‘I must say, though,’ Nancy continued unabashed, ‘it didn’t take Mussolini long to renege on his duties once Rome was bombed.’ The Italian Fascist had been arrested after surrendering, Olive remembered. ‘He soon changed his tune when the war began turning in Britain and the Allies’ favour.’
Olive realised the optimistic news did little to alleviate Nancy’s black mood when her neighbour said through pursed lips, ‘I never did trust that turncoat Mussolini.’
‘It’s easy to say that now, Nancy,’ Olive told her next-door neighbour, who was beating her doormat, causing plumes of dust to spoil the brightness of the sunny summer morning, not to mention Olive’s newly polished windows. ‘Here, isn’t it your Tilly’s birthday soon?’ Nancy’s sudden comment sounded more like an accusation and Olive nodded as she continued to work. Olive had never imagined Tilly celebrating her twenty-first birthday fighting for King and country, but then, she mused, nobody would have thought there would be another war after the last one. Olive nodded in reply to Nancy and swallowed the painful lump of fear-infused pride.
‘I think it might rain later,’ Nancy said in her usual contrary fashion, looking up at the perfectly calm pale blue sky as Olive, once again, began to polish her windows. She wasn’t in the mood for Nancy’s constant whinging today; she had far too much to do before she left for the Red Cross shop where she helped out most days, and she had to try to get into town to buy Tilly a birthday present.
She had saved all her points and coupons as well as the money in the Post Office for just this occasion, and she couldn’t wait to have a look around the shops, although there wasn’t much to buy these days. Certainly, there wasn’t much in the way of luxury goods for twenty-first birthdays. It had been a long time since she had treated herself to a day in the West End.
Olive sighed as she brought her windows to a dazzling shine with the daily newspaper. So much had happened in the last four years it was hard to know a time when peace had been taken for granted. Taking a deep breath of warm morning air, Olive tried not to dwell on thoughts that would dim her usually positive outlook, knowing her temporary melancholia was caused by the lack of information about her daughter; she hadn’t had much in the way of letters since Tilly went back to camp after Easter leave, last April, giving her cause to worry – as any mother would.
But, Olive thought, at least she had the other girls to keep her going, and then there was Archie; he took her mind off her troubles, she reflected with a smile. At nearly forty, Olive recognised that although she wasn’t old, nor was she sixteen any more – even though Archie made her feel that young when he looked at her in that special way he had …
‘You are always on the go, Olive. You’ve been like a mother to those lodgers of yours. I never thought I’d see the day,’ Nancy said, breaking into Olive’s wonderful reverie of Archie.
‘I’m no different from anybody else, Nancy.’ But Olive felt a little glow of pride especially when she remembered that Dulcie had said she was her very own substitute mother. Dulcie, like all her belles, was like another daughter now, especially after her own mother had been tragically killed last March in the Bethnal Green underground crush. Brash, flinty, glamorous and a dyed-in-the-wool East Ender, Dulcie had married aristocratic RAF fighter pilot David, but she was still a frequent visitor to number 13, and Olive suspected she always would be.
‘But if Dulcie sees you as a mother figure, then she must also see you as a substitute grandmother,’ said Nancy, popping Olive’s little bubble of pride; knowing the grandmothers she had become acquainted with were all of matronly stock. Did she look like that? She hoped not, and she tried to keep herself neat and trim. And even if there was so little in the way of beauty care she still used her Pond’s cold cream every night, albeit more sparingly than she had done before the war.
‘I couldn’t stand Dulcie when I first met her,’ Nancy said. ‘ “Common” was the word that sprung to mind when she bobbed down Article Row with those swinging hips and all that fake …’
‘What fake?’ Olive stopped what she was doing and looked at Nancy, her brows furrowed.
‘All that lipstick and rouge, the dyed blond hair and the painted nails, not to mention those eyelashes – it’s a wonder she could see out of her own eyes!’
‘I thought she looked very glamorous,’ Olive lied – she wasn’t having Nancy push Dulcie’s reputation into the gutter – ‘and her hair was not dyed. She used to enhance her own natural blond with a lemon rinse and let the sun do the rest, that’s all.’ Olive wasn’t going to tell Nancy that she, too, thought Dulcie looked a little too ‘made up’ when she first came here. ‘Anyway, she worked on the perfume and make-up counter at Selfridges – she had to look glamorous, it was part of her job.’
It was funny how things turned out, Olive thought, remembering she hadn’t taken to Dulcie straight away when she first came to Article Row; she thought the girl from Stepney was a bad influence on young Tilly. But as it turned out, Dulcie was one of the kindest, most generously thoughtful people Olive had ever met; more so since she married David, who had been badly injured in the Battle of Britain in 1940.
David, Olive recalled, had spent many long months in hospital, and Dulcie surprised everybody by being one of his few visitors and had showed a deeply hidden, sensitive side to her nature that many people, including Olive, didn’t know she had. And now they had little Hope, their darling daughter, who had arrived prematurely– as had, it seemed, a lot of war babies. Olive gave a wry smile: terrible things, those air raids, she thought, knowing that as long as David and Dulcie were happy it was nobody’s business but their own how and when Hope had been conceived.
‘There is a telephone call for you, Mrs James-Thompson,’ said Dulcie’s housekeeper and mother’s help to little Hope and her sister’s boy, Anthony. ‘I will take the babies for their afternoon nap before you go to visit Mrs Robbins.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Wilson,’ Dulcie said, still not used to having help at home. She was surprised when she heard her sister’s voice on the other end of the line.
‘Dulce, are you in today?’
‘I’m going out later this afternoon, but I’m in now, obviously – you just rang me, you nit!’ She hadn’t seen her sister for weeks, which suited Dulcie, because every time she did hear from Edith it was because she wanted something. Last time it had been because she needed Dulcie and David to look after her little son, Anthony, for a few days, and that few days had been three months up to now.
‘Can I come over? I need to ask you something.’
‘Oh, ’ere goes,’ said Dulcie without preamble. ‘I thought it must be something like that.’
‘No, I don’t want anything from you – just a bit of your time, that’s all.’
‘Well, you’d better look sharp because I’m going shopping.’
Edith agreed and hung up while Dulcie wondered what it was her sister wanted this time. It was a shame that their mother hadn’t lived to see her grandchildren, after suffering a heart attack near Bethnal Green underground station, where Edith had actually given birth to the son her mum didn’t even know she was carrying.
‘Is Agnes still working on the underground then?’ Nancy asked conversationally.
Olive nodded, wondering what barbed comment Nancy was going to come out with next.
She didn’t have long to wait when Nancy said, ‘It was such a shame about Ted; but thinking about it now, Agnes would never have been able to compete with that grasping mother of his.’
‘Nancy!’ There was a warning note in Olive’s voice that she wasn’t going to listen to the venomous accusations her neighbour could spit out at will, even if Nancy did voice the things that other people thought. The girl had never known a family of her own, and Ted had become her whole life. When he was