that Sally had changed the subject because she did not want to talk about her father, Olive began to gather up their empty cups and plates. She couldn’t really, after all, expect someone who had been as close to her mother as Sally had obviously been to understand the ache of emptiness and the fear of aloneless that came with the loss of a husband or wife, or to accept that sometimes the widowed partner felt driven by a need to fill that empty gap in their lives, especially when it was a man who had been widowed. Women were expected by their own sex to wear their widow-hood as a form of respectability; men, on the other hand, were seen by that sex as poor creatures in need of the comfort that only a new wife could give. A widow’s respectability was a fragile garment, easily tarnished and damaged, her behaviour constantly under the eagle-eyed inspection of other women. Olive could still remember the lectures she had been given by her mother-in-law in the months following her own widowhood, about the need to preserve her ‘respectability’ and that of her late husband’s family. She had had no desire to marry again, though, Olive admitted. All she had wanted to do then was pour her love into her precious daughter. Then? What she meant was that all she had ever wanted to do was pour her love into Tilly, Olive told herself firmly.
‘Well, I don’t know why you’ve wasted your money on giving me this stuff, Dulcie, I really don’t. Mind you, Edith can probably make use of it.’
Dulcie stared at her mother in outrage, opening her mouth to tell her that if she didn’t want her present then Dulcie would take it back because there was no way that Edith was going to have it, her angry words converted to a yell of pain when Rick very deliberately nipped her arm.
‘I’ll have a bruise on my arm now,’ she complained to him half an hour later as they left the house together, Dulcie to return to Article Row and Rick heading for the local lads’ boxing club to meet up with his friends, ‘What did you have to go and pinch me like that for anyway?’
‘You know why,’ Rick told her.
‘Mum had no right saying she was going to give my present to her to Edith,’ Dulcie objected. ‘Why does ruddy Edith have to have everything? Mum said that she was going to give her that scent you gave her as well.’
‘That’s Mum’s way, and making a song and dance about it won’t change anything,’ Rick advised as they set off down the street. ‘Edith’s always been her favourite.’
‘Well, I don’t know why,’ Dulcie complained, still aggrieved.
‘Ma’s proud of Edith, Dulcie, because of her singing. Remember how when we were kids Ma used to tell us about how she’d won a prize for singing herself when she was at school?’
Dulcie nodded.
‘Well, I reckon Ma favours Edith because of that. She wants Edith to have what she never did.’
‘A greasy-hands-all-over-you agent, you mean?’ Dulcie asked cynically.
Rick sighed and gave her a rueful look. ‘You know the trouble with you, Dulcie, is that you can’t just let things be. You’ve got to make your point, and have the last word, even if it means getting folks’ backs up.’
They’d crossed the road and turned into another street whilst they’d been talking, any attempt Dulcie might have made to respond to Rick’s accusation made impossible by the growing volume of noise.
‘What’s that?’ Dulcie protested, raising her voice.
‘Sounds like someone’s having a bit of a set-to,’ Rick told her unnecessarily as they both heard the sound of breaking glass joining the chants and jeers of angry raised voices.
Street fights weren’t an uncommon occurrence in their neighbourhood, so Dulcie shrugged. Then they turned the corner and she could see the gang of youths up ahead.
‘That’s Mr Manelli’s ice-cream shop they’re throwing bricks at.’ Dulcie stopped walking. ‘They’ve got no right doing that. Ever so nice to us when we were kids, Mr Manelli always was, giving us an extra scoop of ice cream when we took Ma’s baking bowl round on a Saturday to get it filled up for tea.’
As several more bricks were thrown into the broken window they heard a woman’s screams from inside the shop.
‘Come on, Rick. We’ve got to stop them.’
The sight of Dulcie, of all people, advancing on the jeering violent crowd of boys held Rick motionless for a second. But then he set off after her, calling out to the attacking mob, ‘Come on, lads, what’s going on?’ The firm sound of his voice and the fact that he was in uniform were enough to bring a momentary halt to the attack. The youths turned to look at him, whilst Dulcie, to his bemusement, marched in between them and the shop front, her hands on her hips.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, doing summat like this to Mr Manelli,’ she told them. ‘What’s he ever done to you?’
‘He’s an Eyetie and a traitor, that’s what,’ the largest of the youths told Dulcie glowering at her. ‘A ruddy Fascist, and him and his family want running out of the street and putting in prison like all the rest of his kind.’
‘Give over, lads,’ Rick counselled. ‘We all know Mr Manelli – he’s no traitor.’
‘Well, if that’s the case then how come the police have took him and the other Eyeties off to prison?’ one of the other youths demanded, giving Rick a challenging look. ‘My dad heard it from the police themselves. They’ve had orders to round up all the Eyeties and shove them in goal on account of them being Fascists and spies. ’Oo knows what’s bin going on inside there?’
The mood of the mob was turning ugly, Rick recognised. If they chose to go on the attack again he certainly couldn’t stop them by himself, and anyway, his first duty was to protect his sister, who was still standing in front of the smashed shop window.
Mentally Rick cursed Dulcie for getting them involved. He had no quarrel with the Manellis, but he couldn’t hold the mob off by himself if they chose to turn their anger against him and Dulcie. Out of the corner of his eye he saw their local policeman crossing the top of the street. Quickly he hailed him, relieved to see him stop in mid-stride.
The sight of a burly policeman coming towards them at the run was enough to frighten off the mob, who quickly dispersed, leaving Rick to explain to Constable Green what had happened.
‘That’s the trouble when feelings start running high. Folks start taking the law into their own hands,’ was his verdict on Rick’s explanation of the mob’s attack on the ice-cream shop.
Over an hour later, when Rick and Dulcie were finally on their own again, a still visibly terrified and sobbing Mrs Manelli having been handed over by Constable Green into the care of her neighbours and fellow Italians, Rick was finally free to ask his sister, ‘What was that all about?’
‘What do you mean?’ Dulcie affected not to understand him.
Rick heaved a patient sigh and pointed out, ‘We could have had those young idiots turning on us. Why take that risk?’
‘Because I felt like it,’ was the only answer Dulcie would give him.
Women and sisters – especially this particular sister, Rick thought in bewilderment – he would never understand them.
As she made her way back to Article
