‘You know what your trouble is, Olive? You’re far too soft with Tilly. She’s bound to get herself talked about, carrying on like she is. I’d never have let my daughter get away with that kind of behaviour, but then she’s not that sort of girl.’
This was Nancy’s payback for the words they had exchanged recently about fire-watching, Olive knew, and she could well understand why Nancy looked so pleased with herself.
Olive’s cup of tea had gone cold. Right now she’d give anything for the strengthening cheer of a good cup of hot strong tea in the privacy of her own kitchen, where she could come to terms with what Nancy had just told her, but she had a duty to give this evening to the WVS, and a duty to protect Tilly from their neighbour’s spiteful curiosity, Olive reminded herself as she forced what she hoped was a calm smile.
‘I expect Tilly and Drew got talking about his writing and forgot the time,’ she said lightly.
Nancy raised one straggly greying eyebrow and exclaimed loftily, ‘Well, you might want to believe that, Olive, but if I was in your shoes I’d have something to say to your Tilly about getting herself a bad reputation. But then, of course, I always kept a close eye on my own daughter. It’s all very well folk volunteering for all sorts and having folk make a fuss of them because of it, but in my opinion it’s putting your own family first that matters most.’
With that Nancy ate her broken biscuits with every evidence of enjoyment, before announcing that she was going to have to leave the meeting early, ‘because I want to make sure that my Arthur gets a decent supper.’
More like because she wanted to stand in her darkened front room with the black out blind lifted so that she could watch for any comings and goings on the Row, especially if those comings and goings were Tilly’s, Olive thought miserably.
Five
The house in which Dulcie and Sally were staying wasn’t very far from the town centre. Sally had stayed there on her first visit to see George, and she knew that the rooms were clean and the landlady, Mrs Hodges, welcoming. The discovery that Persephone, the upper-class girl from the train, was also staying at the same lodgings had Dulcie pulling a face to Sally as the landlady ushered them into her warm cheerful kitchen with its scrubbed wooden table and welcoming Aga. After Mrs Hodges, who was on her way out to a WI meeting, had announced that she’d left them some cold supper in the larder, Sally turned to George and suggested that they go to the local chip shop and bring back some chips.
‘That’s if you fancy some, Dulcie?’
‘I fancy them more than I do a cold supper,’ Dulcie acknowledged.
‘What about you, Persephone?’ Sally asked.
The other girl immediately coloured up and looked embarrassed as she told them, ‘Daddy doesn’t approve of things like fish and chips.’
‘Poor girl,’ Sally told George ruefully once they were alone together, walking arm in arm the short distance to the chip shop on the high street. ‘I feel a bit guilty leaving her with Dulcie. Dulcie will make mincemeat of her. Which reminds me, do you think it was wise to encourage Dulcie to visit David?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m hoping so,’ George admitted. ‘As I said earlier, physically he’s not mending as well as he should be, and Mr MacIndoe feels that is because he’s been rejected, not just by his wife but his parents as well. But I know I’m taking a risk in encouraging Dulcie to visit him.’
‘A big risk. Surely he needs someone who will be a real and regular support to him? Dulcie isn’t like that, George. Oh, I know that right now she’s all fired up with enthusiasm but that enthusiasm is more about her scoring over David’s wife than generated by any real desire to help David himself, and when it fades—’
‘I know, I know … but we’ve been getting pretty desperate. Mr MacIndoe thinks that we could lose him if we can’t find a way to give him a reason to fight for life. He hates losing patients.’
Sally squeezed George’s arm understandingly.
In the kitchen of their lodgings, Dulcie eyed Persephone. As far as Dulcie was concerned she was a very poor specimen of a girl: too thin, wearing old-fashioned clothes, and with that posh accent that reminded her of Lydia. Not that Persephone had any of Lydia’s high-handed manner about her. Dulcie certainly wouldn’t have tolerated it if she had.
‘So it’s your brother you’re going to see tomorrow then, is it?’ Dulcie asked her.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to be visiting a patient as well,’ Dulcie told her. ‘Asked to specially, I’ve bin, on account of me already knowing him and him needing someone who’s got the gumption to visit him, not like that wife of his. I always knew that she wasn’t up to much.’ Dulcie tossed her blond hair. She was enjoying have a justifiable reason to criticise Lydia openly. ‘Turned her back on him now, she has.’
Persephone made a small sound of distress and said in a shocked voice, ‘Oh, poor boy, how awful for him, and how good you are to visit him.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘But then that’s me all over, putting myself out for others. Always been like that, I have. Where’s Sally with them chips? Canoodling with that fiancé of hers, I expect. You’d think she’d put a bit of speed on. I’m starving … That’s the trouble with some folk. They are just naturally selfish and don’t ever think of others. So what’s up with him, then, your brother? Got burned, has he? There was plenty on that ward I was just on that had, and plenty with no arms or legs either. And George was saying as how they are the ones that have been operated on and are getting better. If that’s true then I’d hate to see them as haven’t had anything done yet,’ Dulcie told the other girl with the kind of relish that rather belied her words. ‘An ’orrible state, some of them must be in, if you ask me. ’Ere, what’s wrong with you?’ she asked when Persephone lifted a hanky to her eyes to wipe away her tears.
‘I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my brother.’
‘Well, you’d better not go crying all over him when you go to see him tomorrow. According to George, this Mr Maclndoe, who’s in charge, doesn’t like it when relatives make a fuss. He says it upsets his patients. He’s even got the hospital to take on pretty nurses and told them to smile at the patients, ’cos he reckons it’s good for them to see a cheerful, pretty girl. I wouldn’t be surprised, if he was to see me talking with David when I see him tomorrow, if doesn’t ask me to smile at the other men there, with me being so pretty meself.’
Having queued up for and got their chips, Sally and George set off back for Sally’s lodgings at a smart pace, linked up closely together, George carrying the chips beneath his coat to make sure that they didn’t get cold, Sally having refused, saying they would make her clothes smell. Although George also lodged in the town, Sally had quite understood when his landlady had told her very politely that she didn’t allow unmarried couples, even engaged couples, to sleep beneath her roof. George wasn’t the sort to push for the kind of favours and intimacies that went with marriage, which in Sally’s view made the sweet sensuality and passion of their shared kisses and the very evident control George had to force on himself to stop him from wanting to take things further, all the more tenderly special. Without even pausing for a single kiss they rushed back.
Not that Dulcie was in the least bit grateful for their sacrifice.
‘What kept you? I’m starving,’ she complained the minute they arrived.
‘There was a queue,’ Sally told her, as they all sat down at the kitchen table and began to unwrap their newspaper parcels.
Persephone had said that she wasn’t hungry but now Sally insisted on coaxing her to share her own fish and chips.
‘Here, take a chip,’ she offered, holding out the parcel to her.
It