My Sweet Valentine Read online

  He had come round because of her? He had been concerned for her? Olive felt a welling up of emotion inside her that brought a new ache to her throat.

  He was being neighbourly, that was all, doing his duty as an ARP warden and their police officer, and if that hadn’t been the case, if there had been something more personal about his visit, then she naturally would have rejected that something more personal and not felt moved by it.

  With that in mind Olive stepped further back from him as she told him politely, ‘Well, thank you for calling round, Sergeant. Your kindness is much appreciated. I’m sure that Tilly will want to thank you herself once she’s back to normal.’

  Only she wasn’t sure just when her precious daughter would be back to normal, Olive was forced to admit over an hour later when the doctor had also called to see Tilly and had given Olive ‘something to help her sleep’, repeating what Sergeant Dawson had said about Tilly being in shock.

  Olive only hoped that he was right. Tonight she would sleep in Agnes’s bed so that she could be close to her daughter, leaving Agnes to sleep in hers. Once Drew was released from hospital, she and Sally could and would nurse him between them. That surely would prove to Tilly that she wasn’t in any way against her young man, and Tilly herself, once she was back to normal, would, Olive hoped, recognise now just why her mother had been so anxious to protect her.

  She’d been right about it being a long night, and they weren’t through it yet, Sally thought wearily, as she went to leave the now empty basement theatre to go for her break. She’d stayed behind after the operation had finished, dismissing her juniors to go for their breaks ahead of her, but remaining herself just to check that everything in the operating theatre had been left as it should be. Something was nagging at her and keeping her here. The smell of blood still hung on the air, despite the scrubbing the operating theatre had been given after each operation. The injuries from the Café de Paris bomb had been truly dreadful: pretty young girls who would never dance again because they had lost one or both legs; handsome young uniformed men who would not now be able to take part in the war because of their injuries. And they were the lucky ones. At least they were still alive.

  As far as Sally was able to tell, neither Tilly, Dulcie nor their escorts had been amongst the injured or the dead.

  No, there wasn’t anything she hadn’t done, she decided, as she left the operating theatre and headed for the stairs.

  She took a short cut across the foyer to reach the nurse’s dining room for her break. The sounds of planes, dulled and softened in the underground theatre, were much louder up here. She winced as one in particular sounded as though it were coming in right overhead. The proximity of the plane, though, was forgotten as she came to an abrupt halt. Now she knew why she hadn’t felt able to leave the theatre. The surgeon who had performed the last op had, for some reason, left his notes there. She’d seen them and meant to pick them up for him but she’d forgotten. She’d have to go back for them.

  She’d just turned round to go back when the familiar sound of a New Zealand accent reached her through the bustle and busyness of the foyer. A young man was talking to the porters who had just wheeled him in. He was wearing an air force uniform, badly smeared and darkened with blood, so much so, in fact, that his flight lieutenant’s insignia was barely discernible.

  ‘Where do you want us to take the Aussie?’ one of the porters was asking a hovering sister.

  Seeing the look on the young man’s at being so wrongly labelled, Sally went over to the trolley. ‘He isn’t from Australia, he’s from New Zealand,’ she told the porters.

  An appreciative smile from the young man had Sally smiling back. He was one of George’s countrymen, after all, a man from the country she herself would probably be calling home one day.

  ‘That was quick of you,’ he complimented her,

  ‘My fiancé is from New Zealand,’ Sally told him, whilst professionally checking him visually. There was a tourniquet on his arm, which she also checked.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he told her tersely. ‘It’s those other poor sods … sorry, but …’ A large muscular forearm was lifted to his eyes. ‘It was supposed to be so safe down there, so everyone said.’

  ‘You mean the Café de Paris?’ Sally guessed.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve seen men – pals – shot down, I’ve seen men injured, I’ve seen bombs dropping before, but I’ve never seen anything as bad as what I saw tonight. Young girls – pretty girls in pretty dresses – covered in blood with …’ His voice broke.

  Sally patted his arm gently. After all, she’d seen the same victims.

  ‘Were you there on your own?’ she asked him.

  ‘There were three of us. The other two of them got it in the blast. They were on the dance floor. I wasn’t. That saved my life. Funny, isn’t it, how things work out? If I hadn’t asked a girl to dance with me who turned me down, I’d be dead too, because she is.’

  He started to cry, dry heaving sobs that tore at his throat. Sally patted him again. She needed to get back to the theatre for those notes.

  She was on her way down the corridor when she was stopped.

  ‘Sorry, Sister,’ the man on the temporary barricade told her. ‘Bomb’s just dropped on one of the theatres. Luckily it was empty so no one’s been hurt. It hasn’t gone off, but no one’s allowed down there until the UXB lot have come and checked it out.’

  ‘Which theatre?’ Sally asked.

  When he told her, she had to lean back against the wall to steady herself. The theatre into which the bomb had fallen had been the one she had been heading for. If she hadn’t stopped to comfort a young man because he had a New Zealand accent she could have been there when it landed.

  ‘You alright, Sister?’ the man asked.

  ‘Yes …’ she told him. ‘Yes. I’m fine.’

  And it was the truth. She was. Because of a man from New Zealand. Because she had had the good sense to put her past behind her and allow herself to love George.

  ‘Oh, Drew. It’s true. You’re alive; you’re safe.’

  Hurling herself into her boyfriend’s arms as he came in through the front door of number 13, Tilly clung fiercely to him whilst she sobbed out her relief against his shoulder. She didn’t care who saw them, or what her mother said. She didn’t care about anything except that Drew was here.

  She’d been upstairs in her room, trying to summon the willpower to get ready for Sunday morning church, whilst inwardly grieving for the Drew she had convinced herself she’d lost, even though her mother had assured her he was safe and well, when she’d heard the door. She’d left it for her mother to answer but then, unbelievably, she’d heard Drew’s voice, and she’d rushed downstairs and into his arms. Now she couldn’t stop touching him, patting his face and his arms and chest just to reassure herself that he was whole and not like that poor, poor man whose image she couldn’t get out of her mind.

  ‘Oh, Drew, Drew … I wanted to go in the ambulance with you but they wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘I should think not,’ he teased her gently. ‘You’re far too pretty to be allowed anywhere near a male ward.’

  He was glad that she hadn’t been allowed to accompany him – not for his sake but for hers. There had been victims of the night’s bombings on the ward including some from the Café de Paris: men with their bodies hideously and cruelly damaged; men crying for the girls and the limbs and the lives they had lost. He had spoken to some of them, torn between his gut instinct as a reporter to capture the raw intensity of the moment, and a natural sensitivity against treading on such horribly tender ground.

  ‘I want to talk,’ one of the men had told him. ‘I want to talk about it and about her, because that’s all that’s left of her now – my memories of her.’

  Just remembering that now was enough to have Drew wrapping his arms around Tilly in a fiercely protective and possessive hug. He loved her so much. She was everything to him.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve been so ups
et,’ he whispered to her as he wiped the tears from her damp cheeks.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were just being brave and trying to help that poor man. I’m such a coward.’

  His finger against her lips silenced her. ‘No, you aren’t. You are my Tilly, and—’

  ‘Hold me, Drew. Hold me and kiss me,’ Tilly begged him. ‘Just hold me.’

  Three hours later, standing outside their church, Drew’s arm around her, she felt so proud that the miraculously, and thankfully only mild, burns he had suffered were badges of honour that brought members of the congregation over to praise him.

  ‘Tilly, are you sure you are well enough to go to work today?’ Olive asked anxiously on Monday morning as she watched her still pale, but resolute daughter heading for the front door.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mum. Don’t fuss,’ Tilly told her, her face breaking into a loving smile as she saw Drew coming down the front garden path towards her. They had arranged the previous day that he would walk her to work this morning, and the joy that filled her at the sight of him illuminated her face.

  Smiling at Olive, Drew handed her a copy of the Daily Express.

  ‘Hot off the presses,’ he told her. ‘My landlord brought it back with him when he came in off his night shift.’

  A brief glance was all Olive needed to show her that the front page was devoted to the dreadful bombing of the weekend, this a far cry from the cheering news she had read in the previous week when the British destroyer HMS Vanoc had accepted the surrender of a German U-boat – U-boat number 99 – the captain of which had been a top U-boat ace in terms of Allied tonnage his vessel had sunk. Hard on the heels of that victory had come the further good news that the Vanoc had sunk U-boat number 100. The glow of pride everyone felt in those victories might not have faded, but the weekend’s bombing had subdued people’s spirits, Olive acknowledged as she closed the front door and made her way to the kitchen.

  The morning wireless news had finished. Anne Shelton’s lovely voice was filling the kitchen. Soon it would be time for Doris and Elsie Waters’ tips and advice for housewives, but before she could listen to that, Olive needed to get the breakfast things cleared away.

  Agnes came hurrying into the kitchen to drink her now cold cup of tea, one eye on the clock as she berated herself for oversleeping.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll understand down at the station, Agnes, after the weekend we’ve had,’ Olive tried to reassure her. ‘After all, normally there’s no one more punctual than you, and if you tell them that you were kind enough to swap beds with me so that I could be in Tilly’s room over the weekend, I’m sure they’ll understand.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Agnes breathed anxiously, racing into the hall to collect her coat and cap. She was very proud of her smart London Transport uniform, just as she was proud of working in the ticket office. The dull grey worsted uniform piped in blue, which had been too big for her when she had first started work at Chancery Lane ticket office, now fitted her very neatly indeed. This was in part due to her having grown a couple of inches and filled out, and partly due to the fact that Olive had seen to it tactfully that Agnes got her uniform properly altered to fit her.

  ‘There’ll be a lot to do today as well, clearing up after people had used the station as a shelter from the bombs. Dead against that, Mr Smith is,’ Agnes told Olive, referring to the office manager, who had scared her so much when she had first started work but with whom she now got on a lot better. As Ted had told her at the start, there was a kind side to Mr Smith once you got to know him.

  ‘Tilly said something this morning about you all meeting up after work today to have tea at Lyons Corner House in Leicester Square,’ Olive commented.

  ‘Yes,’ Agnes confirmed, ‘we arranged it last week ’cos we haven’t had tea together, just the four of us, for ages. Mind you, if Tilly doesn’t feel up to it I know we’ll all understand. I don’t know how she coped the way she did with what happened on Saturday night, I really don’t.’

  Agnes gave a shudder, and then she was gone, the door closing after her.

  ‘Are you sure you’re well enough to go to work?’ Drew asked solicitously as they walked down Article Row together. He intended to go into the newspaper office later, after he had seen Tilly safely to her own job and had made sure that she was all right. The memory of the way in which she had been ready to run into those flames for him would never leave him, he knew. If she had been hurt; if he had lost her … His hand tightened around hers as he held it deep inside the pocket of his raincoat.

  ‘The four of us – Dulcie, Sally, Agnes and me – are all meeting up for tea at Lyons Corner House in Leicester Square after work,’ Tilly told Drew as they walked together. ‘It was Agnes’s idea. She said last week that we hardly get together, just the four of us, any more and that she wanted to hear all about the Café de Paris. She did say yesterday after church that she’d understand if I didn’t want to go after what happened, but I said that I would. I would feel really mean if I backed out. I don’t really want to go, though, Drew. I don’t really want to go anywhere without you at the moment.’

  ‘I know,’ Drew told her softly. ‘I feel the same way about you. I feel I can’t bear to let you out of my sight, but then I remind myself of how lucky we are to be living so close to one another, and free to see one another when so many other couples …’

  Now it was Tilly’s turn to whisper a passionate, ‘I know,’ to him as she gripped his hand tightly.

  ‘I won’t be far away this evening, and I’ll walk you all back to number 13 when you’ve finished your tea.’

  ‘Oh, Drew, you are so wonderful. I don’t deserve you.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t say that. I am the one who doesn’t deserve you.’

  There was an intensity in his voice and the look he gave her that made Tilly’s heart tremble with love.

  Apart from those houses that had been damaged by the falling incendiary bombs, Article Row was more or less back to normal. The March softening of the weather was causing buds to burst on the hedges if you peered closely enough through air still thick with the smoke of the previous night’s bombs, but Olive, normally so attuned to the changes in nature, wasn’t in the mood to notice these signs of spring as she made her way down Article Row. She had promised to go and meet the workmen Mr King was sending to repair the door that had been damaged at number 49, the Longs’ old house, on Saturday night. She felt it was the least she could do after he had so generously allowed them to store the sand for the incendiaries in the back garden there. She also wanted to call in on Mr Whittaker, just to check that he was all right and take him a bit of lunch. He might be grumpy and not generally liked, but Olive’s tender heart recognised that he was an old man who, under his cross exterior, was probably very frightened by what was happening.

  As she approached number 46, Olive averted her gaze. The discolouration on the cobbles was all that remained now to show where that poor man had died. Archie Dawson had been quick to get in the team of workmen to clear up all the signs of what had happened after the body had been removed. The family that had lived there were gone. They had moved out on Sunday. Olive had, of course, gone round to see if there was anything she could do to help. The poor wife had been so distressed, and no wonder, lapsing into her own language and wringing her hands as she wept for her lost husband.

  A man, accompanied by two boys in their early teens, with a handcart, was holding the door to number 49, and wrenching it from side to side, more as though he was making the situation worse rather than improving it, Olive thought worriedly. Seeing her watching them the man released the door, leaving it yawning on its hinges so that Olive could see into the dusty hallway. He gave her a smile.

  ‘Nice day, missus.’

  ‘Yes,’ Olive felt bound to agree. ‘If you’ve come to mend the door—’ she began, intending to point out to them that she had the keys.

  But before she could do so the man said, ‘Oh, don’t you worry, missus. We’ll have it fixed
in no time. Doing this all the time, we are. Won’t take us two ticks. We’ll just put a new lock on it for now, to make sure that no one can break in, like. We don’t want that happening in a nice place like this, do we, lads?’

  The two boys grinned and then laughed.

  ‘That wouldn’t do at all. Not somewhere decent like this.’

  The man was obviously trying to be friendly but Olive couldn’t take to him. It wasn’t just that his manner was unpleasantly ingratiating, there was also the feeling that he was making fun of her. Mocking her. Not taking her seriously.

  ‘Mr King, the owner of the house—’ she began firmly, but once again the man interrupted her.

  ‘Oh, yes, we know Mr King. Sent us round here to sort this out, he did. You don’t need to worry yourself about anything, missus. You can leave everything to us.’

  He was turning away from her, not wanting to have her hanging around interrupting their work, Olive suspected, but just as she was about to walk on to Mr Whittaker’s she saw Barney coming down the hallway of the house towards the still open front door. When he saw her the boy stopped dead, flashing her an uncertain look.

  ‘Hello, Barney,’ Olive smiled. ‘No school today?’

  ‘No, they aren’t having any lessons today on account of the bombs,’ Barney told her.

  Olive knew that many of the schools did have to close after heavy bombing raids. ‘I suppose you’ve come to see what’s going on, have you?’ he asked him with a friendly smile.

  ‘He’s helping us out, aren’t you, Barney lad,’ the workman told her.

  Olive smiled again, then continued on her way to the end house to see Mr Whittaker. Privately she didn’t think she’d have wanted Barney hanging around with them if he were her child. Apart from anything else, the two boys with the man were much older than Barney. Barney himself had obviously been embarrassed and uncomfortable, and Olive wondered if he actually was genuinely off school or if he had simply decided to take the day off. Whatever the case, it wasn’t her business and it wasn’t her place to say anything to the Dawsons either, she decided, all too conscious of how Nancy and her interest in what Barney was doing was viewed by Mrs Dawson in particular. Yet she was concerned about Barney, and she knew instinctively that no matter how soft-hearted Mrs Dawson might be with the boy, Archie Dawson would not approve of him hanging around with the kind of people Olive had seen.