to them or if her father had been part of a large family, but he only had his elder sister, Rosie’s Aunt Maude and her husband, Henry, whom they had seen so rarely that, after his death when she was twelve, Rosie could barely remember what he looked like.
That her mother and her father’s sister did not get on had always been obvious to Rosie, even when she was little. Whenever her mother spoke about ‘your Maude’ to Rosie’s father, she did so in a scathing, slightly high-pitched and angry tone of voice that always made Rosie’s tummy hurt, especially when she saw her father looking so sad and sometimes cross.
As she got older Rosie was told by her mother that her Aunt Maude was a snob who had never wanted Christine to marry her brother. And in fact on more than one occasion her mother had told Rosie that part of the reason she had married Rosie’s father had been ‘to show that snotty bitch what’s what’.
The trouble had started, apparently, when Rosie’s father had taken his new fiancée to Liverpool to introduce her to his sister.
‘Acted like I was a piece of muck wot had got stuck to her shoe, she did, trying to show off wi’ her la-di-da way. If you ask me she never wanted yer dad to marry anyone. Mothered him she had, you see, Rosie, him being the younger and then him going spoilin’ her by giving her half his wages and allus bringin’ her stuff back when he came ashore. Of course she didn’t want him getting married and her gettin’ her nose shoved out of joint. Stands to reason. But your dad’s that soft he couldn’t see that. He thinks she’s perfect and she bloody well isn’t. I’ll bet that husband of hers were right glad to die and escape from her.’
Her mother had always been fond of making outrageous statements of this nature but Rosie had always dreaded her making them when her father was at home in case it sparked off one of their increasingly bitter rows.
‘Then you coming along didn’t help,’ her mother had informed Rosie bluntly, ‘especially when she saw how your dad took to you. She and that husband of hers never had no kiddies of their own and you’d have thought she’d have bin glad to have a little ’un in the family, but not her. Hates you almost as much as she does me.’
Her aunt certainly didn’t like her very much, Rosie was forced to admit. Whenever her father took her to visit, her Aunt Maude’s manner towards her was always cold and disapproving. There was none of the warmth in her aunt’s house that there was in the Grenellis’, even if there was more money. Not that the Grenellis were poor. Giovanni had worked hard for his family, and both his sons-in-law worked in his ice-cream business: small, plump Carlo, who was Sofia’s husband and Bella’s father, with his twinkling eyes and lovely tenor voice, and tall, good-looking Aldo, who spent his spare time like many of the Italian men at St Joseph’s Boxing Club, or in the room at the back of Bonvini’s shop with his fellow paesani, playing cards, and who was married to kind Maria. In the winter the men of the family, all skilled musicians, earned a living entertaining cinema queues and playing at Italian weddings and christenings.
The first thing Rosie noticed as she turned the corner into Springfield Street was the strange silence. The street was empty of the children who would normally have been playing under the watchful eye of their grandmothers. The caged singing birds, trained by some of the Italian families who had brought them from their homeland, were absent from open doorways and the doors themselves were firmly closed where normally they were always left open for friends and family. There were no voluble discussions on the merits of rival products from the women, no occasional mutters of deeper male voices belonging to the card players in the smoke-filled, wine-scented room at the back of the shop. And, most extraordinary of all, the shops themselves were closed – even Jimmy Romeo’s, as the grocery shop owned by the Imundi family was fondly known. Rosie stared at it in bewilderment. Jimmy Romeo’s never closed. On halfdays when other shops locked their doors and hung their signs in the window, and proud fathers walked with their sons to meet up with friends, Jimmy Romeo’s remained open for the men to play their favourite card games of scopa and briscola in the back room, and exchange banter. The street seemed almost alien without the familiar sharp smells of cheese, sausage, olives, coffee and garlic wafting through the open doorways. Something, not fear exactly, but something cold and worrying trickled down Rosie’s spine like the ice cream Dino Cavelli had deliberately dropped down the back of the taffeta dress Maria had smocked so carefully and lovingly for her to wear for her eleventh birthday party. Dino’s parents were close friends of Bella’s, comparaggio in fact, the name Italians gave to those very close friends they had honoured by inviting them into their family. As was the tradition, Dino’s parents had been compare and comare at Bella’s parents’ wedding, and were also Bella’s godparents, just as Bella’s parents were Dino’s. Rosie often envied Bella the security of the traditional Italian network of friends and family that surrounded her, although Bella complained that she found it restrictive and would love the freedom to go out with girlfriends that Rosie enjoyed.
Dino was a tall handsome young man now, and Rosie didn’t mind admitting that she rather enjoyed his flirtatious teasing whenever they happened to meet. Like her own father, he was in the merchant navy, and it always gave her a small frisson of excitement to see him walking down the street towards her when he was back on leave. So far she had resisted his invitations to go to the pictures with him, knowing all too well that he would not have dared to put such an invitation to an Italian girl. It was well known that young Italian men might enjoy a bit of dalliance with English girls but when it came to marriage they were too worried about their mamma’s feelings to do anything other than marry the girl of her choice – and she would always be a good Italian girl.
Not that she wanted to marry Dino – or indeed anyone right now. It was impossible for her to think of falling in love and being happy when the country was at war and so many dreadful things were happening. Her father was the kind of man who believed in protecting his family from the realities of what it meant to sail across the Atlantic, knowing that Hitler’s U-boats were waiting to hunt down and sink the merchant vessels that were bringing the much-needed supplies of food, oil and other necessities back to Liverpool. He might not say to them that each time he sailed he knew that every day he was at sea could be his last, but Rosie knew the truth. In February his ship had been late getting back into Liverpool, because one of the other vessels sailing with it had been torpedoed and sunk with the loss of most of its crew. Rosie had inadvertently overheard her father talking about it with some of the other sailing men from the area.
No, her father might not talk much to her about the dangers he and the other merchant seamen faced, but that did not mean that Rosie was not aware of them. She had felt indignant on her father’s behalf when she had learned that if a merchant ship was lost then the seamen were paid only for the number of days they had been on board it. If a ship was torpedoed and the men had to abandon it, they were paid nothing at all for the days, sometimes even weeks, it might take them to get back to port and find another berth.
Rosie had heard her Aunt Maude berating her father for not getting a shore job where he would be safe and better paid, but as easy-going as her father was, when it came to his work he could not be shifted. He had salt water in his blood, he was fond of saying, and the life of a landlubber was not for him.
Rosie crossed Christian Street into Gerard Street, a small smile curling her mouth as she thought of her father. The smile instantly disappeared the moment she heard angry raised voices, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Half a dozen or more men had suddenly appeared at the far end of the street, some wielding heavy pieces of wood, and yelling out insults and threats as they smashed in the window of an ice-cream shop. As Rosie watched, paralysed with fear, more men joined those attacking the shop, and then several started to march up the street, one of them stopping to throw a brick through a house window, whilst others banged on doors and called out insults. Above the yells of the attacking mob and the sound of glass being trodden underfoot, Rosie could hear a woman screaming and a baby crying. Rose Street police station was only five minutes away. If she ran she could be there in less, Rosie decided, her heart bumping against her chest as she hurried off.
Fortunately she didn’t need to go all the way to the police station, because she met several policemen coming towards her. One of them was their local bobby, Tom Byers, whose son had been at school