Some Sunny Day (30 page)

‘Rosie…wait up…’ Jean called as Rosie made a dash towards the hedge.

‘I can’t. I’m desperate,’ Rosie told her.

Desperate she most certainly was, but not to answer a call of nature so much as to escape from Ricardo.

Why was he pursuing her like this? He must surely be able to see that she wasn’t interested.
And that was what she wanted, was it? For him to see that she wasn’t interested and keep away from her? Yes, of course it was. How could she possibly want anything else? She might be able to accept that her father would not have wanted her to be actively unkind to anyone, but Rosie felt sure he would not have been happy to see her encouraging the attentions of a big handsome Italian. Not after what he had said to her about Aldo and her mother. And she certainly wasn’t going to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

‘What’s up with you?’ Mary asked exasperatedly and, Rosie sensed, a bit irritably, later in the day when Rosie had made yet another excuse to avoid Ricardo’s attempts to talk to her.

‘I’ve already told you, I don’t want to get involved with them,’ Rosie defended herself.

‘Well, I call that downright mean, Rosie. They might be POWs but they still seem nice chaps. The other girls certainly seem to think so.’

‘That’s up to them,’ Rosie told her uncomfortably. How could she possibly explain to Mary that it wasn’t their POW status that was making her want to keep them – or rather, one of them – at a distance, but far more private reasons? ‘But like I said, I don’t want anything to do with them.’

But despite the fact that she did everything she could to avoid him, in the end Ricardo outmanoeuvred her, trapping her between himself and the gate from the field.

‘I have been trying to talk to you all day,’ he began, speaking, Rosie noted, in confusion with a distinct note of impatience in his voice. She was also astonished that his English was as good as her own.

‘I’m here to work, not waste time talking to internees,’ Rosie retorted.

The look that darkened his eyes and made them flash with pride as well as anger would normally have made her feel very guilty about her rudeness.

‘If I hadn’t given in to my grandfather’s urging and agreed to visit our family in Italy in the months prior to war being declared, to report back to him on his land there, I dare say I would have enlisted with my cousins in the British Forces. I am an internee because I made the mistake of believing that I could be both Italian and British. My grandparents came to this country, to Manchester, shortly after their marriage. My parents were both born here. Until war broke out I considered myself to be both Italian and English. The British Government, though, decided that not only could I only be Italian, but that I must also be a Fascist.’

Rosie realised that she could hear not bitterness in his voice or resentment but sadness. It touched something within her, a chord of feeling that made her want to reach out and touch his hand in understanding. She started to panic. She should not be feeling like this.

‘I wanted to thank you for what you did for Paolo,’ Ricardo was saying. ‘I hadn’t realised he
was so badly hurt. I blame myself for not realising…’ Ricardo was speaking coolly and formally now, leaving Rosie to digest the fact that he had not been pursuing her because he wanted to flirt with her but because he wanted to thank her. She felt every kind of fool and prayed inwardly that he had not realised what she had thought. But to her dismay he continued quietly, ‘I realise that I must have given you the wrong impression, when I heard your friends talking about your disgust at the thought of being admired by an Italian – an enemy of your country.’ Now his voice had become clipped and so sharp that she felt as though each word he spoke was cutting into the tenderness of her conscience and her heart. ‘I apologise for distressing you in such a way.’

Rosie’s face was so red she was desperately glad of the dusk to hide her embarrassment.

‘Rosie, come on…’ Sheila called out.

‘Rosie…It is a pretty name. You are from Liverpo ol, I would guess from your accent.’

‘How would you know anything about a Liverpool accent?’ Rosie felt obliged to challenge him. ‘You said you lived in Manchester.’

‘Yes I do,’ he agreed. ‘But like all Italian families, mine is extensive, with branches not just in Manchester, but in London and in Liverpool as well. What part of the city are you from?’

She didn’t have to tell him, Rosie assured herself, but it wasn’t in her nature not to give a truthful answer to a question and so reluctantly she told
him, with a small dismissive shrug, ‘We lived off Scotland Road.’

‘Liverpool’s Italian community live in that area.’

‘Yes, down around Gerard Street,’ Rosie told him promptly.

She realised that she had given too much away when he queried, ‘You lived close to Gerard Street? That’s where my relatives lived. Cesare Volante, my grandmother’s cousin.’

Rosie knew the Volante family, who had been very good friends of the Grenellis. She and Bella had attended several Volante family parties as they grew up.

Hearing him say such a familiar name, Rosie couldn’t control her betraying reaction.

‘You know them?’ Ricardo guessed immediately.

Rosie wasn’t a liar. ‘Yes,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘Look, I must go…’

‘No, wait.’ He had reached out to stop her from leaving, taking hold of her bare arm. The effect of his touch shocked the breath out of her. It was as though some kind of powerful current had run right through her, taking control of her, depriving her of the ability to speak and yet at the same time jerking her body into taking a step towards him. As he had done towards her. They were standing almost body to body, so close that they were virtually touching. She could smell the warm scent of his skin, and the fingers curled round her arm were moving against her flesh in a soft caress.

‘So, it
is
possible that we have met before. I thought so the first time I saw you. There was something about you that I recognised, although logically it seemed impossible that we should have done so. But of course now that I know you were living close to Gerard Street, and my grandmother’s relations, I can see that it is entirely possible that we did indeed meet.’ He was looking triumphant now, and pleased with himself for having, as he believed, had his recognition of her confirmed. And, for all she knew, he could be right. Rosie knew that the extended family in Italian terms was both large and rambling, and that if he had come to Liverpool with his family it was entirely possible that they could have attended the same family function.

‘It is possible,’ she agreed, ‘but…’

Ricardo shook his head and snapped his fingers. ‘Yes. I have it now. There was a wedding. You were there, a pretty little thing, who refused to speak to me, although you did allow me to give you my ice cream. I remember being told that you were not Italian.’

Rosie thought back. There had been so many celebrations, so many weddings, but gradually she remembered the right one. Some important members of the Volante family had come from Manchester. There had been children with them, older girls and boys, who in the main had ignored her, and yet one boy in particular had been kind to her, offering her his ice cream when she had dropped her own.

Rosie couldn’t speak; she could hardly breathe. Along with her shock she could feel pain and something else, something that tugged at her heart and made it ache with a feeling of loss. She stepped back from him, her face showing her feelings. It made her shiver to think that somehow fate had stepped into her life like this, bringing them together a second time, as though…As though what?

‘Rosie, come on,’ Mary shouted.

Ricardo released her arm. She wanted to touch her skin where he had touched it, to cover the flesh that now felt the loss of his warmth.

Half running, half stumbling, Rosie hurried past him, unable to say anything, her thoughts in frightened turmoil.

Rosie glanced anxiously over to where Paolo was slumped against the hedge, his shoulders bowed. He had returned to work with the other POWs at the beginning of the week, but despite the welcome sunshine, which had encouraged the more daring of the girls to cut the legs off their dungarees to turn them into shorts, as they worked under the hot sun stooking the newly cut corn sheaves to allow them to dry, Paolo looked sick and unhappy. He had become so thin that his clothes hung off his body, and Rosie felt almost anxiously maternal about him, although she refused to let anyone else see that.

Anyone else at all, but especially Ricardo. She risked a look across the field from under the brim of her hat. Yes, he was still there, snatching up the corn as it was cut and tied, and throwing the sheaves clear of the machinery. Like most of the other men, he had taken off his shirt. Against the blue of the sky and the dull gold of the newly cut corn, his torso
was the colour of liquid honey, sleek with the sweat of working so hard. One of the girls from another gang working close to him said something to him and as Rosie watched he turned to her, giving her a smile, and lifting the sheaf she was struggling to balance as easily as though it weighed nothing.

Rosie didn’t want to think about why just watching him talking to another girl should make her feel the way she did, or why she should lie awake in bed at night, unable to sleep as she battled against what was happening to her. Why, why, should she be having these unwanted feelings for Ricardo when she hadn’t been able to have them for Rob, who would have made her such a good husband and whom her father would have been happy to see her marry?

Was it because, despite everything, she wanted to believe her aunt had been right and Aldo was her father? Was it the Italian blood in her that was doing this to her? Like to like?

No, she wasn’t going to let herself think that. She dragged her gaze away from Ricardo. She
wasn’t
Aldo’s daughter.

As they worked on through the long hot afternoon and into the evening, Rosie saw how Paolo seemed to grow more and more frail. She had seen too how Ricardo had gone to him, offering him water, giving him some food, and talking with him.

‘That young lad doesn’t look well at all,’ Mary commented, coming over to Rosie whilst she was watching him.

‘He’s been very poorly,’ Rosie reminded her.

When Mary had gone Rosie kept on watching Paolo, and then when they were allowed to break for a rest, she took a deep breath and went over to him. It was just common charity to ask if the lad was all right, she told herself; her dad would have understood that.

Close up, Paolo looked even more poorly than he did from a distance. His skin was drawn tight across the bones of his face, and was tinged almost yellow instead of being warmly olive. The light had gone out of his eyes, and when he looked at Rosie, and she saw the hopelessness in them, her heart ached for him.

‘I do not want to die here,’ he told her brokenly. ‘I want to go home and die in my own country. It is so cold here. Your sun does not warm me.’ He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and Rosie saw how he winced when he moved.

‘You mustn’t talk like that,’ she told him fiercely. ‘You are feeling low at the moment because you have been poorly, but you will get better.’

‘No,’ Paolo told her sombrely, ‘I shall never be better whilst I have to be here.’

Rosie didn’t know what she could say that would comfort him so she patted him awkwardly on the arm and left, sensing that her company was a burden he didn’t want to have to bear.

She was halfway across the field on her way back to join the others in her group when she saw the long shadow Ricardo was casting over her as
he came towards her. Automatically she started to walk faster, but he caught up with her.

‘I saw you talking with Paolo,’ he told her.

His hand was on her shoulder and she jerked away from beneath his touch. Her face felt as though it had been scorched, it was burning so hotly. ‘Is there any law that says I can’t?’ she challenged him rudely.

‘I was going to thank you and ask you if you share my concern for him.’

Shame filled her. ‘It’s as though he doesn’t want to get properly better.’

‘He misses his home and he has convinced himself that he will never see it again. He is young and unable to believe that one day the war will be over and he will be free to return. He doesn’t have the patience for that and so instead he is willing himself to escape in the only way he can.’

Rosie shivered despite the sticky heat of the late afternoon. ‘You mean he’s willing himself to die?’ She had turned to look at Ricardo as she spoke and now, with her gaze trapped in the dark intensity of his, it was too late for her to urge herself to caution.

Although he hadn’t moved or tried to touch her, there was a look in his eyes that said what he felt. She had seen it before as she was growing up in the eyes of other Italian men when they looked at their women, a look of pride and possession and emotional intensity that locked a band around her, as real as any wedding ring. It was a look that said, ‘You are
mine and you always will be mine’ and Rosie could feel herself responding to it and moving closer to him, leaning into him almost as though in acceptance of her fate.

‘You mustn’t let him die.’ Her words seemed to come from somewhere far away, her voice thick and soft with the weight of her awareness of him.

‘I shall do my best.’

She felt as though she was two different people. One of them was angry and fearful, wanting to turn and run from what was happening, whilst the other was filled with the most extraordinary sensation of wanting to go to him and let him take her hand, let him take all of her, Rosie recognised on a swift shiver of sensual awareness.

‘Hey you, back to work.’

The foreman’s command pushed between them so that they stepped back from one another.

Nothing had happened, nothing had been said or done, and yet Rosie knew that within the silence that had followed the look he had given her a promise had been asked for and given.

 An hour later, all that remained of those opposing feelings was the anger and fear. As she worked on, ignoring the ache of her tired body and the irritating whine and bite of the midges that had arrived with the dusk, Rosie felt her anger against the man responsible for her misery rising to the point of explosion. The land girls were working strung out in a line beneath the trees that bordered the edge
of the field, the leaves somehow encouraging the midges to swarm, whilst another group of girls were working in the open on the far side of the field, with the Italians working between them. At least soon it would be too dark for them to work any longer, Rosie decided with relief.

The sound of a plane flying in low over the fields towards them had Rosie and the other girls straightening up out of the shadows of the trees to turn, to laugh and wave.

‘I expect it will be your Ian, Mary,’ Sheila teased her cousin.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rosie saw Ricardo throw down his hoe and start to run towards them, warning, ‘Down…get down. Santa Maria…get down…’

What on earth was he doing? And what right did he have to tell her what to do, or to stop her waving at an English plane? She looked across the field and saw him running fast towards her whilst the plane came lower.

‘Cheek…’ she began, and then froze as, not more than fifty yards away from her, where the other gang of girls were clustered laughing and waving to the incoming plane, the evening air was suddenly filled with the staccato rattle of machine-gun fire, and the screams of the young women who had only seconds before been laughing, but who were now the plane’s targets. Rosie could see it all: the hail of bullets, the terror on the girls’ faces as they tried to escape,
and then the look of disbelief in their eyes when the bullets ripped into them, leaving them to fall to the ground.

‘No!’ Automatically Rosie started to run towards them, wanting to help, but it was too late. Ricardo had reached her and was grabbing hold of her, rolling her beneath him as he flung them both to the ground, making it impossible for Rosie to be aware of anything other than the protective presence of his body pressing hers into the ground. She could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat, and smell the sun-warmed heat of his skin. She wanted to stay like this for ever, held safe against everything by him and with him. She wanted…

She lifted her head and looked up into the evening sky. The German plane was retreating, pursued now through the dusk by a pair of RAF fighters. In the soft darkness of the summer night she could see some of the other girls getting to their feet. Some, but not all.

Ricardo had lifted his body away from hers, but he didn’t make any attempt to move away from her.

‘You are all right?’ he asked her.

She managed to choke out the word, ‘Yes.’ Her throat felt dry and her face had been scratched by the stubble of the newly cut cornfield.

‘I thank the Madonna for it.’

She could hear the emotion in his voice. And then suddenly he leaned forward and kissed her hard and full, right on her mouth. She knew she
should not be letting him do this, but instead of stopping him she was kissing him back just as passionately.

‘Rosie…Rosie…are you all right?’ It was Mary who was asking her this time.

Ricardo released her and she slipped from his arms to stand up, deliberately turning her back on him and almost running to join Sheila and Mary, who were standing together, tearfully hugging each other.

She couldn’t bear to be the person she had just been, the Rosie who had kissed an Italian; the girl who had been her mother’s daughter and not the daughter she wanted to be to the father she wanted to have. Her emotions in turmoil, Rosie glanced to where, several yards away, a group of people were standing around looking down at the ground. Their shocked stillness told her what had happened.

‘They’ve been hit? I…’ She couldn’t speak; her throat felt too raw with pain.

‘The bastards shot them down without giving them a chance,’ Mary choked angrily. ‘Two of them are dead, and another one that badly hit they don’t think she’ll survive.’

‘I saw them trying to run. I wanted to help, but Ricardo stopped me,’ Rosie began.

‘It’s lucky that he did,’ Jean said quietly, coming up to join them, ‘otherwise like as not you’d be lying there dead too.’

Rosie made to go towards them, but Jean
stopped her. ‘No, there’s nothing you can do. They were hit pretty bad. The other girls from their gang are with them. It’s best that we let them do their grieving on their own for now, Rosie, just like we’d want if it was some of our own.’

‘Bloody Luftwaffe,’ Mary burst out.

‘It isn’t just the Luftwaffe, is it?’ Rosie said wildly. ‘It’s them as well.’ She gestured in the direction of the Italians. ‘They’re as much to blame as the Luftwaffe.’

‘Stop it, Rosie. This isn’t the time.’ Mary’s voice sounded so harsh and sharp that it sliced through her pain and silenced her.

The doctor had been sent for, the Italians had been lined up and were marching back to the farm, but the girls stood huddled together, looking fearfully towards the two crumpled bodies lying on the field.

 ‘I was really surprised by the way you carried on earlier, Rosie.’

Rosie had been sitting on her bed, avoiding the others, sensing that they were taking their lead from Mary and echoing her disapproval of Rosie’s outburst in the field. Now though, Mary was seeking her out and there was nowhere for Rosie to go to avoid her. Rosie stood up. Somehow she felt better doing that than letting Mary stand over her looking so cross.

‘You do realise, I hope, that if Ricardo hadn’t pulled you down like he did you could have been
killed like those other poor girls?’ Mary shuddered. ‘I shall never forget what happened to them. Seeing them shot down like that, like they was nothing. And that could have been you, Rosie, if Ricardo hadn’t acted as prompt as he did. As it is, he got shot in the leg. And then you go speaking about him and the other Italians like that. Really shocked me, you have.’

Ricardo had been shot! How badly? Rosie was filled with panic and fear. She swayed, and had to reach out to steady herself, her expression betraying her real feelings, before she could hide them.

Immediately Mary’s face softened. ‘It’s all right, Rosie. There’s no need for you to look like that. It was just a flesh wound and he’ll be fine. I knew you liked him really,’ she added smugly, whilst Rosie fought to get a grip on her treacherous emotions. ‘So, seein’ as the thought of him being shot had you acting like you was about to drop down dead yourself, why are you acting so mean to him?’ Mary demanded. ‘If it’s to make him want you then let me tell you that all of us can see that he does. He’s bin behaving like a proper gentleman towards you, and all.’

‘Stop it, Mary, please stop it,’ Rosie begged her friend. She was in tears now, torn between her own feelings and what she believed to be her duty towards her father’s memory. ‘I can’t bear it, I really can’t.’

‘What is it? What’s wrong? You aren’t already married or summat, are you?’

‘No, it isn’t that.’

‘Then what is it?’ Mary demanded.

‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone else if I tell you? Not even Ian?’ Mary agreed.

‘…And so you see, Mary, I couldn’t possibly, you know, get involved with an Italian. Not with what my mother did…and everything…’

She had been talking what felt like for ever, the words pouring out of her, tumbling over one another in her relief at being able to talk about what she had locked away inside herself.

‘You do understand, don’t you?’ she begged her friend.

Mary leaned across and hugged her fiercely. ‘Oh, you poor kid. Fancy not saying a word about all of this before now. And there was me thinking…Oh, Rosie! Your dad sounds a lovely man and I can understand how you feel, I really can, but I’m sure that he would want you to be happy.’

‘I don’t need Ricardo to make me happy,’ Rosie told her defiantly.

‘Don’t tell me that! I’ve seen the way the two of you keep on looking at one another. He’s nuts about you, Rosie, and I reckon you’re pretty much the same way about him. Ready to die to protect you, he was today. How do you think you’d be feeling right now if he had been killed?’