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Chapter Six

‘Come on and sit down, Mum. I’ve got the kettle on.’

Olive gave Tilly a grateful look as she sank down into the most comfortable of the kitchen chairs – the one that originally belonged to her father-in-law, and which had arms and a couple of cushions, and which she had re-covered in the spring at the same time as she and Tilly had run up the pretty kitchen curtains.

It was Friday afternoon and Tilly had been sent home early because the hospital was completing its evacuation programme ahead of the war that everyone was now not just dreading but also expecting. As Tilly was remaining in London, she would continue to work as part of the skeleton staff in the Lady Almoner’s office.

‘My feet,’ Olive complained as she eased off her shoes and surveyed what looked like the beginnings of a blister. ‘Although I shouldn’t complain, not when I think of those poor children and their mothers.’

In her role as a member of the WVS, Olive had been on duty all day today and the previous day, helping to get small children onto the evacuation trains organised to take them away from danger and into the country.

Newspapers were full of photographs of lines of children being marched away from their homes and their parents, many of them escorted by their teachers, ready to be handed over to waiting groups of volunteers once they reached their destinations. Only mothers with very young children and babies were being evacuated with their children. As Agnes had said the previous evening, after going straight from work to the orphanage to help with the evacuation, it really broke your heart to see the children’s tears as they were taken away from everything and everyone they loved, unable to understand that it was for their own sakes and their own safety.

Olive watched her daughter as she made the tea, worried about her safety.

As though Tilly had guessed her thoughts she said quietly and in a very grown-up voice, I’m glad we’re staying here, Mum. It would be awful if we all deserted London, and those who can’t get away were left on their own. And besides, if anything does happen, if Hitler does bomb us, then I want to be with you, because you’re the best mum in the world. When I listen to poor Agnes talking about growing up in the orphanage and being left on its doorstep, I try to think how I would feel if that was me; if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have you as my mother.’ Her voice broke slightly, causing Olive to blink away her own emotion.

‘Oh, sweetheart, we mustn’t blame Agnes’s mother too much. We don’t know what she might have gone through, poor girl. No mother gives up her baby willingly, I can promise you that, and as for us staying here in London, well, I hope I am doing the right thing, Tilly, and that I’m not just being selfish wanting to be here in this house. A home means a lot to a woman but it never means more than her children and those she loves.’

‘We’ll be all right, Mum, I’m sure of it. Besides, how could Hitler bomb London when we’ve got all those barrage balloons and anti-aircraft batteries, never mind everything else, and the RAF?’

Sally, coming into the kitchen in time to catch Tilly’s fiercely patriotic words, exchanged a brief look over her head with Olive, before agreeing firmly, ‘That’s right, Tilly. This city, and this country, are well defended and we’ll stand firm when the time comes, no matter what Hitler might try to do.’

‘Has everyone gone now?’ Tilly asked her as she removed an extra cup from the cupboard to pour Sally a cup of tea. ‘It seemed so strange when I left earlier, coming through the main hall and it almost being empty. It felt funny, sort of ghostly, making me think how old the hospital really is. I’d never felt it before today.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Sally agreed, ‘and yes, everyone who’s going has mostly gone now, and we’ve sorted out the operating theatres in the basement.’ She didn’t add that she’d heard that orders had been given for thousands of cardboard coffins to be made for the dead the authorities were anticipating should the city come under attack from Hitler.

‘I almost don’t want to do this,’ Olive announced as she switched on the wireless for the six o’clock news bulletin.

‘Come on, Dulcie, it isn’t like you to hang on after we’ve closed for the day,’ Lizzie teased good-naturedly. ‘We’re the last on the floor by the looks of it as well.’

The cosmetics floor was indeed deserted, and had been unusually quiet all day, allowing Mr Selfridge to order each floor to do a practice run of its fire-watching duties, a new regime instituted earlier in the week and which Dulcie loathed. Who wanted to go up onto the roof and act as a look out for non-existent fires started by equally non-existent bombs being dropped from nonexistent German planes? But Mr Selfridge had said they had to, just like he had said they all had to learn how to use a stirrup pump as well as know the correct evacuation procedure from the store, should that be necessary, and his word was law.

She couldn’t hang around here any longer, Dulcie admitted, even if this morning she had woken up feeling sure that today would be the day she saw David James-Thompson again. She had even planned how she was going to give him a big hint about how he could find her at the Hammersmith Palais tomorrow night, sitting at her favourite table, the one in the middle of the front row, facing the band. There was always a crowd of knowing girls who headed for that table, so there was no risk of her ending up sitting there on her own, and they were all there for the same reason: so that they could be seen to advantage by everyone else. Dulcie was so on edge she felt like smoking a cigarette, something she didn’t do very often. Ciggies cost money, and meant that if she bought them she’d have less to spend on her clothes, so normally Dulcie only smoked if someone else offered her a cigarette.

‘Oh, come on then,’ she said to Lizzie, who had now finished putting away her own stock, ‘I just hope we get a few more customers in tomorrow, otherwise I’m going to be dying of boredom. You’d have thought with all this fuss about there going to be a war on that every lad in the city would be coming in here with his girl to treat her to a bit of something, and that every woman without a chap would be coming in to get herself a lipstick so that she could get one before they all go off to war.’

Lizzie gave Dulcie a wry look. ‘I dare say that most people will have more on their minds than buying lipstick, Dulcie.’

‘Such as?’ Dulcie demanded as they walked towards the staff exit to the stairs that led down to the basement-level staff cloakroom.

‘Such as worrying about their children being evacuated if they are young enough, and worrying about their sons going to war if they are old enough. Same thing goes for courting couples. They’ll be wanting to spend what time they’ve got together, not coming in here. Ralph and I are going looking at engagement rings tomorrow,’ she added. ‘Funny but when I was growing up I imagined that when my boy took me to buy an engagement ring it would be the most exciting and happy thing in the world but now it feels like the most frightening and upsetting, because I know that we’re getting engaged now and married at Christmas, just in case.’

Dulcie heaved a bored sigh as they reached the cloakroom and she removed her overall and put it out for the laundry. Mr Selfridge insisted that his staff presented an immaculately clean appearance, which meant that a laundry service was provided for their overalls and uniforms. She was fed up with all this talk of war. Every night at number 13, when everyone else gathered round the wireless to listen to the news, she felt like stamping her foot and saying why didn’t they have some music on instead so that they could have a bit of a dance. Not that that suggestion would go down well with Olive. Dulcie reckoned her landlady would have her out of the house if she gave her the smallest excuse to do that. Well, she wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. And she certainly wasn’t going to give up her comfortable room, or her big bed, and definitely not the wardrobe she had all to herself. Tilly was daft for going soft and sharing her own room with the orphan. She wouldn’t have done that, especially not with a plain dull girl like Agnes, forever creeping around in that shabby brown dress, making Olive feel sorry for her. Well, she didn’t feel sorry for her; if anything, she felt sorry for herself for having to put up with her.

‘So what is this blitzkrieg that everyone’s going on about?’ Dulcie demanded, the four of them – Agnes was still at the orphanage – sitting round the wireless that Olive had just switched off. Everyone apart from Dulcie herself had left their tea virtually untouched, and there was an almost palpable air of grim acceptance in the kitchen.

‘It means lightning war, Dulcie,’ Sally explained. ‘That’s the kind of war that Germany inflicted on Poland when the German army invaded Poland this morning.’ When it invaded Poland and swept all before it, she thought emotionally, including the brave but hopelessly outdated Polish cavalry, which still waged war on horseback. They had been utterly unable to stand against the might of the Wehrmacht force of over a million men with armoured and motorised divisions. The Luftwaffe had blown up Poland’s railways and blown its air force out of the sky. It was over: Poland’s defences lay in ruins, and Poland as an autonomous state had ceased to exist.

Seated across the table from Sally, Olive removed a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and blew her nose firmly, blinking hard as she did so.

‘So why should we have to bother about Poland?’ Dulcie asked, apparently unmoved by the emotion gripping Olive, Sally and Tilly.

‘Why should we bother?’ Sally’s normally calm tone had sharpened to real anger. ‘Why we should bother, Dulcie, is because thousands of brave men have died trying to protect their country from an unprovoked attack; even more thousands of innocent women and children have also been killed or injured or taken prisoner. Even if we weren’t honour bound by treaty to support the Poles, even if there wasn’t the fear that Hitler might decide to attack us, as human beings we should bother about the cruelty to so many innocent people. As hard as it might be for you to lift your mind from such important things as selling lipstick, I would advise that you try to do so, Dulcie, because where Poland lies defeated and bloody today, we could lie tomorrow.’

When Tilly made a small sound of anguish Sally looked at her and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, Tilly, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘It’s best that we all know and face the truth,’ Olive answered for Tilly.

‘Our Government can’t ignore what has happened.’

‘Does that mean that we’re going to be at war with Germany?’

‘I’m afraid so, Tilly,’ Olive answered quietly, brushing her hand over her daughter’s head. A sad smile touched her mouth when Tilly put her head on her shoulder, plainly overcome by her own emotions.

There was no need for Sally to get on her high horse and start lecturing her, Dulcie thought crossly. And besides, lipsticks were just as important as Hitler and his blitzkrieg. At least they were to her.

‘When do you think we’ll hear – officially, I mean?’ Olive asked Sally.

Somehow she had fallen into the habit of treating Sally as though they were closer in age than they actually were, finding it comforting to have Sally in the house to talk to. Secretly, in her heart, Olive was beginning to think of all of them here in her small all-female household as a sort of family. Already she felt protective of the girls – except of course Dulcie, who did not need anyone to protect her. Quite the opposite, in fact. In Olive’s opinion it was others who needed protecting from Dulcie.

‘I don’t know, but it’s bound to be soon,’ Sally answered.

There had been so much talk about war in all the newspapers, so much preparation for it, what with the Government producing so many leaflets about the dangers they would all be facing, that Tilly thought she had grown used to the fear that stalked them, but now, in her mother’s warm comfortable kitchen, with the sun still shining outside, she realised that she had not and that she had not known what fear was at all really until she thought about the fate of the poor Polish people and faced for the first time the true enormity of war.

Standing outside their church on Sunday morning, with everyone going on about the war, no one in her family would even have noticed if she hadn’t turned up this morning, Dulcie thought grumpily as she watched the worshippers leaving, all the young men in uniform grouping themselves together, passing round their cigarettes, not joking and indulging in horseplay as they had on previous Sundays, like children let out of school, but instead exchanging brusque words, spoken from the sides of their mouths, frowns replacing smiles. Even her own brother, Rick’s, normal smile was replaced by a look of determination. She hadn’t bothered going to the Palais last night after all. She hadn’t felt like it somehow.

Moving a little away from everyone else – in part because her mother was still going on about Edith’s singing and how she’d been clapped through three encores at a local working men’s club the previous night, and in part because she liked standing out from the crowd – Dulcie caught the now familiar words being spoken grimly into the warm September air, words like ‘devastation’, ‘POWs’, and ‘blitzkrieg’, mingling with phrases like ‘it will be us next’, ‘thousands left for dead’, ‘poor bloody bastards’. . .

Then one of the boy messengers that worked with the ARP men came cycling up full pelt, yelling out as loud as he could, ‘It’s happened. We’re at war. Mr Chamberlain has just said.’

Of course, uproar followed, with the ARP lot grabbing hold of the boy and hauling him off to question him, whilst the lads in uniform followed after them. Wives and mothers, sisters and sweethearts, clung together, whilst the older men, including her father, looked smaller and shrunken somehow.

‘Well, that’s all I need, isn’t it?’ Dulcie could hear Edith complaining. ‘A war, just when my singing career is looking like taking off.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry too much. Perhaps you’ll be able to sing to Hitler. Course, you’ll have to learn German first,’ Dulcie taunted her.

‘Dulcie, that’s enough of that,’ her mother stopped her, giving her an angry look. ‘There’s no need to go upsetting people more than they need to be upset.’ She looked across to where Rick was standing with a now much larger group of men.

A shiver of foreboding went through Dulcie. Thousands the soldiers had killed in Poland, thousands of young men just like her brother. For the first time since all the talk of war had started Dulcie felt its ice-cold fingers clutch at her heart and grip it painfully hard. She might argue with her brother, she might mock him and taunt him, but of all her family it was Rick to whom she was the closest, Rick who she secretly thought was the best brother that any girl could have, with his handsome looks and his easy-going charm, his way of somehow always being there to calm things down when she felt hard done by. Rick might look so tall and manly and indestructible in his army uniform, but he wasn’t indestructible, he was human flesh and blood, and vulnerable. A huge lump blocked her throat, feelings and thoughts she had never had to worry about before swarming through her head like wasps provoked by someone deliberately stirring up their nest.

‘The next thing we know, the ruddy Germans will be bombing us out of our houses and gassing us all to death,’ one elderly woman was screeching. ‘I can remember what it was like the last time, our lads coming back from the trenches with their lungs rotting from the Germans gassing them.’

Dulcie looked down at her own side. She’d tossed her gas mask to the back of her wardrobe, but of course Edith had hers and was now clutching the strap of its box tightly.

Rick came over. ‘Forget about dinner for me, Ma. Me and some of the other lads are going to see what we can find out. Sid Winters – you know, him whose cousin is a regular in the army – reckons that those who’ve already done their training will be shipped out to France pdq, and that our training will be rushed through now.’

Her brother seemed excited now that the initial shock of the announcement had faded, Dulcie recognised, her earlier concern changing to resentment that he could look so pleased when she was worrying herself sick about him. Her mother’s pinched expression became even more strained but she didn’t say anything, simply nodding and then turning to put her arm round Edith and draw her close to her in a manner similar to which Olive had drawn Tilly close the previous evening.

Mothers fussing over their favourites – well, let them, Dulcie thought acidly; she didn’t care.

‘I’ll have my dinner at Article Row,’ she told her mother tersely, turning on her heel without waiting for her to respond.

‘So it’s happened then?’ Olive found that she was automatically speaking in a lower voice as she asked the vicar’s wife the question to which she already knew the answer.

‘Yes. The Prime Minister has already made a formal announcement. I expect we’ll be able to hear what he said on the news at twelve o’clock.’ The two women exchanged tense white-faced looks.

The news that Britain was now formally at war with Germany hadn’t come out of the blue but it was still shocking, making the heart race and the stomach tense.

‘So many of our young men are already in uniform,’ Mrs Windle continued with a nod in the direction of the young men standing together outside the church in their khaki, their Royal Navy dark blue and their RAF blue serge. ‘And now thousands more will be joining them.’

Their small, well-attended church had been built at the same time as Article Row, by the same philanthropist, and stood on the site of a much older church, along with a neat little rectory, a church hall, and the orphanage, the congregation coming from Article Row and the surrounding area. Olive’s husband and in-laws were buried in its graveyard, and on the anniversaries of their deaths and at Christmas, Olive always made a special point of placing fresh flowers on their graves. She could see the graveyard from where she was standing, sunlight dappling through the shade of the yew trees standing sentinel over the dead. Her heart lurched, a shiver striking through her as she looked from the graveyard to the eager young men in their uniforms.

‘We lost so many in the last war, I can’t believe there’s to be another,’ she said sadly. ‘Look at them. They’re all standing so tall and proud, so determined to do their bit, but they’re so young.’

And so many of them would die, was what Olive was thinking but could not say, especially when one of those young men in air-force blue was Mrs Windle’s own nephew.

At her mother’s side, Tilly held on tightly to her gas mask in its smart box, which she and her mother had covered with some scraps of lace to make it look more attractive, a fashion that many young women in the country were adopting, according to Woman’s Weekly.

‘Everywhere is so quiet without the children,’ Tilly commented as they walked home together.

‘Their poor mothers were besides themselves with grief last week when they sent them away, but I dare say now that they will be feeling that they have done the right thing. Hitler is bound to target London.’

‘If you’re going to say that you wish that I’d been young enough to be evacuated, then please don’t,’ Tilly begged her mother. ‘I want to be here with you, Mum.’

As they passed the ARP station on the corner, Sergeant Dawson was standing outside it smoking a cigarette.

‘You’ll have heard the news, I expect?’ he asked.

‘That we’re at war? Yes.’ Olive shivered a little despite the warmth of the sun flooding between the buildings at the entrance to Article Row.

‘I never thought I’d say this, but right now I’m sort of glad that our lad’s already been taken,’ the sergeant told Olive quietly. ‘There’s many a young lad I’ve seen this morning proud to wear his uniform and do his bit for this country. It’s different for those of us who saw something of the last war. I was only in it for the last few weeks, but that was enough.’

‘Yes,’ Olive agreed, thinking of her own husband, his bravery and his death.

On Article Row, the leaves on the clipped privet hedges standing sentry between the low walls at the boundary of each front garden were beginning to look dusty and tired after a summer of exposure to London’s sooty air. Soon it would be autumn and the leaves would die and fall, just like so many of the young men who today were full of vigour and life. Tears blurred Olive’s vision.

A troop from the local Boys’ Brigade marched past the end of the road, their young faces shining with excitement and anticipation. For them war was something to excite them, whilst for those who had lived through the last war, it was something to fear.

‘Come on,’ she told Tilly firmly, increasing her pace as they headed down Article Row after saying goodbye to Sergeant Dawson. ‘I’ve got that joint in the oven that will need seeing to, and —’ Olive stopped speaking to stare up in horrified disbelief at the clear blue sky in response to the wave of sound that was rising to a deafening warning wail.

For a second neither she nor Tilly could move, simply standing staring at one another until Tilly broke their stillness by grabbing hold of Olive’s arm and yelling, ‘Mum, it’s the air-raid siren. Come on we need to get in the shelter.’

They were four doors away from number 13. Holding on to her mother’s arm and almost pulling her along, Tilly started to run, her heart thudding with dread, the wail of the air-raid alarm sending its warning to every part of her terrified body.

Dulcie heard the air-raid siren when she was walking along High Holborn and got caught up in the frantic rush of people reacting to its sound, the panic of the growing crowd as some ran one way and others another, squeezing her up against the sandbags protecting the walls of one of the buildings. The rasp of the sandbags against her legs made her feel grateful for the fact that she wasn’t wearing her precious stockings, but that relief gave way to fear as the crowd swelled and she was pushed again, this time half losing her balance in her high heels. She would have fallen if it hadn’t been for the male hand reaching out to grasp her arm, its owner hauling her to her feet and insisting, ‘The shelter’s this way.’ He was running so fast, his hand still holding her arm, that she was lifted off her feet.

‘Stop, I’m losing my shoes!’

‘Better that than losing your life,’ was his response, as he slowed his pace just enough for her to get her feet back in her shoes, before tugging her along again to where a crowd of people were trying to push their way into the concrete air-raid shelter she had walked past so often, deriding its presence and its ugliness, but which now had never been a more welcome sight. Not that she was going to admit it. Even as she edged inside, Dulcie was sniffing disdainfully as the scent of stale concrete, male sweat and female anxiety filled the air, ignoring the ARP warden’s instruction to, ‘Move down inside, miss. We don’t want people blocking up the entrance.’

‘Hitler hasn’t wasted much time, has he?’ a woman standing close to her observed in a cockney accent, causing several others to give way to the relief of shaky laughter.

Now that they were inside the shelter and safe, Dulcie had an opportunity to look at her rescuer properly for the first time. Around her brother’s age, and of middle height and square muscular build, and wearing an army uniform, he had mid-brown curly hair, hazel eyes and a plain but kind face. Not the kind of male looks to set a girl’s heart beating with excitement, Dulcie decided ungratefully, not like David James-Thompson. Now there was someone she would much rather have been rescued by.

In their Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, Olive and Tilly sat opposite one another on the garden chairs they’d put in there, along with an old card table, a pack of cards in its drawer, which stuck now because of the damp. Olive had lit the paraffin lamp, which had been on the list of ‘essentials’ Woman’s Weekly had advised all well-prepared housewives to have inside their Anderson. Spare bedding, warm clothes and food were things that should be kept close to hand in the home, ready to be carried into the shelter when needed, but the paraffin stove, matches, wrapped in a piece of waterproof material, and a waterproof box containing games, a couple of favourite books and some candles could be safely left in the shelter.

Olive had made sure that hers was kept swept and tidy, its door opened on sunny days to make sure it was aired, and the vexed question of ‘needing to go’ sorted out via a discreet curtain with a bucket and a wooden seat behind it.

‘Will we hear the German planes?’ Tilly asked Olive nervously.

‘I should think so, but they won’t get as far as London, Tilly, I’m sure, not with all the defences the Government has put in place.

‘I’m glad I thought to dash into the kitchen and turn down the gas, otherwise that nice piece of beef I’ve got in the oven will be ruined.’

It was easier to talk about mundane, everyday things than to let one’s mind be filled with the horror and fear of what was happening.

‘Oh, don’t talk about food, Mum,’ Tilly groaned. ‘I’m scared, but I’m still hungry. Do you think the others will be all right – Agnes and Sally and Dulcie?’

‘They’ll be fine, love,’ Olive reassured her. ‘Sally will be at the hospital and they’ve got a big shelter there, I’m sure.’

‘She’d probably have to go down into the basement,’ Tilly told her.

‘Agnes is helping tidy up the orphanage before they hand it over to the council to use for extra billeting for refugees and that, so she’ll be able to go into the cellar there,’ Olive continued, ‘and as for Dulcie, well, I’m sure she’ll find somewhere.’ Olive’s voice hardened slightly, the thought in her mind that Dulcie would be safe because she was that sort, the sort that always fell on their feet.

‘You don’t like Dulcie very much, do you, Mum?’ Tilly asked.

For a moment Olive was tempted to fib and say that she didn’t know what Tilly meant, but her daughter was growing up. She herself had been married at eighteen and a mother not long after, and although the last thing she wanted was for Tilly to grow up too fast, Olive knew that it wouldn’t be fair to lie to her and treat her as a child. So she admitted quietly, ‘No I don’t. She isn’t the sort of person I was thinking of when I thought of us having lodgers.’

‘You mean because she’s pretty and likes makeup and goes out dancing a lot?’

Olive could hear not just the questioning in Tilly’s voice, but also, more worrying, a hint of rebuke.

‘No, not because of those things,’ she defended herself. ‘After all, you are pretty and although young skin like yours doesn’t need anything more than a dash of lipstick and a brush of mascara on those lovely long eyelashes of yours, you too wear makeup and I dare say you would go out dancing a lot yourself if I let you. No, Tilly, it isn’t because of any of those things that I feel the way I do about Dulcie.’

‘What is it then?’

Moving closer to her daughter, Olive put her arm round her, smiling, filled with maternal love, when Tilly put her head on her shoulder just as she had done as a child.

‘It’s the way Dulcie speaks to Agnes, the way the things she says and does show that she doesn’t have the kind of . . . of consideration and compassion for others that I hope I have always encouraged you to have. There’s a . . . a selfishness about Dulcie that makes it hard for me to warm to her. Tilly, I know you find her exciting and glamorous – of course you do, and at your age I dare say I would have done as well – but think of this, sweetheart. Her own family live within walking distance of here and yet she’s chosen to turn her back on them.’

‘Because there isn’t enough room, and her sister borrows her clothes.’

Olive’s heart sank a little. Plainly Dulcie had had more of an effect on Tilly than she had realised if Tilly was already willing to take Dulcie’s side and defend her.

‘I do know what you mean though, Mum,’ Tilly acknowledged. ‘But don’t you think that Dulcie might be the way she is because people haven’t always been, well, kind and considerate to her?’

Hard on the heels of Olive’s jolt of surprise that Tilly could be so acutely perceptive in pointing out something she hadn’t yet recognised herself, Olive felt a surge of love and gratitude that she had been lucky enough to have such a special daughter.

‘I don’t know, Tilly, you might be right. We shall have to see,’ she answered.

‘Cigarette?’ Dulcie’s rescuer offered her, from the safety of the air-raid shelter, its dark interior illuminated by the lamps that had been lit by one of the three ARP wardens who had taken charge of the place. The lamps gave off a strong smell of paraffin, making Dulcie wrinkle her nose before she shook her head and started to turn away from her rescuer, but he refused to take her hint.

‘I’m Jim Andrews, Private Jim Andrews, 3rd Battalion The Rifles.’ He gave her a rueful smile. ‘I was supposed to be on leave but I reckon with this lot happening, we’ll be recalled before I’ve so much as got me feet back under me mother’s kitchen table, and be on our way to France.’

‘Regular soldier, are you then, son?’ an older man sitting on one of the narrow benches down the side of the shelter asked.

‘Joined up six months ago after I’d done me training,’ Jim confirmed.

He was looking at Dulcie as he spoke, and she suspected that if she gave him half a chance he’d end up asking her out, which wasn’t what she wanted at all. He looked the settling-down type, and Dulcie wasn’t interested in anything about settling down. To her relief, just as he opened his mouth to say something, the sound of the all clear reached their ears, causing a wave of relief to surge through the shelter. Then those inside gathered up their belongings and started queuing up to leave.

‘’Orrible place. You won’t get me going back in one. I’d as soon die in me own bed,’ one elderly woman was telling anyone who would listen as they started to file out past the ARP wardens, who were now trying to write down everyone’s names and addresses.

‘No point in giving him mine, seeing as I won’t be here much longer,’ Jim told Dulcie.

‘Me neither,’ she agreed, it being Dulcie’s nature not to want to oblige officialdom in any of its many forms.

‘You mean you’re going into uniform?’ Jim asked her as he stood back to allow her to step outside and then rejoined her, sticking firmly to her side.

‘No. I mean you’d never get me back in a place like that again even if you paid me,’ Dulcie informed him pithily. ‘It smelled to high heaven, and all them old women going on about the last war and us being gassed got on my nerves. Anyway I shan’t need to, seeing as we’ve got our own shelter in the garden. Thanks for looking out for me,’ she felt obliged to say, ‘but I’d better run, otherwise I’ll get what for, for missing dinner.’

‘I dare say you’ve already got a chap, a pretty girl like you,’ Jim was saying, but Dulcie pretended not to have heard him, deliberately turning away and plunging into the growing crowd thronging the pavement, and then hesitating. The siren going off like that would have given her mother a real fright. Perhaps she should take the bus back home just to check that everyone was all right, and to reassure them that she was too. Not that they’d care. Her mother would probably be too busy having palpitations worrying about ruddy Edith and her singing to even notice she was there. And besides, if there was to be another air-raid warning then she’d rather spend it in number 13’s Anderson shelter than in the public shelter her family would have to go in.

Turning on her heel, Dulcie headed for Article Row.

In the kitchen of number 13, Agnes was listening wide-eyed as Sally told them, ‘I saw the police sergeant who lives at number one on my way here.’

‘Sergeant Dawson,’ Olive and Tilly said together, Olive turning her attention from the potatoes she was putting into the hot roasting tin as she did so to look at Sally.

‘Yes, Sergeant Dawson,’ Sally confirmed. ‘He was standing by his gate when I walked past and he said that he’d heard that the sirens going off had just been a false alarm, that was all.’

‘A false alarm!’ Olive exclaimed. ‘Well, of all the things, nearly giving us a heart attack just for that. It’s just as well I dashed in here to turn the oven down. This piece of brisket wouldn’t have been worth eating otherwise. Is it twelve o’clock yet, only the Prime Minister’s announcement is bound to be on the news.’

‘Nearly, just a couple of minutes to go,’ Sally told her.

As Olive had guessed, Sally had sheltered at the hospital when the siren had gone off, thankful that because it was a Sunday no operations were scheduled, and no emergencies had come in. They’d had a busy enough night in the operating theatre with an appendix that had to be taken out, followed by a lad with a piece of glass from a broken bottle stuck in his leg, which had only just missed severing an artery, and another with a badly broken arm after a fight had broken out at a local pub.

‘It’s twelve now,’ Sally warned, as Olive slid the roasting tin back into the oven and closed the oven door, wiping her hands on her apron before slipping into her chair just in time to hear the wireless crackle and buzz as Tilly frantically adjusted the reception.

Then, after comment from the announcer, they could all hear the Prime Minister saying, ‘This country is now at war with Germany. We are ready.’

The sound of the kitchen door opening distracted them all, Dulcie coming in, saying crossly, ‘I’ve nearly ruined my best shoes and now I’ve just heard one of your neighbours saying that that ruddy air-raid warning was just a false alarm . . .’

‘Shush . . .’

‘The Prime Minister’s on.’

Dulcie glowered as both Olive and Sally spoke at once, demanding her silence. What was the point in listening to the Prime Minister telling them what they all already knew?

The announcer was back on the air, telling them that the King would be broadcasting to the country that evening.

‘So it’s really happening then?’ Agnes asked uncertainly. ‘We really are going to be bombed by the Germans?’

‘We’re certainly at war with them, Agnes,’ Sally answered her briskly, ‘but as for them bombing us, well, I dare say the RAF will have something to say about that.’ Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep with being on nights. Thank goodness she started back on days tomorrow. There was nothing like night duty to drain a person of energy. Yes, it was definitely lack of sleep that was making her eyes sting and her throat ache, nothing else, and certainly not the thought of three people in Liverpool who now mattered as little to her as she obviously did to them.

It was a sombre group of women that sat down to the Sunday dinner Olive dished up later than its normal time of one o’clock, thanks to everything that had been going on.

Afterwards, whilst Tilly and Agnes washed up and Dulcie perched on the edge of the kitchen table watching them, Sally and Olive went into the garden so that Sally could discuss with Olive her plans for starting up a vegetable garden.

‘Huh, growing veggies, is it?’ Nancy from next door demanded, popping her head over the fence, obviously having heard them talking. ‘My Arthur thinks it’s a daft idea trying to grow stuff when we’ve got Covent Garden so close by. He reckons that the Government’s got itself a load of seeds it wants to get rid of.’ She sniffed disparagingly as she spoke, causing Olive to suppress a small sigh.

Sally, though, shook her head and told her calmly, ‘I agree that you can’t get better veggies than those from Covent Garden, but the veggies have got to be got into the country and up to London, and that won’t be possible once this war gets going properly, so it makes sense for us all to do our bit and grow what we can for ourselves.’

‘Well, I suppose there is that,’ Nancy agreed grudgingly, after a brief pause, ‘although I hope you aren’t thinking of fattening a pig like some seem to be doing down on the allotments by the railway.’

Sally laughed. ‘I certainly can’t see us going that far, although I suppose we could think about having a few chickens.’

‘Chickens? Nasty dirty things. Bring rats, they do.’

‘Not if you keep their food out of the rats’ reach, and think of the lovely fresh eggs.’

Sally was dealing beautifully with Nancy, Olive recognised, treating her neighbour with the respect that was due to her seniority in years, but at the same time making it abundantly clear that she could and would stand her own ground. Nancy was inclined to be a bit of a bully and, like all bullies, if she sensed weakness or fear that only made her worse.

Changing tack, Nancy told Sally, ‘I saw you stop and talk to Sergeant Dawson earlier. I feel sorry for him, I really do, with that wife of his.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Mrs Dawson, Nancy,’ Olive protested. ‘I know she keeps herself to herself but that’s because of them losing their son. At least that’s what Sergeant Dawson hinted to me.’

‘Well, she won’t be the only one here with a son to mourn, now,’ Nancy predicted direly. ‘And have you seen how fast them houses further down that are let out to civil servants and the like have emptied? Cowards, they are, the lot them.’

‘Mrs Windle told me that the Government have evacuated lots of civil servants. I expect that’s why they’ve gone. They wouldn’t have had any choice. Not if they wanted to keep their jobs.’

‘Well, you would say that, you being the charitable sort. I’m not so easily taken in. Before you know where we are we’ll have them empty houses filled with refugees wot don’t know how to live amongst decent folk. It’s bad enough us having them Greeks or whatever they are living so close.’

‘They’re Greek Cypriots, Nancy,’ Olive explained patiently, ‘and they don’t do any harm. They keep themselves to themselves, you know that.’

Nancy, though, was plainly not in the mood to be appeased, her mood perhaps reflecting that of the whole country in its refusal to be appeased by Hitler’s offers and explanations of why he had invaded Poland, Olive thought.

‘How do we know them Greeks aren’t on Hitler’s side, that’s what I want to know. They could be spying for him,’ Nancy told Olive with the air of someone who was determined to have the last word.

‘Nancy can be a bit difficult, I’m afraid,’ Olive told Sally after her neighbour had returned to her own house, leaving them to continue their discussion about Sally’s vegetable bed. ‘She does tend to get a bit of a bee in her bonnet about things, so it’s best not to tell her too much.’

‘I know what you mean. We had a neighbour who was much the same. My mother always used to say that she loved finding fault with others. Sadly some people are like that.’

Such a sad look crossed Sally’s face that Olive instinctively reached out and patted her arm.

‘You must miss your own folk,’ was all she could think of to say, not wanting to pry.

‘Not really.’ Sally’s voice and expression changed and hardened. ‘My mother is dead, and . . . and my father remarried and has his own life now. I had the most happy childhood, thanks to my mother, but that’s in the past. Shall we have the veggie bed here, do you think? It’s a good spot with plenty of sunlight?’

Recognising that her lodger did not want to talk about her family, Olive nodded.

‘I noticed a decent-looking hardware shop a couple of streets away when I was walking back the other day,’ Sally continued, changing the subject. ‘I’ll call in there and get some string and some other bits and pieces so that we can mark the bed out.’

‘You might find there’s everything you need in my late father-in-law’s shed,’ Olive told her. ‘He was a keen gardener before he got too poorly to work. When we go back inside I’ll find the key and then you can have a look. Mind you, if you are going to call in at Hargreaves you might see if you can buy some extra torch batteries, if you don’t mind, and some more candles. I’ll give you the money.’

‘Good idea. We’ll all be needing them once the nights draw in and we’ve got to deal with the blackout.’

‘Yes. I’m going to sticky-tape the windows tomorrow now that it’s official and we’re at war. I got the tape a while back when the Government started sending out those leaflets about gas masks and evacuating the kiddies and all that.’

Whilst Olive chatted to Sally in the garden, in the kitchen the washing up had been finished and the dishes put away – by Tilly and Agnes. Dulcie, who had watched them without offering to help, was sitting on the table, swinging her long slim legs and eyeing them with a bored look.

‘I suppose your brother will go straight into service now, once he’s finished his army training?’ Tilly commented.

‘I suppose he will,’ Dulcie agreed. Agnes had removed the apron she’d been wearing whilst she helped with the washing up, and now what looked like several pieces of folded paper had fallen out of the pocket of her too large dress and onto the floor.

‘What’s this?’ Dulcie demanded, swiftly picking up the papers.

‘Oh. It’s what Ted gave me.’ Immediately Agnes reached out for the paper, her obvious anxiety making Dulcie taunt her, holding it up out of her reach.

‘Ted? So who’s he, then? A boyfriend? Been sending you love letters, has he?’

Dulcie was astonished that any male would show an interest in someone as drab and dull as Agnes, never mind write to her, as well as feeling just that little bit put out that Agnes, with her love letters, had stepped into territory that Dulcie considered to be more properly hers. It wasn’t that she wanted a boyfriend, especially not one who was keen on someone like Agnes, but it still aroused her competitive spirit and galled her a little that plain Agnes should be the first one of them in the house to have a male in tow.

Her face scarlet with anxiety and mortification, Agnes denied that as quickly as though Ted himself were there to hear Dulcie’s comments.

‘It isn’t like that. Ted isn’t my boyfriend.’

‘So who is he then, and why is he writing to you?’

‘He’s a driver on the underground, and he’s helping me to learn the names of all the different stations on each of the lines, so that I don’t get confused when people ask for tickets. Ever so kind and nice he is.’

‘So you are sweet on him then?’ Dulcie pounced.

‘No.’ Agnes could imagine how embarrassed Ted would be if he thought that someone as dull as her was getting ideas into her head that had no right being there.

Listening to their exchange, Tilly could see that Agnes was getting upset and couldn’t help wishing that Dulcie would stop teasing her.

‘Learn all the stations? Oh heavens, Agnes, I don’t think I could do that!’ Tilly exclaimed. Dulcie’s behaviour was making her feel uncomfortable. She admired the older girl but at the same time she felt protective of Agnes and didn’t like to see Dulcie making fun of her.

Giving Tilly a grateful look, Agnes explained, ‘Ted’s been teaching me this tune so that I can sing them ’cos that’s how his dad taught him to remember the stations. We have a cup of tea together every day just before he clocks on. He does the late shift.’

‘Well, you’d better not let Tilly’s mother know that you’re being so familiar with a man, otherwise you’ll be out on your ear, ’cos she doesn’t approve of her lodgers having gentlemen friends, does she, Tilly?’ Dulcie demanded, determined to have her pound of flesh.

‘Oh, no. It’s nothing like that,’ Agnes protested, looking even more distressed and anxious.

‘Dulcie’s just teasing you, Agnes,’ Tilly tried to calm her, insisting to the other girl, ‘Aren’t you, Dulcie?’

Dulcie gave a dismissive shrug, tossing the folded pages over to Agnes and laughing as she failed to catch them and had to scrabble on the floor for them.

‘If you say so.’ It irked her that Tilly had taken Agnes’s side. They were just a couple of know-nothing kids, the pair of them, who’d end up being ‘best friends’ and sticking to one another like glue. She’d left all that kind of thing behind her when she’d left school. In this life it was everyone for themselves, and them that put themselves first did best. Not that she’d actually had a best friend at school, she was forced to admit. But then that had been because the other girls had been jealous of her, and them that had palled up with her had only done so because they were soppy over her brother. Besides, once you started palling up with other girls they started wanting to know every bit of your business, and then they started threatening to tell on you if they didn’t like what you were doing. No, the last thing she needed was a best friend.