Women on the Home Front (134 page)

Lily felt ashamed. She’d seen the graffiti and had read about the riots when Mussolini came to power in 1940. A bunch of local hotheads began daubing paint on the Italian ice-cream shops, barber’s and other premises. No better than the Nazis in their ignorance. Even citizens who’d been living here since before the Great War were marched out as aliens but everyone was very jumpy then, expecting invasion any day.

They climbed the narrow stairs up to the flat and there was a wonderful smell wafting down to greet them, spicy, tomatoey, unfamiliar but exciting.

Lily sat upright on the sofa, draped with lacy antimacassars. There were holy pictures on the mantelpiece, a bowl of waxed flowers in the window and lace doilies everywhere. Pride of place pinned to the wall were
postcards from Sicily, showing a sea as blue as sapphires.

‘Beautiful, yes?’ Maria said, following Lily’s gaze. ‘My country was pretty, not like this mucky town. We have dust and poor people, but not smoking chimneys and black soot. But you get used to anything.’ Maria sighed, looking towards the picture of Marco in his army uniform. ‘He is handsome, yes?’ she smiled.

‘Definitely,’ Lily offered. ‘And Rosa…’ Rosa looked up from her toys as the children were plonked down beside her, grabbing at her bricks, bowls and wooden spoons. She was the image of her mother, with black ringlets and dark eyes. She was wearing a little smocked overall on top of her dress. How sensible, Lily mused, to save on washing.

Ana and Su sat upright in their chairs while Maria fussed around them. It was awkward at first. ‘You’ll have a drink?’

They all nodded. ‘Tea will be fine,’ said Lily.

‘You not want to try my beautiful wine? A present from Italia!’

Lily wasn’t sure. It was Sunday but she’d not signed the pledge or anything like that and she didn’t want to give offence. ‘Go on then. I’ll be daring for once!’

The wine was sweet and unusual. Ana knocked hers back with relish, and sighed. Su sipped hers politely while Maria bustled around in the kitchen.

‘Won’t be long. I hope you like spaghetti. My own special sauce.’

Lily had only seen spaghetti in tins like a can of little worms in pale orange juice. They’d just eaten a good
Sunday lunch with apple pie and custard to follow. It was only five o’clock. Crumpets and tea would have been fine but Maria had gone to so much trouble. How to face another heavy meal?

‘That’ll be lovely,’ she shouted.

Maria opened up the table, put on a beautiful lace tablecloth that looked handmade, and some candlesticks. She produced an enormous bowl of wriggling pasta, hot and steaming, doused in a rich tomato sauce that smelled of herbs and salt, and something Lily couldn’t quite describe. How on earth would they eat the twirls and snakes of spaghetti without a spoon? All there was on the table was a fork.

Everyone sat politely waiting for Maria, not sure how to tackle the dish. She sat down and stared at them. ‘You no like?’

‘It looks lovely but how do we eat it?’ Lily asked.

Maria burst out laughing. ‘Like this!’ She twisted the pasta round and round her fork and scooped it up into her mouth.

Su tried first but the dancing swirls just jumped off her fork and back onto her plate. Ana stabbed hers and beat it into submission while Lily tried to suck hers through her lips, dripping sauce everywhere.

‘Oh, I forgot the cheese!’ Maria jumped up. ‘You must have some Parmigiano.’

She brought a slab of hard, crusty cheese and grated it over the bowl, the flakes falling like snow.

Wasn’t this the cheese in
Robinson Crusoe
, or was it
Treasure Island?
Lily mused. It tasted like nothing she’d tried before, sharp and pungent. She wasn’t quite sure
about it but swallowed. This was the strangest Sunday tea: warming, comforting, filling and oh so different.

‘I bring ice cream if you like.’

‘No, no, please. This is so good and I’m full to the brim. You have taken so much trouble,’ Lily insisted, feeling her waistband tightening by the minute.

‘It is nothing. I am glad of your company.’

‘But you’ve shared all your rations with us. It wasn’t your fault about the pram.’

‘Your mamma was very cross when you got home?’ Maria pierced them with her dark eyes.

Lily blushed at the memory of the row they’d received. Ivy had been hysterical with rage. But she lied now. ‘They understood how these things can happen.’

‘We are in big disgrace.’ Su butted in. ‘No one is speaking to us.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Lily countered. ‘Oh, I see, you have a gramophone,’ she pointed out, hoping to distract Maria. ‘What music do you like?’

‘Gilbert and Sullivan, and opera. You’d like to hear some?’ Maria jumped up and found a record from a case, winding up her handset.

It was something dramatic, played loud and so sad that as they listened, tears streamed down Maria’s face.

‘When I hear this I fill buckets with my tears. You like it? Poor Madame Butterfly is deserted by Mr Pinkerton. I think of Marco and all the lost boys. I think of so many sad things. War is terrible.’

Su was sniffling into her hanky. ‘Poor Mr Stan. We all lose our men in the war.’ Now they were all weeping. It must be the wine and the music.

‘Have you anything to gladden us up a bit before we go home?’ Lily asked, seeing gloom descending like a fog.

Maria found some ballet music, much more cheerful, from the
Nutcracker Suite.

‘I watch the ballets when they come to the King’s. I clean the stalls and watch the rehearsals. As soon as she is clean, I take Rosaria to the dancing class. It’s never too soon to learn to dance. Thank you for coming. Will you come again?’

‘Only if you will come to us,’ said Su. ‘It’s only fair, isn’t it, Lily? Titty for tat!’

Lily sighed. What was Mother going to say to
that
?

‘What did I tell you? I knew they couldn’t be trusted out alone.’ The righteous wrath of Ivy on the war path was a sight to behold. The bedraggled bunch had arrived back full of apologies and explanations. A week later she was still going on about the pram theft.

‘It wasn’t their fault,’ said Lily, doing her best to smooth the situation to no avail. ‘I should have known not to leave it outside. I’m sorry. Maria Santini’s given you a pushchair in its place.’

‘It’s just a greasy hunk of tin. I bet she sold the Silver Cross on the black market before the night was out. They’re worth a fortune. How am I going to take Neville to the park?’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Ivy. Let him walk and build up his legs. You coddle that bairn. It’s not as if you’re going to be needing the pram again after what the doctor said about your insides.’ Esme couldn’t resist a snipe.

‘Mother! That’s private business,’ Ivy sniffed. ‘I’m sick of this lot cluttering up the place. Listen to that Joy making so much fuss in the playpen. It’s like bedlam.’

‘If you hadn’t shouted at her mother and sent her upstairs in tears perhaps it would be a bit quieter,’ snapped Lily.

‘I’m not giving into her,’ said Esme, turning her back and plugging her ears from the din. Joy was howling in protest at being caged into the wooden frame. Dina was yelling now too. ‘It’s for her own good. Truby King says all children must learn to be obedient and I’ve got tea to see to. Polly’s gone home. Shush! Your mother won’t be long.’ Ana had offered to help out on the stall to make up for taking board and lodging. Dina was missing her.

Esme couldn’t think for the noise of the screaming infants. Lily was hovering, wanting to give in to her, but Esme waved her back. ‘You’ll only spoil them.’

Dina’s cheeks were puce with rage as she rattled the bars, refusing to be pacified by a line of Neville’s wooden cars laid out for her amusement.

‘That’s right, you tell her,’ yelled Ivy from the door. ‘It’s good for them to scream. They have to learn who’s the boss of the playpen. Neville was never any bother.’

‘How did you get on at the clinic? What did the doctor say?’ Esme asked.

‘Just a tickle in his throat,’ said Ivy, who never took any chances with Neville’s health. ‘You can never be too careful, and what with a house full of foreigners you don’t know
what
germs they are breeding. He told me to get his hair cut. But it might rob him of his strength.’

Lily bent down to lift Dina out of the pen. ‘Come on there, it’s not natural to cage them up like puppies.’ She smiled sweetly.

Ivy was scowling down at her with a withering ‘What do you know about it?’ sort of look. ‘You don’t have to clear up after their trail of havoc or wipe sticky fingers up the stairs. Nothing is safe from wandering fingers. They’re into cupboards and through doors in a flash. Those two could roam around unchecked and teach our Neville bad habits.’ She paused to nail her mother-in-law with a sharp look. ‘How long do we have to put up with these women in our house? It’s been weeks now. Time they were finding themselves rooms of their own.’

‘You know they won’t get rooms to let with small children in tow,’ Lily answered, jiggling Dina on her knee. She was getting far too fond of those youngsters, in Ivy’s opinion.

‘I don’t see why they should be living at our expense,’ Ivy snapped. ‘You don’t know the half of it, trailing in and out as they please.’

Esme stood back and let them bicker. It was not an unreasonable request for Levi and Ivy to want things to go back as they were. At first they were too shocked to turn the visitors out of the door. Now the Christmas season was upon them, such as it was, with meagre rations to share and snow up to their back door. How could she send them packing in the snow?

Every night she struggled with her conscience over how to deal with the tissue of lies they were building around these girls. Every night she knelt on the linoleum
and did her eternal accounts before the One who knew the secrets of all hearts.

On the one hand, Ivy was right. Esme had gone beyond the call of duty in taking them in the first place. To her credit she had fed them and protected them from public shame, sorted out their paperwork with the authorities and perjured herself in the process. To her credit she had taken in foreigners and it sometimes sounded like the Tower of Babel with them jabbering away to their babies in Greek and Burmese and pidgin English. She made them part of the family, even helped them out financially to start with. Lily was befriending them and now they were all pally with the Santini woman, another foreigner, and a Catholic too, from the ice-cream parlour.

Every Sunday they all took themselves off to her flat for tea so the girls could play with their new friend. They came back scented with garlic, wine and other funny smells. It was not right on the Lord’s Sabbath.

‘All this gallivanting on the Lord’s Day, these spaghetti Sundays…you needn’t go with them. You ought to be with your young man,’ Esme argued.

‘I’ve only been twice and Walt doesn’t mind. I’ve never missed church yet. Marco is now permanently in Moses Heights. Maria is glad of company.’

‘I should think she’s got enough company in that family. They say Santinis breed like rabbits.’

It was Lily who argued that it was no different from them all going to visit other Winstanleys for Sunday tea or entertaining company themselves after church. Esme didn’t hold with going on buses into town in the
evening after dark. Lily kept borrowing the van to give them lifts. They were not a taxi service.

That was another thing. The Greek wanted to take a bus to Manchester to light candles in some church on Bury New Road-Greek Orthodox, would you believe, a church full of golden idols-while the Burmese took herself off to St Matthew’s parish church with the parishioners from Green Lane. She was driven back in a fancy car and that got Ivy all het up about nothing. Zion Chapel, it appeared, was not good enough for them now. Esme blamed the Eyetie for putting fancy ideas in their heads.

Part of her struggle each night with the internal workings of this spiritual book-keeping was to weigh up the debits, as well as the pluses.

First, there was the bad grace with which she did all the creditable stuff. It was hard to smile and look relaxed when you were harbouring your son’s secret lovers.

Ivy was always on guard duty, reminding her of any infringements to their rules, any liberties taken with Neville’s toys, and the loss of the big pram was hard to explain away. She watched to see if they used the wrong rations, or left lights on, or the paraffin heater.

Esme had to admit they hardly put a foot wrong. They crept around the house in carpet slippers, made no noise, were very polite and deferential when there was company. They were eager to find work. They saw to their own washing when everyone else used the electric agitator in the outhouse. They kept their rations in a separate cupboard and didn’t eat much, shared any shopping and delivering and mending duties. They paid their way as best they could.

To her credit, she bought the little ones warm clothing with her coupons and Lily was knitting jumpers for them. They were doing their Christian duty to ‘suffer the little children…’ It wasn’t easy.

There was an atmosphere growing that she didn’t know how to deal with. Ivy was rude and Levi let her go unchecked. The foreigners were pretty girls, full of life, and that reminded her she was getting old and fat and not as fit as she once was.

‘Freddie would be proud of you, Mother, but enough’s enough,’ Ivy would scold, that shrill voice bending her ear.

What if they were entertaining angels unaware? What if this was some spiritual scholarship test the family had to pass? What if she had to make up in life for all of Freddie’s failings?

Yet there was something about having a house full of toddlers and young people, the rush of feet on the stairs and laughter of children, that gave her heart a lift better than Wincarnis and feet up by the fire. It was a sign her life wasn’t over yet and she was still needed.

The girls lived up in the attic room and sometimes when they were out she crept upstairs to peek at the sleeping infants and gave herself a pat on the back that she had done right by them all.

They were her grandchildren, illegitimate or not. Only the four Winstanleys knew that secret. If some of her neighbours were curious and wondered why the widows were staying on it was easy to talk about room shortages and bombed-out houses down south, and
how families must help each other out. It felt right as she was saying it, but was it another debit?