London Belles (32 page)

Olive wasn’t deceived, though. She was alone in the kitchen when Agnes came in, her head down and her shoulders bowed in defeat.

Down at the bottom of the garden the greenhouse door was open and she could see Tilly inside it, picking the tomatoes Olive had told her they needed for tea. Knowing that she would be several minutes, Olive seized her chance, going over to Agnes, taking hold of her hands and telling her gently, ‘I know that something’s upsetting you, Agnes. You haven’t been yourself for weeks now. Why don’t you tell me what it is?’

Olive’s sympathy was too much for Agnes’s fragile composure. Fresh tears started to fall as the story of her feelings for Ted and his lack of them for her came flooding out in fits and starts.

Once Olive had discreetly established that nothing that shouldn’t have happened between them had happened, and that Ted had not taken advantage of Agnes in any kind of way, Olive led Agnes to a chair and pushed her gently into it.

Young love could hurt so much. She could still remember the pain she had felt when she had discovered that the boy she had secretly admired for weeks had sent another girl a Valentine card.

‘I know what’s happened hurts dreadfully, Agnes, but it will get better, I promise you. Why, I shouldn’t be surprised if this time next year there’ll be another boy in your life who makes you forget Ted completely.’

‘No one could ever make me forget Ted,’ Agnes sobbed, crumpling her already damp handkerchief into a wet ball.

‘Oh, Agnes . . .’ Olive kneeled down in front of her and took her in her arms, rocking her as though she were a small child. There was nothing she could say or do to make things better, Olive knew. Compassionately, she stroked Agnes’s head.

Poor child. She was so young and so vulnerable. Somehow Olive couldn’t see her own Tilly being so overwhelmed and cast down with misery in the same situation, but then Tilly hadn’t experienced the same loss and childhood that Agnes had. She’d have to have a word with Tilly, and Sally too, to warn them not to mention Ted to Agnes.

‘Tilly will be coming in, in a minute,’ she told Agnes, releasing her and getting up. ‘Why don’t you go up upstairs and bathe your eyes with some cold water, Agnes, and then when you come down again I’ll have a nice hot cup of tea waiting for you?’

The day did bring some good news, though. Well, sort of good news, Olive thought as they all listened to Winston Churchill’s wireless broadcast to the nation that evening, silence between them as they concentrated whilst he spoke, Olive’s eyes filling with tears as he thundered the words.

‘The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All our hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day . . .’

When the speech finally came to an end, all of them exchanged looks, the emotional silence between them, as they digested what Mr Churchill had said, broken by Olive saying firmly, ‘I think we should have a cup of tea.’

Sally was still thinking about Winston Churchill’s speech the following day at work. His words stiffened one’s spine and lifted one’s spirits.

All the serving men on men’s surgical were talking about it and Sister had had to issue a ban on them discussing it for an hour to calm things down in the ward before the consultants’ morning rounds.

Privately all the nurses knew from the evacuated staff that one harsh reality of the RAF’s fierce defence of the country was the number of young men in military and other hospitals with the most dreadful kinds of wounds, not just missing limbs but terrible burns and disfiguring facial injuries. She herself this morning, when Matron had called for volunteers willing to go down to help out when needed on the now busy wards of the evacuated main hospital, had added her name to the list.

She told George about this later in the day as they left the British Museum together, George having asked Sally if she’d like to attend one of Myra Hess’s lunchtime concerts there.

‘I’ll be on duty down there as well,’ George told her.

Sally wouldn’t be leaving London permanently, of course; relief staff would only be called upon for short periods of a couple of days or so when necessary, and Sally hoped it wasn’t too selfish of her to feel glad about that. She had settled in so well at number 13 that it felt like home to her now and she would have been reluctant to leave.

The music had been uplifting and, combined with her existing feelings, had Sally surreptitiously wiping the betraying signs of emotion from her eyes as she and George stepped out into the afternoon sunshine.

She saw that George had noticed, though, and as they became part of the crowd walking away from the British Museum he reached into his pocket and produced an immaculately clean handkerchief, which he handed to her with such an understanding smile that Sally warmed even more to him, that feeling growing when he confessed, ‘I’ve never been able to listen to Beethoven without being in danger of disgracing myself and being overcome with my feelings, and Myra Hess does play so very well.’

‘Doesn’t she just,’ Sally agreed, carefully patting her eyes, before handing George’s handkerchief back to him with her thanks. After that somehow it seemed perfectly natural and right that he should take hold of her hand, and that when he suggested that we hop on a bus and take advantage of our time off and the good weather to walk in Hyde Park,’ Sally had no hesitation in agreeing.

‘This is what I miss about home,’ George told her later when, still hand in hand, they were walking through the park. ‘Greenery, fields and the countryside.’

‘Hyde Park is hardly the countryside,’ Sally laughed.

‘No it isn’t, but at least it’s green,’ George smiled.

The park was busy with others doing exactly what they were doing – strolling in the sunshine – in the main groups of young men and women in various uniforms.

‘I do so admire the young men who’ve come from the Dominions and the Commonwealth to fight for Britain,’ Sally told George, as a group of Aussies with their distinctive hats strolled past, obviously off duty.

‘We come because we want to, because we do love our Mother Country,’ George told her solemnly, stopping walking, his own voice low as he stared into the distance, perhaps seeing, Sally thought, a different landscape of green fields halfway across the world.

Unable to stop herself, she squeezed his hand, her eyes full of the emotion she was feeling as he turned back to her. They were standing in the shadow of one of the trees, and when, after a brief look round, George bent his head and kissed her, Sally didn’t push him away. It was a tender kiss, a sweet kiss full of hope and promise, she recognised, as she nestled closer to him and he took advantage of her movement to take her properly in his arms, a new beginning for her, for them both, with the birth of a new relationship.

George’s kiss was firm but respectful, and it touched Sally’s heart that she could feel his heart thudding so fast and the faint tremble of his arms. He was such a genuine, likeable, nice man, so easy to be with. And easy to love?

‘I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw you,’ George confessed after he stopped kissing her, which made it easy for Sally smile and easy too for her to put serious thoughts of love to one side.

Their kiss had changed things, though. Now, as they continued their walk, they moved much closer together, George’s arm now round her waist, holding her to him, and when they stopped to watch some young naval ratings rowing on the Serpentine, it felt natural and right to Sally to put her head on George’s shoulder.

‘I’ve enjoyed today,’ George told her as they made their way back to the hospital.

‘So have I,’ Sally told him.

They looked at one another and smiled, and Sally felt her heart lift.

The future suddenly looked much brighter, despite the threat of war, and the sadness she had felt for those poor wounded boys.

Things had changed an awful lot since the first time Tilly and Agnes had gone dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, Olive reflected ruefully, as she watched all four young women giving their appearances final checks in the hall mirror. In the small space the rustle of their party frocks mingled with the sound of high heels on the linoleum either side of the hall runner.

‘How do we look, Mum?’ Tilly demanded, twirling into the back room, her face alight with happiness and excitement.

‘You all look lovely,’ Olive assured her truthfully. She had been so anxious that first night she had watched them leave; now her concern was more for the young men who would have to deal with three stunning-looking confident young women, all intent on dazzling them, and one shy one whose quiet sadness was almost bound to draw their compassion.

Tonight would be Tilly’s first really ‘grown-up’ birthday, and the first she would not be celebrating at home, although of course they were having a traditional birthday tea tomorrow, at Tilly’s request. Today, though, the four girls would be having their tea at a Joe Lyons restaurant before going on to the Palais, and Tilly was as excited about that as though they were dining at somewhere like the Ritz. If Olive suspected that Sally might have preferred to spend her Saturday off with her doctor friend, who she mentioned increasingly in her chats, Olive wasn’t going to spoil either Tilly’s evening or Sally’s generosity by saying as much. Even Dulcie seemed to have made an effort on Tilly’s behalf, as Tilly had told her that Dulcie had instructed the young Canadian airman she had met at the Palais to make sure he brought plenty of his pals along with him, informing Olive earnestly, ‘so that we have lots of dashing partners. Dulcie says the Canadians are best, Mum, because they look smart in their uniforms, and they’re very respectful. Dulcie says they don’t flirt like the Australians, or the Poles, so we won’t have to worry about them making a nuisance of themselves.’

Tilly and Agnes were wearing the pretty floral sateen cotton dresses Olive had had made for them after another trip to the Portobello Market. This time there had been several characters there who Olive had thought distinctly shady, a sign, so Sergeant Dawson had told her when she had mentioned this to him, of the increase in black market trading.

Sally’s dress was pale blue with darker blue polka dots, the colour suiting her auburn hair and pale skin, whilst Dulcie was wearing a pink cotton skirt, the cotton embroidered with small black bows, and a black fine-knit top with pink bows at the neckline and on the puffed sleeves.

It was a warm enough night for the girls to insist that they didn’t need heavy coats and that their simple stoles would do.

Tilly looked so grown up in her new dress, wearing the pearl clip-on earrings she had persuaded Olive to let her borrow. The war was changing their lives, making the girls grow up so fast.

‘You know what to do if the air-raid siren goes off?’ Olive couldn’t help saying, forced into a rueful smile when four voices chorused together, ‘Yes, run for the nearest shelter.’

It had been a shock at first when German bombers had been seen over London on the night of 24 August, but the RAF had seen them off and bombed Berlin in retaliation. Although there had been plenty of scares since then, with the air-raid sirens going off at night with increasing frequency, disturbing everyone’s sleep when they all had to troop out of their beds to the nearest shelter – which in the case of Olive’s household was the Anderson shelter in the garden – after the first shock Londoners had begun to take the air raids in their stride. After all, they had the ground batteries with their heavy-duty ‘ackack’ guns, and the RAF, to protect them.

The girls had decided to have their tea at the Joe Lyons in Leicester Square but two buses had gone past them without stopping, obviously full already.

‘Here’s another, and it’s slowing down,’ Tilly cheered.

‘It’s going to Covent Garden, though, not Leicester Square,’ Agnes pointed out.

‘Never mind, let’s just get on it,’ said Dulcie, giving Tilly a push in the direction of the now stationary bus. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’

Tilly hesitated but the conductor was getting impatient and called out, ‘Are you girls getting on or not?’

‘We’re getting on,’ said Sally, stepping forward, the others following on behind her, clambering onto the platform and holding on tight.

‘It’s standing room only down here,’ the conductor told them, reaching for his ticket machine. ‘Upstairs, if you want a seat.’

Taking care to keep her skirt away from the stairs, Tilly went up first, followed by the others, half gasping and half groaning in protest as the bus lurched to an unwieldy halt at the next stop to allow more passengers to get on.

Agnes gave the café where she and Ted used to meet a forlorn look from the seat where the four of them had squashed up together at the back of the bus, and Tilly, who knew from her mother what was causing Agnes’s low spirits, affected not to notice, trying to distract her by pointing out a group of French military on the other side of the road, insisting that one of them had definitely looked like General de Gaulle.

‘Pooh, the French, they’re nothing. The Canadians are much better,’ Dulcie announced as their bus came to a halt at a stop just short of Covent Garden.

Covent Garden was relatively quiet as it was too early for the evening’s ballet-goers. The girls decided to cut across to Leicester Square via the backstreets to avoid the crowds Dulcie had warned them would be filling the square.

‘You should have seen it yesterday. You could hardly move for uniforms, most of them RAF. I suppose they deserve a bit of time off after all this fighting they’ve been doing.’

They had already walked down one street, when Sally broke into Dulcie’s conversation to demand, ‘What’s that?’ She looked upwards towards the sound they could all now hear – a sound that was growing louder and more ominous by the second, its dull droning now becoming a rumbling roar.

Up above them the sky was darkening, the light shut out by the mass of aircraft swarming towards the city.

‘Oh Gawd, it’s them. It’s the Germans,’ Dulcie gasped, reverting to the cockney accent she was normally so careful to keep hidden.

Tilly gulped in shocked silence, feeling Agnes’s arm trembling against her own.

Sally continued to stare upwards in horror. There must be hundreds of them: black bombers surrounded, escorted, protected by fighter planes, too many of them to count, the noise they were making as they flew over making conversation impossible. It was like a nightmare, so unbelievable and unthinkable that surely it couldn’t be happening. Not here in London. The Germans could not be here overhead in such a huge force that they almost blocked the light out of the sky. Where was the RAF? Why were the ack-ack guns silent?

In disbelieving terror the girls stood rooted to the spot as though shocked into a trance.

‘They’re heading for the docks,’ Dulcie, who knew her East End, broke the silence, mouthing the words to them, the four of them wincing as, hard on her words, they heard the sound of an explosion quickly followed by another and then another, huge plumes of smoke billowing up toward the skyline.

Never had the wail of air-raid sirens sounded so unnerving and doom laden.

‘Come on,’ Sally yelled. ‘The nearest shelter will be the one in Leicester Square.’ They started to run, their speed hampered by their heels and the summer-heat-greasy cobbles of the pavementless alley.

‘Oh, ruddy hell,’ Dulcie swore as her heel caught between two cobbles. The air around them was thick with the acrid smell of smoke drifting in from the bombed docks, the sound of sirens filling the air. Dulcie tried to free her heel with an impatient movement of her foot and then gasped in shock when the heel refused to come free, her own violent movement pitching her forward onto the cobbles. She put out her hands to save herself but it was too late.

It was Tilly looking back who saw her, calling out to the other two, ‘Stop. Dulcie’s fallen over.’

Sally tried to catch hold of her, all too aware of their danger, but Tilly had already turned back, Agnes going with her, leaving Sally with no option but to do the same. They were so vulnerable out here in plain view, and she was thankful that it was the docks and the East End the bombers were attacking, and not the city itself.

‘Dulcie, are you all right?’ Tilly dropped down on her knees at the same time as Dulcie struggled to get up.

There was blood on her forehead and what looked like a large bruise already swelling above her eye.

‘Of course I—’ she began, her sudden gasp of pain slicing off her words, as she sank down again.

‘I think Dulcie’s hurt,’ Tilly said to Sally, who had just reached them. ‘There’s blood on her forehead and—’

‘Dulcie?’ Sally queried, immediately the professional trained nurse.

‘It’s my ankle. I must have turned it when I fell. I’ll be all right once I’m standing up.’

‘We’ll help you,’ Tilly began, but Sally shook her head, her heart sinking as she looked at the unnatural angle of Dulcie’s foot, and saw the bruise on her forehead.

‘Well, come on then,’ Dulcie demanded impatiently. ‘Help me up.’

‘Dulcie, I need to look at your ankle. I think you may have broken it, and you’ve hurt your head. Do you feel sick, at all, or dizzy,’ Sally asked her crisply. There was no point in her mincing her words, but she didn’t want to frighten Dulcie more than was necessary by telling her that the bump to her head could result in delayed concussion.

‘No, I don’t feel sick,’ Dulcie told her crossly. ‘I just want to get out of here.’

The sound of another bomb exploding was so loud that she had to stop speaking.

‘You can’t,’ Sally had to tell her. ‘You won’t be able to walk on that ankle. We’ll need to get you some proper medical help.’

As a nurse Sally could recognise from the look on Dulcie’s face how shocked and frightened she was, even though she was trying not to show it, but there was nothing she could do to help her.

It was too late now to regret coming down this empty back alley with no sign of either a shelter or an ARP post. Normally Sally would have stayed with Dulcie and sent Tilly and Agnes to get help, but she was very much aware that Olive, even though she had not said so, expected her to keep the two younger girls safe. As she worried about who needed her the most, a fighter plane screamed overhead, causing them all to duck and Dulcie to wince with fresh pain.

Tears were rolling down Agnes’s face, and for once even Tilly was subdued and quiet.

But then it was Sally’s turn to be shocked when Dulcie told her in a thin but determined voice, with a jerk of her head towards Tilly and Agnes, ‘You’d better get those two to safety, ’cos if anything were to happen to them Olive would have my guts for garters. I’ll be all right here until you can send some help. Jerry isn’t going to come dropping any bombs down this back alley when he’s got the whole of the docks and the East End to bomb.’

They would leave her anyway, Dulcie reasoned to herself as she spoke, so she might as well be the one to send them away as lie here and wait for them to say they were going to leave her. In their shoes she wouldn’t waste a minute – not even a second – in running for safety, so why should they? And she certainly wasn’t going to have them thinking she was scared, even though she was. So scared that she secretly felt like begging them not to leave her, but of course she couldn’t do that. Her pride wouldn’t let her. If her own mother was here right now she probably wouldn’t stay with her because she’d be worrying about her precious Edith. She was nothing to these girls, just like they were nothing to her. She’d be daft to think that they’d care about her feeling frightened and alone.

What Dulcie said made sense, Sally knew, but before she could say anything, Agnes, who up until now had been crying silently, suddenly stopped and said fiercely, ‘We can’t leave Dulcie here. It wouldn’t be right. I’m staying with her.’

Dulcie stared at Agnes. Agnes wanted to stay with her. Agnes, who she had tormented and, yes, bullied and who was so unsure of herself that she never said a word, was standing there telling Sally that she was staying. Dulcie couldn’t believe it. Agnes’s face became a tearful unfocused image she had to blink her eyes to get back into focus. She wasn’t crying, or if she was it was only because of the pain in her ankle and because her head hurt, and not because of the aching pang of emotion she could feel inside her heart.

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Tilly agreed. ‘If Dulcie has to stay then we’re staying with her. We’re all in this together, friends together, and friends don’t go and leave each other, they stick together.’

Friends! Dulcie had never wanted friends. She’d never believed in them. Friends was just a word that meant palling up with someone because they were useful to you, and then dropping them when they weren’t. It didn’t mean risking your own life to be with them when you were free to walk away from danger and they weren’t.

‘It’s best if you go and get help, Sally,’ Tilly added. ‘’Cos you’ll know what to say, and me and Agnes will stay here with Dulcie.’

Tilly plonked herself down on the cobbles next to Dulcie as she spoke, the skirt of her dress billowing out around her.

She wasn’t going to be able to budge Tilly and Agnes, Sally recognised. Dropping down on her haunches she demanded, ‘Let me have another look at your ankle, Dulcie.’ Perhaps it was only sprained and not broken. But another closer inspection showed Sally that Dulcie’s ankle was quite definitely broken.

‘Should we try and get Dulcie’s shoe off?’ Tilly asked, eyeing the now swollen flesh puffing over the strap on Dulcie’s shoe.

Sally shook her head. ‘No, her shoe will help to give the broken bone some support.’

In the immediate anxiety of worrying about what to do, the ongoing bombing was something that Sally had pushed to the back of her mind, but now it couldn’t be ignored. Over towards the docks and the East End, they could still hear bombs exploding. It felt as though they’d been here in the alleyway for hours but a glance at her watch told Sally that they had actually been there only just over fifteen minutes.