My Sweet Valentine (27 page)

‘Don’t look like that, Tilly,’ she heard Drew say. ‘I hate it when you look unhappy.’

Olive swallowed painfully. Drew wasn’t the only one who felt like that.

‘I can’t help it,’ Tilly told him, both of them oblivious to the fact that they weren’t alone and that their conversation could easily be overhead. ‘I really can’t, Drew. We don’t know when the war will end or what’s going to
happen, who is going to win, whether we’ll still be alive when it’s over.’ Her voice broke and Drew tightened his hold on her.

The awful sight she had witnessed the night the incendiaries had fallen on Article Row still tormented Tilly, he knew, even though she didn’t like talking about the effect it had had on her. He hated seeing her so distressed and knowing that there was so little he could do to comfort her.

‘I hate living the way we are,’ Tilly continued passionately. ‘I hate feeling that we’re wasting time now, marking time until the war is over, just to please my mother. We’re alive now; we don’t know if we’ll even be alive tomorrow. I want to live now – with you – as your wife. My mother claims she’s protecting me, but protecting me from what? Being happy? Is that what she really wants? We might only have today, Drew. I can’t bear knowing that, and knowing that my mother is stopping me from being with you.’

‘Oh, Tilly.’

‘It isn’t fair, Drew. It really isn’t. Mum hasn’t said a word about the fact that Sally and George have gone away together for Easter, and yet she won’t even let us get engaged. I felt so envious of Sally this morning, going away with her George, just the two of them, with no one to spy on them or tell them what to do.’

‘Sally is older than you,’ Drew felt honour-bound to point out, ‘and her situation is very different from yours. She doesn’t have a mother to worry and be anxious for her.’

Drew had wanted his comment to remind Tilly of how much more fortunate than Sally she was to have her
mother but, to his dismay, instead Tilly lifted her head from his shoulder to look up into his face and tell him bitterly, ‘Lucky her. I wish I had her freedom.’

Behind the half-open door Olive felt the pain knot her stomach and send her heart into a shocked race of maternal hurt. Releasing the door, she walked blindly towards the hallway, opening the front door to stumble out into the April sunshine, Tilly’s cruel words still ringing in her head.

Out in the garden, Drew gave Tilly a small admonishing shake. ‘You don’t mean that,’ he challenged her.

‘No,’ Tilly agreed. ‘I don’t. I just wish that she’d understand.’

‘As no doubt your mother wishes you would understand her,’ Drew told her gently.

‘I’ve had enough, Drew,’ Tilly told him. ‘When I saw Sally coming downstairs this morning with her case, she looked so happy, and so … so expectant …’ was the only way Tilly felt able to describe Sally’s look of glowing anticipation and joy. ‘I want to look like that for you. I want …’

She didn’t need to say or try to explain any more. Drew was taking her back in his arms, the wheelbarrow and its contents forgotten as he kissed her and Tilly kissed him back.

‘I know how impatient you are for us to get married, Tilly,’ Drew told her as he released her, ‘and I feel the same, but perhaps we do need to be a bit more patient with your mom and give her more time to get used to the idea.’

‘You say that, but I’m frightened, Drew. I’m so afraid that something will happen to part us. It makes me feel
that I have to do everything I can to make sure that we’re together now.’ Overhead, clouds covered the sun and Tilly shivered. ‘It hurts me so much that Mum can’t – won’t – understand that. Sometimes I even think that maybe she wants us to part. I know that’s silly but I just feel so afraid and … and so alone sometimes, Drew. Ever since that night …’

‘Oh, my poor darling girl,’ Drew tried to comfort her. ‘I promise you that whilst I have breath in my body I will never let anything or anyone come between us or keep us apart. I mean that, Tilly. You have my word on that. You are my girl. You are the only girl for me. Nothing can change that. I want you to tell me that you believe me when I say that, and that you will stop worrying.’

‘I believe you, Drew,’ said Tilly sombrely.

‘Promise me?’ Drew insisted. ‘Promise me that you know that I will never ever stop loving you, Tilly?’

‘I promise,’ Tilly told him. She could feel the love and the truth in his promise to her. But not even Drew’s assurance could banish the fear that had taken root inside her heart. What if it was something else that parted them? Something that did have the power to separate them for ever? Death had that power. Tilly closed her eyes against the panic and fear exploding inside her. She must not burden Drew with the awfulness of her dread, or worry him about the truly horrible and increasingly intense nightmares in which she could see him burning to death behind the wall of fire that separated them. She was too ashamed of her own weakness and fear to tell him that the main reason she was so angry with her mother for keeping them apart was because she had become
convinced that she was going to lose him and that he would be killed. She had always thought of herself as a strong person, but she’d been wrong. She wasn’t strong, she was cowardly and weak, and that was something she hated knowing about herself, never mind admitting to anyone else, especially when everyone else was being so brave.

‘Come on. Let’s deliver this barrowload of sand to the Misses Barker before lunchtime,’ Drew told her, reaching for the barrow. Tilly nodded. She felt so ashamed of her cowardice and her fear, so unable to discuss it with anyone because of that shame, and so very alone with those feelings.

Olive had almost reached number 13 when she saw Barney coming towards her accompanied by two older boys. He gave them an anxious look, as though somehow he felt he needed to seek their approval, before responding to her ‘hello’.

‘Up to no good they are, you mark my words,’ Nancy, who was standing at her front gate, her arms folded, announced as soon as Olive came within earshot.

The last thing she wanted right now was to have to stand and listen to one of Nancy’s complaints, Olive thought miserably, but knowing Nancy as she did, she recognised that there was no escape and that Nancy fully intended to have her say.

Olive had to admit that she herself didn’t much like the look of the two youths with Barney. She had recognised them as the two boys who had been helping out the man repairing the door to number 49, but she didn’t want to encourage Nancy to complain about Barney so
she kept her thoughts to herself, saying instead, ‘Barney’s a nice boy, Nancy.’

‘With the background he’s got? How can you say that? The Dawsons shouldn’t be allowed to foist him off on decent folk like they have.’

‘I’ve got to get in,’ Olive excused herself. ‘Drew and Tilly will be coming in for their lunch any minute.’

‘I’m surprised that you’re letting your Tilly spend so much time alone with her young man, Olive. It’s asking for trouble, if you ask me.’

‘Well, I’m not asking you, Nancy, and now if you’ll excuse me …’

Olive could feel her ears burning with a mixture of anger and guilt as she turned her back on her open-mouthed neighbour and hurried inside. If she’d stayed and had to listen to more of Nancy’s criticisms and complaints, Olive felt that she wouldn’t have been able to trust herself not to snap fiercely at her, especially when she criticised Tilly.

Tilly … Olive’s hands trembled as she removed her coat and went to fill the kettle.

What she had heard Tilly saying had shocked and hurt her, but surely it also confirmed that she was right to think that Tilly wasn’t mature enough yet for marriage. Putting the kettle down without turning on the gas, Olive found herself staring at the wall. All she was trying to do was protect Tilly, as any loving mother would. She was right to do that, wasn’t she?

‘Oh, this is lovely. Heavenly, in fact.’

George smiled at Sally as they walked arm in arm together through the pretty woodland glade with its
spring carpet of bluebells, a fresh green canopy of unfurling leaves overhead, the sunlight dappling light and shadow through the branches.

They’d arrived in the small Berkshire village just over an hour ago and, having booked into the White Hart, the pub-cum-hotel where they were staying, they’d come out to explore their surroundings.

It had been Sally who had suggested that they try to get away over Easter since, after Good Friday, they were both off for the rest of the Easter holiday. It was Sally too who had chosen their destination and booked their rooms after another sister at Barts had recommended the place to her. Two rooms, booked in their real names, not the subterfuge adopted by some young couples who chose to share a room under an assumed married name. Two rooms, each with its own bed, but tonight Sally fully intended that they would be using only one of those rooms and sharing its bed.

Thinking of that now, she asked George, ‘Did you get you-know-what?’

Was he really blushing slightly? If so, that only made Sally love him all the more.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘but I’m not sure that we should be doing this, Sally. Do you really think that it’s wise?’ he questioned, the huskiness in his voice betraying to her what he really thought.

‘We’ll have to make sure that we
are
wise – and careful,’ Sally told him firmly.

‘The trouble is,’ George admitted, turning her towards him, ‘I can’t trust myself to be as wise and as careful as I should be when I’m with you like this, Sally.’

Heady words, and they were going to her head, Sally
admitted. What other reason could there be for her smiling up at him and telling him in a voice that was as tremulous as his had been husky, ‘Sometimes I don’t want you to be.’

The spring breeze ruffled the skirt of Sally’s dress, with its dark blue and purple floral design against its cream background, teasing the hem and flattening the fabric against her legs. Sally, though, locked in George’s arms, was oblivious to the breeze.

‘So are you and Ted going to the pictures as usual this evening?’ Tilly asked Agnes, who had come to join her and Drew after delivering a parcel of Olive’s Easter baking to Mr Whittaker at number 50.

‘Yes. We were going to go upriver this afternoon for a bit of a treat and take Ted’s sisters and mum with us, but his mum was worried that it would be too expensive, so Ted’s gone round there instead.’

‘Here’s Barney,’ Drew announced as the gate into the garden of number 49 slowly opened and the Dawsons’ foster son crept in.

‘Hi, Barney. Come to give us hand, have you?’ Drew called out to him.

‘You’ve given him a shock, Drew,’ Tilly said as Barney froze and stared at them. ‘I don’t think he realised we were here.’

The gate opened again and two older boys came in, both of them coming to an abrupt halt as they saw Drew, Tilly and Agnes.

‘Any shrapnel in here, mate?’ the older of the two boys called out to Drew. ‘That’s what we’re looking for, init, Barney?’

‘They must be the two boys that Mum was talking about over lunch, the ones that she said she didn’t much care for,’ Tilly told Drew quietly so that the boys couldn’t hear her. ‘She thinks they’re too old for Barney, and so does Sergeant Dawson.’

‘Too old and probably a bit too knowing,’ Drew agreed, before calling to them, ‘Well, you’re welcome to have a look round, whilst we’re in here filling these barrows.’

‘Go on, Barney mate, you have a good scout around,’ the older boy instructed, as he himself came towards them. He produced half a cigarette from his trouser pocket and lit it, drawing the smoke in to his lungs and holding the cigarette between his thumb and his first finger with practised ease.

‘Heard about the ghost that’s bin seen here, have you?’ he asked, adding before they could say anything, ‘Don’t believe it meself but Barney swears he saw summat and so does our Stan. That’s me brother what’s with him. Reckon they saw summat outside what disappeared into the house through the front door, even though it was shut. There’s bin noises heard too, sort of bangings and shiftings, like. My old man’s with the heavy-lifting repair lot and he reckons that there’s plenty of people say that some of them that’s died are still hanging around, like they was still alive. That Mr Long died here. And there’s the ghost of a woman been seen down near Whitechapel crying out that she can’t find her baby.’

At Tilly’s side Agnes gave a small moan.

‘It’s all right, Agnes,’ Drew reassured her, giving the
boy a cool warning look. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

‘You can say that, mister, but Barney over there reckons he’s definitely seen summat. You ask him. Come on, you two,’ he called out to Barney and the other youth, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘There’s a bomb site over on Hamble Road I’ve heard about where there was four houses flattened. I reckon we’ll find summat there.’

‘Poor Barney did look scared,’ Tilly told Drew after the boys had gone. ‘He kept on looking up at the windows the whole time he was here.’

‘Oh, don’t, Tilly,’ Agnes begged her, looking nervously in the direction of the upstairs windows herself.

‘If Barney was scared it was probably because he’d been fed ridiculous stories of something that doesn’t exist,’ Drew told them both firmly, watching Tilly tense when the sound of a fighter plane was heard in the sky overhead.

‘It’s all right, it’s one of ours,’ Drew reassured her, knowing instantly why she had tensed. Tilly might not talk very much about what had happened the night Article Row had been bombed but that didn’t mean that Drew didn’t know how much it had affected her.

‘I knew that,’ Tilly insisted.

Sitting in the vicarage’s pretty garden, drinking tea out of the delicate china cups that Audrey Windle had once told Olive had been a wedding present from her husband’s great-aunt, Olive and Audrey also heard the Spitfire overhead, and looked up.

‘They’re saying that it’s very likely that the Luftwaffe
will bomb us again, now that the war seems to be going in their favour and not ours,’ Audrey told Olive, adding, ‘My nephew is rejoining his squadron next week. He’s delighted, but naturally my sister is very anxious for him. He tells her not to worry, of course. These young ones have such courage and faith. I envy them that.’