Kezzie was intrigued by the vast range of goods on sale. She enjoyed looking at the coloured and patterned labels on some of the boxes and tins, and trying to read them in Italian. Ricardo would spell the words out to her and she repeated them, stumbling over the unfamiliar pronunciation.
He would laugh and hold his head in his hands. ‘It’s that flat Scottish accent,’ he complained. ‘It is most unsuited to our melodious language.’ The only success she had was when there was an ‘r’ in the Italian word. Then she would exaggerate the sound and roll it around her tongue to make it sound out.
On the back of the shelves were rows and rows of fancy glass jars with a colourful range of sweets inside. Tiered stands stood in front, displaying slices of home-made chocolate cake and fudge set upon fancy lace doilies. There were cartons of ice-cream wafers, bottles of olive oil, hams and salami, and a variety of cheeses. The whole smell of the place, the mingling of cultures, the very signs marked on the goods gave it the exciting feel of an exotic bazaar.
In prime place above the counter was the large framed photograph of Signor Casella, resplendent in his First World War British Army uniform, proudly displaying his medal and decoration.
After her initial difficulty Kezzie found that she loved the Italian words. The items on sale, cannelloni and mozzarella, and the Italian places such as Umbria and Calabria. Even Ricardo’s friends and relatives who called in, usually on a Sunday, had interesting and unusual names; Bruno and Marietta, Serafino and Rosario. There were cousins, uncles, nieces, who came to chat, or have a coffee or a game of cards. Sometimes when the café was full Kezzie’s head spun with their language, so rich and vibrant, and their extravagant gestures as they spoke.
‘No more!’ she would cry eventually, flinging her hands in the air in imitation of Ricardo’s mother when she was agitated. ‘I give up! I am not serving any more until somebody speaks to me at less than a hundred miles an hour.’
She liked the weekday customers too. She responded to the cheeky banter of the shipyard workers, the teasing and open flirting. They always noticed if she wore a different blouse, bought a new comb or slide, or altered her hairstyle in any way. And within a few days she knew their special likes and sandwich combinations.
Kezzie and Ricardo worked well together. There was an easy friendliness between them. And his casual manner, which she perceived as being particularly American, made it less awkward for her when confronted by the many branches of his family.
It was good to have him to talk to. The women that she knew and spoke to in the tenement were all married. She had been to the pictures several times now with Mrs Sweeney, and had soon discovered that the older woman was very lonely. With her husband and son’s shift pattern she was often on her own. Her son had never married so there were no grandchildren. Kezzie realised that Mrs Sweeney looked forward eagerly to their weekly outings, and although Kezzie enjoyed her visits to the cinema with Mrs Sweeney, she still missed company of her own age. She had enrolled for the night classes but found that it was mostly older men who attended. One of the tutors had made enquiries for her as to the appropriate subjects to study, and she was taking maths and Latin classes. These were not popular subjects with younger women.
Also, she discovered that she had a unique bond with Ricardo in the strange unsettled feelings which tormented her from time to time.
Sometimes she felt a longing for Canada that she could not explain even to herself, far less talk it over with Grandad. Lucy seemed to have little difficulty in readjusting to her life in Scotland. She was a favourite with adults and popular with her playmates. She’d adapted to school life very well, although she was teased sometimes about her accent and the names she used for everyday things, referring to motor cars as automobiles and biscuits as cookies. But it was good-natured and some of the children in the close now called their toffee bars and sweets ‘candy’ as a joke.
It wasn’t like that for Kezzie. Occasionally she stood at the tenement window and gazed down into the street. She could see the children playing with hoops and balls. The boys with marbles and bogies and the girls skipping, the rhythmic chant of their song keeping time with the slap of the rope on the pavement. It was all so friendly, homely and yet … different. In many ways childhood games were the same all over the world, but all the little particular things varied. Yet this was what she had been used to most of her life, and what she longed to be back among, when she was away. So why now did this place, this home, seem strange? Why did she sometimes feel alien to the everyday happenings here?
It was comforting to know that Ricardo’s thoughts were similar. The lack of space, he told her, was what had scared him most in the beginning. He was used to the wide freeways, the low bungalows set back from the sidewalks, acres and acres of parking lots, four- or six-lane highways.
He saw the gritty grey buildings here closing in on him. The width of the streets was so narrow in places that housewives in the upper storeys had strung washing lines across between their windows. The sky and clouds seemed closer, as if you could reach and touch them. In America, and in Canada also, she told him, the space seemed endless, stretching out and up into infinity.
They spoke about it often, and about the whole problem of adjusting.
Kezzie thought it must have been such a shock for Ricardo’s grandfather, who had come so long ago to Scotland, and exchanged the clear sunny skies and the heat of Italy for this mild and wet climate.
‘Perhaps we are not so dissimilar, though,’ Ricardo had said. ‘The family is important here, and so it is with Italians. We stay together, we look out for each other.’
They spent much of their spare time together, and it seemed a natural thing for him to hold her hand as they strolled along the road or through the park. One evening, on their way home from the pictures, as they stood chatting under the lamp post at the end of the street, he bent down and kissed her on the mouth. After a moment he raised his head.
‘You enjoyed that, no?’
‘Yes,’ Kezzie replied. ‘It was very pleasant.’
He smiled at her, a soft sad smile.
‘Pleasant,’ he said ruefully, ‘is not what I intended it to be.’
He took her arm and continued to walk her home. She felt she had let him down in some way, but didn’t quite know how.
The topic of conversation everywhere was the disturbances in Europe. How long could it go on before Britain was drawn in? Kezzie knew that the Italian families in Clydebank were worried about their position should war break out. In the First World War Italy and Britain had been on the same side, but a few months ago Mussolini had allied himself with Hitler and Germany. Each day the newspapers were full of events and political discussions. Ricardo’s parents were now not sure whether all three of them would be better off returning to America, or staying on for a while in Britain. There were rumours of German submarines patrolling the Clyde coast.
‘We had no idea things had reached such a state here,’ Signor Biagi told Kezzie one day. ‘Where we lived in the States, we did not hear much foreign news. Most Americans will not be aware of what is happening over here.’
For the time being the Biagis decided that they would stay.
Kezzie had received a reply from Michael. He felt as badly as she did to know that she’d returned to Britain and he had missed her.
I will desert immediately, he wrote, and will sail all the way back across the sea. Please stand by the pier at Greenock and look out for a small boat and a very seasick soldier.
She smiled as she read this extravagant declaration. She knew that there was a fine thread of seriousness in it. She also knew that she herself felt inclined to some similar reckless act so that they could be together.
As she walked to the shop each day it seemed to Kezzie that the mood of the town was changing. Shop windows were taped up, a precaution against flying glass in the event of an air raid. People seemed anxious, and every shop or street corner had someone speculating on exactly what would happen. S
itting in the back green one Sunday, near the end of August, she heard a group of men, of whom her grandad was one, talking together.
‘I don’t think we need tae worry aboot air raids,’ said Bill Forbes, who lived in the next close. ‘These big bombers they’ve got could only be used short range. They’re far too heavy to stay up in the air for long.’
Kezzie heard her grandad laughing.
‘Aye, they said something the same about the Queen Elizabeth when we were building her. That she’d be far too heavy to stay afloat.’ He tapped the hot ashes out of his pipe. ‘She hasn’t sunk yet,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said another, ‘Scotland’s too far away for their fuel to last out. London might get it, but anywhere from the north of England up should be all right.’
‘You’re reckoning that they would always be travellin’ fae Germany,’ said Mrs Sweeney’s husband. ‘Supposin’ they came in fae Denmark or Norway?’
‘Norway!’ repeated Mr Forbes. ‘Whit the hell would the Germans want wae Norway or Denmark?’
‘I think Herr Hitler wants everything he can take,’ said Kezzie’s grandad quietly.
‘I still think their fuel tanks won’t be big enough,’ Mr Forbes persisted. ‘What with the weight of the bombs, and the size of the planes and the number of crew and equipment needed, they wouldnae hae enough fuel tae get here.’
‘They’ll have enough tae get here,’ said Mrs Sweeney’s husband. ‘Aye, tae get here and get back.’
Mr Forbes shook his head. ‘Ye’ll be sayin’ next that folk will be journeying as far away as the moon,’ he said.
Everybody laughed at this. Kezzie looked across. She noticed that her grandad wasn’t smiling.
She worried again about Lucy. Perhaps it was best to make some arrangements for her? To get her out of this area? If there were aerial bombardments she knew that Grandad believed that the shipyard would be a target. Should she have taken the chance to evacuate Lucy? Kezzie resolved that, as soon as her Aunt Bella returned home, she would go and visit her and discuss the matter with her.
Meanwhile Europe and the world held its breath and waited.
The last few days of August and the hot summer of 1939 dwindled. On the first day of September German forces invaded Poland. Two days later, on a Sunday morning, Britain declared itself at war with Germany.
CHAPTER 7
War!
‘WELL, THAT’S US now, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Sweeney grimly as Kezzie passed her on the stairs the next day. ‘Anither war. In my lifetime too.’ She shook some Brasso onto her cleaning cloth. ‘They promised when the last one finished that it widnae happen again.’
Kezzie stopped on the landing and watched her neighbour determinedly polishing the already gleaming letter-box on her front door. It suddenly struck her that Mrs Sweeney was frightened. As anxious as most people were, but trying not to show it.
Kezzie reached out and touched her arm. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘We’ll manage … somehow.’
‘You dinnae ken what it was like,’ said Mrs Sweeney. ‘You young ones, you dinnae ken.’ She shook her head, and Kezzie could see that there were tears in her eyes.
Kezzie walked more slowly downstairs and along the streets of Clydebank. Every newsagent’s had the headlines displayed outside.
BRITAIN AT WAR
TIME RUNS OUT
WAR DECLARED
As she approached the café she could see that the blinds were still drawn. Inside the shop, Ricardo, his parents and his aunt were sitting at one of the tables. The two women were holding each other and weeping. Kezzie said nothing but went straight to the kitchen and put the big coffee pot on the stove. The thought of war scared her too. Her grandfather had fought in the Great War and considered it to have been a waste of young life. She knew that many of his friends had been killed. They’d marched away, he’d told her once, hundreds and hundreds of them, thinking it would be exciting and glorious, whole villages joining the same regiment. Then when the big battles were fought sometimes not one boy from a village survived. They came home singly, or in twos and threes, often badly mutilated.
Kezzie made some sandwiches, then poured out four cupfuls of strong coffee with plenty of sugar and took it through to them.
‘Eat something,’ she ordered. ‘Things aren’t as bad as they seem.’
‘For us,’ said Signor Biagi gravely, ‘it could be serious. The authorities might try to take the café from us, or put us in prison.’
‘What!’ cried Kezzie. ‘Why would they do that?’
The Italians looked at each other. Eventually Ricardo’s mother spoke. ‘We are not British citizens,’ she said. ‘None of us have British passports.’
‘But I don’t think the United States will fight against Britain in this war,’ said Kezzie. ‘You will be quite safe with your American passports.’
Ricardo’s mother and his aunt exchanged fearful glances. ‘Our passports are Italian. Even Ricardo does not have full citizenship.’
‘It shouldn’t be such a big problem.’ Kezzie tried to make her voice sound reassuring. ‘Signora Castella, your son is British. He’ll be fighting in the British Army.’ She pointed to the picture hanging on the wall of the café. ‘Your husband won a medal in the last war.’
Ricardo spoke up. Kezzie realised that he too was trying to calm his parents.
‘Kezzie is right,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to fear. We have done nothing wrong. We will mind our own business and people will leave us alone.’
A few Sundays later Kezzie was to remember his words.
She had asked for some time off and set out early in the morning to visit Aunt Bella. As the ancient single-decker bus wheezed its way through the countryside towards Stonevale, Lucy’s excitement was indescribable. She seemed to remember everything: the burn where she had fished for tadpoles, the hills they’d climbed when berrying, the canal bridge where the horses had to wait until the gatekeeper swung back the heavy wooden barrier to let the coal scows through.
They lurched over the bridge and Kezzie, catching sight of the long barges, suddenly recalled the Sunday School trip of two summers ago when their father had still been alive. It had been the last outing which they’d enjoyed together before he was killed in the pit. It was in her mind now. All of it. The smell of the mown grass in the field where they held the races, the taste of the lemonade, the long gloaming as they glided home along the calm water of the canal. Kezzie saw the scene in front of her blur and dissolve, and raised her hands to wipe her eyes. Suddenly, small fingers were intertwined with her own. She looked down at Lucy, who smiled bravely back at her.
Had the child sensed her grief and was trying to give her comfort? Kezzie gripped her sister’s hand tightly.
They came closer to their own village and, as they passed each place and Lucy called out in delight and chattered about some incident which had happened in the past, Kezzie was amazed at how early some of her memories were.
‘Are you sure you really remember what happened that day?’ she quizzed her sister on one occasion.
Lucy was adamant. She could tell Kezzie the colour of the dress she’d been wearing and whether Kezzie had been cross with her for something she’d done wrong. Kezzie watched her in wonderment. She looked at the little face framed with the fine blonde waves. Her sister’s hair was longer now, less baby-soft, and tended not to curl so much, but it still settled round the child’s face in an angelic cloud. And as her sister became happier and gayer as they came near the little mining village where they had both been born, Kezzie knew with utter conviction that she had done the right thing in bringing her back from Canada.
It was a circle closing. A last link that had to be made to connect Lucy’s life now with that of her previous one, to give her some coherence, make some sense of her childhood which had been so cruelly disrupted. And as they walked up the road together towards the miners’ rows it felt to Kezzie that she herself had completed some kind of particular and significant journey. Th
e air itself, full of the sounds and smells of her homeland, was in her mouth and hair, and then, quite distinctly, in her very being. And like the exile returning, she was suddenly, and to her own surprise, in tears.
Lucy had run on, unannounced, straight into her aunt’s house, and Bella came rushing out, tying on her apron, and flung herself at Kezzie. And they were both laughing and crying and trying to tell each other everything at once. But they found that it was not all tears of sorrow that they shared as they sat together and reminisced about the last years. They spoke of the fun of the annual day trip in the summer, and Kezzie told Bella about Canada, and Bella in turn brought her up to date with local news. Her children now were almost as tall as she was, and still as cheeky. But Will, the eldest, was determined to get a foundry or ironworks apprenticeship rather than go down the mine. He was working hard at school and the teacher was giving him instruction in technical drawing.
‘Most folks are workin’ now,’ said Bella. ‘There’s nothin’ good about a war at all, except that it brings employment.’
At the mention of the war Kezzie told Bella about her fears for Lucy.
‘I don’t know whether we would be attacked, living so far north,’ said Kezzie. ‘Grandad seems to think so. I’m not sure what’s the best thing to do. If she was sent away again, it might distress her too much. Aunt Bella, at one stage in Canada, she was so ill that she didn’t know where, or even who she was.’
‘Leave her here wi’ me,’ said Bella at once.
Kezzie thought this typical of Bella’s generosity. Her house was already overcrowded, and her husband working less and less as his lungs became weaker and weaker.
At that moment, Lucy, in the middle of some game, came running past the side of the house where Bella and Kezzie were sitting. Bella called her over.
‘Ye like yer Aunty Bella, don’t ye, Lucy?’ she said.
Lucy nodded.
‘Then would ye bide here wi’ me, pet, for a holiday?’ asked Bella.
Kezzie at War Page 16
