Some Sunny Day (15 page)

Maria! Did she and Bella ever think about her and wish, as she did, that things might have been different? Or was their mourning for those they had lost still so intense that they had no thoughts or emotions to spare for her?

Swallowing hard against her pain, Rosie looked towards the docks. As much as she longed for her father’s return she was also now dreading it. There was no way her mother could keep this secret for long and it would kill Rosie to try to act normally in front of her father. No good could come from any of this. For the first time ever, Rosie wished that her father wasn’t taking shore leave.

‘And Lance was telling me that he could get me anything I want, and that a girl my age shouldn’t have to ask her parents’ permission to go out on a date, and—’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sylvia, if Lance told you the moon was made of blue cheese would you believe that as well?’ Rosie snapped.

‘There’s no call for you to go being like that,’ Sylvia complained, looking hurt. ‘I was only saying…’

‘Have you told your parents that you’re seeing him yet?’ Rosie demanded.

Sylvia gave her a sullen look. ‘I would have told them but my dad’s got this bee in his bonnet about me goin’ out wi’ lads. He says I’m too young.’

The workroom buzzer went and Enid called out, ‘Rosie, shop – it’s your turn.’

It was a pity that Sylvia had ever had to meet Lance, Rosie decided, protective of her friend as she hurried into the shop, and then came to an
abrupt halt as Lance himself turned away from the display he had been studying and smiled sneeringly at her.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Stuck Up.’

Rosie cast an anxious look over her shoulder to the small office where she knew Mrs Verey would be. One of the rules she made plain to her staff when she took them on was that they were not allowed to have friends or family call on them whilst they were at work. Sylvia was so besotted with Lance that she had probably forgotten to warn him about this, Rosie decided.

‘If you’ve come to see Sylvia—’ she hissed, but Lance shook his head.

‘Did I say that? As it happens I’ve come in to buy a bit of summat for someone special. You know the kind of thing I mean, don’t you, Rosie? Something in silk with lots of lace…’

Rosie swallowed. There was something not just about the way he was looking at her, but also in the way he was speaking that was making her feel very uncomfortable. Now instead of dreading her employer coming into the shop, she almost wished that she would.

‘Our stock is rather limited at the moment,’ she began formally. That much was true but they did have the kind of things he was referring to and Rosie knew that Mrs Verey wouldn’t be pleased if she turned away a sale for something so expensive. ‘But of course I will show you what we have. If it’s for Sylvia…’ she began uncertainly.

‘That’s for me to know, isn’t it?’ he answered with an unpleasant leer.

‘Do you know the size of the lady in question?’ Her pride wouldn’t let her show him just how much she hated asking him that question and seeing the way he smirked at her in response.

‘Well, let me see…’ The way he was looking at her made Rosie’s face burn. He was embarrassing her deliberately and enjoying doing so, she was sure.

‘Well, she’s about your size, I expect, so if you show me what you’ve got and hold it up against you then I’ll be able to imagine how it’s going to look on her, won’t I?’

Rosie was glad that she had ducked down beneath the counter to slide out one of the wooden drawers. Her hands were trembling as she carefully removed a pair of delicate cream silk, lace-trimmed French knickers.

‘We have these,’ she told Lance, making sure she avoided looking directly at him as she placed the knickers on the glass countertop.

‘Well, now, I reckon I was thinking of summat a bit more saucy than that, Rosie. You know, a bit more cut away. The kind of thing a lad would like to see his girl almost wearing.’ He was smirking at her again.

She hadn’t liked him right from the first and now she liked him even less.

‘I’m sorry but these are the only style we have in,’ she told him truthfully.

‘I suppose the brassiere is just as old-fashioned, is it? Go on then, I might as well have it, seeing as it’s all you’ve got. Let’s have a look at it.’

Still refusing to let him see how much she was hating serving him, Rosie dutifully unfolded a matching brassiere in a size she knew would fit Sylvia.

Immediately Lance picked it up off the counter top and held it up, frowning as he studied the small cups before dropping it back on the glass, and then cupping his hands and telling her uncouthly, ‘She’s big enough to fill me hands nicely, not some kid, so get me summat bigger.’ There was a gleam in his eyes that turned Rosie’s stomach. ‘You’re a smart girl, Rosie, and a pretty one, and I can tell you now that you’re the kind of girl I like, so how about you and me going out together tonight?’

Rosie couldn’t believe her ears. How could he ask her out like that, as cool as you please, when he was already seeing Sylvia? Even if she had liked him – which she most certainly did not – the fact that he was seeing her friend would have meant that she would refuse him in a heartbeat.

‘No thank you,’ she told him shortly. ‘I don’t go out with men who are seeing other girls.’

‘Please yourself, it’s your loss. And I was wrong about you ’cos a really smart girl would have known when she was in luck.’

She could see that she had annoyed him, but she didn’t care, Rosie told herself. Ten minutes later, when he finally left the shop carrying the
knickers and brassiere set he had bought, Rosie was shaking inwardly. How could Sylvia be silly enough to like him? He was arrogant and loathsome. It was almost as though he had wanted her to think he was buying the underwear for someone else and not Sylvia.

‘Do you fancy going to the pictures with me after work tonight?’ Sylvia asked her when she got back to the workroom.

‘I can’t. Dad’s ship’s docked and he’ll be coming home.’

Rosie knew she didn’t need to make any further explanations. Home leave was so precious that everyone knew and understood that families wanted to spend every minute of it together. Or at least most families did. Her face clouded at the thought of what the evening ahead had in store.

Rosie shivered in the cold wind whipping up Bold Street as she stepped out of the shop. They were almost into November and although only half-past six it was already pitch-black. Several stars shone, throwing out just enough light for her to recognise the man standing waiting for her.

‘Dad!’

Rosie threw herself into her father’s arms with a small cry of delight. He hugged her close and it was all she could do to stop herself crying.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to come and meet me from work,’ she told him as she tucked her arm through his.

‘Well, your mam said that she had to go out to do someone’s hair so I thought I might as well come into town and walk back with you as be in on me own.’

Rosie stiffened. Was her mother genuinely out working or had she broken her promise and gone out with her married lover? Even Christine couldn’t be so cruel, could she?

‘Did she tell you that she’s changing her shift to work nights?’ she asked her father hesitantly, half afraid to enquire what had been said between them.

‘Aye, and she said as how she wants to find somewhere to rent further away from the docks on account of all the bombing. I must say it would be a load off my mind, knowing that the two of you were living somewhere safer.’

Rosie bit her lip. The truth lurked dangerously on her lips. She hated being deceitful but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth about her mother. She just couldn’t bear to hurt him like that. All she could hope for was that her mother would come to her senses.

‘I’m so glad you’re home,’ she told him instead, squeezing his arm lovingly. ‘We had news the other day about one of the convoys being torpedoed. I was so worried about you until Rob Whittaker told me that your ship was safe.’

‘Rob Whittaker? And who might he be then?’ Her father was trying to sound as though he was joking but Rosie could hear the sharp note of fatherly concern in his voice.

‘He’s a fireman, lodging with the Norrises. He’s working down near the docks. You’ll like him, Dad. His brother’s in the merchant navy.’

‘Oh, I will, will I? Well, we’ll have to see about that. Any lad who comes round courting my daughter—’

‘Dad, it isn’t like that,’ Rosie protested indignantly, her face on fire. ‘Don’t you go letting him think that I’ve told you that it is. How much leave have you got?’ she asked, swiftly changing the subject.

‘Only forty-eight hours, lass, and then we won’t be back again until Christmas.’

Rosie’s excitement faded. Christmas was weeks away.

‘But I haven’t forgotten that a certain someone will be having a birthday soon,’ her father teased. ‘I’ve got a bit of summat in my kitbag for you, Rosie. Brought specially all the way from New York. A few pairs of stockings and some perfume and a couple of lengths of fabric for you and your mum to make yourself a new dress apiece. And mind, no trying to get me to let you unwrap them until your birthday! I’ll be at sea then, but I’ll be thinking about my girl opening her presents and thinking of her old dad.’

‘Oh, Dad…’ Rosie said emotionally. ‘You shouldn’t have. It isn’t presents I want. It’s having you safe.’ She hugged him fiercely again, burying her face in the warmth of his reefer jacket.

‘Aye, I know that, Rosie lass. You’re the best
daughter a man could have, and when I saw all the pretty girls in New York I thought to myself that none of them was half so pretty as you.

‘Have you managed to call round and see your Auntie Maude whilst I’ve been away, Rosie?’

Rosie shook her head guiltily. ‘I will try, Dad,’ she promised, ‘but what with fire-watch duty, and all the other things we have to do, there just doesn’t seem to be time.’

‘I can’t get over how much it’s changed round here,’ her father commented as they walked past the closed shops that had once been so busy.

‘It is different without all the Italian families,’ Rosie agreed sadly. ‘That was so awful what happened to them, Dad.’

‘Bad things happen during wartime, Rosie.’

Rosie felt shamed, knowing that her father must have seen such horrors himself. She determined there and then that she would make his leave, no matter how short, as pleasurable as possible. She just hoped that her mother would come to her senses and realise how lucky she was to be married to a man like her father.

‘So where’s Sylvia this morning? She’s going to be in trouble with Mrs Verey for being late. She’s not still seeing that cousin of Nancy’s, is she, Rosie?’ Enid asked Rosie as they all huddled round the single-bar electric fire in the workroom, trying to warm the damp November chill out of their cold hands prior to starting work.

Rosie hesitated before answering. The truth was that she and Sylvia were no longer friends – Sylvia’s decision, not hers – but she was as reluctant to say so as she was to explain why. Not because she felt she was at fault – she didn’t unless it was for forgetting just how young Sylvia was – but because she still felt a sense of loyalty towards Sylvia, and a need to protect her.

‘She is still seeing him, yes,’ she acknowledged reluctantly when it was plain that she was going to have to give some kind of answer.

The quarrel that had brought about the end of their friendship had happened earlier in the month,
when Rosie had stuck firmly by her decision not to give in to Sylvia’s pleas that she make up a foursome with her and Lance and one of his friends.

‘Aw, go on, Rosie,’ Sylvia had urged her. ‘Lance will get his mate to get you some stockings.’

‘No, thanks,’ Rosie had refused firmly. ‘Dad’s told me that he’s brought me stockings back as a birthday present and, to be honest, Sylvia, I’d rather not have things that I know others are having to do without. It doesn’t seem fair somehow.’

She hadn’t wanted to seem to be critical of Sylvia or to offend her but Rosie had seen from the defiant toss of Sylvia’s head that her frankness hadn’t been well received. But there had been worse to come.

‘Huh, as for that, you can’t tell me that a few cans of this and that haven’t made their way into your larder from the docks, just like they’ve done into ours.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Rosie had been forced to admit. She certainly suspected that her mother was obtaining her cigarettes from the black market, even though Christine had never come out and said so.

‘So what’s the difference between that and having a boyfriend like Lance who knows what’s what?’ Sylvia had demanded.

In truth there wasn’t any logical difference that Rosie could explain, other than that somehow she knew it would make her feel uncomfortable to be accepting the largesse of a man like Lance.

In the end she had felt obliged to say quietly, ‘Sylvia, I don’t mean to interfere, but I think I should warn you that Lance—’

To Rosie’s horror Sylvia had stopped her immediately to say scornfully, ‘Oh ho, so that’s how you’re going to do it, is it? Lance warned me as how you’d bin trying to mek up to him so as you could steal him away from me. But me thinking you was my friend, I told him that he must have got it wrong. But it was me that got it wrong, wasn’t it, Rosie, ’cos it’s as plain as the nose on me face what you’re up to. You’re trying to put me off Lance, so as you can have him. Well, it won’t work. And as for us being friends – you’re no friend of mine and I don’t want nothing to do with you no more.’

Rosie could only stare at her in shocked disbelief. Surely Sylvia couldn’t be serious? Rosie had made her own feelings about Lance abundantly plain. It was laughable that anyone should think she was so much as able to tolerate him, never mind anything else.

When she had got over her astonishment she shook her head and told Sylvia gently, ‘Look, Sylvia, I can see that you might not like me being so frank about not thinking that Lance is right for you, but I’ve only said what I’ve said for your own good.’

‘For
your
own good, more like,’ Sylvia came back at her quick as a flash. ‘There’s no point in you trying to soft-soap me, Rosie, not now that Lance has told me what you’ve bin up to.’

‘I haven’t been up to anything,’ Rosie protested indignantly. ‘I don’t know what Lance has told you but—’

‘Oh, come off it, you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how you’ve bin chasing after my Lance, asking him to meet up with you secretly when he came into the shop asking for me.’

‘I did no such thing,’ Rosie gasped.

There was a look of fury in Sylvia’s eyes. ‘I hope you aren’t trying to call my Lance a liar! Hah, that would be a fine thing, coming from you. And to think I thought you was my friend.’

‘I am your friend,’ Rosie insisted. ‘And if you had any sense you’d know that.’ She recognised her mistake immediately as Sylvia stiffened angrily and stepped back from her.

‘It’s because I’ve got some sense that I want nowt to do wi’ you any more. Because I’ve got enough sense to know when a girl is after my chap and enough to know just what to do about it.’ Rosie could see that Sylvia was working herself up into an angry frenzy. ‘I dunno why I bothered trying to defend you to Lance. You’re no friend of mine no more and I’ll thank you to remember that.’

Rosie didn’t know what to say. She tried to tell herself that Sylvia was very young and very much in love, and that her feelings for Lance were blinding her to the truth of how unfair and unkind she was being. But in her heart Rosie felt not just badly let
down but very hurt. This was the second time someone she had thought of as a friend had turned on her and ended that friendship. There was no point in trying to reason with Sylvia. Anything she said now would only lead to a slanging match and Rosie was not one for that kind of thing.

Very much on her dignity, she inclined her head and said quietly, ‘I certainly don’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t want my friendship, Sylvia, but if you ask me you’re a fool for trusting a chap like Lance.’

‘You’re the one who’s the fool – for thinking that Lance wouldn’t tell me what you was up to. I’ve a good mind to tell the other girls, an’ all.’

‘I wish you would, ’cos if you did they’d soon put you right about a fair few things,’ Rosie felt driven to retort.

That had been over two weeks ago now, and Sylvia had only spoken to her when she had had to since then. Rosie had too much pride to let the other girls know that she had been accused of trying to snatch another girl’s chap, and so she had done her best to act as though everything was normal and they hadn’t fallen out. Luckily, with the war on the other girls had their own worries to think about, and no one had seemed to notice that Sylvia was going out at dinner time leaving Rosie to sit in and eat her sandwiches on her own.

Rosie suspected that part of the reason Sylvia was going out was so that she could see Lance,
and despite their falling-out, she was still genuinely concerned for Sylvia and worried that ultimately Lance would let her down and leave her very hurt.

‘Well, she’s good and late now,’ Enid said, ‘and Mrs Verey will have summat to say to her when she does come in. There was no air raids last night so it can’t be that they’ve bin bombed out or owt like that.’

‘Maybe she isn’t feeling very well,’ Rosie offered, still not wanting Sylvia to get into trouble, even though she had behaved so unkindly to her.

‘Huh, if you ask me she’s probably gone and stayed out too late with that Lance and then not wanted to get up for work,’ Ruth offered critically. ‘Pity she’s not here, ’cos that means she won’t get a piece of the cake that we’ll be having at dinner time on account of it being someone’s birthday.’

Enid and Ruth were both smiling meaningfully at her, Rosie realised, her own face brightening with a wide smile as she blushed and shook her head, saying, ‘If you mean me then—’

‘’Course we mean you. Who else would we mean?’ Enid demanded, mock derisively. She nudged Ruth and demanded, ‘We clocked the date, didn’t we, Ruth, when we heard you saying that your dad had brought you back summat from New York but that you wouldn’t be going to open it until your birthday. Don’t you remember, Rosie, Ruth asked you when your birthday was?’

She did remember now, Rosie acknowledged,
although she hadn’t twigged the significance of why she was being asked at the time.

‘All the girls put a bit in and Mrs Verey said as how we could have a bit extra for our dinner hour and that she’d see to it that there was a bit of a cake.’

Tears filled Rosie’s eyes. After what had happened, first with Bella and now with Sylvia, the kindness of the girls she worked with meant so much to her.

Waking up this morning she hadn’t been able to help contrasting this birthday to those she had enjoyed in the past when Bella had never been able to wait for her to call for her on the way to school but had instead come rushing round with a card, whilst Rosie was still having her breakfast.

Then after school they would go back to the Grenellis’, where Maria would have made a special birthday tea that would include Rosie’s favourite chocolate ice cream. There would be cards from la Nonna and Maria, and always a special present for her from Maria, a pretty dress she had made for her and which she would be dispatched upstairs to Bella’s small bedroom to change into. Bella would change too and then they would go downstairs together, all giggly and self-conscious, to be made a fuss of and told how pretty they looked.

Neighbours would come in to wish her a happy birthday and then stay to share in the celebration, which often included someone playing some music and someone else singing. But this year, of course,
there had been no Bella to wish her a happy birthday and no Grenellis to make it and her feel special. She had felt so low this morning, especially since her mother was now working nights and Rosie had been in the house alone. And now here out of the blue the girls she worked with had lifted her spirits immeasurably with their kindness. Rosie couldn’t begin to tell them how much they had cheered her up.

The birthday she had been dreading because it would be the first she could remember having without her ‘second family’ to celebrate it with her had not been as bad as she had feared after all, Rosie admitted as she hurried home in the November dusk, carefully carrying what was left of the wartime carrot cake Mrs Verey had got for her.

The house was cold and empty. Her mother had forgotten to stoke up the fire with some of the slack, a mix of coal dust and small pieces of coal, which households used to keep their fires smouldering whilst they were out in the hope of preserving some warmth at the cost of very little coal.

She also seemed to have forgotten her birthday as well, Rosie recognised sadly, as she put her cake down on the kitchen table and took off her coat before switching on the wireless and then going to sort out the fire and relight it.

That done, she filled the kettle and then went
upstairs to bring down the carefully wrapped presents her father had left for her. He had teased her about her not wanting to open them until her actual birthday, but Rosie had remained adamant. She had put the brightly wrapped parcels on the kitchen table and had poured the boiling water over the tea leaves before she remembered to go and check the front door for any post just in case her mother had forgotten to do so.

There was some mail, and Rosie felt both nervous and excited when she picked up one envelope and saw Maria’s familiar writing on it.

Desperate to read what Maria had written, she started to open the envelope as she hurried back to the now cheerfully blazing fire and pulled a chair up close to it.

The first thing she noticed was that Maria hadn’t put any address on the letter and that made her heart sink a little.

Rosie was weeping softly long before she had reached the end of the letter. And then once she had, she had to read it again and then a third and a fourth time before she could bear to put it down.
Darling Maria. Had she known how much it would mean to her to hear from her today? Rosie wondered tenderly. There was no message in her letter from Bella but Rosie refused to feel down about that. She did wish that Maria had written down her address. Reading between the lines, though, she guessed that Maria was trying to let her know that Sofia would be against any contact between them. But at least Maria had cared enough to write to her and that eased her sore heart so much.

The fire was burning up well now, although the tea she had brewed had gone cold. Drinking it anyway, Rosie turned to the presents her father had brought home for her.

She opened the stockings first, recognising which parcel they were from the shape. Six pairs! ‘Oh, Dad,’ she protested, ‘you spoil me.’ In the next parcel she found a small bottle of Evening in Paris scent. Very carefully she unstoppered the dark blue bottle and sniffed the lovely fragrance. She would use it very sparingly, she promised herself, to make it last a long time.

The final parcel would she knew contain the fabric her father had bought her. Her mother had already had hers, and it had made Rosie’s eyes sting with tears when she had seen that her father had chosen a soft wool in her mother’s favourite shade of red.