My Sweet Valentine (13 page)

‘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.

FIVE

The house in which Dulcie and Sally were staying wasn’t very far from the town centre. Sally had stayed there on her first visit to see George, and she knew that the rooms were clean and the landlady, Mrs Hodges, welcoming. The discovery that Persephone, the upper-class girl from the train, was also staying at the same lodgings had Dulcie pulling a face to Sally as the landlady ushered them into her warm cheerful kitchen with its scrubbed wooden table and welcoming Aga. After Mrs Hodges, who was on her way out to a WI meeting, had announced that she’d left them some cold supper in the larder, Sally turned to George and suggested that they go to the local chip shop and bring back some chips.

‘That’s if you fancy some, Dulcie?’

‘I fancy them more than I do a cold supper,’ Dulcie acknowledged.

‘What about you, Persephone?’ Sally asked.

The other girl immediately coloured up and looked embarrassed as she told them, ‘Daddy doesn’t approve of things like fish and chips.’

‘Poor girl,’ Sally told George ruefully once they were
alone together, walking arm in arm the short distance to the chip shop on the high street. ‘I feel a bit guilty leaving her with Dulcie. Dulcie will make mincemeat of her. Which reminds me, do you think it was wise to encourage Dulcie to visit David?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m hoping so,’ George admitted. ‘As I said earlier, physically he’s not mending as well as he should be, and Mr MacIndoe feels that is because he’s been rejected, not just by his wife but his parents as well. But I know I’m taking a risk in encouraging Dulcie to visit him.’

‘A big risk. Surely he needs someone who will be a real and regular support to him? Dulcie isn’t like that, George. Oh, I know that right now she’s all fired up with enthusiasm but that enthusiasm is more about her scoring over David’s wife than generated by any real desire to help David himself, and when it fades—’

‘I know, I know … but we’ve been getting pretty desperate. Mr MacIndoe thinks that we could lose him if we can’t find a way to give him a reason to fight for life. He hates losing patients.’

Sally squeezed George’s arm understandingly.

In the kitchen of their lodgings, Dulcie eyed Persephone. As far as Dulcie was concerned she was a very poor specimen of a girl: too thin, wearing old-fashioned clothes, and with that posh accent that reminded her of Lydia. Not that Persephone had any of Lydia’s high-handed manner about her. Dulcie certainly wouldn’t have tolerated it if she had.

‘So it’s your brother you’re going to see tomorrow then, is it?’ Dulcie asked her.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going to be visiting a patient as well,’ Dulcie told her. ‘Asked to specially, I’ve bin, on account of me already knowing him and him needing someone who’s got the gumption to visit him, not like that wife of his. I always knew that she wasn’t up to much.’ Dulcie tossed her blond hair. She was enjoying have a justifiable reason to criticise Lydia openly. ‘Turned her back on him now, she has.’

Persephone made a small sound of distress and said in a shocked voice, ‘Oh, poor boy, how awful for him, and how good you are to visit him.’

‘Yes, I am,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘But then that’s me all over, putting myself out for others. Always been like that, I have. Where’s Sally with them chips? Canoodling with that fiancé of hers, I expect. You’d think she put a bit of speed on. I’m starving … That’s the trouble with some folk. They are just naturally selfish and don’t ever think of others. So what’s up with him, then, your brother? Got burned, has he? There was plenty on that ward I was just on that had, and plenty with no arms or legs either. And George was saying as how they are the ones that have been operated on and are getting better. If that’s true then I’d hate to see them as haven’t had anything done yet,’ Dulcie told the other girl with the kind of relish that rather belied her words. ‘An ’orrible state, some of them must be in, if you ask me. ’Ere, what’s wrong with you?’ she asked when Persephone lifted a hanky to her eyes to wipe away her tears.

‘I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my brother.’

‘Well, you’d better not go crying all over him when you go to see him tomorrow. According to George, this
Mr Maclndoe, who’s in charge, doesn’t like it when relatives make a fuss. He says it upsets his patients. He’s even got the hospital to take on pretty nurses and told them to smile at the patients, ’cos he reckons it’s good for them to see a cheerful, pretty girl. I wouldn’t be surprised, if he was to see me talking with David when I see him tomorrow, if doesn’t ask me to smile at the other men there, with me being so pretty meself.’

Having queued up for and got their chips, Sally and George set off back for Sally’s lodgings at a smart pace, linked up closely together, George carrying the chips beneath his coat to make sure that they didn’t get cold, Sally having refused, saying they would make her clothes smell. Although George also lodged in the town, Sally had quite understood when his landlady had told her very politely that she didn’t allow unmarried couples, even engaged couples, to sleep beneath her roof. George wasn’t the sort to push for the kind of favours and intimacies that went with marriage, which in Sally’s view made the sweet sensuality and passion of their shared kisses and the very evident control George had to force on himself to stop him from wanting to take things further, all the more tenderly special. Without even pausing for a single kiss they rushed back.

Not that Dulcie was in the least bit grateful for their sacrifice.

‘What kept you? I’m starving,’ she complained the minute they arrived.

‘There was a queue,’ Sally told her, as they all sat down at the kitchen table and began to unwrap their newspaper parcels.

Persephone had said that she wasn’t hungry but now Sally insisted on coaxing her to share her own fish and chips.

‘Here, take a chip,’ she offered, holding out the parcel to her.

It was obvious from the uncertain way in which Persephone carefully removed a chip that she wasn’t used to eating with her fingers, Sally guessed. Taking pity on her, she put down her food and got up to get a plate and a knife and fork.

When Persephone tried to refuse, she told her firmly, ‘I’m a nurse. You didn’t eat anything on the train, and you need to keep your strength up. I realise that you might not feel like eating, but you must.’

‘Mummy and Daddy are both so upset about Roddy’s accident that we’ve just got out of the habit of … well, with rationing and everything, and then Cook  leaving because her married daughter’s had a baby …’

Listening in, Dulcie raised her eyebrows at Sally behind Persephone’s back but Sally firmly ignored her. She felt sorry for the young girl, who looked so worn down and apprehensive.

Of course, once they had all finished their supper, had had a cup of tea and then cleaned up it was time for George to leave. Sally naturally accompanied him to the door and outside into the darkness of the blackout where, beneath the bare branches of the climbing rose that covered the small porch, they were able to exchange a few precious kisses.

‘Come and sit in the car with me for a few minutes,’ George begged Sally, taking hold of her hand.

Uncertainly she looked back towards the closed door to the house. ‘I shouldn’t really,’ she began.

‘Please, Sally. We may not get another chance to be properly alone together, and there’s something I want to say.’

Silently Sally nodded her head.

As George led her towards the car she could almost feel the air of determination that surrounded him, and a responsive tremble of emotion made her own insides feel all fluttery in a way that she considered to be most unlike her normal self.

Mr MacIndoe’s car smelled of good leather and wood, and it was certainly warmer and rather more private than the shelter provided by her landlady’s front door, Sally had to admit. Not that she suspected for a single moment that George had anything improper in mind. George, bless him, simply wasn’t like that. One of the things she liked most about George was his reliability and his decency. Decency in a person meant a lot when you’d experienced a lack of it in someone of whom you’d thought better.

Inside the car, she shook her head when George offered her the warm plaid car rug, but she didn’t turn away when George moved as close to her as the car seats would allow, her knee touching his, her flesh warmed by the comfort of that contact with him.

George reached for her hands and Sally let him hold them.

‘There isn’t room for me to go down on one knee to you here,’ he began ruefully. ‘Sally, you know how much you mean to me, how much I love you and want you to be mine. At Christmas you didn’t want us to become
formally engaged because you didn’t want to steal Agnes and Ted’s thunder, but today is Valentine’s Day, even if this isn’t the kind of setting I’d have chosen for my proposal, so please will you agree to be my wife now, Sally? I promise you that I will be the best husband I can be. I love you so very much.’

His voice broke over those last words, the simple heartfelt emotion making Sally’s eyes fill with the sting of tender tears.

‘George, darling, yes, of course I will,’ she answered.

His kiss betrayed how much her answer meant to him, her own senses responding both to the moment and to George himself with an answering passion that told her how right her answer was, and how right they would be together.

‘I’ve got the ring.’ George told her gruffly once he had stopped kissing her. ‘It arrived last week. Ma’s sent a letter for you as well, but if you don’t care for it, then …’

The ring to which George was referring was his grandmother’s ring, which she had left to him for his bride-to-be. He had told her about it when he had first asked her to marry him, just as he had also told her all about his family in New Zealand – his doctor father, and his mother, who had been a nurse, and how they would welcome her into the family as his wife.

‘I shall love it,’ Sally told him truthfully. Wasn’t this what life should be all about? The gift of love, and respect for that love passed down through the generations, signifying the importance of family? Wasn’t that what she had once felt she had had in her own family and what she felt so bitterly devastated about losing? When they
married, George’s family would become her family, and the children she and George would have would be children of that family, and that mattered very much indeed to Sally.

‘Here’s Ma’s letter,’ George told her, reaching into his inside pocket to pass her a bulky envelope with her name written on it, and then diving into that same pocket again to remove a small dark green leather box.