‘Yes, we could put it in one of the gardens. I’d say mine, but Nancy is bound to think I’m giving myself preferential treatment if I do that. Maybe Mr King will let us put it in the back gardens of one of his houses, since they’re unoccupied at the moment,’ said Olive.
Mr King was a local landlord who owned several now empty properties at the other end of Article Row from Olive.
‘That’s a good idea,’ Audrey approved.
‘We’ve got a couple of rakes in the garden shed. My father-in-law used to be a keen gardener and Agnes’s fiancé, Ted, came over and cleaned and sharpened everything in the autumn for Sally. She’s very kindly taken charge of the garden and its veggies for us.’
A little later, making her solitary way home, Olive discovered that although initially she had worried about what she might be getting herself into, now she actually felt rather proud of herself for making that decision. For all that Nancy had been so unpleasant about it, surely it was far better to get involved and do something to protect the homes of which they were all so proud rather than risk an incendiary starting a fire that no one spotted until it was too late, and it had taken hold, possibly threatening the whole Row.
Four
‘I expect that you and your young man have got something special planned for the evening of Valentine’s Day on Friday – that’s if Hitler doesn’t come calling with more bombs,’ Clara Smith, the girl who worked with Tilly in the Lady Almoner’s office at Barts Hospital, asked as they sat side by side in front of their typewriters, shivering in the room’s icy February chill. The two girls were working through yet another batch of new patients’ details for their files, and trying to keep warm with extra layers of clothing because the radiator in their office had been turned off to conserve precious fuel.
Tilly loved her job and felt very proud of the fact that her head mistress had recommended her for the post. She’d worked hard not to let her or the Lady Almoner down, even though the war had brought an increase to her workload that had felt daunting at times.
‘Drew is taking me out for dinner,’ Tilly answered. ‘I don’t know where, though. Drew says that it’s going to be a surprise.’
Being taken out to dinner sounded awfully grown up and sophisticated, not like going to the pictures or even going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais. Her mother wasn’t very keen on them going out alone, just the two of them, Tilly knew.
‘Ooh, a surprise, is it? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if his surprise includes an engagement ring, it being Valentine’s,’ Clara informed her with the wisdom of a girl who already had an engagement ring on her finger.
Tilly felt her heart turn over. There was nothing she wanted more than to have Drew’s ring on her finger – a wedding ring, though, not just an engagement ring.
‘Mum thinks I’m too young to get engaged,’ she felt obliged to tell Clara. She didn’t want the other girl secretly thinking when she didn’t have an engagement ring to wear after Valentine’s Day that Drew didn’t love her enough to give her one. ‘She says that she doesn’t want me rushing into anything just because we’re at war.’
‘That’s typical of the older generation,’ Clara criticised roundly. ‘They don’t understand. It’s because of the war that people want to get engaged and married, in case anything happens, and it’s too late.’
‘Well, Mum got married just a few years after the last war,’ Tilly felt obliged to defend her mother, ‘and she was eighteen herself then, but by the time she was twenty she’d been widowed and she’d got me to look after.’
‘That was then,’ Clara told Tilly. ‘Things are different now. If you ask me I’d rather be married to my fiancé and have something special to remember him by than have him die without ever doing, well, you know what, if you know what I mean.’
Tilly did indeed know what Clara meant. Her face might have grown hot because of what Clara had said but it was no hotter than her body grew at night when she was alone in bed thinking about Drew’s kisses and how they made her feel.
It was an open secret, if you listened properly to what some of the bolder girls had to say in the canteen at lunchtime, that there were plenty of girls who weren’t prepared to deny their young men their physical love when they were going off to war, even if they didn’t have a wedding ring on their finger.
‘Our boys are being so brave and risking their lives for us, us being brave and taking a risk to make them happy is the least we can do. Leastways that’s what I think,’ one of the more outspoken girls had announced when this very subject had come under discussion one lunchtime.
In one sense the war had brought Drew to her, but the thought of it taking him from her made Tilly’s blood chill as ice cold in her veins as though she had been standing outside without her coat in the cold February wind. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for her working day to finish and for the reassurance of finding Drew waiting outside the hospital’s main entrance to walk her home, as he sometimes did if he could snatch enough time away from his work as a reporter. Not that Drew was one to shirk his duty to his work – far from it, he often worked long into the evening, reporting on bombing incidents, talking to the dispossessed, taking photographs. As often as her mother would let her, Tilly went with him when he worked in the evening, gathering material not just for his articles but also for the book he planned to write about Fleet Street when the war was over.
She was lucky to have Drew here in London, Tilly knew. So many sweethearts were separated because of the war; so many brave men in uniform. Take the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy, for instance, manning the all-important convoys that risked not just the dangerous winter seas to bring much-needed supplies back to Britain, but Hitler’s U-boats, as well. Then there was the army fighting to hold back Rommel’s men in the desert, and the RAF doing everything they could to stop Hitler’s Luftwaffe from bombing Britain.
No wonder the whole country read their newspapers so keenly and gathered so anxiously around their wirelesses to catch the BBC news broadcasts. Tilly’s heart swelled with fresh pride as she acknowledged just how important her wonderful Drew’s role was in keeping the country informed.
‘Wait up, Olive.’
Olive pulled her coat more firmly around herself as she stood in the icy February wind waiting for Nancy to catch up with her. Like her, Nancy was carrying a shopping bag.
‘If you’re going to the grocer’s you’d better watch out,’ she complained, her voice shrill with discontent. ‘He told me he hadn’t got a jar of meat paste in the shop last Thursday, but on Tuesday Mrs Mortimer from Parlance Street told me that he’d had a new order of it in. You mark my words, he’s stockpiling things, keeping them back until the price goes up.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true, Nancy,’ Olive responded. ‘He’d probably sold out, that’s all. And as for shopkeepers profiteering by keeping tinned goods back, there’s a new law been brought in to put a stop to that.’
‘It’s all very well for you to say that. How’s this new law going to be imposed, that’s what I want to know? And that’s another thing: I don’t know how Sergeant Dawson can do his job properly, taking as much time off as he has since they’ve had that rough boy living with them.’
‘Sergeant Dawson is simply using up some leave that was owing to him so that he and Mrs Dawson can get Barney properly settled in.’
‘Oh, he told you that, did he? And when might that have been?’
‘No, Sergeant Dawson didn’t tell me that. Mrs Windle did.’ Thank heavens Nancy didn’t know just how relieved she was to be able to tell her that and put her in her place, Olive thought guiltily.
‘That’s all very well,’ Nancy responded, bridling angrily, ‘but like I’ve said to you before, Olive, a woman in your shoes – widowed and on her own – can’t be too careful where her good reputation is concerned.