Free Birmingham Rose by Annie Murray Page B

well have been Australia. She wasn’t even precisely sure where Manchester was. ‘But what about your school, Di? And your pals? I’ll never see you again if you all go up there.’
    Rose’s eyes filled with tears, and Diana was already crying.
    ‘It’s really rotten,’ she sobbed angrily. ‘Daddy decides he wants a different job and the rest of us have to change everything.’
    ‘Look darling,’ Catherine said to her outraged daughter. ‘I know you think it’s not what you want, but you won’t know until you’ve gone and tried it. And when you’ve settled in, I’m quite sure you’ll make friends every bit as good as you’ve got here.’
    She wasn’t aware of the appalling tactlessness of her last remark and its effect on their visitor.
    But Diana said, ‘It’ll be beastly. And I’ll never find another friend like Rose. How can you even think it?’ She got up and put her slim arm round Rose’s shoulders. Rose’s lips were trembling with the effort of not crying.
    ‘Oh, goodness, Rose,’ Catherine corrected herself, horrified. ‘I didn’t mean – oh my poor child, I’m so sorry. How awfully rude of me. But Diana will be able to come down on the train in the holidays and visit.’
    ‘What, and sleep at our house?’ Rose asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
    Catherine chose to ignore the girl’s tone, knowing she was upset. ‘Not necessarily. There are other friends of ours whom she could stay with.’
    Rose stared into her lap. A tight, mutinous feeling was rising up inside her. She wanted to scream and throw all the glasses off the table. Horrible things were happening again that she couldn’t do anything about, just as she thought she was beginning to get somewhere. Her joy at having found her job was for the moment completely wiped away.
    ‘Listen girls,’ Catherine said, looking at the two sullen and tearful faces in front of her. She leaned one of her plump elbows on the table. ‘I know it’s bad news and none of us is pleased about it. Judith and William are upset as well. But we’ve all got to make the best of it. And it’s not happening for a couple of months yet, so let’s all be brave and enjoy the time we have got here together, shall we?’
    Catherine changed the subject, talking about the civil war that was breaking out in Spain, and how she felt that Mr Stanley Baldwin was not doing any better than the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald had at tackling the problem of people out of work. Both the girls realized she was trying to say how small their problem was compared to some of the big things going on in the world. But of course that didn’t make them feel any better. Already it felt as if things were not the same. And Rose had a feeling that now they never would be.

    It took the employees at Lazenby’s a few weeks to get used to having a girl in the office. There was Miss Peters of course, but she was old enough to be most people’s mother, if not grandmother.
    Rose became a familiar figure, running errands to and from the traders on the balcony of the huge meat market, delivering statements and cheques and invoices. At first they ribbed her because she was a girl, but after a few weeks she often heard, ‘Hello Rose! All right Rose!’ from the lads as she made her way round between the office and the trading area.
    One part of the job she didn’t like was running messages down to the yard at the back of Lazenby’s. She found she was surprisingly squeamish about what went on down there. She’d already seen the slaughter yard at Camp Hill. Groups of kids often gathered there to watch when they did the killing early in the morning and she’d been dragged along once by Sam. The dogs chivvied the cows or sheep a dozen at a time into the pen which was open for all to see behind a fence of palings. The slaughterers caught the animals one by one as they shrieked, sweating in terror and running at the fence trying to escape. They drove a sharp stick like a poker