‘You’ve heard,’ she still said.
Her mother nodded. ‘Someone came and told us at the salon. There’s bin hundreds drowned, so they say.’
‘Has the BBC news … ?’
‘I haven’t heard anything official yet. Mind you, I haven’t bin in that long.’
‘It can’t be true,’ Rosie whispered, still unwilling to accept that something so terrible could have happened. ‘The Arandora Star wasn’t a warship. It was carrying Germans and Italians.’
Christine gave a small shrug. ‘Well, perhaps someone ought to have told ruddy Hitler that.’ She reached for her cigarettes, her hands trembling as she lit one. ‘Apparently there’s a crowd of women down at the docks already, waiting for news, daft sods. More than likely they’ll be ruddy lucky to get a body back, never mind news, and it won’t be here they’ll dock, more likely somewhere up in Scotland.’ She spoke with all the authority of a sailor’s wife.
‘At least the Grenellis weren’t on board.’ Rosie felt guilty even saying that when so many families would have had men on the ship. ‘I’m going to go round and see them,’ she announced. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’
Christine shook her head. ‘We won’t be welcome there, Rosie,’ she warned. ‘If I was you I’d stay away.’
‘I can’t do that. Not now that this has happened. And anyway, I don’t understand why they don’t want to be friends with us any more.’ When her mother made no response she told her fiercely, ‘I’ve got to go round; it wouldn’t be right not to.’ None of the Grenelli men would have been on board the Arandora Star but there were bound to have been men on the ship whom the family knew and Rosie felt she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least go round and offer her sympathy and her help.
‘Why don’t you leave it until after your tea?’ Christine suggested. ‘There might have been something on the wireless by then.’
Rosie shook her head. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. Not now …’ she said, rushing out of the door.
As she slipped down the alleyway that led to the Grenellis’ back door, Rosie could see Father Doyle up ahead of her, stepping into the home of one of the Italian families. Seconds later the fine hairs on Rosie’s skin lifted at the unnerving sound of a woman’s single solitary anguished scream of denial. The grief it held was like a physical blow.
Outside the Grenellis’ back door Rosie hesitated. Her palms were sticky with sweat. What was she going to do if Bella’s mother answered and slammed the door in her face or, even worse, started to shout at her? She took a deep breath, wiped her hands on her skirt and then knocked on the door before she could lose her nerve.
To her relief it was Bella who opened it, but there was no smile of welcome in her eyes or lifting of her mouth. Instead she looked as blankly at Rosie as though she had been a stranger.
‘We’ve heard the news. I had to come,’ Rosie began in a rush. ‘I know that Carlo and Aldo and Granddad Giovanni weren’t on board, but—’
Bella looked at her and then said bleakly, ‘They were on board.’
Rosie’s heart jerked. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘You said … you told me yourself that Granddad Giovanni was coming home and that your father and Aldo were going to be interned on the Isle of Man.’
‘They were, but some … someone my father owed a favour to asked if they would swap places with them.’ The words came jerkily as though it hurt her to say them.
‘I don’t understand …’
‘Families were being broken up, fathers sent to the Isle of Man, sons sent to Canada, brothers and cousins separated. Our most important men held a meeting at Huyton and it was decided to change around the papers everyone had been given so that families could stay together. There was one family … an important family in our community to whom my father owed … loyalty who had pieces of paper for the Arandora Star.’
‘But the Arandora Star was sailing for Canada,’ Rosie protested. ‘And Grandfather Giovanni is so old, surely—’
‘It was a matter of duty,’ Bella told Rosie fiercely, ‘a matter of honour; Grandfather agreed that my father had no choice. That is what my mother said. We only found out last night that they were to sail. There was a message …’
‘No,’ Rosie repeated. A wave of sickening heat surged over her and then retreated, leaving her feeling icy cold and trembling violently. She desperately wanted to sit down. But how could she give in to her weakness when Bella was standing there looking so in control of herself? ‘Maybe they weren’t on the Arandora Star? I’ve heard that there is another ship sailing tomorrow. Maybe—’
‘No. We know they sailed on the Arandora Star.’
‘There will be survivors,’ Rosie told her eagerly. ‘Maybe—’
‘My grandfather can’t swim; he is old; they were put in the very bottom of the ship. This is what we know and what we have been told. The German sailors, they will have survived, but not our men.’
‘You can’t know that,’ Rosie protested. ‘Bella, you mustn’t give up hope. Not yet.’
‘Who are you to tell us not to give up hope?’ Bella rounded on her bitterly. ‘We should not need to have hope. Our men should not have been taken away and imprisoned. They should not have been sent to Canada. I will never forget what your country has done to us, Rosie, and I will never forgive it. My mother is right – you are all our enemies.’
‘Bella, that isn’t true.’ Rosie was trembling with the force of her emotions.
‘Isn’t it? Ask your father what he thinks of us, Rosie; ask those men who rioted against us and destroyed our homes. Go and ask them if they are our friends.’
‘My father wouldn’t have wanted this. He’s a sailor. No sailor would ever want something like this to happen.’ She knew that that was true, but she also knew that Bella was right and that her father had never really understood her mother’s friendship with the Grenellis.
Bella gave a small uncaring shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter much any more. We are leaving Liverpool as soon as it can be arranged. We have relatives in Manchester who will take us in, for how are we to earn a living now when there is no sugar for us to make ice cream and no men to sell it? You’d better go,’ she added coolly. ‘My mother will be coming downstairs in a minute and if she knows that you are here she won’t be pleased.’
Rosie wasn’t quite sure how she managed to get home. She certainly couldn’t remember walking there. She stood in the middle of the shabby parlour and told her mother emotionally, ‘I’ve just seen Bella. They were on board, all three of them – her father, Grandfather Giovanni and Aldo.’ And then her whole body was shaking, racked by the sobs that seemed to be being torn away from her heart itself.
‘Stop that.’
The sharp slap her mother gave her shocked her into a stunned silence. Her cheek burned. Slowly she lifted her hand to touch it.
Her mother’s
