When the Lights Come on Again (24 page)

Nineteen

Liz hung up her uniform hat and coat in the small cloakroom at the Infirmary allotted to the VADs and brought out the square of white cloth which had been carefully ironed and starched for her by Sadie the day before. Doing her best to look nonchalant, she put it over her smoothly tied-back hair, transforming the material into a cap by tying it carefully in butterfly wings at the nape of her neck.

Lifting her head again, she checked in the mirror over the washbasin. Perfect. The wee red cross was right in the middle.

‘Oh, gosh,’ came a voice, ‘you’ve done that really well. I seem to be making a bit of a dog’s breakfast of it.’

Liz turned slowly. Cordelia Maclntyre was giving her a rueful grin in greeting, her cap still a square of white cloth dangling from her fingers - a rather crumpled one at that. She must have made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to put it on.

‘Would you mind giving me a hand, Miss MacMillan? I seem to be all fingers and thumbs today. Nervous, I suppose.’

Liz found that hard to believe, but she took the scrap of cloth from her, giving it a brisk shake to try to remove the creases.

‘Bend your head forward a wee bit,’ she instructed, swinging the cloth up and over Cordelia’s short and beautifully styled hair. ‘Now turn around and I’ll tie it at the back.’

She wondered if she sounded as reluctant as she felt. Was she being churlish to resent being asked for help? To feel that she was being treated like some sort of a lady’s maid?

If Cordelia noticed anything, she certainly didn’t show it, expressing her gratitude at some length. ‘Oh, I say, that’s great,’ she said, turning her head first one way and then the other to see how she looked. Her eyes went to Liz’s reflection. ‘How clever of you. You must just have the knack.’

Liz had been practising how to tie her cap for the past week in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door. She wasn’t going to tell Cordelia Maclntyre that. She, still busy admiring her butterfly wings, looked wryly amused.

‘We almost look like real nurses, don’t we?’

Liz was forced to smile at that one. She’d been thinking exactly the same.

‘I’m sure they’ll probably knock that idea out of us, Miss Maclntyre,’ she replied, gesturing towards the cloakroom door to indicate the hospital beyond.

Cordelia hesitated and then plunged in.

‘Would you mind if I called you Liz? And would you call me Cordelia?’

‘It seems to be the done thing to use surnames,’ Liz said. That was true. It was also true that she didn’t want to be the Honourable Miss Maclntyre’s friend. They had absolutely nothing in common, after all.

Cordelia grimaced. ‘I know... but perhaps when we’re on our own? It would be friendlier. Don’t you think?’

‘Maybe. We’d better go now. We’ll be late.’

‘I’m coming,’ said Cordelia with a quick smile. ‘Just let me take a deep breath.’

Holding the door open for the other girl to follow her out, Liz was struck by a thought. Could Miss Maclntyre really be feeling as nervous as herself? She shrugged that off as swiftly as it had come to mind. That was a daft idea. People like her were born confident.

Sister MacLean, the nursing tutor from the Preliminary Training School who’d been put in charge of the VADs, initiated their training by imparting a piece of philosophy. Medicine, she told them gravely, is a science. Nursing is an art.

She also gave them two maxims. One: never go up the ward empty-handed. There was always something which needed to be transferred from one place to another. Two: come hell or high water, the patients must always come first.

As Liz had predicted, she wasted no time in letting them know her opinion of their lowly status. Fixing them with a steely glare as they sat eagerly in the lecture theatre, she delivered her verdict.

‘You may have lovely red crosses on your brows and on your breasts,’ she told them in her lilting Hebridean accent, ‘but that doesn’t make any of you nurses. Not in my book.’

‘Well,’ said Cordelia while they ate their luncheon in the nurses’ dining room, ‘it’s nice to know that you’re the lowest of the low.’ She glanced around her. ‘They seem to have thrown a
cordon sanitaire
around us, don’t they?’

Liz could recognize that the words were French. She didn’t know their exact translation, but she understood what Cordelia meant. The other nurses - the proper ones - were making it quite clear that the VADs were not part of their group.

‘I say,’ said Cordelia, ‘why don’t we go across to Mr Rossi’s café tomorrow instead?’

‘Where’s that?’ asked Janet Brown. Cordelia explained. Janet and the other girls at the table enthused about the idea. It would, Liz supposed, look a bit odd if she didn’t go with them.

Aldo Rossi greeted the six young women who walked into his café the following lunchtime with considerable charm. Cordelia he obviously knew well, and he remembered Liz from her previous visit. Taking her hand between the two of his, he shook it enthusiastically.

‘I will call Mario,’ he said when the girls were seated. Bestowing a warm smile on them all, he headed for a door at the back, behind the counter. As he swung it open, Liz saw a flight of stairs. Presumably he and his son lived in a flat above the café.

‘Och, don’t disturb him, Mr Rossi,’ said Cordelia, half rising again. ‘We can help set the tables and all that. Can’t we?’ She looked around her for confirmation.

‘Yes,’ said Liz hurriedly, also rising to her feet. It was too late. Mr Rossi was already shouting something up the stairs.

‘Sounds so poetic, doesn’t it?’ murmured Cordelia to Liz.

It did, as did the stream of Italian which floated back down to them. Liz wondered if he was up there with the girl she’d seen him with at the Empire Exhibition. They might be sitting on a sofa, perhaps, his arm draped about her shoulders, or...

A succession of pictures flashed through Liz’s mind. None of them had any business at all being there. Then Mario appeared in the doorway. Alone. And yawning hugely.

He was a bit rumpled. A dark waistcoat swung open over a blue and white striped collarless shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and the cuffs. His dark hair was tousled. Another set of pictures entered Liz’s mind. They had no business being there either.

‘
Scusi
,
Papa
,’ Mario began. His long fingers went to his wrist, doing up his cuff buttons. Spotting that his father had customers, he switched seamlessly into English. ‘I should have been down to help you earlier, but I fell asleep.’

‘They work you too hard in that place,’ grumbled his father. Bustling about with napkins and cutlery, he paused long enough to make a very Italian gesture with his head which took in the hospital, the University and everything else down the road from his café.

Mario had just registered who the customers were. He came forward, his hand outstretched.

‘Cordelia! How nice to see you! And Miss Brown, and Miss MacMillan too, of course.’ He shook hands enthusiastically with all three of them, leaving Liz till last. There was a mischievous gleam in his brown eyes as he lifted her hand - and kept hold of it rather longer than was strictly necessary. ‘Won’t you introduce me to the rest of your friends?’

‘Uh...’ said Liz.

It was Cordelia who did the honours, faultlessly managing to remember the other three girls’ names.

‘You’re a medical student?’ one of them asked.

‘Yes. Perhaps we’ll meet on the wards sometime. I certainly hope so.’ He flashed her a smile. Like father, like son.

Finishing a plate of delicious tomato soup some time later, Liz looked up. Aldo Rossi was in the kitchen doing the cooking, and Mario was attending to the serving of the meal. There didn’t seem to be a Mrs Rossi. Then she recalled that Mario had spoken of his mother in the past tense when he’d been talking to Conor Gallagher at the Red Cross exercise. Under cover of the general hubbub, she asked Cordelia.

‘Poor Mr Rossi’s been widowed twice,’ she told her quietly. ‘That’s Mario’s mother up there, next to the bust of Mussolini.’ She indicated a high shelf to the side of the door to the upstairs flat. It was too far away to see properly. All Liz could make out was that it was a formal portrait of a woman. As she studied it, a hand came over her shoulder. It was Mario, lifting her empty soup plate.

‘Oh! Thank you!’ Embarrassing somehow, to have him serving her. He had heard Cordelia’s reference to his father’s bust of
Il Duce
.

‘Embarrassing, isn’t it? Especially for a socialist like myself. Although,’ he said reflectively, stacking three soup plates together and transferring the spoons to the top one, ‘I suppose I was a little fascist once. When I went to school in Italy I could sing all the songs with the best of them.’

‘Why were you at school in Italy?’ asked Janet with unabashed curiosity.

‘Because my mother died when I was ten,’ he said matter-of-factly, smoothly and efficiently swapping soup plates for main courses. ‘My father couldn’t cope with building up the business and bringing my brother and me up as well. My mother’s family were willing to take me in, but not Carlo.’

‘Why ever not?’ asked Janet, looking shocked.

‘Carlo is Mario’s half-brother,’ Cordelia explained. “The son of Mr Rossi’s first wife.’ Glancing swiftly around to check that Aldo was still safely out of earshot in the kitchen, she went on: ‘All her other children died, didn’t they, Mario?’

He nodded. ‘One in the influenza epidemic back in ’19, one of diphtheria and one of scarlet fever.’

‘Is that why you decided to become a doctor?’ asked another of the girls.

‘Probably,’ he said a little absently. His eyes were ranging over the two tables between which the girls had divided themselves. ‘Although I’m planning on becoming a surgeon rather than a physician. Hang on, you haven’t got salt.’ He went behind the counter and was back in a couple of strides. ‘Right, there you are.’

Six sympathetic female faces were looking expectantly up at him.

‘Have I forgotten something else?’ he asked with a puzzled air.

‘Only the rest of your life story,’ said Cordelia. ‘D’you mind?’

‘Not at all, but don’t let your food get cold.
Buon appetito
, ladies.’

‘
Grazie
,’ said Cordelia in response, picking up her knife and fork.

‘Prego, signorina.’
Mario gave Cordelia a funny little bow and leaned back against the counter, watching them all eat. A large white apron tied around his waist, the sleeves of his striped shirt now rolled up, he looked as though he was enjoying the sight.

‘Well, then Carlo’s mother died, and a few years later my father met my mother. Her family disapproved of a good Irish girl marrying a struggling Italian immigrant. So we were sent to my grandparents in Italy when she died, because Carlo and I refused to be separated.’

Cordelia shook her head. ‘How could your other grandparents have been so hard?’ She thought about it for a minute. ‘Prejudice, I suppose. It’s a terrible thing.’

‘It certainly is,’ said Mario lightly.

‘How long did you spend in Italy?’ asked Janet. Liz thought she was being extremely nosy. They all were, tiring questions at him like this, although he didn’t seem to mind. And Liz had to admit, if only to herself, that she wasn’t at all averse to listening to his answers.

‘Four years. I came back to Glasgow when I was fourteen.’

“That must have been a bit of a shock to the system.’

Mario shrugged. ‘Och, they stopped calling me a dirty wee Tally after I had worked out what my fists were for.’

The other girls laughed, but Liz had caught the dryness in his tone.