Perhaps it was that early rejection by his mother that had made him the man he was, and that had fostered in him that streak of earthiness and enjoyment of the company of rich robustness of ordinary people. People like Dulcie. David didn’t know and he cared even less. In fact, he didn’t care about anything right now other than the pain where his lower legs should have been. No, he didn’t care, but he still couldn’t help watching Dulcie walk away from him, until she had disappeared through the door at the other end of the ward.
‘You know the group captain, do you, Dulcie?’ George asked once they were out of the ward.
‘Yes, I do, not that you’d know it from the way he went and showed me up by ignoring me,’ Dulcie responded with a small angry sniff. ‘Of course, it will be on her account, that stuck-up wife of his. Always was jealous of me, she was, and I dare say he won’t want any of his pals telling her that he’s been talking to me when she comes to visit him.’
‘That won’t happen, Dulcie,’ George informed her. ‘Neither David’s wife nor his parents visit him. They’re ashamed of him, you see, because of his injuries, and that will be why he didn’t acknowledge you. He’d be afraid that you would reject him like they did.’
Dulcie could hear the disapproval of Lydia and of David’s parents in George’s voice, and immediately played up to it.
‘Not visit their own son? Well, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, him being like he is. Mind you, I never liked the sound of that mother of his, and as for Lydia, the only reason she married him was because one day he’ll have a title.’
George seemed to be considering something, but even Dulcie, who made a point of never allowing anything to catch her off guard, was surprised when he asked her, ‘Dulcie, how would you feel about visiting David tomorrow afternoon at visiting time?’
‘What, after him ignoring me today?’
‘We desperately need to get him properly on the road to recovery and that’s not going to happen until he feels that people accept him as he is, and that they still care about him despite his injuries.’
Listening to her fiancé as they walked towards the hospital exit, Sally tried to send him a warning look. She didn’t think that Dulcie was the right person to ask to show compassion to a man in David’s condition.
But George was giving her a small shake of his head as he continued, ‘Of course, I realise that it would take a really special girl to do that for David, Dulcie. Not many girls would feel comfortable talking to a young man as badly injured as David is – a young man who right now is feeling very sorry for himself and very angry indeed because of the way his wife and mother have turned their backs on him. It would take a very unselfish and kind young woman indeed, a young woman who is the complete opposite from his wife.’
Sally grimaced to herself. She knew what George was doing and why. He was using on Dulcie the psychological skills he was being taught at the hospital for helping his patients, but Sally still wasn’t sure that was a good idea.
Listening to George, Dulcie, oblivious to what George was doing, bridled with delight at the thought of doing something that would make her look better than Lydia. How she’d enjoy telling them back at Selfridges that she’d had to step in and help David because his wife had turned her back on him. That would show everyone who was the better woman. And it would show David as well. He might have been sweet on her but he had still gone and married Lydia. Not that she, Dulcie, had wanted him to marry her, but she wouldn’t have minded having him ask her.
Ever practically minded, though, she asked George, ‘What if he doesn’t want to talk to me? There’d be no point in me visiting him then, would there? And I’d look a real charlie sitting there with him refusing to even look at me.’
‘I think he’ll want to talk to you, Dulcie. He watched you leaving the ward. I turned round to have a look. It was probably a shock for him to see you. And I expect he was worried about what you’d think. After all, I dare say the last time you saw him he was standing on his feet and uninjured. Now he’s lost both his lower legs and an arm, and there were other injuries … to his groin.’
A flutter of something unfamiliar gripped Dulcie’s belly. David had been such a tall, broad-shouldered, male man, as proud of being a handsome man as she was of being a pretty girl.
‘Well, his face is all right,’ was all she allowed herself to say, ‘and you can’t see that he’s not got any legs whilst he’s in bed, can you? Mind you, I can’t say that I’m surprised about that wife of his – she never did have much about her. And I dare say there won’t be an heir then now either, by the sound of it.’
‘No, Dulcie, there won’t,’ George confirmed sadly. ‘It’s a lot to ask of any young woman, Dulcie, I know that, and I wouldn’t blame you one little bit if you felt that you aren’t up to it.’
‘Who says I’m not up to it? I’m not like that stuck-up wife of his. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with his face.’ She paused and then asked anxiously, ‘He can still talk, can’t he? I mean, what’s happened to him hasn’t …?’
‘Yes, he can talk, Dulcie,’ George confirmed.
‘All right, I’ll do it then,’ she agreed.
They were outside the hospital now, the thin fitful moonlight glistening on the wet road as George opened the car doors for them and then got into the driving seat.
‘Nancy’s just arrived,’ Mrs Morrison told Olive in a rueful whisper as the two WVS ladies queued up for their mid-meeting cup of tea in the church hall.
‘She said she’d be late this evening,’ Olive replied. ‘Her husband’s on fire-watching duty this week and she wanted to wait for him to come in before she came out.’
‘I’ve never known anyone make her own virtue so much of a stick to beat others with,’ said Mrs Morrison pithily. ‘I know she’s your next-door neighbour, Olive, and I don’t like speaking ill of anyone but—’
‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ Olive felt bound to defend her neighbour, even though privately she agreed with what Mrs Morrison was saying. ‘It’s just her way.’
‘You are a very charitable person, Olive,’ Mrs Morrison smiled.
Olive didn’t feel particularly charitable ten minutes later, though, when Nancy, having got her own cup of tea and several sizeable pieces of the broken biscuits that Mrs Dunne, the grocer’s wife, brought to the meetings, settled herself in the empty chair next to Olive and began importantly, ‘I don’t like to be the one to tell tales, Olive, but I think you should know that after you’d gone out this evening, I saw your Tilly leaving the house with that American.’
‘It’s Valentine’s Day, Nancy. Drew is taking Tilly out somewhere special,’ Olive automatically defended the young couple. But her defence only increased Nancy’s smug air of superiority.
‘Well, that may have been what he told you and your Tilly, for all I know, but what I saw with my own eyes was the pair of them straight heading back to the Simpsons’ and going in there together,’ Nancy told her with obvious relish.
Olive felt her heart sink. ‘I dare say Drew had probably forgotten something,’ was all she dared to allow herself to say. She could feel the maternal bands of anxiety and apprehension tightening round her heart, but the last thing she wanted, knowing her neighbour as she did, was for Nancy to see how she felt.
Nancy, though, was not to be put off. ‘I don’t think so, Olive,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t think they’d forgotten anything at all. In there for ever such a long time, they were. I was looking out of my front window waiting for my hubby to get