Birmingham Blitz (27 page)

‘You’ve been consorting with known members of the Italian
Fascio
,’ the thin one said. He pronounced it ‘
Fasho
’. ‘We have Mr Fausto Pirelli in custody already.’

I heard Teresa make an explosive noise of outrage.

‘But it’s Sunday today,’ Vera carried on. ‘You can’t arrest him on a Sunday!’

‘I’m afraid we can, Mrs Spini,’ the fat one said. He nodded at his colleague as if they were about to set off and then said, ‘Norman, we haven’t searched the house.’

‘Ah yes,’ said the one called Norman. ‘The house.’

Vera sank to a chair as they released Micky and started going through their few possessions. The fat one went and peered up the stairs.

‘You ain’t going up there!’ Vera said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘Is that so?’ Next thing was his fat arse climbing up to Micky and Vera’s room, feet clomping on the floor above. Vera covered her face with her hands.

The thin one was pulling drawers open and shut, and yanked one so hard that it came out and fell on the floor. The side fell off the drawer and Micky and Vera’s small collection of papers slid out in a heap. Giovanna started to cry and set Luke off. Teresa picked him up and cuddled him on her lap and Giovanna ran to her mother. Tony sat staring.

‘Hoi,’ Micky called out. ‘Watch what you’re doing. What you looking for anyhow?’

‘We’ll know when we’ve found it,’ the thin one called Norman said. He had squatted down and was rifling through the papers, a look of disgust on his face.

Teresa suddenly erupted from behind the table, still holding Luke in her arms.

‘What the hell d’you think you’re
doing
?’ she bawled at him. Luke was so startled he stopped crying for a moment. ‘Coming here, scaring our family, breaking things and insulting us. Who the bleeding ’ell d’you think you are?’

Micky hurriedly laid a hand on her arm. ‘Teresa, be quiet. Now!’ he ordered, the exertion making him cough again.

‘D’you know why he’s coughing like that?’ The man just stared at her with a flat expression. ‘He was in a fire, trying to save a factory, and his chest’ll never be the same again. How many times’ve you done summat like that, eh? You smug bastards. He’d die for this country my dad would. And yes, we do know Fausto Pirelli – he’s an ignorant jumped up little shite with a bleeding great chip on his shoulder and anything he thinks or does is nothing to do with us. So why don’t you just get out of our house and leave us alone? We haven’t done anything.’

The fat man appeared from the stairs. What with Teresa yelling and the kids bawling the racket was getting pretty overwhelming.

‘What on earth’s going on?’

Teresa turned on him. ‘Satisfied now you’ve had a good nose round, are you?’

‘Can’t someone shut this wop tart up?’ the fat one said and I saw the blood of fury pump into Teresa’s cheeks. He jerked his head at the other policeman. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. Mr Spini—’ They went and caught him by the arms again. ‘You’ll be coming with us.’

‘No!’ Teresa roared. ‘No – you can’t do this!’ Vera watched helplessly. Teresa shoved Luke at her and went to her father, gripping his arm.

Micky’s face was grey. He spoke calmly. ‘Teresa,
cara
, it’s a mistake. I’ll go with them and get it cleared up.’

‘What – like all their other mistakes?’ Teresa retorted. I heard the strain of tears in her voice but she wasn’t going to let herself go in front of them.

They ignored her and started to take Micky from the house. He turned his head at the door. ‘Don’t worry, Vera. It’ll be OK.’

We saw them as they took him past the window, his ashen face turned down towards the ground.

Churchill said this was going to be our finest hour, but it didn’t feel like my finest hour at all. It felt like the worst time of my entire life.

My mom was only just holding together and I was strung between her and the Spinis. Stevie had returned home to find his father gone and went straight down to the cop-shop only to be banged up as well. They’d be able to see them in a day or two, Vera was told.

A week passed. Vera and Teresa were down at the police station in Steelhouse Lane every day. Eventually they were allowed one visit and they saw Micky, Stevie and Uncle Matteo for a few minutes. None of them had a clue what was happening. Vera said they were all trying to be cheerful, but no one would tell them anything. She was getting more distraught by the day.

Then she found out they’d been moved and they wouldn’t say where. The house swarmed with Italians, many in the same position, others offering sympathy or just coming for a nose. Vera was up and down to her mom’s. Her eyes were sunken with lack of sleep and she looked as if she’d lost pounds in days.

Teresa gave up her job and came home. ‘Mom needs me – and the little ’uns.’ So she was back among the fruit and veg, keeping up an amazingly cheery front with the regulars who didn’t desert them because they were Italians and suddenly on the wrong side of the war. And I saw a new Teresa, one who was even stronger than I’d thought. Her face looked as sleepless as Vera’s, but she pinned her hair back, dressed as nicely as she could and accepted everyone’s sympathy.

‘They’ve got to find out sooner or later that Dad shouldn’t be there,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to keep going for ’is sake.’

She gave me strength. I had to do the same for my own dad. And I noticed a new gentleness about the place. Not just the Spinis. It’s not just nostalgia talking to say this. It was nearly everyone. People cared more about each other now we were all in trouble. They’d go out of their way, do anything for you. Even Mom managed to think about Vera and what she must be feeling.

‘What the hell are they playing at? That Micky Spini may be an Eyetie but what harm’s he ever done to anyone?’

On 22 June the French signed the German Armistice. Mr Churchill expressed grief and amazement. The impossible was happening. The hot spring days passed agonizingly slowly.

Sometimes of an evening when I’d done all the chores I couldn’t stand to be near Mom, her sitting there lifeless, half in a stupor, as if the world had already ended. I’d go up and lie on my bed, on the rough blanket, and look out at the light evening, the barrage balloon’s silver tail. I often thought back to a year ago when everyone was home, squabbling, it’s true, and looking daggers. But remembering it from where we were now, even with Lola there it had been normal. Blessedly normal.

I had to hold onto my dreams like Mom used to cling to the stories of the picture shows she saw. Mr Churchill said that if we could stand up to Hitler and beat him our lives would move forwards into ‘broad sunlit uplands’. I liked the sound of them, those broad, sunlit uplands. They stretched out in my mind covered in golden corn and poppies and yellow and white flowers, with a warm breeze blowing and bare legs and the sweet, sweet smell of the fields.

I heard the news over the factory wireless.

‘Oh my God!’ I was stuck to the floor like a statue.

‘What’s eating you?’ Nancy snapped. Her voice was always tart as vinegar when she spoke to me and I could never make out why. What’d I done? ‘Bunch of Nazis and wops,’ she went on. ‘Good riddance to them, I say.’

I was too upset to pay too much attention to Nancy. The appalling news was sinking in. The Germans had torpedoed a ship called the
Arandora Star
and sunk it off the coast of Ireland. The vessel had been carrying 1,500 German and Italian internees bound for Canada, and it looked as if an awful lot of them had drowned. Vera and her family still had no news, not of Micky, nor Stevie, nor Uncle Matt. For all we knew they could have been on that ship.

‘What’s up, Genie?’ Doris leaned round me. ‘There’s surely no one of yours on there?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was numb just then. ‘That’s the trouble. Could be.’ I struggled to keep my eyes on the screw pitches of the brass caps in front of me.

Doris and the others were making sympathetic noises.

‘Poor kid,’ I heard someone say. ‘Another thing to cope with.’

‘While you don’t know there’s still hope,’ Doris’s deep voice came to me.

‘Didn’t know you was one for mixing with Nazis and wops,’ Nancy said. Now she’d picked on that phrase she was obviously keen to work it to death. ‘Did you, girls?’

‘Shut your trap, Nance,’ someone said.

Nancy gave them her coyest smile, which was designed to melt hearts, and I felt like slapping her one. I turned on her. ‘What do you know about it, you ignorant little bitch? Just you watch what you’re saying.’ I marched round to her side of the table. ‘You’re talking about my best pal. One more word out of you and my nails’ll be making a pretty pattern on your face. Got it?’

‘Did you ’ear that?’ Nancy turned in exaggerated outrage to the others.

‘You asked for every word of it, Nance,’ Doris said. ‘So just shut it, eh?’ The others agreed with her. None of them liked Nancy, despite her pretty looks and winning ways. Didn’t take anyone long to work out she was as two-sided as a half-crown.

‘You’d better pack it in the lot of you,’ another voice said from down the far end. ‘Mr Broadbent’s about today and you don’t want him ’earing this carry on, do you?’

We certainly didn’t. I went back to work, picking up each bit of moulded brass, trying to check it as thoroughly as I could. Mr Broadbent was a kind, straight man and I’d do the very best for him I could. When I glanced up I could see Nancy looking hate at me along the table, her auburn curls pushing out from under the snood we had to wear. Even in the dull light from the grimy factory windows I could see she had rouge on her white cheeks, and her thin, heavily plucked eyebrows made her face look wrong somehow – cheap, like one of Morgan’s trollops. I saved that insult up for the next time I might need it and gave her my best ‘and bugger you too’ look down the long table.

If I could have kept my attention on all the most horrible insults I could think of to hurl at Nancy it would have been much the better for me. But I spent the day in the most agonizing state of mind, imagining terrible things. I kept seeing Micky and Stevie and Theresa’s jolly Uncle Matt struggling in the waves, sinking down and down until they were lying on the bottom of the seabed but somehow never dead, always alive, peering helplessly up into the murky water.

After work it was still warm and sunny. I found Teresa packing up the shop for the day. She was wearing the orange dress with the splashes of yellow on it. Without saying anything I picked up one of the boxes from outside and carried it inside for her and together we gathered up the empty crates on which they arranged the pyramids of fruit.

When we’d finished both of us straightened up and I looked into her stricken face. She was holding on tight, I could tell. She couldn’t seem to speak. After a moment she shrugged despairingly.

‘Oh Teresa – come ’ere.’

We stood in each other’s arms and Teresa held me very tight as I did her, our cheeks pressed together.

‘We don’t know they were on that boat,’ she said fiercely. She squeezed me to make the point more strongly. ‘We’ve got to believe they’re not – till we know for sure. But we haven’t heard from them . . .’

I saw her pull her mind away from that thought.

‘You’re brave, Teresa. Much braver than me.’

She shook her head. ‘Not brave. It’s just, if we think of the other, of what might’ve happened, we can’t go on. Mom says the same.’

Teresa bent to bolt the doors of the shop, the orange dress tight over her hips. I thought how grown up she was, now she was allowed to be.

‘Genie—’ She stood up, hesitating. ‘It’s just – we’re all going to Mass now. Would you come?’

In all the time I’d known Teresa I’d never once been to Mass with her. In fact I’d not often been to church at all. Mom and Dad certainly weren’t regular attenders, just went sometimes at Christmas. I had been on occasion with Nanny Rawson who barely ever missed a Sunday. Mom said she used to go to get an hour’s peace from my grandad and his keeping on, but I reckon it was more than that. I don’t know how you’d carry on the way Nanny Rawson did, keep steady, without faith in something or other flickering inside, and the religion she’d been given was Church of England. Sound and solid and no lurching from one extreme to the other. No fripperies, preferably no smells and bells, and what little I’d seen of church was along those sober lines.

The Catholic religion was seen by people like us as something very different from ours. Foreign, baffling, full of dread. The Pope and lots of what Nan called ‘paraphernalia’ like statues and incense and rosary beads. She’d been up in arms when Lil announced she was marrying Patsy, until she saw that even though he was a Catholic he was no more religious than she was and probably less so.

So it felt peculiar to be walking across towards Digbeth to Mass with the Spinis.

‘Are you sure they won’t mind?’ I whispered to Teresa. Vera was beside us carrying Luke, and Teresa was leading Giovanna by the hand.

‘Course not. People’ll be pleased.’

Vera’s face was drawn and stony and none of us had said much on the way across town except Luke who kept chattering, and we took it in turns to answer. All Teresa said to me on the way was, ‘Now I know what it must be like for you.’

St Michael’s was in Bartholomew Street, near the railway. Inside it seemed very dark after the bright afternoon and I liked the strange smell in there, the whiffs of wax and incense and floor polish. It was stuffy and cosy and the candles made me think of Christmas.