by Annie Groves
‘Where’s our Sheila?’ Mary asked tiredly, sticking her potato fork into the ground and sinking down onto the grassy verge by the hedge. ‘Only I’ve got her sandwiches here as well as me own.’
‘She said she was just going to nip behind the hedge for a cigarette,’ Rosie answered.
They weren’t supposed to smoke when they were working and it had still been ten minutes away from their dinner break when Sheila had announced that she was desperate for a smoke.
‘I’ll go and get her, shall I?’
‘Oh, thanks, Rosie, would you? And tell her to get a move on. I’m that hungry I’ll end up eating her sandwiches as well as my own if she doesn’t watch out.’
The ground dropped away to a farm lane on the other side of the hedge, and as she climbed over the stile and then slithered down onto the track, at first Rosie couldn’t see Sheila for the sweeping branches of the chestnut tree several yards away, but then she saw the back of her blonde head and realised that she must be leaning against the trunk of the tree.
Rosie waited until she had almost reached her before calling out her name, and then came to an abrupt halt when she realised that Sheila wasn’t alone and that the reason she hadn’t come back to join them was because the foreman, George Duncan, was virtually imprisoning her against the tree, his arms resting on the trunk either side of Sheila’s head whilst she looked up at him in fear.
‘Rosie.’
Rosie could see the relief in Sheila’s face when she saw her, she could also see the anger in the foreman’s, but she didn’t think twice about her own safety as she rushed to her friend’s side, demanding, ‘Let her go.’
She tugged at George Duncan’s arm as she spoke, trying to pull it away from the tree so that Sheila could escape, but he shook Rosie’s hand from his arm with a roar of fury, and then grabbed hold of her, shaking her furiously.
‘You dare interfere wi’ me. Why, you little bitch, I’ll learn yer to put your nose into my business.’
Rose could hear Sheila screaming but the sound was blurred by the pain in her own head as the foreman pushed her against the tree where Sheila had been, banging her head violently against the wood. Rosie could taste blood in her mouth. She felt sick with the fear that she might faint. When she saw the foreman raise his hand she turned her face to one side to avoid the blow. But the blow never came. Because suddenly the foreman was being wrenched away from her and she was safe in Ricardo’s arms.
She was in too much of a state of shock to be able to speak and could only cling to Ricardo in relief whilst he murmured words of love and concern against the top of her head.
‘You’re all right, bambina …tell me that you are all right. If he has hurt you…’
He sounded so anguished that Rosie had to find the strength to raise her head from his shoulder so that she could look at him and reassure him, ‘No, he hasn’t hurt me, Ricardo. I’m fine…I…’ Out of the corner of her eye Rosie saw a movement over Ricardo’s shoulder. The foreman had picked up the potato fork Sheila had left when she had fled from him and now he was advancing on them, the fork raised.
As she cried out a warning, the foreman flung the fork at Ricardo’s unprotected back like a spear.
The speed with which Ricardo moved her, snatched Rosie’s breath away. She could hear the sound of tearing cloth and felt Ricardo release her. His shirt was ripped and blood was dripping from his arm but to her relief she saw the fork was buried in the earth and not him.
‘Go back to the field,’ he told her. ‘Go back now, Rosie.’ He had turned his back to her and was advancing on the foreman who standing waiting for him, a malicious sneer of anticipation and excitement twisting his mouth.
‘Think you’re up to it, do you, Eyetie? Well, come on then, let me show you what it means to get a real man. And then afterwards, it will be her turn…’
‘Ricardo, no,’ Rosie begged. He might be taller than the foreman but he was nothing like his weight and nor, Rosie suspected, did he have the armoury of dirty tricks the other man would possess.
She was right. The moment Ricardo got close the foreman reached up and grabbed a branch of the chestnut tree, levering himself off the ground and aiming a kick at Ricardo’s body with both his feet.
Somehow, though, Ricardo managed to avoid it and somehow too he managed to drag the foreman down off the branch and hold him with one hand whilst he punched him swiftly with his other hand.
‘That’s for Rosie,’ Rosie heard him saying thickly, ‘and this is for me…’
The foreman staggered back, clutching his face. ‘Get him, lads. Get the bugger and lock him up…’
Until that moment, Rosie hadn’t realised that other people had come running from the field, alerted by Sheila to what was going on.
‘You’ll pay for this, Eyetie, by God you will.’
The soldier who was in charge of the Italians had come running up out of breath demanding, ‘What’s going on?’
‘The bloody Eyetie attacked me. I caught him and her here, having a bit of you-know-what, and—’
‘That’s not true,’ Rosie protested, turning to the farm hands. ‘Tell him. You saw.’
They were looking away from her, no doubt too afraid of the foreman to tell the truth, Rosie realised sickly, and now the soldier was already taking Ricardo by the arm and sternly marching him away.
‘He’s lying,’ Rosie sobbed to Mary. ‘It’s all my fault. Poor Ricardo. All he was doing was trying to help me. Oh Mary, what’s going to happen? Ricardo was so pleased because he had been picked as one of the men the duke wants to work here permanently and live here, and now—’
‘Don’t go getting yourself upset, Rosie. Sheila told us what was going on. Them cowardly farm hands might not have what it takes to stand up to George Duncan but me and the other girls know what he’s like. I’m going to have a word with my Ian about all of this and, if necessary, I’ll go and see the duke meself.’
Rosie sobbed with relief on her friend’s shoulder.
‘For someone who reckons she doesn’t love a certain someone any more, you’re getting yourself in a bit of a state, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ Mary pointed out.
‘I never said I didn’t love Ricardo, only that we couldn’t be together,’ Rosie corrected her. ‘Is Sheila all right?’
‘That one will always be all right. Gave her a bad scare, of course, and no wonder. And she’ll have to do summat about the buttons he tore off the front of her shirt. Dirty pig. If I had my way I’d do to him wot farmers do to them male calves they don’t want as bulls. Serve him right, an’ all. I’ve told Sheila that she’s got to report this to the warden, and I’m going to make sure that she does.’
* * *
Mary was as good as her word, and later on that evening the warden sent for Rosie and told her that she wanted to hear what she had to say about the day’s events.
As calmly as she could Rosie explained what had happened.
‘I hope this is the truth you’re telling me, Price,’ the warden told her sternly. ‘I do know that you have your own personal reasons for not wanting to see a certain POW getting into trouble.’
Rosie’s face burned. ‘I wouldn’t lie about something as important as this,’ she told the warden truthfully.
The warden’s face softened. ‘No, I don’t think you would, Rosie. Now let’s go through it all again, shall we, just to make sure I’ve got everything down correctly?’
‘It wasn’t Ricardo’s fault, really it wasn’t,’ Rosie insisted desperately when she had finished retelling the story. ‘You will make sure they know that, won’t you, Mrs Johnson?’
The warden sighed as she put down her pen. ‘I understand how you feel, Rosie, but you must understand what a serious matter it is for an internee to attack a foreman in charge of him.’
‘But Ricardo was only—’
‘I appreciate that he had come to your defence,’ the warden continued firmly. ‘But none the less he did attack the foreman. Like I said, this
is a very serious matter.’
Rosie’s fears for Ricardo grew even stronger when, after she had left the warden’s office, Mary came to her to tell her that Sheila was beginning to panic about the foreman taking it out on her later if she got him into trouble.
‘If you ask me the silly fool probably started it all by leading him on, even though she swears she didn’t, and now she’s afraid of what’s going to be said.’
‘She’s probably afraid of George Duncan as well,’ Rosie shivered. ‘And who can blame her?’
Mary looked at Rosie’s white face. ‘You did tell the warden about how he hit you and threatened you, didn’t you, Rosie?’
‘Yes. But I’m not sure she believed me. She knows about me and Ricardo, and she probably thinks I’m just trying to protect him. But George Duncan did try to hit me, Mary, and when I saw him about to throw that fork at Ricardo…’
‘He’s a thoroughly bad lot and I know that Ian agrees with me about that,’ Mary said forthrightly. ‘Didn’t take to him one little bit, my Ian didn’t, even though he tried to smarm his way round him.’
On another occasion it would have made Rosie smile to see how partisan Mary was on her fiancé’s behalf. But now she felt too worried about Ricardo to even think about smiling.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she told Mary wretchedly. ‘If Ricardo hadn’t seen me leaving the field he would never have come after me and then—’
‘If I was you I’d thank my lucky stars that he did. That daft cousin of mine had no right to run off, leaving you on your own with George Duncan, especially not after what he’d just bin trying to do to her.’
‘She only did it because she was trying to get help,’ Rosie reminded Mary.
‘Did you tell Ricardo about your dad?’ Mary asked, changing the subject.
‘No, there’s no point. It won’t change anything. I’ve made up my mind, Mary; I can’t let my dad down. Not after everything he’s been through, what with my mother, then being torpedoed and losing his leg, and thinking that I didn’t care. I’m all he’s got now, Mary, and I just can’t.’
‘Oh? And what about letting poor Ricardo down? He really loves you, Rosie. Anyone can see that. And if you ask me, he has a right to know why you’re giving him up,’ Mary told her roundly, ‘especially now, after what he’s gone and done to save you. He could have got himself in a lot of trouble on account of you, Rosie.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you say,’ Rosie told Mary desperately. ‘I can’t change my mind. And besides, Ricardo will find someone else. An Italian girl. His family probably wouldn’t want him marrying me any more than my dad would want me marrying him.’
She could see from the tight-lipped look Mary was giving her that her friend didn’t agree with her. Still, what Mary had said to her had been almost too much for her to bear. She loved Ricardo so very much. So much that she wanted him to find happiness with someone else. Rosie felt as though someone had taken hold of her heart and was squeezing it so painfully that she just couldn’t bear the agony. It wouldn’t always be like this, Rosie tried to comfort herself. The pain would lessen, and Ricardo would find someone else to marry. A girl from his own country whom his family would welcome.
There was no sign of George Duncan when the girls arrived for work the next day, but any relief Rosie might have felt about his absence was cancelled out by the fact that there was no sign of Ricardo or the other POWs either.
She couldn’t help worrying about the warnings both the warden and Mary had given her about the trouble Ricardo could be in for having saved her from the foreman.
‘What do you think’s happened?’ she fretted to Mary at dinner time, unable to eat her sandwiches.
‘I don’t know, Rosie. I’m seeing Ian tonight so I’ll ask him then what he thinks. Are you going to eat them sandwiches?’
‘No, I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, I am,’ Mary told her. ‘So pass them over here, will you? Our Sheila was saying this morning that she wants to go home. She says she’s had enough of being a land girl and she doesn’t want to do it no more. I reckon what’s happened has given her a real nasty shock. She said she was going to see the warden tonight and tell her that she wanted to hand in her cards.’
‘But what about Ricardo?’ Rosie protested. ‘What if he’s in trouble? If Sheila goes then there won’t be anyone to say what George Duncan was doing.’
‘Well, the warden won’t let her go unless she’s satisfied that Sheila’s told her the whole story,’ Mary tried to reassure her.
But Rosie wasn’t convinced and she suspected that in her heart of hearts Mary wasn’t either. Sheila had such a pinched, nervous air about her now, and had changed so much from the cheery girl she had been, that it was obvious how terrified she was of the foreman seeking revenge.
All the girls were talking about what had happened and offering their own opinions on the outcome.
‘My chap’s in the Military Police,’ one of the girls from another gang informed them all when they were chatting after their evening meal at the hostel, ‘and he says there’s bound to be a disciplinary proceedings brought, and that the foreman’s bound to be favoured and let off on account of him being British and the Italian foreign and an internee. He reckons that the Italian could end up spending the rest of the war in prison.’
Rosie stood up, her whole body trembling with the intensity of her feelings. ‘But it wasn’t Ricardo’s fault. It was George Duncan’s.’
‘You can say that as much as you like, Rosie, but it stands to reason that no court is going to favour a foreigner above one of our own,’ the other girl insisted. ‘You can bet that George Duncan has already warned them as works with him what they can expect if they don’t keep their mouths shut about what he’s like, and that wife of his isn’t going to tell on him, is she?’
‘But that’s unfair,’ Rosie protested.
‘It might be, Rosie, but that’s the way things are. There are plenty of folk around who think that it’s unfair that the POWs get a better food ration than we do, and plenty too who don’t like seeing them being allowed to walk free and go to dances and the like. They won’t lose any sleep at night worrying about an Italian internee spending the rest of the war locked up in prison.’
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Mary gave the other girl a dark look and then said firmly, ‘It’s just daft folk who think like that. How do they think we’d get the ruddy farm work done without them lads to help us?’
‘It’s all right for Mary to say that,’ Rosie heard one of the other girls mutter, ‘but Mabel’s got it right: without someone proper to stand up and speak for him, that Italian hasn’t got a chance.’
‘I’m going to have a word with the warden about Ricardo,’ Rosie told Mary, adding passionately, ‘He can’t go to prison, Mary. It isn’t fair.’
‘Well, you and me might know that, Rosie, but it isn’t us that has the say so, is it?’
Mrs Johnson said much the same thing when Rosie asked to see her.
‘I do understand your feelings, my dear,’ she tried to comfort Rosie, ‘but this is a military affair now and will have to be dealt with accordingly. It seems that the foreman – George Duncan, wasn’t it? – has alleged that he was the one who was attacked by your friend and not the other way around. He claims that Ricardo held a grudge against him because of an accident to another Italian, who had blamed him for his own clumsiness.’
‘He must mean Paolo, but that was his fault too. Oh, Mrs Johnson, surely people won’t believe a man like him?’ Rosie was practically wringing her hands together in her despair. ‘He is horrible, cruel and unkind, and his wife—’
‘That’s enough, Rosie. I do understand how you must feel, my dear, but it is up to the authorities now. If your friend has a good record as an internee then I am sure that this will be something in his favour.’
But not as much in Ricardo’s favour as having someone like His Grace speak up for him, Rosie realised.
Mary was h
orrified when Rosie confided her plan to her.
‘You can’t just go up to the manor and ask to see the duke, Rosie. You’d never be allowed anywhere near, even if you could sneak away from working without being found out. And then what help to Ricardo would it be if you was to get in trouble as well?’
‘But I’ve got to see him, Mary. I’ve got to see him and make sure that he knows what really happened.’
‘Oh, yes, and he’d believe you, of course, you being madly in love with Ricardo and him with you. Look, I’m seeing Ian tonight ’cos we’ve got some stuff to sort out, what with the wedding coming up soon. I’ll ask him if he can find out what’s happening, and perhaps have a word with His Grace himself if he can, but you’ve got to promise me that you won’t go doing nothing daft.’
Rosie hesitated and then gave in and promised.
Rosie was waiting for Mary that night when she came in, pouncing on her the moment she walked through the door.
‘Did you speak to Ian about Ricardo?’ she asked her anxiously.
‘Give us a chance to get in the door, Rosie,’ Mary complained. When she saw Rosie’s stricken expression Mary relented. ‘I said I would, didn’t I? Ian’s said he’ll see what he can find out, discreetly, like. He knows a chap who knows someone based at the camp with the internees and POWs so he’s going to try and find out what’s happening. Do you want him to try and send a message to Ricardo from you?’
Rosie ached with longing to say yes and to send Ricardo her love, but how could she? She had made up her mind and told Ricardo that it was over between them, and she couldn’t go back on that.
