Birmingham Rose (32 page)

‘Of course he’s in love. It stands out a mile,’ Margherita told him.

‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ Francesco said rather petulantly.

‘What do you expect?’ Magdalena was scornful. ‘You’re a man.’

‘Rosa?’ Francesco leaned down to see her expression. ‘Is this true?’

Slowly she raised her head, her cheeks burning red. There was no need for her to reply.

‘And you love him?’

‘Of course she does,’ Margherita said, biting off a piece of thread. ‘It’s obvious.’

‘So what’s going on?’ Francesco had the air of someone who has had a fast one pulled on him in a card game. ‘You don’t speak to each other any more. Falcone is like a mule with a sore bottom. What is the matter with you both?’

‘Falcone is trying to decide his vocation,’ Magdalena explained, in the kind of patient tone she usually reserved for Assunta and the children. ‘Not everyone gets a visit from an angel to tell them which way to go.’

‘Do you think he will be a priest?’ Rose asked. ‘It’s all very strange to me.’

‘Only God can tell us that,’ Magdalena said, smiling at her.

‘He’s no priest,’ Margherita said firmly. ‘Two heads on the pillow. That’s his vocation, and deep down he knows it really.’

‘He won’t even speak to me,’ Rose said. It was a relief to confide in the others. ‘I don’t understand him. I never even see him alone any more.’

‘Go now,’ Margherita told her. ‘Assunta is asleep. He’s alone up there.’

Rose stood up and laid Mauro in Magdalena’s arms.

The others watched as Rose and Falcone crossed the courtyard together and unlocked the gate. Out in the baking streets the stalls were closed down and the usual clamour was muted by the routine of the Sunday siesta.

Not speaking, they walked down to the small strip of parched parkland which edged the Mediterranean at Santa Lucia. Scrubby pine trees offered a meagre shade, and they chose a spot to sit away from the sea, where there were no bodies snoring in the heat. Through the trees they could see the white glare of light on the water, and make out the hazy, grey shape of Vesuvius, quiet now, in the distance across the bay.

Falcone said, ‘It’s my fault. I’m sorry. When you’re not here I begin to believe that I know what I’m supposed to do with my life. As soon as I see you again, I’m thrown into confusion.’

‘Sometimes, the way you look at me,’ Rose said haltingly, ‘I begin to think you hate me, that I’m nothing but trouble in your life.’

‘You know I don’t hate you.’

‘But it would be better for you if I did not come here – to Il Rifugio?’

Falcone sat leaning his elbows on his raised knees, his head between his tanned hands, staring out to sea.

He shook his head. ‘No. That’s not true either. You know as well as I do that you’re far more help to them than I can ever be.’ He picked up a small, dry twig and threw it hard towards the sea. ‘I couldn’t even manage to deliver Maria Grazia’s baby safely on my own. I’m no great asset to them. It’s not you that’s at fault, Rosa. It’s me. I told you: everywhere I go I bring hurt and destruction. I thought things were clear. God’s call felt . . . strong, pure. I don’t know if you can understand that. And sometimes I can feel it. But when I am near you I don’t know which is the right path for me. In the meantime I just bring you pain.’

In the silence that followed, Rose found herself crying. They were mostly tears of frustration, at not knowing how to console him since she was the source of his conflict. She wanted to take him in her arms and hold him, but she knew that for him it would be like being embraced by a thorn bush.

‘Rosa?’ Falcone said in distress. ‘Please. Please don’t.’ He made helpless gestures with his arms and laid one of them briefly round her shoulders before withdrawing it again. ‘Please don’t cry, dearest Rosa. It’s better for you if you’re not near me – I’m so confused, I only hurt you. That night in the cemetery, I allowed my feelings for you to – to sweep me along. I shouldn’t have. It was wrong.’

His words only made Rose weep even more. Why was it wrong? Why?

He stood up suddenly. ‘When the war’s over you’ll go back to England and marry your English husband. Think only of that and forget me. Please.’

He turned from her, aghast at himself, and walked away from Santa Lucia and back towards the Via Toledo. When he crossed the courtyard of Il Rifugio alone, only half an hour after they had left, the others exchanged sad, puzzled glances.

Rose sat for a long time under the dry, bleached pine trees, crying for both his anguish and her own.

She tried to bring down her protective shutters as she had done in the past, to stop any expression of her feelings for him, even to herself. As the autumn came and began to turn to winter, and the fields faded to blander colours once more, she carried on with the drops. She spent her leave weekends at Il Rifugio, but as far as possible she avoided contact with Falcone. It wasn’t difficult. They were polite to each other when they had to work together. Rose talked to him briskly and brightly, almost as if he was a new arrival in the place whom she barely knew.

‘Could you go and fetch a bucket of water please?’ she might ask, or, ‘Margherita says she needs you to look at one of the children upstairs.’ And Falcone would nod respectfully as if she were in charge and do as she asked.

She stayed just as committed to the place, but her mind began to hunger to see more of the country around. She mentioned the fact to Margherita and Francesco, and they encouraged her to go.

‘Perhaps Falcone could take you?’ Francesco suggested.

Margherita looked at him as if he were a half-wit.

‘I can easily find a chaperone from the army, thank you,’ Rose said rather bitterly.

‘I’ll take a weekend to go some time,’ she said to Margherita later on. ‘But I’d like to come here for Christmas. Is that all right?’

Margherita gave her tired smile. ‘You know you don’t have to ask. Just come when you can.’

As it turned out, she did not spend Christmas at Il Rifugio. One evening in November Gwen came rushing into the dormitory as most of them were preparing for bed. She looked as if she was about to explode with excitement. ‘Bill’s just asked me to marry him.’

‘And . . . ?’ Rose said.

‘I’ve said I will.’

‘Course you have!’ Madge dashed up to supply one of her bear hugs. ‘As if you’d have turned him down. We’d’ve all lynched you after the amount we’ve heard about your Bill this year!’

All of them went to add their congratulations. Willy had tears in her eyes. ‘Oh, it’s so romantic,’ she cried. ‘Are you going to get married at the palace?’

‘Yes,’ Gwen told them. ‘We’ve fixed it for Christmas Eve. We thought it would be an awfully nice time, when everyone’s feeling festive anyway. Goodness knows if we’ll be ready by then though.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Madge asked. ‘All you need is a bloke and a dress, isn’t it?’

Gwen laughed, looking really pretty. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. But where shall I get a dress from?’

‘Ah – I can help you there,’ Rose said. She knew Signora Mandetta would be pleased to have the work, though she would have been more delighted had it been Rose’s own wedding dress.

When the fuss had died down, Gwen came and sat on Rose’s bed.

‘I’m so happy for you,’ Rose told her. ‘Bill seems a good bloke.’

‘Thank you,’ Gwen said, smiling again. ‘He is, really.’ She was watching Rose, her auburn hair curling round her face. ‘I wanted to ask if you’d be my bridesmaid. I’d be ever so pleased if you would.’

‘Of course,’ Rose said. ‘I’d be honoured.’ She leaned over and gave Gwen a hug. ‘I’m really chuffed.’

‘I’m not going to tell Mummy,’ Gwen told her, looking serious suddenly. ‘Not until it’s all over and settled.’

‘Oh, blimey,’ Rose said. ‘Don’t you think you should? She could hold it against you for the rest of your life.’

‘She’ll do that whether I tell her now or later.’

Gwen became Mrs William Charles Crowther in the little blue-walled chapel in the palace, with her ATS friends standing round. They had gone to great lengths to get hold of flowers to decorate the place, which already had its share of marble and ornate white inlay against the blue ceiling.

Signora Mandetta had made Gwen a beautiful satin dress which hung in soft folds round her hips and swept the floor behind her, decorated with tiny mother-of-pearl seeds. For Rose she had chosen a dress in a pale blue material, and both of them held simple bunches of white lilies.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Rose said to her, before they set off to the palace in a specially decorated army Jeep. ‘I can’t help thinking about the first time I saw you, at Didcot Station that day when we’d joined up. I’d never have dreamed I’d be doing this with you.’

Gwen looked solemn for a moment. ‘Sometimes it makes me go cold thinking about how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t joined up.’ Suddenly she stepped forward and put her arms round Rose. ‘I’m so happy,’ she said. ‘And you’ve been a real brick the way you’ve helped with everything.’ She looked into Rose’s face. ‘Maybe it’ll be you and Tony next. Maybe our wedding’ll give him a push in the right direction.’

Rose smiled back, impishly. ‘Stranger things have happened, I s’pose.’

Standing with Gwen as she and Bill made their vows, Rose was glad of Tony’s solid presence behind her. Everything went smoothly, and when she danced with Tony at the little celebration afterwards, Rose realized she felt almost light-hearted, glad of a break from Il Rifugio and from Naples.

‘I was thinking of going to see Capri on my next leave weekend,’ she told Tony. ‘Any chance of you sparing some time to show me around?’

The letter from Grace arrived two days before Rose’s weekend leave. It was the second that fortnight, which was unusual for Grace who never wrote more often than every month or so, and only a brief note when she did. In the first letter she had announced her engagement to a GI called Joe Landers. He had just been posted and she was missing him. Just like Grace not even to mention him until she really had something to say.

The second letter was only a couple of sentences: ‘We had a telegram today. Sam’s been killed. Thought you’d want to know straight away. Love, Grace.’

Rose re-read the skeleton of a letter, trying to take in the reality of it. She knew its brevity stemmed from Grace’s shock and grief, and also from the fact she didn’t know any more than that. After all, what else was there to say? But Rose longed for detail. Where was he? How had he died? Suddenly the reality of home poured in on her, of life back in the greyness of England, stuck there, waiting for news. In Italy it had all receded from her mind as if Catherine Street was an old film she had seen years ago and half forgotten. Home. The place she would go back to when this was all over, with no Dora, no Sam. No reliable, pedantic Sam.

Over the next two days she thought more about her elder brother than she had in the whole of the war. Memories of their childhood kept forcing themselves into her mind: of playing marbles with him out in the yard; of Sam rescuing her little cloth doll when one of the Pye children threw it over the wall into the next court. Sam going out to start his first job; his stiff loyalty when he found out she was pregnant.

The next weekend she had planned to go to Sorrento with Gwen and Bill and a friend of Bill’s. They’d made up a foursome on the previous leave to see Positano and Amalfi. Tony had taken her to Capri for one weekend, and she had revelled in the rich blue of the sea, the sparkling beauty of the island with its bright white villas and cobbled squares where people lingered and drank and talked, even in winter, as if there was no war anywhere in the world.

Rose had only been to Naples for the weekend once since November. She could not face spending her days so close to Falcone while they were so remote from each other. Now she felt a strong need to talk to Margherita, whom she saw as her closest friend in Italy. Several times Margherita had confided in her, breaking down and pouring out her worries about her father, living in a new place surrounded by strangers. Rose knew Margherita was the one person she could allow to see her feelings.

Without mentioning Sam, she told Gwen she would be going off with Tony for the weekend after all. Gwen smiled knowingly at her.

‘What is it?’ Margherita asked as soon as Rose set foot through the door. She was sitting pounding at some piece of cloth in a bucket of water, her eyes ringed with tiredness. A circle of children stood watching.

Rose burst into tears for the first time. She started to shake and sob. ‘My brother is dead.’

Margherita stood up and led her into the little sitting room, indicating to the children that they should not follow. She put her arms round Rose and let her cry for as long as she needed to, as Rose had done for her a number of times in the past. She stroked Rose’s hair as she sat beside her, her kind eyes solemnly watching her friend’s face.

Then Rose, still shaking, but quieter, was able to tell the little she knew. ‘I don’t even know where he was – what country,’ she said. ‘I know we’ll find out in the end. But it seems terrible to die so far from home.’

Margherita nodded, understanding.

‘I feel so guilty,’ Rose said, starting to cry again. ‘I’ve hardly given my family a thought since coming out here. I’ve been so wrapped up in the army and this place – you’ve all been like my family. It’s suddenly come home to me all they’ve been through, and I’ve been no help at all.’

Margherita sighed sadly. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I have those feelings too. When the eruption came and I lost my mother, that was when I realized I had hardly seen them since the war began. The children had taken all my time. Francesco and I were always so busy, so involved with each other and this place. My family only lived across the bay, and still I did nothing for them. Now I shall never see my mother again. Every day my heart aches when I think of it.’

Holding Margherita around her waist, Rose felt how thin she had become. When they let each other go, she realized they were not alone. Falcone was standing in the doorway, his face full of concern and at the same time surprise at seeing Rose there at all.