men,’ Maria announced firmly.
‘Oh, Bella …’ Rosie hugged her friend tearfully.
‘It isn’t your fault, Rosie,’ Bella told her emotionally, ‘even though you are English and it’s the British Government that’s doing this, and I shall hate them for ever for it.’
‘Oh, Bella!’ Rosie hugged her even more tightly, not knowing what to say.
They were so close to the longest day that the sky was already beginning to lighten as Rosie walked home. It was three o’clock in the morning and she had to be at work at eight, but she knew already that it would be impossible for her to sleep. The street was empty now and silent. Where had the police taken the men? Rose Street station, the nearest police station, was surely too small. The authorities couldn’t intend to keep them for very long, Rosie tried to comfort herself as she let herself into her home, not if they hadn’t let them take any clean clothes.
Her mother was seated at the kitchen table, smoking. There were even darker black tracks down her face now where her mascara had run. Her hand trembled as she put out her cigarette. As well as selling ice cream, the Grenellis also sold cigarettes and sweets from their handcart. Rosie suspected that sometimes these cigarettes came from the black market and her heart thudded in sudden anxiety. If that came out, would that mean trouble for the Grenelli men? Not that they were alone in supplying their customers with black-market cigarettes. Indeed, buying goods that ‘had fallen off the back of a lorry’ coming out of the docks had become part of the city’s culture, and often the only way in which poor families could feed and clothe their children.
Christine worked in a hairdressing salon, but right now she did not look like a good advertisement for the business, Rosie reflected sympathetically as she took in her mother’s haggard expression. Her hair was now untidier, and without the red lipstick she always wore, her face looked pinched and pale. It touched Rosie’s heart to see her mother, who often seemed so hard and unemotional, so distressed on behalf of her friends. Lovingly she reached out for her hand and squeezed it.
‘Maria was wonderful the way she took charge, wasn’t she? You’d have thought that Sofia would be the one to do that but—’
Almost immediately, her mother dragged her hand free, and snapped, ‘Stop going on about it, will you, Rosie? I told Aldo there was goin’ to be trouble, but of course he wouldn’t listen. Ruddy fool … Now look at the mess he’s got hisself into. I’m goin’ up to me bed. Oh, and when you go to work you can call in at Sarah’s and tell her that I won’t be in on account of me nerves being bad.’ She reached down and scratched her leg and then stood up, lighting up a fresh cigarette as she did so. ‘A ruddy slave, that’s what she thinks I am, paying me next to nowt and expectin’ me to work over when it suits her.’
Rosie sighed. As usual, Christine managed to turn the situation to herself, complaining about the hardships she constantly suffered. Life might hold dramatic changes, as she had witnessed that very evening, but some things would always stay the same.
As she had predicted Rosie hadn’t really slept, but at least she now had plenty of time to nip across to the Grenellis’ before she needed to leave for work, just in case they had heard anything. Her mother was still in bed, and Rosie made as little noise as she could when she brewed herself a cup of tea, and put up some sandwiches for her dinner.
She was halfway across the road when she saw Bella coming towards her.
‘Has there bin any news?’ she asked anxiously.
Bella shook her head. ‘La Nonna is taking it that badly, Rosie. Cryin’ all night, she’s bin. Me mam as well, rantin’ and ravin’ she were, sayin’ as how we should all have left and gone back to Italy, and how it’s me Uncle Aldo’s fault that we didn’t. It would be different if all of them had teken out British nationality, but it’s too late for that now.’ She gave a small shiver. ‘Me Auntie Maria were up all night trying to calm them both down.’
‘Oh, Bella.’
The two girls looked at one another.
‘Mebbe they’ll know a bit more at Podestra’s. I’ve told me Auntie Maria that I’ll send word if I hear anything and that she’s to do the same for me. That’s if there’s any of our men left to tell us anything,’ she added bitterly.
Bella worked in the back of one of the Podestra family’s chippies, peeling and chipping potatoes, and it was expected between the two families that eventually Bella would marry the young Podestra cousin who was lodging with the family. Rosie had once asked Bella if she minded her future being decided for her but Bella had simply shrugged and said that it was the custom and their way, that she liked Alberto Podestra well enough and that she would rather marry him than some lads she knew.
‘But don’t you want to fall in love, Bella?’ Rosie had asked her.
Once again Bella had shrugged. ‘Marriage isn’t about falling in love for us, it’s about family,’ she had told her.
Rosie had mixed feelings about love and marriage. Her father had fallen passionately in love with her mother but their marriage had not been a happy one, so far as Rosie could see. Sofia, however, married to placid easy-going Carlo, seemed perfectly happy with the man her parents had chosen for her. But there was Maria, who had also had her husband chosen for her and who anyone could see was not treated kindly by Aldo. From what she had seen around her in the marriages of those closest to her, Rosie wasn’t sure if falling in love was a good thing. On the other hand, all the girls at work could talk about was falling in love like they saw people doing in films, and living happily ever after. And what she did know was that she certainly did not want her husband chosen for her. In that, if nothing else, close as she and Bella were, they felt very differently, Rosie admitted.
After she had said goodbye to Bella, imploring her not to worry with a strength and cheeriness she really didn’t feel inside, Rosie called round at the hairdressing salon where her mother worked to deliver her message, and then headed up into the city, trying not to look too closely at the broken glass and damaged buildings as she did so. People were already outside cleaning up the debris.
Newspaper sellers were out on the street, and Rosie hurried to buy a paper, scanning the headlines quickly, her eyes blurring with tears as she read about the violent rioting of the previous night, which had been caused, according to the papers, by patriotic feelings overwhelming some people on hearing the news of Mussolini’s decision. The paper did of course condemn the violence, but although Rosie searched the print several times, she couldn’t find anything to tell her what was going to happen to the men who had been taken away, other than that Mr Churchill had acted swiftly to ensure that dangerous Fascists were ‘combed out’ from Italian communities, and would be interned as Enemy Aliens for the duration of the war. Her heart jumped anxiously inside her chest when she read the words ‘Enemy Aliens’, but of course they did not apply to men like the Grenellis. And there was some comfort in knowing that it was only those men who were a danger to the country that the government wanted to detain, not men like Giovanni, Carlo and Aldo. She tried to cheer herself up by thinking that by the time she finished work tonight they would be safely back at home, and that Bella’s mother would be back to her normal self. No doubt too la Nonna would be spoiling them and cooking up a celebration supper for them. Her own mouth watered at the thought of it. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday dinner time, apart from a piece of dry toast without butter before she left the house this morning.
It had been left to Rosie to deal with the complexities of shopping on the ration, Christine having no intention of standing in line for hours for scarce cuts of meat, and learning to experiment with the recipes the Ministry of Food was recommending.
