Shelter Read online

  ‘Aw; I dunno; I’m all done in and I’ve got nowt to wear.’

  ‘What d’you think those dresses hanging up in the ladies’ are for? For times like these, that’s what.’ Cass grabs her arm and pulls her across towards the lavs, grinning that grin that means mischief is afoot. ‘You don’t really want to go home, be honest. You want to come and have a laugh with us.’

  Cass is right; she does want some fun. So Connie borrows a dress from the spares in the lav, pinches her cheeks for the appearance of rouge and paints on her favourite red smile. Anything’s possible.

  And here she is, in the heat and the dark of the dance hall, ready.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got it all figured out, lady.’ Warm hands wrap themselves around Connie’s waist and a lick of flame heats her thighs and her belly. She smiles at the familiar voice, arches and hooks one arm easily around Don’s neck, brushing his cheek. Her forearm tingles at its smoothness. He must spend hours in front of the mirror making sure he hasn’t missed a patch.

  ‘Wondered if I’d see you here tonight,’ she says, and twirls to face him as if they’re already dancing.

  ‘Is that right?’ Don bends down, kisses her full on the mouth with beery lips. ‘Well, it’s your lucky day, lady.’ He’s a cocky sod; she fell straight for it the first time they danced. And he doesn’t care that she matches it. Most blokes expect her to mind her P’s and Q’s, but this Yank seems entertained by her outspokenness. She’d ribbed him when he’d told her his name that first time they met in this very dance hall: ‘Don Wayne? Where’s your horse, cowboy?’ but secretly she’s glad of a way to remember it. And she’s glad to see him, too. He reminds her that there’s more to life than Coventry and the factory, that she can make it out of here and she’s right to dream big.

  Connie turns into Don, her body still swaying to the music. She can picture Mam sucking air through her teeth, muttering ‘fast’. As if she herself hadn’t been three months gone with Connie when she and Dad had got hitched! And there’s a war on. Life is fast in wartime, especially after those early years when the bombs were pelting down reminders every night. ‘Fancy showing me how it’s done?’

  ‘Are you talking about the jive?’ Don presses against her in a way that’s got nothing to do with the dance move. Won’t catch her complaining, though. His scrubbed soapiness twists through the smoke and clears her mind of anything but him.

  ‘Let’s start on the dance floor.’ She flashes him a smile. And then they’ll see. Whenever Connie meets up with Don it’s as if he switches on ninety hidden flashlights all at once. She glows so strongly the ARP wardens’ll be over soon to throw a bucket of water over her. It isn’t only what she can feel under his uniform, though that doesn’t harm. It’s that way of talking he has, like someone out of the pictures. It gives her goosebumps. Like the real John Wayne himself coming out of the screen and showing her she could get out, have a different life. And get out she will. Connie isn’t about to beg Don to take her back to America, but he’s made her see that another life is possible. Ever since she’s been knee-high to a grasshopper, no bigger than their Barbara really, Connie’s had an itch that there must be more to life than their street and the factory. She hasn’t got any idea what form that takes or how to get there, but she knows she needs to do it. And now, with the war moving people around all the time, she’s started to formulate a plan. She’ll get to London and take it from there. The big city will sort her out. Just as soon as she’s saved enough, she’s off.

  Connie pushes against Don on the dance floor, his sweat salty on her lips. The waves of the jives throw them apart and her hips and belly scream their disapproval. The music swoons her back towards him and she laughs, Don laughing back. This war won’t last forever; perhaps after London she can get out to America, find a job with a bit of glamour, jive like this all the time. Who knows, they might take her for a film star with her accent: the Yanks never tire of telling her she speaks ‘cute’. Why not? She scrubs up all right and it’s the Land of Possibilities, that’s what they’re always telling her.

  The band stops singing about trains and segues into ‘White Cliffs of Dover’. Don grabs Connie’s hand, pulls her away from the dance floor and out through a side door. She curls into him, breathless and laughing, as he steers her further down the alley into a doorway. Frost crisps the empty fag packets littering the alley; she shrugs closer into Don.

  ‘Here.’ A couple of steps lead down away from the street.

  ‘Down there? It’ll be full of cats and pee, and cold enough to freeze the brass balls off a monkey.’ She knows this city better than to get all soppy about backstreets, but she’s desperate for him really, needs that body back up close against hers, and here is as good as anywhere. Won’t be the first time she’s stooped down some alley for a quick knee-trembler.

  Don laughs again, that bellow of his that’s bigger than any she’d known before. ‘You’re such a romantic. C’mere.’ He pulls again, insistent, not buying the innocent act for a second.

  What the hell? You only live once. This week has been all about other people – her messed-up shifts, the buses home all over the shop, even Mam wanting her home for more endless looking after the littluns. But this moment, right here, this is about her, about living a bit, about a yellow dress on a dank grey night and doing something that feels good because she knows it’s wrong. Those Jerries can’t take away all her fun even now they’ve started bombing London again. She’ll show ’em. She follows Don down the steps, giggling. ‘Shh!’ But he’s laughing too. The music is in them still and they sway together, her arms up around his neck. Her fingers push into his hair, finding him as he finds her; her breath becomes harder and more insistent as Don’s hands move down her body, palm away her yellow skirt and trace their way up the top of her stockings. Her own hands trace their way up his thighs, explore. There’s nothing now, only this.

  From above, the sky splits with the laments of the siren. The door they’ve escaped through fills with shouts, laughs; the warmth of bodies hitting the night and racing to carry on Friday night. She should pull away; they should head for somewhere warmer, carry on the party. But the voice in her head is coming from far, far away; has nothing to do with this Connie right here, right now, her hips forward, legs curving around Don’s, beyond caring about cold or propriety. Every part of him pulses in her. The air is thickening, with the siren that won’t stop, with the frantic crossing of the searchlights. The urgency of the city mingles with his taste on her tongue. Don’s fingers are separating her; her hands, her cheeks, her legs are slippery with need. Her thoughts are panting, her body racing, her mind far away and here, here, here.

  She stayed there with Don, collapsed onto him, concertinaed, until dawn on the back steps of the dance hall that sloped down into the alley, swigging something smoky and bitter from a hip flask he produced and chain-smoking those Yankee ciggies until her throat was sore and her eyes were as gravelly as when the iron filings spangled the factory. She didn’t want that evening to end, which goes to show what she knew. Got your wish in a way, didn’t you, eh?

  When a fox shows its snout down the steps, a scraggy vixen nosing for scraps to take back to its mangy cubs, Connie yawns, stretching along the length of Don, and stands up. Her breath billows out, warm against the early morning, and she laughs, a dragon ready to take on any comers. Just as well.

  ‘Time to get home and see what damage faces me.’ He grabs her fingers, languid, greedy, but the oozing need has turned gritty in the grainy morning light and she shakes her head. ‘It’ll be ugly but I can face it. Better to get it over with now.’ She blows him a kiss full of sunshine despite the proper nip in the air and clambers up the steps, no looking back, beaming as she marches forwards. No ties means no ties. And no shame means no shame.

  She struts to the bus stop, despite the pinching of her dancing shoes and the chill in her bones now she’s not all snuggled up beside Don. Should she circle back to the factory and collect her lace-ups? No, best get
home and get it over with. Mam will read her the riot act, no doubt, but she’ll stand there and take it. Connie has promised she’ll always try and get word home if she’s staying out, especially with all the raids and sirens. But last night she’d known Mam would be mardy that she wasn’t coming home like she’d promised, so she’d ‘forgotten’. There’ll be hell to pay when she gets in, and she probably won’t get any kip for ages, neither. Worth it, though. Her smile widens.

  The conductor looks at her oddly when she steps on, hands over the fare and asks for Hillview Road. Is it that obvious? Is there some pitch to her voice that sings see what I’ve done, see what I’ve done? Can he smell it on her, that mingling of sex and dare? Her joy at his disapproval bubbles up into a beam. But the conductor simply shakes his head. What is that look, anyway? He isn’t having a go, isn’t criticising. She looks at him again as she jams her purse back into her bag. It’s pity.

  Pity!

  Connie bridles. Judging is one thing, but to feel sorry for her after the night she’s just tasted and smelled and danced in? He’s off his rocker. She strides to the nearest seat and plonks her handbag beside her on the bench, smooths her coat over her borrowed yellow dress as the bus pulls away from the kerb, the vibrations low beneath her thighs. It’s her lucky dress now so she’ll hang on to it, ‘forget’ to take it back to the factory. The girls understand about lucky dresses; nobody’ll mind. Her coat’s dusty where she’d balled it up for a pillow on the steps last night, a bit damp too maybe, but nothing worse than you see after a night in the shelters.

  Already she’s scheming which dance Don might next show up to, whether it would be too bold to persuade Cass to come up with her to one of the hops held near the US base at Grafton Underwood. Her body aches with the absence of him. More than that – as if that’s not enough! – she feels better when she’s with Don. The very fact he made it all the way over to England shows her that her path to America isn’t just a pipe dream. All she needs to do is get to London. And from there the world’s her oyster.

  Everything in life is improved by time fooling around with Don. Today she’s unbeatable.

  She rummages in her bag for her lipstick. Warpaint’s what she needs now. She’d better get ready; there’s going to be a doozy of a battle once she gets home.

  The conductor taps her on the shoulder. She peers up at him. He’s still got that strange look on his face.

  ‘This is your stop, miss.’

  She’s been so wrapped up in thoughts of Don that she hasn’t paid the blindest bit of attention. And she still hasn’t found that lipstick. Have to deal with Mam barefaced, then. Connie claps the bag shut and marches down to the end of the bus.

  What the hell’s happened here?

  Dust is everywhere, dust and freezing damp and the clanking of shovels. But Hillview Road is no more.

  Eight

  THE STENCH OF SIXTY men’s sweat and excretions was a small price to pay for solitude.

  The accommodation barrack was empty. Blocking out the disputes and shouts of ‘gol!’ from the parade ground, Seppe eased the door closed into a frame that it didn’t want to fit. He should bring the plane to it.

  Seppe made his way down the rows of bunks until he reached the one he shared with a friendly southerner, Gianni D’Amato. Gianni seemed to understand without pressing the point that Seppe’s sympathies lay less with Il Duce than one might expect from a northerner. It was only around Gianni that Seppe’s shoulders relaxed, his hand less often seeking the security of the whittling knife.

  Seppe dug under his pillow and pulled out the knife and the rough piece of oak he’d salvaged from the last set of chairs he’d made on the camp commandant’s orders. In the three weeks since Seppe had arrived, trucks had rumbled in every day, as many as ten at a time. It was just as the guard had said: more hollow-eyed northerners brought over from Africa where they’d been detained in the camps all over the continent for months, even years, now. Northerners were trickier, more belligerent, even if it was the southern Italians who’d been known as ‘co-belligerents’ since last year. Seppe thought of his father, of Fredo, of every Livorno Italian he knew bar Renzo. They were all fiercely proud of Ciano, Livorno’s son and father of Tuscan fascism, and since his death a few years ago seemed hell-bent on keeping his memory alive through their fervour. If Seppe were a good citizen, more northerners should make him hopeful, uplifted, he knew this. But more northerners meant being reminded again of home, and that was a subject he couldn’t touch on. These northerners, he knew, would root out his lack of patriotism, and this quiet but precarious life of peace amidst war would be over.

  Already the rows of Nissen huts were filling, the calm of the camp lost to shouts and jostling. Even the theatre, over on the other side of the parade ground away from the latrines and the sleeping quarters, seemed less of a folly and more of a sensible diversion now there were men enough to use it.

  He pressed the blade against the oak and the handle bit into the soft skin between his finger and thumb. With every stroke the hundreds of his countrymen crowding into this place disappeared, along with their avowals of the greatness of the system that had overshadowed his whole life and brought only fear and dread. With every stroke he heard more faintly the strangled cries of his dying countrymen in battle, spread out in futilely thin lines along the desert so that Allied air troops couldn’t kill them in one manoeuvre. With every stroke, Renzo came back to him and Seppe’s breath slowed.

  Seppe’s hands were beds of splinters like when he was a boy, his thumb crimson where one had become infected. He put down the pipe he was crafting and sucked, though it would make no difference. He was ten again.

  March, 1934

  An undercurrent to his father’s voice signals impending danger as he returns from a meeting of the Livorno fascio. Seppe gets as close as he can, to listen, without being seen.

  ‘You’d think even the workers, especially the workers, would support Ciano’s ideals. What more do they want from our local hero?’

  Seppe’s mother lays a tentative hand on the Major’s arm, appeasing. ‘But your rank amongst the leadership continues to rise. This is something to be proud of.’

  He bats her away without so much as a glance in her direction. ‘Don’t contradict me. These are matters about which you are ignorant. These riots are infuriating and something must be done.’

  Seppe shrinks against the wall. That ‘something’ doesn’t bode well for anyone.

  His father marches into the formal drawing room and closes the door pointedly behind him. A moment later, a bark: ‘Vittoria! The newspaper.’ Seppe’s mother scurries to find the paper and Seppe sees his chance. He lifts up an edge of the tablecloth and crouches.

  ‘Careful! You’ve moved the baby. She will start to cry.’ Alessa is already under the table, playing a complicated game with the ‘family’ of tassels that hang down. It’s so musty under here – he doesn’t know how she stands it.

  ‘Sorry. There, she’s quiet again now.’ He drops the tablecloth and crawls under. Not so easy to do at ten as Alessa finds it at eight; he is getting taller, even if Fredo still taunts him for being the weediest in the class.

  ‘Do you want to play?’ Alessa bears no grudges. He wishes he could be more like her, enjoy life without complication.

  He gestures up through the tablecloth into the poisoned air and shakes his head.

  ‘Papa’s in a mood. I’m going down to the port.’ He hesitates. She’s big enough to come, and if he were a good brother he’d take her. But the port is his place.

  If it were the other way around, would Alessa take him? He sighs. Yes, without question. He stretches out a hand, whispers to her.

  ‘Come with me?’

  Alessa twists a corner tassel, studies it. ‘I’ll stay under here. I need to look after the babies, or nobody will care for them.’ She beams up at him. ‘See you later.’

  Seppe is filled with tarnished relief as he eases open the front door, slips out and makes his way to t
he industrial port to wait it out. The grand white houses, their columns and begonias bright in the warm sunshine, make way to smaller rows of small-windowed houses tipping towards the canal, which discharges him at the port. His father never deigns to come down here unless it’s on official business to berate and intimidate the workers into signing up to Ciano’s party of fascists. More often than not he’ll send henchmen to make his point more starkly.

  The drays are all out on delivery when he arrives at the stables and he slips in to the side, the hay smelling, as it always did now, of sanctuary. That’s how he found this place, following a dray home after its delivery one day. He settles in. Folded into the corner of one of the stables, he’s invisible, free to dream of a day when his life will not be dictated by his father’s moods, by politics, by the fascio movement. He listens to the day going past; the horns on the ships coming in and out of the harbour, the pace of the men’s grunts as they heave crates onto carts, underpinned by the lapping of the water in the neighbouring canals. By the time the noise abates, his father will have spent his fury and Seppe can go home. And Alessa knows to be sensible and stay where she is.

  That burning Livorno afternoon, thirst gets the better of him and he dips out of the stable as far as the horse trough, cupping the water and taking quick, parched slurps before resuming invisibility. This time, just as he makes it back to the safety of the hay a hand grabs him by the cuff.

  ‘I’ve been watching you, lad.’

  But the owner of the voice is smiling. He’s an old man, older than Seppe’s father, in rough working clothes that the Major would consider an indicator of inferiority, and a heavy apron of some sort.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re hiding from, but I do know you can’t keep it up forever.’

  Seppe’s mouth runs dry. The man hums ‘Bella Ciao’ as he waits for an answer. ‘Bella Ciao’, the song of the resistance, of the folk who don’t believe in Ciano’s dominance and aren’t afraid for it to be known. The Major’s fury will be unassailable when he finds out that not only has Seppe run away but he has also kept company with a traitor to the cause of fascism.