My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  ‘No, Mum, we’ll go down together like we always do,’ Tilly protested as they hurried downstairs. Tilly was still fully dressed because she’d been expecting Drew to call round on his way back to the Simpsons’, but Olive was in her nightclothes and pulling on a dressing gown as she warned, ‘Hurry, Tilly. The last thing I want is for you or Alice to be caught out of the shelter when the bombs start dropping. The Edwardses and some of the others are fire-watching tonight so I can come with you to the shelter.’

  On her way downstairs, though, Tilly insisted on grabbing the old blankets they kept in the airing cupboard for use in the shelter, not leaving them there because of its dampness, ignoring Olive’s pleas for her to go straight to the shelter, whilst she wondered anxiously where Drew was and how close he was to the safety of a shelter.

  At the backs of both their minds, although neither of them said so as they made their way to the Anderson shelter, was the knowledge of the terrible Blitz Liverpool had suffered and whether it was now their turn to endure the same.

  By the early hours of the morning, though, Londoners’ worst fears were confirmed. The city, and especially the docks, were being subjected to their worst bombing yet.

  For Dulcie and Wilder, packed into a communal shelter along with hundreds of other people, the noise from the impromptu sing-a-longs that had started up to lift people’s spirits was almost loud enough to drown out the sound of the approaching planes dropping their deadly cargo. Sally, though, at Barts in the relative silence of the operating theatre where they worked throughout the night on a constant stream of badly injured victims, discovered that a new and unexpected thread of anxiety was being woven into those she already had. Alice. It was not because she cared in the least little bit about the child that she felt that anxiety, because she didn’t. No, what was making her anxious was the thought of something happening to her unwanted responsibility and Callum returning to blame her for it. Which surely was ridiculous when she hadn’t asked for that responsibility and she certainly didn’t want it. The sooner the child was packed off somewhere where it would be someone else’s responsibility to keep her safe, the happier she would be, Sally told herself.

  For Agnes and Ted, squashed into the small local shelter that served the needs of the flats where Ted’s mother and sisters lived, the bombing raid passed relatively calmly. Ted was busy comforting his mother and sisters whilst Agnes did her best to assist him by remaining calmly in the background. It hurt her that Ted’s mother was still so obviously reluctant to accept her, but Agnes was becoming stoical about that hurt. In fact, deep down inside she felt that, because she had been an unwanted child, she actually deserved it. She was so lucky to have met Ted, who loved her despite the circumstances of her birth, she decided, as she tried not to mind that his mother, whilst drawing her daughters close, was keeping her back towards her as they all squeezed tightly into the shelter along with the other occupants of the Guinness flats.

  To be allowed to rent a Guinness flat one had to be considered very respectable. Rental of a flat could be withdrawn and its occupants made homeless if an occupant was deemed to have transgressed against that rule of respectability, and so it was no wonder that people were withdrawing from the half-a-dozen or so shelterers who had grouped round a man with a penny whistle, who was encouraging them to sing. He was only trying to lift people’s spirits, Agnes thought sympathetically, feeling sad for Ted’s sisters, who, when asked if they wanted to join in with the other children gathering around him, looked at their mother and then shook their heads. Children should have some fun, Agnes thought sadly. Even in the orphanage they had had fun. Matron had encouraged it, although of course they had been expected to behave themselves as well.

  For Tilly the relative safety of their own Anderson shelter couldn’t offset her growing anxiety for Drew, the sound of every plane, the explosion of every bomb causing her to tense and stare fixedly toward the metal wall of the shelter, so fixedly that Olive, watching her, felt her daughter’s gaze would burn through the metal in her need to find her boyfriend.

  Tilly wasn’t saying a word, but she didn’t need to. Olive could see that she was being wrung out with the intensity of her emotions, and she was forced to acknowledge that she couldn’t protect Tilly from the emotional pain that could come from love.

  It was obvious from the sound of the bombs that the Germans were hitting the docks. But then a bomb exploded closer to them with an ear-splitting sound that woke Alice, who had been lying peacefully asleep in the washing basket Olive was using for a temporary bed. The baby starting to cry in obvious fear.

  ‘Lift her out, Tilly,’ Olive instructed. She could have reached for the baby herself but she was hoping that doing something for the baby might distract her daughter from her obvious fear for Drew.

  Tilly reached for the crying baby. Alice was sweet, and so pretty, but right now Tilly didn’t want to think about anyone other than Drew.

  ‘What is it?’ Olive asked her gently, seeing her frown.

  ‘I was just thinking how hard it must be to have a baby who is totally dependent on you when you’re worrying about the man you love.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Olive agreed, feeling closer to her daughter than she had done in a long time, ‘but there is a great deal of comfort in having that responsibility, Tilly.’

  Tilly shook her head as she handed the crying Alice to her mother.

  ‘She’s so frightened,’ Olive said as she tried to soothe and comfort the baby. ‘It makes me wonder how much her little mind might know of what she’s been through with the death of her parents, poor little scrap.’

  ‘What do you think will happen to her?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Tilly,’ Olive admitted, both of them flinching as a bomb exploded close at hand, making it impossible for them to continue conversing above the dreadful sound.

  She might be able to try to blot out the sound of the falling bombs but Tilly couldn’t blot out her fears for Drew. The night she had seen the man from number 46 burned to death, and then witnessed Drew being separated from her by the same flames had left its mark on her. Over and over, inside her head she kept saying her prayers for him. He was everything to her, absolutely everything, and even though she knew her mother was afraid for her, she couldn’t deny that feeling.

  ‘It’s definitely been the worst raid so far. They thought at one point that the Faraday Street telephone exchange would go up in the flames, and if we’d lost that, the country would have been completely cut off,’ Olive heard Archie Dawson saying to the vicar outside church the next morning.

  When he ended his conversation, though, to come over and join Mrs Dawson and Barney, who were standing a few yards away from Olive, she couldn’t help but notice how Mrs Dawson grabbed Barney’s hand and very firmly turned herself and the boy away so that they had their backs to him.

  ‘I’m in the doghouse,’ Archie Dawson admitted to Olive, coming over to her rather than rejoin his wife. ‘It’s on account of me giving Barney a serious talking to when I found out that he’s still palling up with those Farley lads. Mrs Dawson thinks I’m being too hard on him, even though I’ve told her that I’m only doing it for Barney’s own good.’

  Olive could hear the frustration in Archie Dawson’s voice but, as much as she sympathised with him, her real concern just then was for Tilly.

  At her mother’s side Tilly couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the fact that it was now morning and Drew wasn’t here. Last night she had managed to convince herself that he would be sheltering somewhere, as her mother had told her. But now it was mid-morning and there was no sign of him. Tilly had wanted to go out searching for him, but her mother had said that it was too soon. Now Tilly felt sick with dread of her deepest fear: that Drew was dead. No! Surely she would know if that had happened. Surely the world would feel different? Surely she would have sensed his going?

  ‘I heard about young Drew being missing. I’ll do my best to find out what I can about him,’ Archie
Dawson assured Olive.

  ‘That’s really kind of you,’ she thanked him. ‘I did suggest to Tilly that she stayed at home instead of coming to church this morning, but she insisted that she wanted to come.’ She looked towards Tilly, who was standing looking in the direction of Fleet Street, even though the street itself couldn’t be seen from the church.

  ‘… And to think Edith’s been alive all this time and never said a word to Mum,’ Dulcie was complaining to Tilly. ‘Just goes to show how selfish she is. You’d never get me behaving like that. Always put others first, I have. Gave me ever such a turn seeing her there, I can tell you. It was like she’d come back from the dead, with us being told she’d gone.’

  Dulcie frowned when Tilly made a small choking sound and pushed past her. What was up with her, acting all dramatic, like, when it was she, Dulcie, who had had the awful shock of seeing the sister she had thought dead was in fact very much alive. Very much alive and, by the sound of what she had said to Wilder, far too eager to get herself involved in Dulcie’s life. Well, Dulcie had made it plain to Wilder last night when they had been in that shelter, just what a selfish person Edith was, and how he was lucky that he’d picked her, the much better sister.

  Normally Tilly enjoyed Dulcie’s chatter but today, when there was still no sign of Drew or any word from him, and with the air full of both the conversation about the devastation, and the dust and detritus from the damage, the very sound of Dulcie’s voice felt like a saw on Tilly’s raw nerves. All she wanted to do was escape to the privacy of a place where she could give way to her emotions, a dark room in which she could hide away with the pain and fear that was ripping into her. But at the same time, just having that pain when all around her people were being so brave and matter-of-fact, and getting on with their lives made her feel weak and worthless and ashamed of herself. She felt as though somehow she had become separated from a part of herself, as though she barely knew herself any more, such was the extent of her misery and fear.

  ‘Tilly,’ Olive began, wanting to offer her comfort and reassurance and yet knowing that she couldn’t. The truth was that the longer Drew remained missing the more likely it was that something had happened to him. Of course there were things they could do – like going round the hospitals to check if he had been admitted; like consulting the lists put up by each council of the missing and dead in their area to see if his name was on one of them – but Olive didn’t want to think about how Tilly was likely to react if they were to do that.

  As she held her daughter’s arm with one hand Olive pushed the loaned perambulator with the other. Inside, Alice lay wide awake, her huge dark eyes gazing up. War was such a cruel thing, robbing people of those they loved, splitting up families, destroying lives and bodies …

  The sound of Tilly suddenly saying, ‘Drew’, as though the word had been ripped from her throat, caused Olive to look up swiftly. Tilly’s face was contorted with anguish, and she pulled free of Olive’s hold and began to run toward her young American boyfriend as he ran toward her.

  ‘It really is you! It really is. I was so afraid. I thought something must have happened to you. I thought I’d never see you again,’ Tilly sobbed as Drew’s arms closed round her. It might be Sunday morning, they might be within sight of the church and its worshippers, but Tilly was prepared to ignore convention as she clung to Drew and wept in her relief at discovering he was alive and whole.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tilly, I’m sorry,’ Drew tried to comfort her as he held her tightly. ‘I got involved with several other reporters after the match. We went out for something to eat, and then we got caught in the bombing. The shelter we were in took a hit.’

  Tilly gasped and trembled in his hold.

  ‘We were lucky. It didn’t effect the bit where we were, apart leaving us blocked inside from falling debris. It took them until this morning to get us out, but I’ve come straight here—’

  ‘Drew, you must come back and have dinner with us and tell us all about it then,’ Olive intervened.

  Tilly’s face was luminous with love but the strain of the night had had its effect on her, and it seemed to Olive as an anxious mother that her daughter had become thinner and more vulnerable-looking virtually overnight.

  ‘Thank you, yes. That’s a good idea,’ Drew agreed, earning a smile of gratitude from Olive. ‘I’ll need to go home and have a bath first, though.’

  Immediately Tilly’s hand tightened on his arm. ‘I’m so afraid if I let you go that you might disappear,’ she told him emotionally.

  From her bedroom window at number 13 Sally, who couldn’t sleep despite the fact that she had worked so hard on her night shift, watched the small procession returning. Olive was pushing the pram and, as they approached the house, Sally could see one small pink fist waving from inside it. Something unfamiliar and unexpected gripped her hear: a feeling, an awareness, a sense of her mother’s love for her and all that it had meant. Alice would never know that kind of love.

  That wasn’t her fault. Alice should never have been born, would never have been born if her father and her former best friend had remained loyal to her mother. It wasn’t Sally’s fault that Alice had been orphaned.

  Sally turned away from the window. She felt as though the smell of blood and fear and death was still clinging to her. A long night in the operating theatre, working alongside the surgeons trying so desperately to repair the injured, did that to you. Inside her head, Sally had tried to lock away the unwanted images of the bodies of her father and Morag.

  She had known from what Callum had not said, from the fact that they had not been individually recovered and buried, that there must not have been much of them left to bury. At least Alice would never know anything of those images, even if she had to grow up knowing she had lost the people who had loved her the most, and who had created her. They weren’t here any more to love her and protect her. But it wasn’t her job to do so in their stead, Sally defended her decision. She had a life of her own to live, a man who loved her and with whom she would have her own children. There was no place in her life for a child who could only ever be an unwanted reminder of a past betrayal.

  Sunday dinner was over. Tilly and Drew were in the kitchen washing up. Sally was upstairs in bed asleep, Agnes and Dulcie were outside in the garden with Alice who was toddling on the grass.

  Tilly had barely touched her lunch, her gaze fixed anxiously on Drew as though she was afraid that he might somehow disappear. Drew had insisted that they do the washing up, and Olive had let them, but now she felt that some fresh air and the sight of little Alice playing joyfully in the garden would do more to lift her daughter’s spirits than washing up.

  As she opened the door into the kitchen she could hear Tilly saying emotionally to Drew, ‘Mum’s right about me not being mature enough to be married. Last night, when I was so worried about you and all I could think about was you, I felt that if we had been married and we’d had a child, I’d have resented having to look after it when I wanted to be thinking about you. I’m such a coward, Drew.’

  ‘Darling, please, you mustn’t say that because it isn’t true,’ Drew protested.

  ‘It is true,’ Tilly insisted. ‘Mum’s right, I’m not fit to be married. I’d only drag you down with my worry and my cowardice. I’m not afraid for myself but I’m so afraid for you, so afraid of being without you. Last night …’

  Drew put down the tea towel with which he had been drying the dinner plates and reached for Tilly’s hand.

  ‘It’s the same for me, you know,’ he told her gently. ‘So if you worrying about me and not wanting to lose me makes you a coward, then me worrying about you and not wanting to lose you makes me one as well. But it isn’t cowardice, my darling girl, it’s love.’

  ‘I can’t bear the thought of losing you.’

  ‘You could never lose me, Tilly. Never. My heart is yours for ever. My love will always be with you, and as for you being a coward, on the contrary, you have the courage of a lion, giving your l
ove as you have done to a stranger from another land, trusting him, believing in him. That isn’t cowardice. Only a very brave person can do that.’

  ‘Oh, Drew, why is it that you always know just what to say to make me feel better?’

  Standing on the threshold of the kitchen, Olive surveyed them both, her eyes damp with tears. Drew’s words had caught at Olive’s own emotions. There was no mistaking his sincerity.

  Perhaps she had been too hard on the young couple, too fearful on Tilly’s behalf. She wasn’t going to change her mind about them getting married – she still felt that Tilly was too young for that – but there was some lenience and trust she could show that would help to restore her daughter to her old self and give her some respite from the horror of the Blitz.

  Olive took a deep breath and then, before she could allow herself to change her mind, she stepped into the kitchen and announced calmly, ‘I’ve been thinking about how much this dreadful Blitz is getting us all down, and I think it would be a good idea if you had a holiday, Tilly. You haven’t had a proper holiday since you started work at the hospital, and now with summer coming …’

  ‘A holiday?’

  Tilly felt confused, and wary. Automatically she moved closer to Drew. If her mother was going to suggest parting them and sending her away from London and from Drew …

  ‘Yes,’ Olive agreed, looking steadfastly at her. ‘I really do think that it would do you the world of good. I can’t get away myself, unfortunately, so I was thinking that perhaps if Drew could go with you …’

  Olive could hear Tilly’s indrawn gasp of excitement and see the joy lighting up her eyes.

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Releasing Drew’s hand, Tilly almost flew into Olive’s arms, her voice breathless with delight and emotion as she told her shakily, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you really mean it. It would be wonderful. To be able to go away, and with Drew …’