It was a reasoned and logical argument, but it failed to calm Liz’s anxieties. Helen was in another part of the hall throughout the ceremony, insisting that Liz had to sit with her parents. They’d all meet up again afterwards. And Liz was to stop worrying. Everything would be fine.
Afterwards, resplendent in his hood and gown, Eddie led Helen by the hand over the carefully manicured lawns of the University grounds towards his parents and sister. Helen was wearing the brown georgette dress and a new hat she’d spent months saving up for.
Liz’s heart was thumping as she watched them approach. They were a handsome couple, Helen so fair and pretty and Eddie so dark and solemn in his academic robes. Liz darted a glance at her father. He was smiling. His wife, unable to contain herself, walked forward to greet Helen.
‘I knew there was a special lassie!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I knew it. Och, and you’re so bonnie too!’ She seized Helen’s hand. ‘What’s your name, my dear?’
‘Helen, Mrs MacMillan. My name is Helen Gallagher.’
It was like watching time stand still - or perhaps go backwards. Liz knew, without having to look, that the smile had slid off her father’s face. Sadie was frozen to the spot. Eddie too. Like his sister, he was transfixed, watching it all go horribly wrong. It was only Helen who kept moving. Taking her hand out of Sadie’s grasp, she extended it to William MacMillan.
‘Hello, Mr MacMillan, you must be very proud of Edward. I know I am.’
He ignored that outstretched hand, and the lovely and open face behind it. He ignored Helen Gallagher completely. Turning to his son, he asked one question.
‘Is she a Fenian?’
Eddie spent his last night as a civilian at Queen Victoria Row only because Liz and Helen begged him to.
‘For your mother’s sake,’ said Helen with tears in her eyes. ‘For your mother’s sake. And for mine too,’ she added when she saw his face harden. ‘Please, Eddie!’
‘He insulted you,’ he said, his lips compressed. ‘He looked through you as though you weren’t there! He wouldn’t shake your hand. And you expect me to spend another night under his roof?’
But he gave in at last, unable to resist Helen’s tears and Liz’s pleading. He left after breakfast the next morning, although his train wasn’t till the afternoon. He hugged his mother and refused his hand to his father, looking him straight in the eye before he left the house with Liz.
‘You wouldn’t take Helen’s hand yesterday,’ he said, his intelligent grey eyes cool and unforgiving. ‘Why should I give you mine today?’
Liz and he spent the morning with the Gallaghers, enjoying a midday meal with Helen and her family as rumbustious as any that household had ever seen. William and Sadie MacMillan sat at their kitchen table alone and found nothing to say to each other for the rest of the day.
Liz couldn’t speak. There was a lump in her throat the size of a tennis ball. It was the way they were looking at each other. When Eddie bent his head to kiss Helen for the last time, Liz turned her back and walked away from them. Then she heard her brother calling her name.
She turned, and saw that he had one arm about Helen’s shoulders and was extending the other to her. She ran back to him. There were only minutes until the train left. She stretched up to kiss his cheek.
‘Look after each other,’ he said huskily into her hair, squeezing her shoulder in farewell.
‘We will,’ Liz promised. ‘Don’t you worry about us.’ She turned to Helen. ‘We’ll be out dancing with Polish soldiers every night, won’t we?’
‘Oh, aye,’ Helen agreed. ‘I’m told they’ve got lovely manners. Wouldn’t dream of arguing with a lady. Unlike some people I could mention.’
‘Ha ha,’ said her sweetheart. ‘Very funny.’
The whistle blew. A kiss on both girls’ foreheads and then Eddie jumped aboard the train, slamming the door and swiftly pulling down the window so he could lean out to give Helen one very last kiss. The train began to move and they separated. Arms linked, the two girls waved until they were sure he couldn’t see them any longer.
‘Come on, Helen,’ Liz urged. ‘Let’s go.’ Her friend seemed to have become rooted to the platform. Should she suggest the pictures for this evening?
‘Och, Liz!’ said Helen, and burst into tears.
‘I thought she was never going to stop crying,’ Liz told Mario as she walked hand in hand- with him in the sunshine of Kelvingrove Park the following day. ‘I took her for afternoon tea after we’d seen Eddie off, and she was so upset she didn’t argue with me when I paid for both of us. I don’t think she even noticed, and that’s not like Helen at all.’
Mario squeezed her hand. ‘I know. It’s tough. At least we don’t have to be separated. That’s one thing.’
When they got back to the café they found it deserted, two irate customers waiting to be served. After he’d dealt with them, Mario ran swiftly up the stairs, pursued by a worried Liz.
‘Papa?’
His father was sitting in the armchair by the fire, staring into space. Mario crouched down beside him, Liz hovering nearby. Aldo Rossi looked up at them at last.
‘I listened to the news,’ he said. ‘I always listen to the news.’ They waited, both of them suddenly realizing what was coming next. ‘
Il Duce
has joined the Germans. Italy has declared war on Britain.’
Mario glanced up at Liz, his expression sombre. They’d been expecting it, but it was a blow nonetheless. She could see that he’d already started thinking ahead to the ramifications of the news. She didn’t think his father had considered those yet. He was too shocked. The country of his birth and the country of his son’s birth were now at war. That was enough to cope with.
The old man’s eyes were wet. Mario put out a hand to him, but he pushed it aside. ‘I go back downstairs,’ he said. ‘I cannot leave my customers unattended.’
Mario rose to his feet, shaking his head at Liz.
‘I think he wants to keep going, pretend that nothing’s changed,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe we can manage that for a wee while.’ He grimaced. ‘At least for the rest of today.’
They followed Aldo downstairs.
‘Will you stay for a bit?’ Mario asked quietly. ‘Help me keep his spirits up?’
‘Of course,’ Liz said, giving his hand a quick squeeze. ‘Nae bother.’
Twenty-nine
One hour later a brick came flying through the window of the café. Aldo was serving coffee to two of his regular customers, an elderly couple sitting at the table nearest the door. The missile flew over them and struck Aldo on the head.
The impact was sufficient to fell him, blood seeping from a wound on his forehead. Mario, hastily wiping his hands on the white apron tied round his waist, came rushing out from behind the counter and knelt down beside his father. Liz had been cleaning some tables at the back of the café, exchanging a few sentences with a single man who was the only other customer in at the time. She went forward too, the man rising to his feet and following her.
‘Should ye no’ get him down the road to the Infirmary, Mario?’ asked the woman, now also on her knees beside Mr Rossi.
‘Aye,’ he said briskly, shaking off the initial shock. ‘Liz, can you mind the store?’
She was about to say yes, of course, nae bother. The younger male customer spoke.
‘I’m thinking you might not have a store to mind! Sorry, pal, but I’m getting out of here!’
He pulled open the door and was gone. That was when they became aware of the noise from outside. There were people out there. Lots of them.
‘Don’t waste any more time, laddie!’ urged the elderly man. ‘Get your father out now! And take the lassie wi’ you! Come on!’
Between the four of them, they got Aldo to his feet and manhandled him out on to the pavement. It wasn’t a crowd which had gathered there. It was a mob, ugly and menacing. Their very posture shrieked aggression.
‘Aw, look,’ shouted one voice. ‘That guy’s hurt.’
Liz stared at them. She couldn’t believe her eyes. If she blinked, would they go away? There were about thirty of them, mostly men but a few women also. They had a handcart in front of them. It was filled with bricks, and stones big enough to fit into a man’s hand...
Had a ripple of sympathy run through them when they had seen Aldo, a man of mature years with blood dripping from his head? If so, it didn’t last long.
‘Dirty Tallies!’ shouted another voice.
‘Tally bastards!’ said someone else.
Mario, his shoulder under his father’s arm, had gone white. Liz thought of
Kristallnacht.
Was this how it had started for the Jews in Germany? People calling them names? Men and women lifting stones, taking aim and getting ready to throw?
‘We’re no’ wanting to hurt anybody,’ came a man’s voice. ‘Let them through.’ The mood shifted again. It came to Liz what made a mob like this so dangerous. You had no idea which way it was going to go next. First a brick through the window. Then sympathy. Then racist insults. And then more bricks and stones?
‘Come on,’ she urged Mario. ‘Your father needs attention now.’
‘You a Tally-lover, hen?’
She didn’t know which one of them had said it, so she lifted her chin and looked at them all. The elderly man gripped her sleeve and whispered, ‘Don’t give them the opportunity, pet.’
He was right. Her head held high, but her heart racing with fear, Liz followed Mario as he moved across the pavement. A group of younger men blocked his path.
‘Tally fucking bastard.’
The menace was unmistakable, all the more chilling because the man who had spoken had said the words quietly, with slow and deliberate malice. He let a young woman push through in front of him. First she smiled at Mario. Then she spat in his face.
Supporting his father with both hands, he wasn’t able to react. Trembling with fury, Liz took her handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the spittle from his face. Locking eyes with the girl who’d done it, she crumpled the cloth up and dropped it in the gutter. The crowd parted and let them through.
When they came from Partick Police Station to arrest Aldo Rossi later that evening, he was still at the Western Infirmary. Some kind soul directed the police officers there. Aldo’s injury had proved to be not too serious, but he was badly shaken. Cordelia Maclntyre, incensed by what had happened, folded her arms and looked down her aristocratic nose at the police sergeant and his constable.
‘You can find Mr Rossi now, but where were you a couple of hours ago? There’s been criminal damage done to his property, you know.’
‘There’s been criminal damage done to Italian businesses all over Glasgow, miss,’ replied the sergeant. ‘We cannae be everywhere at once.’
Over his son’s voluble and frantic protests, they took Aldo away. Mario was distracted. His friends had to restrain him or he’d have got himself into serious trouble. Adam and Cordelia managed to calm him down only by telling him several times that they would get their combined families on to the case, see what strings Mrs Buchanan, Mr Murray and Lady Maclntyre could pull. There must be something that could be done.
‘We’re not living in a police state, after all,’ sniffed Cordelia, her cool eyes sweeping over the representatives of authority. ‘I thought this was the sort of thing we’re supposed to be fighting against.’
She could do the lady-of-the-manor act to perfection, thought Liz admiringly. It helped wring one concession out of the police sergeant. Mario could visit his father the following morning at the police station, but not before then.
‘Of course we’ll not ill-treat him,’ snapped the exasperated sergeant in response to another haughty question from the Honourable Miss Maclntyre. ‘I’ve a father of my own, you know.’
It was heartbreaking. The business Aldo Rossi had struggled for years to build up lay in ruins, trampled and looted by a mindless mob. Silently, Liz followed Mario as he picked his way through the debris of his father’s life.