Читать книгу Women on the Home Front: Family Saga 4-Book Collection - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 25

Chapter Fifteen

‘So you’re not coming home for Christmas then?’

Even as her mother asked the question, it was Edith she was watching, Dulcie thought resentfully as she observed her sister talking animatedly several yards away to a group of admirers, who had halted her progress across the crowded floor of their local working men’s club where she had been singing.

Dulcie hadn’t wanted to come to listen to her sister and she certainly hadn’t wanted to listen to her mother praising her so dotingly for doing so, but she’d got caught out on Sunday after church when her mind had been on the previous evening and not what her mother had been saying to her, and too late she realised she’d agreed to join her family to listen to Edith’s debut as a professional singer.

The club was a rectangular room with a bar occupying the full length of the wall at one end, apart from a door that led into a narrow passageway containing the ladies’. The gents’ was outside in the yard where the brewery loaded the beer barrels into the cellar. Behind the bar was a kitchen where volunteers, who sometimes included Dulcie’s mother, made up sandwiches sold at the bar under a glass cover. The distempered walls were stained with the cigarette smoke, which wreathed round the room, gradually rising toward the ceiling.

Behind the bar, with its mirrored back and glass shelves, the club’s manager, overweight and sweating, was pulling pints whilst his wife and the barmaid washed glasses at the small sink.

Dulcie hated the place as much as the rest of her family seemed to love it. It was where the whole neighbourhood came to celebrate weddings, births and deaths, after going through the formal church proceedings attendant upon such occasions.

Since tonight was a ‘social’ night, which meant that the all-male membership was allowed to bring along their other halves and families, the place was packed, whole families, including grandparents, aunts and uncles, in some cases, crowded round the cheap shabby tables on equally cheap, shabby and mismatched chairs. A harsh light beamed down on the small stage, where Edith had performed, at the opposite end of the room to the bar. The whole place stank of stale beer, male sweat, and cheap cigarettes, Dulcie thought, fastidiously wrinkling her nose. A door in the middle of one of the long walls opened into the pool room – a holy of holies that women were not allowed to enter – and it was plain from a few all-women tables that some of the men had already taken advantage of that embargo to escape into it.

‘No,’ Dulcie answered her mother’s question.

‘Are you sure this landlady of yours wants you staying there over Christmas? It seems a rum do to me. You’d think she’d want her house to herself and not filled with lodgers. I know I would. Christmas is for being with your own folk.’

Her mother’s words hit a nerve but Dulcie wasn’t going to let her see that. Olive had been very cool with her since the night Tilly had rebelled, and Dulcie knew that her landlady blamed her, even if she hadn’t said so. The truth was that hers was probably as welcome a presence at number 13 over Christmas as it would have been at her own home, Dulcie thought bitterly. Just as her mother would be fussing over Edith, so her landlady would be fussing over Agnes, making a big thing of her not having a family of her own. Not that Dulcie was going to tell her mother that.

Dulcie tossed her head, her blonde curls caught back in a pretty diamanté bow-shaped hair clip that she’d managed to get reduced, after she’d discovered that it had been slightly damaged. Dropping it on the floor earlier in the week and deliberately twisting the clip so that it didn’t fasten properly had been easily done whilst Miss Timmins, whose eyesight wasn’t very good, and who was really supposed to be retired but who worked one day a week had been in charge of the hair ornaments counter. Poor old Timid Timmy, as they all called her, had looked confused and blinked desperately, her thin, veined hands trembling slightly as she tried to examine the faulty catch. She had been easy for Dulcie to manipulate, and the departmental floor manager when summoned had agreed that the clip could be reduced. He might have given Dulcie a sharp look as she had paid for her purchase but she had felt triumphant rather than guilty. Just like she had felt triumphant that Saturday night at Hammersmith Palais, knowing that David would rather be with her than with his stuck-up fiancée-to-be.

Feeling triumphant was very important to Dulcie. It made her feel she was in her rightful place in the order of things.

‘Actually,’ she told her mother untruthfully, ‘my landlady asked me especially as a favour to her if I would stay there over Christmas.’

‘Oh, well, if she wants you there . . .’ her mother responded, using a tone of voice that suggested to Dulcie that her mother couldn’t understand why that should be the case. Immediately Dulcie’s combative spirit was aroused.

‘She does. She told me that she thinks of me as another daughter and that she doesn’t know how she’d manage without me there to give her Tilly a few words to the wise when it’s needed, me being older than Tilly and everything. Of course, I told her that I’m pleased to do my bit. Treats me ever so well, she does, just like I was her daughter really, always getting me little bits of treats.’ Warming to her deception, Dulcie started to embroider the fabrication she had created.

‘She took us all shopping to the Portobello Market the other week and she bought me ever such an expensive blouse, pure silk and French design, and—’

‘Oh, here comes Edith now.’

The warmth for her younger daughter in her mother’s voice as she interrupted her infuriated Dulcie, causing her to say unkindly, ‘I don’t know where Edith got that dress from but she’s certainly not dressing anything like as well now that she hasn’t got my wardrobe to raid any more. It doesn’t suit her at all.’

‘She looks lovely in it,’ Dulcie’s mother protested indignantly. ‘Pink always was Edith’s colour. I remember when she was born I had this lovely pink layette that I’d saved ever so hard for. The first new baby clothes I’d had. I had to make do with hand-me-downs for you and for Rick.’

‘Oh, Mum, I thought I was never going to get over to you, so many people wanted to stop and tell me how well I’d done,’ Edith enthused, laughing happily as she hugged her mother.

‘More like they couldn’t believe what you were wearing and wanted to get a closer look,’ Dulcie told her nastily, causing the smile to disappear from Edith’s flushed face as she turned back to their mother, looking tragic and upset.

‘Take no notice of Dulcie, love,’ their mother comforted Edith. ‘If you ask me, Dulcie, it’s just as well you aren’t coming home for Christmas, the way you’re always upsetting poor Edith.’

‘It’s just because she’s jealous, Mum, because I can sing and she can’t,’ Edith trumped Dulcie’s earlier insult.

‘Call that singing?’ Dulcie returned, not to be outdone. ‘It sounded more like someone was trying to kill a cat. And you missed that top note in your last song.’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Yes you did.’

‘Dulcie, why do you always have to upset poor Edith?’ their mother demanded.

‘Why do you always have to take her side?’ Dulcie shot back, taunting her sister, ‘Mama’s little girl who can’t do any wrong.’

‘Here comes Frank, Mum. I’ll have to go. We’ve got to talk with the manager and the band leader about some future bookings,’ Edith announced, ignoring Dulcie as she jumped up hurriedly.

Watching her sister walk away with the man who had swaggered up to them, a cigar stuck in his mouth, his thinning hair greased back from his beefy florid face, Dulcie asked, ‘Who’s that?’

‘His name’s Frank Lepardo, and he’s Edith’s agent,’ her mother told her with obvious pride. ‘He saw her singing the other week and went backstage to sign her up there and then, he was that pleased with her. He’s a real impresario and he reckons that Edith is going to be big – bigger than that Vera Lynn everyone raves about. He’s had one of the top ones from ENSA pleading with him to let Edith go on the wireless. Your sister is going to end up famous.’

Dulcie gave the two departing figures a cynical look. She knew men and she certainly knew what kind of man Frank Lepardo was. He had spiv and chancer written on him in letters as wide as the white stripes in his navy-blue suit.

‘If you ask me, the only place Edith is likely to end up with him, is underneath him,’ Dulcie told her mother bluntly, earning herself a furious look.

‘I’ll not have you talking about your sister like that. Frank Lepardo is a gentleman. Came especially to see me and your dad to get our permission to represent Edith, and he gave your dad ten pounds as an act of good faith.’

‘And I’ll bet Dad’s lost it already down the dog track,’ Dulcie said cynically.

It was more than likely that the real reason Frank Lepardo had gone to see her parents was to find out how naïve they were, she thought grimly, but she knew there was no point in continuing to warn her mother about Frank Lepardo. Anyway, why should she? It would serve Edith right to get what she deserved, the way she continually showed off and made out she was so special. Why was it that everybody was always against her, Dulcie? It wasn’t right and it certainly wasn’t fair.

The Christmas tree was up, decorated by Tilly and Agnes with the decorations that had been collected over the years and which Olive kept so carefully.

Agnes had gazed in delight at the pretty painted tin bird with its feather tail, amazed when Tilly demonstrated to her how it was also a whistle. Olive watching them had remembered the Christmas she had bought the novelty decoration from a street market. Tilly had been only little then, entranced by the whistle herself.

This year there were no new decorations to add but they had no need of any. There were plenty to fill the Christmas tree, which they’d put up in the front room. Pretty electric lights of various colours shaped like flowers illuminated the tree, the fairy in her sparkly costume placed at the top. They’d even clipped on the old-fashioned metal candle holders, with their candles, a reminder of long-ago Christmases before electric lights had come in and, Olive had always thought, potentially very dangerous, especially around children. These, though, would not be lit; they were just there for decoration now.

Multicoloured paper garlands had been strung from the central light fitting in both rooms to the corners, adding to the festive décor.

Tonight, whilst the girls were out dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, she’d finish wrapping their presents and put them under the tree, once she’d made the pastry for her mince pies. The news that Dulcie was planning to stay had caused Olive to panic slightly over the fact that she had knitted sets of gloves with matching scarves and hats for the other three but not for Dulcie. Luckily, she’d been able to get some more wool and, by knitting frantically every spare minute, she’d managed to produce a set for Dulcie as well.

On her way back to the shops this morning, where she’d gone to collect her goose, her sausage-meat and the ham, she’d paused outside Holborn’s famous bookshop, said to be one of the oldest in London, remembering the set of Beatrix Potter books she’d bought there for Tilly. She’d saved so hard for those books, and Tilly had been thrilled with them, even if Olive’s mother-in-law had scorned what she considered to be a waste of money. Olive had been determined right from the start that her Tilly would have a proper education, so that she could hold her head up in the world.

There were sweets to put in the stockings she made for the girls from some cheap felt she’d bought, a sugar mouse for each of them, and some sugared almonds.

Upstairs the girls were getting ready for their night out. Tilly had almost been bursting with excitement over tea, and so had Agnes, who had told Olive shyly earlier in the week that Ted had mentioned that he might as well go along to the Palais, seeing as Agnes was going.

Guessing that Agnes was seeking her approval, Olive had nodded and told her, ‘I think that’s a good idea, Agnes, and very kind of Ted. There’s nothing worse than going to a big dance, for the first time and then feeling left out because the other girls seem to know lots of boys and have partners.’

One member of the quartet from number 13 probably wouldn’t lack partners or confidence, Olive thought wryly. She suspected that Dulcie would never be behind the door when it came to putting herself forward. She had convinced herself now, though, that it was better for Tilly to discover what Dulcie was for herself, instead of her criticising her and then having Tilly jump to her defence.

She could hear the girls clattering down the stairs. Tilly was first into the room, the air around her positively crackling with excitement and energy.

‘Will I do, do you think, Mum?’ she demanded, doing a swift twirl, the panelled skirt of her new velvet dress swirling round her.

Olive’s breath caught in her throat. She’d seen the dress on before, but now tonight, looking at Tilly wearing it, she was filled with maternal emotion – pride combining with anxiety. The dress, with its sweetheart neckline, long sleeves and nipped-in waistline showed off Tilly’s slender figure, the sweep of its panelled skirt making her look taller, revealing a hint of the woman that Tilly would become. Olive’s heart ached with love, but of course she wasn’t going to tell Tilly how beautiful she looked. Instead she told her calmly, ‘I should think that dress would more than do for any dancehall, Tilly, even the Hammersmith Palais. The dressmaker really has done an excellent job with that velvet.’

The pretty gold locket that Tilly’s father had given her mother as a wedding present gleamed softly against Tilly’s skin. Her eyes had filled with tears when Olive had suggested she should wear it.

‘Your dad would have been so proud of you, and it’s right that you take a bit of him with you tonight to look out for you,’ Olive had said.

Agnes’s dress was just as pretty but a slightly different style to Tilly’s, with a gathered skirt that added a bit of a curve to Agnes’s thinness.

Olive shifted her attention from the two younger girls to Sally and Dulcie. Sally was wearing a quietly elegant silk dress in dark green that suited her colouring, whilst, predictably in Olive’s opinion, Dulcie’s dress, which was also silk, was very glamorous with a wrap round V-necked bodice and a straight skirt that flared out at the knee. The silk, a pretty pale green, was sprigged with soft pink roses with darker green stems and leaves, and a fabric covered belt cinched in Dulcie’s narrow waist. A double row of fake pearls and matching pearl earrings in Dulcie’s neatly shaped ears finished off her ensemble and she did look good in it, Olive was forced to admit – very elegant and stylish although the look was rather older than Olive felt suitable for a girl so young.

Olive didn’t miss the challenging tilt of Dulcie’s chin as they exchanged looks. There was nothing she could say, though, not without risking spoiling Tilly’s night, and of course she didn’t want to do that.

Instead she hugged her daughter and then Agnes, telling them truthfully, ‘You all look lovely.’

Within minutes the girls all had their coats on and were going out of the front door, leaving the house feeling very empty and quiet without them.

An hour later Tilly was gazing round the interior of the Palais, still half unable to believe that she was actually here. The packed ballroom had been decorated for Christmas and everyone was in high spirits.

There was a large Christmas tree illuminated with multicoloured fairy lights in the entrance foyer, but well back from the doors so as not to break the blackout laws. Red and green paper garlands decorated the ceiling, coming from the walls to the huge glittering mirror ball suspended over the dance floor, whilst the male bar staff were wearing red waistcoats, and a cheery-looking Father Christmas, escorted by a bevy of pretty girls wearing short red dresses trimmed with white swansdown, went from table to table selling raffle tickets. The whole atmosphere was so exciting and filled with Christmas goodwill and fun that at first Tilly and Agnes could only stand and stare as they tried to take it all in.

‘I never thought it would be like this,’ Tilly gasped in delight. ‘I mean, I knew it would be wonderful . . .’

When she stopped, lost for words, Dulcie informed her knowledgably, ‘Well, it is the best dancehall in London,’ before leading them all speedily to ‘her’ table, a move that Sally recognised was a good one, half an hour later as she looked to where some people were standing watching the dancing and reflected that she herself wouldn’t have fancied standing up all evening. But then, aching feet were something she was familiar with, being a nurse.

Sally was used to the atmosphere of Liverpool’s Grafton Ballroom, but she still had to admit that the Palais was impressive. No one could be here on a night like this and not be infected by the atmosphere of fizzing excitement and energy.

For Tilly, the atmosphere in the ballroom was almost magical, and she gazed round at her surroundings in thrilled delight, half unable to believe that she was actually here. The church hall could never compare with something like this. Her eyes widened as she watched prettily dressed young women and their partners take to the floor. She felt so . . . so grown up and special just being here.

‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful?’ she mouthed to Agnes above the sound of the Joe Loss Orchestra.

‘I hadn’t realised it would be so big or that there’d be so many people here,’ Agnes mouthed back, her own feelings tending more towards apprehension than excitement. She didn’t much like crowds.

A waiter stopped at their table, asking if they wanted drinks.

‘Lemonade for us,’ Sally said firmly, indicating Tilly, Agnes and herself.

‘Yes, and for me as well,’ Dulcie surprised her by agreeing.

The reality was that whilst Dulcie would have a shandy if one was pressed on her, she had seen enough of what too much alcohol could do in her own neighbourhood to want to end up the worse for drink herself. There was Ma Bowker, who lived round the corner from her own parents, the whole family crammed into three rooms they rented in a tenanted house. Ma Bowker liked nothing more than rolling up her sleeves and laying into both her kids and her husband, giving them a real battering when she was in drink. Then there were the husbands who regularly knocked their wives about, and then ‘up’ after too much to drink; men who drank so much of their wages that there wasn’t enough left to feed their families. Dulcie wanted no part of that. Her own father thankfully wasn’t a big drinker. He liked his pint on a Friday and a Saturday, just as he liked his bet at the dogs, but that was all.

There were plenty of women dancing together, Tilly noticed, but when she suggested to Dulcie that they did the same, Dulcie shook her head firmly.

‘It looks like you can’t get a proper partner if you do that, and besides, we won’t be sitting here long. The best-looking girls always get asked to dance.’

As though to prove her point, just as she finished saying this four young men approached their table. However, before they could so much as open their mouths, Dulcie was saying firmly, ‘No, thanks, we aren’t dancing right now. We’re just waiting for our drinks.’

Dulcie’s manner was rather different from what she had expected, Sally had to admit, ruefully.

‘We can do better than that,’ Dulcie explained. ‘Much better. You’ve got to make sure that lads know how lucky they are when you agree to have a dance with them,’ she informed Tilly and Agnes firmly.

Their drinks arrived, delivered by a smiling redwaistcoated waiter, and Sally paid for them using the money Olive had given her for that purpose when she’d asked Sally to keep an eye on what Tilly and Agnes had to drink.

Dulcie had told herself not to expect to see David. She’d achieved her goal and that was that. David might have said that they were two of a kind but Dulcie disagreed. He was posh – a toff – and he’d marry Lydia. To him she was just a bit of fun, a way of breaking the rules before he knuckled down to the right kind of marriage. Dulcie knew that, but she also knew where her own boundaries lay and she wasn’t going to let David cross them. Besides, it made her feel good to realise that he’d rather be with her than Lydia. Lydia might look down her nose at her, but Dulcie could feel she had one up on her because Lydia’s fiancé secretly fancied her. There was no way, though, that she was going to end up as David’s bit on the side. That wasn’t how Dulcie envisaged her future at all. Ultimately she would marry, and the kind of respectable man she wanted as her husband – a man with a good job, perhaps even in an office, who could afford to buy them a house like those in Article Row, or perhaps even in one of those new suburbs she’d seen advertised – would not want a wife who’d been carrying on with other men. Dulcie viewed her planned future without sentiment. All women had to marry – how else could they manage financially? But she was determined that her marriage would give her a better life than her mother and their neighbours had. Dulcie had no illusions about herself. Men would always be attracted to her because of her looks, more the wrong kind of men than the right kind. It was up to her to make sure that when she let the wrong kind, like David, treat her to the good things in life, they did so on the understanding that she was merely trading with them the right to enjoy having a pretty girl on their arm, but not the right to expect sexual favours.

Living in Article Row, like working in Selfridges, was for Dulcie a step in the direction she wanted her life to go. Both conferred on her a certain status that, for all her mother’s boasting about Edith’s singing, allowed Dulcie to feel that she had moved ‘up’ socially from her background. She might milk these benefits for all that she could but there was no way she was going to risk losing them by going too far.

She looked at Tilly, flushed and excited. She had almost pushed Olive too far with that business of Tilly lying to her, Dulcie knew, which was why tonight she intended any report that Sally made back to Olive to be one that showed her in a good light and not a bad one.

To Tilly, filled with the excitement of the evening, simply being at the Palais was initially enough to fill her with happiness, but then eventually, tapping her foot in time to the music became a longing to be up on the floor and dancing.

Then Ted arrived, coming over to their table, to be welcomed by a shyly delighted Agnes, who introduced them.

Dulcie cast one look over Ted’s plain honest face and shiny clean appearance, and immediately dismissed him as unimportant, whilst Sally duly registered Ted’s discreetly protective manner towards Agnes and politeness to everyone else, and mentally agreed with Olive’s judgement that Ted seemed a decent sort.

Ted, for his part, was glad to draw up a seat next to Agnes, and take charge of ordering the girls second drinks, rather than having to suggest that he and Agnes had a dance. He wasn’t much of a dancer. He preferred to sit and watch, and it seemed to him that Agnes was of much the same mind.

The sensation of someone tapping on her shoulder, just as the band struck up for a new dance, had Dulcie stiffening, fighting against the betraying race of her heart, and trying to deny the name that immediately sprang to her lips.

Only the voice in her ear saying, ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ belonged not to David but to her brother, Rick.

‘Rick, you’re home!’ Genuinely pleased, Dulcie turned round to find, not only her brother, but a whole group of other young men in army uniform clustered behind her.

‘Got back this afternoon,’ Rick told her, adding cheerfully, ‘Is it OK if we join you?’ and then calling for his comrades to collect some chairs, without waiting for Dulcie’s reply.

There were five of them all together; Rick; a tow-headed young man with a northern accent, called Ned, who came from Manchester and who Rick said was their corporal; two boys from London, named Ian and Fred; and, a little to Dulcie’s surprise, John Dunham, whose father was the builder for whom her own father sometimes worked.

‘I thought you were going to join the navy,’ she commented when John sat down next to her.

‘I was, until Rick persuaded me to enlist in the army then as luck would have it we ended up in the same regiment – the Middlesex, 7th Battalion,’ he said proudly, ‘and the same company.’

From the minute she had seen Rick, Tilly’s heart had been thumping with excitement and teenage self-consciousness. If anything he looked even more handsome than he had done before, bigger somehow, broader, and very manly and grown up in his uniform, with his dark hair cut close to his scalp. The other men looked shorn and rather forlorn with their short back and sides army-regulation haircuts, but in Rick’s case the short cut only served to emphasise his well-shaped head.

‘Mum won’t be very pleased when she hears you’ve come down here. Not with Edith singing with ENSA,’ Dulcie said somewhat sarcastically as she mimicked their mother’s voice for the last few words.

Typically, though, Rick merely grinned. ‘Yes, I heard all about that the minute I got through the door. Ta, yes, John, I’ll have a beer, thanks,’ he broke off as John was asking what everyone wanted to drink. ‘Ma says that Edith’s got an agent now.’

John was asking what Dulcie wanted to drink now but before she could show off her sophistication by announcing that she’d have a gin and it, Rick was telling his friend cheerfully, ‘She’ll have a shandy, John.’

‘I was going to have a gin and it, ’ Dulcie told him crossly. ‘And as for Edith’s agent, he’s a real spiv, and I told Mum that she was a fool for letting Edith take up with him, but of course she wouldn’t have it. You know what she’s like. She’s always thought that the sun shines out of Edith’s backside and now she thinks the same about this agent.’

‘Ma said that you’re having your Christmas dinner at your lodgings instead of coming home.’

‘Yes. My landlady asked me in particular to have my dinner with them,’ Dulcie fibbed, turning away so that none of the other girls could hear her.

Sally thanked the young corporal who was handing her her drink. She’d been a bit worried at first when Dulcie’s brother had proposed that he and his friends join them, but the respectful manner in which the young soldiers were behaving towards them had calmed her fears. Dulcie’s brother was a very good-looking young man, and it was no wonder that Tilly was looking at him with such admiration, Sally acknowledged ruefully. Once she had probably looked at Callum like that. The pain that thought brought her was swift and savage.

‘What are we doing sitting here when we could be dancing?’ Rick demanded jovially, giving Tilly an appreciative smile. She really was a looker, even if she was a bit on the young side. ‘John, you dance with Dulcie,’ he instructed, ‘but mind she doesn’t step on your toes; she’s got two left feet,’ he teased his sister, before holding out his hand to Tilly.

‘Do you want to take pity on a poor soldier who hasn’t seen a pretty girl in months and dance with him?’ he asked with a warm smile.

Did she? Tilly was speechless with delight.

The corporal asked Sally up, causing Ted to reach for Agnes’s hand and give it a little squeeze when she confided in him, ‘I’m glad it’s you that’s asked me to dance, Ted, because I’m not very good at it at all. Because I was one of the oldest at the orphanage, I always had to be the boy when we did any dancing.’

Two minutes later they were all on the floor, Dulcie proving that she was as light on her feet as a proverbial feather, her steps confidently in perfect time with the music.

When Agnes whispered to him happily, ‘Oh, Ted, you are ever such a good dancer,’ Ted’s chest swelled. Agnes felt so fragile and delicate, like something precious that he wanted to protect from harm. She looked a treat too in her new dress. He just hoped that one of those army lads didn’t step in and catch her eye.

Tilly was in heaven, dancing on clouds of delirious excitement and delight. Never had there been such a wonderful Christmas gift, she thought giddily as Rick swung her expertly through the dance. But all too soon it came to an end, the light dimming to signal the interval between the orchestra’s sessions. Then, just as the dancers were starting to disengage from their partners and drift off the floor, a young man wearing an RAF uniform jumped onto the stage and said something to the band leader, who nodded and then made an announcement.

‘As a special request we’re going to play the last waltz before the interval so that the flight lieutenant can share it with his new fiancée before he has to catch his train and get back on duty.’

Above the laughter and cheers of the crowd, the first strains of a waltz began. Rick had started to move back to their table, but since Tilly was still standing looking at the orchestra, he too stopped moving. The lights were still dimmed, couples swaying together, locked in their own personal worlds. Silently Tilly went into Rick’s arms, trembling slightly when they closed round her. This was beyond heaven, this was . . . there were no words to name it, no previous experiences in her life with which to compare it. This was special, wonderful, a time out of time that would remain with her for the rest of her life, Tilly promised herself fervently as she instinctively moved closer to Rick.

The girls in Paris, at least the ones Rick had met, had been available – for a price – but dancing with them had not proved as tempting as dancing with Tilly, Rick acknowledged. He had felt her small betraying tremble when he had taken her in his arms, and now he was beginning to wonder if she would tremble as sweetly if he kissed her. And he did want to kiss her. The first time he had met her he had dismissed her as a pretty young girl, little more than a schoolgirl, really, but tonight when he had looked at her sitting with Dulcie he had seen a very desirable young woman. The music was offering him an opportunity to get closer to her that it would be a crime to ignore. A girl’s head was surely designed to rest on a chap’s shoulder, her soft curls brushing his chin. The low lights and romantic music were certainly designed to allow a man to whisper softly in his partner’s ear that she looked lovely and that he was glad that she had chosen to dance with him.

Rick’s breath against her ear sent desperately exciting shivers racing through Tilly’s body, his compliment swelling a heart already tender with youthful adoration. Tilly lifted her head and looked up into Rick’s face.

As Rick looked back at her the dim light seemed to enhance the delicacy of her profile and the shine in her eyes. He guided her arm around his side and then released his hand to lift it to her face to cup it as their movements slowed to a barely there sway. Enclosed by the crowd, lost in her own disbelieving delight, Tilly swallowed against the tension seizing hold of her.

Rick was going to kiss her.

Her heart gave a gigantic thump and then a series of flurried excited beats as he lowered his head toward her.

He was going to kiss her!

‘The orchestra has stopped playing, in case you two hadn’t noticed.’

Dulcie’s sharp voice sliced into their privacy and its promise, shattering their intimacy. Instead of kissing Tilly, Rick drew his fingertip the length of her nose and then released her, guiding her back towards the table.

Sally, who hadn’t seen what was going on between Tilly and Rick on the dance floor, was still concerned enough just by Tilly’s now besotted expression to take hold of the younger girl’s hand and pull her gently down into the empty seat the young corporal had just vacated to go to the bar, so that Tilly was sitting safely between her and Agnes and not therefore able to cosy up with Dulcie’s handsome brother. Sally didn’t need to ask herself what Olive would think of her vulnerable young daughter falling for Rick. Olive would not like it one little bit.

Dulcie, whilst equally aware of Olive’s probable reaction to any burgeoning romance between Tilly and Rick, was less tactful with her brother than Sally had been with Tilly and a good deal more forceful, grabbing hold of Rick’s arm to prevent him from following Tilly off the floor and then out of earshot of the others, hissing at him, ‘And you can stop flirting with Tilly, and getting her all baby-eyed over you.’

‘I was just dancing with her, that’s all.’

‘You were not just dancing,’ Dulcie told him forthrightly. ‘You want to watch out, Rick, because she’s daft enough to fall head over heels for you.’

‘So what if she does?’

Knowing what Olive’s reaction would be if she could hear Rick, and guessing she’d blame Dulcie herself for sure, and probably throw her out, Dulcie asked her brother, ‘That’s what you want, is it, some daft kid getting soppy over you and then perhaps you ending up married with a baby on the way?’

Rick’s horrified expression told its own story.

‘I danced with her, Dulcie, that’s all,’ he defended himself.

‘Yes, well, you’d better make sure you don’t do any more dancing with her, ’cos I promised her mother that I’d keep an eye on her and that’s exactly what I intend to do.’

That was a lie, of course, but it fitted too neatly into the story Dulcie had told her mother for her to be able to resist it.

‘In fact, if you know what’s good for you you’d better make sure she knows that you aren’t available, because if she thinks you’re messing with her Tilly, then her mother will be after you to put an engagement ring on her finger,’ Dulcie insisted.

‘I danced with her, that’s all,’ Rick repeated.

‘Her mother won’t see it that way. Not if Tilly goes home and starts telling her mum that she’s falling for you,’ Dulcie warned him.

Rick wasn’t the sort to push himself onto a girl. He didn’t need to. He normally had to fight them off, and he’d soon find someone else to flirt and dance with, Dulcie told herself as they both made their way back to the table.

Rick had taken his sister’s words to heart. He liked Tilly, and her girlish and obvious hero worship had swelled his chest and increased his appreciation of her. However, Dulcie’s warnings about the dangers of having Tilly fall in love with him had hit home. There was a lad in their platoon who’d got a girl into trouble just before he’d enlisted, and now he was a married man at nineteen and bitterly resented being tied down. Rick certainly didn’t want that to happen to him. He’d have to cool things down between him and Tilly and keep his distance from her for the rest of the evening.

All Tilly’s joy in the evening had gone. Rick was ignoring her. He hadn’t even looked at her since they’d sat down after their dance, despite the imploring looks she’d given him. Now he’d actually turned his back on her to laugh with his friends as he sat two chairs away from her next to the quiet soldier who was sitting next to Dulcie. Tilly’s misery was as intense as her earlier happiness had been, and threatened to overwhelm her.

Normally the sight of Tilly’s unhappy face would have been enough to have Rick’s resolve slipping. He liked Tilly, after all, and hated to see her looking so miserable, but Dulcie’s warning about the likely reaction of Tilly’s mother, coupled with his knowledge of the fate of his army mate hardened Rick’s resolve. Flirting with a pretty girl, dating her, and even getting a bit sweet on her was one thing, but marriage – that was something different altogether. The last thing Rick wanted to do right now was tie himself down and become a family man. It wasn’t easy, though, for him to ignore Tilly’s distress when he asked other girls to dance. The poor kid couldn’t hide what she was feeling. That was his fault for having encouraged her like he had, of course. Part of him wanted to act the big brother with her and warn her that it wasn’t in her own interests to let any lad see her feelings so plainly, and that she should take a leaf out of Dulcie’s book and act cool and dismissive around lads, but of course he couldn’t do that. All he could do was make it plain to her that he wasn’t the going steady or settling down type.

Agnes felt ever so happy. She was comfortable with Ted. He didn’t make her feel awkward and shy. He understood without her having to say anything that she was content simply to sit at his side, and drink her lemonade whilst they exchanged snatches of conversation.

‘Got anything fixed up for New Year’s Eve?’

The feigned indifference in John’s voice didn’t fool Dulcie. John had always been a bit keen on her, but she wasn’t particularly interested in him. Her dad might go on about how lucky John’s father was having his own business to hand on to his son – if you could call repairing chimneys and fitting new windows and doors and doing general repairs a business, which Dulcie did not – but Dulcie wasn’t impressed. In her view John didn’t have enough backbone about him. He was too willing to go along with others – his dad, her brother, Rick, and of course her, if she had wanted him to do so.

In response to his question she gave a dismissive shrug. ‘I’ve had a couple of offers, but I haven’t made up my mind which one I’m going to accept yet.’

John nodded. Dulcie could see that he was disappointed but she didn’t really care. The last thing she wanted was to be tied to someone as dull as John for New Year’s Eve. If Rick was still on leave, then he could come here with her, she decided. That way she’d have a partner and the freedom to exchange him for someone else, if someone better came along.

The MC was announcing the final dance of the evening, an end that couldn’t come fast enough, as far as Tilly was now concerned. Every bit as much as she’d longed to be here, she now longed to be at home. Especially now, with the last dance having been announced, and with it her last hope of Rick dancing with her again gone as he remained on the floor with the girl with whom he’d had the last two dances.

Tilly’s heart ached with envy. Rick’s partner was petite and blonde and full of confidence. Tilly had seen that from the way she’d showed off her dance steps when she’d first danced with Rick, twirling round so that the full skirt of her bright blue spotted dress rose up to show off her slim legs. She was pretty too, and fun. Tilly had seen the way Rick had laughed at something she’d said to him. It was obvious to Tilly that Rick preferred the blonde girl’s company to her own and all she wanted to do was get home and give way to her tears.