared her throat and soldiered determinedly on. ‘She’s tainted by him. I can’t even bear to look at her in case I see his likeness in her.’

‘Forget about him; he’s long gone and can’t hurt you no more.’ John flicked some contemptuous fingers.

‘It’s all right for you!’ Rosie was incensed at her father’s attitude. ‘You just want a pretty toy to show off for a few years till you’re bored of teething and tantrums. You certainly won’t want her around if she turns out anything like that swine.’ Rosie forked agitated fingers into her blonde hair.

‘I think you’d better take that remark back, miss!’ John had leaped up, flinging off Doris’s restraining hand as she tried to drag him back down beside her on the sofa. ‘How dare you accuse me of play-acting? It’s you keeps chopping ’n’ changing yer ideas, my gel.’ John advanced on his daughter, finger wagging in emphasis. ‘I offered at the time to put things right. Soon as we found out about your condition I said I’d stump up to sort it out. Wouldn’t have it, though, would yer? Insisted you was having the baby and was prepared for all the gossip and hardship facing you as an unmarried mother.’ He barked a laugh. ‘Now you want to duck out without even giving it a try.’

‘I said I’d have the kid, not that I’d give it a permanent home,’ Rosie shouted. ‘I’ve got to act before it’s too late: once she gets to know us as her family it wouldn’t be fair to send her away.’

‘It ain’t fair anytime, that’s the point!’ John roared.

‘But … I might never love her. I might even grow to hate her,’ Rosie choked. ‘That’d be wicked because she could have somebody doting on her. She’s not got a clue who we are!’ Rosie surged to her feet at the parlour table, knocking over her mug of tea in the process. Automatically she set about mopping up the spillage with her apron.

She couldn’t deny that some of what her father had said was true. She’d not wanted an abortion; the talk of having something dug out of her had made her retch. The idea of enduring horrible pain and mess had been intolerable; now she knew that the natural way of things was pretty awful too.

Yet Nurse Johnson had been right when she’d said the memory of the ordeal would fade; her daughter was only four weeks old yet already Rosie felt too harassed to dwell on the birth. She guessed every other new mum must feel the same way. But she doubted many of those women were as bitter as she was, and her father, much as he wanted to help, was just making things worse.

‘Cat got yer tongue, has it?’ John was prowling to and fro in front of the unlit fireplace. ‘You should be ashamed. And I ain’t talking about what happened with Lenny. I know that weren’t your fault.’ After a dramatic pause he pointed at the pram. ‘But if you abandon the little ’un you should hang your head, ’cos it should never have come to this.’

‘I’m not a murderer,’ Rosie muttered. ‘I’m not a hypocrite either. Don’t expect me to play happy families.’ Attuned to her daughter’s tiny snickers and snuffles Rosie glanced at the pram. It was an ancient Silver Cross model that her father had got off the rag-and-bone man for a couple of shillings.

He’d brought it home a month before the date of her confinement. The sight of it had shocked and frightened Rosie because up until then she’d shoved to the back of her mind how close she was to having Lenny’s child. John had ignored his daughter’s announcement that he’d wasted his time and money on the pram because the Welfare was getting the kid.

The creaking contraption had been bumped down the cellar stairs and John had toiled on it in his little workshop, as he called the underground room that doubled as their air-raid shelter. Screws had been tightened and springs oiled, then he’d buffed the scratched coachwork and pitted chrome until they gleamed. At present John’s labour of love was wedged behind the settee, with the hood up to give the baby a bit more protection from the chilly March air in the fireless room.

‘She’s gonna be as pretty as you, y’know.’ Taking his daughter’s silence as an encouraging sign, John tried a bit of flattery.

‘Good looks don’t make you happy,’ Rosie stated bluntly. ‘If you force me to keep her, none of us’ll be content.’ She didn’t hate the child: the poor little thing was an innocent caught up in a vile web of violence and deceit.

‘We’ll make sure this is a happy place, dear.’ John sensed his daughter was softening. ‘No point in suffering like you did, then having nothing good to show for it in the end, is there?’

With a sigh, Rosie gathered up their tea things, loading them onto the tray ready to be carried into the kitchenette. She knew it was pointless trying to win over her father. It was always his way or nothing at all. But not this time. She had one final duty to perform before she slipped free of the yoke the poor little nameless mite had fastened around her neck.

She avoided her future stepmother’s eye. Rosie knew that Doris had been watching her, pursed lipped, throughout the shouting match between father and daughter. The woman had resented being told to shut up and had sat in stony silence ever since.

‘Nurse Johnson’s due soon. She said after today it’s time to sign us off home visits.’ Rosie was halfway to the door with the tea tray before adding, ‘I’m going to tell her to start things moving on the adoption.’

‘If you ain’t got the guts to look after her, I’ll do it meself,’ John sounded adamant. ‘No granddaughter of mine’s ending up with strangers, and that’s the end of it.’

Doris leaped to her feet. ‘Now just you hang on a minute there. Reckon I might have something to say about getting landed with kids at my age.’ They’d recently spoken about getting married in the summer so Doris thought she’d every right to have a say.

‘If you don’t like it, you know where the door is.’ John snapped his head at the exit.

Doris gawped at him, her expression indignant. ‘Right then. Couldn’t have made that plainer, could yer?’ She snatched up her handbag, then marched over the threshold and into the hallway.

‘Well, that was bloody daft.’ A moment after the front door was slammed shut, Rosie sighed loudly. ‘If Doris never speaks to you again it’ll be your own fault, Dad.’

‘Don’t care.’ John shrugged. ‘There’s only one person I’m interested in right now.’ He kneeled on the sofa and peered over its threadbare back into the pram. The little girl was sleeping soundly, long fawn lashes curled against translucent pearl-spotted skin. A soft fringe of fluffy fair hair framed her forehead and her tiny upturned nose and rosebud mouth looked as perfectly delicate as painted porcelain.

John stretched out a finger to stroke a silky pink cheek before pulling the blanket up to the infant’s pointed chin. ‘Don’t know you’re born, do you, little angel? But I won’t let you down,’ he promised his granddaughter in a voice wobbling with emotion.

‘You’re just feeling guilty,’ Rosie accused, although she felt quite moved by her father’s melodramatic performance. But what she’d said about him feeling guilty had hit the spot. And they both knew it. A moment later John flung himself past her and the cellar door was crashed shut as he sought sanctuary in his underground den.

Rosie placed the tea tray back on the table. For a moment she stood there, leaning against the wood, the knuckles of her gripping fingers turning white. The baby started to whimper and she automatically went to her. Seated on the sofa she reached a hand backwards to the handle, rocking the pram and avoiding looking at the infant, her chin cupped in a palm. Within a few minutes the room was again quiet. Rosie stood up, drawing her cardigan sleeves down her goose-pimpled arms. She took off her pinafore and folded it, then looked in the coal scuttle, unnecessarily as she knew it would be empty.

It was a cold unwelcoming house for a visitor but it didn’t matter that her father was too thrifty to light the fire till the evening. When Nurse Johnson turned up Rosie intended to say quickly what she had to, then get rid of her so she might start planning her future.

She wandered to the window, peering through the nets for a sighting of the midwife pedalling down the road. It had been many months since she’d hurried from Dr Vernon’s surgery to huddle, crying, in a nearby alleyway. She’d been terrified that day of going home and telling her father the dreadful news that she was almost certainly pregnant, yet he’d taken it better than she had herself. But now, at last, Rosie felt almost content because the prospect of returning to something akin to her old life seemed within her grasp.

Under a year ago she’d been working as a showgirl at the Windmill Theatre. Virtually every waking hour had been crammed with glamour and excitement. She’d enjoyed her job and the companionship of her colleagues, despite the rivalry, but she couldn’t go back there. Her body was different now. Her breasts had lost their pert youthfulness and her belly and hips were flabby. Besides, Rosie felt that chapter of her life had closed and a new one was opening up. Whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d grown up. The teenage vamp who’d revelled in having lavish compliments while flirting with the servicemen who flocked to the shows, no longer existed. Wistfully Rosie acknowledged that she’d not had a chance to kiss goodbye to that sunny side of her character. That choice, and her virginity, had been brutally stolen from her by Lenny, damn the bastard to hell …

But once her daughter was adopted Rosie knew she’d find work again, and she wanted her own place. Her father’s future wife resented her being around and Rosie knew she’d probably feel the same if she were in Doris’s shoes.

Suddenly she snapped out of her daydream, having spotted Nurse Johnson’s dark cap at the end of the street. Rosie let the curtain fall and pulled the pram out from behind the sofa so the midwife could examine the baby. Although she was expecting it, the ratatat startled her. Rosie brushed herself down then quickly went to open the door, praying that her father wouldn’t reappear to embarrass her by making snide comments.