Durham Trilogy 02. The Darkening Skies

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Anna and Domenica gasped together and Nonna Maria woke up with the noise. ‘What is going on?’ she asked in confusion.

  Arturo stepped between Cummings and Joe. ‘I think you better go, Signor Cummings. I’m sure Joe has understood your message.’

  ‘Aye, well he better have,’ Alfred answered and pulled at his hat. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ He turned and pushed past Paolo, disappearing down the steps.

  For a long moment there was complete silence, then everyone began to talk at once.

  ‘How could you, Joe?’ Domenica accused. ‘You have brought shame to Papa and Mamma with this affair.’

  ‘Oh, Joseph,’ his mother trembled. ‘Promise you will not see her again? That terrible man - with his wicked threats!’

  ‘What is wrong?’ Nonna asked fretfully. ‘Tell me what is going on?’ Paulo gave Joe a sad look and, with a shake of his head, descended to the shop, where Sylvia and Rosa worked, oblivious of the row.

  ‘Tell Rosa she cannot bring Sara here again,’ Domenica decreed.

  ‘Joseph, you will make your mamma white-haired—’

  ‘Please, be quiet all of you!’ Arturo ordered. He turned and looked sternly at Joe. ‘Joseph Arturo, come downstairs with me, please. We will discuss this alone.’

  Reluctantly, Joe followed him down to the back-shop where Arturo pulled out a stool by the table and sat, indicating for his son to join him. Joe hesitated, unnerved by his father’s silent disapproval, resentful of his family’s frightened reaction.

  ‘Paolo needs help in the shop,’ Joe countered.

  ‘Paolo can manage five minutes more. Please, sit with your father.’ He was adamant, so Joe straddled the stool opposite, drumming his fingers impatiently on the seat. His father drew out a packet of Woodbines and, to Joe’s surprise, offered one to him. They both knew he smoked, but never in the house. Joe took one and leaned forward for his father to light it.

  ‘We’ve never had much chance to chat, you and I.’ Arturo leaned his heavy frame on the table between them, clasping his cigarette between hairy fingers. ‘That is my fault, I admit. We should have talked more, you and I.’

  ‘You’ve always been busy, Papa,’ Joe shrugged, beginning to calm down, ‘working too hard.’

  His father opened his hands in a fatalistic gesture. ‘It’s necessary to work hard - we are a big family,’ Arturo replied, studying him, ‘but I should have found the time for you, Joseph, you’ve always been more - independent - than the others.’

  Joe blew smoke. When his father said independent he meant unruly.

  Arturo continued gravely, ‘You’ve never told me about your friends - where you go - what you do - always rushing about on that motorcycle - vroom, vroom! It makes your mother worry. And now this business with Sara…’

  ‘There’s no need for Mamma to worry,’ Joe flicked ash on the floor and took another deep drag on his cigarette.

  ‘Isn’t there?’ Arturo asked softly. Joe shifted uncomfortably. He preferred it when his father was just plain angry with him and they could get their disagreement over with quickly and be done with it. Rosa dashed in with a tray of dirty glasses and caught sight of her brother and father sitting tensely opposite each other. Her face registered surprise and then concern.

  ‘Leave those, Rosa,’ her father waved her back into the shop, ‘you can do them in a minute.’ Rosa scurried back to the parlour and closed the door. Joe felt the heat of his burning cigarette nearing his fingers. He could hear the muffled rattle of plates and the hiss and gurgle of the coffee machine from the next room and the faint chatter from the women upstairs. But the humdrum sounds only heightened the hush in the back-shop and his own disquiet.

  ‘I worry for you, too,’ Arturo continued at last. ‘And for Sara.’

  Joe reddened with guilt. ‘So what if I have been seeing a bit of Rosa’s friend?’ he answered defensively. ‘She’s a canny lass - you and Mamma like her. And Sara’s been a good friend to us - helping around the place when we’re busy - you’ve said so yourself a dozen times. What harm is there in being friends?’

  His father nodded. ‘It’s true what you say - Sara is a kind girl - and Rosa is a happier daughter since they became friends. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no harm in a little friendship,’ he stressed the word, ‘but her uncle is not a good man - he has made threats against us. I might have turned the blind eye if Signor Cummings had not made his objections so plain, but he has. I cannot risk his damaging our business or threatening the family.’

  Joe stood up in annoyance. ‘And you’re going to let him insult us and frighten us into turning our backs on Sara? She lost her father just a few months ago - she is far from her family - are you saying I can’t see her, either?’

  ‘I think it would be best if you did not,’ Arturo remained calm. ‘Sara is a nice girl, si. I can understand your attraction, but there are other girls - more suitable girls, Joseph. Cummings is right about one thing - Sara is not one of us, she does not understand our ways. Your mother - she would never accept her as anything more than Rosa’s friend, you must see that?’

  ‘No, I don’t! Sara is just as good as any of your Italian girls!’ Joe answered angrily, stung into defending Sara by his father’s veiled attack. ‘I’m a working man - I can see who I like, can’t I?’

  His father stood up slowly, his expression stern. ‘I can’t stop yon seeing her if that’s what you wish,’ he admitted, ‘I can’t watch you every minute of the day. But for the sake of the family, Joe, remember what Cummings has said—’

  ‘For the sake of your precious business, you mean!’ Joe exploded.

  ‘No, not just for that!’ his father’s voice rose too. ‘Think of the trouble you make for Sara, too. Signor Cummings is an important man in Whitton Grange - I’ve heard people talk of him - Sergeant Turnbull is his friend. He could make life difficult for us, Joe. With all this talk of war - it makes me nervous - we are not as safe here as perhaps we thought…’ Joe looked at his father in astonishment.

  ‘What has war got to do with me and Sara, Papa?’ Joe said in exasperation.

  ‘Nothing I hope,’ Arturo sighed. ‘Listen, Joseph,’ he was quietly grim, ‘be careful. And just remember, when the time comes, you will marry a good Italian girl like Paolo has done. Don’t cut yourself off from your family Joe - or the business.’

  The threat was so veiled Joe wondered if he had misunderstood, but the look of censure in his father’s face confirmed it. He could play around if he did not get caught, but they would cast him into the cold if he brought disgrace on the family again. For a moment they glowered at each other across the table and then Joe kicked his stool away and marched out of the back shop into the unrelenting July rain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sara found Joe crouched on the steps of the deserted Palace Picture House, looking morose in the rain with a soggy cigarette stuck to his bottom lip. He seemed oblivious to the straggle of villagers hurrying by.

  ‘Joe!’ Sara sat down beside him on the cold step, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’ve got some terrible news - it’s Uncle Alfred - he knows all about us - I’m not to see you - and Domenica’s wedding - he says I can’t go! He’s gone round to tell your father about us. What shall we do, Joe?’ she gabbled out her story, wanting him to reassure her that all was not really as bad as she imagined.

  Joe dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his boot. He stood up. ‘Come on, we can’t talk here,’ he said shortly, glancing around.

  ‘Then where?’ Sara grabbed his arm. ‘I don’t care if we are seen together.’

  ‘Round the back.’ Joe nodded down the back lane and Sara followed, too unnerved by his sullen appearance to argue. Joe leaned against the wet drab brick of the cinema building and hunched into his jacket.

  ‘He’s told me to stay away from the parlour,’ Sara said morosely, trying to make out the expression on Joe’s half-hidden face. His jaw and nose looked angular and uncompromising, his warm mouth expressionless.
‘We had a terrible row over dinner. I’m supposed to be up in my room, but I climbed out the window.’

  For the first time Joe turned his face towards her and smiled.

  ‘You’re a plucky lass,’ he said, seeking out her hand and squeezing it briefly. ‘I was there when your uncle came round. He insulted my father and me in front of my family.’ Joe’s voice was hard. ‘He even threatened to smash our windows if I saw you again. What sort of man is that?’

  ‘Oh, Joe, I’m sorry!’ Sara answered. ‘I hate him for what he’s done. But can’t your father do anything to persuade him to let us carry on seeing each other? At least we don’t have to pretend to your family anymore.’

  Joe sighed. The mention of his father plunged him into gloom again. He felt torn between his loyalty to his family and his affection for the girl beside him. Why should he have to choose between them? he thought with annoyance. He admitted, reluctantly, that it would be so much easier to court a girl from another Italian family and have the approval of his relations, instead of all this sneaking around trying to meet Sara. No one wanted them to be friends; his own father had made that quite clear and now Alfred Cummings was determined his niece should have nothing to do with the Dimarcos. Joe was offended. Yet it was not Sara’s fault; she was risking further punishment by being with him at that very moment.

  ‘Cummings has given my father a scare,’ Joe’s voice was low. ‘He’s worried about what might happen to the business - and to the family - and he doesn’t want any trouble.’

  Sara’s heart plummeted. Joe’s glum face told her that Mr Dimarco was not pleased at their courtship. ‘Your father doesn’t want us to see each other either, does he?’

  ‘No,’ Joe admitted.

  ‘And your mother? Domenica?’

  Joe shrugged. ‘They’re just old-fashioned - they want me to find a good Italian girl like Sylvia. But that’s not what I want, so what does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters what your family think,’ Sara’s eyes pricked with tears of disappointment. She felt sick as realisation dawned on her. ‘They were never going to accept us seeing each other, were they?’ Sara pressed him. ‘That’s why you put off telling your family, Joe, wasn’t it?’

  Joe let out a sigh. He felt an overwhelming guilt because her words were true; he had dismissed any thoughts of what might happen should his parents discover his relationship with Sara, content to indulge in a summer romance without a thought for the consequences.

  ‘Hey, stop worrying,’ he rallied, gripping her hand tighter, ‘they can’t stop me seeing you - my father said so himself. To hell with what they think!’

  Sara pulled away. ‘Joe! How can we see each other if both your father and my uncle are set on keeping us apart? How could I even look your father or mother in the face, knowing that they don’t think I’m good enough for you!’ She was indignant.

  ‘They don’t think that,’ Joe’s tone grew vexed.

  ‘And I thought Domenica was my friend…’ Sara said, full of hurt.

  ‘She is,’ Joe insisted, ‘it’s just…’

  ‘Just what, Joe?’ Sara demanded. ‘That it’s all right for you to play around with the likes of me - a common Durham lass - but don’t get serious, because I’m not as good as the likes of your sisters? I’m not a spoilt, protected little Italian girl!’ Sara’s voice grew shrill.

  ‘Don’t ever speak about my sisters like that!’ Joe was angry in turn. ‘Rosa knows nothing about this - she doesn’t deserve your insults.’

  Sara turned from him, tight-lipped and resentful. Joe stood with arms folded and stared crossly at the ground.

  Sara began to regret her hasty words, especially against her friend Rosa, but she still boiled with anger at the superior attitude of the Dimarcos. What was worse was that Joe did not take the matter seriously. Who were they but jumped-up shopkeepers anyway? she thought savagely. But no, that was unfair, Sara admitted; she was sinking to the petty level of her uncle and aunt.

  The Dimarcos were generous and kind people, who had shown her great friendship and hospitality when her own relations had begrudged her a place in their home. She hated the thought of not seeing them again, of not being friends with Rosa. But what future was there for her and Joe? she wondered bleakly.

  ‘Perhaps it’s for the best if we don’t see each other for a while - at least until things have calmed down,’ he muttered without looking at her. ‘You’ll only get into trouble with your uncle - and I don’t want him turning up again and causing problems for my family.’

  Sara was bitterly wounded by his brusque words. For all his belief that he was a free spirit, Joe was not going to stick his neck out for her, in the way she was prepared to take risks for him.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ she answered stonily.

  ‘Things will be easier after my sister is married.’ Joe glanced at her, with a bleak smile. ‘Domenica’s always had this thing about me finding an Italian girl - once she’s gone, I’m sure I can win my father round.’

  But Sara did not believe him. Raymond’s words of warning echoed in her mind, ‘They stick with their own - don’t expect it to last.’ Joe was just trying to soothe her with empty promises. Perhaps he was even relieved to have this excuse to finish with her.

  Sara turned from him and began to walk away down the dismal alleyway.

  ‘Where you going?’ Joe called after her.

  ‘I’ll see you around,’ she told him coldly, trying to act with the unconcern of a screen heroine. But unlike a cinema hero he did not try to stop her going and as she tramped out of the lane on to the drizzly main street of grey Whitton Grange, Sara was filled with an overwhelming emptiness.

  Rosa woke on the morning of Domenica’s wedding day feeling sick with nerves. She and her younger brother Bobby went out early to watch the colliery band play down South Street and lead a mass of villagers towards Whitton Station, where special trains had been laid on to take them to the Gala in Durham. Rosa had never attended the Big Meeting, but remembered her schoolfriends talking about the processions and banners and a huge fair, as the most exciting day of the year.

  But today was Domenica’s wedding day and the most exciting in her life! Rosa thought with a rumble of nerves. She had overcome her shock and disappointment over the revelation about Joe and Sara’s deceitful romance, which had threatened to overshadow the wedding. Rosa was hurt that Sara had never confided in her, merely using their friendship as a way of seeing her brother, and she was upset at the way Cummings’s visit had set her family bickering among themselves as to what should be done. With Joe and her father at loggerheads once more, she blamed herself for having introduced Sara into their home in the first place. And to think she had assumed Sara was being courted by Raymond! Rosa thought with annoyance, Raymond must have thought her so rude for the way she had avoided him since the carnival dance. How naive she had been!

  So, on the one occasion she had visited Sergeant’s, Rosa had been cold towards her former friend and ignored Sara’s attempts to speak to her when the elderly grocer went into the storeroom. In future she would be content with the company of her own family and today nothing was going to spoil her enjoyment of Domenica’s marriage, she decided, herding Bobby home to help with the final preparations. She had a beautiful dress to wear and an important part to play in the procession - and she was going to meet Emilio Fella, Pasquale’s best man, for the first time.

  The parlour was transformed for the occasion. The women had been up before daylight setting the trestle tables that Arturo had hired and which had been pushed together in the centre of the shop to provide a long banqueting table around which all the thirty guests would be squeezed. Starched linen cloths hid the rough surfaces and on them cutlery and glasses gleamed, white napkins were shaped into fans and a forest of freshly cut flowers filled the polished room with vibrant colours and scents. Rosa had helped her sister-in-law Sylvia make garlands of paper flowers which they suspended from the ceiling and anchored to the top table
to create a colourful bower behind which the newlyweds would sit, while her mother’s magnificent wedding cake stood in three tiers on the middle of the table.

  Her father was flustering over what wine to bring out first, while Paolo quietly and efficiently saw to the problem. Her mother and Sylvia and Granny Maria had spent many hours preparing the wedding feast, but two girls from the church had been hired for the day to help serve out the food and wash up in the back-shop during the feast.

  Then Bobby shouted that Uncle Davide and Aunt Elvira were arriving in their new car and they dashed out to watch the family draw up in a gleaming black Humber saloon.

  Their student son, Benito, and two of their three daughters were going to be present. Rosa hardly remembered her eldest cousin who had returned to Italy to enter a convent. However, the youngest, Albina, was her own age and unmarried and was also to be a bridesmaid. There was an explosion of greetings and shouts and kisses as the two families reunited, the booming-voiced Uncle Davide clasping his brother Arturo to his solid paunch.

  ‘Elvira!’ Anna Dimarco embraced her bird-like sister-in-law. ‘How was the journey? You are looking so well.’

  ‘Mam, look at Uncle Davide’s new car!’ Bobby interrupted, hopping with excitement around the well-polished motorcar.

  ‘I feel sick in it, if the truth be known,’ Aunt Elvira admitted, ‘but don’t tell Davide.’

  Rosa’s cousin Val who had shocked everyone by insisting on training as a nurse, came over and embraced Domenica.

  ‘I’m glad you could come,’ Domenica said happily, linking arms with her slight, bespectacled cousin.

  ‘So am I,’ Val smiled, ‘but I’ve got to get the train back this afternoon - I’m on nights.’

  ‘But you must stay for the whole day!’ Domenica protested.

  ‘Sorry,’ Val gave an apologetic shrug.

  ‘How can you do it, Val?’ Domenica shuddered. ‘All that illness and mess. Give me a shop to run any day.’

  Rosa eyed plump cousin Albina with caution. ‘Would you like to try on your dress now,’ Rosa urged, ‘in case Sylvia has to alter anything?’