My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  ‘We’ll have to make sure that we are wise – and careful,’ Sally told him firmly.

  ‘The trouble is,’ George admitted, turning her towards him, ‘I can’t trust myself to be as wise and as careful as I should be when I’m with you like this, Sally.’

  Heady words, and they were going to her head, Sally admitted. What other reason could there be for her smiling up at him and telling him in a voice that was as tremulous as his had been husky, ‘Sometimes I don’t want you to be.’

  The spring breeze ruffled the skirt of Sally’s dress, with its dark blue and purple floral design against its cream background, teasing the hem and flattening the fabric against her legs. Sally, though, locked in George’s arms, was oblivious to the breeze.

  ‘So are you and Ted going to the pictures as usual this evening?’ Tilly asked Agnes, who had come to join her and Drew after delivering a parcel of Olive’s Easter baking to Mr Whittaker at number 50.

  ‘Yes. We were going to go upriver this afternoon for a bit of a treat and take Ted’s sisters and mum with us, but his mum was worried that it would be too expensive, so Ted’s gone round there instead.’

  ‘Here’s Barney,’ Drew announced as the gate into the garden of number 49 slowly opened and the Dawsons’ foster son crept in.

  ‘Hi, Barney. Come to give us hand, have you?’ Drew called out to him.

  ‘You’ve given him a shock, Drew,’ Tilly said as Barney froze and stared at them. ‘I don’t think he realised we were here.’

  The gate opened again and two older boys came in, both of them coming to an abrupt halt as they saw Drew, Tilly and Agnes.

  ‘Any shrapnel in here, mate?’ the older of the two boys called out to Drew. ‘That’s what we’re looking for, init, Barney?’

  ‘They must be the two boys that Mum was talking about over lunch, the ones that she said she didn’t much care for,’ Tilly told Drew quietly so that the boys couldn’t hear her. ‘She thinks they’re too old for Barney, and so does Sergeant Dawson.’

  ‘Too old and probably a bit too knowing,’ Drew agreed, before calling to them, ‘Well, you’re welcome to have a look round, whilst we’re in here filling these barrows.’

  ‘Go on, Barney mate, you have a good scout around,’ the older boy instructed, as he himself came towards them. He produced half a cigarette from his trouser pocket and lit it, drawing the smoke in to his lungs and holding the cigarette between his thumb and his first finger with practised ease.

  ‘Heard about the ghost that’s bin seen here, have you?’ he asked, adding before they could say anything, ‘Don’t believe it meself but Barney swears he saw summat and so does our Stan. That’s me brother what’s with him. Reckon they saw summat outside what disappeared into the house through the front door, even though it was shut. There’s bin noises heard too, sort of bangings and shiftings, like. My old man’s with the heavy-lifting repair lot and he reckons that there’s plenty of people say that some of them that’s died are still hanging around, like they was still alive. That Mr Long died here. And there’s the ghost of a woman been seen down near Whitechapel crying out that she can’t find her baby.’

  At Tilly’s side Agnes gave a small moan.

  ‘It’s all right, Agnes,’ Drew reassured her, giving the boy a cool warning look. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

  ‘You can say that, mister, but Barney over there reckons he’s definitely seen summat. You ask him. Come on, you two,’ he called out to Barney and the other youth, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘There’s a bomb site over on Hamble Road I’ve heard about where there was four houses flattened. I reckon we’ll find summat there.’

  ‘Poor Barney did look scared,’ Tilly told Drew after the boys had gone. ‘He kept on looking up at the windows the whole time he was here.’

  ‘Oh, don’t, Tilly,’ Agnes begged her, looking nervously in the direction of the upstairs windows herself.

  ‘If Barney was scared it was probably because he’d been fed ridiculous stories of something that doesn’t exist,’ Drew told them both firmly, watching Tilly tense when the sound of a fighter plane was heard in the sky overhead.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s one of ours,’ Drew reassured her, knowing instantly why she had tensed. Tilly might not talk very much about what had happened the night Article Row had been bombed but that didn’t mean that Drew didn’t know how much it had affected her.

  ‘I knew that,’ Tilly insisted.

  Sitting in the vicarage’s pretty garden, drinking tea out of the delicate china cups that Audrey Windle had once told Olive had been a wedding present from her husband’s great-aunt, Olive and Audrey also heard the Spitfire overhead, and looked up.

  ‘They’re saying that it’s very likely that the Luftwaffe will bomb us again, now that the war seems to be going in their favour and not ours,’ Audrey told Olive, adding, ‘My nephew is rejoining his squadron next week. He’s delighted, but naturally my sister is very anxious for him. He tells her not to worry, of course. These young ones have such courage and faith. I envy them that.’

  ‘They don’t know what we know. This is their first war. It’s our second,’ Olive pointed out sombrely.

  ‘You’ll go ahead and drive for the mobile canteen service then, will you, Olive?’ Audrey asked her, changing the subject. ‘Only I could see how pleased Mrs Finch was when she learned that you could drive.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be happy to do it, if they want me to,’ Olive confirmed.

  It had been flattering to know how keen the mobile canteen arm of the WVS were to put her on their list of available drivers.

  ‘I’m so glad that Mrs Dawson has decided to join our WVS group,’ Audrey continued. ‘She’s a changed person since they took Barney in. A true example of charitable kindness being its own reward.’

  ‘… And the boy with Barney told us that he thinks that there’s a ghost at number 49,’ Agnes informed Olive breathlessly as the four of them sat down for a cup of tea later in the afternoon.

  ‘All nonsense, of course, and I told them so,’ Drew chipped in.

  ‘But that boy said that Barney had heard strange noises coming from the house,’ Agnes reminded him.

  ‘I’m sure if Barney tells Sergeant Dawson that he thinks that number 49 has a ghost, he’ll say exactly what you’ve said, Drew,’ Olive responded. What she couldn’t say, though, was that she suspected that Archie Dawson would be extremely concerned to know that Barney was still hanging around with the Farley brothers.

  ‘Mrs Vincent says that she knows a couple of villagers who’ll let us borrow their bikes tomorrow, and that we should go and have a look at the ruins of the castle on the outskirts of the village,’ Sally informed George, as she rejoined him in the cosy bar after speaking with the landlady.

  When the spring light had faded into darkness, the landlord had lit the log fire in the pub’s large inglenook fireplace, and Sally and George had eaten their evening meal basking in its warm glow.

  ‘I recommend the chicken pie and no questions asked about where the chicken came from,’ the landlord had winked at them when they had asked what was on the menu. And as Sally had said once she had tasted it, the pie had almost been as good as Olive’s cooking, as had the rhubarb flummery that had followed it.

  Out here in the countryside it was almost possible to forget that there was a war, or at least it had been until a group of young men in RAf uniform had arrived in a couple of sports cars.

  ‘I can’t help contrasting them with your patients,’ Sally told George when the airmen had left and the sound of their cars’ engines had faded.

  ‘I know, I was just thinking the same thing. Fancy a stroll to walk off dinner before we go up?’ he asked with a studied casualness that made her smile tenderly at him and gently touch his knee beneath the table.

  ‘Aren’t I the one who should be feeling apprehensive and trying to put things off?’ she teased him.

  A few minutes later, when they were strolling along the village street, her ha
nd tucked through his arm, George admitted, ‘I don’t want to disappoint you.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Sally assured him lovingly. ‘You couldn’t. Come on, let’s go back.’

  Sally had elected to go to George’s room rather than have him come to hers. She felt he would be more comfortable that way because it would make it clear to him that she wanted what was going to happen as much as he did, and that he wasn’t compelling her in any way. Sally smiled to herself at the thought of George, dear George, who was so gentle and kind compelling her to do anything.

  Their bedrooms were next to one another and virtually identical, tucked up in the eaves of the centuries-old White Hart, with its slate roof and tiny windows with deep stone ledges. The landlady had already covered the windows with the blackout curtains, and after her bath in a bathroom that smelled pleasantly of George’s cologne Sally dressed herself in the pretty pale blue chemise and matching French knickers set bought on impulse in the days when she had believed she would be wearing them for a very different man, and so nearly thrown away in furious misery when she had been packing to leave home. It had been the thought of her mother grieving over such a waste that held her back then, just as it was her memories of her mother that were pushing her forward now. Other young women might find it odd and even hard to understand that she should think of her mother at a time like this and feel that she would approve of what she was doing, but Sally knew that her mother would have loved George and would have understood perfectly why, in their world of death and destruction, Sally wanted to create this small brief oasis of special commitment for them both. They couldn’t marry. It would be frowned upon with George at the stage he was with his career, and even more so by her own matron. But they could do this. She could do this, Sally felt. She could give them both this special time, this special memory to sustain them until the was was over.

  Pulling on her dressing gown, she made her way along the bare boards of a corridor that creaked with every step she took until she was outside George’s bedroom door. Knocking briefly she didn’t wait for an answer, simply lifting the old-fashioned wrought-iron latch and stepping inside.

  George, like her, was wearing a dressing gown – his being a smart paisley – beneath which she could see the trousers of a pair of handsome-looking burgundy silk pyjama bottoms. He was pacing the wooden bedroom floor, smoking a cigarette.

  When he saw her the tips of his ears went red.

  ‘The bed looks comfy,’ Sally told him, deliberately teasing him as his ears burned even more.

  ‘Sally, are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked her anxiously. ‘Because if you don’t—’

  ‘Shush. And yes, I do,’ Sally told him tenderly, going to him and placing her fingertips against his mouth.

  Taking her hand in his, George said, ‘I just hope you won’t be disappointed. I haven’t …’ He paused, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘Neither have I.’

  ‘I don’t want to disappoint you,’ he repeated.

  ‘You won’t,’ Sally reassured him as she had done earlier before shrugging off her dressing gown and putting her arms round his neck. ‘Or at least you won’t if you kiss me very soon, darling George.’

  With something between a groan and a self-depreciatory laugh, George gathered her in his arms, his heart thudding heavily into hers.

  Later, much later, after they had shared the uncertainty of that first exploratory time, and then come together again with newly discovered confidence and joy, Sally lay in George’s arms, her head pillowed against his shoulder, her hand resting on his bare chest, her voice soft with love as she whispered to him, ‘See, I was right, wasn’t I? I knew it would be wonderful. I knew you would be wonderful, George.’

  ‘You are the one who is wonderful,’ he responded emotionally.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Of course, when I told them that I was working for Selfridges but that I’d felt it me duty to go into munitions on account of me having a brother who was out fighting in the desert, they offered me a job straight away. Well, it stands to reason that they would, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But aren’t you just a little bit worried that you won’t like it, Dulcie? I mean, you’ve been working with them lovely cosmetics and everything at Selfridges, and one of the women who works with me has said as how her niece is working in munitions and that she doesn’t care for it at all. It’s turned her skin yellow, and she says that you have to wear horrible clothes. She says too that there’s some girls there who are really rough types.’ Agnes gave a small shudder.

  Listening to them, Olive suppressed a small sigh. Agnes was a dear, and wouldn’t knowingly hurt anyone, but there was no getting away from the fact she could be naïve at times.

  ‘Well, of course I won’t be mixing with that sort. And I dare say I’ll be promoted in no time at all, me being a cut above them. That’s what David says, anyway,’ Dulcie informed Agnes, giving her an angry look. ‘As for the clothes, you have to wear them to protect yourself, ’cos you’re dealing with dangerous chemicals. That’s what Mr Finch, who’s the foreman, told me. Anyway, I don’t see how you can say that about working in munitions when you’re working on the underground in that awful uniform.’

  ‘I think what you’re doing is very brave, Dulcie,’ Tilly chipped in.

  ‘You’re right, it is. But of course I felt it was my duty, didn’t I, when Mr Bevin said about our boys needing more munitions and that. You only have to listen to the news to know that they’re having a hard time out in the desert where our Rick is.’

  Sally suppressed a small smile as she listened. The reality was, of course, that if Dulcie hadn’t volunteered she would have been called up for munitions work anyway eventually, and that her decision to find herself a job at a local munitions factory meant that she’d avoided the risk of being sent to a strange town where she knew no one. Now at least she could continue to lodge at number 13. Not that Sally blamed her for wanting to do that. Number 13 had become home to all three lodgers.

  Having looked at her watch, Sally finished her cup of tea and stood up. ‘I’d better go otherwise I’ll be late for my night shift.’

  Olive watched her as she hurried to the door.

  When Sally had returned from Berkshire on Easter Monday there had been such an obvious glow of happiness and contentment about her that Olive had guessed immediately what had happened. Not that she would have said so to Sally, if Sally herself hadn’t introduced the subject when they had been alone in the kitchen together doing the washing up.

  ‘I suppose you’ve guessed what happened whilst we were away,’ she said quietly. ‘It was my idea, and what I wanted. We can’t marry yet, and sometimes I feel that George doesn’t realise how special he is to me and how much I love him. I wanted him to know how I really feel. I wanted us to have something to hold on to. I dreamed of my mother afterwards. She was smiling and happy for me. I know she would have loved George.’

  Olive could still feel the sharp echo of the pang of envy she had felt witnessing Sally’s obvious joy. And if she had been aware of that air of completeness and fulfilment that surrounded her, then how much more aware of it must Tilly be?

  Just one brief look at her daughter’s face now as Tilly watched Sally hurry out of the room told Olive that she was right to fear that Tilly was aware of the change in Sally and the reason for it.

  Sally was so lucky, Tilly thought enviously. There had been no one to stop her being with George as Tilly so desperately wanted to be with Drew. And, of course, George, unlike her own Drew, would not have told her that her mother was only trying to protect her by refusing to acknowledge that she was adult enough to make her own decisions.

  Tilly thought of the girl she had overheard in the ladies’ at the pub in Fleet Street when she and Drew had gone there for a drink on Saturday night – a girl who had looked as though she was more or less her own age, and wearing a new shiny wedding ring – who had been boasting to her friend that she had forced her parents’ hands by telling th
em that there was every risk that their grandchild would be born out of wedlock if they didn’t let her marry her sweetheart, and quickly.

  If Drew had been a different type of man she might have been able to persuade him to do the same, but then if he had been the type to agree to something like that, then he wouldn’t have been her Drew, Tilly was forced to admit, as she turned to Dulcie, in an attempt to give her thoughts a new direction.

  ‘So what is it that you have to wear then, Dulcie?’ she asked.

  Dulcie pulled a face. ‘Well, when you get there, you have to sign on and then you have to go into this room and get changed out of your own clothes, on account of you not being allowed to wear anything with metal in it in case it causes a spark and you blow the whole place up, what with all them detonators and that around.’

  Listening to Dulcie, Tilly’s hand went straight to the neckline of her floral blouse, beneath which she was wearing Drew’s ring on its chain. She didn’t think she’d be willing to take any kind of work that meant she couldn’t have it close to her.

  ‘Then we have to work a month on days and a month on nights, and we don’t get to finish until Saturday afternoon. Mind you, we do get a hot meal whilst we’re there, and they have the wireless going, not that you can hear much of it with all them machines. The place stinks, an’ all, with all them explosives and that, and you can’t go to the air-raid shelter until the foreman says that you can even though the air-raid warning has gone. One of the girls I got talking to told me that it’s horrible when there’s a bombing raid and you’re working nights, ’cos you know that it’s the munitions factories they’re after. She says they built the factories down along the Thames so that there’s plenty of water to put out the fires if they do get bombed.’

  ‘Oh, Dulcie, I think you are ever so brave volunteering to work there,’ Agnes exclaimed admiringly, making up for her earlier faux pas.