My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  ‘I can’t have someone scaring the living daylights out of my girl, especially when she’s bin kind enough to take him a meal,’ Ted smiled down at Agnes.

  ‘Well, it isn’t Mr Whittaker who frightens me, although he can be a bit gruff. Mind you, I think he’s really taken to you, Ted. He was asking you ever so many questions, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He certainly was. Had me going right back to me granddad, wot worked down at the tannery he did. That took me back a bit, I can tell you. I can see Granddad now standing outside the Carter’s Arms, smoking his pipe, waiting for it to open. If he was late back for his tea me nan used to go and give him a real dressing down,’ Ted chuckled. ‘Of course, Mum didn’t really approve of Dad’s family, and she won’t hear them spoken of now that she’s got this Guinness Trust flat. Asked me about that too, Mr Whittaker did. And how I thought I was going to be able to support a wife. Told him that we’d agreed that we wouldn’t get married until the girls are older. Anyway, if it isn’t Mr Whittaker you’re afraid of, what is it?’

  ‘Number 49, the house next door, the one that the Lords used to live in. Mr Lord died there, you know, and Barney and those two lads he hangs around with swear that it’s haunted.’

  ‘They’re having you on, Agnes, and just trying to scare you.’

  ‘No, Ted. I’ve heard noises myself, after that bombing in May when I took Mr Whittaker his tea one night.’

  ‘There’s no such things as ghosts,’ Ted assured her stoutly.

  Agnes didn’t say anything. Instead she moved closer to him.

  It had been a difficult day at work. Sally had heard this afternoon that they’d lost a patient – a fireman – on whom they’d operated the night after the blitz. The surgeon had had to amputate both his legs and there had been wounds to his chest as well, caused by falling glass. They had all known that it would be a miracle if he did survive but that didn’t make his death any easier to bear. Surgeons and those who worked with them took it as a personal affront if a patient didn’t survive, and the atmosphere in the theatre after they’d had the news had been very prickly.

  As an antidote to that loss Sally had changed into the faded old dress she wore when she was working on the veggie plot and had come out to do some weeding.

  Ten minutes ago Olive had come out with Alice, whom she’d placed on a blanket on the grass under the gnarled apple tree, and now Olive had gone inside, saying casually, ‘Keep an eye on Alice for a minute for me, will you, Sally?’ Sally was now alone in the garden with her baby half-sister.

  Of course she had to watch her. She might not want her in her life but that did not mean that she was uncaring enough not to watch out for the baby’s safety out of the corner of her eye whilst she got on with her weeding.

  She could hear Alice talking to herself, half singing, half chattering as she did whenever she was trying very hard to do something, and as she turned round Sally saw she was crawling towards her at some speed.

  Not that Sally was going to behave as the others did at this bit of baby cleverness. No. She certainly wasn’t going to coo and smile and clap her hands, and then hold out her arms to the little girl. There was no point in encouraging her, after all.

  But then Alice stopped crawling and sat back on her well-padded bottom and gave Sally the most beatific smile as she held out her arms to her, her fat little baby hands imploring Sally to hold her.

  Inside her chest Sally felt as though something was cracking and then tearing apart, as though it were being ripped by strong hands, the sharpness of the pain making her catch her breath as she fought against both it and the instinct that urged her to go to the little girl. As she started to turn away from her she could see the happy smile fading from Alice’s face, to be replaced by a lost look of confusion and fear. The look of a child who knew even at that baby age how alone she was. She didn’t cry or make any kind of sound at all, but Sally discovered that she wanted to cry. She had had such a happy childhood, filled with love and security. She had never needed to look like Alice was looking, or as Agnes sometimes did even now. She thought of her mother. No need to ask what she would think or what she would do; she had known the answer to those questions right from the moment she had seen Alice.

  Putting down her hoe and removing her gardening gloves, Sally went towards the still silent baby.

  When she reached her she crouched down beside her. Alice looked at her with a dark dense-eyed gaze that revealed uncertainty and anxiety. Inside her head Sally had a picture of Alice abandoned in an orphanage, whilst she walked away from her. Her heart was thumping heavily and fast, as though she had just escaped from the most awful kind of horrific accident, her relief at escaping it stabbed with the anxiety of how close she had come to succumbing to it. Sally felt as though she were waking from some kind of dangerous hypnotic dream that had, like a fast-flowing river, been carrying her towards some distant danger from which there could be no going back, and only just in time. What could have possessed her ever to think she could turn her back on Alice?

  No baby should look like that, and least of all because of her. How could she have even thought of abandoning her? Her mother would have been horrified and disbelieving that the daughter she had raised with so much love could do such a thing to an innocent baby, and her own flesh and blood.

  Quickly, as though she were afraid that someone might take her from her, Sally picked up her half-sister, and held her tight. How odd that holding her should feel so right, as though somehow she had always know her warmth and weight, and the small movements of her body as she kissed the top of the dark curls. Tears filled her eyes as she realised how close she had come to losing something very precious.

  Olive, watching the small touching scene from the kitchen window, exhaled shakily in relief. She’d already made up her mind that if Sally had persisted in her plans to have Alice adopted she was going to offer to be the one to adopt her. And not just for Alice’s sake. Olive knew her lodgers, she knew and understood what Sally had been through, but she also believed that if Sally had abandoned Alice ultimately she would have been torn apart by regret and guilt that would have completely overshadowed the happiness with George she so much deserved.

  ‘Hello, little sister,’ Sally whispered to Alice. How easy it was now to touch one rose petal cheek and marvel at the softness of skin that was the same tone as her own, the little nose surely the same elegant shape as their shared father’s had been.

  Was it foolish of her to feel that her mother had somehow had a hand in making her see not just what was right, but what true joy there could be in her loving Alice?

  Sally looked up and saw Olive coming towards her carrying a tea tray.

  ‘You knew this would happen, didn’t you?’ she accused her landlady ruefully as she settled herself in one of the deck chairs that had originally belonged to Olive’s father-in-law, and which lived in the garden shed, which Sally now kept almost as spick and span as her operating theatre.

  ‘I hoped that it would,’ Olive agreed, watching Alice laugh and cuddle up to Sally as she sat in her half-sister’s lap. ‘For your sake as well as for Alice’s, Sally. I understood how you felt, and the terrible shock you’d had, not just because of the arrival of Alice but also the news of the death of your father and Alice’s mother. You loved them both very much, and love doesn’t always die as conveniently as we want it to.’

  ‘I’ve felt such a strong sense of my mother these last few days, as though she’s watching over both of us and urging me to … to love Alice and look after her.’

  Olive reached for Sally’s hand. ‘I’m sure that she is, Sally. I never met your mother, but from everything you’ve told me about her I don’t doubt for one minute that she’d want Alice to be with you and that she would love her herself.’

  ‘She would. She was like that. She loved people so much and they loved her. Everyone loved her.’

  When Olive didn’t say anything Sally challenged her shakily, ‘You’re thinking that my father and Morag must
have loved her as well, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Olive acknowledged.

  Sally gave a small sigh. ‘I hope that one day I’ll be ready to believe that, for Alice’s sake.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to tell George, though, Olive. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want her. I love George so much. I didn’t want to sacrifice the happiness I know I’ll have with him to look after Alice. I know that’s selfish of me.’

  ‘No it isn’t. It’s only natural. From what I know of George, though, I’m sure that he’ll be as ready to take on Alice as you now are, Sally.’

  Sally shook her head. ‘I can’t expect him to do that. It wouldn’t be fair. Besides, once he knows how much I’ve kept from him … We’ve both always said that honesty between us is important, and now …’

  In Sally’s lap Alice made a small sad sound as though she sensed Sally’s distress. Automatically Sally cuddled her closer to soothe her.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see him and tell him everything. I’ve got to offer him his ring back, Olive. Anything less than that would be wrong.’

  NINETEEN

  ‘… and since then our Edith’s started wanting to tag on with us when me and Wilder go out, and she’s bin writing to him. The cheek of it,’ Dulcie complained to David as they sat outside in the June sunshine, where she had wheeled him in his chair.

  Whilst other amputees were getting to grips with their new false limbs, the complications David had had with his amputation wounds after he had first been operated on meant that it was likely that he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Not that Dulcie thought that should bother him.

  ‘After all,’ she’d told him on her first visit after the news had been broken to him that he would be wheelchair bound for the rest of his life, ‘I dare say it’s much more comfortable being pushed round in a chair than having to try to walk on them artificial legs. Ever so difficult, they look, and painful too. No, I think you’re lucky that you can’t manage them, David.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ David had agreed, ‘although it will mean me having to have ramps and the like put in when I move back to chambers and my rooms at Lincoln’s Inn, once I’m discharged from here. I’ll have to find a decent-sized ground-floor flat, of course, and not too far from chambers either.’

  Dulcie couldn’t really understand why David was insisting on going back to work as a barrister, especially when it turned out that he had inherited so much money from Lydia after she had been killed, and her having all that money from her grandparents. But then men had their own funny ways, and right now it was Wilder’s ‘funny ways’ that were occupying Dulcie’s thoughts and exacerbating her ire.

  ‘I’ve told Wilder that he’s just got to ignore Edith, and that she’s just making a play for him because he’s going out with me. Always been like that, she has, wanting what I’ve got, and of course our mum always letting her get away with it. Well, I’m not going to.’ She scowled as she thought of her sister and how aggravating she was being, writing to Wilder after he’d taken those friends of his to see her show, and actually daring to suggest that he took her out for dinner one night. The cheek of it! Of course, Wilder had agreed with her that Edith had had no right to suggest what she had. After all, he was her boyfriend, not Edith’s. And just to prove that, Dulcie had allowed him to kiss her far more passionately than she normally did the last time he had taken her out. Just to let him know which side his bread was buttered on, so to speak.

  ‘So you want to talk to me about something?’

  Sally nodded, deliberately walking slightly apart from George as they set off on their favourite walk around East Grinstead, instead of tucking her arm through his. The sunlight glinted on her engagement ring. The engagement ring she would be giving back to George before she left him today. Oh, she knew he would say that it didn’t matter about Alice and that he loved her – he was that kind of man – but it did matter. It would certainly matter to George’s family – to his mother, who had been so welcoming to her; how would they ever be able to feel they could trust her now, when she produced a half-sister she had never let them know existed? Last night when she had bathed Alice, the little girl had reached for her ring, her innocent delight in touching it tearing at Sally’s heart. How could she ever have thought of George as just a pleasant young man? How could she not have known the minute she had met him how much she would love him and have told him everything there and then?

  She looked at him now. His dear honest face was creased with concern – for her, she knew – and anxiety. He reached for her hand but she shook her head and, being George, he didn’t fuss or object, simply watching her with even more concern.

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I … I’ve lied to you, George. Deceived you. I’m so sorry. I wish that I hadn’t. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realise when we first met what would happen between us, and I was too … I didn’t want … I let you think that both my parents were dead, because … because to me they were, but it wasn’t the truth.’

  Quietly she explained the events that had followed her mother’s death and the anguish and anger they had caused her.

  ‘I didn’t mean to deceive you. I just didn’t want to talk about what had happened – to anyone. Then when Callum came to London to tell me … to tell me that there was to be a child, I had to explain to Olive what had happened but I didn’t tell anyone else. To me, my father was dead – at least the father I had known and loved, the father I had thought I’d had was dead. I couldn’t bear the thought of what he had done, of what they had done. I hated them both,’ Sally admitted in a small guilty voice. ‘I hated them and I hated the very thought of the child they were to have.’

  ‘And Callum – did you hate him as well?’

  For the first time in their relationship Sally could hear anger in George’s voice and it confirmed everything she had known and feared would happen when she told him of her deception.

  ‘Yes. If anything, I hated him even more than my father and his sister, because …’

  ‘Because you loved him?’

  Why were they talking about Callum? He wasn’t important any more. The love she’d once thought she had had for Callum was nothing compared with the reality of the mature grown-up love she felt for George.

  ‘I suppose so …’ She brushed aside George’s question. Her heart was thumping and it ached with the pain of the parting she knew must come. She was anxious to get to the end of her explanations, anxious to give him back his ring and walk away from him, leaving him free to find someone to love who would not be deceitful and who he could trust as she knew he would now never again be able to trust her, before she broke down completely, begged him to forgive her and never ever to leave her. That was how much he meant to her. He meant everything to her. Everything. He was the very best of men, and he deserved the very best of fiancées.

  ‘I thought it didn’t matter that I hadn’t told you about my father. After all, he wasn’t part of my life any more, and as far as I was concerned he was dead to me, but then …’ She stopped walking and so did George, so that she could turn towards him to stand in front of him and tell him what she must as bravely as she could.

  ‘My father and Morag were killed in the May blitz on Liverpool, but Alice, their baby, survived. Callum brought her to me on his way to rejoin his ship. I’m all she’s got, George. I wanted to have her adopted and never tell you about her. I was going to. I’d got it all planned, but I couldn’t. She needs me. Please don’t hate me.’ She pulled off her engagement ring as she spoke, and held it out to him, her hand trembling. ‘One day I hope you’ll find a girl who’s more worthy of this than I am.’

  ‘And Callum, do you still love him? Are the two of you planning to bring up Alice together?’ George demanded, as he took the ring from her.

  ‘What? No, of course not.’ Sally knew she couldn’t cope with much more. ‘I’m so sorry. I know you’d do the decent
thing and take on Alice if I asked you to, but I can’t do that to you or to your family. Not when she’d always be a reminder of my lack of honesty. Every time you looked at her – every time your mother looked at her – you’d both wonder if you could really trust me to be honest with you and I couldn’t bear to have that barrier between us.’

  ‘Sally …’

  ‘No, please don’t say anything, George. I can’t abandon her. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.’

  And she didn’t know how she would live without George and his love either, but somehow she must.

  ‘I’m back on duty in ten minutes,’ he told her. ‘We can talk more about this later.’

  Sally nodded, but she knew that ‘later’ she would be on her way back to London. What was there, after all, for them to say to one another that could put things right and miraculously give them back the security of the loving trust they had now lost?

  ‘Oh, Drew, do look out of the window. How pretty the countryside looks, all these fields and trees.’

  Drew smiled as he heard a city girl’s wonder in Tilly’s voice as she looked wide-eyed out of the window of their first-class compartment at the countryside through which they were passing. She was as excited as a little girl going on holiday for the first time, he thought indulgently, but of course she wasn’t a little girl, and her pretty red cotton dress, with its bright pattern of black and white Scottie dogs and the sweetheart neckline, revealed a figure that most definitely did not belong to a little girl. A desire to take hold of her and kiss her gripped him, but Drew resisted it. He had promised Tilly’s mother that his behaviour would be impeccable and irreproachable.

  Tilly, though, seemed to have a sixth sense where his feelings for her were concerned because she suddenly looked at him and smiled.

  ‘Since we’ve got the carriage to ourselves, why don’t we pull down the blinds into the corridor and then you can kiss me – properly,’ she suggested softly.