London Belles (31 page)

‘What will happen to them?’ She wasn’t really interested, Dulcie assured herself. She wasn’t so soft that she cared what happened to them, and yet deep down she knew that she did feel something that was more than mere curiosity.

He had no idea why he was talking to Dulcie in so much detail, Raphael acknowledged, unless it was simply because he needed to get what he was feeling off his chest to someone whose own emotions wouldn’t be lacerated by what had happened.

‘We don’t know officially as yet. Although we have heard that the London detainees will be transferred to a camp at Lingfield racecourse in Surrey, prior to being interned. I must go otherwise I shall miss my train. Thank you again for what you did.’

‘I don’t want your thanks. I didn’t do it for you.’ The words were out before Dulcie could stop herself from saying them, causing her to hold her breath in case Raphael challenged her.

But to her relief he simply said, ‘You may not want my thanks and my gratitude but you have them anyway.’

And then he was gone, striding away from her, tall and broad-shouldered in his military uniform, quickly caught up in the bustle and the crowds of Oxford Street.

She’d definitely go to the Palais this coming Saturday, Dulcie decided. She hadn’t gone last Saturday – for one thing her mother’s birthday present had left her a bit short of money, and for another she hadn’t really felt like it. Not because Tilly and Agnes had shaken their heads when she’d asked them if they wanted to go with her – she’d been doing them the favour, not the other way around and if they chose not to accept it then that was their loss, not hers. Personally she’d thought them daft for going on duty with that St John Ambulance lot they’d got so involved with. In their shoes she’d have come up with an excuse rather than miss out on a good night’s dancing.

‘Tilly, Agnes seems very quiet. The two of you haven’t had a fall-out, have you?’ Olive asked her daughter, taking advantage of the fact that the two of them were alone as Agnes had been asked to stay on at work a bit longer because they were short-handed.

‘No, of course not,’ Tilly assured her mother. She had noticed herself that Agnes seemed a bit low but she had put that down to all the bad news in the papers. It made Tilly feel low herself.

The kitchen was warm with the smell of ironing, the kitchen door open to let in some fresh air. Tilly was helping her mother by folding the ironing, the two of them working companionably together. Sally was working nights and Dulcie had gone home to see her brother, who would be rejoining his regiment once his leave came to an end. Tilly gave a small sigh. She had really liked Dulcie’s brother and when she had first seen him she had created all manner of romantic fantasies inside her head, most of which involved her doing something really brave, like saving his life, after which he clasped her to his chest and gazed deep into her eyes, telling her how wonderful she was.

Dunkirk, and what she had seen and heard from the soldiers rescued from France’s beaches, though, had driven such silly school girlish daydreams right out of her head. Men weren’t fairytale princes; they were human flesh and blood, marked by the things they had witnessed.

‘I went to see Mrs Long today,’ Olive told Tilly.

Tilly put down the petticoat she had been folding. ‘Christopher’s mother?’

Olive nodded, testing the heat of her iron on a damp handkerchief. Some women might spit on their irons to test their heat, but Olive’s mother, having been in service, thoroughly disapproved of such common habits and had taught Olive to dampen a handkerchief and iron that instead. Having satisfied herself that it was hot enough to iron her smart cream linen summer skirt, she turned it inside out and slipped it on to the ironing board, carefully straightening its pleats.

‘Is Christopher’s father going to die?’ Tilly asked anxiously. ‘Christopher thinks he is. He doesn’t say so but I can tell.’

‘I think it’s possible that he may, Tilly,’ Olive answered her honestly, ‘although naturally one hopes that he will not. It will be very hard for Mrs Long and Christopher if he does.’

‘It must have been hard for you, Mum, when Dad died.’

They rarely talked about Jim’s death. Although Olive had always made a point of talking to Tilly about her father, she had tried to talk about him in a light-hearted happy manner, wanting Tilly to know the best of her father rather than the dreadful final weeks of his life.

Standing at the sink, dampening the clean tea towel she was going to use to press her skirt with Olive then turned round and looked at her daughter. Tilly was growing up so quickly now. The war had done that.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, ‘it was hard. I had your grandparents, of course. Your grandmother took your father’s death very hard. I understand now much better than I did then how she must have felt. To have raised a child to adulthood and then to lose them is an unthinkable, an unbearable pain.’

‘You must have missed Dad so much.’

‘Yes I did. But I had you and that made it easier for me, Tilly. I had you to love and look after and I knew that your dad would want me to concentrate on you and not on his death. It will be harder for Christopher’s mother than it was for me because they have been together so much longer, and hard for Christopher too.’

‘Poor Christopher. His life is already difficult, with him being a pacifist. You have to be very brave to stick to your beliefs when other people don’t always agree with them. I don’t really agree with them myself, but that doesn’t stop me being friends with Christopher.’

Her daughter definitely wasn’t in any danger of falling in love with Christopher Long, no matter what Nancy might want to think, Olive acknowledged as she pressed the iron down hard on the pleats, filling the kitchen with sizzling steam and the smell of damp cloth.

Agnes felt so wretched. Even more wretched than she had felt when she had been told that she’d have to leave the orphanage, as she sat in the small back room off the booking office, hidden from public view, eating the fish-paste sandwiches Olive had made up for her lunch. She hadn’t seen Ted for days, not since he had told her that he didn’t think there was any need for them to have tea together any more now that she had settled in at the booking office. And she suspected that he was deliberately avoiding her.

Les, the new driver, on the other hand, she seemed to be bumping into all the time, but Les wasn’t Ted. He didn’t have Ted’s kind smile nor his cheery whistle. She’d never thought that this would happen and that Ted wouldn’t want to see her again. They had been such good friends – the best of friends – and Agnes missed him dreadfully. She couldn’t sleep properly at night for thinking about him and worrying that he might have guessed that what she felt for him was more than just friendship.

Agnes didn’t know when she had first realised that what she wanted most of all was to spend the rest of her life with Ted. She’d certainly known there was something at Christmas when he had hugged her and then kissed her quickly before releasing her. She’d wanted him to kiss her again but he hadn’t and now he never would. A hard lump of emotion filled her chest, making it ache. She felt so ashamed of herself, feeling like she did about Ted when he didn’t want her to. That was a fine way to repay his kindness to her. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Tilly how she felt. Tilly was full of plans for what they could do together if the war continued, and once they were old enough. They could join the ATS or the WRNS, Tilly had said, and properly do their bit for their country. Agnes didn’t want to go into uniform; she wanted to stay here where she could at least be close to Ted, but of course she hadn’t told Tilly that, because she knew that Tilly would worry about her if she thought that she was unhappy over Ted. Tilly was like that.

She was so lucky to be living at number 13, Agnes acknowledged. She’d even got used to Dulcie’s sharp tongue and had grown to realise that it didn’t really mean anything and that it was just Dulcie’s way. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere where she could be happier, except of course if she was married to Ted and living with him. But that was never going to happen, Agnes acknowledged sadly.

Lying on the lawn under the shade of the apple tree in the back garden of number 13, taking a break from heeling in the new raspberry canes and blackcurrant bushes for Sally’s fruit garden, Tilly looked up through the leaves towards the brilliant blue, early evening August sky. In the distance towards the south she could see white vapour trails and tiny barely discernible planes. Tilly’s heart thudded with pride at the sight of them even though her stomach was churning with anxiety.

July had heralded the beginning of Hitler’s attempt to destroy the RAF and thus leave the South Coast defenceless and ready for his invasion, and now, in mid-August, what was being called the Battle of Britain had begun in earnest, with aerial ‘dogfights’ taking place in the skies night and day, whilst the ground-based gun batteries did their bit to try to help the RAF.

The noise of heavy gunfire had now become almost as familiar to Londoners as the cries of its barrow boys and newspaper sellers.

There couldn’t be many people who wouldn’t now recognise the heart-thrilling shape of an RAF Spitfire – or the fear-inducing sight of an enemy German plane, so familiar was the almost daily battle in the skies over the South of England between the RAF and the Luftwaffe.

London, especially Drury Lane and Piccadilly, were filled with men and women in uniform, especially RAF uniforms from Fighter Command’s men based in the South of England, coming to the city to enjoy their leave by visiting the theatre and nightclubs.

British uniforms weren’t the only ones to be seen either. In addition to the Free French of General de Gaulle, there were also Polish and Czech fighter pilots. And now that official military support from the colonies had arrived, there were servicemen from Australia, wearing their uniform hats pinned up at one side, from New Zealand, from Canada and, most recently, a contingent of airmen from Southern Rhodesia.

The Aussies were the most friendly and cheerful, and Tilly had been stopped more than once in the street by a smiling Australian wanting to know if she would ‘show him where Buckingham Palace was’, or making some other excuse to flirt with her. Such men though always took her refusal in good part, and Tilly had danced with some of them when the four of them – herself, Agnes, Dulcie and Sally – had gone to the Hammersmith Palais to celebrate Agnes’s birthday in early July.

It was her own birthday on 7 September, a Saturday, and it had been agreed that since her mother would be on duty with the WVS that afternoon, her ‘birthday tea’ would be put off until the Sunday, and the four girls would have tea out together in London before going on to the Hammersmith Palais.

Tilly had felt quite envious of her mother earlier in the month when she had seen George Formby, who was filming
Spare a Copper
at the Ealing Studios, helping with the collection of scrap metal, something that Olive’s WVS group took very seriously indeed. So seriously in fact that each member of the group had given one of their pans to the collection.

Tilly and Agnes had a St John Ambulance meeting this evening. Christopher wouldn’t be going, though. He hadn’t attended the last couple of weeks’ meetings following the death of his father, feeling that his mother needed his presence at home. Poor Christopher. He had loved his father so much, and his death had increased his loathing of war.

As she left work for the day, Dulcie’s thoughts were occupied with whether or not she was going to allow the good-looking Canadian, who had danced with her at the Palais the previous Saturday, to take her to the cinema, and admiring the nice tan the summer sunshine was giving her legs, meaning that she didn’t have to wear stockings, so that she didn’t see the man waiting for her until she had walked past him. He had called her name in a low urgent voice that had her spinning round in a mixture of disbelief anger and excitement, unable to stop herself from exclaiming, ‘David!’

He was in uniform and it suited him, adding to the devil-may-care manner that secretly she found so attractive. Not that she would ever admit that to him or anyone else, of course, especially now that he was married.

‘Dulcie.’ His delight at seeing her was obvious as he laughed and caught hold of her round the waist, swinging her off her feet and into his arms.

The unexpectedly familiar smell of him enveloped her – after all, his cologne was one they sold in Selfridges – further weakening her resistance. David, with his air of danger and excitement, appealed to a part of herself she had to struggle to control. But she did have to control it, she reminded herself.

‘Put me down,’ she demanded. ‘Someone might see us, and tell your wife, and she certainly wouldn’t approve of you being here, would she?’

‘I don’t care whether Lydia approves or not. She has her life, and I have mine.’

‘The life of an RAF pilot who wants to do things that a married man isn’t supposed to do,’ Dulcie challenged him as he released her.

Her comment made him look deep into her eyes and tell her in a husky voice, ‘There are so many things I’d like to do with you, Dulcie. I’ve thought about you a lot. We could have had a lot of fun together . . . we still can.’

Things like skulking around at the back of Selfridges, as though it were a back alley. Well, she wasn’t the back alley type, and she wasn’t going to be sweet-talked by David into becoming one, no matter how many jerky little bumps her heart gave just because he was here with her.

‘Like I’ve already told you, I don’t go out with married men,’ Dulcie reminded him, before asking sharply, ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘I’m on leave and in London – where else would I be but here hoping to see you whilst I still can. We’ve lost four pilots from our squadron this week, and two the week before. We have to live as much as we can whilst we can, Dulcie, because who knows which of us will be the next? I know what you said but I had to come and see you.’

He had moved out of the shadows now and it gave Dulcie a shock to see how the sunlight revealed harsh new lines either side of his mouth and a grimness to his expression. It shocked her even more to see how his hand trembled as he removed his cigarettes from his pocket and lit them each one.

Unfamiliar feelings of fear and panic turned her own body weak and cold. David was the last person she would have expected to talk about death.

‘I’ve got only tonight here. Lydia’s arranged some ruddy party she wants me to attend tomorrow – I should have gone straight home. I’ve got only a forty-eight-hour pass, but I told her I needed to come to London on RAF business. I have just this evening, Dulcie. Spend it with me. We could go out for dinner and then on to a club,’ David urged her.

To her own shock, for a heartbeat of time she was almost tempted to agree, but David was a married man now even if he had claimed to her before his marriage that marrying Lydia would never be anything more than a duty he had been obliged to perform. David meant nothing to Lydia as a man, Dulcie suspected, it was his suitability and his connections she had married.

It wasn’t because she felt she had a moral responsibility to recognise and protect their marriage that Dulcie was hesitating, though. It was because her instincts urged her to protect her own reputation. Once a girl crossed that line of respectability there could be no going back. Especially not when the man concerned was married. To Dulcie her reputation and her respectability were just as valuable assets as her beauty – important bargaining counters when the day came when she did want to get married and she had selected the husband she wanted. Just as Lydia and David’s marriage was founded on her family’s wealth and his family’s country connections, she would be in a better position to get the kind of husband she wanted if she had something of value to trade with herself.

Dulcie knew all this by instinct, so that it only took a moment’s hesitation before she was shaking her head and saying, ‘I can’t.’

‘Yes you can. Oh, Dulcie, please,’ David begged her reaching for her hand.

On the other side of the road, unobserved by either of them, Raphael, who had given in to an impulse to call and say ‘hello’ to Dulcie whilst he was in the area, saw David take Dulcie’s hand.

He was in London on family business – Enrico Manelli, like his own grandfather and along with over seven hundred other Italians, had lost his life when the
Arandora Star
, the ship transporting many of the Italian ‘aliens’ from Liverpool to Canada for internment, had been sunk by a German U-boat.

Some families had lost whole generations of male relatives, since, during their incarceration at Warth Mills near Bury in Lancashire, fearing that they would be separated, families had privately swapped papers so that family groups could stay together.

The trauma of so many deaths had affected everyone in the Italian community. Raphael’s own father had been consumed with guilt about Raphael’s grandfather and the fact that he had died without them being reconciled. Raphael had come to London during his leave to see Caterina Manelli to offer her his condolences. He didn’t know where the sudden impulse to come here to Selfridges to see Dulcie had come from, and had excused his behaviour to himself by telling himself that Dulcie might want to know what had happened to the Manellis.

Watching her now, though, he could see that his presence was hardly likely to be welcomed. So he turned and walked away.

Tugging her hand free from David’s, Dulcie repeated, ‘I can’t,’ adding, ‘I’m already seeing someone this evening.’ It wasn’t a complete lie, because she was anticipating seeing the Canadian. ‘I must go.’ She didn’t want to stay in case David tried to persuade her to change her mind.

‘Dulcie, please.’

There was real anguish in his voice but she refused to listen to it, walking away from him so quickly that she was almost running, the flared skirt of her summer dress swirling round her legs in the speed of her retreat.

Agnes had been lingering so long outside the steps to Chancery Lane underground, that she was beginning to feel sick with anxiety and the fear of disappointment. She was waiting here after work in the hope of seeing Ted, whom she knew would be coming on duty. Agnes knew that what she was doing was ‘wrong’, and that it wasn’t acceptable for a girl to lie in wait for a man, especially when that man had already made it plain that he didn’t want anything more to do with her, but not knowing what it was she had done wrong and why Ted was ignoring her was making her feel so miserable that she had to see him.

It was a busy time of the evening, with people going home from work and others starting evening shifts, in addition to all the people in uniform, so many more of them now than there had been at the start of the war. Even Mr Smith had joined the Home Guard, as the Local Defence Volunteers were now called.

Agnes stiffened as she caught sight of Ted. He hadn’t seen her – yet. Determined not to lose the opportunity to speak with him she screwed up all her courage and plunged into the mêlée of people, her heart pounding so heavily she thought it would burst through her skin. She reached the door to the café at the same time as Ted, the colour leaving his face when he saw her.

Already he was turning away from her. Desperately, Agnes grabbed hold of his arm, pleading with him, ‘Ted, please, what’s wrong? Why don’t you want to be friends with me any more?’

The sight of Agnes’s pale pleading face made Ted want to take her in his arms and hold her tightly, not something he would normally have even considered doing in public and in full daylight, but such was the effect of seeing her after all the weeks of avoiding her that his emotions threatened to get the better of him. But he couldn’t and must not let them, he reminded himself. Things weren’t good at home. His younger sister had been poorly all summer, coughing and wheezing so badly that they’d had to have the doctor, and that had cost money, even though they were in a hospital savings plan. The doctor had said that it was the dry dusty air in London that was affecting little Sonia’s lungs and that she’d be better off living in the country, but there was no way Ted’s mother would allow her two young daughters to be evacuated without her, and they were over the age at which she could have been evacuated with them, so all they’d been able to do was to buy the medicine the doctor had recommended and keep Sonia inside as much as possible. Ted’s sister’s illness meant that his mother needed his wages even more. Only the previous night, lying awake in bed listening to Sonia coughing, Ted had known that the door had finally closed on any chance he might have had of courting Agnes.

Now, manfully, Ted put his own feelings to one side.

‘The thing is, Agnes,’ he began carefully, ‘when you and me used to get together you was still finding your feet at work, so to speak. It was like, well, a sort of business relationship. I couldn’t stand back and see you get yourself in a mess and perhaps leave the underground. I reckoned it was my duty to help you out a bit.’ He could see Agnes’s face crumpling, and he had to harden his heart and deny his own feelings, telling himself that it was better this way and that he was doing it for her. There was no sense in him starting something between them that could never go anywhere. Better to be cruel now to be kind to her for the future.

A business relationship? Did Ted mean that they had never really been friends at all? He must do.

‘It’s different now. You’ve settled in, and there’s no call for you and me to get together any more. I reckon you’re a real credit to what I’ve taught you and to yourself,’ he added, trying to soften the blow. He was hurting her, he knew, but it was surely better to hurt her now?

So now she knew. Ted hadn’t fallen out of friends with her, because he had never thought of them as friends in the first place. Agnes felt mortified. She wanted to run away and hide, but of course she couldn’t. She could only nod her head and accept what Ted was saying to her, and then let him go.

She cried all the way home. In fact she cried so much that she could hardly see where she was going, only managing to stop just before she reached Article Row, extracting her handkerchief from her pocket and doing her best to rub away the signs of her misery.