Women on the Home Front Read online

  They had to stop to cross another road, the warmth of the sun making Dulcie begin to feel hot, hemmed in by the press of people on the busy street.

  The movement provided Italian lessons for the children of Italians born in Britain, it provided meeting halls, schools, a place for Italian communities to be together, a small part of Italy and home in a foreign land. Only a small proportion of those who belonged to the movement were politically motivated and true fascists, and Raphael wanted to warn his grandfather against placing himself in that small group, especially as increasingly it looked as though Mussolini was about to ally himself to Hitler, and thus declare war on Britain.

  He wasn’t sure himself why he had elected to do what he had done with regard to Dulcie. It was true that he had had time on his hands, but he could have filled that time doing other things. It had surprised him to discover how much his pride had stung to hear Dulcie announce that he wasn’t good enough for her, when her comment should have amused him. She was a shop girl, sharp enough when it came to her own wants, and ambitions, but oblivious to the political and social situations that were so important to him. If one of them should look down on the other then he should be the one looking down on her.

  He stopped walking as they came to another crossroads.

  ‘I’m sorry but I must leave you here.’

  It was only after they had gone their separate ways and Dulcie was almost ‘home’ that she allowed herself to give vent to her feelings. Of all the cheek, him apologising to her for leaving her as though he thought that she had actually wanted his company, and would be disappointed at being deprived of it. Well, she wasn’t. She didn’t need anyone’s company, much less that of a ruddy Eyetie. She was forced to admit to herself, however, for all that Arlene had affected to sneer at him, she’d seen the look in her eyes when they’d first clocked him. Eyetie or not, he was still a well set up and good-looking chap.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sally pushed her hair back off her face, shading her eyes from the June afternoon sun as she looked up from the row of lettuces she had just been weeding around, leaning on her hoe as she did so.

  ‘Looks easy hoeing, but it isn’t.’ The voice of Nancy’s husband, Arthur, reached her from the other side of the garden fence. Arthur was a kindly gentle man, the complete opposite of the image of him that Nancy held up to others with her frequent references to Arthur’s dislike of all those things that Nancy had decided were to be disliked. Now, as he filled and then lit his pipe, Sally laughed and agreed.

  ‘Much harder. I’ve never been in full charge of a veggie plot before, although I helped my father with his.’

  ‘Tea leaves is what you need. Soak them in vinegar overnight and then put them round your lettuces, and you won’t get no slugs coming after them.’

  Nancy’s, ‘Arthur, come and get a cup of tea,’ over the hedge dividing the two gardens, had him giving Sally a farewell nod of his head before he dutifully headed for the back door where Sally could see Nancy standing with her apron on over her floral-patterned summer frock, her hands on her hips.

  ‘Poor Arthur,’ Olive commented, coming down the path with a tray of tea and two scones from the batch she had just baked, just in time to hear her neighbour calling out to her husband. ‘He is rather henpecked. No butter for the scones, I’m afraid, but luckily I’ve got plenty of jam left from the batch I made last year. I’m really glad now that we’ve got rationing that I decided to sort out a stock cupboard last summer.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking that perhaps we could get half a dozen hens,’ Sally began five minutes later when the two of them were settled under the shade of the apple tree, enjoying their tea and scones. ‘There’s room for them, and I noticed a sign in the hardware shop as I came past the other day, advertising hen coops.’

  ‘Well, I can certainly use the fresh eggs,’ Olive agreed, ‘but you can’t be expected to look after the gardens and some hens, Sally. I feel a bit guilty as it is, watching you working so hard.’

  ‘I enjoy it,’ Sally told her truthfully, ‘and you and Tilly and Agnes all give me a hand.’

  ‘Well, if you really want to take it on, I’m all for it,’ Olive approved. She looked up at the sky through the leaves on the apple tree.

  ‘I can’t imagine what it will be like to be invaded by the Germans, but that’s what everyone says Hitler will try to do now that he’s got France.’

  ‘It won’t be as easy to invade us as it was to invade France,’ Sally said stoutly.

  Olive gave her a wan smile. ‘That’s what everyone said about the Maginot Line – that he’d never cross it – but he did. I keep thinking of all those people who tried to escape.’ She put her hand to her mouth and Sally knew that she was thinking of the women and children who had been killed by the Luftwaffe. She herself had heard the most graphic and awful stories from some of the injured soldiers they’d got at Barts, the words bursting from them as though they couldn’t contain the horror of what they’d witnessed.

  ‘If they do invade, they’re bound to march on London.’

  ‘We’ve got the RAF to hold them back, don’t forget,’ Sally tried to comfort her.

  Olive gave her a troubled look. ‘I worry for Tilly and Agnes, and you too, Sally. You are young with your whole lives in front of you, and I can’t help thinking that if Hitler does invade you’d all be safer out of London.’

  ‘If he succeeds in invading,’ Sally told her gently. ‘I personally don’t think he will. If those of us who live and work here did desert London then what kind of message would that send out to him, and to our boys who are fighting for this country and for us? The BEF have taken a terrific blow to their pride. We need to show them, as well as Hitler, that we have faith in them.’

  Olive looked at her lodger, taking in Sally’s determined expression. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, adding, ‘You have such a wise head on your young shoulders, Sally.’

  ‘My mother’s head, or rather her teaching.’ Sally’s smile softened and then disappeared, to be replaced by a look of sadness. ‘I miss her so much. The trained nurse in me knew that she couldn’t survive and that she would die, but as her daughter I couldn’t bear to lose her.’

  ‘Your father is still alive,’ Olive began, but Sally shook her head.

  ‘Not for me. I have no father any more. My father ceased to exist for me the day he married Morag. The man I knew and loved as my father could not have performed such a betrayal. I must finish this weeding before I have to go in and get changed for work. Arthur has recommended that I put tea leaves soaked in vinegar round the lettuces to keep the slugs off. I’ve never heard of that remedy before.’

  Recognising that Sally had changed the subject because she did not want to talk about her father, Olive began to gather up their empty cups and plates. She couldn’t really, after all, expect someone who had been as close to her mother as Sally had obviously been to understand the ache of emptiness and the fear of aloneless that came with the loss of a husband or wife, or to accept that sometimes the widowed partner felt driven by a need to fill that empty gap in their lives, especially when it was a man who had been widowed. Women were expected by their own sex to wear their widow-hood as a form of respectability; men, on the other hand, were seen by that sex as poor creatures in need of the comfort that only a new wife could give. A widow’s respectability was a fragile garment, easily tarnished and damaged, her behaviour constantly under the eagle-eyed inspection of other women. Olive could still remember the lectures she had been given by her mother-in-law in the months following her own widowhood, about the need to preserve her ‘respectability’ and that of her late husband’s family. She had had no desire to marry again, though, Olive admitted. All she had wanted to do then was pour her love into her precious daughter. Then? What she meant was that all she had ever wanted to do was pour her love into Tilly, Olive told herself firmly.

  ‘Well, I don’t know why you’ve wasted your money on giving me this stuff, Dulcie, I really don’t. Min
d you, Edith can probably make use of it.’

  Dulcie stared at her mother in outrage, opening her mouth to tell her that if she didn’t want her present then Dulcie would take it back because there was no way that Edith was going to have it, her angry words converted to a yell of pain when Rick very deliberately nipped her arm.

  ‘I’ll have a bruise on my arm now,’ she complained to him half an hour later as they left the house together, Dulcie to return to Article Row and Rick heading for the local lads’ boxing club to meet up with his friends, ‘What did you have to go and pinch me like that for anyway?’

  ‘You know why,’ Rick told her.

  ‘Mum had no right saying she was going to give my present to her to Edith,’ Dulcie objected. ‘Why does ruddy Edith have to have everything? Mum said that she was going to give her that scent you gave her as well.’

  ‘That’s Mum’s way, and making a song and dance about it won’t change anything,’ Rick advised as they set off down the street. ‘Edith’s always been her favourite.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know why,’ Dulcie complained, still aggrieved.

  ‘Ma’s proud of Edith, Dulcie, because of her singing. Remember how when we were kids Ma used to tell us about how she’d won a prize for singing herself when she was at school?’

  Dulcie nodded.

  ‘Well, I reckon Ma favours Edith because of that. She wants Edith to have what she never did.’

  ‘A greasy-hands-all-over-you agent, you mean?’ Dulcie asked cynically.

  Rick sighed and gave her a rueful look. ‘You know the trouble with you, Dulcie, is that you can’t just let things be. You’ve got to make your point, and have the last word, even if it means getting folks’ backs up.’

  They’d crossed the road and turned into another street whilst they’d been talking, any attempt Dulcie might have made to respond to Rick’s accusation made impossible by the growing volume of noise.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dulcie protested, raising her voice.

  ‘Sounds like someone’s having a bit of a set-to,’ Rick told her unnecessarily as they both heard the sound of breaking glass joining the chants and jeers of angry raised voices.

  Street fights weren’t an uncommon occurrence in their neighbourhood, so Dulcie shrugged. Then they turned the corner and she could see the gang of youths up ahead.

  ‘That’s Mr Manelli’s ice-cream shop they’re throwing bricks at.’ Dulcie stopped walking. ‘They’ve got no right doing that. Ever so nice to us when we were kids, Mr Manelli always was, giving us an extra scoop of ice cream when we took Ma’s baking bowl round on a Saturday to get it filled up for tea.’

  As several more bricks were thrown into the broken window they heard a woman’s screams from inside the shop.

  ‘Come on, Rick. We’ve got to stop them.’

  The sight of Dulcie, of all people, advancing on the jeering violent crowd of boys held Rick motionless for a second. But then he set off after her, calling out to the attacking mob, ‘Come on, lads, what’s going on?’ The firm sound of his voice and the fact that he was in uniform were enough to bring a momentary halt to the attack. The youths turned to look at him, whilst Dulcie, to his bemusement, marched in between them and the shop front, her hands on her hips.

  ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, doing summat like this to Mr Manelli,’ she told them. ‘What’s he ever done to you?’

  ‘He’s an Eyetie and a traitor, that’s what,’ the largest of the youths told Dulcie glowering at her. ‘A ruddy Fascist, and him and his family want running out of the street and putting in prison like all the rest of his kind.’

  ‘Give over, lads,’ Rick counselled. ‘We all know Mr Manelli – he’s no traitor.’

  ‘Well, if that’s the case then how come the police have took him and the other Eyeties off to prison?’ one of the other youths demanded, giving Rick a challenging look. ‘My dad heard it from the police themselves. They’ve had orders to round up all the Eyeties and shove them in goal on account of them being Fascists and spies. ’Oo knows what’s bin going on inside there?’

  The mood of the mob was turning ugly, Rick recognised. If they chose to go on the attack again he certainly couldn’t stop them by himself, and anyway, his first duty was to protect his sister, who was still standing in front of the smashed shop window.

  Mentally Rick cursed Dulcie for getting them involved. He had no quarrel with the Manellis, but he couldn’t hold the mob off by himself if they chose to turn their anger against him and Dulcie. Out of the corner of his eye he saw their local policeman crossing the top of the street. Quickly he hailed him, relieved to see him stop in mid-stride.

  The sight of a burly policeman coming towards them at the run was enough to frighten off the mob, who quickly dispersed, leaving Rick to explain to Constable Green what had happened.

  ‘That’s the trouble when feelings start running high. Folks start taking the law into their own hands,’ was his verdict on Rick’s explanation of the mob’s attack on the ice-cream shop.

  Over an hour later, when Rick and Dulcie were finally on their own again, a still visibly terrified and sobbing Mrs Manelli having been handed over by Constable Green into the care of her neighbours and fellow Italians, Rick was finally free to ask his sister, ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dulcie affected not to understand him.

  Rick heaved a patient sigh and pointed out, ‘We could have had those young idiots turning on us. Why take that risk?’

  ‘Because I felt like it,’ was the only answer Dulcie would give him.

  Women and sisters – especially this particular sister, Rick thought in bewilderment – he would never understand them.

  As she made her way back to Article Row, Dulcie was no more inclined to answer Rick’s question to herself than she had been to him, other than to think that it had been high time she proved to a few people who thought they were so much better than her that they weren’t. People like Edith, and Olive, and some of the girls at work, who thought they could look down on her and get away with it. And him too, that Raphael, who had tried to make out he was so much better than she was. Well, they weren’t ’cos it was her that had had the guts to stand her ground and helped old Mrs Manelli, and not them!

  Rick was just about to leave the boxing club and make his way home, when Raphael found him, having heard the story of Mrs Manelli’s rescue whilst he’d been at the headquarters of the Italian Fascist Organisation.

  He’d gone there in the hope of picking up some information about what had happened to the men who had been arrested in the early hours on 10 June, taken from their homes without warning under suspicion of being active Fascists. One of those men had been his grandfather, and naturally Raphael was concerned for him, an old man of eighty-one who was stubborn enough and foolish enough to cling to Fascism out of sheer cussedness.

  The Italian communities, in Britain’s main cities were all in shock over the night-time raids on their homes, their men being removed by the police, taken from their homes in the clothes they’d pulled on after being woken from their sleep, with no information being given about what was going to happen to them except that they were to be interned as enemy aliens.

  Raphael had telephoned his father in Liverpool to discover that the situation there was even worse than it was in London. In London it was only those who were believed to be active Fascists who had been arrested. In Liverpool there had been a wholesale taking into custody of a huge swathe of the entire Italian adult male population. Only those, like his father, who had naturalised and become British citizens legally had escaped arrest.

  Naturally the Italian community had flocked to their Fascist clubs, both for information and for comfort, especially those women whose husbands or fathers or sons had been taken.

  In the heightened atmosphere within the club, the tale of Rick’s heroic bravery spread like wild-fire, causing Raphael to ask where he might find him. Since the Manellis were distant relatives and had no son of
their own, it fell to him to thank Mrs Manelli’s rescuer for his timely intervention.

  Armed with the information, from a couple of young Italians who knew him, that he would more than likely find Rick Simmonds at his boxing club, and instructions about which bus he would need to catch to get there, Raphael headed for the bus stop, recognising only after he had left the club that Mrs Manelli’s rescuer had the same surname as Dulcie. Raphael shrugged. Perhaps Simmonds was as common a surname to the East End as his own was to the Italian community. He had no intention of wasting time allowing someone like Dulcie to take up residence in his thoughts.

  The warmth of the light June nights had brought people out into the city to stroll in its parks and see its shows, perhaps, Raphael suspected, aware of what was happening to France and thinking that they might as well enjoy their freedom whilst they could, although it was obvious that the people’s mood was sombre. Everyone you talked to spoke in hushed or anxious voices about their belief that Hitler would try to invade Britain, often without admitting to their unspoken fear that he might succeed.

  Like all those who had been rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, Raphael had been granted two weeks’ leave. That leave was already half over and in another few days he would be rejoining his unit of the Royal Engineers. He just hoped that before that happened they would know what had happened to his grandfather, not only for his grandfather’s sake but, more importantly, for his father’s. Raphael knew how desperately worried his father would be and how guilty he would feel, even though in Raphael’s opinion his father had no reason to feel any guilt. He had, after all, over the years made endless attempts to be reconciled with his father, and it was the older man who had stubbornly refused all Raphael’s father’s attempts to make peace.