Kay Brellend - Rosie’s War

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.