One hour later, Helen Gallagher still had a rosy glow on her face, although Eddie was long gone. He had submitted to her ministrations, allowed her to deal with an imaginary broken arm, been examined and unbandaged and left, stiffly declining Mrs Galbraith’s friendly offer of a cup of tea. Liz and Janet were studiously quiet at the meal break, speaking only when strictly necessary. Eventually, Helen couldn’t stand it any longer, laying down her knife and fork.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘Well what?’ replied Liz, in a cloyingly sweet tone of voice. ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to say, Miss Gallagher. Nothing at all. Not a dickie bird.’ She turned to Janet. ‘Have you got anything to say, Janet?’
‘No, Liz. I’ve got nothing to say either.’
Janet and Liz exchanged deliberately arch smiles. Helen’s expression was thunderous. Then it changed, her eyes sliding past them both to the door of the hall. It was her turn to have some fun.
‘Oh, I think you might have something to say, Miss MacMillan,’ she said, her voice as sugary sweet as Liz’s had been. ‘That cat’s having a busy day today. Look what it’s dragged in now.’
‘She’s like the old Queen, that woman,’ muttered Janet Brown as Amelia Buchanan swept into the hall. ‘She knows how to make an entrance.’
Liz, however, was not so much struck by Mrs Buchanan’s resemblance to Queen Mary as by the fact that what one could only call her entourage consisted of several white-coated medical students. It wasn’t a great surprise to see that Adam Buchanan was one of them. The appearance of Mario Rossi at his shoulder was a different matter entirely.
Fifteen
‘Would you look at that?’ hissed Janet. ‘Is he God’s gift to womankind, or what?’
‘Close your mouth, Elizabeth dear,’ said Helen. ‘You’ll catch flies. Oh look, he’s coming over. Your description of him was excellent, by the way. I’d have known him anywhere.’
It was Liz’s turn to make an inarticulate sound. Mario Rossi was indeed heading straight for her, closely followed by Adam Buchanan and the other medical students. Introductions were made and then Mrs Buchanan appeared, smiling at Liz, Helen and Janet.
‘Whilst I understand the attraction, young gentlemen, there are other helpers in the hall - and many simulated injuries worthy of your attention. Miss MacMillan - I’m really looking forward to meeting your parents tomorrow. I do hope you’ll be there too.’
She was aware of him for the rest of the afternoon: the dark good looks, the laughing eyes, the flashing smile, the way he was making everybody laugh. So what? He was a Roman Catholic. He was out of bounds.
Not to mention the fact that a man as good-looking as he was would never be interested in someone like her anyway. Liz had her good days, but she knew she wasn’t a stunner like Helen.
However, when he spotted her leaving at the end of the exercise, Mario Rossi cut off a conversation with one of his medical student colleagues and came running across the room to request, with surprisingly old-fashioned courtesy, if he might have the honour of walking her home.
Flabbergasted that he had asked, Liz opened her mouth to turn him down and heard herself saying yes instead.
It was about a quarter to four, and the event was tailing off. Three of the Gallagher boys had already left. Only Conor had stayed, waiting to walk his sister home. Finn was at his side as usual, an intelligent look on his craggy face, ready for whatever his master required of him.
‘That’s a magnificent animal,’ Mario said warmly.
Finn’s proud owner preened visibly.
‘Do you know something about dogs?’ he asked, looking down at Mario, who was bent over - not very far, Finn being such a large dog - patting the shaggy grey head.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Mario, offering Finn the back of his hand to sniff. ‘Back in the village where my family comes from - in Tuscany - we have a breed of hunting dogs not unlike this...’
The two young men were off, happily talking dogs until Helen coughed. ‘Mr Rossi was about to walk Liz home, Conor.’
‘Oh - I’ll not hold you back then,’ said Conor. ‘You’re Italian, then?’
‘Aye,’ said Mario, giving him a smile. ‘Although my mother was Irish.’
. Conor grinned hugely, his wide mouth filling the whole of his good-natured face. ‘You’ll have to come and visit us sometime. Our ma would love you. A good Catholic boy’ - Conor paused, a question in his voice, and Mario nodded - ‘and half-Irish into the bargain.’
Helen coughed again. Her brother obediently took his cue.
‘Right then, I’ll not hold you back. Liz’s father will probably come out waving a string of garlic at you, mind,’ he said to Mario. ‘Don’t go all the way with her.’
Then the big red-haired lad blushed scarlet, suddenly realizing what else his words could mean. He stammered an apology which succeeded only in making Liz as embarrassed as he was. She was aware of all the faces around them: Helen, Conor, Adam Buchanan. He was looking unusually serious. Somehow Mario Rossi managed to extract them from it. Soon they were out in the fresh air, heading down the road.
He made no reference at all to poor Conor’s disastrous comment, chatting easily about other topics until Liz began to relax. In time the blush faded from her face and she began to feel able to give more than monosyllabic replies. She even managed to look at him from time to time. That was no hardship. He was real handsome.
Having met her the day before, she supposed he was walking her home out of some extravagant sense of courtesy. She’d heard that continentals could be like that. His father had certainly been a charmer.
He couldn’t possibly fancy her - not someone like him. All the same, she was aware of a little thrill of excitement at having him walking by her side.
That didn’t prevent her stopping some distance before they got to the corner of Dumbarton Road where she always turned off to go home. Mario Rossi stopped too, looking at her with polite curiosity.
‘Is this where you live?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Our house is along a wee bit.’ She waved vaguely in the direction of Queen Victoria Row. ‘I’ll be all right from here.’
‘You don’t want your parents to see me?’
‘It’s not that—’ she began. She realized it was exactly that. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finished lamely. ‘My father’s very against Roman Catholics.’ She dropped her eyes, not wanting to see the reproach in his.
‘What about you?’ came his voice from above her dipped head. ‘Are you very against Roman Catholics?’
She shook her head, embarrassed. ‘My best friend’s a Catholic. Helen. You met her back there at the exercise.’
‘So does that mean you’d contemplate going out with a Catholic? To the pictures, maybe?’
She darted a nervous look up at him. Was he actually asking her out? She was flattered. Very flattered. Unfortunately she could think of two extremely good reasons for saying no.
Firstly, she had enough problems at the moment with her father. If Adam’s mother did manage to persuade him tomorrow - please God, let her do that - she’d have to be careful not to give him any chance to change his mind. From now on, she couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong.
Secondly, if her suspicions about Helen and Eddie’s interest in each other were true, there was going to be enough trouble in the MacMillan family as it was. One mixed-religion romance was more than enough to be going on with.
And he had asked her to the pictures: to the cinema, with its soft, dark intimacy, a place where people held hands and kissed. After what Eric Mitchell had done to her yesterday - and before - she wasn’t ready for that yet. But it was her father’s bigotry which made her turn him down.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’
‘So you are prejudiced against Catholics?’
‘No,’ she denied, shaking her head, hating the note of wry resignation she could hear in his voice. ‘No, I’m not, but it would cause me too many problems at home.’
He would go away now, wouldn’t he? Only he didn’t. He stood there gazing at her out of those soulful brown eyes. You could drown in those depths, thought Liz, carried away on an uncharacteristic flight of fancy.
She wondered how Mario Rossi would go about kissing a girl. Would he cup her face between those long-fingered hands before he bent his head to hers?
‘W-well,’ she stammered. ‘I-I expect we’ll see each other at the hospital when I start my VAD training. If Adam’s mother manages to persuade my father, that is.’
Mario smiled a slow, lazy smile.
‘Oh, she’ll manage. She’s a formidable lady, Mrs Buchanan.’
That smile did things to Liz. She hoped the effects weren’t visible on the outside. She was horribly afraid that they were.
Mario, however, relaxed the intensity of his gaze and spoke briskly.
‘Some of us are organizing a trip to the Paul Robeson concert at the Empire Exhibition,’ he told her. ‘We thought it might be fun to go as a group and we’re planning to hire a bus. That’ll be cheaper the more participants we get, and we’re going to drop people off as close to home as possible on the way back. Why don’t you come with us? Bring your brother and your friend Helen, if you want,’ he said easily.
Liz looked at him, undecided.
‘Safety in numbers,’ he suggested.
‘Could Helen’s brothers come?’ she asked. ‘They’re all dead keen on music. And maybe my grandfather too?’
The dazzling smile flashed. ‘Would you like me to get a ticket for the big dog as well?’
Aided and abetted by her son, Mrs Buchanan’s arrival in Queen Victoria Row the next afternoon was a bit like a visit from royalty. Acting as her chauffeur, Adam handed her out of the car as though she really were Queen Mary. The effect on William and Sadie - and the rest of the street, watching from behind the lace curtains as usual - was not at all marred by the huge wink he gave Liz behind everyone else’s back.
Liz’s father was completely overawed. Amelia Buchanan’s task was easy. Liz wondered how much Adam had told her. Perhaps it was her own desire to gain as many recruits as possible for her beloved Red Cross which did the trick.
In less time than Liz could have believed, Mrs Buchanan had done the impossible: the form giving parental permission for his daughter to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nursing auxiliary was signed. Liz was bubbling over with excitement.
With unerring instinct, Amelia had appealed to William MacMillan’s snobbery. ‘We do get a very superior class of girl in the VADs, Mr MacMillan, I can assure you of that. A very
nice
type of young woman. And Elizabeth would be making her contribution without having to leave home.’
She launched into a great exposition of the plan of action should the worst come to the worst - that phrase again. There were plans, she told them, to evacuate children from industrial areas, and the manning - or more probably
womaning
, as she put it with a disarming smile - of first aid posts.
‘And of course, VADs could prove very useful in freeing trained and experienced nurses for field hospitals and the like. We all hope it won’t come to that, of course, but we do have to be ready for every eventuality.’
By the time she began drinking the first of two cups of tea, taking time out to compliment Sadie on her ‘absolutely delicious fruit loaf, Mrs MacMillan, you must let me have the recipe’, Liz’s father was nodding sagely, agreeing with all the points his charming guest was making.
By the time she had finished with him, he was ready to take on Hitler in single combat.
Both Liz and her parents saw the Buchanans to the door when they left. Going on ahead down the short garden path, Adam held the gate open for Liz to go through in front of him. He glanced back at his mother, still on the doorstep saying her farewells to William and Sadie.