by Daisy Styles
‘You were captured by the Germans?’ Kit asked softly.
When Rosa, too upset to speak, just nodded her head, Gladys stroked her bare arm. ‘You poor, poor girl,’ she murmured.
The arrival of Violet, Arthur and Stevie brought a smile back to Rosa’s sad face. Quickly wiping away her tears, she hurried to lift the baby from the pram and show him the vivid orange and yellow dahlias growing in Kit’s lovely garden.
All the guests had brought something to contribute to the picnic lunch that they shared in the big kitchen, which had a long wooden table running down the middle. Along one side of the kitchen was an enormous old oak dresser, bright with colourful crockery, and on the other side was a very old black Aga that kept the kitchen warm and the original slop sink that Kit had refused to let Ian rip out.
‘It reminds me of home; it’s good for me to remember my roots,’ she’d insisted.
‘But we could have a gleaming new modern sink,’ Ian teased.
But Kit was adamant and in the end Ian thanked her for it. On cold nights they bathed Billy in the shallow sink, then they dried him in a warm towel on their laps as they sat in an old Windsor chair in front of the Aga. Kit was serious when she said the sink reminded her of home and how far she’d travelled from those harsh days in Chapelizod and her cruel father’s behaviour over Billy. She’d loved Ian McIvor almost from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, but, after he’d fought a long legal battle to reclaim Billy, she positively adored the man. Even now, preparing a meal with her friends, Kit’s eyes wandered around the room in search of her husband, and when their eyes locked for a few seconds the love they had for each other was tangible. Kit’s day-dreaming was brought to an abrupt halt by the noisy arrival of Edna and Malc.
‘It’s not chip butties,’ Malc chuckled as he set down a big basket on the table. ‘It’s a batch of Edna’s pies – meat and onion, and cheese and onion – all my ration coupons have gone into yon pies, so you’d best enjoy the buggers!’
‘And don’t leave them lying around long next to Malc,’ Edna joked. ‘He’ll eat the lot!’
Kit smiled happily at the middle-aged couple, who, between them, never stopped talking and cracking jokes. They too were in love – you could see it in their eyes and smiles, and it made Kit’s heart sing to see her friend Edna so content.
As everybody laid their modest contributions on the kitchen table, Rosa produced something they’d never seen before.
‘Pizza,’ she said.
Everybody stared at the two plates, which held food that looked warm, round, puffy and absolutely mouth-watering.
‘They smell delicious,’ said Gladys, who’d eaten pizza in Naples. ‘It’s bread dough,’ she explained to her friends. ‘Topped with tomatoes, herbs and a bit of cheese.’
‘It not so good as pizza we make in Italia,’ Rosa explained. ‘I no find olive oil, sausage, salami …’
Malc guffawed. ‘You do surprise me, sweetheart!’
‘It looks amazing,’ praised Edna.
‘Try, please,’ Rosa urged.
After everybody had consumed a slice of Rosa’s pizza, there was a general murmur of appreciation. Edna was the first to speak. ‘Your pizzas, Rosa, are a threat to my chip shop,’ she declared. ‘I need you to teach me how to make these!’
‘Gorgeous!’ Malc enthused.
‘Is there any more?’ Nora asked yearningly.
Rosa laughed and shook her head. ‘I make more,’ she promised.
‘Where does the yeast come from?’ Edna asked.
‘Yeast?’ Rosa puzzled.
‘You know, the stuff that makes it puffy,’ Edna said, as she used her hands to explain what she meant.
Rosa smiled as she understood Edna’s meaning. ‘Il lievito – yeast, I get bit from ladies in factory, we share with each other,’ Rosa replied.
With his mouth smeared red with tomato sauce, Billy paid Rosa the very best compliment. ‘More, more, Rosa pie!’ he cried.
Their joint contributions laid enticingly on the oak table brought a smile to everybody’s face. Even in the middle of a war that had been raging for four years, they’d brought the very best that their rations could provide. There was Kit’s delicious hot soup made from her finest seasonal vegetables; Nora brought some ripe purple plums from her dad’s garden; Myrtle had somehow cobbled together a delicious mock-chocolate cake; Maggie had brought along some corned-beef fritters; and then there were Edna’s pies and what was left of Rosa’ s pizza.
‘A feast!’ Malc exclaimed.’ ‘I tell you, it’ll be a long time before we eat this well again!’
A happy companionable group sat around the kitchen table, chatting and laughing as they shared their food and passed around jugs of Arthur’s raspberry cordial and Malc’s home-made beer.
‘Careful with that stuff,’ Edna warned as Malc poured out his home brew. ‘It’ll blow your bloody head off!’
‘Cheers!’ said Malc, as he raised his pint mug. ‘Here’s to all the happy families!’
Kit and Gladys anxiously watched Rosa, wondering if Malc’s completely innocent words might trigger another emotional reaction, and the girl’s face indeed clouded over momentarily.
‘We are like a family,’ Nora commented as she munched her food. ‘We stick together and look out for each other.’ With tears brimming in her earnest blue eyes, Nora stared adoringly at Myrtle. ‘After mi mam and our kid died, I don’t know how I would have got by without you all.’ Then in all innocence she turned to Rosa and said, ‘Have you got any brothers and sisters, Rosa?’
Kit and Gladys held their breath. Only somebody as genuine as Nora could have come out with such a direct but innocent question, but was she inadvertently stepping on a minefield? Both women heaved a sigh of relief as Rosa replied, ‘I have brother, older than me, Gabriel.’ She reached into her bag and drew out a crumpled black-and-white photograph that was ripped at the edges.
As the photograph was solemnly passed around the table, they all gazed into the face of a beautiful young man with high cheekbones, sweeping, dark hair, almond-shaped brown eyes just like Rosa’s and a gentle smile that revealed perfect teeth.
‘He’s very handsome,’ Nora said. ‘Nearly as beautiful as his little sister.’
Rosa nodded proudly, ‘He very handsome,’ she murmured. ‘I pray he safe.’
The opportunity Gladys had been carefully waiting for to ask further questions about Rosa’s past was broken by Stevie waking up in his pram and starting to cry for his feed. She sighed – she would have to find another time to gently probe poor Rosa about the family she clearly adored. As Kit helped Violet heat up a bottle of dried milk powder, the rest of the company drifted outside to enjoy the last of the sunshine in the warm garden. Before she left the kitchen, Gladys noticed Rosa looking thoughtful as she picked up a pencil and several pieces of Billy’s drawing paper, which she took with her into the garden. Curious, Gladys followed her friend, whom she caught sketching Billy as he played football with Ian. Utterly absorbed in her work, Rosa’s hands moved swiftly and easily over the paper as she glanced up and then down again to correct a line or an angle, or to smudge the pencil to create shadows. When she’d finished the football sketch, she turned her eyes towards Malc and Edna, who were sitting on the garden wall, swinging their legs back and forth like teenagers in love, completely unaware of anybody but each other. As Gladys watched Rosa sketch, she suddenly realized that by opening up and talking about the family she loved and missed Rosa had clearly released some inhibitions in herself; it brought a smile to Gladys’s face to see her friend more relaxed than she’d ever been previously.
Kit then appeared with a tray loaded with tea things, and Violet handed Stevie to Arthur so she could help pour tea for all the guests. After patting his son’s back and winding him, Arthur kissed Stevie on the forehead, then rocked him to sleep in his arms, a sweet image that Rosa also caught on paper.
Just before the party broke up, Malc stood up to make an announcement. Clearing his th
roat, he said, ‘We’ve got some news for you.’ Turning, he took hold of Edna’s hand. ‘I’ve asked this lovely woman to marry me and she said yes.’
‘Am I daft or not!’ Edna joked as she flashed a lovely pearl-and-diamond engagement ring, which she’d managed to keep hidden all afternoon. ‘Getting wed at my age!’ she laughed.
Violet, Kit, Gladys, Nora and Maggie literally lifted Edna off the ground as they gave her a collective bear hug. ‘Congratulations!’ they cried, absolutely delighted for their friend.
Myrtle discreetly gave her a kiss on each cheek. ‘Wonderful news, dear,’ she remarked.
Edna hugged them all in turn, but when it came to Kit she leant over to whisper in her ear. ‘I want you to give me away, little lass,’ Edna said, as she gave Kit a knowing wink. ‘I stood for you, now it’s your turn to stand for me.’
Kit stood on her toes so she could reach up and kiss Edna warmly. ‘It’ll be the biggest pleasure and honour,’ she said with a delighted smile.
Before they all went their separate ways, Rosa quietly handed out her sketches. ‘For you,’ she said shyly to Malc and Edna, who were overwhelmed and thrilled with their portrait. ‘And this,’ she said to Violet as she gave her the sketch of Stevie in his father’s arms, ‘is for you, and here I have picture for Kit.’
Kit gazed at Rosa’s pencil drawing of her son playing football with Ian. She was quite in awe of how accurately Rosa had captured her son, and how quickly and efficiently she’d worked whilst they all chatted.
‘Thank you, you’re so talented!’ Kit enthused. ‘It’s so precious that I’m going to frame it to remind me of a perfect day with friends and family.’
Rosa blushed prettily. ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘For me is perfect day too.’
Kit exchanged a smile with Gladys; it was the first time since they’d met Rosa that they’d seen such colour in her thin cheeks.
5. The Liberation of Naples
Though Gladys was much happier than she had been on her arrival at the Phoenix, she was still not the Gladys her friends had known and loved before she joined ENSA.
‘We miss your singing, dear,’ Myrtle had ventured to say one dinner-time when the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Apple Blossom Time’ came lilting out of the canteen radio.
‘And the Bomb Girls’ Swing Band too – I really miss the fun we had together,’ Maggie exclaimed.
‘And the music we played, and the excitement of all those competitions, and the applause of the crowd,’ Nora added, with real yearning in her voice.
Gladys concentrated hard on stirring her mug of piping hot tea. ‘There just aren’t enough hours in the working week any more,’ she replied limply.
‘Nonsense!’ Myrtle exclaimed. ‘We made time in the past.’
Galvanized by Myrtle, who was usually the soul of diplomacy, Maggie quickly added what they’d all been thinking but had never articulated. ‘Music was your life before you left for Italy!’
Maggie, who was walking out with Gladys’s younger brother and therefore knew more about Gladys’s past than the rest of her friends, courtesy of Les’s humorous anecdotes, added, ‘He said the two of you used to sing and play all the time when you were at home.’
Gladys fell silent as she recalled those happy days before war broke out, when she and her kid brother would duet upstairs in her bedroom after they’d finished work. Les would play the trumpet he loved so much and she’d be on her saxophone. For hours they’d sing all the popular songs of the day – ‘Begin the Beguine’, ‘Summertime’, ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ – until their mother (worried that the neighbours would complain about the noise) banged on the ceiling with the sweeping brush and told them to ‘SHUT UP!’
‘Whatever you say about lack of time, Glad,’ Violet announced robustly, ‘you MUST play at Edna’s wedding.’
Gladys smothered her dismay. She didn’t even want to touch her saxophone, which was still under her bed in Leeds – and as for singing, the very thought made her shudder. Prevaricating, she said, ‘Have they set a date?’
‘Not exactly,’ Violet replied. ‘But Edna said she’d like to have a Christmas wedding.’
Gladys gave a sigh of relief, ‘Oh, that’s ages off,’ she retorted.
‘No, it’s not!’ Nora protested. ‘We should be rehearsing for Edna’s wedding if you ask me,’ she added, and she threw Gladys a hurt look.
Gladys gave a chipped, polite smile. ‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ she answered airily. Rosa, who knew nothing of Gladys’s past history or her astonishing musical talent, watched the exchange with interest; she sensed from Gladys’s body language that she was reluctant to be having this conversation and the sooner it was over the better.
‘What’s she hiding?’ Rosa wondered as the factory hooter called them all back to work. ‘What changed her life and made her stop singing?’
A few days later Rosa came tearing into the cowshed, where Gladys was washing her hair before they started their afternoon shift.
‘GLADEEEES!’ she bellowed.
Gladys wiped the soap out of her eyes and smiled – she loved the way Rosa called her ‘Gladeeees’ when she was really excited.
‘The Italians have … oh, how you call it?’ Rosa asked impatiently.
‘Surrendered – to the Allies,’ Gladys gasped.
‘YES, YES, YES!’ Grabbing Gladys by the hand, Rosa did a little jig of joy around the kitchen.
‘That’s brilliant news! We should celebrate with a cuppa before we have to leave to clock on,’ said Gladys, and she gave her friend a huge hug before rushing to towel-dry her hair and fill the kettle.
‘We drink champagne!’ Rosa cried.
‘Wouldn’t that be nice,’ Gladys agreed with a cheeky smile. ‘But for the moment we’ll have to settle for tea.’
The next morning, eager and still wildly excited, Rosa insisted on going over to the canteen as soon as they woke up. ‘I must see the newspapers,’ she laughed as she skipped down the cobbled lane to the Phoenix, followed by a yawning Gladys. The daily papers were indeed full of pictures of smiling American soldiers handing out chocolate to little Italian children, soldiers waving American flags. There were pictures too of the heroes of the moment: smiling, handsome Montgomery and General Eisenhower arriving in triumph at the port of Messina. As Rosa, muttering to herself in Italian, pored over every detail, Gladys sleepily flicked through the newspapers. ‘Italy surrenders unconditionally …’ She turned several more pages, then her hand froze in mid-air: gazing out at her from the folds of the newspaper was unquestionably the image of the very man who haunted her dreams. Almost choking, she gasped, ‘It’s HIM!’
Hearing her cry, Rosa quickly turned towards her friend, who was as white as a sheet. ‘Who? Il Duce?’ she enquired.
‘HIM!’ said Gladys, powerless to keep her distress from her friend as she jabbed a trembling finger at an overweight naval officer standing in the background behind stunning Montgomery.
Bewildered, Rosa asked, ‘Who, mia cara?’
Trying to collect her raging thoughts, Gladys stammered, ‘A … a m … man I met in Naples.’
Seeing her friend in deep distress, Rosa said, ‘Stay here – I will bring tea for you.’
As soon as Rosa turned her back, Gladys screwed the newspaper into a tight ball, which she then hurled into the dustbin. When Rosa appeared with two steaming mugs of tea, she found Gladys quietly weeping. Clutching her hand, Rosa squeezed it. ‘Gladyeeees, darling,’ she said tenderly. ‘You must speak: please tell me why you cry,’ she begged.
Gladys focused on Rosa’s deep, trusting eyes. She couldn’t hold this in any more, and maybe sweet Rosa was the right one to confide in. She had no choice: the photograph of the man she hated most in the world had stirred up such unwelcome thoughts and memories.
‘Something happened to me in Naples – something bad,’ she blurted out miserably.
Rosa released her friend’s arm and, never taking her eyes from her friend’s face, calmly lit up one of h
er cheroots, which she inhaled slowly before she said gently, ‘You want tell me more?’
‘NO!’ Gladys wretchedly exclaimed. Was it not better to bottle up her anguish as she always had in the past? How could an emotional outpouring possibly help? ‘I want to wipe it from my mind and never, EVER think about it again.’
Rosa nodded, understanding, but unsure how best she could help her dear friend. For now, all she felt she could do was be there with Gladys in companionable silence as they drank their tea, hoping she would open up and talk more when the time was right.
After they’d finished their tea and the colour had returned a little to Gladys’s cheeks, the two of them walked back up the lane to the cowshed, where Gladys slumped on to the sofa. As Rosa stoked the wood-burner, she tried a different approach with Gladys, who was staring at the wall.
‘You are clever woman, my friend, you know you cannot’ – she paused, searching for the right word – ‘wipe away bad thoughts from your mind: the brain is not factory machine that you can switch on and off, like that,’ she said as she snapped her fingers. ‘Believe me, mia cara, I know these things,’ she said. Hoping that sharing her own painful story might help Gladys to confide in her, Rosa started to talk, struggling now and again with the unfamiliar language but determined to reach the troubled woman before her.
‘When the Nazis came for the Jews in my city, Gabriel and I took Mama and Papa to friends in the hills near Padova, then we came back.’ Rolling a cheroot, she added bitterly. ‘That was big mistake.’ Before she continued, she lit the cigarette with trembling fingers and inhaled deeply. ‘Neighbours betray us and Nazis soon find us.’ She paused, forcing herself to recollect the most disturbing of memories.
‘They throw us in trucks, old, young, babies, the sick – we whipped and kicked like animals.’ Sitting beside Gladys, Rosa stared out of the sitting-room window for a few minutes before continuing. ‘Gabriel and I – we know where we going, but not say,’ she whispered. ‘I see prisoners pushed into the trucks and I see my brother talk to guard.’ She shook her head as she recalled the moment with obvious clarity. ‘I try listen, I don’t know what Gabriel say to guard, but I see him give guard lot of money, then Gabriel he came return in truck, he smile and move me to back of truck, where we stand like this.’ Rosa squeezed herself in as if she was being flattened. ‘My brother tell me he love me and he tell me to do what he say.’ She closed her eyes momentarily to stem the tears. ‘No questions, little sister, promise me, mia tesora, no questions.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘When the trucks move, guard sit by me,’ she continued with a glazed expression as if she was reliving the horror of the moment. ‘When we turn off main street, guard he push me out the back of the truck, which goes fast. Before I can cry out, I am on ground and truck is driving from me, but I am safe,’ she added, still in a state of disbelief at the outcome of the event. ‘The last I see of my Gabriel, he smiling at me and then he gone.’