Franca Erriquez

I don't remember when I first met Franca, my mother's friend for many years, who also lived in Woodhouse Park, and was one of many Italian war brides who, like my mother, had married an English soldier and come to England with them.
Franca was born in Ferrara in northern Italy. She was an only child, whose father was one of 60,000 Italians who were captured by the Red Army during the Second World War, and of these only 10,000 remained alive at the end of the war and were repatriated to Italy. According to the story I was told as a child there was a bombing raid on Ferrara towards the end of the war, most likely in the summer of 1944, whilst Franca was at school, and Franca returned home afterwards to discover her home had been destroyed and her mother had been killed. I do not know how she survived after that as she would have been a teenager. Ferrara was liberated officially on 24th April, 1945 by the 8th Army. I believe that Franca survived like many other war orphans and hungry children by hanging around a British army base. It was here that she met a soldier, George M—, from Manchester, by whom she became pregnant. I don't know when they married, but their son Rex was born in Italy and his birth was registered with the Italian authorities there.
It must have been in about 1951 that Franca and George, like my parents, moved to a new home in Woodhouse Park, Their home was on Portway, about a half a mile from our home, and it ws here that summer that their daughter Sonia was born, only a few months before the birth of my sister Rina. I remember going to their home with my mother, and I particularly admired for some forgotten reason a typical Smiths wind up clock on their mantelpiece. Like us they had very little in the way of posessions. George was a bus driver with the Manchester Corporation Transport Department, and here he became friends with Mahmoud F—. Mahmoud was an Egyptian seaman who in 1934, when he was aged 42, married a girl from Sculcoates in Hull, called Eva Hill. I was told that she was only sixteen years old, but having checked the records I believe she was in fact twenty two years old. The couple had twelve children, the last being born in 1957. The couple appear to have moved to Manchester at the beginning of the war, and he died there in 1968. I attended his Muslim funeral in Manchester that summer when I was 18.
George took his friend home to meet his wife, and I believe the visit was reciprocated, and that was how Franca met Mahmoud's son Hussein, always known as Hosney. He had been born in Sculcoates in 1935. I remember him then as tall and handsome with glossy black hair and brown eyes he had inherited from his father. He had an extravert personality and a wonderful, infectious laugh. He was generous too: he bought for my birthday an iced cake with range roses, something I had never known.
Franca and Hosney fell in love. France left George, and left the family home. While matters were sorted her son Rex came to live with us at Manley Road, so it must have been about 1959, and Rex shared a bedroom and bed with me. Roy had been away at a summer camp run by the Salford Roman Catholic diocese, and had learnt a lot from the older boys. As he was three years older than me he also taught me a lot, so we were often naked together in the bed, enjoying each others young bodies, and he taught me how to wank properly and how to wank his cock for him. I enjoyed our innocent fun together.
Franca and Hosney set up home together with Rex and Sonia at 92, Rosebery Street in Moss Side, not far from my primary school and close to Maine Road, the Manchester City football ground. i often went round there to visit them and to play with Rex. These were never the games of our youth, to which we never referred, but much more exploring on our bicycles. Rex taught me the correct way to lean into corners on a bike. He was for a short while an older brother to me.
I enjoyed being in their home, and Franca's cheerful company, and would also run errands for her occasionally to the shops in Princess Road.
We did not know that there was a dark secret in 92, Rosebery Street. I did not know till some years later that Hosney was sexually abusing his stepdaughter, and that she fellated him each morning. When Hosney and Franca separated, we were told it was because Hosney wanted a child, but it may well have been that Franca discovered what was happening to her daughter.
I know that Rex married Carole in 1970. I also know that Rex divorced his wife after Carole had an affair with his stepfather, Hosney. I do not know the date of this. This must have antedated Hosney and Franca's separation.
At some time after this Hosney married an American, and they had a daughter, thus satisfying Hosney's wishes for a child. When his daughter was about five years old Hosney collapsed and died of a heart attack upstairs on a bus in Manchester. His body was robbed of any valuables: his wallet, and a gold chain round his neck. His wife returned to America taking their daughter with them. Some years later I did correspond with Hosney's widow, but I let the correspondence lapse as I fely I knew too many secrets.
I did see Sonia again. I was buying a pair of thick socks for hiking, and went into a shop in market Street, Manchester facing Lewis's and was happy to find her serving, and was able to chat a little. I believe though that Sonia became a drug addict and turned to prostitution. She died very young after a cigarette she was smoking in bed set her bedding on fire causing severe injuries.
France always worked at the Dunlop factory in Manchester making inflatable dinghies; demanding but poorly paid work. In her old age she suffered from heart complaints and underwent surgery. I met her ten years ago at my parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary celebrations in Chester. She came once to visit us in Crediton, and was happy in the warmth of our conservatory, and shrugged off my mother's rudeness to her. Franca spent her last years in a nursing home in Manchester, including at Heathlands near my parents, but they no longer bothered with her and did not visit her. I remember her with affection.
[Written in affectionate memory. I have changed names.]