My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  How his mother had railed against the fact that, as the last of her family, she could not claim the earldom and all that went with it, always concluding her furious tirades with the cruel words that David could never have been good enough to wear the family ermine.

  ‘How I came to produce a child like you I shall never know,’ she was fond of declaiming.

  If fate had been unkind to her it had been equally unkind to him in giving him a mother who had no love for him. His father, a decent, good man in his way, had quickly been cowed by his far more domineering wife, and David had learned from him that it was easier to give in to his mother than to stand up to her. He had often wondered if Lydia realised that, for all her fussing over her, his mother secretly despised her. Lydia would certainly never have been considered good enough for his mother’s precious brother or the earldom.

  Perhaps it was that early rejection by his mother that had made him the man he was, and that had fostered in him that streak of earthiness and enjoyment of the company of rich robustness of ordinary people. People like Dulcie. David didn’t know and he cared even less. In fact, he didn’t care about anything right now other than the pain where his lower legs should have been. No, he didn’t care, but he still couldn’t help watching Dulcie walk away from him, until she had disappeared through the door at the other end of the ward.

  ‘You know the group captain, do you, Dulcie?’ George asked once they were out of the ward.

  ‘Yes, I do, not that you’d know it from the way he went and showed me up by ignoring me,’ Dulcie responded with a small angry sniff. ‘Of course, it will be on her account, that stuck-up wife of his. Always was jealous of me, she was, and I dare say he won’t want any of his pals telling her that he’s been talking to me when she comes to visit him.’

  ‘That won’t happen, Dulcie,’ George informed her. ‘Neither David’s wife nor his parents visit him. They’re ashamed of him, you see, because of his injuries, and that will be why he didn’t acknowledge you. He’d be afraid that you would reject him like they did.’

  Dulcie could hear the disapproval of Lydia and of David’s parents in George’s voice, and immediately played up to it.

  ‘Not visit their own son? Well, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, him being like he is. Mind you, I never liked the sound of that mother of his, and as for Lydia, the only reason she married him was because one day he’ll have a title.’

  George seemed to be considering something, but even Dulcie, who made a point of never allowing anything to catch her off guard, was surprised when he asked her, ‘Dulcie, how would you feel about visiting David tomorrow afternoon at visiting time?’

  ‘What, after him ignoring me today?’

  ‘We desperately need to get him properly on the road to recovery and that’s not going to happen until he feels that people accept him as he is, and that they still care about him despite his injuries.’

  Listening to her fiancé as they walked towards the hospital exit, Sally tried to send him a warning look. She didn’t think that Dulcie was the right person to ask to show compassion to a man in David’s condition.

  But George was giving her a small shake of his head as he continued, ‘Of course, I realise that it would take a really special girl to do that for David, Dulcie. Not many girls would feel comfortable talking to a young man as badly injured as David is – a young man who right now is feeling very sorry for himself and very angry indeed because of the way his wife and mother have turned their backs on him. It would take a very unselfish and kind young woman indeed, a young woman who is the complete opposite from his wife.’

  Sally grimaced to herself. She knew what George was doing and why. He was using on Dulcie the psychological skills he was being taught at the hospital for helping his patients, but Sally still wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

  Listening to George, Dulcie, oblivious to what George was doing, bridled with delight at the thought of doing something that would make her look better than Lydia. How she’d enjoy telling them back at Selfridges that she’d had to step in and help David because his wife had turned her back on him. That would show everyone who was the better woman. And it would show David as well. He might have been sweet on her but he had still gone and married Lydia. Not that she, Dulcie, had wanted him to marry her, but she wouldn’t have minded having him ask her.

  Ever practically minded, though, she asked George, ‘What if he doesn’t want to talk to me? There’d be no point in me visiting him then, would there? And I’d look a real charlie sitting there with him refusing to even look at me.’

  ‘I think he’ll want to talk to you, Dulcie. He watched you leaving the ward. I turned round to have a look. It was probably a shock for him to see you. And I expect he was worried about what you’d think. After all, I dare say the last time you saw him he was standing on his feet and uninjured. Now he’s lost both his lower legs and an arm, and there were other injuries … to his groin.’

  A flutter of something unfamiliar gripped Dulcie’s belly. David had been such a tall, broad-shouldered, male man, as proud of being a handsome man as she was of being a pretty girl.

  ‘Well, his face is all right,’ was all she allowed herself to say, ‘and you can’t see that he’s not got any legs whilst he’s in bed, can you? Mind you, I can’t say that I’m surprised about that wife of his – she never did have much about her. And I dare say there won’t be an heir then now either, by the sound of it.’

  ‘No, Dulcie, there won’t,’ George confirmed sadly. ‘It’s a lot to ask of any young woman, Dulcie, I know that, and I wouldn’t blame you one little bit if you felt that you aren’t up to it.’

  ‘Who says I’m not up to it? I’m not like that stuck-up wife of his. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with his face.’ She paused and then asked anxiously, ‘He can still talk, can’t he? I mean, what’s happened to him hasn’t …?’

  ‘Yes, he can talk, Dulcie,’ George confirmed.

  ‘All right, I’ll do it then,’ she agreed.

  They were outside the hospital now, the thin fitful moonlight glistening on the wet road as George opened the car doors for them and then got into the driving seat.

  ‘Nancy’s just arrived,’ Mrs Morrison told Olive in a rueful whisper as the two WVS ladies queued up for their mid-meeting cup of tea in the church hall.

  ‘She said she’d be late this evening,’ Olive replied. ‘Her husband’s on fire-watching duty this week and she wanted to wait for him to come in before she came out.’

  ‘I’ve never known anyone make her own virtue so much of a stick to beat others with,’ said Mrs Morrison pithily. ‘I know she’s your next-door neighbour, Olive, and I don’t like speaking ill of anyone but—’

  ‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ Olive felt bound to defend her neighbour, even though privately she agreed with what Mrs Morrison was saying. ‘It’s just her way.’

  ‘You are a very charitable person, Olive,’ Mrs Morrison smiled.

  Olive didn’t feel particularly charitable ten minutes later, though, when Nancy, having got her own cup of tea and several sizeable pieces of the broken biscuits that Mrs Dunne, the grocer’s wife, brought to the meetings, settled herself in the empty chair next to Olive and began importantly, ‘I don’t like to be the one to tell tales, Olive, but I think you should know that after you’d gone out this evening, I saw your Tilly leaving the house with that American.’

  ‘It’s Valentine’s Day, Nancy. Drew is taking Tilly out somewhere special,’ Olive automatically defended the young couple. But her defence only increased Nancy’s smug air of superiority.

  ‘Well, that may have been what he told you and your Tilly, for all I know, but what I saw with my own eyes was the pair of them straight heading back to the Simpsons’ and going in there together,’ Nancy told her with obvious relish.

  Olive felt her heart sink. ‘I dare say Drew had probably forgotten something,’ was all she dared to allow herself to say. She could feel the maternal bands of anxiety
and apprehension tightening round her heart, but the last thing she wanted, knowing her neighbour as she did, was for Nancy to see how she felt.

  Nancy, though, was not to be put off. ‘I don’t think so, Olive,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t think they’d forgotten anything at all. In there for ever such a long time, they were. I was looking out of my front window waiting for my hubby to get home, on account of me wanting to get down here and being worried that he’d be delayed fire-watching,’ she excused her nosiness, ‘and I’d say it was a good hour before they left.’

  Olive could feel the smile she had forced for Nancy’s benefit tightening on her face as she struggled not to betray what she was really feeling.

  ‘You know what your trouble is, Olive? You’re far too soft with Tilly. She’s bound to get herself talked about, carrying on like she is. I’d never have let my daughter get away with that kind of behaviour, but then she’s not that sort of girl.’

  This was Nancy’s payback for the words they had exchanged recently about fire-watching, Olive knew, and she could well understand why Nancy looked so pleased with herself.

  Olive’s cup of tea had gone cold. Right now she’d give anything for the strengthening cheer of a good cup of hot strong tea in the privacy of her own kitchen, where she could come to terms with what Nancy had just told her, but she had a duty to give this evening to the WVS, and a duty to protect Tilly from their neighbour’s spiteful curiosity, Olive reminded herself as she forced what she hoped was a calm smile.

  ‘I expect Tilly and Drew got talking about his writing and forgot the time,’ she said lightly.

  Nancy raised one straggly greying eyebrow and exclaimed loftily, ‘Well, you might want to believe that, Olive, but if I was in your shoes I’d have something to say to your Tilly about getting herself a bad reputation. But then, of course, I always kept a close eye on my own daughter. It’s all very well folk volunteering for all sorts and having folk make a fuss of them because of it, but in my opinion it’s putting your own family first that matters most.’

  With that Nancy ate her broken biscuits with every evidence of enjoyment, before announcing that she was going to have to leave the meeting early, ‘because I want to make sure that my Arthur gets a decent supper.’

  More like because she wanted to stand in her darkened front room with the black out blind lifted so that she could watch for any comings and goings on the Row, especially if those comings and goings were Tilly’s, Olive thought miserably.

  FIVE

  The house in which Dulcie and Sally were staying wasn’t very far from the town centre. Sally had stayed there on her first visit to see George, and she knew that the rooms were clean and the landlady, Mrs Hodges, welcoming. The discovery that Persephone, the upper-class girl from the train, was also staying at the same lodgings had Dulcie pulling a face to Sally as the landlady ushered them into her warm cheerful kitchen with its scrubbed wooden table and welcoming Aga. After Mrs Hodges, who was on her way out to a WI meeting, had announced that she’d left them some cold supper in the larder, Sally turned to George and suggested that they go to the local chip shop and bring back some chips.

  ‘That’s if you fancy some, Dulcie?’

  ‘I fancy them more than I do a cold supper,’ Dulcie acknowledged.

  ‘What about you, Persephone?’ Sally asked.

  The other girl immediately coloured up and looked embarrassed as she told them, ‘Daddy doesn’t approve of things like fish and chips.’

  ‘Poor girl,’ Sally told George ruefully once they were alone together, walking arm in arm the short distance to the chip shop on the high street. ‘I feel a bit guilty leaving her with Dulcie. Dulcie will make mincemeat of her. Which reminds me, do you think it was wise to encourage Dulcie to visit David?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m hoping so,’ George admitted. ‘As I said earlier, physically he’s not mending as well as he should be, and Mr MacIndoe feels that is because he’s been rejected, not just by his wife but his parents as well. But I know I’m taking a risk in encouraging Dulcie to visit him.’

  ‘A big risk. Surely he needs someone who will be a real and regular support to him? Dulcie isn’t like that, George. Oh, I know that right now she’s all fired up with enthusiasm but that enthusiasm is more about her scoring over David’s wife than generated by any real desire to help David himself, and when it fades—’

  ‘I know, I know … but we’ve been getting pretty desperate. Mr MacIndoe thinks that we could lose him if we can’t find a way to give him a reason to fight for life. He hates losing patients.’

  Sally squeezed George’s arm understandingly.

  In the kitchen of their lodgings, Dulcie eyed Persephone. As far as Dulcie was concerned she was a very poor specimen of a girl: too thin, wearing old-fashioned clothes, and with that posh accent that reminded her of Lydia. Not that Persephone had any of Lydia’s high-handed manner about her. Dulcie certainly wouldn’t have tolerated it if she had.

  ‘So it’s your brother you’re going to see tomorrow then, is it?’ Dulcie asked her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to be visiting a patient as well,’ Dulcie told her. ‘Asked to specially, I’ve bin, on account of me already knowing him and him needing someone who’s got the gumption to visit him, not like that wife of his. I always knew that she wasn’t up to much.’ Dulcie tossed her blond hair. She was enjoying have a justifiable reason to criticise Lydia openly. ‘Turned her back on him now, she has.’

  Persephone made a small sound of distress and said in a shocked voice, ‘Oh, poor boy, how awful for him, and how good you are to visit him.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘But then that’s me all over, putting myself out for others. Always been like that, I have. Where’s Sally with them chips? Canoodling with that fiancé of hers, I expect. You’d think she put a bit of speed on. I’m starving … That’s the trouble with some folk. They are just naturally selfish and don’t ever think of others. So what’s up with him, then, your brother? Got burned, has he? There was plenty on that ward I was just on that had, and plenty with no arms or legs either. And George was saying as how they are the ones that have been operated on and are getting better. If that’s true then I’d hate to see them as haven’t had anything done yet,’ Dulcie told the other girl with the kind of relish that rather belied her words. ‘An ’orrible state, some of them must be in, if you ask me. ’Ere, what’s wrong with you?’ she asked when Persephone lifted a hanky to her eyes to wipe away her tears.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my brother.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not go crying all over him when you go to see him tomorrow. According to George, this Mr Maclndoe, who’s in charge, doesn’t like it when relatives make a fuss. He says it upsets his patients. He’s even got the hospital to take on pretty nurses and told them to smile at the patients, ’cos he reckons it’s good for them to see a cheerful, pretty girl. I wouldn’t be surprised, if he was to see me talking with David when I see him tomorrow, if doesn’t ask me to smile at the other men there, with me being so pretty meself.’

  Having queued up for and got their chips, Sally and George set off back for Sally’s lodgings at a smart pace, linked up closely together, George carrying the chips beneath his coat to make sure that they didn’t get cold, Sally having refused, saying they would make her clothes smell. Although George also lodged in the town, Sally had quite understood when his landlady had told her very politely that she didn’t allow unmarried couples, even engaged couples, to sleep beneath her roof. George wasn’t the sort to push for the kind of favours and intimacies that went with marriage, which in Sally’s view made the sweet sensuality and passion of their shared kisses and the very evident control George had to force on himself to stop him from wanting to take things further, all the more tenderly special. Without even pausing for a single kiss they rushed back.

  Not that Dulcie was in the least bit grateful for their sacrifice.

  ‘What kept you? I’m sta
rving,’ she complained the minute they arrived.

  ‘There was a queue,’ Sally told her, as they all sat down at the kitchen table and began to unwrap their newspaper parcels.

  Persephone had said that she wasn’t hungry but now Sally insisted on coaxing her to share her own fish and chips.

  ‘Here, take a chip,’ she offered, holding out the parcel to her.

  It was obvious from the uncertain way in which Persephone carefully removed a chip that she wasn’t used to eating with her fingers, Sally guessed. Taking pity on her, she put down her food and got up to get a plate and a knife and fork.

  When Persephone tried to refuse, she told her firmly, ‘I’m a nurse. You didn’t eat anything on the train, and you need to keep your strength up. I realise that you might not feel like eating, but you must.’

  ‘Mummy and Daddy are both so upset about Roddy’s accident that we’ve just got out of the habit of … well, with rationing and everything, and then Cook leaving because her married daughter’s had a baby …’

  Listening in, Dulcie raised her eyebrows at Sally behind Persephone’s back but Sally firmly ignored her. She felt sorry for the young girl, who looked so worn down and apprehensive.

  Of course, once they had all finished their supper, had had a cup of tea and then cleaned up it was time for George to leave. Sally naturally accompanied him to the door and outside into the darkness of the blackout where, beneath the bare branches of the climbing rose that covered the small porch, they were able to exchange a few precious kisses.

  ‘Come and sit in the car with me for a few minutes,’ George begged Sally, taking hold of her hand.