The Heart of the Family Read Online Free Page A

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 thatthey 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