Читать книгу Women on the Home Front: Family Saga 4-Book Collection - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 34

Chapter Twenty-Three

Things had changed an awful lot since the first time Tilly and Agnes had gone dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, Olive reflected ruefully, as she watched all four young women giving their appearances final checks in the hall mirror. In the small space the rustle of their party frocks mingled with the sound of high heels on the linoleum either side of the hall runner.

‘How do we look, Mum?’ Tilly demanded, twirling into the back room, her face alight with happiness and excitement.

‘You all look lovely,’ Olive assured her truthfully. She had been so anxious that first night she had watched them leave; now her concern was more for the young men who would have to deal with three stunning-looking confident young women, all intent on dazzling them, and one shy one whose quiet sadness was almost bound to draw their compassion.

Tonight would be Tilly’s first really ‘grown-up’ birthday, and the first she would not be celebrating at home, although of course they were having a traditional birthday tea tomorrow, at Tilly’s request. Today, though, the four girls would be having their tea at a Joe Lyons restaurant before going on to the Palais, and Tilly was as excited about that as though they were dining at somewhere like the Ritz. If Olive suspected that Sally might have preferred to spend her Saturday off with her doctor friend, who she mentioned increasingly in her chats, Olive wasn’t going to spoil either Tilly’s evening or Sally’s generosity by saying as much. Even Dulcie seemed to have made an effort on Tilly’s behalf, as Tilly had told her that Dulcie had instructed the young Canadian airman she had met at the Palais to make sure he brought plenty of his pals along with him, informing Olive earnestly, ‘so that we have lots of dashing partners. Dulcie says the Canadians are best, Mum, because they look smart in their uniforms, and they’re very respectful. Dulcie says they don’t flirt like the Australians, or the Poles, so we won’t have to worry about them making a nuisance of themselves.’

Tilly and Agnes were wearing the pretty floral sateen cotton dresses Olive had had made for them after another trip to the Portobello Market. This time there had been several characters there who Olive had thought distinctly shady, a sign, so Sergeant Dawson had told her when she had mentioned this to him, of the increase in black market trading.

Sally’s dress was pale blue with darker blue polka dots, the colour suiting her auburn hair and pale skin, whilst Dulcie was wearing a pink cotton skirt, the cotton embroidered with small black bows, and a black fine-knit top with pink bows at the neckline and on the puffed sleeves.

It was a warm enough night for the girls to insist that they didn’t need heavy coats and that their simple stoles would do.

Tilly looked so grown up in her new dress, wearing the pearl clip-on earrings she had persuaded Olive to let her borrow. The war was changing their lives, making the girls grow up so fast.

‘You know what to do if the air-raid siren goes off?’ Olive couldn’t help saying, forced into a rueful smile when four voices chorused together, ‘Yes, run for the nearest shelter.’

It had been a shock at first when German bombers had been seen over London on the night of 24 August, but the RAF had seen them off and bombed Berlin in retaliation. Although there had been plenty of scares since then, with the air-raid sirens going off at night with increasing frequency, disturbing everyone’s sleep when they all had to troop out of their beds to the nearest shelter – which in the case of Olive’s household was the Anderson shelter in the garden – after the first shock Londoners had begun to take the air raids in their stride. After all, they had the ground batteries with their heavy-duty ‘ackack’ guns, and the RAF, to protect them.

The girls had decided to have their tea at the Joe Lyons in Leicester Square but two buses had gone past them without stopping, obviously full already.

‘Here’s another, and it’s slowing down,’ Tilly cheered.

‘It’s going to Covent Garden, though, not Leicester Square,’ Agnes pointed out.

‘Never mind, let’s just get on it,’ said Dulcie, giving Tilly a push in the direction of the now stationary bus. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’

Tilly hesitated but the conductor was getting impatient and called out, ‘Are you girls getting on or not?’

‘We’re getting on,’ said Sally, stepping forward, the others following on behind her, clambering onto the platform and holding on tight.

‘It’s standing room only down here,’ the conductor told them, reaching for his ticket machine. ‘Upstairs, if you want a seat.’

Taking care to keep her skirt away from the stairs, Tilly went up first, followed by the others, half gasping and half groaning in protest as the bus lurched to an unwieldy halt at the next stop to allow more passengers to get on.

Agnes gave the café where she and Ted used to meet a forlorn look from the seat where the four of them had squashed up together at the back of the bus, and Tilly, who knew from her mother what was causing Agnes’s low spirits, affected not to notice, trying to distract her by pointing out a group of French military on the other side of the road, insisting that one of them had definitely looked like General de Gaulle.

‘Pooh, the French, they’re nothing. The Canadians are much better,’ Dulcie announced as their bus came to a halt at a stop just short of Covent Garden.

Covent Garden was relatively quiet as it was too early for the evening’s ballet-goers. The girls decided to cut across to Leicester Square via the backstreets to avoid the crowds Dulcie had warned them would be filling the square.

‘You should have seen it yesterday. You could hardly move for uniforms, most of them RAF. I suppose they deserve a bit of time off after all this fighting they’ve been doing.’

They had already walked down one street, when Sally broke into Dulcie’s conversation to demand, ‘What’s that?’ She looked upwards towards the sound they could all now hear – a sound that was growing louder and more ominous by the second, its dull droning now becoming a rumbling roar.

Up above them the sky was darkening, the light shut out by the mass of aircraft swarming towards the city.

‘Oh Gawd, it’s them. It’s the Germans,’ Dulcie gasped, reverting to the cockney accent she was normally so careful to keep hidden.

Tilly gulped in shocked silence, feeling Agnes’s arm trembling against her own.

Sally continued to stare upwards in horror. There must be hundreds of them: black bombers surrounded, escorted, protected by fighter planes, too many of them to count, the noise they were making as they flew over making conversation impossible. It was like a nightmare, so unbelievable and unthinkable that surely it couldn’t be happening. Not here in London. The Germans could not be here overhead in such a huge force that they almost blocked the light out of the sky. Where was the RAF? Why were the ack-ack guns silent?