The velvet bought, they all agreed that a cup of tea and something like a nice fresh hot meat pie were needed to give them the energy to finish their shopping.
There were plenty of stalls selling food, but Olive insisted that they find a café. She didn’t really approve of eating in the street, and besides, her feet needed a rest.
They found a welcoming café down a narrow side street, the smell of the hot pies they were selling making Tilly declare that her mouth was watering already.
The pies turned out to be as good as they smelled, hot and tasty, warming chilled fingers and filling hungry stomachs.
The women didn’t waste much time in the café, though. The crowd milling around the market had grown throughout the morning, and Olive wanted to get their shopping done before it got even busier.
Once they had eaten their pies and emptied the generously sized pot of tea they’d had with them, the three of them headed for a stall Olive had noticed earlier that sold lining fabrics. The local dressmaker would charge her a little bit less, Olive was sure, if she provided her own lining fabric, thread and buttons, and make allowances for the time it would save her in not having to go out and buy them.
It was whilst she was carefully matching the swatches of fabric she had retrieved from Tilly that Olive suddenly realised that her daughter and Agnes had disappeared. Uncertainly she looked round. The market was busy; she didn’t want them getting themselves lost in the bustling crowd. Then to her relief she caught sight of them hurrying towards her.
‘You mustn’t go off like that,’ she scolded them vigorously. ‘What on earth were you doing?’
‘Oh, I just wanted to show Agnes some lace I’d seen earlier that would make a pretty collar,’ Tilly told her airily.
‘Just because you’ve persuaded me to let you have a velvet dress instead of a plaid one, that does not make you grown up enough to go wandering off without a by-your-leave,’ Olive warned. ‘There’ll be pickpockets and all sorts here.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ said Tilly obediently.
When Olive turned back to finish choosing the lining fabrics Tilly and Agnes exchanged secret smiles. When they’d gone to the ladies’ after they’d finished having their dinner Tilly had told Agnes that she wanted to go back to the velvet stall to buy the amber velvet for her mother, and immediately Agnes had said that she wanted to go halves on the cost with her. Now the amber silk velvet was parcelled up with their own and the two of them were excitedly anticipating surprising Olive with it when they got home.
* * *
The house was finally quiet, Tilly, Agnes and Dulcie all in their beds and Sally working at the hospital. Olive, lying in her own bed, was thankful to be able to rest her still aching feet. In the glow of her bedside lamp Olive could see the brown-paper parcels, open now, their string removed and carefully rolled into balls for future use, stacked on her dressing-table stool, including the amber fabric that Tilly and Agnes had surprised her with earlier in the evening. A tender smile curved her mouth, her eyes misting with emotion and maternal pride.
Of course she had remonstrated with Tilly, saying that she and Agnes had no business wasting their money on silk velvet for her when she had no need of a party dress. A party dress. The last time she had had one of those she had been Tilly’s age. It had been pale blue silk and she had been wearing it the night she had met her husband, at a dance she had gone to with some friends. Jim had loved her in that dress, begging her to have a photograph taken of herself wearing it for him. She had loved dancing. She had loved Jim too, but she didn’t want Tilly’s youth to be like hers, over almost before it had begun, her life filled with the responsibilities of being a wife and a mother. She already knew what war did to young hearts and how it urged their owners to seize the moment in case it was snatched away from them. For a moment Olive’s heart was filled with remembered pain. She had been widowed for so long that she rarely thought of how it had felt to be a wife any more, or how it felt to be loved by a man and to love that man back in return, and then to lose him.
This war would not be like that, she tried to reassure herself. Everyone said so. She hoped that they were right.
The papers were saying that the war would be over before Christmas, Hitler put in his place and the British Expeditionary Force brought back from France and Belgium. Mothers who had parted with their children, allowing them to be evacuated, fearing the worst and that London was going to be bombed, were now bringing them back, and Nancy next door was complaining that the streets were full of children causing mischief who should have been at school, except that the schools had been closed down when the children were evacuated, adding that she was glad that Article Row was free of children, and that Barbara Simpson hadn’t decided to move back to London with their four. Olive didn’t agree with her. She thought it was rather a shame that they could no longer hear the voices of the four young Simpson children.
Another week and they’d be at the end of October; two months and it would be Christmas. She’d have to start getting a few things in ready, and find out what her lodgers planned to do. Dulcie, she assumed – and hoped – would want to spend Christmas with her own family, but Agnes would be with them, and Sally possibly. She could get some wool and knit both Tilly and Agnes gloves and scarves for Christmas to go with their new coats. Perhaps she’d knit a set for Sally, as well, a nice bright red that would match the lining of her nurse’s cloak.
Christmas. She’d have plenty of shopping to do with her house so full, and perhaps the sooner the better. Nancy had been talking gloomily about the probability of food shortages and even rationing if the war continued. She needed to get started with making her Christmas pudding, Olive decided. Olive still used the recipe that had been her own mother’s, given to her by the cook of the family with whom Olive’s mother had been in service.
Somehow the thought of following her familiar routine helped to push away the fear that knowing they were at war brought.
War was such a small word with such a big meaning and overwhelming consequences. Olive reached out and switched off the lamp. It was church in the morning, and she’d be able to tell the vicar’s wife about Sergeant Dawson offering to give her and Mrs Morrison driving lessons.
Chapter Ten
‘It’s St John Ambulance this afternoon,’ Tilly reminded Agnes as they stood together outside the church after morning service. ‘I hope I don’t have to be injured again. Johnny Walton bandaged my arm so tightly last time it went numb.’
‘Learning first aid isn’t as bad as when we have to move all those sandbags that are supposed to be collapsed buildings, to get the injured out,’ Agnes reminded her. ‘Ted is on fire-watching duties for the street he lives in when he’s not working nights. He says when there’s a full moon he can see the barrage balloons as clear as anything, and right over to the river. Do you think that Hitler will really bomb us, Tilly?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tilly admitted. People talked a lot about the war, but so far nothing really bad had happened, and it was hard to imagine what war was like, even though she knew that Britain’s soldiers had been sent to France.
People were already complaining about the inconvenience of the blackout, and having bossy Air Raid Precautions wardens coming round threatening to fine you if you showed even the smallest chink of light. Plain daft, Nancy next door had said to Tilly’s mother when she had been grumbling about it, when there wasn’t a German in sight.
Where there had initially been a sense of purpose and determination because of the war, there was now almost a sense of anticlimax.
‘Mum said that she was going to have a word with the dressmaker and arrange for us to go to her so that she can take our measurements for our new things.’ Tilly gave a small sigh. ‘I do wish that Mum would let me go to the Hammersmith Palais. I’m not a child any more, after all.’
‘We’ll be going to