Birmingham Rose (47 page)

She went over to the fireplace and jiggled the loosened brick out of the wall to recount the money.

Her fingernails scratched against the brickwork. For a moment she scrabbled around, not believing it. Where was the envelope? Growing frantic, she slid her hand all round the inside of the cavity. Nothing.

A horrible suspicion filled her mind. Heart thumping hard, she ran up to the attic, to George’s room, where she had not ventured for weeks.

The stench of stale cigarette smoke hit her immediately. With trembling hands she held the candle high and looked around. The bed was unmade and the old cupboard door was hanging open. Beside the bed lay the only remains of George to be seen in the room: a white saucer brimming over with cigarette stubs.

A week later a letter arrived from Catherine Harper-Watt. They kept up a regular correspondence, but this letter was different and short. Rose read it through several times, the full implications of it taking time to sink in. Finally she laid it down, shaking with anger and embarrassment.

My dear Rose,

Just a quick note to let you know that all is well and I am most happy to have been able to help. The fact that you felt able to send your brother here when he needed assistance is most gratifying to me, and he seemed such an interesting and purposeful young man.

I was able to let him have £50 to help him on his way, and we left him at Piccadilly heading north to his new life feeling we had truly done someone a service. Perhaps this removes a burden from you, and of course of that I am also glad.

We are all well. Judith has announced that she is at last to be married to her teacher friend Robert. How old that makes me feel!

I shall write again, but I just wanted to set your mind at rest.

Loving greetings,

Catherine Harper-Watt.

The winter months passed very slowly. Rose felt as frozen inside as the weather outside. Even work seemed less enjoyable. To her surprise she missed Ella Crosby, and it was lonely sitting in the outer office on her own.

She could not bring herself to write and tell Catherine the truth. For a start it might sound as if she was asking for more money. She had not even told Grace what had happened. Now she did not have Catherine’s money as a back-up, she felt compelled to save as much as she could of her wages, scrimping along as a matter of habit.

Laurence Abel was keener than ever to speak Italian whenever possible, and although she went along with it, it only rubbed in the fact that she never seemed to get anywhere in her life.

What she needed to do now, she told herself, was to forget all this foolish hankering for something that was past, and build the best future she could for herself and her daughter. Hilda, after all, was the future.

The bus drew up with its brakes shrieking. Climbing inside Rose realized she had the chance of a seat and squeezed across to sit next to the window. It was a surprisingly warm spring day and the bus felt hot inside. She was on her way home from work, tired and stuffy in the head.

On her lap with her bag was her last newspaper from Laurence Abel, a December copy of
Corriera della Sera
. She knew she was feeling too inert to make any sense out of it at that time in the afternoon, but she opened it up, taking care not to wave it in the face of the man next to her.

The words seemed to shout at her, from a small news item in the middle of the second page. She blinked hard and tried to make sense of it.

‘Vatican makes example of rebel priests’ was the headline above the words that had drawn her eyes: Paulo Augustino Falcone. Father Paulo Falcone.

Many of the words in the article were unfamiliar to her as she seldom bothered to read stories connected with the Church.

She tore home, the paper not even properly folded in her hands. Once she was sitting down at the table with her dictionary she began to make more sense of it.

Three priests were referred to in the story. All of them had preached or taught on issues of faith or morals in a manner which had come to the displeasured attention of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Rose had no idea what that was so she skipped over it. The story said that the Vatican had decided to clamp down on these three to provide a moral example to the rest of the Catholic community. Consequently, all three had to some degree been silenced by suspension from their duties as priests.

Rose skimmed over the details about the other two.

The most severely reprimanded of the three and also the youngest is Father Paulo Augustino Falcone, ordained three years ago in the Dominican house of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples. His radical views on issues such as poverty and contraception, and his calling to question the obligatory state of celibacy for all priests have resulted in his being banned from teaching, preaching, or celebration of the Mass.

Rose sat staring across the room, only realizing after a moment that Hilda was prodding her arm.

‘I’m hungry, Mom. What’s for tea?’

In a dreamlike state Rose got up and started spreading margarine on bread, the past still crashing in around her. Just reading his name like that rekindled such strong feelings.

‘I said I wanted jam!’ Hilda protested, swinging her legs crossly against the chair when the food arrived.

Rose stared, confused, at the slices of bread. Instead of jam she had put margarine on them twice.

He was still there: he was real. And now, after all his agonizing, all those years of training, his commitment to the priesthood was leading him into what, she recognized, devoid as she was of any real understanding of the Catholic faith, must be a good deal of pain and confusion.

‘Mom! Listen to me! Can I have some jam? Is there any cake?’

Now she knew with a kind of frightening clarity that whatever it took, whatever the outcome of it, she had to go there. Finish things if necessary. She had to see Falcone again.

Standing by the table with the saucer of strawberry jam in her hand she said to Hilda, ‘You know I said – ages back – that we’d be going on a journey? Well, I’ve been saving, and I’m going to go on saving our money until we’ve got enough to go – together. What d’you think of that?’

‘Smashing,’ Hilda said. ‘Now please give me some of that jam!’

‘You really going tomorrow then?’ Grace’s voice held a definite tone of disapproval.

Rose was folding clothes into a decrepit old suitcase of Alfie’s that had stood for years in her bedroom. ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’

‘Beats me why you want to go off over there,’ Grace said, shifting her weight to lean up against the doorframe. ‘You could’ve gone anywhere for a break – a week by the sea at Rhyl for a quarter the price. I’d have thought you’d have had enough of over there in the war. They say it’s ever so dirty and smelly.’

Rose smiled. ‘Do they?’

‘And you could’ve left Hilda with me and our dad. No need to go dragging her along as well.’

‘I want her to come,’ Rose said. ‘She’s seven, old enough to see it and remember. And Margherita’s got kids. They can all play together.’

‘You sure you’ve got enough money? Is that Mrs Harper-Watt paying for you to go?’

‘No,’ Rose said briskly, pushing a pair of shoes down into the side of the suitcase. ‘She sent me some money for my birthday so I put that in the pot.’ She turned to look squarely at Grace. ‘The money she gave me after she came that time—’

‘How much was it?’ It was something Grace had always been dying to know.

‘A hundred quid.’

Grace’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Blimey. She must be rolling in it!’

‘When I’d taken some out for you and some other bits and bobs, there was still about eighty left. George had it off me.’

‘You gave him eighty pound?’ Grace screeched at her, standing absolutely upright now.

‘Course I didn’t. He pinched it, when he went off. And he stopped by in Manchester and conned some more out of her on the way to wherever he’s gone.’

Grace stared at her, speechless for almost half a minute. ‘Did you tell her?’ she managed to say at last.

‘No. Couldn’t really, could I? It’d have sounded as if I was on the scrounge or something. What we’re going away on is what I’ve saved, bar the ten pound she sent me.’

‘He should be strung up.’

‘Probably has been by now, for all we know.’ Rose shut the case and struggled with the rusty fastenings. ‘There – all set. Oooh.’ She gave a little jump. ‘I can’t believe it, Grace. I’m really going – for ten whole days!’

‘Nor can I,’ Grace said drily, though she was smiling. ‘Must be mad.’

With rhythmic, comforting sounds, the Naples train eased its way out through the suburbs of Rome. It was not very crowded and they had seats facing each other. Hilda, exhausted already from the excitement of a very long day – travelling on an aeroplane! – was dozing, her head lolling against the window. Rose felt she could not have slept even if she had been heavily drugged. She watched Hilda, her cheeks soft and lovely in the gentle light of the approaching sunset. Her perverse, self-willed but lovable daughter, here with her in Italy. Bringing these two parts of her life together seemed quite extraordinary.

She turned her attention to the regal Roman buildings outside the window. Even in the suburbs many of the tenements had a grandeur about them, with their flaking paint in yellow or terracotta or pink, and the contrasting greens and blues of the wooden shutters. Rose took in a deep, satisfied breath. This country! Whatever happened while she was here, at this moment she felt deeply content just to see it, to take in all the half-forgotten things that she loved about it. Fig trees and peeling trunks of eucalyptus softening the sides of buildings, the washing strung across narrow side streets glimpsed as the train hurried past; the baskets and buckets hanging outside windows ready to be let down to receive a delivery of bread or groceries. All the different smells that were so peculiarly Italian, the trace of drains and cigarette smoke mixed with the evening air – and she was sure she could smell the
prosciutto
between chunks of white bread that the elderly woman was tucking into on the seat across the passage.

As the light began to fade they passed through miles of fields, with small towns and villages strung along the railway line. Part of the land was fallow now that the summer was closing, and some fields held late crops of hay or spindly maize, with mules and carts still out collecting the dry cobs. On the left ran the line of the mountains, sometimes close enough to see the dark green cover of trees, sometimes smoky grey outlines in the distance, the foothills of the long spine of Italy.

When it was completely dark outside and the lights were on inside the train, Rose pulled Margherita’s latest letter out of her bag. It seemed incredible that in a few hours she and Hilda would be sleeping in Francesco and Margherita’s flat, and waking with the sun to meet their children.

‘
Carissima Rosa
,’ Margherita’s bold writing looped across the cheap piece of paper.

We are so happy that you are coming and bringing your daughter with you. How excited we all are about seeing you – it seems now only like a dream!

I hope you will forgive our little place – it is small and cramped with all of us in it, but we can always find the space for such a welcome guest.

Your train will arrive in Naples at about 22.00, and Francesco will be there to meet you, we promise you faithfully. I hope you will recognize each other! Please stand in the area near the ticket office and he will come to find you.

We wait in eager anticipation of your visit – and until then, love and blessings from us all. Margherita.

The train began passing between buildings again, some of them higher than any Rose remembered from the war. Like Birmingham, she thought. The war has given us all a new face. As they rattled past tenements and factories still dotted with lights, and junctions with roads where cars, lorries and carts waited facelessly behind the gates, she began to smell the sulphury city smell.

He’s out there somewhere, she thought. His city. The train was slowing now from its hectic pace so that the buildings slid past instead of being whisked immediately from view. They were replaced by light and the concrete of railway platforms as they drew to a halt in the great yawning central railway station in Naples.

‘Hilda!’ She leaned across and shook her gently. ‘Come on, love. We’re here.’

Francesco spotted her the moment she and Hilda walked out from the railway platform. Before she had even had time to look for him he was beside her.

‘Rosa!’

‘Francesco! Oh, Hilda, this is Francesco.’

And their arms were round each other, laughing and exclaiming and oblivious to anyone else in the huge, echoing station.

‘
Come sta?
Are you well?’

‘
Bene – benissimo!
’

‘I think you’ve got a bit fatter, you know.’ Rose prodded him playfully. ‘It must be married life!’ She found herself speaking slowly, feeling her way into the language again.

‘But not much, truly. With six children you don’t get fat! And you – you look lovely as ever. A little different perhaps . . . ?’

‘Older – but then who isn’t!’

Francesco bent down and Rose watched as he smiled warmly at Hilda who glanced doubtfully at her mother before smiling back.

‘Welcome,
piccola
.’ He pinched one of her cheeks affectionately. Unsure, Hilda drew her face away. ‘We have a lot of friends at home for you to play with.’

Rose explained this to Hilda in English.

‘She’ll come round,’ she told Francesco. ‘By tomorrow night she’ll be bossing them all about even if she doesn’t speak the same language. Oh – I can’t wait to see them all!’

Still laughing and joking, with Francesco carrying her suitcase, they walked out to a side street near the station.