get yourself off home, and make sure you stay there, young Rosie,’ Tom told her grimly, straightening the chinstrap of his helmet, his usually friendly face looking very stern. ‘It isn’t safe for you to be out with these young hotheads on the loose, creating trouble for decent honest folk.’
‘What’s happening to … ?’ Rosie began, but the noise from the mob was growing in volume and the policemen had already started to hurry towards it.
But instead of going home, Rosie scurried down to the Grenellis’, going round to the back door as she always did and calling out as she knocked on it.
‘It’s me – Rosie.’ She couldn’t bring herself just to walk in unannounced. even after all these years and countless admonishings from the Grenellis to do so.
The door was opened immediately, and Rosie was almost pulled inside by Bella’s grandfather.
‘Did you see what’s happening, Rosie?’ Bella asked her anxiously from the back of the kitchen. ‘We heard shouts and breaking glass.’
‘It’ll be them crazy mad Inglesi who was down here earlier full of drink, yelling that we’re all Fascists,’ Sofia, Bella’s mother, always sharper-tongued than her gentler sister, Maria, answered tersely.
‘Well, you can’t blame ’em for what they’re thinking, not with bloody Mussolini doing what he’s done,’ Rosie’s mother announced, putting out her cigarette and almost immediately lighting another one as she leaned against the wall, constantly stealing quick furtive glances towards the door.
Despite the fact that it was June, the room seemed unfamiliarly shadowed in some way, and shrouded in an atmosphere that was a mixture of confused helpless anger and growing apprehension.
Rosie’s father was always saying what a beautiful girl her mother had been, and she was still good-looking now, Rosie admitted, although privately she couldn’t help wishing that her mother wouldn’t dye her brown hair such a brash blonde, nor wear such a bright red lipstick. She had seen the way other people looked at Christine and it made her feel both angry and protective. Her mother made no secret of the fact that she liked a good time: she loved dancing, and Rosie had often heard her asking Maria if she minded if she borrowed her Aldo so that she could go down to the Grafton for a dance.
No one was thinking about dancing now though, as the sounds from outside grew louder and ever closer.
‘We’ll be all right,’ Carlo tried to reassure them. ‘It will be those with shops they’ll be going for.’
‘How could anyone do something like this?’ Rosie protested.
‘They’re doing it because we’re Italian,’ Sofia told her. ‘If I was you, Christine, I’d take meself home. It’d be much safer for you and your Rosie there, that’s for sure. After all, you aren’t Italian, are you?’
Inexplicably there was a mounting tension between her mother and Sofia that Rosie didn’t understand and for the first time she felt uncomfortably like an outsider to their close-knit family group.
‘I saw Tom Byers on the way here and he said it was just a few hotheads, and that they’d soon have it sorted out,’ she offered, in an attempt to give some reassurance and dissolve the tension, but as she spoke the noise from outside became so loud that she couldn’t even hear Bella’s response.
Giovanni and Carlo exchanged anxious looks and, as always in times of great emotion, Giovanni reverted to Italian, gesticulating wildly as he spoke.
‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ Rosie repeated, trying not to wince as she heard the threatening sound of shouted abuse mingling with that of breaking glass. It was so loud now, as though a full-blown riot were taking place: angry voices, the sound of blows, breaking glass and police whistles.
‘It’s because Mussolini is joining Hitler, Rosie,’ Bella explained to her, raising her voice so that she could be heard above the din.
‘I know about Mussolini but why should that mean—’
‘Some people look for any excuse to make trouble,’ Sofia told Rosie. ‘They think that because we are Italian we are now their enemy. They forget that our children play with their children, that we have sons who are wearing the same uniforms as theirs. It’s all right, Mamma.’ She tried to comfort Lucia, who was looking anxiously at the door and crossing herself, whilst saying that she wished she had never left Italy.
‘You’d better go next door, Carlo, and make sure that Giovanna is all right,’ Sofia instructed her husband. ‘She’ll be on her own with the babies because Arno’s gone over to Manchester to see his brother. Tell her she’s welcome to come here if she wants. And if you see any police about, ask them what they’re doing, letting this happen.’
Despite the gravity of the situation, Rosie couldn’t help smiling slightly as she listened to Sofia bossing her husband around.
Carlo had almost reached the back door when the sound of someone banging loudly on it made them all gasp.
They each let out a breath when they heard Aldo’s voice calling out, ‘Maria, it’s me, Aldo. Let me in.’
Maria opened the door, but it was Christine who was first at Aldo’s side, leaning weakly against his broad shoulder and saying weepily how afraid she was. Almost comically opposite in looks to his brother-in-law, Aldo was tall, and broad-shouldered, lithe, with a dark, smouldering gaze and a dismissive way of treating Maria that made Rosie feel for her.
‘Aldo, Carlo’s just going round to bring Giovanna back here. You’d better go with him, in case she needs some help with the bambini,’ Sofia instructed her brother-in-law.
Although no one ever said anything – like all Italian families, they were intensely loyal to one another – Rosie suspected that Sofia was not overfond of her sister’s husband.
‘There’s no point,’ he answered her dismissively, causing Maria to pale and Sofia to suck in her breath.
‘It’s too late? They’ve been 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