Some Sunny Day

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‘You’re a real pal, Rosie,’ said Evie warmly. ‘And as a matter of fact, I do just happen to have seen a really nice dark red taffeta frock in a shop up by the Adelphi Hotel. Proper posh-looking it is, and I reckon it must have belonged to someone rich. The colour would suit you a treat. We could go and have a look on Saturday after work if you like.’

Rosie wasn’t really sure she needed or even wanted a full-length evening dress but Evie was so enthusiastic she found herself giving in and agreeing. It would be a welcome distraction from her ever-confused thoughts. She did so miss the happy times she and Bella had shared when they had hurried off to St John’s market to look for bargains.

‘Ta-ra then. See you tomorrow,’ Evie sang out when she and Rosie reached Great Crosshall Street where their routes home separated. ‘And don’t forget about Saturday and us going to look at that frock.’

Rosie still hadn’t got used to the unfamiliar silence of the streets of Little Italy. Those Italian families that hadn’t already moved to be with their relatives in Manchester or London, where there were larger Italian communities, were keeping themselves inside their houses, with the doors firmly closed against the outside world. Less than a month ago virtually every door would have been open, with women calling out to one another and children playing happily in the street, men pushing home their ice-cream carts and gathering on street corners to talk, whilst the sounds of music from accordions and flutes mingled with the smell of freshly ground coffee and herb-flavoured tomato sauce cooking, but now all that was gone.

Michael Farrell, whose wife, Bridie, did all the local laying-outs, was leaning against a lamppost, obviously the worse for drink.

‘Oh, it’s yourself, is it, Rosie,’ he greeted her. ‘And sad day this is and no mistake, all them poor sods drowning.’

As he spoke he was wiping his arm across his eyes to blot away his tears. ‘Over a thousand of them, so I’ve heard. Aye, and the ruddy ship torpedoed by their own side. Complaining they was being sent to Canada, but there’s many a family here in Liverpool will be wishing tonight that that’s where they are instead of lying drowned at the bottom of the sea.’ He swayed and staggered slightly, belching beer-laden stale breath in Rosie’s direction but she barely noticed. A horrible cold feeling had seized her.

‘What do you mean? What’s happened? Tell me please,’ she begged the Irishman.

He focused on her and blinked, hiccuping. ‘It’s that Arandora Star what was taking them Italians and Germans to Canada,’ he told her. ‘Gone and got itself sunk, it has.’

EIGHT (#uf801dcdf-4FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

It couldn’t be true. Michael Farrell must have got it wrong. But somehow Rosie knew that he hadn’t. After she left him she started to walk home as fast as she could and then broke into a run, driven by a sickening sense of dread.

Her mother was in the kitchen. She was standing right beside the wireless, a fixed expression on her face, even though she was listening to someone singing. Rosie knew immediately that she too had heard what had happened.

‘You’ve heard,’ she still said.

Her mother nodded. ‘Someone came and told us at the salon. There’s bin hundreds drowned, so they say.’

‘Has the BBC news … ?’

‘I haven’t heard anything official yet. Mind you, I haven’t bin in that long.’

‘It can’t be true,’ Rosie whispered, still unwilling to accept that something so terrible could have happened. ‘The Arandora Star wasn’t a warship. It was carrying Germans and Italians.’

Christine gave a small shrug. ‘Well, perhaps someone ought to have told ruddy Hitler that.’ She reached for her cigarettes, her hands trembling as she lit one. ‘Apparently there’s a crowd of women down at the docks already, waiting for news, daft sods. More than likely they’ll be ruddy lucky to get a body back, never mind news, and it won’t be here they’ll dock, more likely somewhere up in Scotland.’ She spoke with all the authority of a sailor’s wife.

‘At least the Grenellis weren’t on board.’ Rosie felt guilty even saying that when so many families would have had men on the ship. ‘I’m going to go round and see them,’ she announced. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’

Christine shook her head. ‘We won’t be welcome there, Rosie,’ she warned. ‘If I was you I’d stay away.’

‘I can’t do that. Not now that this has happened. And anyway, I don’t understand why they don’t want to be friends with us any more.’ When her mother made no response she told her fiercely, ‘I’ve got to go round; it wouldn’t be right not to.’ None of the Grenelli men would have been on board the Arandora Star but there were bound to have been men on the ship whom the family knew and Rosie felt she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least go round and offer her sympathy and her help.

‘Why don’t you leave it until after your tea?’ Christine suggested. ‘There might have been something on the wireless by then.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. Not now …’ she said, rushing out of the door.

As she slipped down the alleyway that led to the Grenellis’ back door, Rosie could see Father Doyle up ahead of her, stepping into the home of one of the Italian families. Seconds later the fine hairs on Rosie’s skin lifted at the unnerving sound of a woman’s single solitary anguished scream of denial. The grief it held was like a physical blow.

Outside the Grenellis’ back door Rosie hesitated. Her palms were sticky with sweat. What was she going to do if Bella’s mother answered and slammed the door in her face or, even worse, started to shout at her? She took a deep breath, wiped her hands on her skirt and then knocked on the door before she could lose her nerve.

To her relief it was Bella who opened it, but there was no smile of welcome in her eyes or lifting of her mouth. Instead she looked as blankly at Rosie as though she had been a stranger.

‘We’ve heard the news. I had to come,’ Rosie began in a rush. ‘I know that Carlo and Aldo and Granddad Giovanni weren’t on board, but—’

Bella looked at her and then said bleakly, ‘They were on board.’

Rosie’s heart jerked. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘You said … you told me yourself that Granddad Giovanni was coming home and that your father and Aldo were going to be interned on the Isle of Man.’

‘They were, but some … someone my father owed a favour to asked if they would swap places with them.’ The words came jerkily as though it hurt her to say them.

‘I don’t understand …’

‘Families were being broken up, fathers sent to the Isle of Man, sons sent to Canada, brothers and cousins separated. Our most important men held a meeting at Huyton and it was decided to change around the papers everyone had been given so that families could stay together. There was one family … an important family in our community to whom my father owed … loyalty who had pieces of paper for the Arandora Star.’

‘But the Arandora Star was sailing for Canada,’ Rosie protested. ‘And Grandfather Giovanni is so old, surely—’

‘It was a matter of duty,’ Bella told Rosie fiercely, ‘a matter of honour; Grandfather agreed that my father had no choice. That is what my mother said. We only found out last night that they were to sail. There was a message …’

‘No,’ Rosie repeated. A wave of sickening heat surged over her and then retreated, leaving her feeling icy cold and trembling violently. She desperately wanted to sit down. But how could she give in to her weakness when Bella was standing there looking so in control of herself? ‘Maybe they weren’t on the Arandora Star? I’ve heard that there is another ship sailing tomorrow. Maybe—’

‘No. We know they sailed on the Arandora Star.’

‘There will be survivors,’ Rosie told her eagerly. ‘Maybe—’

‘My grandfather can’t swim; he is old; they were put in the very bottom of the ship. This is what we know and what we have been told. The German sailors, they will have survived, but not our men.’

‘You can’t know that,’ Rosie protested. ‘Bella, you mustn’t give up hope. Not yet.’

‘Who are you to tell us not to give up hope?’ Bella rounded on her bitterly. ‘We should not need to have hope. Our men should not have been taken away and imprisoned. They should not have been sent to Canada. I will never forget what your country has done to us, Rosie, and I will never forgive it. My mother is right – you are all our enemies.’

‘Bella, that isn’t true.’ Rosie was trembling with the force of her emotions.

‘Isn’t it? Ask your father what he thinks of us, Rosie; ask those men who rioted against us and destroyed our homes. Go and ask them if they are our friends.’

‘My father wouldn’t have wanted this. He’s a sailor. No sailor would ever want something like this to happen.’ She knew that that was true, but she also knew that Bella was right and that her father had never really understood her mother’s friendship with the Grenellis.

Bella gave a small uncaring shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter much any more. We are leaving Liverpool as soon as it can be arranged. We have relatives in Manchester who will take us in, for how are we to earn a living now when there is no sugar for us to make ice cream and no men to sell it? You’d better go,’ she added coolly. ‘My mother will be coming downstairs in a minute and if she knows that you are here she won’t be pleased.’

Rosie wasn’t quite sure how she managed to get home. She certainly couldn’t remember walking there. She stood in the middle of the shabby parlour and told her mother emotionally, ‘I’ve just seen Bella. They were on board, all three of them – her father, Grandfather Giovanni and Aldo.’ And then her whole body was shaking, racked by the sobs that seemed to be being torn away from her heart itself.

‘Stop that.’

The sharp slap her mother gave her shocked her into a stunned silence. Her cheek burned. Slowly she lifted her hand to touch it.

Her mother’s eyes were glittering with anger, her own face burning almost as bright a red as Rosie’s cheek.

‘You must have misunderstood what Bella was saying. Mind you, she’s as much of a drama queen as that ruddy mother of hers. Their men couldn’t have been on board. I spoke to Aldo meself on Saturday night. He told me then that they was going to the Isle of Man.’

‘You spoke to Aldo? But that’s impossible. You couldn’t have done. No one was allowed to talk to the men.’

‘Well, I did. And don’t go looking at me like that. It’s the truth. Like I’ve already told you, there’s always ways and means, Rosie, if you know how to go about things and you know the right people. Bella’s got it wrong. Aldo was full of it, and that relieved …’

‘Bella said that they’d changed places with someone,’ Rosie stopped her mother quietly.

Between one breath and another Rosie saw her mother’s expression change, and the colour leave her face, only to rush back into it to burn in two bright spots on her cheeks.

‘The stupid bastard,’ she breathed. ‘The stupid, stupid bastard. I warned him not to …’ Suddenly it was her mother who was shaking from head to foot. She dropped down into a chair and leaned her elbows on the table, holding her head in her hands.

‘Mum …’ Rosie begged her uncertainly. She was upset – devastated – but her mother was inconsolable.

‘It’s that ruddy Carlo – he’s the one who’s responsible for this.’ It was as though she was talking to herself. ‘He’s the one who dragged Aldo into that Fascist lot on account of Sofia nagging at him. She’s the one who’s to blame for them all being drowned … She might as well have murdered them with her bare hands.’

Had the news somehow affected her mother’s brain? How was it possible for her to know so much?

‘We don’t know what … what’s happened yet, Mum. They might still be alive …’

Her mother was giving her the same look that Bella had given her when she had said that to her.

‘No, they won’t be alive,’ she told Rosie bitterly. ‘I need a drink.’

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Rosie offered.

‘Not that kind of drink. A proper drink. There’s a bottle of gin in the sideboard – go and get it for us.’

‘Mum, I don’t think—’

‘All right, don’t get it, I’ll go and get it meself,’ she glowered.

‘I don’t understand,’ Rosie protested. ‘Why did they change places with these other people, and why did you say it was Sofia’s fault? They aren’t Fascists.’

‘Aldo certainly wasn’t. Sofia’s had it in for Aldo for a long time – well, I hope she’s happy now with what she’s gone and done.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Rosie repeated.

‘No, you don’t understand, Rosie, and that’s the ruddy truth.’

It was another week before they knew for sure that the Grenelli men were indeed amongst those missing, presumed drowned. And not once in that week had the Grenellis’ door opened to Rosie’s knock, even though she had gone round every day hoping to be allowed to share their grief. Rosie went with her mother to the service that was being held at Holy Cross in memory of those who had died, both of them dressed in their most sombre clothes.

The church was packed full, and it was almost impossible to hear the voice of the priest because of the noise of women crying, Rosie and her mother included. And then during the prayers one woman screamed so loudly in her despair that Rosie thought she herself was going to faint from her pain. The grief they were all feeling couldn’t be contained. It spilled over and filled the church as the mourners gave themselves over to it.

All Rosie could think about was how the Grenellis must be feeling and how much she wished she had been allowed to share this dreadful time with them. All week she had hoped that today of all days they would relent and accept that although she and her mother were not Italian, they shared their sense of loss and bewilderment. But the church was so packed that it was impossible to find anyone particular amongst the huge crowd. Many of the widows and children of the men who had lost their lives were given seats at the front of the church, but although Rosie craned her neck to see if the Grenellis were amongst them, she couldn’t find their familiar faces.

The grief of the mourners brought home to Rosie not just the cruel tragedy of what had happened but also the reality of what it meant to have a beloved husband or father die in such a dreadful way. It had always been her fear that one day her own father might not return home, and witnessing the anguish here reinforced that fear and added to her grief for all the lost lives.

She and her mother clung to one another for support when they left the church after the service. Rosie had never seen Christine so emotionally affected by anything. For once her mother was not wearing her trademark mascara and bright red lipstick, and it tore at Rosie’s tender heart to see her looking so unexpectedly vulnerable, as some of their Italian neighbours glowered pointedly at them, making it plain that they considered them to be outsiders.

‘Did you see the way that Carlo Cossima were looking at us, like we was to blame for what’s happened, when it were me wot tried to save Aldo? If there’s anyone to blame for them drowning then it’s that Sofia and not me,’ Christine wept as she clung to Rosie.

Rosie could feel her mother trembling. She squeezed her arm, trying to comfort her, not trusting herself to speak. Her mother seemed fixated on Aldo’s fate, whereas Rosie recognised that it was for all of their men that most of the women had come to mourn, and that was why they were looking so bitterly at them – because they were English and it was the British Government they believed had sent their men to their deaths.

Everyone had been saying that the war was going to change people’s lives for ever, but Rosie felt sure that nothing else could ever have the impact on hers that the internment and deaths of the Italian men from Liverpool had had. She felt bereft without the closeness and friendship of the Grenellis, but her pain went deeper than that, and she knew that a part of her would never recover from the words Bella had thrown at her. They had grown up together, both innocent of any differences between them, bonded by a friendship Rosie had believed would last for ever. But now that innocence was gone. Rosie’s tender heart ached for all the Italian families who had suffered so much pain and loss, but it ached as well for her own loss.

It ached too for her mother, who had begun to frighten Rosie with the way she was drinking. All week Rosie had lain in bed at night, hearing her mother walking around downstairs, wanting to go down to her to beg her to come up to bed, but knowing that Christine would have had too much to drink to pay any attention to her. It had been the early hours before she had eventually come upstairs and then in the morning she had been sleeping so heavily that Rosie had been unable to wake her up properly so that she could go to work. Rosie was astonished that her mother had actually made it to the service.

She longed for her father to come home, and yet at the same time she felt guilty because he was alive whilst so many other men from the neighbourhood were dead. Over seven hundred had drowned, so it said in the papers, most of them Italian. Amongst them had been the man she had thought of almost as her own grandfather. She and Bella should have been mourning his loss together, supporting one another and comforting one another. How could her friend not understand that she had loved him too?