Some Sunny Day (22 page)

‘Dad…’ Rosie begged frantically, when her father remained silent and refused to look at her.

‘No shame in her at all, she hadn’t,’ Aunt Maude was continuing. ‘Neither of them had. How that poor wife of his put up with it I don’t know. Even had the priest round, the family did, to give him a talking-to, but your mother talked him round, tempting him like the wicked hussy she was.’

‘Dad, Dad…’ Rosie appealed, taking hold of her father’s hand and giving it a pleading shake. ‘That’s not true, please tell me it isn’t,’ she implored.

She could feel the deep breath he took as he raised his head and looked at her with a tortured expression that told its own story.

‘Rosie, lass, I never wanted you to have to know about any of this.’

‘You mean it is true?’ Rosie started to tremble violently. ‘No,’ she denied, unable to accept what she was hearing, but knowing already in her heart that what her aunt had just told her was the truth. Now, just as though someone had lifted a blind that had obscured a view, she could see the past and her mother’s friendship with Maria in its true colours. Small incidents, odd memories that had somehow stuck inside her head like leftover pieces that wouldn’t fit into a familiar jigsaw suddenly fell into place. Poor Maria. How could her mother have acted out such a terrible betrayal of both her husband and her friend? Gentle loving Maria, who had never ever hurt anyone…

‘How long was it…did she…?’ she whispered.

‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ her aunt told her grimly. ‘If you ask me, there’s a sight more of that Italian family about your looks, Rosie, than there is of ours.’

‘That’s enough of that kind of talk, Maude,’ her father objected fiercely, suddenly rousing himself. ‘Rosie’s my lass and there’s no one will ever say she isn’t.’

Rosie wasn’t listening to him. Her face had gone white as awareness dawned on her. Other memories
were crowding into her head now: Maria’s sad face when she looked at her; the way she had loved and petted her, sometimes calling her ‘my little Rosie’; the way people had often mistaken her for a member of the family; the way her mother had always tried to encourage her to be more friendly to Aldo.

‘Is it true?’ she shakily asked the man she had always thought of as her father, the only man she wanted to be her father, in a hoarse whisper. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ she answered for him when he didn’t respond. ‘It is.’

‘No, Rosie, it isn’t,’ he told her determinedly. ‘I promise you it isn’t.’

But it was too late. Rosie ran to the door, yanking it open, ignoring the fact that she wasn’t even wearing her coat as she ran out into the icy cold, huge raw sobs of fear and horror wrenching at her chest.

‘Rosie?’

She gasped and struggled to escape when familiar hands clamped down on her shoulders, whilst her grief filled her body and tore at her lungs.

‘Aw, Rosie, Rosie…do not, lass, please. I’m that sorry you had to learn about your mam and everything like this…’

Rosie gulped. ‘I’m not your daughter, am I? I’m Aldo’s.’

‘You’re
my
girl, Rosie,’ came the sturdy answer. ‘You allus have been and you allus will be. You’re my girl, and I’m your dad, and don’t you ever go thinking otherwise. I loved you from the moment the nurse put you into my arms. The bonniest little thing I’d ever seen, you were, with your brown eyes and your curly hair. Here, put this on.’ He was holding out her coat to her. Obediently, Rosie slipped her arms into it and then let him fasten it for her as he had done when she had been a little
girl. His little girl; safe then in her belief that she was his. Not like now.

‘How can you know?’ she wept. ‘How can you?’

‘It’s me that’s raised you, Rosie. Me that sat up wi’ you when you was teething; me you call “Dad” – me not anyone else. And that’s all I need to know. It’s what’s in here,’ he thumped his chest, ‘that makes me your dad, eighteen years of loving you and wanting the best for you. And your mam never said owt about you not being mine, which, knowing her, she would have done in one of her tempers if you weren’t.’

Rosie couldn’t feel reassured. ‘But if Mum—’

He tucked her arm through his, and started to walk towards Edge Hill Road so that Rosie had to fall into step beside him. ‘I don’t want you to go thinking badly of your mother, Rosie. It wasn’t all her fault, no matter what your aunt says. You see, your mam never really wanted to marry me. It was me who wanted that. I loved her that much that I thought that I’d be able to make her love me back. But love doesn’t work like that, Rosie. You remember that and don’t you go making the same mistakes I’ve made. You mek sure when you get married that you both love each other the same. I’ve thought many a time over the years that I did wrong by your mam by persuading her to wed me, but it was done then, and we had to make the best of it.’

‘But Mum didn’t make the best of it, did she?’ Rosie questioned him bitterly. ‘She started messin’ around with Aldo.’

Her father sighed. ‘Aye, well, he was a handsome chap, and no mistake, and we could all see that he looked a bit disappointed when he realised that it was Maria he was expected to wed. Not that she wasn’t a good-hearted girl,’ he added hastily when he saw Rosie’s expression. ‘But she wasn’t pretty, not like your mother. Of course, your mam being the girl she was, she tried her best for Maria, going round and helping her with her makeup and her hair, like. If you ask me, it were him that was to blame. Turned your mother’s head, he did, with his compliments and his fancy foreign ways.’ Rosie felt as though she were a child again, listening to her parents quarrelling, hearing her father telling her mother that he didn’t want her spending so much time with her friends. Now though, when she heard the anger and the bitterness in her father’s voice, she understood what had caused it.

‘You’re mine, Rosie,’ he said fiercely, ‘my lass, and no one and nothing will ever change that, so don’t you forget it. I’d never have let that ruddy Aldo take you from me the way he did your mother, even though Maria and them was allus trying to mek out that you belonged wi’ them, teaching you to speak their lingo and having you calling them auntie this and uncle that, like you was blood-related to them. Well, you wasn’t. You’re mine.’

She could hear so much in her father’s voice that had previously been hidden from her. He
loved her so much, and she loved him too. She wanted to be his daughter more than she had ever wanted anything, Rosie admitted. It scared her – no, more than that, it sickened her – to think that there was any possibility that Aldo could be her father. She wanted to push the thought from her and lock it away where she would never have to think of it again.

‘Huh, that Aldo might have liked to think that you was his, giving me that look and swaggering about like he was summat better than me, but he couldn’t get his own wife pregnant so what made him think he had done wi’ mine? Aye, and I told him so, an’ all. Told him what I thought of him and what I’d do to him if I ever caught him trying to steal you away from me the way he had done your mam. Told him that I’d got friends who knew what to do to men who behaved the way he had.’

Rosie shuddered. This was a side to her father she had never seen before, a violent, unforgiving, vengeful side that left her shocked but unable to blame him for what he was saying.

‘Why did you stay with her?’ she asked, but she thought she already knew the answer.

‘I knew if I threw her out like I should have done she’d have taken you with her and gone to him. Aye, and that daft Maria was that soft she’d have let him have your mother living there with them, and you, an’ all. Especially you. I could see in her eyes how much she wanted you, Rosie, wi’ her not having any kiddies of her own. Of course,
that sister of hers was a different kettle of fish entirely. Hated your mam, she did, and she let her know it too. She even came round to see me once and told me that I should make your mam stay at home. Said that in the old country she’d have been locked away by her family for what she’d done.’

‘But…’ But what if I am his child? Rosie wanted to ask, but she knew that she couldn’t. She didn’t want to be Aldo’s and she didn’t think she could bear it if she were ever to find out that she was. But that was impossible now with her mother and Aldo both dead.

As she looked at her father, Rosie made a vow that she would do and be everything she could to show both him and the world that she was his daughter. She wanted to be alone to come to terms with her own thoughts and feelings, but at the same time she also wanted desperately to be with him and to be close to him.

‘I can’t go to the grave now,’ she whispered.

‘I’m sorry you had to find out about this, Rosie. I’d have given anything to keep it from you. I made your mother swear she would never say a word.’

He might have been able to silence her mother but not even her father had the power to silence her aunt, with her jealousy and her bitterness, Rosie realised. In
her
eyes she would never be forgiven for being her mother’s daughter, nor ever allowed to forget what she might also be.

It was almost the end of the evening. The band were playing a slow smoochy number and on the dance floor couples were taking advantage of the opportunity to move closer together.

‘Rosie, what is it? What’s wrong with you?’ There was exasperation as well as hurt male pride in Rob’s voice as he tried to draw Rosie closer to him and she pulled back.

‘Don’t go on, Rob.’ Rosie fought back her own misery. ‘I just don’t like being mauled about, that’s all.’

‘Huh, seems to me there isn’t much that you do like any more. You haven’t bin the same since—’ He broke off, scarlet-faced and mumbled, ‘Sorry, Rosie. I was forgetting for the moment about your mum.’

His apology filled Rosie with remorse. It wasn’t after all his fault she felt the way she did. She was lucky to have such a decent lad – very lucky, given her own background. So why did she feel like this?
Why couldn’t she be the loving happy girl Rob wanted her to be? Why couldn’t she be like the other girls she could see all around her, who were only too happy to kiss and cuddle with their partners? Rosie knew the answer, of course.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she told Rob warmly. ‘I’m just worrying about Dad, what with all the bad news about the convoys being torpedoed.’ She gave a small shiver. She had heard only that morning that Molly Dearden’s young man had lost his life when his ship had been torpedoed.

But her fear for her father now that he was back at sea wasn’t the real reason she felt so unwilling to let Rob hold her tight or touch her in any kind of intimate way.

It was over a week since she had learned about her mother and Aldo, but she still hadn’t come to terms with what she had been told. Every night her dreams were filled with images and memories from the past: memories of her mother, of Aldo, of Maria and the others. She had even dreamed vividly that she was with Aldo and that he was trying to steal her away, telling her that he was her real father. That dream had been so real and so upsetting that when she had woken from it she had refused to let herself go back to sleep in case it reclaimed her. Outwardly, she was the same person she had always been, yet deep down inside she was afraid that she was not, that she was in reality someone different, someone with a shameful secret that had to be kept hidden. Despite everything the
man she would always think of as her dad, and love as such, had told her, the thought that she might actually be Aldo’s child wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she wanted it to. She had never liked Aldo, always feeling uncomfortable in his presence, and now she hated him and felt bitterly resentful of her mother for making it possible for her to have this fear. Those feelings, however, quickly gave way to guilt. She shouldn’t think ill of her mother, should she, not now? But how could she do such a thing?

When she was on her own she searched her reflection in the small mirror in her bedroom, looking for any telltale signs that would confirm her secret dread. She longed now, as she had never done before, for fair hair and not the striking dark prettiness that so often in the past had caused Maria to say fondly that she could almost be Italian.

Before he had gone back to sea, her father had taken her in his arms and told her how much he loved her and how much he would always love her.

‘Promise me you’ll stay here with your Aunt Maude, Rosie, until I come back?’

She gave him the promise he wanted, but her aunt made it plain that very day how little she wanted her there.

‘You’ve got that Italian’s fathering all over you,’ she had told Rosie bitterly, earlier in the week, ‘even if my poor brother refuses to see it. It’s in your blood and your bones, what you really are.’

Rosie had no defences against her bitterness, but her words made her more determined not to be Italian.

She was longing for the evening to be over so that she could be on her own. All around them on the dance floor, other couples were cuddling up to one another but the thought of doing the same filled her mind with images of her mother and Aldo and made her feel sick with bitterness and anger. Sometimes her own feelings confused her so much that she longed to be able to talk to someone about them, but who was there to talk to? Not her aunt; not her father because he wasn’t here, and not Rob himself because she didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when she told him that she didn’t know the identity of her father. No, the shame that was her mother’s legacy to her was something she had to lock away inside herself.

‘We’re in March now. Easter’s coming up soon,’ Rob continued. ‘Did your dad say when he was likely to be back? There’s summat I want to discuss with him – man to man, like,’ he added meaningfully, reaching for her hand and squeezing it tightly. ‘We’ve bin seeing one another for a fair while now, Rosie, and I’d like to make it official, like, get engaged and—’

‘Oh, Rob, please don’t. It’s too soon…I mean,’ Rosie amended hastily, not wanting to hurt or offend him, ‘I like you, I really do, but I’m only eighteen and with this war…’

‘It’s because of the war that I want us to be wed, Rosie,’ Rob told her, ploughing on determinedly. ‘You were saying only the other day that you think your aunt wants shot of you. Well, if you and me was to get married…’

She could hear the hope and the eagerness in his voice and her chest tightened with a mixture of panic and pain. She hated the thought of hurting Rob, but she couldn’t forget what her father had said about her mother not loving him as much as he had done her, or what had happened to their marriage. She didn’t want to do anything that might set her off down the same shameful path as her mother.

‘Let’s wait a while, Rob,’ she begged him lamely. ‘There’s many a couple so I’ve heard who have rushed into marriage and now wish that they hadn’t.’

‘I don’t understand you, Rosie. If you were the kind of girl who wanted to go out dancing all the time, flirting with other lads and putting herself about a bit looking for a good time, it would be different, but you’re not. I love you, Rosie.’

‘I know that you think that you do, Rob,’ Rosie acknowledged in a low voice. ‘But you don’t know me properly, and I can’t help thinking about what would happen if we got wed and you changed your mind.’

‘Don’t be daft. Why would I go doing that? Folk get married and then they make the best of things,’ Rob told her firmly.

Rosie’s heart had sunk lower with every word he had said. She knew now from her parents’ marriage the unhappiness that ‘making the best of things’ could bring. It might be different if she was crazily in love with Rob, in the way she had heard the girls at work talking, but Rosie didn’t think she wanted to feel like that. It sounded far too dangerous. She only had to remember the way Sylvia had acted over Lance to convince herself that being crazily in love was not something she wanted to happen to her.

‘I’d still rather wait,’ she told Rob quietly, ‘until we’re sure.’ So much that she had taken for granted had changed for her with the discovery of her mother’s infidelity with Aldo. She now felt that not only could she not believe in her past, she felt she could not trust in her future either.

The silence with which Rob received her comment made her feel dreadful. And so once they got to a quiet street, when he pulled her into the shadows and kissed her, Rosie didn’t try to stop him.

‘Be quiet all of you! I’ve got summat to tell you,’ Enid called out importantly, raising her voice to make herself heard above the chatter in the dinner hour busyness of the workroom.

‘Go on then, tell us,’ one of the girls called out cheekily.

Enid gave her a firm look. ‘That’s enough of your cheek, Marjorie Belham. Mrs Verey has told
me to tell you that there’s to be a meeting here tomorrow morning at half-past eight so you’ve all got to mek sure you’re here.’

‘A meeting? What kind of meeting? What for?’

‘Why can’t she tell us now?’

‘What’s it all about anyway?’

Everyone seemed to be asking questions at the same time so that the clamour filled the room.

‘I can’t tell you nothing more because I don’t know nothing more,’ Enid told them sharply. ‘Just mek sure that you’re all here.’

‘What do you think Mrs Verey wants to say to us?’ Ruth later asked Rosie worriedly. ‘Only I hope she isn’t going to be laying some of us off. I like working here. I know the money’s not as good as at some places, but it’s good for getting to the shops and getting in the queues, not like some places where everything’s gone by the time you get to hear about it. Has Enid said anything to you on the QT, like? After all, she’s allus a bit more friendly towards you than the rest of us.’

Rosie shook her head. She was as much in the dark as the other girls.

The evenings had started to lighten and Rosie could see the men working on their allotments as she walked down her aunt’s road, her feet dragging the closer she got to the house. Her father had slipped her his key before he had left, so at least now she didn’t have to knock on the door and
wait for her aunt to let her in or, even worse, be left standing there if her aunt happened to be out.

Rosie hung up her coat and then headed for the kitchen, where she put just enough water in the kettle to make herself a cup of tea. Mr Churchill and his government were stressing to the people at every turn how important it was to be as frugal as possible with resources. It was, after all, men like her father who risked their lives in the convoys that brought into England the much-needed supplies.

Whilst she waited for the kettle to boil, Rosie went into the larder and removed the mashed potato left over from the previous day. Mixed with winter cabbage and fried up it would make a tasty supper.

Her aunt came in whilst she was halfway through cooking it. She sniffed the air and snapped, ‘I thought I told you not to go putting any of that foreign muck on good plain English food.’

‘I haven’t put anything in it, Aunt. It’s just cabbage and mash.’

‘Don’t you go lying to me. That mother of yours might have got away with lying to my brother, but I’m not as soft as he is. I’m telling you now, I won’t have you bringing your dirty foreign ways into my house.’

Rosie could feel the anger expanding inside her chest from a tight hard ball to a burst of fury. Turning the gas off under the frying pan, she turned round to confront her tormentor.

‘I am not a liar.’

‘Don’t give me that. Of course you are. How could you not be with the parents you’ve had? That mother of yours, little better than a whore, and that Italian she let have his way with her.’

‘Aldo was not my father,’ Rosie protested.

‘Come here.’

Before Rosie could stop her, her aunt had taken hold of her and dragged her across the kitchen to the small mirror in the hall.

‘Take a good look at yourself, miss, and then tell me that I’m wrong.’

‘You are wrong. I know you are.’

Her aunt had let go of her and was walking away, ignoring her. Rosie’s heart was thumping heavily and painfully inside her chest. The humiliation of what she had just endured was burning her face bright red and making her throat ache as she fought back her tears.

She would not let herself be Aldo’s daughter, she vowed fiercely. She would not!

She couldn’t eat her supper. Her aunt had pointedly made herself a sandwich and gone into the front room to eat it. She was treating her as though she was something vile and unclean, doing everything she could to make Rosie feel bad about herself.

Rosie couldn’t wait for her father to get back. Being here without him was unendurable. And if it hadn’t been for the promise she had given him that she would be here when he returned, she would have left. Yes, even if that meant that she had to join one of the growing bands of trekkers who
trudged about the city every night, carrying their belongings with them to sleep in whatever temporary accommodation they could find, because they had no permanent roof over their heads. Rosie had never felt more alone. There was no one for her to turn to, no one to whom she could explain what was happening. How could she tell them about her mother and risk them turning against her as her aunt had done?

It was almost dawn before she finally fell asleep, with the result that she slept through her alarm and only just managed to reach the shop in time for Mrs Verey’s talk.

The other girls were already putting forward their own theories as to what Mrs Verey wanted to say. Rosie took off her coat and hurried to join them.

‘You’ve cut it a bit fine,’ Enid remarked. ‘That’s not like you, Rosie. There’s some here as I could name that are allus on the late side but you’ve allus been one who has come in to work well before time.’

‘I’m sorry, Enid. I didn’t hear the alarm,’ Rosie apologised meekly as she squeezed into the line of girls between Evie and Mary.

Mrs Verey didn’t keep them waiting very long, coming into the workroom dead on the stroke of eight thirty. Naturally pale-skinned, with blonde hair that she always wore drawn back off her face in a chignon, today she looked positively washed out, Rosie thought sympathetically. She had always liked
her employer and that liking had grown when Mrs Verey had loaned her her own hat for the funeral.

‘Thank you for coming in early,’ Mrs Verey began. ‘I wouldn’t have asked it of you if it hadn’t been necessary. I’m afraid the news I have for you is bad. This is a very sad day for me, but my husband has put his foot down and I’m afraid that I am going to have to close the shop.’

A shocked murmur filled the room as the girls turned to one another in dismay.

Mrs Verey looked as upset as they were themselves, and Rosie’s heart went out to her. She had heard Enid say more than once that Mrs Verey’s mother had originally owned the shop and that Mrs Verey had taken it over when her mother’s health had forced her to retire. The Vereys lived at the top end of Wavertree, close to the tennis club in one of the leafy avenues of large detached houses. Mr Verey had been a doctor until his own ill health had forced him to retire. The couple did not have any children and Rosie knew that Mr Verey was older than his wife. The shop was her lifeblood.

‘My husband feels that he must do his bit for the war effort and so he has accepted the position of general practitioner to a village in Cheshire so that their own doctor can be released to join our troops. Naturally, I must put my duties as a wife first. In addition, you all know, I am sure, of the problems we have been having in obtaining stock, and these problems can only become worse.’