Keep Smiling Through (2 page)

‘
Ciao
, Rita. I hear you come home, and want to make sure you are all right.’

She turned to find Antonino Minelli standing in the doorway. The short, rotund little Italian had a mop of black, unruly hair and a bushy moustache of which he was very proud. His ever-cheerful smile and enthusiastic approach to life belied his years, and no one would have guessed he was almost sixty – but today his eyes were troubled, his smile soft with sympathy and love as he opened his arms to her.

Tears welled on seeing him and all the emotions she’d been holding back poured out as she fell into his embrace. ‘Oh, Papa Tino,’ she sobbed, ‘I’m going to miss him so very much.’

‘
Cara mia
,’ he soothed, his hand gently stroking her short curls. ‘Of course you are sad, but Mamma Louise and I will take care of you, I promise.’

Rita found comfort in the soft Italian endearments and the fierce embrace, and she clung to him until the storm of tears and jagged emotions were soothed. ‘You must think I’m being a terrible baby,’ she said as she finally drew away and blew her nose.

His brown eyes were wet with his own tears – Tino had never been one to hide his emotions. ‘You must always cry when the need is great,’ he soothed. ‘And yes, you are still very young, but you are strong, Rita. You will get through this.’

She gave him a watery smile. ‘I know,’ she admitted, ‘but . . .’

He tried to look stern but his warm smile shone through. ‘We will make sure you do, and for now, you will come home with me and eat pasta. Louise has cooked it just the way you like.’

The thought of Louise’s delicious pasta made Rita’s mouth water despite her sadness. ‘I’d love to come, but I need to get out of these clothes and have a wash first.’

He shook his head as his gaze drifted over her heavy boots, leather trousers and the old flying jacket that had survived the first war. His moustache twitched in disapproval. ‘You are pretty girl,’ he said in his heavily accented English. ‘Why you dress like boy all the time?’

This was a familiar grumble, and Rita replied as she always did, but with a rather shaky smile. ‘Because I can’t ride the Norton in a skirt.’

His dark eyes flickered with disdain over the motorbike before regarding her solemnly. ‘Perhaps it is not fitting to ride bike at all,’ he said. ‘In Italy the girls ride side-saddle – these bikes are for boys.’

Rita had had this argument with him before, and they both knew it would never be resolved. But it was good to be having a normal conversation after the trauma of her day, and she loved him all the more for it. She kissed his cheek and gently steered him out of the garage. ‘Give me half an hour, Papa. And I promise not to wear trousers.’

‘Roberto, he is home tonight,’ said Antonino, his eyes twinkling now. ‘You dress pretty, eh? Maybe take
la passeggiata
after dinner with Roberto and his
famiglia
before he have to leave for guarding the factories?’

To give Papa Tino his due, he never tired of matchmaking, for he seemed convinced – against all their protests – that she and Roberto were meant for one another.
La passeggiata
was a slow amble through the streets in the company of your betrothed and his family or, if unpromised, with a
mamma
who had a sharp eye open for a suitable husband. In Antonino’s Naples it was an age-old custom carried out during the soft, warm and scented evenings, but in Cliffehaven where the wind tore in from the Channel and the gulls squabbled overhead, it would lose any of the romance of the moment and simply get tongues wagging amongst the small Italian community.

Rita chuckled and shook her head. ‘No
passeggiata
tonight, or any other, Papa. I’ll see you in half an hour.’

‘You are sure?’ He looked crestfallen, the very embodiment of a man devastated by crushed hope.

Rita had seen this act before and wasn’t fooled. She grinned. ‘Positive. Now, let me close these doors and get on, or Louise’s pasta will be ruined.’ She watched him shrug before he turned away and knew he was already plotting something else so she and Roberto could be alone.

She was still chuckling as she drew the heavy doors to, snapped the padlock over the thick chain and headed to the back of the garage and the door that led to a flight of stairs. Running up the bare boards, she entered the main room at the front. Even her own father seemed anxious to see her and Roberto together, and although she adored Roberto, he was more like a brother than someone to fall in love with, and she refused to play along with their scheming. The war had meant life was opening up to her with endless exciting possibilities and new challenges. She wasn’t about to do something so radical just to please the people she loved. If she and Roberto were meant for one another, then it would happen. Meanwhile, she had a war to get through.

The front room served as kitchen and living space, with a small range in the chimney breast, a narrow table, two chairs and a sagging couch. A photograph of her mother had pride of place on the mantel next to the new one of her father in his uniform, and a wireless stood in one corner, the mahogany casing gleaming dully through the layer of dust that had settled since this morning. It wasn’t a big room, but it was the heart of their home, and as Rita eyed her father’s empty chair, she felt his absence even more keenly.

The sadness threatened to overwhelm her again, so she drew the blackout curtains and lit the gas lamps – the electricity supply had recently come to this end of town, but not every house had been fully adapted. She eased off her sturdy boots, then stripped off the heavy leather trousers and moth-eaten flying jacket and slung them over the back of the couch where she’d left the dungarees she wore to work. Wriggling her toes, she pulled off the thick socks and, dressed only in her camiknickers and vest, padded across the faded linoleum into her bedroom.

It was a small, rather untidy room – there never seemed to be enough time for housework these days, which suited her just fine – with a single iron bedstead, chest of drawers, wardrobe, and a view out of the window over the tiny backyards of the houses in the next terrace to the shunting yards beyond the high brick wall. There was no bathroom, and it would take too long to fill the big metal tub which hung on a hook in the outside lav, so she would have to make do with a quick wash in the kitchen sink.

Now the sun had gone down it was chilly, so she pulled a warm knitted dress and cardigan from the wardrobe and returned to the front room. Standing well back to avoid getting her eyebrows and lashes singed, she lit the ancient boiler and washed as well as she could in the tepid water.

Her stomach rumbled as she finished dressing, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since the paste sandwiches she’d shared with her father at lunchtime. She hadn’t had any appetite then, but now her mouth watered at the thought of Louise’s pasta. But her main concerns were far from the family dinner awaiting her as she rubbed her hair dry and tried to restore some order to its dark, wayward curls. They were still centred on her father, and the memories and passions they shared.

The airfield to the north of Cliffehaven had fascinated her from the moment her father had taken her there as a small child. She’d stood holding his large warm hand, not at all afraid or overwhelmed by the noise of the place, and over the years she had become a familiar figure about the hangars and runways, asking endless questions of the mechanics and pilots as her father tinkered with the engines on his one day off.

She had never had a yen to actually go up in a plane – she preferred to have her feet firmly on the ground – but the yearning to be a part of that exciting world and to work in the hangars had remained with her, growing stronger with every passing year.

Rita gave a deep sigh as she ran a comb through her damp hair. The airfield had been enlarged over the past year, with more runways, a new control tower, Nissan huts and extra hangers to house the steady influx of planes and pilots. It was now an important RAF airbase and therefore off limits for the duration.

She had been to the RAF recruiting office and asked about joining the WAAFs as a mechanic, but she was still too young, and her qualifications incomplete. The woman there had suggested she wait until her eighteenth birthday to apply for an administration post, but that didn’t appeal at all. The thought of being stuck in an office all day made her shudder.

Her dad had understood, but even he couldn’t get round the ever-stringent rules and regulations that were now in force. He’d suggested the job in the factory as a stopgap until she found something else, and she supposed she should be satisfied she was doing her bit by welding parts of planes together. But she couldn’t quite dismiss the thought of how much more satisfying it would be to become a useful member of the engineering team that ensured the planes’ engines were running smoothly so the courageous pilots could be brought home safely.

Dragging her thoughts into order, she glanced at the clock and gasped at how quickly time had passed. Louisa’s pasta would be ruined if she didn’t hurry up.

PEGGY REILLY WAS
in her early forties and had lived in Cliffehaven all her life. She and her husband, Jim, had taken over the running of Beach View Boarding House when her parents retired, and it was there that she’d raised her four children. Jim had recently returned home unscathed after taking part in the rescue of the troops from Dunkirk’s beaches with his older brother Frank, and she gave nightly thanks they’d been spared.

Her father-in-law, Ron, and his large Bedlington-cross, Harvey, lived in the basement of Beach View, sharing the two small rooms and scullery with her young sons, Bob and Charlie. Her much older girls, Anne, who was a teacher, and Cissy, who was theatrical, shared a room at the top of the house. Anne’s future husband was an RAF pilot who had to live on the base nearby, and Peggy fretted as much as her daughter over his safety now they were flying so many missions across enemy territory.

The elderly Mrs Finch lived on the first floor. She’d become a permanent boarder once she’d admitted she could no longer live alone. She was as deaf as a post and refused to replace her ailing hearing aid – not that it mattered a jot, for the family had come to love her as their own, and her confused, but cheerful twittering always made them smile – and in these dark times a smile was worth a great deal.

The holiday trade had dried up once war had been declared, but with the evacuation process in place and more service personnel arriving all the time, Peggy’s home was once again full to the rafters – which was the way she liked it.

Cliffehaven was changing and growing rapidly as the war progressed, but despite the influx of foreign servicemen, and the barbed wire and gun emplacements on the seafront, it still felt like home to Peggy. There were numerous new factories being built on what had once been wasteland to the northeast of the town, the airfield to the north had become a strategically important centre for the RAF, and the grand hotels on the seafront had become billets to allied servicemen from all over the world. A vast Canadian camp had been built in a distant valley to the west, close to the permanent American airbase which had been there since the last war. Although the Americans had yet to join in the hostilities, they could often be seen about the town helping to fix things, and using their jeeps and heavy machinery to good advantage when called to do so.

Peggy rather liked the Americans; they were so terribly polite, calling her ‘ma’am’ all the time and offering to carry her shopping. But she wasn’t daft enough to be taken in, for she knew only too well that their real interest was in her youngest daughter Cissy and the girl from London who was billeted with her.

She smiled as she packed away the last of the blankets and locked them in a cupboard. She’d been in the boarding house business long enough to have a sharp eye for shenanigans, and she kept to the strict rule of no men in the house – unless they were lodgers, or too old to cause trouble.

Peggy eased her back and yawned. She had just finished her afternoon stint at the WVS centre which was now based at the Town Hall, and although she was tired and there was a great deal still to do at home before she could put a meal on the table, she was determined to visit Rita. This would be her second visit in the ten days since Jack had left, and she wanted to make sure the girl was still coping.

The old bike had seen better days, but her father-in-law, Ron, had fitted new tyres and chain, given it a lick of black paint, and managed to find a lovely new basket which he’d tied to the handlebars with thick leather straps. Peggy dumped her handbag, gas mask and parcels in the basket and wheeled the bike out of the Town Hall, down the steps between the great wall of sandbags and out into the road.

It was a steep climb to the station, taking her up the High Street, away from the shops, the cinema and the seafront, and over the hump-backed bridge to the north of the town. She decided it might be better to push the bike most of the way, for gone were the days when she could have cycled up this hill with ease – gone too were the days when she used to drive up here to get her dear old car serviced.

Her journey was made longer by friends stopping her for a chat, and although she liked a good gossip, and was desperate to share the news of Anne’s impending wedding, she didn’t really have time to stand about. Beach View Boarding House was full of people waiting to be fed, not least of all her husband, Jim, who would no doubt be filching anything he could find in her woefully understocked larder to ward off his imaginary starvation.

With that thought in mind, she pushed harder and crossed the railway bridge. It was much flatter on this side of the line, and the wheels hummed nicely as she rode through the narrow back streets of crowded terraces and headed for Barrow Lane. It was still early June, and the day had been pleasant, but now the sun was dipping behind the hills she felt chilled by the light breeze she stirred as she raced along.

Barrow Lane looked more forlorn than ever now most of the children had been evacuated, and Peggy despaired for the families who had to live in those damp, dark little houses. The council should have done something about this whole area years ago, and the mayor – who was the landlord – should be ashamed of himself for letting things deteriorate so badly.