‘I’m sure that nothing will prevent Wilder from getting up to London to take you to the dance, Dulcie,’ Drew assured her.
‘It’s all very well you saying that, but there’s been talk of leave being cancelled, and there not being any trains running.’
‘If that’s the case then he will just have to fly here in a fighter plane,’ Drew teased Dulcie, who pulled a face at him.
Wilder, the young American she was dating, was a member of the American Eagles, the fighter pilot unit that was attached to the RAF. These brave young American pilots, ignoring the fact that their country had not joined the war and was insisting on remaining neutral, had nevertheless come over to Britain and offered their services to the RAF. Their ‘uniform’, such as it was, consisted of well-worn ‘pants’ to fly by the seat of, a swagger, fiercely chewed gum, and well-worn heavy-duty flying jackets. Needless to say they attracted girls like honey attracted bees.
‘I know one thing that does mean,’ Dulcie grumbled, ‘and that’s that they’ll be making even more fuss at Selfridges about having us up on the roof doing fire-watching duties because of this lot, especially Miss Cotton, since she’s the one always going on about it.’
Every business in the city was supposed to provide fire-watchers from their staff to make sure that any falling incendiaries were extinguished before the flames could take hold. So far Dulcie, who worked in the cosmetics department of the luxury store on Oxford Street, had managed to wriggle out of doing any fire-watching herself by claiming that her broken ankle was still too weak for her to risk clambering about on the roof. Though it was not, of course, too weak for her to go dancing on it. Of course not!
‘We ought to be getting back now that the light’s starting to go,’ Olive told Audrey Windle with an anxious look towards the girls. ‘I’d hate for us to be caught out in the open if Hitler decides to come back again tonight.’
‘You’re right,’ her friend agreed. ‘We’ve got WVS tonight and I thought we’d go through those bags of second-hand clothes Sergeant Dawson brought in to the church hall on Saturday. I feel guilty about taking them. They must belong to someone … even if …’
Even if their owner was no longer alive to wear them, Olive knew that Audrey meant. They had an arrangement with a local laundry that had offered to launder the clothes they brought in for a very modest amount paid for out of the funds they raised, as and when they could, which at least meant they handed out clean and fresh clothes to those in need.
It was growing darker by the minute, only thankfully small fires now illuminating the nightmare scene of destruction surrounding them as Olive gathered together her small brood.
‘It’s all right if Drew comes back with us for supper, isn’t it, Mum?’ Tilly asked, tucking her arm through Olive’s.
‘Yes, of course,’ Olive agreed, earning her arm a small squeeze before Tilly dropped back, no doubt finding a much more romantic place to tuck her arm with Drew, Olive guessed. She might be thirty-seven but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t remember what it was like to be young and in love, which was why she was so concerned for her daughter. She knew the intoxication that came with true love. Sometimes even now she’d wake up in the early hours, vulnerable with sleep, aching inside for the warmth of loving male arms to turn to, and a loving husband to love her back.
They all had their torches but it made sense for them to use only one of them, to save their batteries. Olive and Audrey led the way, coming to an abrupt halt when they nearly walked into a wooden barrier blocking off a side road, a notice pinned to it warning, ‘No Access – Unexploded Bomb’. Olive played her torch carefully to either side. On one building, its windows bombed out, the holes gaping blackly like rotting teeth in a dusty red-brick mouth, they all saw someone had chalked, ‘London can take it.’ Fiercely Olive blinked away her emotion.
Down the next street they passed a group of men still searching quietly in the filthy soot and dust-coated rubble of what had once been a row of buildings but that was now a line of jagged roofless outlines against the darkening sky.
Olive started to walk more quickly, hissing to the girls to ‘keep up’, not wanting to raise her voice in case the sound disturbed the men listening so carefully at those still mounds of rubble, just in case there might be someone inside them still alive.
‘Ugh. Look, I’ve got soot and grease on my gloves,’ Dulcie complained once they were all standing together in the safety and warmth of number 13’s hallway. Holding up her hands, she displayed for everyone else’s inspection the pretty gloves that had been a Christmas present from Olive, who had knitted a pair for each of the girls from wool she had unravelled from old jumpers and the like, handed over to the WVS for reuse. The money she’d paid for the items and the work she had to do, not just in the knitting but also in unpicking and then washing the wool in the first place, was rewarded every time she saw her girls go out with their hands warmly wrapped in their gloves.
‘Give them to me. It will wash out with a bit of Dreft,’ she assured Dulcie, in the general bustle of coats, scarves and hats being removed and hung on the hall coat stand, prior to everyone hurrying into the warmth of the cosy family kitchen at the back of the house.
Olive’s kitchen, with its duck-egg-blue and cream colour scheme, gave her a thrill of pride every time she walked into it. Her late father-in-law had bought the kitchen units for her, having had them copied by someone he knew after Olive had seen and fallen in love with them at a furniture exhibition the year before he had died.
Number 13 had been Olive’s in-laws’ home and she had inherited it from them. It had been her and Tilly’s home all Tilly’s life, and Olive loved it dearly.
Tonight, with thoughts of the destruction they had all just seen, she was more conscious than ever of how precious her home was to her. They had been lucky so far that no bombs had fallen near Article Row. The previous night’s air raid was the closest the falling bombs had come so far. Now, looking round, Olive felt a pang of something approaching guilt because her home was standing when so many weren’t; that those she loved and cared about were safe when so many weren’t, she acknowledged.
It was Sally, with her practical nurse’s manner, who was putting the kettle on and lighting the gas, whilst Tilly got out the mugs, handing them to Drew, the two of them exchanging tender smiles as their fingers touched.
‘Come on, you two lovebirds,’ Dulcie, whose sharp eyes never missed a thing, teased them. ‘I’m gasping for a brew after being out in all that dust and smoke. I dare say there’s all sorts in them cinders we were breathing in,’ she added darkly.
‘What do you mean?’ Agnes squeaked. When Dulcie gave her a meaningful look she demanded, turning slightly green, ‘You mean bodies and things?’
‘Well, what do you think happens when people get burned to death? There’s bound to be summat left,’ Dulcie insisted.
‘That’s enough of that kind of talk, thank you, Dulcie,’ Olive warned her lodger, then sent Agnes to get the milk from the larder.
Hurrying back into the warmth, Agnes reflected on how lucky she was. Abandoned as a baby outside a local orphanage, she’d been terrified at seventeen when the matron had told her that she’d found her a job on the underground and a room to rent. She’d dreaded having to leave the only home she’d ever known. But now number 13 was her home, and the other girls her best friends, especially Tilly, whose bedroom she shared. And it wasn’t just the other girls who’d changed her life. She’d met Ted, a young underground train driver, at work, and she loved him with all her heart, even if the two of them couldn’t even think of getting married for years. Ted had a widowed mother and two young sisters to support, so they wouldn’t be able to marry until Ted’s sisters were grown up and settled. Ted was, after all, the sole breadwinner in their small household. Agnes understood and respected that. In fact, she admired her Ted more than ever for wanting to do his duty by his family.
But …
But