It wasn’t just the cruelty of ten extra years on her face, her thin body, or the new rasp to her voice. There was a new hesitation to her movements as if she had to think hard before she lifted her mug to her mouth or spooned a blob of jam onto her plate. To make each action an economy so she could save her strength for when she had to tense her muscles to ward off the pain.
She was doing it now. A tremor made her fingers twitch and she lowered her head, took two short breaths, then sighed in relief. ‘Your Jane, she’s quite the character, isn’t she?’
‘Well…’
‘I can’t imagine what the two of you actually have in common,’ Rose said tartly and she hadn’t lost any of her edge. That edge could cut him into slivers, but Leo was rather pleased it was still there. ‘Are you really married?’
‘I know it seems unbelievable but yeah, we really are. Way out of my league, isn’t she?’
Lydia was putting more bread in the toaster but she looked over at Leo and grinned. ‘Definitely. Have you got something on her that forced her to say “I do”? Do you know where all her bodies are buried?’
It seemed a pity to puncture the light atmosphere but he couldn’t ignore Rose’s careful stillness any more. Before he left, she’d always been so restless, in constant motion. Leo covered her beautiful, ruined fingers with his hand. She was cool to the touch. ‘How are you? Really?’ he asked.
She caught his eye, held it and the connection that they’d always had flickered hopefully back into life. ‘Not bad, I suppose,’ she replied. He was dimly aware of Lydia leaving the room, so it was just the two of them. Leo and Rose. ‘All things considered.’
‘Cancer?’ He could barely say it. ‘Lydia said it was. Said you’d had it before. Why aren’t you fighting it this time?’
If Rose could give up, then what chance did he have?
Now it was Rose holding his hand, not the other way round. ‘The first time, I put up one hell of a fight,’ she said. ‘But that was nine years ago. When you get to my age, nine more years wreaks all kinds of havoc on one. Besides, I knew it would come back. It always does. With more teeth and claws.’
‘But you’re tough,’ Leo protested. ‘You could fight it again.’
‘Oh, my darling boy,’ she said as if he still meant that much to her. ‘I’ve cheated this too many times. My mother, your great-grandmother, died not that long after the war. She was only forty-three. And your grandmother, my sister Shirley, barely made it past fifty, so I’ve done very well to get this far.’
‘But why aren’t you having chemo or what is it? Radiotherapy?’ he demanded. Rose rubbed her thumb against the back of his hand in a distracted way that did nothing to soothe him.
‘Because I had them before, both of them, and I was so very tired and weak. I didn’t want to do anything. Go anywhere. See anyone.’ Rose’s eyelids drooped down as if it were exhausting just remembering the treatment. ‘Leo, I have stage four secondary liver cancer. I have a couple of months if I’m very, very lucky. Weeks, if I’m not…’
‘But the chemo would definitely give you months…’
‘I’d rather spend what time I have left not feeling like a worn-out dishrag. Quality of life, my doctor calls it. You shouldn’t worry, I’m stuffed full of tablets.’ Rose smiled valiantly, and swayed very carefully on her chair. ‘If you listen very carefully, you can hear them rattling.’
She wanted him to smile, was waiting for it. Leo stretched his lips wide obediently. ‘Are you in a lot of pain?’
‘Not too much. Last week I even strapped on a hard hat to inspect a renovation project, though I thought it best not to climb up any ladders.’ Rose’s smile was more convincing than his had been. ‘Pain-wise, I’m about a three when the tablets have kicked in. Sometimes I’m up to a six if I’m late with my dose. That’s not so bad, is it?’
‘I suppose not.’ He nodded his head decisively. ‘But if gets worse than a six, they can give you something stronger, right?’
Lydia had come back into the room and the mood shifted again. Rose took her hand away, reached up to adjust her scarf and when she glanced at him he was aware of all his failings. From the jam at the side of his mouth, to the days-old stubble, T-shirt straining over his gut, the sour, parched smell if he didn’t keep his arms pinned to his sides.
‘While we’re being honest with each other… do I need to worry about having prescription painkillers in the house, if you’re staying?’ she asked him and it wasn’t always a good thing that Rose was so candid. Sometimes, like now, it was like being cut open, sides pulled back, pinned down and displayed under a microscope.
‘God, no. No! You don’t need to worry about that. I would never…’ He could only breathe through his nose.
‘Do you still take drugs?’ Lydia asked him baldly. The pair of them were merciless.
‘From time to time. Only weed.’ A half-truth was better than trying to explain that you could have a gram of coke over a weekend and then not go near the stuff for ages. There were months, even longer, when he hadn’t wanted it. Like the two years he spent in Sydney, when he’d painted houses, done a bit of bartending, surfed. He might even have stayed if his visa hadn’t run out. ‘I haven’t got messed up again. Like I did that time.’
‘Really? Because we watched a TV show about these two men who cooked up crystal meth,’ Lydia said.
‘We did,’ Rose confirmed. ‘I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to take that . It didn’t look like any kind of fun.’
Leo snorted with laughter, then hid his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. He might even have cried a little bit. ‘If I did crystal, I wouldn’t be as fat as I am now,’ he managed to say once he’d stopped laughing.
‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Rose said. ‘Are you back for a while, then?’
‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Never do, do I?’ There was still something else bothering her. Not just his complete inability to come up with even a half-arsed apology. Some people wouldn’t look at you when they were about to tell you something unpleasant, but not Rose.
‘You might as well know that your mother’s in town,’ she said.
‘Right. OK.’ The news was like a note pinned to your door that you could see as you climbed up the stairs and with every step you took, the dread deepened until it had almost swallowed you. ‘She’s not staying here, is she?’
Rose shook her head. ‘No, she insists it would be an imposition, even though it’s not. We have exactly the same argument every time she comes to London.’ She sounded exasperated, but then his mother’s self-deprecation was exhausting. ‘She’s staying in a vacant flat in that serviced block of mine on Kensington Church Street.’
‘So, she’s well, then, is she?’ Leo asked, guilt washing over him now in cold, oily waves.
‘She is, and she’s coming round for lunch today so it’s probably best if you make yourself scarce.’ Rose sounded angry now. ‘Ten years, Leo, and you didn’t so much as call or send her a postcard. I find that unforgivably cruel.’
‘If I’d have called, she’d only have got upset.’ Staying out of his mother’s life was the kindest thing he could have done. It was practically noble of him. ‘Please, I thought we were making up, Rose. Don’t give me a hard time about this.’
Rose seemed to wilt before his eyes. ‘I am very, very fond of your mother. She goes back to Durham in a few days, I doubt we’ll see each other again…’ She stopped, turned her head, but not before Leo saw the tear trickle down her creased cheek. But it couldn’t be, because Rose didn’t do things like cry. Even so, her hand reached up to her face to brush away the evidence and Leo turned his own head and found that he was blinking away tears too. All this rousing talk of pills and quality of life had obscured the simple fact that in a couple of months Rose might not be here. Wouldn’t be sitting down to breakfast or touching the teapot to see how warm it was, as she was now. She’d be gone. ‘I would like it, more than you know, if at some point you were to make things right w
ith your mother, introduce her to Jane, build bridges, but not now. You’ll only be in the way. Is that unreasonable of me?’
‘It’s not,’ Leo said. ‘You’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t have come back.’
Rose had both hands curved round the teapot. Her attention was not on him, but on the kitchen window, which looked out onto the mews at the back of the house, where two men were standing by a ladder. ‘Well, yes, maybe you shouldn’t have,’ she agreed.
13
February 1944
‘Darling Rose, just because Danny’s gone there’s no reason to go into mourning,’ Sylvia told her as they walked the backstreets towards Rainbow Corner one frigid night in late February. It was so cold that Rose had asked her mother to put her thermal combinations in the post. ‘No point putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.’
‘I thought he’d have written by now. Even a postcard. It takes no time at all to write a postcard,’ Rose complained. ‘Unless something dreadful has happened to him. What if —’
‘I refuse to listen to what-ifs. Let’s talk about something more cheery.’
Sylvia was still talking about the new hat she planned to buy when they reached Rainbow Corner and prepared to part ways. ‘I’ll see you back here at ten-thirty,’ Rose said. ‘Do you want to go out dancing after? The Opera House, maybe?’
‘I can’t be fagged to go to all the way to Covent Garden,’ Sylvia complained, but just as Rose was going to suggest they might try the Astoria, she felt a hand on her arm.
‘Just the little lady I was looking for,’ Mickey Flynn said, even though Rose was at least four inches taller than he was. ‘About that favour you owe me…’
‘You’re meant to talk to me about any favours,’ Sylvia said sharply.
‘I only came to tell our Rosie that we’re even.’
‘Are we?’ It was impossible to get Mickey Flynn to look one in the eye. His gaze was either fixed on one’s chest or on some point in the middle distance, as if he were permanently on the alert for someone else who might owe him a favour. ‘How did that happen?’
‘This is how. Rose, Sylvia, meet Edward. He’s top drawer. Prince among men. Salt of the earth. As much as your good pal Mickey Flynn can vouch for any man, I vouch for him.’
Sylvia and Rose shared a look of confusion, then turned back to discover that Mickey had melted away as if the walls were made of blancmange. In his place was a tall, thin man in a major’s uniform with a slight stoop, fair hair brushed back to show off lean, patrician features and a slightly nervous smile. Rose was sure she’d seen him before, but couldn’t think for the life of her where.
‘I asked Mickey if he’d mind formally introducing us. He drove a very hard bargain so now I owe him a favour and you’ve discharged your debt,’ he said to Rose. ‘It’s probably for the best that I owe Mickey, rather than you. Mickey’s idea of a favour can be rather unsavoury.’ He had a dark, treacly voice and then Rose remembered where she’d met him before. Coming out of the billiard room the night she’d got her papers – she’d been desperate to run away, not just from Mickey’s lecherous gaze, but from this man too. ‘And I did rather wonder if the pair of you would do me a favour, but it’s a very nice sort of favour.’
‘What is it, then?’ asked Sylvia, even though he’d barely taken his eyes off Rose, who’d smiled briefly at him but now didn’t know where to look. He did stare so.
‘My sources tell me you’re the prettiest two girls at Rainbow Corner and I hoped that you might agree to make up a foursome with me and a colleague this evening.’ He leaned in close. ‘He’s a very big noise in the Service Corps but he’s also very dull. I might not be able to stay awake past the hors d’oeuvres.’
It didn’t sound a tempting prospect to go out with a dull man in charge of stationery plus Edward, who’d stared unnervingly at her for five minutes. ‘We’d get into terrible trouble if we just upped and left,’ Rose told him coolly. ‘We might even be blacklisted.’
‘Don’t make jokes like that.’ Sylvia put a hand to her forehead as if she might faint.
‘I’m sure I could square it with Mrs Atkins. Isn’t she in charge of the volunteers?’ He was already backing away as if he was intent on hunting her down.
‘It has to be better than three hours on the information desk,’ Sylvia hissed. ‘Three hours!’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Oh, by the way, I thought we’d go to the Criterion, if that meets with your approval.’
Fortunately, Rose was wearing Shirley’s black crêpe de Chine. It was a little tight with her thermals on underneath, but now she was in the Criterion, being led to a table by a stiff-backed waiter who walked like a penguin, Rose was eternally grateful she wasn’t in Shirley’s limp pale blue taffeta.
A portly, middle-aged man stood as they approached the table, eyed up both girls, kissed their hands as Edward introduced them, and said something about the other man being a brigadier. Rose wasn’t paying attention – she was far too busy rubbernecking the other diners.
It was the London she’d always dreamed of. Women in beautiful gowns, white necks emerging from clouds of silk tulle. The urbane hum of muted conversation. All the men looked so handsome; even the older ones looked distinguished, all except…
‘You must call me Bertie,’ the portly man said. His face was very red and he was cultivating a pencil moustache, which didn’t suit him. He made a big show of pulling out Sylvia’s chair and smiled approvingly as the waiter reverently placed a white napkin on her lap.
‘I suppose this will do, won’t it, Rose?’ Sylvia said with a sly grin.
It was left to Edward to pull out Rose’s chair, then he sat down next to her, Bertie on her other side and Sylvia opposite so Rose could pull an incredulous face at her when she opened her menu and glanced down. She must have slipped down a rabbit hole like Alice to a land where there was lobster and caviar, steak and duck.
‘I suppose it would be more patriotic to ask for the other menu that doesn’t have all the non-rationed luxury items on it,’ Edward said earnestly to Rose. Then he smiled so she supposed he was making a joke and smiled uncertainly back at him. To her left Bertie was cracking an off-colour joke about the oysters, which made Sylvia hoot.
Rose had absolutely no desire to eat oysters anyway. ‘I’ll have the caviar,’ she told the waiter decisively. She ordered Tournedos Rossini for her main course, which earned her an odd look from Bertie, and enthusiastically agreed that a bottle of champagne as an aperitif ‘would be simply heavenly’.
In the meantime, Bertie regaled them with tales of his hunting, shooting and fishing and how he’d much rather ‘hunt the Hun’ instead of pushing paper in an office in Whitehall.
Rose couldn’t imagine he’d be much good in open combat; he was far too fat. Not that Sylvia minded. She laughed at every single one of Bertie’s jokes, of which there were many – he was particularly fond of puns – and flattered him shamelessly. ‘I’ve been trying to think who you remind me of for the last half-hour. Bertie has a look of Clark Gable, don’t you think, Rosie?’
Rose didn’t, but she nodded anyway. She tried hard to think of bright, witty things to say, but it was hard with Edward barely saying anything at all and still looking at her when he thought she wasn’t looking at him. Whenever Rose had thought of the glamorous London life she hoped to experience she was always blasé and languid and saying, ‘Oh, darling!’ a lot. She was doing none of those things, but sitting there mute. She could positively feel the gormless expression on her own face.
It was a relief when another waiter arrived at their table with a bottle in a silver bucket full of ice. Rose watched, riveted, as he expertly pulled out the cork. It came away with a resounding pop that made her think of crackers and fireworks and other things she loved.
She was handed a glass, the pinprick fizz of the bubbles tickling her nose, then they raised their glasses and said ‘Cheers!’ and she took her first sip.
Rose thought she might cry because th
e champagne was just as vile as Coca-Cola. Worse. At least Coca-Cola was sweet. The champagne had a sour taste and it took everything she had not to screw up her face in revulsion.
‘Do you not like it?’ Edward whispered to her. All he’d done was gawp at her so he must have caught the faint flicker of disgust that she hadn’t been able to disguise.
‘Oh no, it’s lovely. My absolute favourite thing in the world.’ Rose steeled herself to take another sip.
‘It’s all right if you don’t like it. I could ask if they’d make you a mimosa, which you might like better,’ he said. ‘It’s worth a shot.’
Rose would have liked to think that Danny would be so kind, but he never missed an opportunity to curb what he called her brattiness. Certainly, she couldn’t picture Danny at the Criterion. He wouldn’t have been impressed when Bertie had pointed out Winston Churchill’s usual table and he’d call all the waiters ‘pal’ and slouch in his chair, legs akimbo. Even with the slight hunch to his shoulders, Edward’s back was as straight as it could be as he waited expectantly for her reply.