My Sweet Valentine (28 page)
‘They don’t know what we know. This is their first war. It’s our second,’ Olive pointed out sombrely.
‘You’ll go ahead and drive for the mobile canteen service then, will you, Olive?’ Audrey asked her, changing the subject. ‘Only I could see how pleased Mrs Finch was when she learned that you could drive.’
‘Yes. I’ll be happy to do it, if they want me to,’ Olive confirmed.
It had been flattering to know how keen the mobile canteen arm of the WVS were to put her on their list of available drivers.
‘I’m so glad that Mrs Dawson has decided to join our WVS group,’ Audrey continued. ‘She’s a changed person since they took Barney in. A true example of charitable kindness being its own reward.’
‘… And the boy with Barney told us that he thinks that there’s a ghost at number 49,’ Agnes informed Olive breathlessly as the four of them sat down for a cup of tea later in the afternoon.
‘All nonsense, of course, and I told them so,’ Drew chipped in.
‘But that boy said that Barney had heard strange noises coming from the house,’ Agnes reminded him.
‘I’m sure if Barney tells Sergeant Dawson that he thinks that number 49 has a ghost, he’ll say exactly what you’ve
said, Drew,’ Olive responded. What she couldn’t say, though, was that she suspected that Archie Dawson would be extremely concerned to know that Barney was still hanging around with the Farley brothers.
‘Mrs Vincent says that she knows a couple of villagers who’ll let us borrow their bikes tomorrow, and that we should go and have a look at the ruins of the castle on the outskirts of the village,’ Sally informed George, as she rejoined him in the cosy bar after speaking with the landlady.
When the spring light had faded into darkness, the landlord had lit the log fire in the pub’s large inglenook fireplace, and Sally and George had eaten their evening meal basking in its warm glow.
‘I recommend the chicken pie and no questions asked about where the chicken came from,’ the landlord had winked at them when they had asked what was on the menu. And as Sally had said once she had tasted it, the pie had almost been as good as Olive’s cooking, as had the rhubarb flummery that had followed it.
Out here in the countryside it was almost possible to forget that there was a war, or at least it had been until a group of young men in RAf uniform had arrived in a couple of sports cars.
‘I can’t help contrasting them with your patients,’ Sally told George when the airmen had left and the sound of their cars’ engines had faded.
‘I know, I was just thinking the same thing. Fancy a stroll to walk off dinner before we go up?’ he asked with a studied casualness that made her smile tenderly at him and gently touch his knee beneath the table.
‘Aren’t I the one who should be feeling apprehensive and trying to put things off?’ she teased him.
A few minutes later, when they were strolling along the village street, her hand tucked through his arm, George admitted, ‘I don’t want to disappoint you.’
‘You won’t,’ Sally assured him lovingly. ‘You couldn’t. Come on, let’s go back.’
Sally had elected to go to George’s room rather than have him come to hers. She felt he would be more comfortable that way because it would make it clear to him that she wanted what was going to happen as much as he did, and that he wasn’t compelling her in any way. Sally smiled to herself at the thought of George, dear George, who was so gentle and kind compelling her to do anything.
Their bedrooms were next to one another and virtually identical, tucked up in the eaves of the centuries-old White Hart, with its slate roof and tiny windows with deep stone ledges. The landlady had already covered the windows with the blackout curtains, and after her bath in a bathroom that smelled pleasantly of George’s cologne Sally dressed herself in the pretty pale blue chemise and matching French knickers set bought on impulse in the days when she had believed she would be wearing them for a very different man, and so nearly thrown away in furious misery when she had been packing to leave home. It had been the thought of her mother grieving over such a waste that held her back then, just as it was her memories of her mother that were pushing her forward now. Other young women might find it odd and even hard to understand that she should think of her mother at a time
like this and feel that she would approve of what she was doing, but Sally knew that her mother would have loved George and would have understood perfectly why, in their world of death and destruction, Sally wanted to create this small brief oasis of special commitment for them both. They couldn’t marry. It would be frowned upon with George at the stage he was with his career, and even more so by her own matron. But they could do this.
She
could do this, Sally felt. She could give them both this special time, this special memory to sustain them until the was was over.
Pulling on her dressing gown, she made her way along the bare boards of a corridor that creaked with every step she took until she was outside George’s bedroom door. Knocking briefly she didn’t wait for an answer, simply lifting the old-fashioned wrought-iron latch and stepping inside.
George, like her, was wearing a dressing gown – his being a smart paisley – beneath which she could see the trousers of a pair of handsome-looking burgundy silk pyjama bottoms. He was pacing the wooden bedroom floor, smoking a cigarette.
When he saw her the tips of his ears went red.
‘The bed looks comfy,’ Sally told him, deliberately teasing him as his ears burned even more.
‘Sally, are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked her anxiously. ‘Because if you don’t—’
‘Shush. And yes, I do,’ Sally told him tenderly, going to him and placing her fingertips against his mouth.
Taking her hand in his, George said, ‘I just hope you won’t be disappointed. I haven’t …’ He paused, looking uncomfortable.
‘Neither have I.’
‘I don’t want to disappoint you,’ he repeated.
‘You won’t,’ Sally reassured him as she had done earlier before shrugging off her dressing gown and putting her arms round his neck. ‘Or at least you won’t if you kiss me very soon, darling George.’
With something between a groan and a self-depreciatory laugh, George gathered her in his arms, his heart thudding heavily into hers.
Later, much later, after they had shared the uncertainty of that first exploratory time, and then come together again with newly discovered confidence and joy, Sally lay in George’s arms, her head pillowed against his shoulder, her hand resting on his bare chest, her voice soft with love as she whispered to him, ‘See, I was right, wasn’t I? I knew it would be wonderful. I knew
you
would be wonderful, George.’
‘You are the one who is wonderful,’ he responded emotionally.
‘Of course, when I told them that I was working for Selfridges but that I’d felt it me duty to go into munitions on account of me having a brother who was out fighting in the desert, they offered me a job straight away. Well, it stands to reason that they would, doesn’t it?’
‘But aren’t you just a little bit worried that you won’t like it, Dulcie? I mean, you’ve been working with them lovely cosmetics and everything at Selfridges, and one of the women who works with me has said as how her niece is working in munitions and that she doesn’t care for it at all. It’s turned her skin yellow, and she says that you have to wear horrible clothes. She says too that there’s some girls there who are really rough types.’ Agnes gave a small shudder.
Listening to them, Olive suppressed a small sigh. Agnes was a dear, and wouldn’t knowingly hurt anyone, but there was no getting away from the fact she could be naïve at times.
‘Well, of course I won’t be mixing with that sort. And I dare say I’ll be promoted in no time at all, me being a cut above them. That’s what David says, anyway,’ Dulcie
informed Agnes, giving her an angry look. ‘As for the clothes, you have to wear them to protect yourself, ’cos you’re dealing with dangerous chemicals. That’s what Mr Finch, who’s the foreman, told me. Anyway, I don’t see how you can say that about working in munitions when you’re working on the underground in that awful uniform.’
‘I think what you’re doing is very brave, Dulcie,’ Tilly chipped in.
‘You’re right, it is. But of course I felt it was my duty, didn’t I, when Mr Bevin said about our boys needing more munitions and that. You only have to listen to the news to know that they’re having a hard time out in the desert where our Rick is.’
Sally suppressed a small smile as she listened. The reality was, of course, that if Dulcie hadn’t volunteered she would have been called up for munitions work anyway eventually, and that her decision to find herself a job at a local munitions factory meant that she’d avoided the risk of being sent to a strange town where she knew no one. Now at least she could continue to lodge at number 13. Not that Sally blamed her for wanting to do that. Number 13 had become home to all three lodgers.
Having looked at her watch, Sally finished her cup of tea and stood up. ‘I’d better go otherwise I’ll be late for my night shift.’
Olive watched her as she hurried to the door.
When Sally had returned from Berkshire on Easter Monday there had been such an obvious glow of happiness and contentment about her that Olive had guessed immediately what had happened. Not that she would
have said so to Sally, if Sally herself hadn’t introduced the subject when they had been alone in the kitchen together doing the washing up.
‘I suppose you’ve guessed what happened whilst we were away,’ she said quietly. ‘It was my idea, and what I wanted. We can’t marry yet, and sometimes I feel that George doesn’t realise how special he is to me and how much I love him. I wanted him to know how I really feel. I wanted us to have something to hold on to. I dreamed of my mother afterwards. She was smiling and happy for me. I know she would have loved George.’
Olive could still feel the sharp echo of the pang of envy she had felt witnessing Sally’s obvious joy. And if she had been aware of that air of completeness and fulfilment that surrounded her, then how much more aware of it must Tilly be?
Just one brief look at her daughter’s face now as Tilly watched Sally hurry out of the room told Olive that she was right to fear that Tilly was aware of the change in Sally and the reason for it.
Sally was so lucky, Tilly thought enviously. There had been no one to stop her being with George as Tilly so desperately wanted to be with Drew. And, of course, George, unlike her own Drew, would not have told her that her mother was only trying to protect her by refusing to acknowledge that she was adult enough to make her own decisions.
Tilly thought of the girl she had overheard in the ladies’ at the pub in Fleet Street when she and Drew had gone there for a drink on Saturday night – a girl who had
looked as though she was more or less her own age, and wearing a new shiny wedding ring – who had been boasting to her friend that she had forced her parents’ hands by telling them that there was every risk that their grandchild would be born out of wedlock if they didn’t let her marry her sweetheart, and quickly.
If Drew had been a different type of man she might have been able to persuade him to do the same, but then if he had been the type to agree to something like that, then he wouldn’t have been her Drew, Tilly was forced to admit, as she turned to Dulcie, in an attempt to give her thoughts a new direction.
‘So what is it that you have to wear then, Dulcie?’ she asked.
Dulcie pulled a face. ‘Well, when you get there, you have to sign on and then you have to go into this room and get changed out of your own clothes, on account of you not being allowed to wear anything with metal in it in case it causes a spark and you blow the whole place up, what with all them detonators and that around.’
Listening to Dulcie, Tilly’s hand went straight to the neckline of her floral blouse, beneath which she was wearing Drew’s ring on its chain. She didn’t think she’d be willing to take any kind of work that meant she couldn’t have it close to her.
‘Then we have to work a month on days and a month on nights, and we don’t get to finish until Saturday afternoon. Mind you, we do get a hot meal whilst we’re there, and they have the wireless going, not that you can hear much of it with all them machines. The place stinks, an’ all, with all them explosives and that, and you can’t
go to the air-raid shelter until the foreman says that you can even though the air-raid warning has gone. One of the girls I got talking to told me that it’s horrible when there’s a bombing raid and you’re working nights, ’cos you know that it’s the munitions factories they’re after. She says they built the factories down along the Thames so that there’s plenty of water to put out the fires if they do get bombed.’
‘Oh, Dulcie, I think you are ever so brave volunteering to work there,’ Agnes exclaimed admiringly, making up for her earlier faux pas.
Watching Dulcie acknowledge Agnes’s praise very much as though she considered it to be no less than her due, Olive felt that now wasn’t the time to spoil things by reminding Agnes that Dulcie had had no alternative, given her age and the new law the Minister for Labour had proposed. It did, though, make her think about how she’d be feeling if it was Tilly who was obliged to go and work in munitions. There was no getting away from the fact that not only was the work itself dangerous, but also that the munitions factories along the Thames were, as Dulcie had rightly said, a known target for the Luftwaffe’s bombs. Of course, Tilly wasn’t old enough yet to get caught up in the Government decree that young women who were not either married with children or involved in reserved occupations had to go into munitions. Plus the fact that she was working at Barts meant that she was in a reserved occupation. Not that that meant that Tilly was safe from Hitler’s bombs – none of them was.
‘Come on, Drew,’ Tilly announced, getting to her feet. ‘We’re on fire-watch duties tonight.’
The awfulness of what had happened might have filled her with a constant fear for Drew’s safety and a dread that she might lose him, but she certainly wasn’t going to let it stop her from doing her duty. Her fear was for losing Drew, not for anything that might happen to herself.