by Annie Groves
Rosie could feel her guilt growing by the heartbeat. At the very least, she ought to go over and tell Ricardo how sorry she was about Paolo. That couldn’t do any harm, could it? And it wasn’t as though she’d be saying anything personal, if she did that. Not personal like about her and Ricardo and why she didn’t want to see him any more. And besides, she had to see him, Rosie admitted, so that she’d be able to set her own mind at rest instead of worrying herself sick now that Mary had started going on about how poorly he looked.
Rosie put down her dinner and stood up, unaware of the small triumphant look Mary gave her as she took a deep breath and then set out across the field.
Ricardo made no attempt to pretend that he hadn’t seen her. Rosie saw him throw aside the apple he had been eating, and come towards her, almost running over the furrowed field.
He was thinner. Rosie’s heart flung itself against her chest wall as though urging her to fling herself into his arms. Now that he was within arm’s reach of her, Ricardo was standing still, his brown-eyed gaze fastening on her face so hungrily that she wanted to cry.
‘Rosie. My Rosie!’
Just hearing the fervent way in which he whispered her name flooded her with love. But when he came closer, and tried to take her hands, Rosie stepped back with a small agonised moan of denial. She dare not let him touch her.
‘Rosie. My little love…’ How Italian he sounded now as he breathed her name with such intense emotion.
‘I just came to say how sorry I am about Paolo,’ Rosie told him, using the words to hold him away from her. She shivered. ‘Poor, poor boy, to do such a thing. He must have felt so alone.’
She could see her own pain mirrored in Ricardo’s gaze.
‘None of us had any idea. It was a shock to us all when he left the camp. We had all tried to talk to him and to cheer him up. We knew how much he missed his home and his family, but we never imagined he would do something like this. The war had made him sick at heart inside himself; he felt that he had let his family down by being captured. The elders of his village are strong supporters of Mussolini, and poor Paolo had never really wanted to fight. He was a country boy who loved his family, not a fighter. He should never have been forced to go to war.’ Now Rosie could hear anger as well as sadness in Ricardo’s voice. ‘He has paid the ultimate price for the warmongering pride of others. And he will not be the only one to do so. This war has many different kinds of casualties. Please don’t make our love one of them, Rosie. I have missed you so much. Longed for you so much, my Rosie.’
Rosie began to panic. Every word he said was making it harder for her to remember why they could not be together. ‘No, no, you mustn’t say that,’ she told him, and, ‘I’m not your Rosie. I – I can’t be. Not now.’
‘Because of your father.’
Rosie stared up at him, torn between relief and anger. ‘You know? How? Mary told you?’ she guessed. ‘She had no right.’
‘But surely as the man who loves you, and who believes that you love him, I have every right to know why you are doing this? You must not blame Mary. I begged her to tell me. If she broke a confidence between the two of you then she did so in the belief that what she was doing was right. She told me as your friend, because she is concerned for you. Concerned that you are mistaken in believing that your father would want you to deny our love for one another.’
‘She had no right,’ Rosie repeated. ‘Mary doesn’t understand. My father has bitter memories of…of the past and my mother’s relationship with an Italian. Seeing me with you would only remind him of what he suffered. I can’t cause him that kind of pain.’
‘But you can inflict pain on me and on yourself?’
How could she bear this? But somehow she must find a way to do so. ‘There’s no point in saying any of this, Ricardo, and besides…’
‘Besides what?’
‘You’re Italian,’ Rosie told him almost accusingly. ‘You know as well as I do that your parents, especially your mother, will expect you to marry an Italian girl.’
The look in his eyes made her feel small and mean. ‘So, now you want to include my parents in this blame? Well, you cannot do so. I will not allow it. My mother will want me to marry the girl I love.’
Rosie’s look was scornful. His own words had proved the point she had just made. ‘I’ve lived in an Italian community, Ricardo. I know all about how much Italian mothers worship their sons, and how they expect those sons to take wives they approve of.’
Ricardo shrugged. ‘My mother loves me, yes, but why should you think that she will not approve of you?’
Rosie was losing her patience. ‘Because I’m not Italian,’ she repeated.
‘No, that is true you are not, but then neither is my mother.’
Rosie gaped at him, unable to conceal her astonishment. ‘She isn’t? But…’
‘My father also fell in love with an English girl and he married her. It is true that his parents, my grandparents, were not entirely accepting of my mother at first, but in the way of things, once the bambini arrived all was forgiven. What Italian nonna can ever resist her grandchildren, eh? So my mother was forgiven and truly welcomed into the family. So much so, in fact, that my grandparents chose to live with my father and my mother rather than with one of my father’s sisters and their families. You see, Rosie, with love, if you have enough of it, anything is possible. No, don’t look at me like that with your lovely eyes full of tears,’ Ricardo begged her rawly.
But it was too late, she had already done so, and now she was in his arms and he was kissing her so tenderly that Rosie felt as though her heart was melting with love for him.
‘Your father will understand,’ he whispered to her.
‘No,’ Rosie told him brokenly. ‘No, he won’t, Ricardo, and I can’t ask him to. I can’t! Please don’t make this even harder for me than it already is. If you truly love me you will understand and accept that we cannot be together.’ She broke free of his hold and stood back from him.
‘Rosie,’ he pleaded.
‘No. No more, please. I can’t bear it.’
‘And you think that I can? I, who love you and who want you as my wife, the mother of our children. You are everything to me, Rosie – my love, my woman, my future.’
‘No! No!’
Rosie felt as though she were in mortal agony and dying from a thousand wounds. Her tears fell as though they were her blood and she was dying from the pain of having her love ripped from her. But she could not abandon her father. She was all he – a badly wounded victim of the war – had. He had written bravely of losing his leg but he would need her now, not just emotionally but practically as well, once he came home.
Thinking about her father steadied her a little, allowing her to regain control of her emotions. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about Paolo, really I am. And…and I’m pleased about…about you getting the cottage and everything, and not being in trouble for hitting the foreman, but you’ve got to forget about me and…and look for someone else. It’s for the best, for both of us.’
The look Ricardo was giving her told her how little he agreed with what she had said.
‘How can giving up our love be for the best?’ he demanded savagely.
‘It’s the best for my dad,’ Rosie told him. ‘And…and I can’t let him down like my mother did, Ricardo. I just can’t. He needs me now.’
‘And you think that I don’t? I am not giving up, Rosie. I will find a way for us to be together.’
To Rosie’s relief, Ricardo didn’t wait for her to answer him, simply turning on his heel instead and walking back across the field.
It was over. For a few sweet, short and precious days she had known love and believed in it. But now the realities of life were crowding in on her, taking root where it should have grown.
The week felt like it was never going to end. Every day that passed was harder for Rosie to get through as she tried to ignore the fact that Ricardo was working only a field away.
On the Wednesday, at dinner time, Mary told her defiantly, ‘I know you won’t like this but me and Ian are inviting Ricardo to our wedding. I’m just going across to tell him now.’
Rosie didn’t want to watch them talking together but somehow she couldn’t stop herself from looking yearningly towards the other field. She saw that Mary had reached Ricardo and was handing him something. But when Ricardo leaned down and kissed Mary on the cheek Rosie had to look away.
It lifted her spirits a little bit to find a letter from her father waiting for her when they got back to the hostel after their day’s work. She went up to the dormitory to read it, sitting down on her bed and then frowning as she realised that the drawer in which she had put his letters was slightly open. She must have left it like that without realising it, she decided, as she closed it again and opened his new letter.
He was overjoyed to have heard from her, he had written, but shocked and sad to learn of the death of his sister. She was not to worry about him or fret for him, for he was doing very well in Canada and had the kindest of new friends in the couple he was lodging with – a fellow sailor and his wife who had made him feel very much at home.
You would love it here, Rosie. It’s a wonderful country. I wish you could be here with me to see it. I’m not saying that it’s been easy getting used to the fact that I’ve had to lose my leg. It hasn’t. But at least I’m still here and alive, and there’s many a poor chap who will have worse to face than me when this war’s over and he’s back on civvy street. Of course I won’t be able to sign on under the Red Duster no more – but I dare say I’ll be able to get myself a bit of a job somewhere.
Rosie had told him in her own letter that she wasn’t seeing Rob any more and he had gone on to write teasingly that he would look around for a nice young Canadian for her.
It’s a good place for young ones, Rosie, and maybe after the war you’ll be able to see that for yourself. Of course he’d have to be willing to give your old dad a berth, seeing as how I’m likely to be shore bound from now on. I’ve told Pat and Arthur all about you and how proud I am of my lovely girl and how proud I am to call you my daughter, Rosie. And don’t you ever think any different than that, because it’s the truth. Your aunt shouldn’t have said what she did to you and that’s a fact. She didn’t mean any real harm. She just got a bit carried away, that’s all, and said more than she should have done. Your mum never ever said anything about you not being mine, and knowing her and how she felt about Aldo, it seems to me that if you had bin his she would have told me so. In fact, between you and me now, Rosie, there was times when I worried that she wasn’t treating you as lovingly as a mother should and I worried that it was on account of you being mine and not his. It made me feel proper angry, that did. Of course I know she was always taking you round there to them Italians, but if you was to ask me I’d have said that that was on account of her wanting to go round there so as she could see him. And they certainly didn’t think you was one of their own. Leastways, that sister of Maria’s never did. Told me once, she did, that she was sick of your mother carrying on with her sister’s husband and that she’d told Maria to put her foot down and put a stop to it. Had a real go at me, she did, and all, saying as how I should have done something about it. But you know what your mum was like, Rosie. She’d made up her mind that it was him she wanted and nothing was going to stop her from seeing him. I don’t want you ever thinking badly of yourself though, Rosie, or thinking that I don’t believe you’re my own girl. I’ve bin thinking a lot about how it was when I last saw you. What with the shock of hearing about your mum’s death and everything, I didn’t perhaps make it as plain to you as I should have done that I’ve never gone along with your auntie’s daft talk. Your mum’s gone now, may she rest in peace, and you and me can have a fresh start once this war is over. Who knows, we could even end up living here in Canada. It’s a fine country.
I want you to forget about all that silly stuff your auntie came out with and to remember until we can be together again, that you are my girl and you always will be.
And he had signed the letter, ‘From your loving dad.’
By the time she had read the letter three times over, Rosie’s heart was overflowing with love. If she closed her eyes she could almost see him, his face weathered by the sea’s salt-laden winds, his blue eyes warm with love as he smiled at her. He had always walked with a sailor’s slightly rolling gait. With the loss of his leg that walk would have changed, and so too, she imagined, would the familiar salt and tar smell she always associated with his return from sea. She didn’t know enough about Canada to be able to picture him against a Canadian background in the same way that she could so easily picture him against the backdrop of Liverpool’s docks, where she had gone so often as a young girl to wait for him coming off his ship, kitbag over his shoulder, his face crinkling into a wide smile the moment he saw her. Then he would stand there, putting his kitbag down and holding out his arms so that she could run into them and be swung up onto his shoulders.
He had cared for her and loved her unstintingly throughout her childhood, and now it was her turn and her pleasure to do the same for him. His sister’s house would provide them with a comfortable roof over their heads, and she could work even if her father couldn’t. They would manage – somehow – and she would be happy – somehow.
‘Oooh, Rosie, that looks ever so nice, it really does.’
The enthusiasm in Audrey’s voice as she studied the flowers and greenery with which Rosie had just finished decorating the church hall made Rosie force an answering smile.
The last thing she wanted to do was in any way spoil Mary and Ian’s special day, so she had thrown herself into helping with the arrangements for the wedding and put her own unhappiness to one side. The result was that she had virtually decorated the church and the church hall single-handedly, with the greenery and flowers they had all gathered from the hedgerows, and those kind villagers who had offered them flowers from their gardens, wild poppies, and pale pink dog roses from the hedgerows, ragged robin and verbena. Cultivated roses of every shade, there were, and large white garden daisies, white, blue, lilac and purple larkspur and delphiniums, and many more.
Everywhere did indeed look very pretty, Rosie acknowledged as she pushed her hair out of her eyes before climbing down the stepladder on which she had been perching to go to put the final blooms into place over the lich-gate.
Mary’s parents had arrived earlier in the week and were staying in the village, and Rosie, along with the other girls, had oohed and ahhed over the wedding dress they had brought with them. Clothing coupons now meant that Mary could not have a brand-new dress, but one of her cousins had been married the previous year and her dress had been passed on and retrimmed.
Everyone had done their bit to help, and seeing Mary all aglow with excitement and happiness had made Rosie all the more aware of what she had given up. She must not dwell on that, though, she told herself determinedly. Instead she must just think about being happy for Mary and Ian; and remembering poor Peggy, who would now never stand where Mary would be standing tomorrow, being joined in marriage to the man she loved; and of course the end of the war and her own life with her father.
Mary’s closest group of friends, which included Rosie, had been given permission to finish work at dinner time so that they could set to and help with the organisation of the wedding. Now with the flowers all finished and the light fading, Rosie came down off the ladder, propped on the lich-gate, and asked Audrey, ‘What else is there to do yet?’
‘There’s still the tables and that to put up in the village hall, ready for the wedding breakfast. Did you say you’d done some flowers for the top table, Rosie?’
‘Yes. I left them in the church porch. It’s cooler there and, with so many of them being wild flowers, they won’t last more than a day at most.’
‘Some of Ian’s pals have come over from Hack Green to give us a hand, and by the sound of it when I left the hall half an hou
r ago, some people are celebrating this wedding already.’ Audrey chuckled. ‘The lads have brought down a gramophone and some records. A bit of music whilst you’re working really helps to get things going, doesn’t it?’
Rosie nodded, folding up the ladder, which the vicar had loaned her.
‘If it stays fine like it’s supposed to, they’ll have a lovely day for the wedding tomorrow,’ Audrey observed, looking up at the clear sky before tucking her arm through Rosie’s as they walked down to the village hall.
The village itself might be quiet and peaceful, but inside the village hall it was anything but. The sound of Vera Lynn singing could hardly be heard above the bustle of activity and excitement.
A group of young men in RAF uniform were busily putting up trestle tables, whilst the girls, watched over by Mary’s mother, were covering them with sheets to hide the trestles and then with tablecloths.
‘It’s really kind of the duke to send down them plates and glasses and things to help out,’ Audrey commented. ‘He’s let Mary have a couple of chickens as well, and they’ve sent down some tins of ham and fruit and that from the NAAFI, she was telling me yesterday.’
‘Come on, you two, don’t just stand there watching, give us a hand,’ Sheila demanded breathlessly, hurrying over to them.
‘Oh, you’re a fine one to talk,’ Audrey laughed. ‘The last time I came in here you was dancing with some lad.’
‘I was just doin’ me duty, that’s all,’ Sheila grinned. ‘On account of him not knowing how to dance close up, like, with a girl.’
‘Go on with you. You never fell for that one, did you?’ Audrey shook her head. ‘I heard the other day about this girl that was that soft that when she was on the train and some young soldier pretended to faint, she was daft enough to get down on the floor to have a look. Of course, the chap was only pretending, and the next thing she knew he was grabbing hold of her and giving her a kiss.’
