Some Sunny Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

pudding.
    Thanking her, Rosie regretted her own decision earlier not to stop to get herself something to eat. The larder would almost certainly be bare.
    The summer light was beginning to fade from the sky, which was now streaked the colour of blood. Blackout curtains were going up in those windows that hadn’t been broken, and outside those that were, small groups of men were gathering to examine the damage and make temporary repairs. At least it was summer and rain was unlikely to hinder their efforts. The look on the victims’ faces made Rosie feel shamed of her own nationality. She wanted to go to the Italians and assure them that not everyone felt the same way as those who had rioted against them.
    When she got home she found her mother in the parlour, sitting on the sofa with her feet up on a worn leather pouffe, smoking a cigarette, herhair already rolled up in rag curlers, and a scarf tied round them turban style.
    ‘Where’s us supper?’ Christine demanded irritably. Her lipstick had bled into the lines around her mouth, Rosie noticed absently. And there was a button unfastened on her blouse.
    ‘Pod’s was closed.’
    ‘So why the hell didn’t you go somewhere else? It’s not as though there ain’t enough ruddy chippies around here,’ Christine complained acidly.
    ‘Yes, and they’re all Italian-owned,’ Rosie reminded her, ashamed that her mother was only thinking of her stomach at a time like this.
    ‘Aye, well, they’ve only got themselves to blame,’ Christine told her. ‘That Sofia thinks she’s bin so bloody clever getting her Carlo in with that Fascist lot and her Bella enrolled at one of them language schools what they run, but you mark my words, she’ll be regretting it now.’
    There had been a lot of talk in the area whilst Rosie was growing up about Mussolini and his effect on Italian politics. Being a passionate race, Liverpool’s Italian community talked as intensely and fiercely about ‘Fascismo’ as they did about everything else. Rosie knew from sitting in the Grenellis’ kitchen whilst these often heated discussions were going on that to the older generation of immigrants, Mussolini’s desire to treat them as though they were still ‘Italians’, albeit living away from their homeland, meant so much to them emotionally. They saw what Mussolini was doingas a means of uniting them, of giving them respect and status, and of preserving their Italian heritage. They couldn’t see, as their younger British-born children could, the dangers of Fascism.
    Hadn’t Mussolini shown respect for their patriotism? the older men argued. Hadn’t he encouraged ‘his’ people living outside Italy to set up social clubs where the men could meet to talk about their homeland and to share their sense of what it meant to be Italian? Hadn’t their mother country sent delegations to talk to them and, thanks to them, hadn’t an Italian school been opened in Liverpool so that their children could learn their true mother tongue? If some of their non-Italian neighbours in their adopted country chose to resent what Mussolini was doing for his people, then that was their problem. For themselves, they were now doubly proud to be Italian and to know that their mother country valued them and recognised them as such.
    Stubbornly these often elderly men believed that Fascism was more about an upsurge of patriotism and a love for their homeland, than about politics, which they did not really understand or want to accept.
    Many of the younger men, on the other hand, especially those who worked alongside non-Italians, were concerned that in clinging so determinedly to the mother country their fathers and uncles and grandfathers were ignoring the realities of just how antagonistic towards Mussolini the English people and the British Government were, and this led toheated arguments within families when they gathered together. Rosie had seen the way Maria shook her head when they took place in her own kitchen.