by Annie Groves
‘Give him up? That’s not what I heard, and you haven’t heard the worst of it yet. She made a proper laughing stock out of you, I can tell you. You walking behind her cortège like any proper grieving husband should, mourning her, whilst the whole of your street knew that the reason she’d been killed was because she’d been with him when the air-raid siren sounded and that the two of them had stayed there. Fornicating…’
‘Dad…’ Rosie pleaded as her father didn’t answer her. Instead he stood staring at them both, his face betraying his emotions.
‘Now see what you’ve done,’ her aunt told her angrily. ‘You and that mother of yours. Cut from the same cloth, the pair of you and no mistake…’
Rosie wasn’t listening. ‘Dad,’ she implored. ‘Mum didn’t mean to hurt you. I know she didn’t. What she did was wrong, but—’
‘I told you right from the start not to marry her, Gerry,’ Rosie’s aunt cut in sharply. ‘It was plain to me the first time I saw her what she was. I told you then what would happen the minute you turned your back, and I was right.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Rosie burst out angrily.
‘Isn’t it? Much you know, miss, an’ all.’ She nodded in Rosie’s father’s direction. ‘He knows as well as I do that this isn’t the first time she’s made a laughing stock out of him. I told him then what she was, but he wouldn’t have it. Carrying on with that Italian under his own wife’s nose as well as her husband’s, and thinking she could get away with it when everyone could see what she was up to.’
Rosie’s eyes widened in shocked rejection of her aunt’s sharp words. ‘Dad,’ she begged her father, ‘that’s not true…it can’t be. Maria was Mum’s friend. She was always sticking up for her and looking out for her, and for me. You know that. Mum would never have done anything to hurt her.’ Rosie couldn’t believe what her aunt was saying. She knew that her mother had betrayed her father, but she couldn’t believe that she would have done something so low and despicable as her aunt was claiming. But her father wasn’t answering her, and the way he was hanging his head made a horrid sick fear crawl through Rosie’s stomach.
‘Much you know,’ her aunt told her triumphantly. ‘Friend or not, your mother was after that Italian from the moment she set eyes on him, and her not a year wed to my brother.’
‘Dad…’ Rosie begged frantically, when her father remained silent and refused to look at her.
‘No shame in her at all, she hadn’t,’ Aunt Maude was continuing. ‘Neither of them had. How that poor wife of his put up with it I don’t know. Even had the priest round, the family did, to give him a talking-to, but your mother talked him round, tempting him like the wicked hussy she was.’
‘Dad, Dad…’ Rosie appealed, taking hold of her father’s hand and giving it a pleading shake. ‘That’s not true, please tell me it isn’t,’ she implored.
She could feel the deep breath he took as he raised his head and looked at her with a tortured expression that told its own story.
‘Rosie, lass, I never wanted you to have to know about any of this.’
‘You mean it is true?’ Rosie started to tremble violently. ‘No,’ she denied, unable to accept what she was hearing, but knowing already in her heart that what her aunt had just told her was the truth. Now, just as though someone had lifted a blind that had obscured a view, she could see the past and her mother’s friendship with Maria in its true colours. Small incidents, odd memories that had somehow stuck inside her head like leftover pieces that wouldn’t fit into a familiar jigsaw suddenly fell into place. Poor Maria. How could her mother have acted out such a terrible betrayal of both her husband and her friend? Gentle loving Maria, who had never ever hurt anyone…
‘How long was it…did she…?’ she whispered.
‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ her aunt told her grimly. ‘If you ask me, there’s a sight more of that Italian family about your looks, Rosie, than there is of ours.’
‘That’s enough of that kind of talk, Maude,’ her father objected fiercely, suddenly rousing himself. ‘Rosie’s my lass and there’s no one will ever say she isn’t.’
Rosie wasn’t listening to him. Her face had gone white as awareness dawned on her. Other memories were crowding into her head now: Maria’s sad face when she looked at her; the way she had loved and petted her, sometimes calling her ‘my little Rosie’; the way people had often mistaken her for a member of the family; the way her mother had always tried to encourage her to be more friendly to Aldo.
‘Is it true?’ she shakily asked the man she had always thought of as her father, the only man she wanted to be her father, in a hoarse whisper. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ she answered for him when he didn’t respond. ‘It is.’
‘No, Rosie, it isn’t,’ he told her determinedly. ‘I promise you it isn’t.’
But it was too late. Rosie ran to the door, yanking it open, ignoring the fact that she wasn’t even wearing her coat as she ran out into the icy cold, huge raw sobs of fear and horror wrenching at her chest.
SEVENTEEN
‘Rosie?’
She gasped and struggled to escape when familiar hands clamped down on her shoulders, whilst her grief filled her body and tore at her lungs.
‘Aw, Rosie, Rosie…do not, lass, please. I’m that sorry you had to learn about your mam and everything like this…’
Rosie gulped. ‘I’m not your daughter, am I? I’m Aldo’s.’
‘You’re my girl, Rosie,’ came the sturdy answer. ‘You allus have been and you allus will be. You’re my girl, and I’m your dad, and don’t you ever go thinking otherwise. I loved you from the moment the nurse put you into my arms. The bonniest little thing I’d ever seen, you were, with your brown eyes and your curly hair. Here, put this on.’ He was holding out her coat to her. Obediently, Rosie slipped her arms into it and then let him fasten it for her as he had done when she had been a little girl. His little girl; safe then in her belief that she was his. Not like now.
‘How can you know?’ she wept. ‘How can you?’
‘It’s me that’s raised you, Rosie. Me that sat up wi’ you when you was teething; me you call “Dad” – me not anyone else. And that’s all I need to know. It’s what’s in here,’ he thumped his chest, ‘that makes me your dad, eighteen years of loving you and wanting the best for you. And your mam never said owt about you not being mine, which, knowing her, she would have done in one of her tempers if you weren’t.’
Rosie couldn’t feel reassured. ‘But if Mum—’
He tucked her arm through his, and started to walk towards Edge Hill Road so that Rosie had to fall into step beside him. ‘I don’t want you to go thinking badly of your mother, Rosie. It wasn’t all her fault, no matter what your aunt says. You see, your mam never really wanted to marry me. It was me who wanted that. I loved her that much that I thought that I’d be able to make her love me back. But love doesn’t work like that, Rosie. You remember that and don’t you go making the same mistakes I’ve made. You mek sure when you get married that you both love each other the same. I’ve thought many a time over the years that I did wrong by your mam by persuading her to wed me, but it was done then, and we had to make the best of it.’
‘But Mum didn’t make the best of it, did she?’ Rosie questioned him bitterly. ‘She started messin’ around with Aldo.’
Her father sighed. ‘Aye, well, he was a handsome chap, and no mistake, and we could all see that he looked a bit disappointed when he realised that it was Maria he was expected to wed. Not that she wasn’t a good-hearted girl,’ he added hastily when he saw Rosie’s expression. ‘But she wasn’t pretty, not like your mother. Of course, your mam being the girl she was, she tried her best for Maria, going round and helping her with her makeup and her hair, like. If you ask me, it were him that was to blame. Turned your mother’s head, he did, with his compliments and his fancy foreign ways.’ Rosie felt as though she were a child again, listening to her parents quarrelling, hearing her father telling her mother th
at he didn’t want her spending so much time with her friends. Now though, when she heard the anger and the bitterness in her father’s voice, she understood what had caused it.
‘You’re mine, Rosie,’ he said fiercely, ‘my lass, and no one and nothing will ever change that, so don’t you forget it. I’d never have let that ruddy Aldo take you from me the way he did your mother, even though Maria and them was allus trying to mek out that you belonged wi’ them, teaching you to speak their lingo and having you calling them auntie this and uncle that, like you was blood-related to them. Well, you wasn’t. You’re mine.’
She could hear so much in her father’s voice that had previously been hidden from her. He loved her so much, and she loved him too. She wanted to be his daughter more than she had ever wanted anything, Rosie admitted. It scared her – no, more than that, it sickened her – to think that there was any possibility that Aldo could be her father. She wanted to push the thought from her and lock it away where she would never have to think of it again.
‘Huh, that Aldo might have liked to think that you was his, giving me that look and swaggering about like he was summat better than me, but he couldn’t get his own wife pregnant so what made him think he had done wi’ mine? Aye, and I told him so, an’ all. Told him what I thought of him and what I’d do to him if I ever caught him trying to steal you away from me the way he had done your mam. Told him that I’d got friends who knew what to do to men who behaved the way he had.’
Rosie shuddered. This was a side to her father she had never seen before, a violent, unforgiving, vengeful side that left her shocked but unable to blame him for what he was saying.
‘Why did you stay with her?’ she asked, but she thought she already knew the answer.
‘I knew if I threw her out like I should have done she’d have taken you with her and gone to him. Aye, and that daft Maria was that soft she’d have let him have your mother living there with them, and you, an’ all. Especially you. I could see in her eyes how much she wanted you, Rosie, wi’ her not having any kiddies of her own. Of course, that sister of hers was a different kettle of fish entirely. Hated your mam, she did, and she let her know it too. She even came round to see me once and told me that I should make your mam stay at home. Said that in the old country she’d have been locked away by her family for what she’d done.’
‘But…’ But what if I am his child? Rosie wanted to ask, but she knew that she couldn’t. She didn’t want to be Aldo’s and she didn’t think she could bear it if she were ever to find out that she was. But that was impossible now with her mother and Aldo both dead.
As she looked at her father, Rosie made a vow that she would do and be everything she could to show both him and the world that she was his daughter. She wanted to be alone to come to terms with her own thoughts and feelings, but at the same time she also wanted desperately to be with him and to be close to him.
‘I can’t go to the grave now,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry you had to find out about this, Rosie. I’d have given anything to keep it from you. I made your mother swear she would never say a word.’
He might have been able to silence her mother but not even her father had the power to silence her aunt, with her jealousy and her bitterness, Rosie realised. In her eyes she would never be forgiven for being her mother’s daughter, nor ever allowed to forget what she might also be.
EIGHTEEN
It was almost the end of the evening. The band were playing a slow smoochy number and on the dance floor couples were taking advantage of the opportunity to move closer together.
‘Rosie, what is it? What’s wrong with you?’ There was exasperation as well as hurt male pride in Rob’s voice as he tried to draw Rosie closer to him and she pulled back.
‘Don’t go on, Rob.’ Rosie fought back her own misery. ‘I just don’t like being mauled about, that’s all.’
‘Huh, seems to me there isn’t much that you do like any more. You haven’t bin the same since—’ He broke off, scarlet-faced and mumbled, ‘Sorry, Rosie. I was forgetting for the moment about your mum.’
His apology filled Rosie with remorse. It wasn’t after all his fault she felt the way she did. She was lucky to have such a decent lad – very lucky, given her own background. So why did she feel like this? Why couldn’t she be the loving happy girl Rob wanted her to be? Why couldn’t she be like the other girls she could see all around her, who were only too happy to kiss and cuddle with their partners? Rosie knew the answer, of course.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she told Rob warmly. ‘I’m just worrying about Dad, what with all the bad news about the convoys being torpedoed.’ She gave a small shiver. She had heard only that morning that Molly Dearden’s young man had lost his life when his ship had been torpedoed.
But her fear for her father now that he was back at sea wasn’t the real reason she felt so unwilling to let Rob hold her tight or touch her in any kind of intimate way.
It was over a week since she had learned about her mother and Aldo, but she still hadn’t come to terms with what she had been told. Every night her dreams were filled with images and memories from the past: memories of her mother, of Aldo, of Maria and the others. She had even dreamed vividly that she was with Aldo and that he was trying to steal her away, telling her that he was her real father. That dream had been so real and so upsetting that when she had woken from it she had refused to let herself go back to sleep in case it reclaimed her. Outwardly, she was the same person she had always been, yet deep down inside she was afraid that she was not, that she was in reality someone different, someone with a shameful secret that had to be kept hidden. Despite everything the man she would always think of as her dad, and love as such, had told her, the thought that she might actually be Aldo’s child wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she wanted it to. She had never liked Aldo, always feeling uncomfortable in his presence, and now she hated him and felt bitterly resentful of her mother for making it possible for her to have this fear. Those feelings, however, quickly gave way to guilt. She shouldn’t think ill of her mother, should she, not now? But how could she do such a thing?
When she was on her own she searched her reflection in the small mirror in her bedroom, looking for any telltale signs that would confirm her secret dread. She longed now, as she had never done before, for fair hair and not the striking dark prettiness that so often in the past had caused Maria to say fondly that she could almost be Italian.
Before he had gone back to sea, her father had taken her in his arms and told her how much he loved her and how much he would always love her.
‘Promise me you’ll stay here with your Aunt Maude, Rosie, until I come back?’
She gave him the promise he wanted, but her aunt made it plain that very day how little she wanted her there.
‘You’ve got that Italian’s fathering all over you,’ she had told Rosie bitterly, earlier in the week, ‘even if my poor brother refuses to see it. It’s in your blood and your bones, what you really are.’
Rosie had no defences against her bitterness, but her words made her more determined not to be Italian.
She was longing for the evening to be over so that she could be on her own. All around them on the dance floor, other couples were cuddling up to one another but the thought of doing the same filled her mind with images of her mother and Aldo and made her feel sick with bitterness and anger. Sometimes her own feelings confused her so much that she longed to be able to talk to someone about them, but who was there to talk to? Not her aunt; not her father because he wasn’t here, and not Rob himself because she didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when she told him that she didn’t know the identity of her father. No, the shame that was her mother’s legacy to her was something she had to lock away inside herself.
‘We’re in March now. Easter’s coming up soon,’ Rob continued. ‘Did your dad say when he was likely to be back? There’s summat I want to discuss with him – man to man, like,’ he added meaningfully, reachi
ng for her hand and squeezing it tightly. ‘We’ve bin seeing one another for a fair while now, Rosie, and I’d like to make it official, like, get engaged and—’
‘Oh, Rob, please don’t. It’s too soon…I mean,’ Rosie amended hastily, not wanting to hurt or offend him, ‘I like you, I really do, but I’m only eighteen and with this war…’
‘It’s because of the war that I want us to be wed, Rosie,’ Rob told her, ploughing on determinedly. ‘You were saying only the other day that you think your aunt wants shot of you. Well, if you and me was to get married…’
She could hear the hope and the eagerness in his voice and her chest tightened with a mixture of panic and pain. She hated the thought of hurting Rob, but she couldn’t forget what her father had said about her mother not loving him as much as he had done her, or what had happened to their marriage. She didn’t want to do anything that might set her off down the same shameful path as her mother.
‘Let’s wait a while, Rob,’ she begged him lamely. ‘There’s many a couple so I’ve heard who have rushed into marriage and now wish that they hadn’t.’
‘I don’t understand you, Rosie. If you were the kind of girl who wanted to go out dancing all the time, flirting with other lads and putting herself about a bit looking for a good time, it would be different, but you’re not. I love you, Rosie.’
‘I know that you think that you do, Rob,’ Rosie acknowledged in a low voice. ‘But you don’t know me properly, and I can’t help thinking about what would happen if we got wed and you changed your mind.’
‘Don’t be daft. Why would I go doing that? Folk get married and then they make the best of things,’ Rob told her firmly.
Rosie’s heart had sunk lower with every word he had said. She knew now from her parents’ marriage the unhappiness that ‘making the best of things’ could bring. It might be different if she was crazily in love with Rob, in the way she had heard the girls at work talking, but Rosie didn’t think she wanted to feel like that. It sounded far too dangerous. She only had to remember the way Sylvia had acted over Lance to convince herself that being crazily in love was not something she wanted to happen to her.
