Annie Groves - The Heart of the Family

It wasn’t too quiet for her, though. It fact it suited her down to the ground.

As soon as she’d got everything unpacked and the two of them properly settled in she’d have to see about sorting out a school for young Tommy. It was just him and her now. Mother and son, so to speak. Just thinking those words filled her with so much happiness that she could feel it right down to her toes. And yet for all her happiness, and despite knowing that she had made the right decision in leaving Liverpool – after all, what did she owe the city; what had it ever done for her except give her an unfaithful husband? – the sound of those bombers and their relentless purpose brought a lump to her throat and caused her to say a silent prayer for the city of her birth.

Eight o’clock. She’d better get a move on, Lena decided, otherwise, she’d be late for work and her boss had told her that she wanted her in early because they’d have a lot of women wanting their hair done, since the blitz meant that many no longer had access to proper water in their own homes.

Lena hesitated as she turned the corner and saw a small group of women and children standing on the pavement outside number ten, where the Hodson family lived. Her heart sank. There was no way she could avoid them, not with half the houses down on the other side of the street and no pavement left.

‘Ruddy Eyetie,’ Annette Hodson said loudly as Lena drew level with them. ‘I don’t know how she’s got the brass neck to show herself here amongst proper English folk when her lot have sided with that Hitler.’

Annette Hodson was blocking the pavement now, her arms folded across her chest as she confronted Lena.

Some of the sparse mousy hair has escaped from her rag curls and was hanging limply over the red scarf that drew unkind attention to her heavily flushed face. The apron she was wearing was grubby, her fingers stained with nicotine. Annette Hodson was a bully whose own children went in fear of her. Somehow, though, she’d set herself up as the street’s spokeswoman when it came to who and what was and was not acceptable. She’d had it in for Lena ever since she’d discovered her husband leering at Lena one Saturday afternoon after he’d trapped her in conversation, one hand resting on the house wall as he refused to let her go past.

Initially Lena had been believed when Annette had appeared, quickly making her escape, but then the comments had started, and Lena’s aunt had soon backed up her neighbour and friend, warning Lena that no good came to girls who made eyes at married men.

‘Course, it’s that Italian blood of hers,’ Lena had heard her aunt telling Annette.

Lena had never known the Italian side of her family but she did know that the war had turned some of Liverpool’s citizens violently against the Italian immigrant community, which had previously lived peacefully in the city.

Italian businesses had been attacked by angry mobs, and Italian people hurt. There had been those who had spoken out against the violence and those too who had helped their Italian neighbours, but there were others who, like Annette Hodson were the kind who seized on any excuse to take against other people.

Then, by order of the Government, all those Italian men who had not taken out British citizenship had been rounded up and sent away to be interned for the duration of the war. That had led to more violence and also to terrible deprivation for those families deprived of their main breadwinners.

Italian families with sons who had British passports and who were in the armed forces found that they were being treated with as much hostility as though they were the enemy, and those with Italian blood had quickly learned to be on their guard.

‘I’ll bet she was down the shelter last night, though, taking up a space that by rights should have gone to a proper British person,’ Annette was jeering. ‘If I had my way, it wouldn’t just be the Italian men I’d have had rounded up; I’d have rounded up the women and the kids as well and put the whole lot of them behind bars. Aye, and I’d have told Hitler he could come and bomb them any time he liked, and good riddance. ’Oo knows what she gets up to? For all we know she could be a ruddy spy.’

Ignoring Annette’s insults, Lena stepped out into the road to walk past her and then gasped as a small piece of broken brick hit her on the arm. Automatically she turned round to see Annette’s youngest, four-year-old Larry, grinning triumphantly as he called out in a shrill voice, ‘I got her, Mam. Ruddy Eyetie.’

‘Good for you, our Larry. Go on, throw another at her, Eyetie spy,’ Annette encouraged her son, laughing as he bent down to pick up another piece of broken brick.

She wasn’t going to run, Lena told herself fiercely, she wasn’t. She would think about him instead, her lovely, lovely soldier boy. That way she couldn’t feel the pain of the sharp pieces of brick the children gathered round Annette were now hurling at her with shrieks of glee. They didn’t mean any harm, not really. It was just a game to them. Lena gasped as someone threw a heavier piece, which caught her between her shoulder blades, almost causing her to stumble.

‘Eyetie spy, Eyetie spy,’ the children were chanting. ‘Come on, let’s get her … Let’s kill the spy.’

‘What’s going on here?’

Lena had never felt more relieved to see the familiar face of the local policeman as he grabbed her arm to steady her.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Davey, just the kids having a bit of a joke on Lena on account of her being an Eyetie, isn’t that right, Lena?’ Annette challenged her.

Lena longed to deny what she was saying, but she knew that if she did Annette would only tell her aunt and then she’d have her aunt going on at her and threatening to tell her uncle to take his belt to her.

Tears of misery and self-pity blurred her eyes. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had, not really, and her parents had never been the loving protective sort, too interested in quarrelling with one another to bother much about her, but right now she wished that her dad was here and that he could put Annette Hodson in her place and the fear of God into her just as she was trying to do to Lena.

Davey Shepherd had released her now.

‘Aye, well, no throwing stones, you lot,’ he told the now silent children. ‘Otherwise Hitler will come and get you.’

‘Lena’s an Eyetie and she should be locked up,’ Larry piped up truculently. ‘Me mam says so.’

Lena could tell from the way Davey didn’t look at her that he didn’t want to get any further involved.

‘You’d better get on your way,’ he told her in a gruff voice.

‘Aye, and don’t bother coming back,’ Annette called after her as Lena made her escape whilst Davey stood watching her.

There was brick dust on her cardigan sleeve. She’d look a fine mess turning up at work all dusty and dirty. Simone would give her a right mouthful and no mistake. The hairdresser might speak to her clients in an artificial and affected posh voice, but when they weren’t around and she was in a bad mood, she yelled at the girls who worked for her, using language so ripe it would have made a fishwife blush.

Lena had been working part time for Simone ever since she had left school, fitting the hairdressing work in round the cleaning jobs her Auntie Flo forced her to do, and which really were part of her aunt’s own job, but now Simone had offered to take her on full time and Lena had said ‘yes’ immediately. Other hairdressers might have closed down thinking that the war would be bad for business but Simone had different ideas and she was shrewd. She had told Lena that, with all the rationing and everything else, she reckoned women would want their hair doing more than ever, and that the war could actually be good for business.