Rosie’s War

John peered out of the window, then, frowning, he opened the back door and stepped out, head tipped up as he sauntered along the garden path. His mouth suddenly fell agape in a mixture of shock and fear and he pelted back towards the house, shouting.

But the sirens had belatedly begun to wail, cutting off his warning of an air raid.

Rosie let the crockery crash back to the draining board on hearing the eerie sound and sprang to the back door to hurry her father inside. Before John could reach the house a short whistle preceded an explosion in a neighbour’s garden, sending him to the ground, crucified on the concrete at the side of the privy.

Crouching on the threshold, arms covering her head in instinctive protection, Rosie could hear her father groaning just yards away. She’d begun to unfold to rush to him when debilitating terror hit her. She sank back, shaking and whimpering, biting down ferociously on her lower lip to try to still her chattering teeth. Tasting and smelling the metallic coppery blood on her tongue increased the horrific images spinning inside her head. She rammed her fists against her eyes but she couldn’t shut out the carnage she’d witnessed in the Café de Paris a year ago. Her nostrils were again filled with the sickly stench of blood, and her mind seemed to echo with the sounds of wretched people battling for their final moments of life. Some had called in vain for loved ones … or the release of death. Limbless bodies and staring sightless eyes had been everywhere, tripping her up as she’d fled to the street, smothered in choking dust. For months afterwards she’d felt dreadfully ashamed that she’d instinctively charged to safety rather than staying to comfort some of those poor souls.

‘Rosie … can you hear me …?’

Her father’s croaking finally penetrated Rosie’s torment and she scrambled forward, uncaring of glass and wood splinters tearing into her hands and knees. She raked her eyes over him for injuries, noting his bloodied shin, although something else was nagging at her that refused to be dragged to the forefront of her mind.

‘Think me leg’s had it,’ John cried as his daughter bent over him.

Rosie was darting fearful looks at the sky in case a second attack was imminent. The bomber had disappeared from view, but another could follow at any moment and drop its lethal load. Obliquely Rosie was aware of neighbours shouting hysterically in the street as they ran for the shelters, but she had to focus on her father and how she could get him to safety in their cellar.

‘Take my arm, Dad … you must!’ she cried as he tried to curl into a protective ball on hearing another engine. Thank goodness this aeroplane, now overhead, was a British Spitfire on the tail of the Dornier. ‘Come on … we can make it … one of ours is after that damned Kraut.’ Rosie felt boosted by the fighter avenging them and murmured a little prayer for the pilot’s safety as well as their own. But then her attention was fully occupied in getting her father to cooperate in standing up. He was slowly conquering his fear and squirming to a seated position with her assistance.

Regaining her strength, she half-lifted him, her arm and leg muscles in agony and feeling as though they were tearing from their anchoring bones. Gritting her teeth, she managed to get both herself and her father upright. With her arm about his waist she dragged him, limping, into the kitchen. John Gardiner wasn’t a big man; he was short and wiry but heavy for a girl weighing under eight stone to manhandle.

Slowly and awkwardly they descended the stairs to the cellar, crashing onto the musky floor two steps from the bottom when Rosie’s strength gave out. John gave a shriek of pain as he landed awkwardly, attempting to break his daughter’s fall while protecting his injured limb.

Rosie scrambled up in the dark, dank space and lit the lamp, then crouched down in front of her father to inspect him. The explosion had left his clothes in rags. Gingerly she lifted the ribbons of his trouser leg to expose the damage beneath. His shin was grazed and bloody and without a doubt broken. The bump beneath the flesh showed the bone was close to penetrating the skin’s surface.

Her father’s ashen features were screwed up in agony and Rosie noticed tears squeezing between his stubby lashes. She soothed him as he suddenly bellowed in pain.

‘Soon as it’s over I’ll go and get you help,’ she vowed. ‘We’ll be all right, Dad, we always are, aren’t we?’ She desperately wanted to believe what she was saying.

Rosie thumped the heel of her hand on her forehead to beat out the tormenting memories of the Café de Paris bombing. It seemed a very long while ago that she’d gone out with two of her friends from the Windmill Theatre for a jolly time drinking and dancing to ‘Snakehip’ Johnson’s band, and the night had ended in a tragedy. Three of them had entered the Café de Paris in high spirits but only two of them had got out alive.

Rosie forced the memories out of her mind. She sprang up and dragged one of the mattresses, kept there for use in the night-time air raids, closer to her father, then helped him roll off the floor and on to it to make him more comfortable. There was some bedding, too, and she unfolded a blanket and settled it over him, then placed a pillow beneath his head.

Sinking down beside her father, Rosie pressed her quaking torso against her knees, her arms over her head as the house rocked on its foundations. Another bomber must have evaded the Spitfire to shed its deadly cargo.

‘We’ve taken a belting … that’s this place finished … we’ll need a new place to live,’ John wheezed out between gasps of pain, his voice almost drowned out by the crashing of collapsing timbers and shattering glass. ‘Come here, Rosie.’ He held out his arms. ‘If we’re gonners I want to give you a last cuddle. Be brave, dear … I love you, y’know.’

They clung together, terrified, the smell of John’s blood and sweaty fear mingling in Rosie’s nostrils. After what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than a few minutes the dreadful sounds of destruction faded and the tension went out of John. Pulling free of his daughter’s embrace he flopped back on the mattress, breathing hard.

‘That’s it over then, if we’re lucky. Everything seemed all right while we still had this place.’

Rosie knew what her father meant. This had been the house her parents had lived in from when they were married, and it was Rosie’s childhood home. Wincing as she picked a shard of glass from her knee, Rosie mentally reviewed their options. Doris lived in Hackney and she might let them stay with her until the housing department found them something. Then Rosie remembered the woman had stomped out, making it clear she wasn’t getting landed with kids …

As though the memory drifted back through a fog in her mind Rosie realised that it wasn’t just her and Dad any more. Her baby was upstairs. She’d saved her own skin and her father’s, oblivious to the fact that there were three of them now. Her little girl was all alone and defenceless in the front room and she’d not even remembered her, let alone made an effort to protect her from the bombing.

Rosie pushed herself to her feet. She stood for less than a second garnering energy and breath, then launched herself up the cellar steps, her hands and knees bloodied in the steep scramble as she lost her footing on the bricks in her insane haste. The door was open a few inches and she flew into it to run out but something had fallen at the other side, jamming it ajar. With a feral cry of fury Rosie barged her arm again and again into the door until it moved slightly and she could squeeze through the aperture. Frenziedly she kicked at the obstacles blocking her way.

Masonry from the shattered kitchen wall was piled in the hallway but she bounded over it, falling to her knees as the debris underfoot shifted, then jumping back up immediately. She’d no need to fight her way into the front room. The door had fallen flat and taken the surround and some of the plaster with it.

Rosie burst in, her chest heaving. The top of the pram was covered in rubble and a part of the window frame, jagged with glass, lay on the hood.

Flinging off the broken timbers, she swept away debris with hands and forearms, uncaring of the glass fragments ripping into her flesh. Oozing blood became caked with dust, forming thick calluses on her palms.

Hot tears streamed wide tracks down her mucky face as finally she gazed into the pram. Very carefully she put down the hood, and removed the rain cover. She was alive! Rosie picked up her daughter, wrapped in her white shawl, and breathed in the baby’s milky scent, burying her stained face against soft warm skin until the infant whimpered in protest at the vice-like embrace.

‘Thank you, God … oh, thank you …’ Rosie keened over and over again as the white shawl turned pink in her cut hands. She bent over the tiny baby as though she would again absorb her daughter into herself to keep her safe. Her quaking fingers raced up and down the little limbs, checking for damage, but the infant’s gurgling didn’t seem to be prompted by pain.

‘Let’s go and find Granddad, shall we?’ Rosie softly hiccuped against her daughter’s downy head. ‘Come on then, my darling. I’m so sorry; I swear I’ll never ever leave you again.’

When she pushed open the cellar door Rosie found her father had crawled to the bottom step and was in the process of pulling himself up it. He choked on a sob as he saw them, flopping back down against the wall.

‘I forgot about her, too,’ he gasped through his tears. ‘What sort of people are we to do something like that?’ He shook his head in despair, wailing louder. ‘It’s my fault. I was too concerned about meself to even think about saving me granddaughter.’

‘It’s all right, Dad. She’s fine, look …’ Rosie anchored the baby against her shoulder in a firm grip, then descended as quickly as she could, hanging onto the handrail. ‘Look, Dad!’ she comforted her howling father. Gently she unwrapped the child to show her father that the baby was unharmed. ‘We’re not used to having her around yet … that’s all it is. No harm done. She’s in better shape than us,’ Rosie croaked. She felt a fraud for trying to make light of it when her heart was still thudding crazily with guilt and shame.

John blew his nose. For a long moment he simply stared at his granddaughter, then he turned his head. ‘Can see now that you’re right, Rosie,’ he started gruffly. ‘She’d be better off elsewhere. Let somebody else care for her, ’cos we ain’t up to it, that’s for sure.’

Somewhere in the distance was a muffled explosion, but neither John nor Rosie heeded it, both lost in their own thoughts. Rosie settled down on the mattress. Her lips traced her daughter’s hairline, soothing the baby as she became restless. She placed the tiny bundle down beside her and covered her in a blanket, tucking the sides in carefully.

John studied his wristwatch. ‘Time for her bottle. I’ll watch her if you want to go and get it.’ Muffling moans of pain, he wriggled closer to peer at the baby’s dust-smudged face. He took out from a pocket his screwed-up hanky.

‘No! Don’t use that, Dad. It’s filthy; I’ll wash her properly later … when we go upstairs.’ Rosie smiled to show her father she appreciated his concern. But she wasn’t having him wiping her precious daughter’s face with his snot rag.

‘She’s hungry,’ John said, affronted by his daughter’s telling off.

Rosie made to get up, then sank back down to the mattress again. ‘Kitchen’s blown to smithereens. Won’t find the bottles or the milk powder; won’t be able to wash her either, if the water’s off.’ She began unbuttoning her bodice. ‘I’ll feed her,’ she said. Turning a shoulder to her father so as not to embarrass him, she helped the child to latch onto a nipple. Her breasts were rock hard with milk, hot and swollen, but she put up with the discomfort, biting her lip against the pain. She encouraged the baby to feed with tiny caresses until finally she stopped suckling and seemed to fall asleep with a sated sigh.

‘What you gonna call her?’ John whispered. He had rolled over onto his side, away from mother and child to give them some privacy. His voice sounded different: high-pitched with pain still, but there was an underlying satisfaction in his tone.

Rosie smiled to herself, wondering how her father knew she’d been thinking about names for her daughter. ‘Hope …’ she said on a hysterical giggle. ‘Seems right … so that’s what I’m choosing. Hope this bloody war ends soon … hope we get a place to live … hope … hope … hope …’

‘Hope the doctors sort me bloody leg out for us, I know that.’ John joined in gruffly with the joke.

‘You’ll be right as rain with a peg leg … Long John Silver,’ Rosie teased.

They both chuckled although John’s laughter ended in a groan and he shifted position to ease his damaged limb.

In her mind Rosie knew she’d chosen her daughter’s name for a different reason entirely from those she’d given. Her greatest hope was that her daughter would forgive her if she ever discovered that she’d abandoned her like that. The poor little mite could have suffocated to death if she’d not been uncovered in time. Or the weight of the shattered window frame on top of the pram might even-tually have crushed the hood and her daughter’s delicate skull. The idea that Hope might have suffered a painful death made bile rise in Rosie’s throat. She closed her eyes and forced her thoughts to her other hope.

She hoped that Nurse Johnson would forgive her. The woman desperately wanted to be a mother, and Rosie had promised her that her dream would be real. Rosie sank back on the mattress beside Hope and curved a protective arm over her daughter as she slept, a trace of milk circling her mouth.

But Rosie had no intention of allowing anybody to take her Hope away now. She’d do anything to keep her.

‘Hear that Dad?’

‘What … love?’ John’s voice was barely audible.

‘Bells … ambulance or fire engine is on its way. You’ll be in hospital soon,’ she promised him. While she’d been cuddling her little girl she’d heard her father’s groans although he’d been attempting to muffle the distressing sounds.

‘Ain’t going to hospital; they can patch me up here,’ he wheezed.