Women on the Home Front Read online

  ‘I’ll be downstairs, when you’re ready,’ Tilly had told her, thinking that Agnes might want to use the bathroom or perhaps unpack a few personal treasures in privacy, but then with her foot on the top stair, she’d turned back to go into her mother’s room and look down the Row again.

  And that was when she saw Dulcie, in her smart red dress and her white high-heeled peep-toed shoes, followed by the best-looking young man Tilly had ever seen carrying a large suitcase.

  As though he sensed that he was being studied, the young man looked up at the window, causing Tilly to step back, clasping her hands over her chest to calm her excited heartbeat as she did so.

  Was he Dulcie’s young man? He must be, Tilly decided, racing downstairs and out into the garden to warn her mother breathlessly, ‘Dulcie’s nearly here.’

  Although she smiled and turned to make her way back to the house, Olive wasn’t happy about her daughter’s obvious excitement. This was just what she had feared. Tilly was at an impressionable age. Because there weren’t any other young people in the Row of her age, and because her mother had been so busy nursing Tilly’s late grandfather, Tilly hadn’t had the opportunity to go out and have fun as much as other girls might. Olive was aware of that, just as she was aware of the increasing restlessness she had seen in her daughter over the summer months. There was fun and fun, though, and Olive did not want her quite naïve daughter getting involved in the kind of ‘fun’ she suspected someone like Dulcie enjoyed.

  When Olive opened the door to Dulcie’s firm knock, though, it wasn’t the sight of Dulcie that set maternal alarm bells ringing inside her so much as the sight of the far too handsome young man standing behind her, one arm draped loosely around Dulcie’s shoulders. Her mouth firmed, her expression cooled, but before she could say anything Dulcie forestalled her.

  ‘It’s all right. Rick here is only my brother. He’s come to help me move in on account of my case being heavy. Rick, this is Mrs Robbins.’

  Her brother and not a boyfriend. Olive allowed herself to relax a little. Rick’s smile was open and warm, his handshake firm and his uniform indicating that it was unlikely that he was going to be around very much, to Olive’s relief, as she recognised the effect having such a very good-looking and friendly young man in and out of the house could have on her daughter. Rick had the kind of smile, looks, and easy charm that would melt any girl’s heart.

  ‘I’ll show them up, shall I?’ Tilly suggested happily from the hallway, having just learned that the handsome young man was Dulcie’s brother and not her boyfriend.

  But to her disappointment her mother told her, ‘I’m sure that Dulcie can remember which is her room and you’d only be in the way of her brother getting her suitcase up the stairs. Go and put on the kettle instead, please, Tilly, so that Dulcie and Rick can come down and have a cup of tea when they’re ready.’

  ‘Well, I have to admit that you’ve fallen on your feet here,’ Rick pronounced after he had dragged the heavy case up to Dulcie’s room and thoroughly inspected her new living quarters.

  ‘Told you,’ Dulcie reminded him. ‘I’ve got a whole room to myself and my own wardrobe, and there’s a bathroom on this floor that I only have to share with this nurse that’s taken the other room.’

  ‘All right, but don’t you forget that promise you made me,’ Rick warned her as he picked up the now empty case.

  Olive was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, ushering them into the kitchen, ruefully aware of just how pleasant and charming Dulcie’s brother was in contrast to Dulcie herself. Pleasant and charming and far, far too good-looking for the peace of mind of the mother of an impressionable girl, especially when that impressionable girl was currently gazing at him with the kind of dazed expression girls her age normally reserved for matinée idols, Olive thought with a small sigh. She directed Tilly to fetch some milk from the larder, and then to go and bring Agnes and Sally in from the garden so that they too could have a cup of tea.

  When the three young women returned Dulcie’s eyes widened at the sight of Agnes in her dull ill-fitting brown dress, and then narrowed with hostility when Olive told her pointedly, ‘This is Agnes, who should have had your room. Luckily she doesn’t mind sharing with Tilly. Come on and sit down, Agnes,’ Olive coaxed the hesitant-looking girl, her voice and expression warming as she welcomed her.

  Her new landlady’s obvious approval of the shabbily dressed orphan and her equally obvious disapproval of her raised Dulcie’s hackles and brought out the same fighting instinct that her mother’s favouritism of Edith always aroused. The orphan was nothing compared with her so why should Olive make such a fuss of her? Deliberately and very disdainfully Dulcie brushed off the skirt of her own dress as Agnes’s shabby frock touched it, the pearl-pink nail polish she was wearing catching the light as she did so.

  Little madam, Olive thought grimly, treating poor Agnes like that, although fortunately the other girl hadn’t noticed Dulcie’s deliberate slight. Dulcie, though, noticed Olive’s reaction and immediately her dislike of Agnes for her shabbiness hardened into dislike of the girl herself, because Olive obviously favoured her. Agnes was another Edith, ‘a favourite’ to be fussed over whilst she was pushed to one side and ignored.

  ‘Just been called up?’ Sally asked Rick, whilst Tilly looked on, envious of the older girl’s calm ability actually to speak to Rick whilst she could only stare at him in speechless awe.

  ‘Yes,’ Rick acknowledged. ‘I leave in a few days to start my training, and I reckon that we’ll be at war before I finish it, from what they’ve been saying in the papers.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,’ Sally agreed.

  ‘The sooner we get Hitler sorted out and put in his place, the sooner life can get back to normal. I reckon we’ll give him the roundabout and boot him back to Germany in no time at all,’ Rick assured her confidently. ‘He’ll never get past the Maginot Line, even if he does dare to try and invade Belgium.’

  ‘That’s what the Government is saying,’ Sally confirmed.

  Olive hugged her arms around her body. ‘I hate all this talk of war, after what our men went through the last time,’ she said, ‘but if it has to come then it has to come. Turn on the wireless, will you, Tilly? It’s almost time for the news.’

  Obediently Tilly went to switch on the wireless, feeling all fingers and thumbs and very self-conscious as she did so, because Rick was sitting closest to it.

  The announcer’s voice, when it did come through, was slightly fuzzy, and immediately Rick turned in his chair, leaning over to Tilly. ‘It needs a bit of tuning – want me to do it for you?’

  Before she could answer, he was reaching out towards the control knob, so that his fingers brushed against hers as she moved away.

  Scarlet colour dyed her skin, her heart flipping over like an acrobat whilst her pulses raced with excitement and delight, mixed with even more self-consciousness.

  ‘There, that’s it,’ Rick told her as his small adjustment brought the sound back in balance, his smile for Tilly warm and friendly. She was a very pretty girl, but very young, not much more than a school girl. Had she been a couple of years older he might have been tempted to tease her a little and really make her blush, before he asked her out and kissed her – had she not been Dulcie’s landlady’s daughter and had he not been about to leave London. Right now, as far as Rick was concerned, Tilly was just a nice kid.

  All of them fell silent whilst they listened to the news, even Dulcie. Not that there was much to learn unless you were interested in the fact that Poland had mobilised all its reservists and France had called up all of hers which Dulcie wasn’t, not really She was more interested in wondering when she was next going to see David James-Thompson. When she was going to see him, not if, because she knew that she would. She really could do with getting hold of a decent bit of material and having a new dress made, Dulcie decided, because when David James-Thompson took her to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse she wanted
to look her best, so that he’d know that every other man there was looking at him and envying him because he was with her. Dulcie loved that kind of admiration; that feeling of knowing that she was the best.

  The newsreader was talking about Britain’s plans for evacuating children from the cities, and whilst Olive and Sally sighed and said how awful that was going to be for their mothers, Tilly sat with her chin in her hands pretending to listen intently, whilst in reality what she was looking at was Rick.

  It had been such a busy evening she hadn’t had any time at all to study Ted’s lists, Agnes acknowledged, but she could start reciting them to herself in the morning whilst she walked to work. She’d expected her new surroundings to feel alien and a little bit frightening but Tilly and her mother had made her feel so welcome. It felt funny not to be in the large orphanage kitchen, washing up or helping cook. Tilly’s mother had stopped her when she had gone to wash their teacups earlier, saying that there would be time enough for that another day and that anyway, she was a paying lodger and not here to work.

  Olive nodded as she listened to Sally whilst inwardly thinking that she would have a word with Tilly and see what she thought about passing on a couple of the dresses she was growing out of on to Agnes. Matron had more or less admitted to Olive before she had left that it was difficult getting second-hand clothes for Agnes because she was so much older than the other girls, and the clothes that people passed on to the orphanage were for younger children. Olive had decided there and then that she would do her utmost to make sure that poor Agnes had a few better things. She would see if she could get a decent bit of material from one of the markets, Petticoat Lane perhaps, to have something new made up for both Tilly and Agnes. She could afford it now that she was getting three lots of rent money in, even if she had reduced what Agnes had to pay because she was having to share with Tilly.

  The news had finished. Rick got to his feet, having assured himself that his sister had indeed found somewhere comfortable. It had been daft of him secretly to worry about her. Trust Dulcie to fall on her feet. Not that he liked what she had done. Families should stay together – that was how people like them lived – but Dulcie had always been awkward, wanting to make things difficult for herself and for others.

  Dulcie saw Rick to the front door.

  ‘And don’t you forget about going home on Sunday to go to church?’ he reiterated yet again.

  ‘Will you stop going on about that?’ she complained. ‘I’ve said I’ll come, haven’t I?’

  ‘Well, you just make sure you do,’ Rick warned her, as he set off in the direction of Stepney with the now empty case.

  It was gone eleven o’clock, she could see from the tiny illuminated hands of her alarm clock, but Sally still couldn’t sleep. Being back in a proper bedroom in a proper house had brought back too many memories.

  Memories of before the betrayal, when Morag had been invited home by her mother and had stayed overnight with them; memories of the laughter and happiness that had filled the kitchen as Morag easily and naturally fell into the household routine, helping with the chores; memories of the Christmas before her mother had fallen ill that they had all spent together, Morag, Callum, her parents and her. She could see herself now pulling a cracker with Callum and then wearing the silly hat he had put on her head before reading out the equally silly riddle that had been inside the cracker along with a plastic heart charm, which he had given to her with the words, ‘Here’s my heart, Sally. I want you to look after it for me.’ Silly words, and yet to her at the time they had had such meaning. It was pointless thinking about that now, she told herself, rolling over and punching her pillow as she reminded herself that she was on duty in the morning at eight o’clock, and that the ENT surgeon had a full list of tonsil-lectomies to get through, the final batch before the majority of the operating staff were evacuated. These urgent operations were now to be carried out in the basement theatres the hospital had organised, the top-floor theatres closed down because of the threat of war.

  Liverpool . . . She would always miss her home city, Sally knew, but she would not miss the pain she hoped she had left behind there. A pain she was determined should not follow her into her new life.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Come on and sit down, Mum. I’ve got the kettle on.’

  Olive gave Tilly a grateful look as she sank down into the most comfortable of the kitchen chairs – the one that originally belonged to her father-in-law, and which had arms and a couple of cushions, and which she had re-covered in the spring at the same time as she and Tilly had run up the pretty kitchen curtains.

  It was Friday afternoon and Tilly had been sent home early because the hospital was completing its evacuation programme ahead of the war that everyone was now not just dreading but also expecting. As Tilly was remaining in London, she would continue to work as part of the skeleton staff in the Lady Almoner’s office.

  ‘My feet,’ Olive complained as she eased off her shoes and surveyed what looked like the beginnings of a blister. ‘Although I shouldn’t complain, not when I think of those poor children and their mothers.’

  In her role as a member of the WVS, Olive had been on duty all day today and the previous day, helping to get small children onto the evacuation trains organised to take them away from danger and into the country.

  Newspapers were full of photographs of lines of children being marched away from their homes and their parents, many of them escorted by their teachers, ready to be handed over to waiting groups of volunteers once they reached their destinations. Only mothers with very young children and babies were being evacuated with their children. As Agnes had said the previous evening, after going straight from work to the orphanage to help with the evacuation, it really broke your heart to see the children’s tears as they were taken away from everything and everyone they loved, unable to understand that it was for their own sakes and their own safety.

  Olive watched her daughter as she made the tea, worried about her safety.

  As though Tilly had guessed her thoughts she said quietly and in a very grown-up voice, I’m glad we’re staying here, Mum. It would be awful if we all deserted London, and those who can’t get away were left on their own. And besides, if anything does happen, if Hitler does bomb us, then I want to be with you, because you’re the best mum in the world. When I listen to poor Agnes talking about growing up in the orphanage and being left on its doorstep, I try to think how I would feel if that was me; if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have you as my mother.’ Her voice broke slightly, causing Olive to blink away her own emotion.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, we mustn’t blame Agnes’s mother too much. We don’t know what she might have gone through, poor girl. No mother gives up her baby willingly, I can promise you that, and as for us staying here in London, well, I hope I am doing the right thing, Tilly, and that I’m not just being selfish wanting to be here in this house. A home means a lot to a woman but it never means more than her children and those she loves.’

  ‘We’ll be all right, Mum, I’m sure of it. Besides, how could Hitler bomb London when we’ve got all those barrage balloons and anti-aircraft batteries, never mind everything else, and the RAF?’

  Sally, coming into the kitchen in time to catch Tilly’s fiercely patriotic words, exchanged a brief look over her head with Olive, before agreeing firmly, ‘That’s right, Tilly. This city, and this country, are well defended and we’ll stand firm when the time comes, no matter what Hitler might try to do.’

  ‘Has everyone gone now?’ Tilly asked her as she removed an extra cup from the cupboard to pour Sally a cup of tea. ‘It seemed so strange when I left earlier, coming through the main hall and it almost being empty. It felt funny, sort of ghostly, making me think how old the hospital really is. I’d never felt it before today.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Sally agreed, ‘and yes, everyone who’s going has mostly gone now, and we’ve sorted out the operating theatres in the basement.’ She didn’t add that she’d
heard that orders had been given for thousands of cardboard coffins to be made for the dead the authorities were anticipating should the city come under attack from Hitler.

  ‘I almost don’t want to do this,’ Olive announced as she switched on the wireless for the six o’clock news bulletin.

  ‘Come on, Dulcie, it isn’t like you to hang on after we’ve closed for the day,’ Lizzie teased good-naturedly. ‘We’re the last on the floor by the looks of it as well.’

  The cosmetics floor was indeed deserted, and had been unusually quiet all day, allowing Mr Selfridge to order each floor to do a practice run of its fire-watching duties, a new regime instituted earlier in the week and which Dulcie loathed. Who wanted to go up onto the roof and act as a look out for non-existent fires started by equally non-existent bombs being dropped from nonexistent German planes? But Mr Selfridge had said they had to, just like he had said they all had to learn how to use a stirrup pump as well as know the correct evacuation procedure from the store, should that be necessary, and his word was law.

  She couldn’t hang around here any longer, Dulcie admitted, even if this morning she had woken up feeling sure that today would be the day she saw David James-Thompson again. She had even planned how she was going to give him a big hint about how he could find her at the Hammersmith Palais tomorrow night, sitting at her favourite table, the one in the middle of the front row, facing the band. There was always a crowd of knowing girls who headed for that table, so there was no risk of her ending up sitting there on her own, and they were all there for the same reason: so that they could be seen to advantage by everyone else. Dulcie was so on edge she felt like smoking a cigarette, something she didn’t do very often. Ciggies cost money, and meant that if she bought them she’d have less to spend on her clothes, so normally Dulcie only smoked if someone else offered her a cigarette.