hurt?’ Maria exclaimed in distress. ‘Oh, Aldo …’
‘Did I say that?’ he answered irritably. ‘They’re fine. Giovanna’s brother was at the club. He walked up the street with me.’ The women exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Rosie, as ever, automatically fell into the familiar pattern of echoing the huge sigh and expressive gestures of the others.
‘Here, Mamma, drink this,’ Maria was instructing la Nonna whilst she hurried to get a small glass and pour her some of the special restorative ‘cordial’ that came all the way from ‘home’ and which was normally only served on very special occasions or when someone was in need of a tonic. ‘Rosie cara, help Bella to make us all some coffee, will you?’ Maria called back over her shoulder.
Rosie needed no second instruction. It felt so comforting to go through the routine she and Bella had learned together as little girls. Rosie could still remember how proud she had been when she had been allowed to serve la Nonna and Grandfather Grenelli the first cups of the coffee she had made all by herself.
These days there was no need for her to concentrate or worry as she ground the beans, releasing their wonderful rich dark aroma into the kitchen, and then waited for the kettle to boil. The Grenellis preferred to use an old-fashioned range rather than a modern stove, and Rosie admitted that there was something comforting about the warmth it gave out.
The giving of a medicinal cordial followed by the family gathering round the cordial drinker to offer comments on his or her condition, whilst they drank coffee was a part of Rosie’s growing up and she took comfort from it now.
When her father was at home Rosie always drank tea because she knew it was what he preferred, but secretly she preferred coffee. Here in the Grenelli household she was more Italian than English, whilst at home she was very much her father’s daughter. She had, she knew, inherited his calm temperament, and his abhorrence of any kind of flashy showiness. They shared the same sense of humour, laughing over silly jokes on the wireless on programmes such as ITMA, which had her mother complaining that they were both daft. The delicacy of Rosie’s bone structure came, her father had always claimed, from his side of the family, along with her warm smile. Rosie cherished the closeness between them, and even though she envied Bella the closeness of her loving family, Rosie wouldn’t have changed her dad for anyone.
As Maria handed her husband the coffee Rosie had just poured, he told them, ‘And Giovanna’s brother is taking them back home with him. I saw the police helping them out the back way.’ As always, Aldo barely acknowledged Maria, taking the coffee from her without bothering to thank her and then turning back to Rosie’s mother, who was still clinging fiercely to his arm, to say, ‘Don’t worry, Chrissie, there’s nothing to be afraid of now. The police have moved the rioters on.’
La Nonna muttered something to Sofia that Rosie couldn’t catch, but which caused Maria to shake her head gently.
‘Trust you not to be here when Maria needed you, Aldo,’ Sofia told her brother-in-law scornfully.
‘I couldn’t get back. We had to stay where we were for our own safety, until the police had rounded up the troublemakers. It weren’t just winders they were battering, you know,’ Aldo answered her defensively. ‘When I came up the street there was a man lying in the gutter who the mob had left for dead. Police were waiting on an ambulance to tek him to the hospital.’
‘And with you, of course, your own safety always comes before that of anyone else, especially poor Maria,’ Sofia snapped.
‘Sofia, please,’ Maria protested. ‘It is not fair to blame Aldo. He is not responsible for those who are rioting.’
‘Isn’t it time you went home, Christine?’ Sofia said to Rosie’s mother sharply. ‘You aren’t Italian, after all,’ she repeated, ‘and you’ll be safer behind your own front door.’
Again a charged look passed between her mother and Sofia, which Rosie couldn’t interpret.
Christine gave a small shrug. ‘Walk us ’ome, will you, Aldo?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t fancy walking back on me own, not with all them fellas running riot.’
A strange, almost prickly silence filled the small room, broken only when Maria bowed her head and said softly, ‘Yes, Aldo, you must go with Christine and Rosie, and make sure they get home safely. May the Blessed Virgin keep you safe, Rosie,’ she added, her words muffled against Rosie’s hair as she hugged her tightly and kissed her.
Tears burned the backs of Rosie’s eyes as she returned the hug and then followed her mother and Aldo, who was already opening the back door.
The street was now quiet, its silence making the devastation that lay before them all the more shocking. The road was scattered with broken glass and doors that had been ripped off their hinges. Rosie’s stomach lurched when she saw the bright red streaks of blood on the glass. She hoped fiercely they belonged to the men who had done the attacking and not to those who had been attacked.
‘Jesus, it looks as though bloody Hitler’s bin bombing the place,’ Rosie heard her mother whisper to Aldo, as she clung tightly to his arm. Rosie, though, hung back, reluctant to take hold of his other arm. For some reason she was unable to understand, Rosie had never felt entirely comfortable in Aldo’s company. In fact, when she witnessed the way he treated poor Maria, she couldn’t understand how her mother could make such a fuss of him and, even worse, openly flirt with him in front of Maria herself. But she knew better than to take her mother to task for her behaviour. Christine made her own rules and didn’t take kindly to being criticised, plus she had a keen temper on her when she was angered. Rosie had heard the arguments between her parents when her father had attempted to reason with her. On more than one occasion Rosie had witnessed Christine throwing whatever came to hand at her husband, including the crockery, before storming out, slamming the back door behind her and leaving Rosie and her father to pick up the broken shards.
They had almost reached their own front door, which was several doors down from the Grenellis’. Their house, unlike those of the street’s Italian families, looked uncared for, the step dusty and undonkey-stoned, and the paintwork dull instead of the bright blues, reds and yellows favoured by the Italians, which, like the window boxes of summer bedding plants in their equally rich colours they loved so much, were reminders of the warm, vibrant Mediterranean they had left behind. Stepping into the streets of Little Italy was like turning a corner into a brilliantly vivid special place where all the colours seemed brighter, the song birds sang more sweetly, the laughter echoed more happily, and even the air itself, scented with the rich smells of Italy, seemed warmer. But, best of all, the whole area, or so it seemed to Rosie, was imbued with a special atmosphere of love.
Set against this backdrop, her own home seemed unwelcomingly drab. No carefully tended window boxes of flowers adorned her mother’s windowsills, the sound of singing and laughter never wafted out onto the air from open windows, no appetising smells of delicious pasta and soups wafted from her mother’s kitchen, unless Rosie herself was making them, which wasn’t very often because her father didn’t like ‘all that foreign muck’, so when she cooked for him Rosie stuck to the traditional English dishes.
Christine modelled herself on her favourite screen actresses, like Rita Hayworth, who were known for their glamour rather than their domestic virtues, rather than on a respected Italian mamma like la Nonna.
‘Rosie, run over to Currie Street and fetch us a fish supper from Pod’s, will yer?’ Rosie heard her mother demanding. She was still leaning on Aldo’s arm and had handed him her door key, intimating that she felt too weak to unlock the door herself. But not so weak that she didn’t want her supper, Rosie reflected wryly
