really are Fascists,’ she offered awkwardly, ‘then—’
Anger flashed in Bella’s eyes. ‘Showing your true colours now, aren’t you? You’re siding with your own government. What if they aren’t? What if they are just innocent men like my dad and my granddad? You say you think of yourself as part of our family, but you don’t and you aren’t – you never were and never will be! How can you be? It’s right what my mum says. You’ve got to stick with your own kind. How can you even begin to understand what it feels like to be me?’
‘Oh, Bella,’ Rosie protested, unable to hide her distress, but Bella shook her head and then pushed past her and hurried down the street, leaving Rosie to fight back her tears. She was trying to put herself in Bella’s shoes, but it was hard when Bella was being so nasty to her, and acting as though they were enemies and not friends. She continued home, feeling more sick at heart than she had ever imagined she could feel, and wondering whether Bella would even speak to her again.
‘I saw Bella when I was on my way home,’ Rosie told her mother later. ‘She told me that Carlo and Aldo are being sent to the Isle of Man and that Grandfather Giovanni is going to be released.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Christine agreed carelessly. ‘I managed to send word to Aldo when I was up at Huyton the other day, and he sent a message back to me.’
‘You never said anything.’
Christine shrugged dismissively. ‘So what? Pass us me ciggies, will you, Rosie?’
‘So can anyone go up to Huyton and do that then?’ Rosie asked her mother curiously. ‘Only Bella never said that she’d been in touch with her dad.’
Christine lit her cigarette and blew out a ring of smoke, studying it for several seconds before replying, ‘No they can’t, and don’t you go telling Bella that I’ve done it neither. It all depends who you know. It just happens that I’ve got to know one of the chaps up there on guard duty, and he sorted it all out for me.’
There was something that her mother wasn’t telling her, Rosie felt sure, something about her story that didn’t quite ring true.
‘What do you mean, you’ve got to know one of the chaps?’ she asked uncertainly. As a child Rosie had never questioned the fact that it was the men of the Grenelli household with whom Christine spent most of her time when they went there, but now as a young woman she hadn’t been able to help noticing that her mother was a woman who seemed to prefer men’s company to that of her own sex.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rosie, stop questioning me, will you? If you must know I do his wife’s hair. Now give it a rest, will you? You’re making me head ache.’
‘What are we having for tea? There’s some of that tinned fish left and we could make a bit of a fish hash pie with it,’ Rosie suggested.
Christine shook her head. ‘You have some if you want, but I don’t want anything. I’m going out to the Gaiety with some of the others from the salon and then we’re all going round to Flo’s for a bit of supper afterwards. I don’t know what time I’ll be back. You know what that Flo is like once she’s had a couple of drinks. She’ll keep us natterin’ at her place all night if we let her. I might even end up staying over with her. Are you doing anything?’
Rosie nodded. ‘I’ve promised to meet up with Evie and her cousins and go to the pictures with them.’
‘You mean you’re going to the Gaiety as well?’ Christine demanded sharply.
‘No, Evie said to meet her up town outside Lewis’s.’
‘Well, just you mind what you’re doing. Your dad thinks you’re the next best thing to a ruddy angel and he won’t be too pleased if he comes home to find you’ve gone and got yourself in trouble with some lad in a uniform who’s taken himself off and left you.’
‘There’s no need to say that,’ Rosie assured her indignantly, her face pink. ‘I know better than to let any lad mess around with me.’
‘You can say that now, but there’s a war on, remember. Maggie Sullivan, her as looks after Father Doyle and Father Morrison, was saying in the salon the other day that people are queuing up to book weddings, and that most of them should be booking the christening at the same time, by the look of them. And that’s only them as are with lads who are willing to stand by them and do the decent thing. There’s plenty of the other kind around who won’t.’
‘There’s no need to worry on my account.’
‘Well, you just make sure it stays that way. I’ve had enough trouble with your dad’s bloomin’ sister, without you giving her more ammunition to fire at me.’
‘I don’t know why you’re having a go at me like this,’ Rosie objected. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Not yet you haven’t. Like I just said, there’s a war on,’ her mother answered darkly.
Later that evening, queuing for the pictures with Evie and her cousins, Rosie had cause to acknowledge that her mother had a point when she claimed that the war was affecting the way people behaved. There were several couples in the queue who were wrapped in one another’s arms and behaving as brazenly as you liked.
‘Here, look at them two over there,’ Evie urged Rosie, giving her a nudge in the ribs. ‘Just look where he’s got his hand! You won’t catch me letting a fella show me up like that in public.’
Rosie peered over Evie’s shoulder, automatically avoiding stepping back on the heavy sandbags, which had been put in place when war had first been announced, to protect buildings from bomb damage, but which were turning green, and leaking trickles of sand.
‘No,’ Jane giggled. ‘Me neither. It’s best waiting for the blackout if you want to get up to that kind of how’s-your-father.’
It was impossible to pretend to be shocked and Rosie didn’t try, joining in with their raucous laughter.
‘They were doing this new dance at the Grafton last weekend. It’s all the rage in London,’ Evie informed the others. ‘It’s called “the Blackout Stroll”. All the lights go off whilst you’re dancing and then you change partners in the dark. Last weekend I ended up with this Canadian chap – a pilot he told me he was, and ever so handsome.’
Rosie could well imagine what her Aunt Maude would think of Evie’s revelations.
The queue moved forward slowly. There was a big crowd to see the latest newsreels of the war, as well as the main film. Rosie loved the cinema; she had done ever since she was a small girl and her father would take her to see the latest Disney film as a treat when he was on leave. As she grew up, she couldn’t wait for the Saturday afternoons of darkness and excitement, of adventure and passion. The women were all so beautiful, the men so brave. But just because they fell in love and lived happily ever after, it didn’t mean that that could happen to real people, Rosie always reminded herself warningly. She would hate to end up in a marriage like her parents’, where one partner loved too much and the other not enough.
Now the cinema fulfilled a different function. It was a means of escape, certainly from the devastation and drudgery, but also it was a way of finding out more information on the hostilities, of seeing for oneself the progress of the war.
‘Last time I came
