by Ellie Dean
‘What?’ Peggy’s fear for Rita made her tone sharper than she’d meant.
‘The police let the hooligans go free and promptly arrested all the Italians, including the women, children and old folk.’
‘But why?’
‘Defence of the Realm Act, according to Alf,’ he muttered darkly. ‘The same thing happened to the German families in the last war, if you remember.’
Peggy could remember it all too well. She stood and reached for her coat and scarf which were hanging on the back of the door. ‘I must go to Rita and make sure she and Louise are all right.’
‘You’ll not be going anywhere near that side of town until things calm down,’ he replied firmly. ‘Feelings are still running high and it’s not safe.’
‘Safe or not, I’m going.’ She kicked off her slippers, pulled on her coat, grabbed her handbag and gas mask and slid her feet into her outdoor shoes. ‘Louise isn’t strong at the best of times, and relies on Antonino for everything. I dread to think what all this must have done to her.’
‘Sit down, Peg,’ he growled. ‘It’s not our business and it won’t do any good to meddle.’
‘Of course it’s our business,’ snapped Peggy, who was now thoroughly overwrought. ‘Rita’s been coming here since she was a little girl, and she relies on the Minellis – they’ve been a second family to her. I need to make sure Louise hasn’t been arrested along with the others.’
‘For God’s sake, woman, would you listen to yourself?’ Jim rose from his chair and towered over her, his eyes glinting with what looked suspiciously like amusement. ‘Louise won’t have been arrested. She’s one of us.’
‘My point entirely,’ she retorted, ‘and because she’s one of our own she’ll need all the support she can get until her husband and son are released. Now, are you coming with me, or do I have to go alone?’
He heaved a great sigh, finished his tea and reached reluctantly for his cap. ‘God preserve me from interfering women,’ he muttered, tipping a wink at his father who was grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘If I’d known you’d make such a fuss, I wouldn’t have told you anything.’
Peggy wasn’t even listening to him as she hurried into the hall. ‘Hurry up,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘or we’ll miss the trolleybus to the station.’
‘Thanks for standing by me today.’ Rita gave her friend a hug. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
May hugged her back and climbed onto her BSA motorbike. ‘I’ll be here waiting for you, so don’t be late.’ She kicked the bike into life and shot out of the estate, the powerful bike barely missing the broad, wobbling beam of Aggie Rawlings – earning a shaken fist and some ripe language.
It was after four, and Rita walked quickly past the furious Aggie, the gas mask box bumping on her hip, her heavy, steel-capped boots ringing out on the pavement as she hurried home. The day had not been a pleasant one, for a lot of the other women had refused to speak to her at all. At least she’d had May at her side, and two or three of the other younger girls had come forward to offer their sympathy and make it clear they wanted no part of her being sent to Coventry.
Rita had never been a victim of bullying before, had never experienced such suspicion and spite, and it had unsettled her more than she liked to admit. Still, she thought with some relief, now she knew where she stood and who her real friends were – and May had proved to be a stalwart.
As she entered Barrow Lane she felt her spirits rise as she saw the café had been boarded up with heavy sheets of plywood, the door replaced, and the ruined furniture piled neatly outside awaiting the rubbish collection. Perhaps their darkest dread had been in vain, and Roberto and Tino had come home.
But hope faltered as she stood there. It was hard to tell if anyone was at home, for the upstairs window had been boarded up, too, and it was rather worrying that she couldn’t smell cooking or hear voices.
With rising panic, Rita hurried to the narrow alley that ran between two of the houses and headed for the Minellis’ back gate. As she unlocked the gate and stepped into the neat concreted yard with its array of potted herbs and seedlings, she looked up at the rear window. The curtains were drawn and the sash window was tightly shut, which was most unusual at this time of day.
Her mouth dry, she let herself in through the back door. This was where Antonino and Roberto baked their pies, cakes and pastries, but since plentiful supplies of cream, sugar, flour and eggs had become almost impossible to maintain, they’d had to cut down on production, and Roberto had gone to work in the hospital kitchens. The fire in the range in the corner had gone out, the mixing bowls and baking tins were neatly stacked on shelves, and the cool slab of marble where Papa Tino rolled his pastry and made his bread had been polished clean. The paraphernalia of rolling pins, knives, spatulas and spoons were neatly stacked in jars, waiting for him to return. The only sound came from the quiet hum of the gas fridge.
Fearful for Louise, Rita ran into the shop, noted it had been cleaned of all trace of the brawl, and raced up the stairs. ‘Louise,’ she called, hurtling into the main room.
There was no reply, and she quickly checked the two bedrooms before finding the note Louise had left on the mantelpiece.
‘Have gone to police station. Please come.’
‘Oh, no,’ she groaned, and fled back downstairs again. She didn’t have enough petrol in the tank to use the motorbike, and although she had a couple of cans stowed in the garage for emergencies, it would take too long to top it up, so she locked the back door, grabbed Roberto’s bicycle and pedalled furiously into town.
Louise was waiting for her beside the great stacks of sandbags that guarded the door to the police station. Her face was drawn, her eyelids swollen as she gratefully clasped Rita’s hands with her cold fingers. ‘I waited,’ she murmured in Italian, ‘knowing you would come as soon as you could.’
‘Have you had any news?’
Louise shook her head as the tears welled again. ‘They haven’t come home and I’m frightened, Rita.’
Rita noted the straggle of untidy hair drifting from beneath the headscarf, the deep lines of worry etched into the sweet face that was usually wreathed in smiles. Louise was slowly falling apart, and Rita realised she had to be strong for both of them. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking her hand. ‘I’ll see if we can get any sense out of anyone.’
They climbed the concrete steps and pushed through the heavy door into a vast hall with a desk at one end. Sergeant Williams stood behind it, and when he caught sight of them he ducked his head and continued to write something in a large ledger.
Rita hurried forward, Louise alongside her. ‘We want to know what’s happened to Roberto and Antonino,’ she said. ‘You told us you would keep us informed, but they still haven’t come home, and you said . . .’
‘They won’t be coming home, miss,’ he interrupted. ‘Not for a long while yet.’
‘Why not?’ Rita snapped. ‘They aren’t criminals.’
‘Where are my husband and son?’ pleaded Louise as she twisted the strap of her gas mask box in her fingers. ‘I must talk to them; make sure they are all right.’
Sergeant Williams stood tall, his expression implacable. ‘They’ve been taken to Wormwood Scrubs for questioning.’ He glared down at Louise. ‘It’s no good you looking like that, missus. You want to thank your lucky stars you’re English and didn’t go with them. All the other Italian families have been rounded up and sent to camps where they’ll stay for the duration.’
‘All of them?’ breathed Louise. ‘Even Gino’s nonna Frizzelli?’ At his nod she burst into tears. ‘But she’s eighty years old. What possible risk could she be?’
‘It’s not my place to question the law, madam, just to see it obeyed.’
‘But Wormwood Scrubs is miles away. How am I supposed to get to them?’ wailed Louise.
Rita could feel her temper rising and had to struggle to remain calm in the face of his inflexibility. ‘Can we visit them at the Scrubs? Or perhaps write to them?�
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‘There’s no visiting or correspondence allowed. Not for internees. Besides, you won’t be allowed travel warrants.’
‘Murderers are allowed visitors,’ Rita retorted. ‘I don’t see why . . .’
‘It’s out of my hands, miss. But the way things are going, I doubt they’ll be there for much longer. The German and Italian nationals are being processed pretty swiftly to get them away from strategic areas before the invasion comes. You’ll just have to wait until they can write to you.’
Rita stared at him as Louise sobbed. ‘But this is England,’ she said, her own voice trembling with emotion. ‘We don’t treat people like this.’
The sergeant slammed the large logbook shut. ‘There’s a war on,’ he said grimly. ‘Things happen whether we like it or not.’ With that, he pushed through the nearby door and was gone.
Rita put her arm round Louise’s shoulder. ‘Come, Mamma,’ she murmured. ‘Let’s get you home.’
She gently steered the weeping woman out of the police station, past the sandbags and into the almost deserted High Street. There was no sign of a bus and neither of them could afford a taxi even if, by some miracle, one happened along. Rita retrieved the bicycle from where it leaned against a nearby lamp post. It was going to be a long, slow walk home.
The air-raid siren went off before they could reach Barrow Lane, and they hurried down the concrete steps of the public shelter that had been dug beneath the recreation ground. It was dimly lit and reeked of damp and too many bodies crammed into a tight space. Babies were crying, women were chattering and complaining at the inconvenience of it all as they puffed cigarettes and shared flasks of tea, and Rita had to push her way through to find somewhere to sit.
She recognised many faces but, as she held Louise’s hand and tried to comfort her, she noticed how their gazes shifted away, how they shrank from making contact with them, and whispered to each other behind their hands.
‘It’s all right,’ she consoled Louise. ‘Let them turn their noses up. Roberto and Papa are worth ten of them.’
Despite her brave words, they suffered an uncomfortable half-hour down there until the all-clear rang out. It was yet another false alarm, and everyone trudged back up the steps, more concerned with getting home than continuing their gossip.
Louise tied her headscarf under her chin, gripped her handbag and gas mask box to her chest and, head held high, walked alongside Rita who was pushing the bicycle. They went into the house through the back door and, after making sure everything was locked, wearily climbed the stairs to the main room.
‘You’ve worked hard today,’ said Rita as she pulled the blackout curtains over the fresh plywood, lit the gas lamps and put the kettle on to boil. ‘It must have taken ages to clean up the mess downstairs.’
Louise sank into her favourite armchair with a deep sigh and pulled off her gloves and headscarf. ‘I had plenty of help. Peggy and Jim Reilly came over and she got him to board up the windows and carry the heavier stuff out to the pavement while we scrubbed the floor and cleaned the mess. Jim even managed to find a replacement door. They were both so very kind.’
‘They’re lovely people,’ agreed Rita. She prodded the poker amongst the few coals in the range fire and coaxed it to burn more brightly as her thoughts whirled. It was a great pity their neighbours hadn’t rallied round, and she hoped they’d felt at least a twinge of shame as they watched the Reillys help clean up.
‘Peggy was all for going to the police station and giving the superintendent a piece of her mind, but I managed to persuade her not to make a fuss. It would have only made things worse for Tino and Roberto.’
‘It might not have done,’ said Rita as she let the tea steep in the pot and reached for cups. ‘Peggy knows a lot of influential people in this town, and she might have been able to pull some strings.’
‘There are no strings left to pull,’ said Louise, who was close to tears again. ‘You see, it’s my fault Roberto is in prison, and I didn’t want the shame of having to tell Peggy how stupid I’ve been.’
Rita perched on the arm of Louise’s chair and took her hand. ‘What is it, Mamma?’ she asked softly.
Louise sniffed back the tears and tried her best to remain composed. ‘Antonino and I had taken the girls to Naples for his brother’s wedding. We thought we’d have plenty of time to get back before Roberto was born – but he came early. I left Italy only a few days after he was born and planned to deal with the paperwork when I got home. But Roberto was a demanding baby, Tino needed help in the café and I had the two girls to look after. It slipped my mind.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ murmured Rita. ‘You had enough to worry about by the sound of it.’
Louise nodded and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘When I finally remembered, there were so many forms to read, so many places that had to be signed and witnessed and stamped – and I couldn’t understand half of them.’ She dipped her chin, her voice softer now. ‘I was never much good at reading and writing, and I got more and more confused and upset about it all. I finally decided it wouldn’t really matter if I didn’t fill them in. Tino had made his home here since he was fourteen, the girls were born in this house and I was already British anyway. Roberto was less than a week old when I brought him home, and I didn’t think there was any harm in pretending he was English too.’
‘But surely Papa Tino must have known?’
Louise burst into tears. ‘I was ashamed to admit I couldn’t understand all those forms. So I lied to him. He didn’t question it because he trusted me.’
Rita held her as she sobbed into a handkerchief. The whole thing was a terrible mess. If only Louise had had more courage, Rita was certain Tino would have understood and perhaps paid for advice on how to fill in those damned forms. But it was too late now, and all they could do was wait and see what happened next.
Louise eventually blew her nose and then scrabbled in her handbag for a rare cigarette. She lit it, coughed on the smoke and determinedly carried on puffing. ‘He will know now that I lied to him, but it was the only time, Rita, I swear. And look what it has done.’
Rita didn’t know what to do or say. Events had whirled out of her control to the point where she was as confused and upset as Louise. But one thing was certain. Louise could not cope alone. It was now up to her to make sure they both got through this – no matter how long it took, or how hard it became.
Chapter Four
AS THE WEEKS passed and there was still no news of her husband and son, Louise slowly lost hope and became a shadow of her previous self. The allotment where Antonino had once worked so diligently was all but abandoned. The three rooms above the boarded-up café began to look shabby as she couldn’t dredge up the energy to cook and clean, and she’d lost any interest in her appearance, rarely leaving the sanctuary of her home for fear of the real and imagined slights of the neighbours who mostly still kept their distance.
Louise had become a lost soul – a prisoner in her own home, and Rita despaired at ever seeing her smile again. Peggy was a frequent visitor, and she and Rita did their best to clean the house and try to bring some order to Louise’s life. Ron turned up to weed the allotment now and again, but there were too few hours in the day for any of them to do much. Peggy had a houseful, Ron had his own garden to keep as well as helping in the pub and attending to his Defence Volunteer duties. Production at the factory had been stepped up, and everyone was encouraged to work longer hours to complete the quota, which meant Louise was often left alone to mope.
Rita had all but abandoned her own home, sitting night after night with Louise, encouraging her to eat the dismal little meals she’d cooked as she attempted to persuade her to take up some sort of work – or at least to spend time in the allotment. Peggy would often arrive with a tin of something to eat, but with no income from the café, and few savings, Louise had effectively come to rely on Rita’s slender pay packet. Although their needs were few, it was getting harder to cope each week.
But all these worries faded into insignificance at the beginning of July when they heard that the Arandora Star had been sunk by a German U-boat. She’d been on her way to Canada with 1,562 internees on board. Over eight hundred lives were lost, the majority of them Italian, and although there was a public outcry, it didn’t stop the government from sending another, larger ship, the Dunera, to Australia with even more internees on board, including German Jews who had escaped the terrors of Europe only to find themselves imprisoned alongside Nazi POWs.
It took Rita and Peggy many days to reach the right people and confirm that the Minelli men had not been on board, or sent to Australia on the Dunera along with the survivors from the Arandora Star. But their whereabouts was still being kept secret, and all communication banned. This lack of knowledge was almost the undoing of poor Louise and she retreated further into her shell of despair.
As the summer waned, the war news became ever more alarming. The Channel Islands had fallen to German occupation. Italy had invaded Southern France and bombed Abyssinia and Eritrea, capturing the British outposts of Kassala and Gallabat on the Sudanese border, and the Italians had bombed the British protectorate of Palestine. Cardiff and Liverpool had come under attack by the Luftwaffe and August saw the first enemy bombing raid over London. Hitler’s blockade of the British Isles was swiftly followed by massive enemy raids on London, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool and Manchester.
The activity at the airfield increased tenfold as the RAF began night raids on Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Berlin. Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared that ‘The Battle of Britain’ had begun, and now there were daily air-raid warnings as seaports, airfields, radar stations and factories came under attack. Shipping was under fire in the Channel as Hitler’s blockade of Britain tightened, and everyone was on high alert as the activity in the skies increased and the danger of invasion became ever more likely.
Cliffehaven was in the direct flight path of the enemy bombers which came across the Channel to attack London, and was being called ‘Fire Alley’ in the newspapers. Because of the military camps, the factories and the airfield in the hills behind it, the sprawling seaside town had suffered numerous heavy bombing raids during August and September, which had caused several deaths and a great deal of damage.
