by Annie Groves
‘You gave me ever such a shock, fainting like that,’ Mary told her. ‘Whatever’s to do? I know you haven’t bin so good recently, with that cough and everything, but it gave me a real shock when you passed out like that. I’ve sent Audrey across the fields to get Ricardo, but I reckon you need to see a doctor.’
Rosie struggled to sit up, panic filling her at the thought of Ricardo seeing her so vulnerable; Ricardo, who was marrying Sheila because she was having his baby. Rosie couldn’t believe there could be so much pain. It filled her and flowed over her, until it totally possessed her and she had no escape from it.
‘I’m sure that Ricardo will make a good husband and father for Sheila and the baby.’ Rosie didn’t know how she managed to get the words out, they hurt so much.
‘Ricardo?’ Mary was looking at her in astonishment. ‘You surely aren’t thinking that it’s Ricardo that Sheila has got herself into trouble with, are you, Rosie?’
Numbly Rosie looked at her.
‘Well, of all the daft things. What on earth put that idea into your head? No. It’s Tommy Lucas, Ian’s best man, the one whose trousers she took off the night before the wedding. Sneaking off together in the evening, the two of them have bin doing, making use of the blackout for stuff it was never intended for, an’ all. But like I said, at least the lad’s prepared to do the decent thing by her. Oh, good, here’s Ricardo now. He’ll know what to do…’
It was too much for Rosie to take in, too much for her to cope with right now, when she felt so ill, and too much for her to bear knowing that Ricardo was here. She could hear Mary telling him what had happened.
‘She hasn’t bin well for a while, Ricardo, and if you ask me she’s bin pining for you that badly she’s made herself ill.’
‘No! That’s not true.’ Rosie finally managed to sit up. ‘I’m all right, there’s nothing wrong with me,’ she insisted valiantly, struggling to her feet, even though she had to hold on to the hedge to keep herself upright.
‘No, not much,’ Mary agreed drily. ‘She only went and passed right out because she thought it was you that has got our Sheila into trouble, Ricardo.’
How could Mary betray her like this? But before Rosie could tell her how she felt, a bout of coughing had her doubled over, unable to speak.
‘You should see a doctor,’ Ricardo announced.
‘Exactly what I’ve bin saying to her, Ricardo, but she won’t listen. I’ve never known anyone as stubborn as Rosie is.’ Mary shook her head.
‘I keep telling you, there’s nothing wrong with me, or at least there wouldn’t be if certain people left me alone,’ Rosie said sharply. ‘Haven’t you got some fields to plough?’ she asked Ricardo pointedly. She saw the look he and Mary exchanged, but she turned her back on them both defiantly and went back to work.
Beneath her defensive anger, though, she was greedily lingering over the stolen pleasure of seeing Ricardo. Farm work had strengthened and corded the muscles in his arms, and Rosie shivered inwardly at the thought of his maleness. He needed a haircut and there was smudge of dirt on his forehead where he must have pushed his hair out of the way. He still smelled the same, though – of coffee and clean fresh hardworking man, and of himself. It was a scent she would carry in her memory until her dying day.
‘That really is a nasty cough you’ve got, you know, Rosie,’ Audrey pointed out as a fit of coughing had Rosie almost bent double. Leaning against the wet hedge, and unable to speak for the pain in her chest, Rosie waited for the discomfort to go.
‘It’s all this rain,’ she told Audrey when she could finally speak. ‘It gets on my chest.’ The days were drawing in, giving them shorter working hours, which was a relief, but the cold wet conditions in which they were working meant that Rosie felt constantly chilled and unwell. Not that she was one to complain. It didn’t seem right to do that when none of the other girls seemed to be as badly affected by the weather as she was.
She could do with a tonic of some kind, though, she admitted tiredly later as she slumped against the side of the truck taking them back to the hostel. She was waking up at night coughing and she was uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was probably disturbing the other girls’ sleep as well as her own. Mary, who was on leave with Ian, so that they could attend Sheila’s quickly arranged wedding at home in Birmingham, had said to her only the other week that she ought to go to see a doctor, but Rosie didn’t feel she wanted to take up a doctor’s time when there was really nothing wrong with her.
The first thing she did when they got back to the hostel was go and have a warm shower, but not even that could drive the cold out of her bones.
‘Postie’s delivered a whole sack full of letters today. There’s one here for you, Rosie,’ Jean called out as she sorted through the mail that had been delivered whilst they were out working.
The sight of her father’s familiar handwriting on the letter Jean handed to her lifted Rosie’s spirits. She went straight up to the dormitory with it so that she could read it in private, impatiently opening the envelope, delighted to see that her father had covered both sides of several sheets of writing paper. He had written,
Rosie, Rosie, oh, love, I am so sorry and I feel so guilty. Your Ricardo has written to me to tell me what’s been happening between the two of you and how you’ve told him that you don’t want to see him any more because of me, and him being Italian.
He says that you love him and if that’s true, Rosie lass, and something tells me, as your loving dad, that it is, then I feel really bad. I wouldn’t for one moment want you to put yourself through any kind of unhappiness on my account, Rosie, and I just wish I was there so that I could speak to you myself and tell you truthfully that all I want is for you to be happy. Ricardo has told me all about himself and his family and he’s been straight with me as a man should be when he wants to marry a chap’s daughter, but he’s also stood up for himself and said how it is for him being both Italian and English, and I respect him for that. I would not want my precious girl to be wed to a chap who doesn’t think anything of himself. He sounds a decent sort, your Ricardo, Rosie. A straight-up, honest lad who will do the right thing by you and look after you like he should.
I can’t pretend that it wasn’t a shock when I first got his letter, especially with you not having said a word, but then when I read what he’d written about you not wanting to hurt me by marrying an Italian, but him believing after what you’d told him about me that I was the kind of dad who would only want his daughter to be happy, I warmed to the lad and appreciated his honesty. He wrote that he could understand my feelings on account of your mother, but that he felt sure that I wouldn’t want you to give up the man you loved because he happened to be part Italian. And he’s right, Rosie. Oh, my poor girl, I’m not ashamed to tell you, lass, that I cried some tears when I read what he had written to me about you; how much he loved you and what a special girl you are, but most of all on account of knowing the sadness you’ve been going through.
Rosie love, I would never expect you to give up Ricardo on my account, and if I was there with you I reckon none of this foolishness would have happened. Being your loving dad I would have seen that something was wrong with my girl and found out just what it was pretty sharpish, and of course, as Ricardo said in his letter to me, he would have been able to come and see me and talk to me man to man about everything. Did I tell you that he wrote that he ‘didn’t think Rosie could have had a better father’ and that when his turn came to be a dad to a little girl he hoped that I’d be on hand to help him learn the ropes, since his dad and mum only had boys?
He sent me some really nice photographs of himself and his family. Would you credit it, his mum looks a proper English rose. He’s explained to me how he got to be interned, and it seems to me that this duke is a shrewd chap for seeing the good in him and helping him out.
I don’t want to hear about you going through any more unhappiness, Rosie, and I want you to understand that the most important thing in the world to me is you, and you b
eing happy. If you love this lad as he says you do then I promise you that the pair of you have my blessing. I’ve written to Ricardo too, telling him that you’ve both got my blessing.
Your always loving dad
PS. Write me soon, Rosie, to tell me how you are. I’ll be worrying until I hear from you.
Ricardo had written to her father! How dare he do such a thing? How could he have done it? How had he got her father’s address? Rosie frowned as she looked at the drawer where she kept her letters. Mary must have got it for him. She had never felt so angry or so betrayed. I’m not giving up, Ricardo had told her, but she had never imagined he would do something like this.
Her poor dad. What must he have gone through when he had received Ricardo’s letter right out of the blue with no warning? Hadn’t Ricardo realised how unfair he was being? How cruel? Of course her father would say now that he didn’t mind – Rosie had known all along that that would be his reaction. She had never ever doubted her father’s love for her and had known that he would put her feelings first. But that wasn’t what she had wanted. She hadn’t wanted to feel that her father had been forced to accept Ricardo for her sake.
Had Ricardo received her father’s letter yet? And if he had, did he think that he had won and that everything was now all right? A grim determination seized her. Putting down her father’s letter, Rosie stood up.
‘Rosie, where are you going? It’s almost supper time.’
‘I’ve got to go out. I shan’t be long,’ Rosie called back to Jean before stepping out into the darkness of the wet October evening.
It was just over two miles across the fields from the village to Ricardo’s small cottage, by way of a narrow footpath. Not a particularly long walk, on a fine summer’s day, but not a walk to be attempted by an emotionally wrought young woman with a bad cough on a cold wet night in October. Rosie had to stop several times to wait as a bout of coughing made it impossible for her to keep walking. The footpath, churned to mud by cows, was slippery and treacherous, and to make things worse the wind had picked up, driving the rain into her. But the heat of her rage was more than equal to the discomfort of the walk.
Thick clouds obscured the moon, making Rosie glad that she had thought to bring her small torch. It was still a relief, though, when she could finally see the cottage. Her impatience to get there and confront Ricardo made her walk faster, which in turn caused her cough to start up again.
The cottage was double-fronted, with a good solid porch and neat little dormer windows upstairs, which might on another occasion have made Rosie smile with appreciation of its prettiness. But tonight she had other things on her mind. She opened the gate and marched up to the front door, raising the knocker and letting it bang down again loudly. Blackout curtains covered the windows so that it was impossible to see inside, and when several minutes ticked by with no sign of someone coming to open the door it suddenly struck Rosie that she might have come here for nothing and that Ricardo could be out. Her heart sank at the thought of her long wet walk back to the hostel without having had the satisfaction of telling Ricardo what she thought of him.
Dispiritedly she stepped back from the front door and was just about to turn and walk away when abruptly it opened and Ricardo was standing there.
‘Rosie!’ There was shocked concern in his voice, instead of the guilt Rosie felt he should have been exhibiting.
‘I expect you know why I’m here,’ she challenged him determinedly.
‘Oh, my poor little love, what’s happened to you? You look so sad and thin.’
‘I am not your love,’ Rosie repudiated angrily. ‘I’ve come about the letter you sent to my father.’
A huge smile illuminated Ricardo’s face. ‘You have his letter? He wrote me that he had sent one to you. Oh, Rosie, it is just as I knew it would be. He wants your happiness above all else…’
Ricardo had taken hold of her arm and was drawing her into the small hallway, closing the door behind her so that they were enclosed in the cottage’s warmth.
‘You are wet and cold. Come and sit by the fire. You shouldn’t have walked here on a night like this. I had already asked if I could have time off tomorrow to talk to you. Ah, but it warms my heart, my Rosie, to know that you were as impatient to see me as I have been to see you. I have missed you so much.’
This wasn’t what Rosie had expected. Doggedly she stuck to her guns. ‘You had no right to write to my father.’
Ricardo had opened the door into the cosy sitting room whilst he was talking to her and now she could see the log fire burning in the inglenook fireplace. The room was simply furnished with the bits and pieces he had been given, and immaculately clean and tidy. Her father, with a seaman’s habit of neatness, would approve of that. Rosie closed her eyes, squeezing back the painful sting of her unwanted tears. She had not come here looking for ways in which her father would approve of Ricardo.
Ricardo was still holding her arm. Angrily, Rosie wrenched it free. She could see the happiness fading from Ricardo’s face along with his smile as he registered her antagonism.
‘You are angry with me,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes,’ Rosie agreed. ‘I am – very angry. You should not have written to my father.’
‘How else could I have presented myself to him and asked for his permission to marry you?’
‘I had already told you why we could not be together; you knew about my mother, you knew how my father feels about Italians.’
‘I knew certainly how you believed he felt,’ Ricardo acknowledged quietly, ‘but it seemed to me when I put myself in his place that no matter how much the behaviour of your mother had hurt him, his love for you must mean that he would want your happiness above all else. And indeed, his letter to me confirms that this is so.’
‘Of course he’s going to say that, but that doesn’t mean that it’s what he really feels. I’m all he’s got. He needs me.’
‘When you marry me your father will have a whole new family. He will have a son-in-law and grandchildren, have you thought of that?’
‘You say that now but—’
‘I say it because it is what I mean. I shall be proud to have your father as my father-in-law, Rosie. I shall honour him as he should be honoured, and so will our children. He will always be assured of a home under my roof. That is the Italian way, you know that.’
Rosie could feel herself weakening. ‘What makes you think that he will want a home under your roof?’
‘I think it because he has written to tell me it is so,’ Ricardo told her simply.
‘Can’t you see he’s just saying that because of me, to make me feel better? But I know how he really feels.’
‘Do you? Or is it that you have changed your mind and are using your father as an excuse to end things between us? Is that what this is really all about, Rosie? Are you not the girl I thought after all, but too much of a coward to say what is in your heart?’
‘No. It is not that at all,’ Rosie denied furiously.
‘So you do love me still then?’
How neatly he had trapped her, she recognised. ‘It is not my love for you that matters.’
‘Your father wouldn’t agree with you about that. He says that your feelings, your love are more important than anything else, at least to him. Have you thought, Rosie, how unhappy it would make him to see you unhappy?’
‘He wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told him.’
‘Do you really think he wouldn’t have guessed that something was wrong? He loves you very dearly. Think, Rosie, if you had a child and they loved someone but felt for your sake they had to keep that love hidden, think how you would feel. Would you rejoice because they had protected your feelings, or would you grieve for their pain?’
Rosie already knew the answer. ‘You mustn’t do this to me. It isn’t fair.’ Her voice broke as her feelings overwhelmed her.
‘So what is fair? Is it fair that we should spend our lives apart, each yearning always for the other? You have
told me already to find someone else but that can never happen, for no girl could ever mean to me what you do. I am sorry if I have angered you, but I was desperate, Rosie. I couldn’t bear to lose you, and when Mary told me about your father, and told me to write to him and throw myself on his mercy, I knew that that was what I must do. Surely you can trust and believe in your father’s love, Rosie?’
‘Yes, of course I can.’
‘Then surely too you can trust and believe him when he says that he is happy to give us his blessing and that the bitterness he holds against Aldo is held against the man and not his race?’
Rosie opened her mouth to answer him but before she could speak she was overcome by a paroxysm of coughing that left her ribs aching with pain.
‘You are not well,’ Ricardo told her immediately.
‘It’s just a bit of a cough, that’s all,’ Rosie told him tiredly, and then shivered so violently that her teeth chattered together.
‘Come and sit down by the fire and get warm whilst I make you a hot drink. You should not have walked here tonight in the rain.’
‘I’m all right,’ Rosie insisted, but she still let him guide her towards the chair closest to the fire and push her gently into it.
‘Let me take these boots off and put them on the top of the range to dry them out a bit.’
‘I can take them off myself,’ Rosie protested, but somehow it was easier to lie back in the chair and let Ricardo remove them for her. This continual coughing left her so wrung out and exhausted sometimes, it was an effort just to breathe.
‘Your feet are so cold and wet.’
‘My boots leak, and we are not allowed to have another pair because of the shortage of material for them with the war.’
Ricardo had removed her wet socks now and was chafing her cold feet between his hands.
It was so cosy here in the cottage with him, being cosseted like this. She felt so tired that she could fall asleep right here in the chair. Another fit of shivers gripped her body, and then she sneezed.