‘The doctor’s been again this morning to number forty-nine,’ Nancy announced over the hedge.
Olive paused on the steps to her back door, balancing the weight of the washing she had just been to collect from the local Chinese laundry more securely on her raised knee.
‘It can’t be long now, not with the doctor coming nearly every day. I said to my Arthur when they moved in that I didn’t reckon the husband would last very long.’
Olive felt that sometimes Nancy took too keen an interest in such morbid subjects, almost relishing it when one of her dire warnings became true.
‘Mr Long is very poorly at the moment,’ she felt obliged to agree, whilst pointing out, ‘But his son, Christopher, has told Tilly that they have every hope that he will rally and make some recovery. Apparently this has proved to be the case on more than one occasion in the past.’
Nancy merely shook her head, adding darkly, ‘And that’s another thing. If I was you I wouldn’t let your Tilly get too involved with that boy of theirs, not with him being one of the conscientious objects. There’s no saying where it might lead. Folk like them like putting the wrong ideas into other folk’s heads, and you don’t want your Tilly getting them kind of wrong ideas.’
‘I don’t think for one minute that anything like that is going to happen, Nancy. Tilly and Agnes have simply taken Christopher under their wing a bit because they are being good neighbours.’
‘Well, you can say that, but—’ Nancy began.
Her neighbour was like a dog relishing a particularly juicy bone it did not want to give up, Olive thought ruefully as she determinedly changed the subject.
‘Has Linda settled in with her in-laws in Sussex now?’
Linda, Nancy’s daughter, and her son-in-law, Henry, had evacuated themselves and their seven-year-old son to Sussex to live with her in-laws shortly after war had been announced.
‘Oh, yes. Ever so glad to have her there, Henry’s mother is, and Henry’s got a job working in partnership with an electrician that’s already set up there. Mind you, Linda says that it’s Henry that’s bringing in most of the work, not this other chap, and she reckons that it’s Henry who should be the senior partner. Henry’s mother’s lucky to have them living with her. There’s nothing Linda doesn’t know about running a house like it should be run. Of course, she’s got me to thank for that. I have to say that Henry’s mother doesn’t have the same standards I’ve taught Linda. When we went and stayed with them the Christmas before last, there was that much dust on the picture rail in her hallway that she couldn’t have dusted up there all year.’
Olive nodded. She knew from experience that there was nothing Nancy liked more than boasting about her daughter, but the weight of the laundry was beginning to make her arms ache so she excused herself and unlocked her back door.
Once inside she made her way straight upstairs so that she could put the clean linen in the airing cupboard, ready to change the beds on Monday.
When Nancy had first found out that Olive was sending her sheets and pillowcases to the Chinese laundry instead of washing them herself, she had affected to be shocked, but Olive didn’t care. With five beds to change it would have been impossible for her to get all the bedding washed, dried and ironed every week, on top of everything else she had to do, including her WVS work.
Once she’d put the clean laundry away, Olive glanced at her watch and, seeing that it was almost half-past ten, she hurried back downstairs so that she could make herself a cup of tea and then sit down and enjoy it whilst she listened to Music While You Work on the wireless.
It was whilst she was listening to that that Olive found her thoughts wandering to the Longs. She wondered if she should call and ask Mrs Long if there was anything she could do to help, such as fetching her shopping for her. She didn’t want her to think that she was being nosy, though, especially when Mr Long was so obviously poorly. Olive had no fears that Tilly might be getting too involved with Christopher in the way that Nancy had tried to imply. She knew her daughter and it was perfectly plain to her that Tilly thought of Christopher only as a friend. She certainly wasn’t attracted to him in the way that she had been to Dulcie’s handsome brother. Thinking of that reminded Olive of her exchange with Dulcie. She hadn’t intended to get Dulcie’s back up, and in fact she had actually, to her own surprise, felt concerned for her when she’d seen her cuts and bruises, but Dulcie wasn’t someone who made it easy for others to be sympathetic towards her, Olive thought wryly. Quite the opposite.
She would go and see Mrs Long after she had had her dinner, she decided. It wouldn’t be neigh-bourly not to do so. Olive could still remember how she had felt during the final weeks of her own husband’s life. Of course, she had been younger than Mrs Long, and they had been living here with her in-laws, but you never forgot the awfulness of knowing someone you loved was going to die. She would certainly never forget the hours she had lain awake at night listening to his racking cough, and then the silences that had followed it, hardly daring to breathe herself as she listened desperately in the darkness for the sound of his breathing and only relaxing when she heard it.
Olive had decided to do a ham salad for every-one’s evening meal, seeing as it was so warm, so she opened the tin of ham she intended to use, taking a thin sliver off the ham to make herself a sandwich for her lunch. The thin scraping of margarine she put on the bread didn’t look very appealing, but Olive knew that with a bit of mustard and some lettuce her sandwich would be nice and tasty.
Once she’d eaten she checked the larder to make sure that there were enough boiled potatoes left over from the previous evening’s meal for her to make some potato salad to go with the ham.
After removing her apron, Olive went upstairs to comb her hair and make sure that she looked tidy, setting her neat off-white straw hat on top of her newly brushed curls, and then opening her dressing table drawer to remove a clean pair of white gloves.
As she opened her front door, the Misses Barker from next door were walking up the Row, and naturally Olive stopped to speak to them. Spinster sisters and retired teachers, they always looked spick and span. Physically the sisters were very different. Miss Jane Barker, the elder of the two, was tall and thin, with a long bony face, whilst Miss Mary Barker was smaller and plump. Olive’s late husband, who had been taught by them at the local church school before they had retired, had often said that whilst Miss Jane favoured the stick, Miss Mary favoured the carrot, and that between them they had ensured that even the most unruly of boys along with the shyest of girls learned their ABC and their times tables.
Once ‘good afternoons’ had been exchanged, it was Miss Mary who told Olive excitedly, ‘We’ve just seen the vicar and he’s asked us if we’d like to think about helping out at the junior school. It seems that with so many families bringing their children back from evacuation, the Government is having to open some of the schools they closed at the beginning of the war.’
After they had parted company Olive reflected that the thought of going back to teaching had brought a definite spring to the sisters’ steps.
When she reached number 49 she could see that the curtains were half drawn across the windows of the front room. Rather hesitantly she knocked on the front door, wondering if she had done the right thing when Mrs Long opened it and Olive saw how tired and distressed she looked.
‘I’m sorry,’ Olive apologised. ‘Perhaps I’ve called at a bad time. I won’t stay. I heard that Mr Long isn’t very well and I just wanted you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help – collect your shopping for you, that kind of thing.’
‘Please do come in,’ Mrs Long urged her, holding the door open wide, so that Olive felt obliged to step inside.
The immaculately clean hallway possessed a smell that Olive instantly recognised: the smell of carbolic and sickness and a certain fetid lack of air that came from trying to keep an invalid warm and a house clean.
Olive followed