‘Yes. It’s because of her being abandoned as a baby herself. It’s all very well Agnes getting herself in an emotional state, but she doesn’t appreciate the realities of the situation. Even if I wanted to keep Alice, which I don’t, how could I? I’ve got George to think of. He doesn’t even know she exists. How could I ask him to take her on? Besides, I’m not her only relative. She’s got Callum. She’s known him since she was born. She can’t stay here, Olive. I’ll have to do something.’
‘And we’ve booked to stay at this pub in a village on the River Otter, and—’
‘Two rooms or one?’ Clara demanded, interrupting Tilly in mid-sentence.
‘Two,’ Tilly responded. ‘Mum wouldn’t have let me go otherwise. She found out about the village for us from Mrs Windle, the vicar’s wife. She knew about it from some friends of her family, and it was actually Mrs Windle who wrote to the pub on our behalf. They’re a bit fussy about who they let stay, on account of not wanting to let rooms to RAF types who might be up to no good with their girlfriends.’
‘Your mum told you that?’
‘Not in so many words, but it was obvious what Mum was getting at when she gave me this lecture about not letting Mrs Windle down.’
‘So when do you go then?’ Clara asked, as they got ready for their day’s work, removing the covers from their typewriters and folding them neatly away before sitting down at their machines.
‘Just over two weeks. I can’t wait.’
Clara nodded. Outside, the main streets of London might have been cleared of the worst of the debris from the dreadful blitz of 10 May, one might no longer have to literally crunch through ankle-deep broken glass on the pavements, the raw gaping awfulness of buildings ripped apart to show their most private interiors might have been softened by the herculean effort put in by people to restore the city to some semblance of normality, but London would never be the same. Too many buildings had been lost – too many buildings and too many lives. Rather than instil fear into people, though, the savagery of the May blitz had had the opposite effect, giving people a determination to see things through that was evident everywhere you went. Tilly now felt as though she was part of that courageous band. Knowing that she was going to have that precious personal time with Drew and that her mother finally accepted that she was old enough to do that had made such a difference to her, pulling her back from the edge of that awful fear that had dragged her down.
Her spirits had rebounded, her natural optimism reasserting itself. She and Drew had now survived three equally awful incidents: the bombing of St Paul’s, the incendiary attack on Article Row, and finally the bombing of the city that had seen Fleet Street and the surrounding district on fire from end to end. Surely now they were safe now?
‘I’d have liked to have stayed on the coast but, like Drew says, with the war on there’s bound to be all sorts of restrictions about going near the beaches and that kind of thing, and this village where we’re staying is on the river. Drew says he’s going to teach me to fish.’
A happy smile curved Tilly’s mouth. ‘When he was growing up he and his family used to go to this lake every summer. He says it’s something that Americans do.’
Once again Clara nodded. She was more interested in her own life than Tilly’s, and wanted to talk about the effect the new law bringing in clothing coupons was likely to have on her ability to buy a wedding dress.
‘I just wanted to say thank you, Sister, seeing as you were the one that was there when our Carole was operated on, after her being hurt in the bombing. Right as rain, she is now, thanks to everyone here, and her broken leg’s mending a treat. Broke my heart, it would, if we’d lost her, aye and my hubby’s as well. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? When we found out that our Betty had got herself into trouble with a seaman she’d been seeing, her dad was all for throwing her out he was that mad with her, showing us up and bringing shame on the family, and then when our Betty didn’t survive the birth, well, my hubby said how it would be best if we were to give the baby up for adoption, her being illegitimate and everything. But flesh and blood is flesh and blood when all said and done, and it wasn’t the poor little mite’s fault that she’d been born the way that she had. You can’t turn your back on your own. It weren’t her fault what her mum did, bringing all that trouble on us and letting us down like she did.’
The woman shook her head and then told Sally, ‘That was at the beginning of the war, and now you should see my Derek with her. Thinks the sun shines out of her, he does, and reckons she’s the spitting image of his sister wot died of scarlet fever when she was a kiddy.’
Sally smiled politely and nodded. It wasn’t unusual for the relatives of patients and patients themselves to come into the hospital to thank those who had helped them. Normally their thanks gave Sally a real lift, but listening to this woman, it wasn’t a lift to her spirits she felt so much as a cold lump of unwanted guilt, which lay heavily in the pit of her stomach.
She knew the others at number 13 thought she was being cold-hearted and mean in ignoring Alice and refusing to have anything to do with her, but she couldn’t help it. Every time she looked at the little girl she saw her father and her false friend, and every time she saw them she thought of her mother and what she had endured, the dreadful physical pain, the awfulness of her body wasting away as the cancer ate into her. Then, at a time when her father’s thoughts should have been only for her mother, he had secretly been thinking of Morag.
Thinking of her, wanting her … betraying her mother with her. Sally could visualise her mother now, see her sweet loving smile, feel the gentle loving touch of her hand on her own head brushing her hair out of her eyes as she had done when she had been a child, loving her and protecting her. Now it was her turn to love and protect her mother, to be loyal to her.
Sally closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again when, as clearly as though she had been there with her, she could hear her mother’s voice saying quietly, ‘Sally, she’s just a baby.’
‘Morag’s baby,’ said Sally fiercely.
‘Talking to yourself?’ a fellow sister grinned as she passed Sally in the corridor. ‘Bad sign that, you know.’
Sally smiled back dutifully, but in reality she didn’t
feel like smiling. She wasn’t sleeping and she was missing George, whom she hadn’t been able to see since before the last air raid because of the shifts they were working. She really missed him, even though they wrote to one another every day. She wished desperately that she had been open with him right from the start about the situation with her father.
She had a day off in three days’ time. She would go and see the vicar and ask him if he knew of a good orphanage that would take Alice. Olive might say that she was happy to have Alice living at number 13, and, even more generously, that she was prepared to look after her, but it wasn’t right that she should have to do that. Alice wasn’t Olive’s responsibility, after all.
‘Thanks for coming with me to take Mr Whittaker his tea,’ said Agnes to Ted as they walked back from number 50 arm in arm in the late evening sunshine.
‘I can’t have someone scaring the living daylights out of my girl, especially when she’s bin kind enough to take him a meal,’ Ted smiled down at Agnes.
‘Well, it isn’t Mr Whittaker who frightens me, although he can be a bit gruff. Mind you, I think he’s really taken to you, Ted. He was asking you ever so many questions, wasn’t he?’
‘He certainly was. Had me going right back to me granddad, wot worked down at the tannery he did. That took me back a bit, I can tell you. I can see Granddad now standing outside the Carter’s Arms, smoking his pipe, waiting for it to open. If he was late back for his tea me nan used to go and give him a real dressing down,’ Ted chuckled. ‘Of course, Mum didn’t really approve of
Dad’s family, and she won’t hear them spoken of now that she’s got this Guinness Trust flat. Asked me about that too, Mr Whittaker did. And how I thought I was going to be able to support a wife. Told him that we’d agreed that we wouldn’t get married until the girls are older. Anyway, if it isn’t Mr Whittaker you’re afraid of, what is it?’
‘Number 49, the house next door, the one that the Lords used to live in. Mr Lord died there, you know, and Barney and those two lads he hangs around with swear that it’s haunted.’
‘They’re having you on, Agnes, and just trying to scare you.’
‘No, Ted. I’ve heard noises myself, after that bombing in May when I took Mr Whittaker his tea one night.’
‘There’s no such things as ghosts,’ Ted assured her stoutly.
Agnes didn’t say anything. Instead she moved closer to him.
It had been a difficult day at work. Sally had heard this afternoon that they’d lost a patient – a fireman – on whom they’d operated the night after the blitz. The surgeon had had to amputate both his legs and there had been wounds to his chest as well, caused by falling glass. They had all known that it would be a miracle if he did survive but that didn’t make his death any easier to bear. Surgeons and those who worked with them took it as a personal affront if a patient didn’t survive, and the atmosphere in the theatre after they’d had the news had been very prickly.
As an antidote to that loss Sally had changed into the
faded old dress she wore when she was working on the veggie plot and had come out to do some weeding.
Ten minutes ago Olive had come out with Alice, whom she’d placed on a blanket on the grass under the gnarled apple tree, and now Olive had gone inside, saying casually, ‘Keep an eye on Alice for a minute for me, will you, Sally?’ Sally was now alone in the garden with her baby half-sister.
Of course she had to watch her. She might not want her in her life but that did not mean that she was uncaring enough not to watch out for the baby’s safety out of the corner of her eye whilst she got on with her weeding.
She could hear Alice talking to herself, half singing, half chattering as she did whenever she was trying very hard to do something, and as she turned round Sally saw she was crawling towards her at some speed.
Not that Sally was going to behave as the others did at this bit of baby cleverness. No. She certainly wasn’t going to coo and smile and clap her hands, and then hold out her arms to the little girl. There was no point in encouraging her, after all.
But then Alice stopped crawling and sat back on her well-padded bottom and gave Sally the most beatific smile as she held out her arms to
her
, her fat little baby hands imploring Sally to hold her.
Inside her chest Sally felt as though something was cracking and then tearing apart, as though it were being ripped by strong hands, the sharpness of the pain making her catch her breath as she fought against both it and the instinct that urged her to go to the little girl. As she started to turn away from her she could see the happy smile fading from Alice’s face, to
be replaced by a lost look of confusion and fear. The look of a child who knew even at that baby age how alone she was. She didn’t cry or make any kind of sound at all, but Sally discovered that she wanted to cry. She had had such a happy childhood, filled with love and security. She had never needed to look like Alice was looking, or as Agnes sometimes did even now. She thought of her mother. No need to ask what she would think or what she would do; she had known the answer to those questions right from the moment she had seen Alice.
Putting down her hoe and removing her gardening gloves, Sally went towards the still silent baby.
When she reached her she crouched down beside her. Alice looked at her with a dark dense-eyed gaze that revealed uncertainty and anxiety. Inside her head Sally had a picture of Alice abandoned in an orphanage, whilst she walked away from her. Her heart was thumping heavily and fast, as though she had just escaped from the most awful kind of horrific accident, her relief at escaping it stabbed with the anxiety of how close she had come to succumbing to it. Sally felt as though she were waking from some kind of dangerous hypnotic dream that had, like a fast-flowing river, been carrying her towards some distant danger from which there could be no going back, and only just in time. What could have possessed her ever to think she could turn her back on Alice?
No baby should look like that, and least of all because of her. How could she have even thought of abandoning her? Her mother would have been horrified and disbelieving that the daughter she had raised with so much
love could do such a thing to an innocent baby, and her own flesh and blood.
Quickly, as though she were afraid that someone might take her from her, Sally picked up her half-sister, and held her tight. How odd that holding her should feel so right, as though somehow she had always know her warmth and weight, and the small movements of her body as she kissed the top of the dark curls. Tears filled her eyes as she realised how close she had come to losing something very precious.
Olive, watching the small touching scene from the kitchen window, exhaled shakily in relief. She’d already made up her mind that if Sally had persisted in her plans to have Alice adopted she was going to offer to be the one to adopt her. And not just for Alice’s sake. Olive knew her lodgers, she knew and understood what Sally had been through, but she also believed that if Sally had abandoned Alice ultimately she would have been torn apart by regret and guilt that would have completely overshadowed the happiness with George she so much deserved.
‘Hello, little sister,’ Sally whispered to Alice. How easy it was now to touch one rose petal cheek and marvel at the softness of skin that was the same tone as her own, the little nose surely the same elegant shape as their shared father’s had been.
Was it foolish of her to feel that her mother had somehow had a hand in making her see not just what was right, but what true joy there could be in her loving Alice?
Sally looked up and saw Olive coming towards her carrying a tea tray.
‘You knew this would happen, didn’t you?’ she accused her landlady ruefully as she settled herself in one of the deck chairs that had originally belonged to Olive’s father-in-law, and which lived in the garden shed, which Sally now kept almost as spick and span as her operating theatre.