Italian folk in our street were when their boys joined up. St Joseph’s Boxing Club was practically empty, so many of the boys who go there had enlisted. The Fuscos a few doors down from us lost their only son at Dunkirk,’ she added quietly. Her eyes clouded at the thought.
The whole country was still in shock over the dreadful news they had all heard about the British Expeditionary Force, the very best of the country’s experienced soldiers. Trapped when Hitler had swept into Belgium and then France, the British soldiers had been forced to retreat to the French beaches of Dunkirk. Thousands of them had died there and thousands upon thousands more would also have perished or been taken prisoner had it not been for the brave men who had risked their own lives over and over again to sail across the Channel to bring their fellow countrymen safely home.
Rosie had seen the newsreels, showing that valiant rescue operation. She had seen too the heart-wrenching celluloid images of the haggard, grey-faced men in their uniforms, heads bent in shame and defeat. Mr Churchill’s stirring words, though, had raised everyone’s spirits and given the fighting men of Great Britain back their pride, as he had turned defeat into pride that so many brave men had been saved. But the terrible events of Dunkirk had left a shadow over the whole country, along with the fear of Hitler’s threatened invasion.
Just thinking about the war made Rosie feel so afraid. And not just for herself. Her father was a merchant seaman, sailing under the ‘Red Duster’, as the Red Ensign was nicknamed. All through the winter, merchant ships had made their way across the Atlantic in convoys, bringing much-needed supplies to the country, but the loss of life and shipping had been severe, and Rosie could never relax when her father was at sea.
Although the dress shop closed at five o’clock, the girls in the sewing room were expected to work on until six. Normally Rosie, who as a trainee was mainly working on alterations to start with, loved her work, adjusting pretty clothes in beautiful material, coming up with interesting trimmings and using her skill as a seamstress to excellent effect, but tonight she was anxious to leave so that she could hurry home and find out more about the news Nancy had referred to. Their Italian neighbours had been reluctant to talk about the likelihood of Mussolini joining Hitler. All of them still had family back in Italy, and Rosie, knowing how close-knit Italian families were, could only imagine how anxious they must be feeling.
The shock of being at war, and most especially the Dunkirk evacuation, was at the forefront of everyone’s mind and had brought a sombreness to people, but it had also brought a resoluteness, Rosie recognised, as she stepped out into the early evening sunshine and headed for home. Rosie’s parents rented a small house in Gerard Street. Like the children of their Italian neighbours, Rosie had attended Holy Cross school and worshipped at Holy Cross itself.
It wouldn’t take her very long to walk home, and although her stomach growled hungrily as she drew level with her favourite chippy, she refused to give in to the temptation to go in, telling herself as she turned into Springfield Street that she’d come back later after she’d seen Bella and get herself a tuppenny dinner. It wasn’t likely there’d be dinner on the table, after all. Her mother, Christine, wasn’t the domesticated sort, and Rosie had learned from a young age that when her father was at sea she had to look after herself. Rosie expected that right now Christine would be round at the Grenellis’, smoking and laughing with the men, whilst Maria bustled around her kitchen making dinner for everyone. Sometimes Rosie found it hard to understand what her undomesticated, often hard to please mother had in common with gentle, homely Maria, and why Maria put up with a friend who was as difficult and selfish as Rosie knew her mother to be. As a little girl she had often wished secretly that Maria was her mother, loving the way she would sweep her up onto her lap and cuddle her, something Christine never did.
Her mother practically lived at the Grenellis’ when Rosie’s father was away at sea. Rosie imagined that Christine, who had left her large family of brothers, sisters and cousins behind when she had left Preston to come and live in Liverpool as a young wife, missed them so much that she naturally preferred the hustle and bustle of her neighbours’ house to the solitude of her own home. Rosie knew how her father had fallen in love with her mother at first sight when he had been visiting a fellow sailor who lived in that town, and how he had refused to take no for an answer and had finally persuaded her mother to marry him. She had often complained to Rosie, though, about how lonely she had felt when she had first arrived in Liverpool, knowing no one there but her new husband, who had promptly returned to sea, leaving her on her own. It had been the Grenellis – especially sweet-natured, gentle Maria – who had taken pity on her and taken her under their wing, inviting her into their home and offering her their friendship.
Rosie suspected that it was because of that friendship, and her reluctance to be parted from such longstanding and kind friends, that her mother had refused all her father’s attempts to persuade her to move out of the Gerard Street area, with its small shabby houses, and up to a bigger and smarter house on Chestnut Close between Edge Hill and Wavertree where his widowed sister already lived. Her father was a hard worker and, unlike many other seamen, neither drank nor gambled away his wages, so they had the money to go, but her mother wouldn’t even entertain the idea of moving.
Rosie had grown up hearing her parents arguing about it, and then pulling the bed covers over her ears to block out the sound. She often felt guilty for loving her father so much more than she did her mother. But her mother treated her sometimes as though she resented her rather than loved her. It wasn’t that she was ever actively unkind to her, Rosie admitted; her mother simply wasn’t like that. But neither was she the kind of mother who openly showed tenderness and love for her child, and Rosie had learned very young not to go to her mother for cuddles. If she did, Christine was more than likely to refuse to pick her up, telling her instead to go away.
Things were better between them now that Rosie was almost grown up, and these days Rosie found herself behaving towards her mother as though she were the child, and in need of looking after, as well as taking over most of the domestic responsibilities.
The love she hadn’t got from her mother, though, she certainly had received from her adoptive Italian family. Maria had no children of her own but her comfortable knee and warm arms had always been there for Rosie throughout her childhood. And whilst her mother had often spoken critically and sometimes even unkindly to her friend about her plumpness and her homely ways, Rosie loved Maria deeply. She had sensed too, in that way that children can, that Maria loved her. It had been Maria she could remember singing lullabies to her and telling her stories, Maria to whom she had wanted to hurry after school so that she could tell her about her day.
Giovanni and Lucia, Bella’s grandparents, had first come to Liverpool as a very young couple, with the encouragement of other family members already living in the city. Both Maria and Sofia had been born in Liverpool, although Giovanni had insisted on them marrying young men from his and Lucia’s old village. Maria and Sofia had both been new brides at the same time as Christine, and Rosie’s first memories were of being in the Grenellis’ busy, aromatic kitchen, playing with Bella whilst the grown-ups worked and gossiped around the kitchen table. Rosie soaked up the Italian language like la Nonna’s famous ciabatta soaked up the pungent olive oil that was lovingly sent from Italy four times a year. La Nonna, as the whole family called Lucia, could speak English but she preferred her native tongue and, especially whilst cooking or eating, the rest of the family followed suit. Over the years, sitting on the floor, listening attentively, wide-eyed and enthralled, Rosie learned the history of the Grenelli family from la Nonna.
Rosie had been so entranced by la Nonna’s stories that she had asked her school teacher, Miss Fletcher, to show her where Naples and Rome were in the dusty, slightly worn pages of a school atlas, and had then lovingly traced the whole country of Italy from that map, marking out first the cities la Nonna had named, and then the Picinisco area itself. When she had seen what Rosie was doing, Miss Fletcher had helped her to chart a dotted line all the way from Picinisco across the sea to Liverpool. Then when this had been done, under Miss Fletcher’s guidance, Rosie
