by Annie Groves
‘Not if I get to drive the tractor,’ Mitzi replied smugly.
Rosie and the others had spent the week on dairy work, much to their delight. Rosie enjoyed milking and it surprised her just how much she liked living in the country. She had told herself that it was probably because Liverpool held such unhappy memories for her. If there had not been a war she would have continued to live happily in her home city, and perhaps once the war was over she would want to return there.
Once the war was over…That seemed so hard to imagine. When she thought of Liverpool now she thought of the warning wail of air-raid sirens, of searchlights crisscrossing the night sky, of the heavy bomb-filled drone of German aeroplanes, of the sickening few seconds’ silence between the whine of a bomb dropping and the terrible noise of it exploding. But more than the danger she thought too of all those who had been lost, not just her own father and mother, but everyone: those children in the shelter with her, who would never now grow up; the men who flew the planes; the firefighters like Rob; and the ordinary men and women of the city for whom each night might be their last. The city she had left behind wasn’t the city of her childhood any more, but nor had she deserted it as some might think. She wanted to do her bit for the war, but she wanted to help people to live. Working on the land did that. Every bit of food she helped to grow was contributing to keeping the country and its people going, just as her father had helped when he had stuck it out at sea. He would be proud of her for what she was doing here in the country, Rosie knew, and he would be pleased too that she was finding a new sort of happiness and peace here, away from her sadness.
‘I suppose Mary and Peggy are out with their chaps tonight, are they?’ Audrey asked. ‘Only they’re cutting it a bit fine. It’s ten now.’
The girls were supposed to get in for ten o’clock unless it was the weekend and they had been given special permission to stay out later.
‘Mary said that she’d throw a bit of gravel up at the window when they got back so that one of us could go and let them in,’ Rosie answered.
‘Mrs Johnson won’t be pleased if she catches you. She’s nice enough, generally speaking, but she’s a bit of a stickler over timekeeping,’ Audrey warned, adding, ‘Has anyone got a ciggie, only I’m desperate?’
Rosie shook her head, but Sheila, although she grumbled about it, produced one for her. Although they were allowed to smoke in the common room, smoking in the dormitories was strictly banned.
‘I wouldn’t mind finding a nice handsome chap meself,’ Sheila sighed.
‘Why don’t you get Mary to ask Ian if he’s got a friend you could make up a foursome with?’ Rosie suggested.
‘Wot, and have our Mary looking over me shoulder all the time to mek sure I was behavin’ meself? That’s the last thing I’d want to do if I was with a good-looking lad,’ Sheila told her with a wink.
Rosie couldn’t help but laugh. There was something about Sheila’s frankness that made it hard not to do so.
‘So what would you be wanting to do with him then?’ Audrey challenged her. ‘Just in case I get one meself and need a few tips, like.’
The next morning the girls were driven out to a farm to start helping with the haymaking and when they got there the Italians were already jumping down from their army transport.
‘There’s your admirer, Rosie,’ Mary laughed, digging her in the ribs.
Rosie pursed her mouth and shook off her friend’s hand.
‘What’s up with you?’ Mary asked.
‘There’s nothing up with me,’ Rosie answered her shortly. ‘It’s him that there’s something up with.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that he’s a prisoner of war, an enemy, that’s what, and I don’t want anything to do with him,’ Rosie told her flatly. She was nearly beside herself with anxiety and misery, her angry words tumbling over themselves in her haste to distance herself from the Italian. ‘And I’ll thank you and the the girls not to go making out that he’s interested in me or that I want him to be. Because I don’t.’
Mary was looking at her in astonishment. ‘Well, what side of the bed did you get out of this morning? I don’t know what’s got into you, Rosie. I’m sure there are innocent lads of ours in camps all over Europe. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
But Rosie wasn’t going to take back what she had said. Keeping her head held high, she marched into the field, ignoring the perplexed and slightly disapproving looks Mary was giving her.
A steam-driven machine was used to cut the hay and the girls and the Italians had to follow behind it, lifting the cut hay into stooks. There was an art to making the stooks properly and at first Rosie struggled with hers, but by the end of the morning she was beginning to get the hang of it.
It was hot, dusty, hard work, but no matter how hard Rosie concentrated on what she was doing, she was still sharply conscious of the handsome Italian watching her, and trying to attract her attention.
‘Bella, bella,’ another young Italian close to her teased her admiringly. ‘Ricardo thinks you are much bella, pretty girl,’ he added, gesturing towards the tall, broad-shouldered figure who worked several yards away. Like the other men he had removed his shirt and was working in boots and a pair of army trousers, his olive skin warmly tanned. Rosie hadn’t intended to look at him, but now that she was doing so, somehow she couldn’t drag her gaze away and even worse, there was a funny aching feeling in her tummy that was both pleasurable and a bit frightening.
‘Ricardo, he wants to talk with you,’ the other man told her. ‘You speak with him when we have our dinner, yes?’
‘No,’ Rosie refused fiercely. She felt all quivery inside and her heart was jolting about inside her chest so much she could hardly breathe.
‘Come on, Rosie, you’re falling behind,’ the girl she was working with called out warningly.
It was just the strength of the sun that was making her feel so peculiar, Rosie told herself, as she turned her back resolutely on the Italians and got on with her work.
‘Watch out for us, will you, Rosie? I’m just going to nip behind the hedge.’
Tiredly, Rosie agreed. Trying to find somewhere private to relieve themselves was just one of the many hazards of being a land girl, and the girls all rallied round one another to keep cave at such times.
She swatted at the flies buzzing irritatingly in the heat, and closed her eyes.
‘Hey, Rosie, your admirer is on his way over.’
Jean’s words brought her to her feet in a speedy if ungainly movement as she looked round warily to see the handsome Italian picking his way through the newly stacked stooks of hay towards her.
‘Rosie…wait up…’ Jean called as Rosie made a dash towards the hedge.
‘I can’t. I’m desperate,’ Rosie told her.
Desperate she most certainly was, but not to answer a call of nature so much as to escape from Ricardo.
Why was he pursuing her like this? He must surely be able to see that she wasn’t interested. And that was what she wanted, was it? For him to see that she wasn’t interested and keep away from her? Yes, of course it was. How could she possibly want anything else? She might be able to accept that her father would not have wanted her to be actively unkind to anyone, but Rosie felt sure he would not have been happy to see her encouraging the attentions of a big handsome Italian. Not after what he had said to her about Aldo and her mother. And she certainly wasn’t going to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
‘What’s up with you?’ Mary asked exasperatedly and, Rosie sensed, a bit irritably, later in the day when Rosie had made yet another excuse to avoid Ricardo’s attempts to talk to her.
‘I’ve already told you, I don’t want to get involved with them,’ Rosie defended herself.
‘Well, I call that downright mean, Rosie. They might be POWs but they still seem nice chaps. The other girls certainly seem to think so.’
‘That’s up to them,’ Rosie told her uncomfortably. How could she possibly exp
lain to Mary that it wasn’t their POW status that was making her want to keep them – or rather, one of them – at a distance, but far more private reasons? ‘But like I said, I don’t want anything to do with them.’
But despite the fact that she did everything she could to avoid him, in the end Ricardo outmanoeuvred her, trapping her between himself and the gate from the field.
‘I have been trying to talk to you all day,’ he began, speaking, Rosie noted, in confusion with a distinct note of impatience in his voice. She was also astonished that his English was as good as her own.
‘I’m here to work, not waste time talking to internees,’ Rosie retorted.
The look that darkened his eyes and made them flash with pride as well as anger would normally have made her feel very guilty about her rudeness.
‘If I hadn’t given in to my grandfather’s urging and agreed to visit our family in Italy in the months prior to war being declared, to report back to him on his land there, I dare say I would have enlisted with my cousins in the British Forces. I am an internee because I made the mistake of believing that I could be both Italian and British. My grandparents came to this country, to Manchester, shortly after their marriage. My parents were both born here. Until war broke out I considered myself to be both Italian and English. The British Government, though, decided that not only could I only be Italian, but that I must also be a Fascist.’
Rosie realised that she could hear not bitterness in his voice or resentment but sadness. It touched something within her, a chord of feeling that made her want to reach out and touch his hand in understanding. She started to panic. She should not be feeling like this.
‘I wanted to thank you for what you did for Paolo,’ Ricardo was saying. ‘I hadn’t realised he was so badly hurt. I blame myself for not realising…’ Ricardo was speaking coolly and formally now, leaving Rosie to digest the fact that he had not been pursuing her because he wanted to flirt with her but because he wanted to thank her. She felt every kind of fool and prayed inwardly that he had not realised what she had thought. But to her dismay he continued quietly, ‘I realise that I must have given you the wrong impression, when I heard your friends talking about your disgust at the thought of being admired by an Italian – an enemy of your country.’ Now his voice had become clipped and so sharp that she felt as though each word he spoke was cutting into the tenderness of her conscience and her heart. ‘I apologise for distressing you in such a way.’
Rosie’s face was so red she was desperately glad of the dusk to hide her embarrassment.
‘Rosie, come on…’ Sheila called out.
‘Rosie…It is a pretty name. You are from Liverpo ol, I would guess from your accent.’
‘How would you know anything about a Liverpool accent?’ Rosie felt obliged to challenge him. ‘You said you lived in Manchester.’
‘Yes I do,’ he agreed. ‘But like all Italian families, mine is extensive, with branches not just in Manchester, but in London and in Liverpool as well. What part of the city are you from?’
She didn’t have to tell him, Rosie assured herself, but it wasn’t in her nature not to give a truthful answer to a question and so reluctantly she told him, with a small dismissive shrug, ‘We lived off Scotland Road.’
‘Liverpool’s Italian community live in that area.’
‘Yes, down around Gerard Street,’ Rosie told him promptly.
She realised that she had given too much away when he queried, ‘You lived close to Gerard Street? That’s where my relatives lived. Cesare Volante, my grandmother’s cousin.’
Rosie knew the Volante family, who had been very good friends of the Grenellis. She and Bella had attended several Volante family parties as they grew up.
Hearing him say such a familiar name, Rosie couldn’t control her betraying reaction.
‘You know them?’ Ricardo guessed immediately.
Rosie wasn’t a liar. ‘Yes,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘Look, I must go…’
‘No, wait.’ He had reached out to stop her from leaving, taking hold of her bare arm. The effect of his touch shocked the breath out of her. It was as though some kind of powerful current had run right through her, taking control of her, depriving her of the ability to speak and yet at the same time jerking her body into taking a step towards him. As he had done towards her. They were standing almost body to body, so close that they were virtually touching. She could smell the warm scent of his skin, and the fingers curled round her arm were moving against her flesh in a soft caress.
‘So, it is possible that we have met before. I thought so the first time I saw you. There was something about you that I recognised, although logically it seemed impossible that we should have done so. But of course now that I know you were living close to Gerard Street, and my grandmother’s relations, I can see that it is entirely possible that we did indeed meet.’ He was looking triumphant now, and pleased with himself for having, as he believed, had his recognition of her confirmed. And, for all she knew, he could be right. Rosie knew that the extended family in Italian terms was both large and rambling, and that if he had come to Liverpool with his family it was entirely possible that they could have attended the same family function.
‘It is possible,’ she agreed, ‘but…’
Ricardo shook his head and snapped his fingers. ‘Yes. I have it now. There was a wedding. You were there, a pretty little thing, who refused to speak to me, although you did allow me to give you my ice cream. I remember being told that you were not Italian.’
Rosie thought back. There had been so many celebrations, so many weddings, but gradually she remembered the right one. Some important members of the Volante family had come from Manchester. There had been children with them, older girls and boys, who in the main had ignored her, and yet one boy in particular had been kind to her, offering her his ice cream when she had dropped her own.
Rosie couldn’t speak; she could hardly breathe. Along with her shock she could feel pain and something else, something that tugged at her heart and made it ache with a feeling of loss. She stepped back from him, her face showing her feelings. It made her shiver to think that somehow fate had stepped into her life like this, bringing them together a second time, as though…As though what?
‘Rosie, come on,’ Mary shouted.
Ricardo released her arm. She wanted to touch her skin where he had touched it, to cover the flesh that now felt the loss of his warmth.
Half running, half stumbling, Rosie hurried past him, unable to say anything, her thoughts in frightened turmoil.
TWENTY-FOUR
Rosie glanced anxiously over to where Paolo was slumped against the hedge, his shoulders bowed. He had returned to work with the other POWs at the beginning of the week, but despite the welcome sunshine, which had encouraged the more daring of the girls to cut the legs off their dungarees to turn them into shorts, as they worked under the hot sun stooking the newly cut corn sheaves to allow them to dry, Paolo looked sick and unhappy. He had become so thin that his clothes hung off his body, and Rosie felt almost anxiously maternal about him, although she refused to let anyone else see that.
Anyone else at all, but especially Ricardo. She risked a look across the field from under the brim of her hat. Yes, he was still there, snatching up the corn as it was cut and tied, and throwing the sheaves clear of the machinery. Like most of the other men, he had taken off his shirt. Against the blue of the sky and the dull gold of the newly cut corn, his torso was the colour of liquid honey, sleek with the sweat of working so hard. One of the girls from another gang working close to him said something to him and as Rosie watched he turned to her, giving her a smile, and lifting the sheaf she was struggling to balance as easily as though it weighed nothing.
Rosie didn’t want to think about why just watching him talking to another girl should make her feel the way she did, or why she should lie awake in bed at night, unable to sleep as she battled against what was happening to her. Why, why, should she be having these unwanted
feelings for Ricardo when she hadn’t been able to have them for Rob, who would have made her such a good husband and whom her father would have been happy to see her marry?
Was it because, despite everything, she wanted to believe her aunt had been right and Aldo was her father? Was it the Italian blood in her that was doing this to her? Like to like?
No, she wasn’t going to let herself think that. She dragged her gaze away from Ricardo. She wasn’t Aldo’s daughter.
As they worked on through the long hot afternoon and into the evening, Rosie saw how Paolo seemed to grow more and more frail. She had seen too how Ricardo had gone to him, offering him water, giving him some food, and talking with him.
‘That young lad doesn’t look well at all,’ Mary commented, coming over to Rosie whilst she was watching him.
‘He’s been very poorly,’ Rosie reminded her.
When Mary had gone Rosie kept on watching Paolo, and then when they were allowed to break for a rest, she took a deep breath and went over to him. It was just common charity to ask if the lad was all right, she told herself; her dad would have understood that.
Close up, Paolo looked even more poorly than he did from a distance. His skin was drawn tight across the bones of his face, and was tinged almost yellow instead of being warmly olive. The light had gone out of his eyes, and when he looked at Rosie, and she saw the hopelessness in them, her heart ached for him.
‘I do not want to die here,’ he told her brokenly. ‘I want to go home and die in my own country. It is so cold here. Your sun does not warm me.’ He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and Rosie saw how he winced when he moved.
‘You mustn’t talk like that,’ she told him fiercely. ‘You are feeling low at the moment because you have been poorly, but you will get better.’
‘No,’ Paolo told her sombrely, ‘I shall never be better whilst I have to be here.’
Rosie didn’t know what she could say that would comfort him so she patted him awkwardly on the arm and left, sensing that her company was a burden he didn’t want to have to bear.
