by Annie Groves
She was halfway across the field on her way back to join the others in her group when she saw the long shadow Ricardo was casting over her as he came towards her. Automatically she started to walk faster, but he caught up with her.
‘I saw you talking with Paolo,’ he told her.
His hand was on her shoulder and she jerked away from beneath his touch. Her face felt as though it had been scorched, it was burning so hotly. ‘Is there any law that says I can’t?’ she challenged him rudely.
‘I was going to thank you and ask you if you share my concern for him.’
Shame filled her. ‘It’s as though he doesn’t want to get properly better.’
‘He misses his home and he has convinced himself that he will never see it again. He is young and unable to believe that one day the war will be over and he will be free to return. He doesn’t have the patience for that and so instead he is willing himself to escape in the only way he can.’
Rosie shivered despite the sticky heat of the late afternoon. ‘You mean he’s willing himself to die?’ She had turned to look at Ricardo as she spoke and now, with her gaze trapped in the dark intensity of his, it was too late for her to urge herself to caution.
Although he hadn’t moved or tried to touch her, there was a look in his eyes that said what he felt. She had seen it before as she was growing up in the eyes of other Italian men when they looked at their women, a look of pride and possession and emotional intensity that locked a band around her, as real as any wedding ring. It was a look that said, ‘You are mine and you always will be mine’ and Rosie could feel herself responding to it and moving closer to him, leaning into him almost as though in acceptance of her fate.
‘You mustn’t let him die.’ Her words seemed to come from somewhere far away, her voice thick and soft with the weight of her awareness of him.
‘I shall do my best.’
She felt as though she was two different people. One of them was angry and fearful, wanting to turn and run from what was happening, whilst the other was filled with the most extraordinary sensation of wanting to go to him and let him take her hand, let him take all of her, Rosie recognised on a swift shiver of sensual awareness.
‘Hey you, back to work.’
The foreman’s command pushed between them so that they stepped back from one another.
Nothing had happened, nothing had been said or done, and yet Rosie knew that within the silence that had followed the look he had given her a promise had been asked for and given.
An hour later, all that remained of those opposing feelings was the anger and fear. As she worked on, ignoring the ache of her tired body and the irritating whine and bite of the midges that had arrived with the dusk, Rosie felt her anger against the man responsible for her misery rising to the point of explosion. The land girls were working strung out in a line beneath the trees that bordered the edge of the field, the leaves somehow encouraging the midges to swarm, whilst another group of girls were working in the open on the far side of the field, with the Italians working between them. At least soon it would be too dark for them to work any longer, Rosie decided with relief.
The sound of a plane flying in low over the fields towards them had Rosie and the other girls straightening up out of the shadows of the trees to turn, to laugh and wave.
‘I expect it will be your Ian, Mary,’ Sheila teased her cousin.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rosie saw Ricardo throw down his hoe and start to run towards them, warning, ‘Down…get down. Santa Maria…get down…’
What on earth was he doing? And what right did he have to tell her what to do, or to stop her waving at an English plane? She looked across the field and saw him running fast towards her whilst the plane came lower.
‘Cheek…’ she began, and then froze as, not more than fifty yards away from her, where the other gang of girls were clustered laughing and waving to the incoming plane, the evening air was suddenly filled with the staccato rattle of machine-gun fire, and the screams of the young women who had only seconds before been laughing, but who were now the plane’s targets. Rosie could see it all: the hail of bullets, the terror on the girls’ faces as they tried to escape, and then the look of disbelief in their eyes when the bullets ripped into them, leaving them to fall to the ground.
‘No!’ Automatically Rosie started to run towards them, wanting to help, but it was too late. Ricardo had reached her and was grabbing hold of her, rolling her beneath him as he flung them both to the ground, making it impossible for Rosie to be aware of anything other than the protective presence of his body pressing hers into the ground. She could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat, and smell the sun-warmed heat of his skin. She wanted to stay like this for ever, held safe against everything by him and with him. She wanted…
She lifted her head and looked up into the evening sky. The German plane was retreating, pursued now through the dusk by a pair of RAF fighters. In the soft darkness of the summer night she could see some of the other girls getting to their feet. Some, but not all.
Ricardo had lifted his body away from hers, but he didn’t make any attempt to move away from her.
‘You are all right?’ he asked her.
She managed to choke out the word, ‘Yes.’ Her throat felt dry and her face had been scratched by the stubble of the newly cut cornfield.
‘I thank the Madonna for it.’
She could hear the emotion in his voice. And then suddenly he leaned forward and kissed her hard and full, right on her mouth. She knew she should not be letting him do this, but instead of stopping him she was kissing him back just as passionately.
‘Rosie…Rosie…are you all right?’ It was Mary who was asking her this time.
Ricardo released her and she slipped from his arms to stand up, deliberately turning her back on him and almost running to join Sheila and Mary, who were standing together, tearfully hugging each other.
She couldn’t bear to be the person she had just been, the Rosie who had kissed an Italian; the girl who had been her mother’s daughter and not the daughter she wanted to be to the father she wanted to have. Her emotions in turmoil, Rosie glanced to where, several yards away, a group of people were standing around looking down at the ground. Their shocked stillness told her what had happened.
‘They’ve been hit? I…’ She couldn’t speak; her throat felt too raw with pain.
‘The bastards shot them down without giving them a chance,’ Mary choked angrily. ‘Two of them are dead, and another one that badly hit they don’t think she’ll survive.’
‘I saw them trying to run. I wanted to help, but Ricardo stopped me,’ Rosie began.
‘It’s lucky that he did,’ Jean said quietly, coming up to join them, ‘otherwise like as not you’d be lying there dead too.’
Rosie made to go towards them, but Jean stopped her. ‘No, there’s nothing you can do. They were hit pretty bad. The other girls from their gang are with them. It’s best that we let them do their grieving on their own for now, Rosie, just like we’d want if it was some of our own.’
‘Bloody Luftwaffe,’ Mary burst out.
‘It isn’t just the Luftwaffe, is it?’ Rosie said wildly. ‘It’s them as well.’ She gestured in the direction of the Italians. ‘They’re as much to blame as the Luftwaffe.’
‘Stop it, Rosie. This isn’t the time.’ Mary’s voice sounded so harsh and sharp that it sliced through her pain and silenced her.
The doctor had been sent for, the Italians had been lined up and were marching back to the farm, but the girls stood huddled together, looking fearfully towards the two crumpled bodies lying on the field.
‘I was really surprised by the way you carried on earlier, Rosie.’
Rosie had been sitting on her bed, avoiding the others, sensing that they were taking their lead from Mary and echoing her disapproval of Rosie’s outburst in the field. Now though, Mary was seeking her out and there was nowhere for Rosie to go to avoid her. Rosie stood up. Somehow she felt
better doing that than letting Mary stand over her looking so cross.
‘You do realise, I hope, that if Ricardo hadn’t pulled you down like he did you could have been killed like those other poor girls?’ Mary shuddered. ‘I shall never forget what happened to them. Seeing them shot down like that, like they was nothing. And that could have been you, Rosie, if Ricardo hadn’t acted as prompt as he did. As it is, he got shot in the leg. And then you go speaking about him and the other Italians like that. Really shocked me, you have.’
Ricardo had been shot! How badly? Rosie was filled with panic and fear. She swayed, and had to reach out to steady herself, her expression betraying her real feelings, before she could hide them.
Immediately Mary’s face softened. ‘It’s all right, Rosie. There’s no need for you to look like that. It was just a flesh wound and he’ll be fine. I knew you liked him really,’ she added smugly, whilst Rosie fought to get a grip on her treacherous emotions. ‘So, seein’ as the thought of him being shot had you acting like you was about to drop down dead yourself, why are you acting so mean to him?’ Mary demanded. ‘If it’s to make him want you then let me tell you that all of us can see that he does. He’s bin behaving like a proper gentleman towards you, and all.’
‘Stop it, Mary, please stop it,’ Rosie begged her friend. She was in tears now, torn between her own feelings and what she believed to be her duty towards her father’s memory. ‘I can’t bear it, I really can’t.’
‘What is it? What’s wrong? You aren’t already married or summat, are you?’
‘No, it isn’t that.’
‘Then what is it?’ Mary demanded.
‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone else if I tell you? Not even Ian?’ Mary agreed.
‘…And so you see, Mary, I couldn’t possibly, you know, get involved with an Italian. Not with what my mother did…and everything…’
She had been talking what felt like for ever, the words pouring out of her, tumbling over one another in her relief at being able to talk about what she had locked away inside herself.
‘You do understand, don’t you?’ she begged her friend.
Mary leaned across and hugged her fiercely. ‘Oh, you poor kid. Fancy not saying a word about all of this before now. And there was me thinking…Oh, Rosie! Your dad sounds a lovely man and I can understand how you feel, I really can, but I’m sure that he would want you to be happy.’
‘I don’t need Ricardo to make me happy,’ Rosie told her defiantly.
‘Don’t tell me that! I’ve seen the way the two of you keep on looking at one another. He’s nuts about you, Rosie, and I reckon you’re pretty much the same way about him. Ready to die to protect you, he was today. How do you think you’d be feeling right now if he had been killed?’
Rosie’s white face told its own story.
‘Why don’t you tell him what you’ve just told me? About your mam and your dad and all.’
‘No! No, I can’t…And you mustn’t either. You promised you wouldn’t say a word to anyone, Mary,’ Rosie reminded her fiercely.
The next day the girls went to work in silence, avoiding looking at the rust-coloured patches in the field where their comrades had died. The gang of workers to which they had belonged had been dispersed, so they had heard on the grapevine, and the girls who had survived sent home to their families before going to join new gangs in other parts of the country, in an attempt to help them to make a fresh start. It didn’t do to dwell on things, they all knew that. There was a war on and it was their duty to make the best of things and to keep on working for the good of the country and its fighting men. But even so, the horror of what had happened had touched them all. It seemed so incongruous that anyone should be machine-gunned by an enemy plane here in the country. But as Mary had told Rosie and the others, Ian had explained to her that the German plane had been part of a group flying in to attack the docks, and had somehow lost its way, so its pilot had looked for what targets he could find. It was a tragedy that the girls had been working in the field when he flew over it – and a miracle that more of them hadn’t been killed. The tall row of trees had helped to save them, had been Ian’s opinion, because it had caused the pilot to veer off or risk crashing into them. Rosie, however, was in no doubt as to what – or rather who – had saved her, and in doing so sustained an injury himself. And whilst she naturally grieved for the girls who had lost their lives, and for their families – after all, she knew herself what it was like to lose a loved one, as indeed they all did – her sharpest anxiety and concern was for Ricardo, about whom she had not been able to discover anything, despite all her own and Mary’s best attempts to do so.
The sunshine had given way to a sullen pewter sky with thunder grumbling in the distance, and an electricity in the air that mirrored the girls’ nervy tension. None of them mentioned the deaths of the girls who had been shot down, but they all knew that each and every one of them was thinking about them, and feeling torn between their grief for their loss and their guilty relief that they had been spared their fate. A heavy sombre silence had taken the place of their normal chatter and happy singing. The slightest sound had them stopping work to look upwards.
A week went by with no relaxation of the girls’ shared mood of grief. For Rosie it was an especially long week of sadness for the lost lives, and anxiety for Ricardo. Unusually, there had been no sign of the Italians all week, and Rosie could only assume that they must have been sent to work on another farm. Even though Mary assured her that Ian had checked and could confirm that Ricardo had suffered only a flesh wound, Rosie knew she wouldn’t be able to believe that fully until she had seen him for herself.
They were halfway through the following week before Rosie saw Ricardo again, and despite the fact that they were in the middle of a thunderstorm, the sight of him jumping awkwardly out of the army lorry made her feel as though the sun had come out and was shining brilliantly on her.
Ignoring the rules, she ran across to him, and then stopped, feeling acutely self-conscious and uncertain.
He didn’t seem to have any such inhibitions, though. He came towards her. ‘I…I heard that you’d been hurt…when…when you saved me,’ she began awkwardly. ‘I wanted to thank you…’
‘You being alive is all the thanks I need,’ he responded, looking at her in such a way that her heart thudded into her chest wall.
‘Is your leg…?’ Rosie looked down at his body and then flushed brilliantly, looking quickly away.
‘The bullet just grazed the skin, that’s all.’
‘I’m glad…I mean, I’m glad that that’s all it did, but I wish that you hadn’t been hurt at all,’ Rosie told him almost incoherently.
‘I’m sorry about those other girls.’ He sounded as awkward now as she felt, Rosie recognised.
‘Yes. It was awful,’ she agreed and then shuddered. ‘Their poor families.’
‘Rosie…’ He had reached for her hand and had taken hold of it before she could stop him. It felt so small and safe in his. The feel of his calloused palm against her skin made her tremble with unfamiliar excitement edged with another emotion. Rosie tried to pull her hand free but he refused to let her go.
‘I’ve bin wanting to get you all to myself so that I could talk to you proper, like, for weeks,’ he told her softly.
‘I don’t know why you should be wanting to do that,’ Rosie felt obliged to say.
‘Don’t you?’
Her whole body was trembling now, not just her hand.
‘You’re a very special girl, Rosie, and I…I want you to know that I think I’m falling in love with you,’ he told her rawly.
‘You mustn’t say that. You hardly know me,’ Rosie protested, but her heart was leaping with a wild joy she couldn’t control.
‘I can’t help how I feel, and as for knowing you, I know what you do to me, Rosie.’ His frankness was making her colour up hotly. ‘Is there any hope for me, Rosie?’ he demanded huskily.
‘I…’ What could she say? He
might have died saving her. She might have lost him for ever. Perhaps they were rushing things but everyone knew that that’s the way it was in wartime. She knew you had to snatch your happiness whilst you could in case it was taken from you. ‘I…’
‘There’s going to be a dance in Nantwich on Saturday. We’ve been told we can go. Will you dance with me there, Rosie?’
Unable to speak, Rosie nodded. A feeling she could only associate with those times as a child when her father had returned home from sea, picking her up so that she felt so giddy with excitement and anticipation that she thought she could fly was billowing through her. She wanted to both laugh and cry; to turn somersaults and to reach out and embrace the whole of the world. Her happiness was so bright and shiny, so intense and new, that she was afraid that if she blinked it might disappear.
So this was love and the freedom to feel that love.
I love you, Dad, she offered in silent tribute, the words an exchange for her freedom to move on from their shared past to her own new future.
‘Quick, Rosie, the foreman’s on his way,’ Mary hissed warningly.
‘You’re afraid of him?’ Ricardo asked protectively. ‘You need not be. I will not allow him to hurt you, my Rosie.’
His words brought a loving smile to Rosie’s lips but she shook her head, urging him to leave. ‘There’s no point in us courting trouble,’ she told him, a smile curving her mouth as she added with deliberate emphasis, ‘especially now that we’re courting one another.’
‘I knew all along you were sweet on Ricardo,’ Mary announced with open satisfaction when Ricardo had gone back to join the other men and she and Rosie were back at work. ‘Didn’t we, girls?’ she demanded, seeking the support of the others.
‘Yes, it’s bin obvious how you and Ricardo felt about one another, Rosie,’ the others confirmed, laughing when she started to colour up self-consciously.
