When Christopher made no response Tilly suppressed a small sigh. She was a sociable girl who enjoyed the company of others and meeting new people, but trying to get him to talk was like drawing teeth, she decided ruefully. But good manners meant that she had to keep trying.
They’d almost reached the buffet table so she changed the subject and told him proudly, ‘You must have one of the mince pies, and a sausage roll. My mother made them.’
He nodded and then blurted out, ‘I’d prefer it if you call me Kit, not Christopher, and thanks . . . for dancing with me. I don’t think the vicar really approves of me being a conscientious objector, only, being a man of God, he can’t really say so.’
‘You’re still doing your bit,’ Tilly told him stoutly, indicating his St John Ambulance uniform.
The dance finished early, in time for the midnight carol service. As Tilly told her mother, linking arms with both her and Agnes as they set off for number 13 afterwards, there was something special about singing carols on Christmas Eve.
At St Barts, Sally shared Tilly’s feelings, her eyes stinging slightly with emotion when she left the chapel where one of the chaplains had just finished conducting the Christmas Eve midnight service.
‘We never did get to manage that meal out together,’ George Laidlaw told her, catching up with her as she walked down the corridor.
She’d seen the young doctor only briefly since his return from his posting with their evacuated colleagues, their only exchange brief nods of recognition, and sometimes a few words as they went about their duties.
‘The theatre lists have been busy,’ she told him. ‘With most of the staff evacuated and a reduced number of operating theatres, there’s been more pressure on those that there are, especially with all the blackout accidents that have been coming in.’
‘If you haven’t already got a partner for the hospital’s New Year’s Ball, and you aren’t on duty, perhaps you’d consider letting me take you to that?’
Automatically Sally opened her mouth to refuse and then closed it again. What was the point in looking backwards to what might have been?
‘I’m not on duty, and yes, I’d like that,’ she answered.
‘You will?’ George looked delighted.
Ten minutes later as she stepped out into the cold night air, her cloak wrapped warmly round her, Sally discovered that she was still smiling at George’s obvious pleasure in her acceptance.
Part Two
June 1940
Chapter Seventeen
‘Is there any more news about Dunkirk?’ Tilly asked Olive anxiously, having raced home from work to change into her St John Ambulance uniform, ignoring the discomfort of its heaviness in the heat of the early June afternoon. Like the rest of the country, she had far more on her mind than herself.
‘No real news, but according to Mrs Windle the troop trains are still full when they reach London, which must mean something.’
Dunkirk. How quickly the name had become familiar, so that over the space of a handful of days it was on everyone’s lips, the echo of its horror and bravery the beat of everyone’s heart.
Dunkirk – the beach beyond which the British Expedition Force had retreated until they could retreat no further, after the Germans had smashed through the supposedly unsmashable Maginot Line.
Dunkirk – from where not just the might of the British Establishment but the love and bravery of Britain’s ordinary citizens, in their small vessels, had plucked the waiting men to safety, bearing them home across the Channel in voyage after voyage.
Olive and Tilly had seen what Dunkirk had done to once-proud fighting men. Olive manned one of the many WVS tea urns, and Tilly helped the walking wounded when they arrived at St Pancras station, one of the London stations into which troop trains came pouring to disgorge weary retreat-scarred men from the British Expeditionary Force; men who had left behind in France not only their guns and equipment but also their pride.
In three short days Tilly felt she had left her own youth behind her, just as those men had left behind them their dead comrades and their self-belief. The sight of grown men with blank expressions and eyes that constantly looked beyond her, as her St John Ambulance unit worked amongst the wounded, no longer shocked her as it had done that first day.
Men in dirty mud-spattered uniforms, rank with the dried sweat of fear, who couldn’t look her in the eye; men with dirty bandages wrapped around wounds; men who broke down and wept with shame and relief when they were greeted with a hot cup of tea and a warm smile – Tilly had seen them all.
Because it was her turn to drive the WVS van, Olive said that she would take Tilly to St Pancras along with the members of her WVS unit she was due to pick up from the vicarage. Crouched in the back of the van, Tilly was filled with admiration for the way her mother drove, manoeuvring it with the new confidence the last few days had given her. Olive had even been co-opted into ferrying some of the walking wounded to various London hospitals for out-patient treatment.
The most seriously injured men and the stretcher cases had been sent to hospitals closer to the coast, Sally had told them. The London hospitals were only dealing with the more minor cases; cleaning up wounds, before the men travelled onward to take advantage of the two weeks of home leave they had all been granted.
One of Tilly’s jobs had been to check with those arriving at St Pancras that they had sent off one of the postcards they had been issued with on arrival on British shores, to tell their relatives they were safe.
It was as she handed out postcards to those who, for one reason or another, had not already sent them that she had a glimpse of what was concealed behind the men’s blank expressions, as though the thought of those waiting for them at home was the key that turned the lock on their emotions.
This evening the number of men filling the platforms seemed larger than ever.
Craning her neck, Tilly tried to see where the milling mass ended, as she and Agnes stood together with their bag of postcards and their instructions to send those men who looked most in need of medical attention to the St John Ambulance post behind them on the station’s main waiting area, where they would be checked over and dealt with or sent on to hospital for further medical treatment.
Men were caked in a mixture of mud from the retreat across France, sand from the beaches, salt from the Channel and, in some cases, oil as well. After three days Tilly had learned enough to know that oil meant the men had been rescued from torpedoed ships.
Down at the other end of the concourse, closer to the exit, her mother, along with various other WVS groups, would be serving the men tea and biscuits, the first drink, some men told her, they had had since leaving France.
A soldier, grey-skinned and dead-eyed, standing in the line a couple of yards away from them caught Tilly’s eye. He was being supported by the man next to him, who looked equally done in.
‘Grab these two,’ Tilly told Agnes, the two girls stepping up to the men, and only just in time, Tilly recognised as the soldier being supported stumbled, and almost fell into her arms.
‘Sorry, miss,’ his companion, hollow-cheeked with exhaustion, his face grimy with oil and dirt, apologised. ‘No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Tilly assured him, gesturing to her uniform. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Has he got any injuries, do you know?’
She could almost see the soldier, who had been looking defensive and wary, relax a little at her words, as Tilly gently set the semi-conscious man back to his feet so that his companion could once again support him.
Tilly