Читать книгу Annie Groves 2-Book Valentine Collection: My Sweet Valentine, Where the Heart Is - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 12

‘I expect that you and your young man have got something special planned for the evening of Valentine’s Day on Friday – that’s if Hitler doesn’t come calling with more bombs,’ Clara Smith, the girl who worked with Tilly in the Lady Almoner’s office at Barts Hospital, asked as they sat side by side in front of their typewriters, shivering in the room’s icy February chill. The two girls were working through yet another batch of new patients’ details for their files, and trying to keep warm with extra layers of clothing because the radiator in their office had been turned off to conserve precious fuel.

Tilly loved her job and felt very proud of the fact that her head mistress had recommended her for the post. She’d worked hard not to let her or the Lady Almoner down, even though the war had brought an increase to her workload that had felt daunting at times.

‘Drew is taking me out for dinner,’ Tilly answered. ‘I don’t know where, though. Drew says that it’s going to be a surprise.’

Being taken out to dinner sounded awfully grown up and sophisticated, not like going to the pictures or even going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais. Her mother wasn’t very keen on them going out alone, just the two of them, Tilly knew.

‘Ooh, a surprise, is it? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if his surprise includes an engagement ring, it being Valentine’s,’ Clara informed her with the wisdom of a girl who already had an engagement ring on her finger.

Tilly felt her heart turn over. There was nothing she wanted more than to have Drew’s ring on her finger – a wedding ring, though, not just an engagement ring.

‘Mum thinks I’m too young to get engaged,’ she felt obliged to tell Clara. She didn’t want the other girl secretly thinking when she didn’t have an engagement ring to wear after Valentine’s Day that Drew didn’t love her enough to give her one. ‘She says that she doesn’t want me rushing into anything just because we’re at war.’

‘That’s typical of the older generation,’ Clara criticised roundly. ‘They don’t understand. It’s because of the war that people want to get engaged and married, in case anything happens, and it’s too late.’

‘Well, Mum got married just a few years after the last war,’ Tilly felt obliged to defend her mother, ‘and she was eighteen herself then, but by the time she was twenty she’d been widowed and she’d got me to look after.’

‘That was then,’ Clara told Tilly. ‘Things are different now. If you ask me I’d rather be married to my fiancé and have something special to remember him by than have him die without ever doing, well, you know what, if you know what I mean.’

Tilly did indeed know what Clara meant. Her face might have grown hot because of what Clara had said but it was no hotter than her body grew at night when she was alone in bed thinking about Drew’s kisses and how they made her feel.

It was an open secret, if you listened properly to what some of the bolder girls had to say in the canteen at lunchtime, that there were plenty of girls who weren’t prepared to deny their young men their physical love when they were going off to war, even if they didn’t have a wedding ring on their finger.

‘Our boys are being so brave and risking their lives for us, us being brave and taking a risk to make them happy is the least we can do. Leastways that’s what I think,’ one of the more outspoken girls had announced when this very subject had come under discussion one lunchtime.

In one sense the war had brought Drew to her, but the thought of it taking him from her made Tilly’s blood chill as ice cold in her veins as though she had been standing outside without her coat in the cold February wind. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for her working day to finish and for the reassurance of finding Drew waiting outside the hospital’s main entrance to walk her home, as he sometimes did if he could snatch enough time away from his work as a reporter. Not that Drew was one to shirk his duty to his work – far from it, he often worked long into the evening, reporting on bombing incidents, talking to the dispossessed, taking photographs. As often as her mother would let her, Tilly went with him when he worked in the evening, gathering material not just for his articles but also for the book he planned to write about Fleet Street when the war was over.

She was lucky to have Drew here in London, Tilly knew. So many sweethearts were separated because of the war; so many brave men in uniform. Take the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy, for instance, manning the all-important convoys that risked not just the dangerous winter seas to bring much-needed supplies back to Britain, but Hitler’s U-boats, as well. Then there was the army fighting to hold back Rommel’s men in the desert, and the RAF doing everything they could to stop Hitler’s Luftwaffe from bombing Britain.

No wonder the whole country read their newspapers so keenly and gathered so anxiously around their wirelesses to catch the BBC news broadcasts. Tilly’s heart swelled with fresh pride as she acknowledged just how important her wonderful Drew’s role was in keeping the country informed.

‘Wait up, Olive.’

Olive pulled her coat more firmly around herself as she stood in the icy February wind waiting for Nancy to catch up with her. Like her, Nancy was carrying a shopping bag.

‘If you’re going to the grocer’s you’d better watch out,’ she complained, her voice shrill with discontent. ‘He told me he hadn’t got a jar of meat paste in the shop last Thursday, but on Tuesday Mrs Mortimer from Parlance Street told me that he’d had a new order of it in. You mark my words, he’s stockpiling things, keeping them back until the price goes up.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true, Nancy,’ Olive responded. ‘He’d probably sold out, that’s all. And as for shopkeepers profiteering by keeping tinned goods back, there’s a new law been brought in to put a stop to that.’

‘It’s all very well for you to say that. How’s this new law going to be imposed, that’s what I want to know? And that’s another thing: I don’t know how Sergeant Dawson can do his job properly, taking as much time off as he has since they’ve had that rough boy living with them.’

‘Sergeant Dawson is simply using up some leave that was owing to him so that he and Mrs Dawson can get Barney properly settled in.’

‘Oh, he told you that, did he? And when might that have been?’

‘No, Sergeant Dawson didn’t tell me that. Mrs Windle did.’ Thank heavens Nancy didn’t know just how relieved she was to be able to tell her that and put her in her place, Olive thought guiltily.

‘That’s all very well,’ Nancy responded, bridling angrily, ‘but like I’ve said to you before, Olive, a woman in your shoes – widowed and on her own – can’t be too careful where her good reputation is concerned. You’ve only got to think about that widow from the other side of Farringdon Street. She’d got men calling all hours of the day and night, her and her daughter. Said she was interviewing lodgers.’ Nancy gave a disparaging sniff. ‘And that reminds me, I was telling my daughter about your Tilly taking up with that American over Christmas and she said that she could never fancy getting involved with a foreigner herself, and especially not an American, on account of them remaining neutral.’

‘Drew’s a lovely young man. The kind of young man any mother would be pleased to have making friends with her daughter,’ Olive informed Nancy, putting aside her own maternal concerns about the relationship, before adding briskly, ‘Excuse me, Nancy, but I’ve just remembered that I promised I’d call in at the vicarage to see Audrey Windle, and I don’t want to miss the lunchtime news on the wireless, so I’d better let you go and get on with your shopping on your own.’

Without giving her neighbour the opportunity to object Olive set off across the road, her cheeks pink with angry colour. It was one thing for Nancy to criticise her but she wasn’t having her criticising Tilly.

Audrey wasn’t in, but at least calling at the vicarage had given Olive the chance to escape from Nancy. She started to cross the road again and then stopped as she saw Mrs Dawson coming out of the front door to number 1. Knowing how reluctant Sergeant Dawson’s wife was to talk to anyone, Olive hesitated, not wanting to ignore her but not wanting either to make her feel uncomfortable. But then to her surprise, instead of walking away, as Olive had expected, Mrs Dawson crossed the road and came over to her.

‘I’m just going out to see if I can get a tin of Spam,’ she announced chattily. ‘Barney loves it fried with a bit of potato. It’s his favourite dinner.’

‘He’s settled in well then, and it’s all working out all right?’ Olive asked once she had overcome the shock of Mrs Dawson’s unfamiliar talkativeness.

‘Oh, yes. He’s ever so bright. Had me in tucks the other night, he did, imitating them from that ITMA programme on the wireless.’

‘It will be good to hear a child’s voice in Article Row again,’ Olive smiled. ‘It’s been so quiet with the Simpson children evacuated.’

‘Yes, it has, although my Archie says that quite a lot of them that was evacuated into the country to live with other families have been brought back by their mothers because they missed them so much.’

‘Yes, we’ve seen that through the WVS as well,’ Olive agreed, ‘although of course the Simpson children are with their mother, and she is with her parents. That makes a big difference.’

‘I’d better be on my way,’ Mrs Dawson said. ‘Archie forgot his sandwiches this morning so I’m going to call by the station and drop them off for him. I’ve told him that I’m not going to be able to run round after him now that I’ve got Barney to think about. He’s got to come first now. Oh, I can’t tell you the difference it makes having Barney living with us. I think that Archie assumed that it would be him and Barney that would pal up, but it’s me and Barney that have really hit it off. Of course, Archie says that’s just because I let Barney wind me round his little finger, but if a boy that’s gone through what he has doesn’t deserve a bit of spoiling then I don’t know who does.’

Olive nodded, but privately Mrs Dawson’s words had made her feel rather sorry for Archie Dawson. She must not be critical, though, she warned herself. The Dawsons – and especially Mrs Dawson – had had such a lot to bear, first with their son’s illness and then his death. Olive had worried a bit, when she’d first learned that the Dawsons were taking Barney in, that Mrs Dawson’s vulnerable emotional state might mean that she couldn’t cope with a healthy young boy in the house after the tragedy of her own son, but she’d obviously been wrong. Having Barney around had given Mrs Dawson a new lease of life, and she was pleased for her as well as for Barney himself, Olive reflected, as she headed for the shops.

‘Watch out, you’ll end up breaking that mug if you slam it down any harder,’ Sally told Dulcie, wincing. ‘What’s wrong with you, anyway?’ she asked. ‘You look as though you’ve lost a shilling and only found a penny. You’ve not had another row with Wilder, have you?’

It was common knowledge at number 13 that Dulcie’s relationship with Wilder was somewhat tempestuous.

‘Well, I dare say you wouldn’t be feeling too pleased yourself if your George had told you that he couldn’t get leave after promising to take you out somewhere special on Valentine’s Day.’

‘Well, Wilder is in uniform, Dulcie,’ Sally felt obliged to point out.

Dulcie’s scowl told her that her comment was not well received. ‘That’s as maybe, but he was able to get time off easily enough when he wanted to go to watch some silly boxing match last week. Of course, I know he wanted to take me somewhere special,’ she added hastily, ‘’cos he thinks a lot of me, Wilder does.’

Sally nodded. The truth was that she didn’t think that Wilder thought very much of anyone other than himself, but she knew that beneath her sharp exterior Dulcie had an unexpected vulnerability, so she kept her thoughts to herself.

‘A fine thing it’s going to be, me having to say that I had to stay in on Valentine’s Day when everyone else at work is talking about where they went,’ Dulcie continued.

Sally looked at her. ‘Well, if you’re at a loose end you could always come to Sussex with me for the weekend,’ she told her. ‘They’re having a dance at the hospital on Saturday for those patients who are well enough to attend. George was saying only the last time I spoke to him that they’re short of girls to partner the men. There’s two single beds in the room where I’m staying. I’m sure Mrs Hodges, the landlady, won’t mind you using the spare bed.’

‘What? Me go to some hospital to dance with sick men?’ Dulcie demanded scornfully. ‘I’d have to be hard up before I’d want to do something like that.’

Repressing her instinctive urge to let Dulcie see what she really thought of her callousness, Sally mentally counted to ten, and then told her firmly, ‘Well, it’s up to you, of course, Dulcie. I’d be the last person to suggest that you sacrifice having a good time to benefit anyone else, but those poor boys have been through an awful lot – and lost an awful lot – for our sakes, you know. They are always so grateful to have visitors. They’d be especially grateful to have the opportunity to dance with a girl as pretty as you. Of course, if you’re thinking that Wilder might not approve …’ she added craftily.

‘Huh, it’s not up to him to approve of what I decide to do. I’m perfectly capable of making up my own mind about that, thank you very much.’ Privately after what Sally had said, Dulcie was thinking that it might not be a bad idea to be able to tell Wilder truthfully that she had gone to a dance without him and been asked to dance by scores of smitten young men. That would teach him not to use his leave to go to boxing matches instead of taking her out.

‘All right then,’ she told Sally grudgingly. ‘I’ll go but if Wilder finds out that he can get leave after all, I’ll have to change my mind,’ she warned.

‘That’s fine,’ Sally agreed. Whilst George had told her how keen the hospital was to get girls to attend the Saturday night dance they were giving for their patients, she suspected that Dulcie wasn’t exactly the kind of girl he had had in mind. She hardly had the milk of human kindness flowing through her veins. As Sally had seen for herself on her first visit to the hospital the previous month, some of the men were terribly badly disfigured from the injuries they had suffered, so much so in some cases that their own relatives refused to visit them. It was too late now, though, for her to regret having made her impulsive suggestion.

On Valentine’s Day Tilly was up early, wishing that the morning wasn’t so dark and that she could watch for the postman’s arrival from her bedroom window.

However, when she went downstairs, she discovered that she had had her own personal postal delivery because there was a card lying on the hall floor with her name on it but without a postage stamp, showing that Drew must have posted his card to her on his way to work. Smiling happily, Tilly hugged the card to her.

On her own way downstairs, Olive watched her. It didn’t seem so very long ago that she had been the one to secretly send her daughter a Valentine’s card. Now Tilly had no need of such maternal care, because she had Drew. Olive could remember how she herself had felt on receiving that precious first Valentine’s card from Tilly’s father: the excitement; the longing; the shared stolen kisses. What was that ache in her heart? What was wrong with her? She was thirty-seven and not a girl any more.

No, she wasn’t a girl but she was a mother, she reminded herself as she followed Tilly into the kitchen, thinking sadly as she did so that these days she and Tilly were hardly ever alone together. Was Tilly avoiding being alone with her because she knew that her mother was concerned about the growing intensity of her relationship with Drew?

‘From Drew?’ Olive asked, nodding her head in the direction of the card Tilly was still clutching to her chest as she followed her into the kitchen.

‘Yes,’ Tilly acknowledged happily. She wasn’t going to open her card until she was on her own. Reading Drew’s first Valentine’s card to her was something very special and very private.

Olive started to fill the kettle and then stopped, turning round to put it down and look at her daughter.

‘Tilly, I hope you haven’t forgotten what I said to you about you being so young and—’

‘I’m old enough to know how I feel about Drew, Mum,’ Tilly stopped her mother immediately. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have – not today on Valentine’s Day, when all she wanted to think about was Drew and their love for one another.

Olive could feel her heart thumping.

‘You’re eighteen, Tilly, that’s all, and there’s a war on.’

‘Exactly,’ Tilly shot back. ‘I’m eighteen and there’s a war on. Boys my age are joining up to fight and die for this country, Mum, just like my dad did. If Drew was one of them I—’

She broke off as the kitchen door opened and Agnes came in, her face pink as she clutched a white envelope. ‘The postman’s just been,’ she beamed, breathless with an innocent happiness that for Olive contrasted painfully sharply with Tilly’s hostility towards her.

Now wasn’t the time to talk rationally to her daughter, Olive recognised.

Later, when the girls had all left for their respective jobs, as she put away the washed and dried breakfast things and then set about sweeping the kitchen floor as she listened to more of Elsie and Doris Waters’ Home Hints on the wireless, Olive reflected that all she wanted to do was protect her daughter, and it hurt her that Tilly couldn’t see that. It was a pity that she had agreed to be on WVS mobile canteen duty tonight to fill in for a colleague from another branch of their organisation, before her regular WVS meeting, Olive reflected. Now she would have preferred to remain here at home so that she could mend things with Tilly before she went out for the evening. The last thing she wanted was her passionate and sometimes headstrong young daughter going out in a rebellious mood, and with discord between them. Despite what Tilly seemed to want to believe, Olive could remember perfectly well how it felt to be young and in love on Valentine’s Day.

It had, after all, been on the evening of Valentine’s Day that Tilly’s father, Jim, had proposed to her.

Without realising she had done so, Olive stopped sweeping, her gaze clouding with memories as she clasped the handle of her brush.

There had been no special meal out for her and Jim the night he had proposed. He’d arrived home on leave unexpectedly, and she’d found him waiting patiently in the rain for her outside the small clothing company where she’d been taken on as a machinist. He’d had a bit of a cough even then, she remembered. They’d been walking out together for just over a year. She’d met him through one of the other girls at the factory whose brother he’d been on leave with. She’d liked him right from the start. Tall, and handsome, and with the kindest eyes and smile she’d ever seen, he’d made her feel so safe with him and so proud to be his girl, even if his parents, especially his mother, had thought that he could do better for himself and hadn’t really approved of her, left orphaned as a teenager and with no family of her own to support her. It had brought her so much joy to see him standing outside the factory, smoking a Woodbine as he waited for her, the collar of his army greatcoat turned up against the drizzle, that she had felt as though the sun had come out. He’d brought her a Valentine’s card that he bought for her in Paris. She still had it upstairs, along with the letters he had written her. As if in a dream, Olive leaned her sweeping brush against the table and headed for the stairs.

Upstairs in her bedroom she kneeled down on the floor to pull Jim’s battered suitcase from underneath her bed. Since Olive kept a spotless house there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on the case, the familiar lock clicking open beneath her fingers. Fingers that trembled slightly as though she were still that young girl he had courted with so much love and tenderness. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done this, Olive acknowledged as she opened the case.

Inside it was Jim’s greatcoat and the medal he had received for his bravery in the field. ‘Everyone gets them, if they live long enough,’ he had told her. There had been so much pain in his eyes on that leave home – his last before the end of the war. She’d found out later from his nightmares that he’d been the only member of his platoon to survive when the trench they were in had come under attack, and that he’d stayed with two of his dying fellow soldiers until the end rather than make his own escape. That had been Jim all over, always thinking of others before himself. It had been the gas from those attacks that had damaged his lungs, which had ultimately led to his death. The man who had come home to her after the war had been a shadow of the young man with whom she had fallen in love, but today it wasn’t that sick dying Jim she wanted to remember. Today she wanted to remember the handsome young soldier who had brought her a Valentine’s card from Paris, and with it a special bottle of scent.

Very carefully Olive folded back Jim’s greatcoat, smoothing the front of the fabric, much as she had smoothed Jim’s poor damaged chest in those last awful months and weeks of his life.

Beneath the coat, carefully wrapped in tissue paper and tied in blue satin ribbon, were the letters he had written to her and the cards he had sent her.

That special Valentine’s card, though, wasn’t with the others. Instead it was in the box in which she had received it – a lovely silver-coloured box with a red satin heart on the front of it and the words ‘To my Sweetheart’ written on it.

Was it her imagination or did even the box still smell of foreign places and war? For a moment tears blurred Olive’s eyes as she opened the box to reveal the card inside it. On top of a delicate cream lace underlay, hand-painted pink and blue flowers on their green stems twined all round the red satin heart decorated with tiny seed pearls at the centre of the card. Inside there was a small verse: ‘Here is my love, from a heart that’s true. A true blue heart that beats just for you.’

Jim had told her that there was a shop in Paris that sold cards made especially for the British servicemen to send home to their girls. Olive’s hand shook, a tear rolling down her face. Quickly she brushed it away, her desire to protect her precious memento overcoming her emotions.

What was she doing up here behaving like this? She was far too old for this kind of silliness. And too old to sometimes miss and long for the comfort of a protective loving pair of male arms to hold her, for that special something that a loving couple shared?

Yes. She really didn’t know what was getting into her these days, Olive berated herself, as she replaced the card in its box and put it back in the case, closing it and pushing it back under the bed.

‘I thought you said that it was a good train service to this East Grinstead place and that it didn’t take long. Not much, it doesn’t. We’ve been on this train for three hours now,’ Dulcie complained to Sally as she glowered from the February landscape beyond the dirty train window to her companion who was seated opposite her in the full compartment.

‘It is – normally,’ Sally responded. The train crash in which she had been involved on her way back from Liverpool before Christmas had left her feeling a bit on edge when she had to travel by train, but she was determined that no one else was going to know that. Not when she had survived that crash almost without a scratch whilst others had lost their lives.

Even without the anxiety of the train journey she was regretting having invited Dulcie to come along with her. The other girl had done nothing but complain from the moment she had agreed to come. Even as late as this morning Sally had been hoping that Wilder would get in touch with Dulcie to say that he had got leave after all. Dulcie might be the one who was complaining volubly that he hadn’t, but privately she wished every bit as strongly as Dulcie that the opposite was the case, Sally reflected grimly. She must have been crazy to have actually felt slightly sorry for Dulcie because Wilder had let her down. George had certainly thought so when she had told him during yesterday’s telephone call that she was bringing Dulcie with her.

‘I can’t see her doing much to cheer up our chaps,’ George had protested.

‘She can be fun, and she is very pretty,’ Sally had defended her decision and her fellow lodger, but in her heart she knew that George was probably right, especially if Dulcie continued in the mood she was in right now.

They were sharing their carriage with a pale, thin young woman with an anxious expression, who was dressed in what were obviously good quality although rather dull-looking clothes and who was sitting primly in her seat with a shopping basket on her knee covered with a white cloth that now had several smoke smuts on it from the open window. The window had been opened by a young boy travelling with his mother, who was having to give more attention to her baby than her infant son. An older respectable-looking couple, occupying the remaining seats, exchanged speaking looks at the little boy’s boisterous behaviour.

‘Oh, you’re going to East Grinstead as well, are you?’ the young mother asked, looking relieved. ‘Going to the hospital, are you?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Only this is my first time. My Lance got took there after his plane was shot down. Got burned, he did, according to what I’ve been told, but they say that he’s going to be all right. First time I’ve been able to visit him, this is, what with the kiddies.’

Sally’s sympathy was immediately aroused. Having seen the patients at the hospital, she knew the terrible injuries most of them had suffered. At the hospital they received the very best, not just of medical care but, thanks to Mr Archibald MacIndoe’s innovative method of treating his patients, of emotional and psychological care as well. For the families at home, though, there was very little support, and even her one brief visit had been enough to show Sally how badly affected many of the relatives were by the injuries suffered by their loved ones.

‘This is your first visit to your husband then?’ she double-checked.

‘Yes. Yes. Brought the kiddies with me ’cos I ain’t got no one to keep an eye on them. Besides, Lance hasn’t even seen the baby yet.’

Dulcie gave Sally a cross look. Why she was getting involved with this badly dressed woman with her runny-nosed children Dulcie did not know. She stuck her own nose up in the air to signal that she wasn’t going to follow suit. And as for that dim-looking girl seated opposite her, with her basket on her knee, she smelled of mothballs and looked like she was wearing something more suited to her grandmother, Dulcie thought unkindly.

‘We’re going to the hospital as well,’ the man joined the conversation.

‘Our son’s a patient there,’ added his wife. Her hand trembled as it rested on his arm, Sally saw.

‘Mr MacIndoe is very pleased with his progress so far. He’s having skin grafts. It’s a long process and Bryan gets impatient.’

‘That’s a good sign that he must be starting to heal,’ Sally offered gently, before explaining, ‘I’m a nurse. My … my boyfriend is a doctor at the hospital.’

She didn’t normally disclose that kind of information – the minute you said you were in the medical profession people always wanted to discuss symptoms and operations with you – but on this occasion she knew that she would feel uncomfortable listening to harrowing tales of awful injuries from people who might assume that she was ‘one of them’ when she wasn’t.

‘Yes. We’re going down there to a dance,’ Dulcie chipped in, suddenly realising that she was being excluded from the conversation. Dulcie did not like being excluded from anything.

‘It’s for the patients,’ Sally felt bound to explain hastily when she saw the pained look on the older couple’s faces. ‘As you know, Mr MacIndoe believes that it is very important to get his patients as involved with normal everyday life as he can, even whilst they are still having treatment.’

‘Yes,’ the girl with the basket unexpectedly spoke up, her cut-glass accent making Dulcie bridle slightly. ‘They’ve begun to call East Grinstead “the town that doesn’t look away”.’

‘You’re visiting someone yourself?’ the young mother asked.

‘Yes. My … my brother.’

‘Well, since we’re all travelling to the same place,’ Sally said with a smile, ‘perhaps we should introduce ourselves. I’m Sally, and this is Dulcie,’ she announced promptly, extending her hand to each of the others in turn.

‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ the young mother replied. ‘I’m Joyce, and that’s William over there, and this here is Pauline.’

‘Edna and Harold Chambers,’ the male half of the elderly couple introduced them.

‘Persephone Stanton,’ the other girl included herself, in her very upper-class accent.

A faint wash of pink brightened her pale face when Dulcie demanded, ‘Persephone? What kind of a name is that?’

‘It’s Greek,’ she explained. ‘Daddy is a Greek scholar.’

Thankfully, before Dulcie could put her foot in it again, Joyce called out wearily to her little boy, ‘William, don’t keep on touching them windows. I keep telling you they’re dirty.’

‘But I like touching them,’ the little boy protested, ‘and there’s nothing else to do.’

Opening her bag, Sally delved into it for the pencil and notepad she always carried with her, tearing out a sheet of paper and handing it to the boy with the pencil and a smile as she suggested, ‘Why don’t you count how many houses you can see from the window, William?’ her kindness earning her a grateful look from Joyce, who told her in a confiding undertone, ‘He’s such a handful at the moment. He’s only at school in the mornings, see, on account of his proper school being bombed. Running wild all over the place, he is, with a gang of older boys. I’ve warned him that he’ll get himself into trouble and then where will we be? Of course I can’t say anything to his dad, not wanting to worry him.’

‘Haven’t you got any family who could help?’ Sally asked her sympathetically.

‘Not really. I’m from the north but I’ve moved down to London ’cos it’s easier to get to the hospital but I don’t really know anyone there yet.’

‘A boy that age needs a man around to teach him his manners,’ Harold Chambers announced firmly. ‘Need a bit of strong handling, young boys do.’

Seeing the stubborn look crossing the little boy’s face and the anxious guilt on his mother’s, Sally stepped in hastily, asking the first thing that came into her head in an effort to change the direction of the conversation.

‘How old is your little girl?’

‘Pauline. She’s nine months. Born in May, she was.’

May. The same time as her half-sister. Pain spiked through Sally, catching her off guard. Normally she refused even to think about her half-sister, even to acknowledge within her own thoughts that she existed. Nine months old. That meant that she would have had nine months of love from Sally’s own father that she had had no right to have at all.

Sally shivered and turned towards the window.

‘So where are we going then?’ Tilly asked Drew, as they left the house arm in arm.

‘I’m not telling you until we get there. It’s a surprise,’ Drew insisted. ‘Oh, damn!’ he exclaimed ruefully. ‘I’ve gone and left part of your surprise on the kitchen table at Ian’s. We’ll have to call in there and get it.’

Tilly nodded.

‘I’d better check on the fire whilst we’re here,’ Drew added as he unlocked the front door to let them both into the house. ‘Ian’s gone down to his in-laws for the weekend, so I’m in charge of keeping in the fire.’

‘You mean you’ve got the house to yourself?’ Tilly asked as she followed him into hall.

Ian employed a cleaner to keep the place tidy but it lacked the well-polished special look that her own home had, that touch that came from a home having a woman in charge who loved it, she recognised. When she and Drew had their own home she would keep it every bit as spick and span as her mother kept number 13. Their own home … The thought of having the right to share a house with Drew as his wife brought the now familiar surge of giddy excitement and anticipation mixed with urgency.

‘Yes,’ Drew confirmed, ‘and that being the case, we had better not stay here for very long. I’ll bet that Nancy is keeping a watch out. You know what she’s like, and your mom will have something to say if she thinks I’m breaking the rules.’

Tilly pulled a face. ‘Nancy’s so nosy. Anyway, we’ve got a perfectly legitimate reason for being here.’

‘You mean these,’ Drew asked her, reaching for the carefully wrapped box of chocolates he’d left on the kitchen table.

‘No, I mean this,’ Tilly told him, sliding her arms round him and raising her face to his for a kiss.

‘That is not a perfectly legitimate reason,’ Drew told her several minutes later, his voice thick with emotion as he finally stopped kissing her.

‘Don’t talk,’ Tilly whispered to him, placing her fingers against his lips. ‘Just kiss me again instead, Drew.’

‘Tilly …’ he began to protest, but Tilly silenced him in the most effective way she could, kissing him again with passionate intensity.

The only thing that Drew had told her about their special Valentine’s evening out had been that she should wear the lovely dress she had worn on New Year’s Eve, which Tilly knew must mean that he was taking her out dancing. Now, as she pressed herself closer to him, the rich plum-coloured silk velvet shimmered in the hall light as their bodies moved closer together and Tilly wound her arms tightly around Drew’s neck.

‘I want to stay here – with you – just the two of us … together,’ she told him fiercely.

Drew shook his head. ‘You know we can’t do that.’

‘I thought you loved me,’ Tilly protested.

‘I do,’ Drew assured her, ‘but you know what I promised your mom, Tilly. What we both promised her. Don’t look like that,’ he coaxed her, adding firmly, ‘Wait here. I’ve got something special to show you.’

As he released her and turned away to start to climb the stairs, Tilly made to follow him but Drew shook his head and told her firmly ‘No, Tilly. You must wait down here. Otherwise, I’m not going to show you.’

He meant it, Tilly could tell.

Reluctantly she stood in the hallway and watched as he bounded up the stairs two at a time. She heard a door open and then close. Drew’s bedroom door. Her heart turned over and then started to race. She looked at the stairs. If she followed him up to that room; if she kissed him as she had done before, then …

Then it wouldn’t be fair to Drew, she warned herself. Because he had promised her mother, and she loved him too much to want to make him break that promise, knowing how badly he would feel about it if he did.

The bedroom door opened and then closed again, and then Drew was coming downstairs toward her carrying a sheaf of typed papers.

‘I’ve started writing the book,’ he told her, shaking his head when she reached out to take the pages from him. ‘No, I’m not going to let you read it – not yet.’

‘When did you start? You never said anything.’

‘The night we went to see St Paul’s.’

Silently they looked at one another and Tilly knew that he too was remembering how close she had come to losing her life.

She stretched out her hand towards him and Drew took it, wrapping his large hand around her small one, making her feel safe and protected, and loved just as he had done then.

‘I wasn’t going to say anything yet, because I’m not sure … well, I don’t know how you’ll feel about it, but it just feels so right, even though it’s not exactly what I planned.’ He looked away and then back at her. ‘It’s about us, Tilly, about you and me and our war as well as the people of London’s war – the brave ordinary people of London – and I’m writing it so that we’ll never forget. I never want to forget what our war has been like, just as I know that I shall never be able to forget that moment when I thought that I might lose you.’

‘You’re writing about us … about me? I’m going to be in a book? But I’m not important enough to be in a book.’

‘Yes, you are, Tilly. You are the most important person in the world to me.’

‘When can I read it?’

‘Not yet. Not until it’s finished.’

Tilly’s heart swelled with loving pride. She just knew that Drew’s book was going to be wonderful.

‘I’m going to take this back upstairs and then you and I are going to go out and enjoy our Valentine’s evening,’ Drew told her.

‘However lovely my treat is, Drew, it can’t make me any happier than you’ve already made me,’ Tilly told him.

When he came downstairs again, though, Tilly remembered that she had something else to tell him – a message from her mother.

‘Mum’s decided that she’s going to go ahead and set up this fire-watching team for Article Row. She wants to ask you and Ian to join the team.’

‘I can’t speak for Ian. I’ll tell him, though, of course, and needless to say I want to join. I think it’s really commendable of your mother to take this on, Tilly, but then she’s that kinda person, always wanting to help out where she can.’

‘I dare say she’ll rope in all of us at number 13. I can’t see Dulcie being keen, though. She’s already creating about having to do fire-watch duty at Selfridges. Oh, but you’ll never guess. The Misses Barker from number 12 got to hear about Mum’s plans – from Nancy, I suppose – and they’ve both said that they want to be involved.’ Tilly laughed. ‘That was definitely one in the eye for Nancy, although given their age I can’t imagine that Mum’s going to want them climbing on roofs or leaning out of attic windows so that they can spot falling incendiaries. They must both be in their sixties.’

Drew laughed too, but said, ‘No, but they will be able to help clear away any of the incendiaries that have fallen in the area. It will be team work that will keep Article Row safe, Tilly. Come on, we’d better make a move otherwise we’ll be late.’

‘Just one more kiss before we go?’ Tilly pleaded.

Not that she needed to plead very hard. She could see that from the look in Drew’s eyes.

Their train was predictably late in arriving at East Grinstead station. As George was meeting them at the station, Sally and Dulcie said their goodbyes to the others, who were all lodging within walking distance. As they queued to hand over their tickets to the waiting ticket inspector, Sally suspected that the majority of the passengers exiting the station had travelled to the small town to visit relatives at the hospital. With several young women amongst them, it looked as though there would be a reasonable number of partners for the men at Saturday night’s dance, which gave her all the more reason to regret that she had ever invited Dulcie to join her.

That feeling increased when they were still waiting for George fifteen minutes later, and Dulcie had complained about his tardiness for every one of those fifteen minutes. It didn’t help that it had started to rain, a fine miserable freezing drizzle that was slowly soaking through Sally’s knitted gloves.

‘If you was to ask me I’d say the best thing we could do is get on the first train back to London,’ Dulcie informed her in a sharp voice. ‘I don’t know why I ever let you talk me into coming here.’

A car was coming towards them, its headlights dimmed for the blackout. It pulled to a halt right in front of them. It was a very smart and expensive-looking car indeed, Sally recognised. When the driver’s door opened and George climbed out she could hardly believe it, simply standing staring at him in disbelief until he opened the passenger door and called out, ‘Come on and get inside before you get even wetter.’

This was more like it, Dulcie decided, having immediately settled herself in the comfortable front passenger seat and pulled the smart tartan car rug she had found there across her lap, leaving George to deal with her weekend case, and Sally with no alternative other than to climb into the back of the car. Sally’s boyfriend must be doing well if he could afford a car like this.

Only, as George explained once he was back in the driver’s seat and indicating to pull back out into the road, the car actually did not belong to him, but to his boss, the famous pioneering surgeon.

‘Mr MacIndoe said I could borrow his car to pick you up when he realised that our last op of the day had run over, and that meant I’d had to leave you both standing in the rain. He sends his apologies, by the way. Oh, and if you don’t mind I just want to drive back to the hospital before I drop you off and see that you’re settled in, just to check that my patient is comfortable. He was still pretty much out for the count when I left him.’

Before Dulcie could voice what Sally knew would be objections, she assured George quickly, ‘Of course we don’t mind. It’s a treat to be chauffeured in such a lovely car, isn’t it, Dulcie?’

‘So where’s this dance being held then?’ Dulcie demanded, not vouchsafing an answer.

‘At the hospital. We have a room there that we can use and it will be more comfortable for the men. Although the townspeople here are marvellous about not making the men feel self-conscious about their injuries, some of the patients are pretty reluctant to leave the hospital. That’s why Mr MacIndoe is so keen to have these social events. He believes that it’s as important to get the men back into living normal lives as it is to deal with their physical injuries. The mental and emotional trauma they suffer is every bit as bad as the physical stuff, although, of course, some of them handle it better than others. Those with families – wives and girlfriends who rally round – do the best, although we do get some who hate what has happened to them so much that they refuse to see them. We have to remember that most of these men are RAF – young, strong, good-looking men who had the world at their feet before they were injured. Men that other men envied, men who girls always looked twice at in their smart uniforms and because they are heroes, instead of because of the severity of their injuries. Now, here we are …’ George told them as he swung the car into the road that led to the hospital, its bulk outlined as a dark shape against the slightly lighter sky by the thin moonlight escaping through the clouds.

‘I shouldn’t be too long,’ George told them as he brought the car to a halt. ‘I’ll have a word and see if I can get you each a cup of tea whilst you wait for me.’

‘Would it possible for me to go with you, George?’ Sally asked. ‘Just out of professional curiosity. That’s if Ward Sister will allow it.’

Sally knew from George and her previous visit that the nursing care provided to Mr MacIndoe’s patients was rather different from the ordered routine of Barts Hospital. Mr MacIndoe had a rule that the nurses smile at their patients at all times and, indeed, that they actually teased them and flirted with them a little, to help boost the men’s confidence.

‘Sister won’t mind – she’s an old Barts nurse,’ George assured her, as he got out of the car, opening the rear door for Sally first and then going round to help Dulcie out of the front passenger seat.

The minute they entered the hospital Dulcie wrinkled her nose against the fiercely pungent smell of clean linoleum and disinfectant.

‘I’ll leave you here in reception,’ George told her. ‘I’ll ask someone to bring you a cup of tea. We won’t be very long.’

Ten minutes later, growing increasingly bad-tempered, Dulcie wasn’t best pleased, having stopped a nurse who was going off duty to ask her where her cup of tea was, when the other girl said she didn’t know and then added, ‘Your stocking seam’s gone and run all over your leg.’

A quick look over her shoulder showed Dulcie that the nurse was right and that her carefully applied eyebrow pencil ‘stocking seam’ had run with the rain.

‘Where’s the nearest toilet then?’ she demanded.

‘Down the corridor, turn left, then right and it’s halfway down that corridor on your left.’

She was gone in a swirl of her cloak before Dulcie could say anything more. Showing off, Dulcie thought crossly. Not that she’d got any reason to do so, not with those thick ankles of hers.

Down the corridor. Well, that was easy enough. ‘Turn left, and then right, and it’s halfway down the corridor on your left.’

The other girl might have said just how long the corridors were, Dulcie thought indignantly when she finally found the ladies’, and was able to inspect the damage to her ‘seams’ by standing on the lavatory lid with the door open so that she could see the back of her legs in the slightly spotted mirror above the washbasin.

Ten minutes later, her seams fully restored to their original smartness, and her handkerchief rather the worse for wear, having been used as both a flannel and a towel, Dulcie set off back to the reception area.

Down the corridor and then turn into the other corridor and then … Had she come this way? Dulcie wasn’t sure, and the corridor she was in now seemed to go on for miles.

It never came easily to Dulcie to admit that she was wrong – about anything – but even she was beginning to feel that she was going to have to turn round and retrace her steps when, to her relief, up ahead of her she saw a pair of double doors. Hurrying towards them, she pulled them open and then came to an abrupt halt.

She was in a ward. It was filled with men – men sitting or lying in bed, men seated in chairs, men leaning against walls and talking to other men, men in uniform, men in pyjamas, men talking, men smoking, and men simply lying silently in their beds swathed in bandages. Tall men, short men, men with dark hair and men with fair hair. But men who all had one thing in common – the severity of their injuries.

Other young women might have turned away, unable to bear the evidence of what war could do to the human body, but Dulcie wasn’t like that. She lacked that delicate female sensitivity and imagination that made most of her sex so aware of the pain of others. On the other hand, she wasn’t the sort to shrink from such things either. It simply wasn’t in her nature. She had grown up in the poverty of the East End. In that world there had been adults who had rickets as children and as a result had weak and twisted limbs, men who had lost limbs during the Great War, a little boy three houses down from where Dulcie had lived had suffered horrendous burns when he had pulled a pan of boiling soup over onto himself.

Now, instead of turning away from the sight of young men with badly burned faces and missing limbs, she simply stared curiously at them.

One of the men who had been standing closest to the door, smoking a cigarette, put it out and called out, ‘Hey, boys, look. We’ve got a stunner of a pretty girl come to visit.’

Immediately all the men who were able to do so turned towards her.

‘Who are you looking for?’ the young man who had spoken up asked her.

‘No one,’ Dulcie replied. ‘I got lost on my way to reception.’

Confident by nature and toughened by her upbringing, Dulcie felt no self-consciousness at being the only young woman amongst so many young men. Their obvious interest in her she took as no more than her due. Flirtatious comments and tributes to her prettiness were something she took in her stride, preening herself like a queen amongst her courtiers as she accepted them, whilst privately thinking that it was just as well that she had reapplied those rainwater-damaged ‘stocking seams’.

‘Well, reception’s loss is our gain,’ one of the men told her appreciatively.

This was Dulcie’s favourite milieu – being at the centre of male attention – and whilst it was true that these men bore the scars of their injuries very openly, they had enough confidence and enough youthful verve despite their bandages for her to decide that tomorrow’s dance might be good fun after all. And it would just serve Wilder right if she did have fun after the way he had let her down. In Dulcie’s opinion he should have made much more of an effort to see her tonight.

‘Going to the dance tomorrow?’ asked one of the young men, who had limped over to her. He was rolling a cigarette with one hand, the stump of his other, missing arm heavily bandaged, like almost all of the left-hand side of his face.

‘I might be,’ Dulcie responded coquettishly.

‘There’s no way that Mr MacIndoe is going to let you go dancing tomorrow night,’ one of the other men warned. ‘You’ve got surgery on Monday.’

‘All the more reason to have a good time on Saturday,’ the young man responded.

The doors at the other end of the ward opened to admit a pretty young nurse, accompanied by George and Sally.

‘Dulcie, what are doing in here?’ Sally asked.

‘You were gone so long I thought I’d have a look round,’ Dulcie fibbed. She wasn’t going to make herself look daft by admitting she’d got herself lost.

Sally gave the ward sister an apologetic look. It was typical of Dulcie that she’d managed to find her way into the ward that contained in the main those men who were reaching the final stages of their treatment and rehabilitation before being discharged, and who were therefore far more likely to react as high-spirited young men in her presence than very sick patients.

Since George had come into the ward with the ward sister only to check up on another of his patients, Sally pointed to the doors through which she and George had just come, and told Dulcie, ‘We’re going back this way.’

George had finished checking up on his patient and was waiting for them to join him. As they did so, Dulcie glanced casually at the man George had been examining and then stopped, moving closer to exclaim in astonishment, ‘David!’

It was David James-Thompson, the dashing barrister who had married Dulcie’s arch-enemy from Selfridges – the posh daughter of one of Selfridges directors.

How Dulcie had enjoyed flirting with David and encouraging him to pay attention to her as a means of getting at the snooty Lydia, who had made it so plain that she looked down on her. David had wanted to take things further than the mild flirtation Dulcie had instigated, but Dulcie had refused. If she’d been the type to allow herself to fall in love, which she wasn’t, then falling in love with a man like David – a man who would one day inherit a title and whose mother had chosen his wife for him – could only lead to heartache. But even though she knew that she had made the right decision, standing here looking at him was making her heart thud in a most un-Dulcie-like way – something that Wilder had never been able to achieve.

David’s handsome face was exactly the same, even if the amusement and the confidence had gone from the familiar hazel eyes. It was very rare for anything or anyone to wrong-foot Dulcie or catch her off guard. But right now something had.

David wasn’t looking at her. He had turned his head right away from her so that he didn’t have to look at her, turning his body away from her too, and that was when Dulcie recognised from the movement of the bedclothes that David no longer had much of a body; that in fact beneath the bedclothes where the outline of his legs should have been there was nothing. David has lost his legs. And most of one of his arms, she realised as she looked properly at him. She had been so surprised to see him, so taken off guard by the sight of his familiar handsome face that initially she hadn’t looked beyond that face.

Sally’s hand on her arm was drawing her away, George coming to stand on the other side of her, both of them almost walking her out of the ward so that she was through the doors and in the corridor beyond it before she could think to object.

David watched her go. Seeing Dulcie had affected him in a way that he had truly believed was no longer possible. Not sexually – that was impossible, thanks to his injuries from the Messerschmidt bullets, which had ripped apart his lower legs and his groin as well as damaging his arm. No, seeing Dulcie had brought back to life, if only briefly, his war-numbed emotions. Seeing Dulcie had reminded him of a past that in its way had been every bit as bleak as the only future he could now look towards.

He had been very young when he had recognised that his mother didn’t even like him, never mind love him, absorbing that knowledge as a truth without any need for it to be put into words, as young children do. Later, using his legal brain to try to rationalise his mother’s attitude to him, he had decided that initially her antipathy toward him sprang from the loss of her own elder brother toward the end of the Great War. His mother had worshipped her elder sibling; she talked about him all the time. Her private sitting room had been filled with silver-framed photographs of him where it had been bare of photographs of both David and his father. David had never been allowed to touch those precious photographs, his small chubby baby hands smacked hard whenever he tried to reach for them when his mother was holding them.

David could still vividly remember his mother’s excitement on her brother’s rare visits, even though he had been very young at the time. No one had been allowed to interrupt them. His mother had wanted her precious brother to herself. Apart from these rare glimpses, David’s visual memories of his uncle came from his mother’s photographs. These had shown a thin and delicate man, as befitted the poet he had been. A poet who, according to David’s mother, had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Perhaps things might have been different for David if he had taken after his mother’s side of the family and physically resembled his dead uncle, but he did not. David had the strong muscles and the height of his father’s family, and that had been another reason for his mother to reject him. His father’s family were good country stock but not anywhere near as blue-blooded as his mother’s family, with its earldom at the top of their family tree. At the top of the family tree and far out of the reach of his mother’s branch of the family until the Great War had scythed through its younger branches, resulting in the deaths of the three male cousins, their deaths putting his mother’s brother, Eddie, in direct line to inherit the earldom on the death of the then current earl.

He had been a child still when his uncle had been sent home from the trenches, suffering from the gas poisoning that had killed him. A child with scarlet fever, whose mother had therefore been banned from going to nurse her sick brother, the sick brother who had died, whilst he … the naughty child, whose illness had meant she was unable to see her brother, to nurse him, maybe to save him, was then the cause of the whole family losing the earldom and the status and riches that went with it. His mother had never forgiven him for that, and David knew that she never would.

His marriage to Lydia had been the price his mother had demanded from him as mere interest on the debt she believed he owed her. Lydia would ultimately inherit a very good fortune indeed and Lydia’s family, with their connection to trade through the great-grandparents from whom that fortune came, had been keen to cement their progress up the social ladder by marrying their daughter to a young man who would ultimately inherit from his own great uncle and then his father the title of Sir David and the pretty Oxfordshire manor that went with it. Not that his mother, forced to accept his father’s proposal when the Great War had left so many young women of her generation without prospective husbands, thought very much of his father’s family title. A mere baronetcy could after all hardly compare with an earldom; good stout hearty beefy English county blood could not match the purity of blue blood that for centuries had never been mixed with anything other than more blue blood.

How his mother had railed against the fact that, as the last of her family, she could not claim the earldom and all that went with it, always concluding her furious tirades with the cruel words that David could never have been good enough to wear the family ermine.

‘How I came to produce a child like you I shall never know,’ she was fond of declaiming.

If fate had been unkind to her it had been equally unkind to him in giving him a mother who had no love for him. His father, a decent, good man in his way, had quickly been cowed by his far more domineering wife, and David had learned from him that it was easier to give in to his mother than to stand up to her. He had often wondered if Lydia realised that, for all her fussing over her, his mother secretly despised her. Lydia would certainly never have been considered good enough for his mother’s precious brother or the earldom.

Perhaps it was that early rejection by his mother that had made him the man he was, and that had fostered in him that streak of earthiness and enjoyment of the company of rich robustness of ordinary people. People like Dulcie. David didn’t know and he cared even less. In fact, he didn’t care about anything right now other than the pain where his lower legs should have been. No, he didn’t care, but he still couldn’t help watching Dulcie walk away from him, until she had disappeared through the door at the other end of the ward.

‘You know the group captain, do you, Dulcie?’ George asked once they were out of the ward.

‘Yes, I do, not that you’d know it from the way he went and showed me up by ignoring me,’ Dulcie responded with a small angry sniff. ‘Of course, it will be on her account, that stuck-up wife of his. Always was jealous of me, she was, and I dare say he won’t want any of his pals telling her that he’s been talking to me when she comes to visit him.’

‘That won’t happen, Dulcie,’ George informed her. ‘Neither David’s wife nor his parents visit him. They’re ashamed of him, you see, because of his injuries, and that will be why he didn’t acknowledge you. He’d be afraid that you would reject him like they did.’

Dulcie could hear the disapproval of Lydia and of David’s parents in George’s voice, and immediately played up to it.

‘Not visit their own son? Well, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, him being like he is. Mind you, I never liked the sound of that mother of his, and as for Lydia, the only reason she married him was because one day he’ll have a title.’

George seemed to be considering something, but even Dulcie, who made a point of never allowing anything to catch her off guard, was surprised when he asked her, ‘Dulcie, how would you feel about visiting David tomorrow afternoon at visiting time?’

‘What, after him ignoring me today?’

‘We desperately need to get him properly on the road to recovery and that’s not going to happen until he feels that people accept him as he is, and that they still care about him despite his injuries.’

Listening to her fiancé as they walked towards the hospital exit, Sally tried to send him a warning look. She didn’t think that Dulcie was the right person to ask to show compassion to a man in David’s condition.

But George was giving her a small shake of his head as he continued, ‘Of course, I realise that it would take a really special girl to do that for David, Dulcie. Not many girls would feel comfortable talking to a young man as badly injured as David is – a young man who right now is feeling very sorry for himself and very angry indeed because of the way his wife and mother have turned their backs on him. It would take a very unselfish and kind young woman indeed, a young woman who is the complete opposite from his wife.’

Sally grimaced to herself. She knew what George was doing and why. He was using on Dulcie the psychological skills he was being taught at the hospital for helping his patients, but Sally still wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

Listening to George, Dulcie, oblivious to what George was doing, bridled with delight at the thought of doing something that would make her look better than Lydia. How she’d enjoy telling them back at Selfridges that she’d had to step in and help David because his wife had turned her back on him. That would show everyone who was the better woman. And it would show David as well. He might have been sweet on her but he had still gone and married Lydia. Not that she, Dulcie, had wanted him to marry her, but she wouldn’t have minded having him ask her.

Ever practically minded, though, she asked George, ‘What if he doesn’t want to talk to me? There’d be no point in me visiting him then, would there? And I’d look a real charlie sitting there with him refusing to even look at me.’

‘I think he’ll want to talk to you, Dulcie. He watched you leaving the ward. I turned round to have a look. It was probably a shock for him to see you. And I expect he was worried about what you’d think. After all, I dare say the last time you saw him he was standing on his feet and uninjured. Now he’s lost both his lower legs and an arm, and there were other injuries … to his groin.’

A flutter of something unfamiliar gripped Dulcie’s belly. David had been such a tall, broad-shouldered, male man, as proud of being a handsome man as she was of being a pretty girl.

‘Well, his face is all right,’ was all she allowed herself to say, ‘and you can’t see that he’s not got any legs whilst he’s in bed, can you? Mind you, I can’t say that I’m surprised about that wife of his – she never did have much about her. And I dare say there won’t be an heir then now either, by the sound of it.’

‘No, Dulcie, there won’t,’ George confirmed sadly. ‘It’s a lot to ask of any young woman, Dulcie, I know that, and I wouldn’t blame you one little bit if you felt that you aren’t up to it.’

‘Who says I’m not up to it? I’m not like that stuck-up wife of his. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with his face.’ She paused and then asked anxiously, ‘He can still talk, can’t he? I mean, what’s happened to him hasn’t …?’

‘Yes, he can talk, Dulcie,’ George confirmed.

‘All right, I’ll do it then,’ she agreed.

They were outside the hospital now, the thin fitful moonlight glistening on the wet road as George opened the car doors for them and then got into the driving seat.

‘Nancy’s just arrived,’ Mrs Morrison told Olive in a rueful whisper as the two WVS ladies queued up for their mid-meeting cup of tea in the church hall.

‘She said she’d be late this evening,’ Olive replied. ‘Her husband’s on fire-watching duty this week and she wanted to wait for him to come in before she came out.’

‘I’ve never known anyone make her own virtue so much of a stick to beat others with,’ said Mrs Morrison pithily. ‘I know she’s your next-door neighbour, Olive, and I don’t like speaking ill of anyone but—’

‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ Olive felt bound to defend her neighbour, even though privately she agreed with what Mrs Morrison was saying. ‘It’s just her way.’

‘You are a very charitable person, Olive,’ Mrs Morrison smiled.

Olive didn’t feel particularly charitable ten minutes later, though, when Nancy, having got her own cup of tea and several sizeable pieces of the broken biscuits that Mrs Dunne, the grocer’s wife, brought to the meetings, settled herself in the empty chair next to Olive and began importantly, ‘I don’t like to be the one to tell tales, Olive, but I think you should know that after you’d gone out this evening, I saw your Tilly leaving the house with that American.’

‘It’s Valentine’s Day, Nancy. Drew is taking Tilly out somewhere special,’ Olive automatically defended the young couple. But her defence only increased Nancy’s smug air of superiority.

‘Well, that may have been what he told you and your Tilly, for all I know, but what I saw with my own eyes was the pair of them straight heading back to the Simpsons’ and going in there together,’ Nancy told her with obvious relish.

Olive felt her heart sink. ‘I dare say Drew had probably forgotten something,’ was all she dared to allow herself to say. She could feel the maternal bands of anxiety and apprehension tightening round her heart, but the last thing she wanted, knowing her neighbour as she did, was for Nancy to see how she felt.

Nancy, though, was not to be put off. ‘I don’t think so, Olive,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t think they’d forgotten anything at all. In there for ever such a long time, they were. I was looking out of my front window waiting for my hubby to get home, on account of me wanting to get down here and being worried that he’d be delayed fire-watching,’ she excused her nosiness, ‘and I’d say it was a good hour before they left.’

Olive could feel the smile she had forced for Nancy’s benefit tightening on her face as she struggled not to betray what she was really feeling.

‘You know what your trouble is, Olive? You’re far too soft with Tilly. She’s bound to get herself talked about, carrying on like she is. I’d never have let my daughter get away with that kind of behaviour, but then she’s not that sort of girl.’

This was Nancy’s payback for the words they had exchanged recently about fire-watching, Olive knew, and she could well understand why Nancy looked so pleased with herself.

Olive’s cup of tea had gone cold. Right now she’d give anything for the strengthening cheer of a good cup of hot strong tea in the privacy of her own kitchen, where she could come to terms with what Nancy had just told her, but she had a duty to give this evening to the WVS, and a duty to protect Tilly from their neighbour’s spiteful curiosity, Olive reminded herself as she forced what she hoped was a calm smile.

‘I expect Tilly and Drew got talking about his writing and forgot the time,’ she said lightly.

Nancy raised one straggly greying eyebrow and exclaimed loftily, ‘Well, you might want to believe that, Olive, but if I was in your shoes I’d have something to say to your Tilly about getting herself a bad reputation. But then, of course, I always kept a close eye on my own daughter. It’s all very well folk volunteering for all sorts and having folk make a fuss of them because of it, but in my opinion it’s putting your own family first that matters most.’

With that Nancy ate her broken biscuits with every evidence of enjoyment, before announcing that she was going to have to leave the meeting early, ‘because I want to make sure that my Arthur gets a decent supper.’

More like because she wanted to stand in her darkened front room with the black out blind lifted so that she could watch for any comings and goings on the Row, especially if those comings and goings were Tilly’s, Olive thought miserably.