‘I can’t imagine what it will be like to be invaded by the Germans, but that’s what everyone says Hitler will try to do now that he’s got France.’
‘It won’t be as easy to invade us as it was to invade France,’ Sally said stoutly.
Olive gave her a wan smile. ‘That’s what everyone said about the Maginot Line – that he’d never cross it – but he did. I keep thinking of all those people who tried to escape.’ She put her hand to her mouth and Sally knew that she was thinking of the women and children who had been killed by the Luftwaffe. She herself had heard the most graphic and awful stories from some of the injured soldiers they’d got at Barts, the words bursting from them as though they couldn’t contain the horror of what they’d witnessed.
‘If they do invade, they’re bound to march on London.’
‘We’ve got the RAF to hold them back, don’t forget,’ Sally tried to comfort her.
Olive gave her a troubled look. ‘I worry for Tilly and Agnes, and you too, Sally. You are young with your whole lives in front of you, and I can’t help thinking that if Hitler does invade you’d all be safer out of London.’
‘If he succeeds in invading,’ Sally told her gently. ‘I personally don’t think he will. If those of us who live and work here did desert London then what kind of message would that send out to him, and to our boys who are fighting for this country and for us? The BEF have taken a terrific blow to their pride. We need to show them, as well as Hitler, that we have faith in them.’
Olive looked at her lodger, taking in Sally’s determined expression. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, adding, ‘You have such a wise head on your young shoulders, Sally.’
‘My mother’s head, or rather her teaching.’ Sally’s smile softened and then disappeared, to be replaced by a look of sadness. ‘I miss her so much. The trained nurse in me knew that she couldn’t survive and that she would die, but as her daughter I couldn’t bear to lose her.’
‘Your father is still alive,’ Olive began, but Sally shook her head.
‘Not for me. I have no father any more. My father ceased to exist for me the day he married Morag. The man I knew and loved as my father could not have performed such a betrayal. I must finish this weeding before I have to go in and get changed for work. Arthur has recommended that I put tea leaves soaked in vinegar round the lettuces to keep the slugs off. I’ve never heard of that remedy before.’
Recognising that Sally had changed the subject because she did not want to talk about her father, Olive began to gather up their empty cups and plates. She couldn’t really, after all, expect someone who had been as close to her mother as Sally had obviously been to understand the ache of emptiness and the fear of aloneless that came with the loss of a husband or wife, or to accept that sometimes the widowed partner felt driven by a need to fill that empty gap in their lives, especially when it was a man who had been widowed. Women were expected by their own sex to wear their widow-hood as a form of respectability; men, on the other hand, were seen by that sex as poor creatures in need of the comfort that only a new wife could give. A widow’s respectability was a fragile garment, easily tarnished and damaged, her behaviour constantly under the eagle-eyed inspection of other women. Olive could still remember the lectures she had been given by her mother-in-law in the months following her own widowhood, about the need to preserve her ‘respectability’ and that of her late husband’s family. She had had no desire to marry again, though, Olive admitted. All she had wanted to do then was pour her love into her precious daughter. Then? What she meant was that all she had ever wanted to do was pour her love into Tilly, Olive told herself firmly.
‘Well, I don’t know why you’ve wasted your money on giving me this stuff, Dulcie, I really don’t. Mind you, Edith can probably make use of it.’
Dulcie stared at her mother in outrage, opening her mouth to tell her that if she didn’t want her present then Dulcie would take it back because there was no way that Edith was going to have it, her angry words converted to a yell of pain when Rick very deliberately nipped her arm.
‘I’ll have a bruise on my arm now,’ she complained to him half an hour later as they left the house together, Dulcie to return to Article Row and Rick heading for the local lads’ boxing club to meet up with his friends, ‘What did you have to go and pinch me like that for anyway?’
‘You know why,’ Rick told her.
‘Mum had no right saying she was going to give my present to her to Edith,’ Dulcie objected. ‘Why does ruddy Edith have to have everything? Mum said that she was going to give her that scent you gave her as well.’
‘That’s Mum’s way, and making a song and dance about it won’t change anything,’ Rick advised as they set off down the street. ‘Edith’s always been her favourite.’
‘Well, I don’t know why,’ Dulcie complained, still aggrieved.
‘Ma’s proud of Edith, Dulcie, because of her singing. Remember how when we were kids Ma used to tell us about how she’d won a prize for singing herself when she was at school?’
Dulcie nodded.
‘Well, I reckon Ma favours Edith because of that. She wants Edith to have what she never did.’
‘A greasy-hands-all-over-you agent, you mean?’ Dulcie asked cynically.
Rick sighed and gave her a rueful look. ‘You know the trouble with you, Dulcie, is that you can’t just let things be. You’ve got to make your point, and have the last word, even if it means getting folks’ backs up.’
They’d crossed the road and turned into another street whilst they’d been talking, any attempt Dulcie might have made to respond to Rick’s accusation made impossible by the growing volume of noise.
‘What’s that?’ Dulcie protested, raising her voice.
‘Sounds like someone’s having a bit of a set-to,’ Rick told her unnecessarily as they both heard the sound of breaking glass joining the chants and jeers of angry raised voices.
Street fights weren’t an uncommon occurrence in their neighbourhood, so Dulcie shrugged. Then they turned the corner and she could see the gang of youths up ahead.
‘That’s Mr Manelli’s ice-cream shop they’re throwing bricks at.’ Dulcie stopped walking. ‘They’ve got no right doing that. Ever so nice to us when we were kids, Mr Manelli always was, giving us an extra scoop of ice cream when we took Ma’s baking bowl round on a Saturday to get it filled up for tea.’
As several more bricks were thrown into the broken window they heard a woman’s screams from inside the shop.
‘Come on, Rick. We’ve got to stop them.’
The sight of Dulcie, of all people, advancing on the jeering violent crowd of boys held Rick motionless for a second. But then he set off after her, calling out to the attacking mob, ‘Come on, lads, what’s going on?’ The firm sound of his voice and the fact that he was in uniform were enough to bring a momentary halt to the attack. The youths turned to look at him, whilst Dulcie, to his bemusement, marched in between them and the shop front, her hands on her hips.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, doing summat like this to Mr Manelli,’ she told them. ‘What’s he ever done to you?’
‘He’s an Eyetie and a traitor, that’s what,’ the largest of the youths told Dulcie glowering at her. ‘A ruddy Fascist, and him and his family want running out of the street and putting in prison like all the rest of his kind.’
‘Give over, lads,’ Rick counselled. ‘We all know Mr Manelli – he’s no traitor.’
‘Well, if that’s the case then how come the police have took him and the other Eyeties