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Chapter Ten

‘It’s St John Ambulance this afternoon,’ Tilly reminded Agnes as they stood together outside the church after morning service. ‘I hope I don’t have to be injured again. Johnny Walton bandaged my arm so tightly last time it went numb.’

‘Learning first aid isn’t as bad as when we have to move all those sandbags that are supposed to be collapsed buildings, to get the injured out,’ Agnes reminded her. ‘Ted is on fire-watching duties for the street he lives in when he’s not working nights. He says when there’s a full moon he can see the barrage balloons as clear as anything, and right over to the river. Do you think that Hitler will really bomb us, Tilly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tilly admitted. People talked a lot about the war, but so far nothing really bad had happened, and it was hard to imagine what war was like, even though she knew that Britain’s soldiers had been sent to France.

People were already complaining about the inconvenience of the blackout, and having bossy Air Raid Precautions wardens coming round threatening to fine you if you showed even the smallest chink of light. Plain daft, Nancy next door had said to Tilly’s mother when she had been grumbling about it, when there wasn’t a German in sight.

Where there had initially been a sense of purpose and determination because of the war, there was now almost a sense of anticlimax.

‘Mum said that she was going to have a word with the dressmaker and arrange for us to go to her so that she can take our measurements for our new things.’ Tilly gave a small sigh. ‘I do wish that Mum would let me go to the Hammersmith Palais. I’m not a child any more, after all.’

‘We’ll be going to the church’s Christmas Dance,’ Agnes reminded her. To Agnes, going to any kind of dance was thrillingly exciting. She couldn’t wait to tell Ted how kind Tilly’s mother had been to her, and about her new clothes.

‘Oh, the church dance!’ Tilly pulled a face. ‘That will just be boys and girls who are still at school. Dulcie said this morning at breakfast that the Hammersmith Palais is the very best dancehall in London and that it was packed with men in uniform last night.’

It wasn’t men in uniform who occupied Tilly’s most private thoughts, though, so much as one particular man in uniform – Dulcie’s brother. In bed at night, when she closed her eyes, Tilly thought about how exciting it would be to dance with Dulcie’s brother, picturing herself in her new dress whilst Rick swept her round the floor and told her how beautiful she looked. Of course, she couldn’t say anything to Agnes about those thrillingly secret thoughts. They were far too private for that. And she certainly couldn’t tell her mother. Tilly knew that her mother didn’t entirely approve of Dulcie, and Tilly suspected that would mean that she would not approve of Rick either. She certainly didn’t approve of Tilly wanting to go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, but Tilly was determined to persist in begging her to let her go until her mother gave way. She was, after all, seventeen now, working, and properly grown up.

Several yards away from the two girls, Mrs Windle, the vicar’s wife, was telling Olive, ‘Sergeant Dawson spoke to me earlier about his offer to teach you and Mrs Morrison to drive. I must say it’s a most generous and welcome offer. I believe he’s already had a word with Mr Morrison and he’s happy to agree. It will make such a difference to our WVS unit to have two drivers and a vehicle. I must confess I was beginning to have a most unchristian reluctance to listen to the bishop’s wife talking about their drivers. I can’t tell you how pleased I am, and how grateful too, to Sergeant Dawson and to you and Mrs Morrison, for giving up your spare time like this. This will make such a difference to our unit, and to those we’ll be able to help.’ Mrs Windle’s face was pink with excitement. The vicar’s wife was small and on the plump side, her grey hair tightly permed, her smile for Olive genuinely warm. Olive liked her, with her calm, practical manner, and her genuine concern for her husband’s parishioners. The Windles, who were in their early fifties, didn’t have any children.

‘I just hope that I don’t let Sergeant Dawson down and prove not to be able to learn,’ Olive responded worriedly.

Mrs Windle patted Olive’s arm and surprised her by telling her warmly, ‘My dear Olive, of all the women I know, you are the least likely to let anyone down. I noticed this morning how happy little Agnes looks.’

‘She and Tilly get on very well together,’ Olive agreed. ‘Tilly’s persuaded Agnes to join the St John Ambulance and go along with her.’

‘And of course they’ll be coming to the church Christmas Dance. We’ve invited some of the Polish refugee families billeted locally to come along. It must be dreadful to be forced to flee one’s home and country.’

‘Terrible,’ Olive agreed, slipping away from Mrs Windle’s side as another parishioner claimed her attention. She went to have a word with Peggy Thomas, the local dressmaker, who lived a couple of streets away with her elderly mother.

She’d just finished making arrangements for Tilly, Agnes and herself to go round to be measured on Monday evening when Sergeant Dawson came up to her.

‘I’ve had a word with the vicar’s wife about the driving lessons.’

‘Yes, she told me. It really is very generous of you.’

‘I’m on nights this week so I thought we might make a start. Perhaps Thursday, if you can make it? Much easier for you both to learn in the daylight.’

‘Thursday?’

‘You’re too busy?’

‘No . . . not at all. It’s just, well, I’m a bit apprehensive about it, I suppose,’ Olive admitted with a small laugh.

‘There’s no need. You’ll be a natural, I reckon.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better get back. Iris isn’t feeling too well at the moment.’ He paused and then added, ‘It’s the anniversary today, you see . . . of us losing our lad, and she still takes it hard. We’ll be going down to the cemetery later. She’d spend all day there if I’d let her.’

Olive gave him a sympathetic look. ‘I know how I felt when I lost Jim but losing a child must be so much worse.’ She glanced across at Tilly. ‘So very much worse.’

‘Iris still thinks that something could have been done – to save him, like.’ Archie Dawson shook his head. ‘I don’t. Poor lad, I reckon he was glad to go and be freed from his suffering. I used to lie in bed at night listening to him trying to breathe. Really struggled, he did, wheezing and coughing . . .’

Olive didn’t know what to say. Her throat felt choked with emotion. Had he been a woman she would have reached out and touched his arm but of course he wasn’t, so that was impossible. All she could bring herself to say was a quiet, ‘You must miss him dreadfully.’

‘I miss what he might have been if he’d not been born so poorly. There was many a time when I’d be sitting at his bedside lifting him up to get air in to his lungs as he struggled to breathe, when I wished it was me that was so poorly and not him. He was such a brave little lad. Never a word of complaint, except towards the end one night he said to me, “Do you think I will die soon, Dad, only it hurts so much to live, and I’m that tired.”’

Now the rules of convention had to be ignored as Olive gave in to her natural instincts and reached out to place her hand briefly and compassionately on Sergeant Dawson’s arm.

‘He’s better off where he is now,’ he told her simply, ‘but Iris can’t see that.’ He cleared his throat and then looked across to where Tilly and Agnes were talking with several other young members of the local St John Ambulance brigade.

‘Tilly’s growing up into a fine young woman. One minute they’re still at school and the next they’re all grown up.’

Grown up? The sergeant’s words jarred a little on her. Olive didn’t want to think of Tilly being grown up. Not with a war on and all the temptations and difficulties that could bring for a young woman. She’d seen what could happen for herself with the last war: girls caught up in the patriotism and urgency of the moment, getting involved with and then marrying young men who had gone away to war and then, if they were lucky, had come back, but not as the young men they had been. And that was just those young women who had been lucky. She wasn’t the only woman of her generation to end up widowed with a child to bring up. War gave young women freedoms they would not otherwise have been granted – she had seen that too – but those freedoms could exact a heavy price and she desperately wanted to keep Tilly safe from the pain she herself had known.

‘Young Agnes is lucky to have found a billet with you,’ the sergeant continued.

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Sergeant,’ Olive demurred. ‘I want to do my best for her, of course . . .’

‘Something’s troubling you?’

‘In a way,’ Olive admitted. ‘Agnes isn’t my daughter, of course, but I can’t help feeling some responsibility towards her. She’s become very friendly with a young man – Ted – she’s met through her work at Chancery Lane underground station. He’s a train driver. They’ve been meeting up at a café there. From Agnes’s side it’s all very innocent. So far as she’s concerned he’s simply teaching her the names of all the stations. He sounds respectable and well-meaning enough, but without knowing him or having met him . . .’ Olive paused, knowing from Sergeant Dawson’s expression that she didn’t need to explain her concern in more detail. ‘She’s very young for her age,’ she added, ‘having only ever known life inside the orphanage.’

‘Leave it to me, Mrs Robbins. Chancery Lane comes under our jurisdiction. It won’t be any problem for me to call round there and ask a few discreet questions about this young man. You don’t happen to have his surname, do you?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t, Sergeant, and you really mustn’t go to any trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble. I’ll have a walk round there during the week and see what I can find out. Meanwhile I’ll see you on Thursday afternoon for your first driving lesson. Ernie Lord says I can collect the van any time that suits me, so would half-past two on Thursday afternoon be all right for you?’

Olive nodded. Now that the driving lessons were actually going to take place she felt far more apprehensive about them than excited, dreading both making a fool of herself by not being able to learn, and wasting the sergeant’s time.

There was something about working nights that was intensely wearying, Sally thought as she suppressed a yawn. Maybe it was because the operations that took place on nights were emergencies, which meant that one was always somehow on the alert. Being on nights gave a person too much time to think because even on the ward, nights lacked the bustling busy routine of daytime shifts.

She had already been up to the ward to check on ‘her’ patients, and to make sure that they were recovering comfortably from their operations, talking quietly to the new junior nurse on the ward as she went with her from bed to bed.

‘What are you doing that for?’ the junior had asked her when Sally had leaned close to the bandaged stump of an arm that had had to be removed after being crushed when a barrel had fallen onto it from a brewery lorry.

‘I’m just checking to see how it smells,’ Sally had told her once they had moved away from the bed. ‘That’s something we can’t always do when the patient is awake in case it frightens them. Stumps that aren’t healing and are becoming infected smell of that infection,’ she had gone on to explain.

The junior nurse had shuddered and pulled a face. Sally suspected that she would be one of those who didn’t stick out her training.

‘Cocoa?’ Ward Sister offered. ‘I’m just about to make some.’

‘Yes, please,’ Sally replied.

On nights at home in Liverpool, Callum had often been there to meet her and Morag when they had come off duty, walking them home to make sure they were safe.

Callum. Even without closing her eyes she could picture his face with its high cheekbones and the blue eyes she had once thought possessed a gaze that was both understanding and kind. Kind! He certainly hadn’t been kind to her when he had called her selfish and cruel for refusing to welcome his sister’s marriage to her father. It was true that with Callum blood was thicker than water, his loyalty to his sister far, far stronger than the relationship she had thought that they were beginning to share. The blood tie between her and her father, though, had not been strong enough for him to understand the revulsion she had felt, and still felt, at the knowledge that he wanted to replace her mother with her best friend.

Olive hummed to herself as she hung out her Monday morning wash, pegging the sheets firmly to make sure they stayed on the line in the warm breeze. She’d just finished and was about to position the wooden prop to lift the line when Nancy’s head appeared over the fence.

‘Morning, Nancy,’ Olive called out, with a smile, ignoring her neighbour’s downturned mouth and disapproving expression.

‘Mrs Morrison was telling me after church yesterday that Sergeant Dawson is going to be giving you and her driving lessons,’ Nancy announced without any preamble.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Olive agreed, checking that the prop was fixed firmly into the lawn, before bending down to pick up her empty laundry basket. A couple of stray curls had escaped from the headscarf she wrapped round her head to keep her hair out of the way whilst she worked, and she stood up to tuck them out of the way, still smiling as she informed Nancy, ‘It was Mrs Windle’s idea. She had the offer of a van for the WVS to use but she didn’t have any drivers. It’s so kind of Sergeant Dawson to make the time to teach us.’

‘Kind, is it? Well I’ve got to tell you straight, Olive, that that’s not what I think and it wouldn’t be what your late ma-in-law would have thought either.’

‘What do you mean?’ Olive asked, bewildered.

‘What do you think I mean? Sergeant Dawson is a married man. And I don’t think it’s right or proper that he should be giving you driving lessons. It’s all right for Mrs Morrison, she’s got a husband to keep an eye out for her, but you haven’t, and you know how people talk.’

Olive didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry.

‘I’m only warning you for your own good, Olive,’ Nancy continued. ‘A woman in your position, widowed, and with a teenage daughter to look out for can’t be too careful about her reputation.’

‘Nancy,’ Olive protested, ‘it’s Sergeant Dawson who will be teaching me, not some stranger. And Mrs Windle has already said how pleased she is. It’s for the war effort that I’m doing it.’

Nancy gave a disparaging sniff. ‘You can say what you like, Olive, but I don’t think it’s right, a single woman like you spending time on her own with a married man, and I’m only telling you what your own ma-in-law would say.’

As Olive listened to Nancy’s warning a surge of uncharacteristic anger filled her. She knew what Nancy was trying to do. She was trying to bully her into backing out of having her driving lessons. And besides, what Nancy was suggesting – but not coming out directly and saying – about her being alone with Sergeant Dawson possibly leading to some kind of hanky-panky on his part towards her was ridiculous. Sergeant Dawson was a respectable and an honourable man. Anyone who was in his company for more than a few minutes couldn’t help but know that. Olive had come across her fair share of the other sort during her widowhood to know the difference. Oh, there had been nothing directly said by those men – some of them friends of her late husband and her in-laws, and most of them married – but it had all been there in the looks they had given her in private, the hints they had dropped suggesting that she, a young woman without a husband, must be ‘lonely’. She had made it plain to all of them that she wasn’t interested. The very idea was an insult! And Nancy’s hints about Sergeant Dawson were an insult to him. Olive felt angry with Nancy on his behalf when the whole neighbourhood knew what a decent sort he was. She certainly trusted him. But even so, Olive knew that once she would probably have given in and done what Nancy wanted simply to keep the peace. Things were different now: there was a war on, and that was what she had to think about, not Nancy’s disapproval.

She took a deep breath and then told her neigh-bour firmly, ‘You might not approve, Nancy, but I think that Jim would. He’d want me to play my part and do everything I can to help others.’ And with that Olive picked up her laundry basket and headed for her back door without giving Nancy the opportunity to come back at her. She was not a young girl like Tilly, she was a mature woman and one who was perfectly capable of judging for herself whether or not a man could be trusted, and what was and was not appropriate behaviour for her, without Nancy trying to tell her what to do, Olive decided determinedly, as she opened her back door and stepped inside without giving Nancy a backward look.