My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  Initially it looked as though Article Row was going to be lucky. Up above them in the night sky the flare from the falling magnesium incendiaries was so bright that they could easily see the bombers looking for fresh targets.

  ‘They’ll be after the docks, not us,’ said Mr Edwards, who, like so many of the other neighbours, had come out to see what was going on.

  But just as he spoke a sudden shower of bombs descended at the bottom of the row, falling from the basket that contained them.

  ‘Quick, one’s gone through the roof of one of Mr King’s houses,’ Olive warned. ‘Come on, Agnes, we’ll go and deal with it.’

  ‘No, me and Mr Edwards can do it,’ Drew began, but Olive shook her head. She was already on the move, telling both Agnes and Dulcie briskly, ‘You come with me, girls. Tilly, you stay with Drew.’ As she hurried towards the house she recognised that she had another reason to thank Sergeant Dawson for his forethought, since he had suggested to Mr King that he gave her a spare set of keys for just this kind of emergency.

  Leaving the wheelbarrow outside, but instructing Agnes to carry in the bucketful of water and Dulcie the bucket of sand, Olive, paused in the hallway before hoisting the hose onto her shoulder as Sergeant Dawson had shown her, grabbing the hoe and the shovel in her other hand and hurrying up the stairs with Dulcie and Agnes at her heels. Mr King’s houses, which were all let out, weren’t anything like as well cared for inside as her own home. The war had meant fewer tenants but Olive actually welcomed the dank musty smell that came from the unused and unheated building, hoping the damp would make it less easy for the fire to take hold.

  The smoke coming from beneath one of the bedroom doors warned her that her hopes were misplaced, though.

  ‘Keep back,’ she warned the two girls, as she opened the door, ‘and pull your scarves up round your faces. We don’t want to be breathing in smoke.’

  Dulcie, never willing to take orders from anyone, started to complain that her lipstick would come off on her scarf if she did that, but her protest ended in a coughing fit from the smoke escaping from the room.

  ‘’Ere, we can’t go in there. It’s too dangerous,’ she coughed, forgetting to use her ‘refined’ Selfridges voice in the panic of the moment when she saw how quickly the fire had taken hold.

  If the sight of the bedroom carpet well and truly on fire had momentarily filled Olive herself with shock, the sound of the fear in Dulcie’s voice and the realisation that she was responsible for the safety not just of the house but, far more importantly, of the two girls with her, was enough to have Olive stiffening her spine and deciding that no German incendiary bomb was going to get the better of her.

  Aiming the nozzle of the hose at the fire and then pulling the door almost closed as they had been instructed, Olive called back to Agnes, ‘Start pumping.’

  After what seemed like a lifetime the satisfying hiss of the water hitting the flames brought her a wave of relief. This was no time for complacency, though.

  ‘Get ready with that sand,’ she warned Dulcie. ‘As soon as we’ve got this fire under control we need to take up the bomb and put it in the sand bucket.’

  Outside in the street, Drew was wishing that Ian Simpson wasn’t at work and that he had a few more young men to help him. Not that Tilly wasn’t a good helper – she was – but Drew didn’t want her to be in danger, and it was dangerous out here, he recognised, even if the residents were reacting to the falling bombs with what he now knew to be typical British resilience.

  ‘Look, that’s another lot falling,’ Tilly gasped pulling the tin hat one of the Misses Barker had handed her further down over her head.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged Drew, as a fresh basket of incendiaries fell from the sky down at the far end of the road.

  ‘Tilly, wait,’ Drew protested, but it was too late, she was already pushing the barrow down the street at some speed.

  Up above them two incendiaries landed on the roof of number 46, close to the end of the Row, both of them easily piercing the roof slates.

  As they hurried over, the front door of the house opened and the Polish refugee family who were living there came running out.

  And then the most horrific thing happened – so awful that it sucked the breath from Tilly’s lungs and almost stopped her heart. As the Polish father ran out into the street to attract their attention, one of the falling incendiaries hit him, its fin piercing his back.

  For a handful of seconds no one moved, not even the man who had been hit. Everyone was silent. Then that silence was broken, first by the man’s agonised scream and then by the shocked cries of grief of his family.

  People were coughing in the smoke billowing out of the incendiaries as they hit the ground.

  Automatically Tilly started to run towards the injured man, who had fallen to his knees on the cobbled road, although without any idea of what she might usefully do.

  ‘Tilly, keep back,’ Drew yelled frantically.

  The man’s screams of pain filled the street, blotting out even the sound of the bombers, his family rushing towards him, as Drew cursed and warned them to stand back. It was obvious to him that nothing could be done for the man, who had collapsed and was now lying face down in the street.

  At the sound of Drew’s voice Tilly froze. The shock of what she was witnessing kept her rooted to the spot, her body cold with sick horror, even whilst she could feel a hot sweat of nausea rising up inside her. And yet when Drew ordered her to start pumping water, somehow she managed to do so.

  The poor man was still screaming, whilst Drew trained the hose, even whilst he knew that it was just a waste of time. The man’s family tried to go to him. Afraid for them, Drew urged them to stand back, lifting the nozzle of the hose to spray water at the children, making them cry even harder as they clung to their white-faced mother.

  Other neighbours were rallying round, throwing sand on the other incendiaries that were still burning on the cobbled road. The man groaned and tried to move, and then screamed again. There was nothing he or anyone else could do, Drew knew that, but it was impossible for him to ignore that scream of terror and plea for help from another human being. Dropping the hose Drew went to the dying man, fighting his way through the smoke of the other incendiaries burning round him, and ignoring Tilly’s pleas for him not to put himself in danger.

  Terrified for Drew’s safety, still in shock from the horror of what had happened to the man who lay dying in the street, Tilly, who all her life has been so optimistic and always looked on the bright side, was suddenly filled with a conviction that Drew was going to suffer the same fate as the dying man.

  She cried out to him not to go, but all he did was shout over his shoulder to her, ‘Keep pumping, Tilly,’ as he frantically hosed down the dreadful blackening scorched thing in the middle of the road that had been a human being. The smell that reached him reminded him so sickeningly of the roast pork served at his parents’ summer barbecues that he knew he would never be able to think of those sun-filled summer events without thinking too of this awful human tragedy that was happening in front of him. He dodged the still falling incendiaries, trying to get as close to the dying man as he possibly could, knowing that nothing he or anyone else could do would save him, but unable to endure the thought of simply leaving him where he was in his terrible mortal agony.

  Upstairs in number 38, Olive had put out the fire and was on her way back down the stairs behind Dulcie, having handed her the hose whilst relieving her of the bucket with its still smoking, sand-covered incendiary.

  Outside on the Row, Olive quickly realised that the fire they had just put out wasn’t the only one. The smoke from the fires started by the bombs was so thick that it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. Through it, neighbours came rushing up to her, begging her to come and put out their own fires. Mrs Edwards told her that her husband had gone down to the ARP unit to see if they could get a fire engine, and added in a dark whisper, ‘Of course, he’ll ask them to send an
ambulance as well but it’s obvious there won’t be any point. Poor Tilly.’

  ‘What?’ Olive stopped her, letting the bucket of sand clatter to the pavement. ‘What’s happened to Tilly?’

  ‘Well, she saw the whole thing, didn’t she? She and that young of man of hers were standing right there when the incendiary hit that poor man, so my hubby said.’

  Olive didn’t wait to hear any more, pushing her way through the crowd now gathered in the street but keeping as far away as they could from the falling incendiaries. She could see Tilly now, standing stock-still by her wheelbarrow, her face turned away from Olive as she looked to where Drew was spraying water on something on the ground that was burning and smoking.

  Then, as Olive watched, an incendiary fell between where Tilly was standing and where Drew was hosing down the dreadful-looking ‘thing’ on the cobbles. As the incendiary hit the cobbles it exploded, sending up a wall of white fire between Tilly and Drew. Someone screamed a terrified horrible primeval howl of sound so raw that it was impossible to tell if came from a female or a male throat.

  Through the anguished agonised yells of warning and despair, all Olive could hear was her daughter’s voice crying out Drew’s name as she released her barrow and almost threw herself towards the fire that separated her from him.

  Later Olive didn’t know where she got the strength somehow to force her way through the crowd just in time to drag Tilly back.

  ‘No. No,’ Tilly protested, trying to fight free, as through the flames they could both see Drew’s face contorted with pain, his clothes on fire.

  All around them people were leaping into action, shovelling sand on the burning incendiaries, playing hoses on the fires, but not even the screech of a fire engine could drown out the agony of pain Olive could hear in her daughter’s voice as she cried out, distraught, for the man she loved and she tried to fight free of her mother to get to him.

  ‘Don’t look, don’t look, Tilly,’ Olive begged her as she struggled to hold her, whilst the most terrible screams of agony split the night air.

  ELEVEN

  In the Café de Paris, believing they were safe, and completely oblivious to the bombs being dropped overhead, the rich and well-connected jeunesse dorée danced and flirted. Until that was, one of the falling bombs somehow found the ventilation shaft to the club.

  Over thirty-six people were killed outright, including ‘Snakehips’ Johnson, whose head was blown off his body.

  By the time some of the dead, the dying and the injured reached Bart’s Hospital, where Sally was on night duty, as acting sister, those working to rescue them had such tales of chaos and horror to tell that even they, bomb-hardened though they were, were weeping.

  When Sally joined other nurses helping get the wounded into the hospital, one ambulance driver, tears pouring down his face, told her over and over again about seeing a young man carefully restoring the ripped-off arms and legs to his girlfriend’s torso whilst her head remained several feet away.

  ‘And then there was the ruddy looters,’ he told Sally bitterly, ‘down there like carrion crows, they was, ripping off rings and necklaces and the like. There was even bodies with their finger cut off so that they could get their rings.’

  Her heart thumping, Sally looked frantically through the injured being brought in, all too aware that Dulcie and Tilly had been planning to go to the Café de Paris. When she couldn’t see either them or the two young men she still couldn’t feel relieved. Barts wasn’t the only hospital in London, after all, and from the stories they were being told the carnage was such that it would be some time before a full tally of those killed and injured could be made.

  Sally was a trained nurse, though. Her duty here now at Barts was to the injured.

  She needed to be at her post in the operating theatre scrubbing up for what she knew would be a long night of operations. The night sky was filled with the sound of enemy planes, dropping bombs and the fierce defensive of the ack-ack guns, but Sally pushed those sounds to the back of her mind to concentrate on her work and her patients.

  At number 13 a brisk knock on the front door had Olive looking anxiously from Tilly’s white, set face as she lay unmoving in her bed.

  Since they had brought her back to the house her daughter had neither spoken nor moved of her own volition, initially remaining seated in the kitchen chair into which Olive had guided her, staring in front of herself unseeingly, her body occasionally breaking out into shudders that racked it from head to toe, until Olive, aided by a willing Agnes and a grumbling Dulcie, had managed to get her upstairs and then undressed enough to get her into bed. Normally so fastidious, for once Olive had had more important things on her mind than the smell of smoke on Tilly’s clothes and the unpleasant odour filling her clean bedroom.

  Now, as she sat next to Tilly’s bed on the bentwood chair from which she had removed Tilly’s silk velvet evening dress, carefully hanging it in the wardrobe, she reached for her daughter’s hand and held it in her own. It felt so cold and lifeless, just as Tilly’s face looked equally drained of blood and life, almost as though Tilly was wanting to give up on life.

  Olive shuddered herself, her hold on Tilly’s hand tightening as she heard someone knocking on the front door and then Dulcie calling up, ‘It’s Sergeant Dawson.’

  ‘I’ll sit with Tilly whilst you go down,’ Agnes offered, coming into the room.

  Olive hesitated and then nodded, a delicate pink flush of colour staining her face as she made her way downstairs. It wasn’t because it was Archie Dawson that she was going down to see him, it was because he was their local police officer. There were probably things he would want to know, reports he would need to write.

  They were on their own in the shadowy darkness of the hallway.

  ‘Olive, I’ve just heard the news. How is Tilly?’ She was taking a step closer to him before she knew what she was doing. ‘Olive.’ The emotion in his voice when he repeated her name and then reached for both her hands was almost too much for her. Tears threatened her composure, as she gave in to her need for the comforting warmth of his hands around her own. It meant nothing that it shouldn’t have meant. He was simply comforting her, the kind gesture of one neighbour to another, nothing more than that. Nothing at all. And yet … For a moment her composure failed her.

  ‘Oh, Archie,’ she said, with such aching intensity that he drew her closer.

  ‘Olive …’

  She could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear. Upstairs a floorboard creaked, the sound making them spring back from one another. ‘Tilly is dreadfully shocked,’ Olive answered him, struggling to appear calm and in control, and to keep her voice even and level against the thud of her racing heartbeat. It was Tilly who mattered, not her, Tilly he had come to ask her about. Tilly, who was lying upstairs in such a dreadful state, and no wonder after what she had witnessed.

  ‘When Tilly saw what was happening to Drew I really thought that she was going to throw herself into the flames after him.’ Olive’s voice broke afresh. ‘I only just managed to hold her back. I don’t know what would have happened if the others hadn’t been able to extinguish the fire and the bomb and save him. That poor man from number 46 couldn’t be saved, though. I didn’t see what happened but Tilly did, according to what Drew told me. He was more concerned about her having witnessed that than he was about himself. Such a dreadful terrible thing to have been pierced by the fin of the incendiary and then have it burn into him.’

  Sergeant Dawson’s grip on her hands tightened sympathetically.

  ‘I had no idea what had happened until Drew told me,’ Olive continued shakily. ‘Tilly won’t talk about it. She won’t say anything. She’s just lying upstairs in her bed without moving. The only time she’s spoken was when I told her that Drew was all right. She just looked at me and said, “You’re lying. I know he’s dead. I saw him burning, just like that other man.” That’s all she said. Then she turned away from me and wouldn’t even look at me.’

&nb
sp; ‘Shell shock,’ said the sergeant matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve seen it happen to the most battle-hardened men. She’ll be all right, Olive. Just give her time. How is young Drew?’

  ‘Well, he’s burned, of course, but thankfully nothing like as badly as we all feared. The ambulance men took him to hospital. Mr Edwards went with him and he’s sent a message to say that he’s been told that Drew will be sent home as soon as his burns have been dressed. Tilly wanted to go with him, of course, but she was in such an overwrought emotional state that the ambulance men wouldn’t let her. Thank goodness.

  ‘The Polish family can’t praise him enough for what he did trying to save that poor man. Drew has sent a message via Mrs Edwards that as soon as he’s able to do so he’s going to come round and see Tilly. I don’t think she’ll be able to accept that he’s alive until she’s seen him for herself. I just wish she’d say something. It’s so unlike her to be like this. I feel almost as though it’s not my Tilly who’s lying there.’

  Catching back her emotions, Olive forced herself to be calm, as she told the sergeant ruefully, ‘Dulcie says that none of this would have happened if they’d stayed safely at the Café de Paris.’

  When Archie Dawson shook his head Olive looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘As for that, I’ve heard that there’s been a bomb hit it and that there’s over thirty been killed and many more injured.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Olive protested.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ the sergeant told her. ‘And Buckingham Palace has been hit as well.’

  ‘The King and Queen?’ Olive asked apprehensively.

  ‘Both safe, and the princesses, thank the Lord.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll want to talk to us all about what happened here earlier. For the records and everything?’

  ‘At some stage, but not right now. That’s not what I’ve come round for now. I heard from one of the other men about what happened, and bearing in mind what you’d told me about Tilly in confidence, I just wanted to make sure that you were all right.’