Home for Christmas

by Annie Groves

  ‘If you must know, I can’t come. You’ll have to find someone else to bandage, because I’ve got to go to enlist for bomb disposal training.’

  Tilly couldn’t contain either her gasp of shock or her disbelief. ‘But you’re a conscientious objector,’ she protested.

  ‘That means I don’t believe in wounding or killing other people. According to the Government, that doesn’t include not wanting to be wounded or killed myself,’ he informed her bitterly, ‘which is why I have to report tonight to enlist. Enlistment, medical check, uniform collection . . .’ he ticked them off on thin trembling fingers, ‘. . . and then I’ll be off somewhere to be trained in how ultimately to kill myself, seeing as that’s what seems to happen to bomb disposal men.’

  He was right, Tilly knew. It had been in the papers how many men were killed when the bombs they were trying to make safe exploded.

  ‘I don’t understand. Why are you doing it if you don’t want to? You’re in a reserved occupation,’ Tilly pointed out.

  ‘You mean I was. We’ve got a new boss in our department. He doesn’t like me and he’s moved me to a non-reserved job, just because his own son has joined up and he thinks everyone else should do the same.’

  Tilly didn’t know what to say. It was plain to her that Kit was very upset. His Adam’s apple wobbled when he spoke and his naturally pale face looked whiter than ever.

  ‘It might be better than you think,’ she tried to console him, biting her lip when he turned to her with a burning look in his eyes and demanded, ‘How?’ before walking away at a speed that told her that he didn’t want her to catch up with him.

  ‘Dulcie, you’ve got a visitor,’ Olive told her lodger. ‘A Lizzie Walters. She said she’s come from Selfridges to see how you are. I’ve put her in the front room. You go in and I’ll bring you each a cup of tea.’

  It was half-past two, just about an hour since the all clear had sounded after a daylight air raid, during which Olive, Dulcie and Sally had all had to take refuge in the garden shelter.

  ‘Another blinking raid, that’s all we need,’ Dulcie had huffed in complaint, before adding darkly, ‘Mind you, it is Friday the thirteenth.’

  ‘I didn’t have you down as superstitious, Dulcie,’ Sally laughed.

  ‘I’m not,’ Dulcie defended herself with her customary smartness, pointing out, ‘’Cos if I was I wouldn’t be living here at number thirteen would I?’

  Now they were back in the house, Sally had returned to bed, after the quick soup lunch. Olive was a firm believer in the efficacious effect of a warming bowl of soup, as comforting as it was nutritious. Her soup had been made from the last of the summer’s home-grown tomatoes. Dulcie had been reading Picture Post when she and Olive had heard the knock on the front door.

  Putting down the copy of Picture Post, Dulcie now stood up and leaned against the kitchen table to reach for her crutches.

  Olive had gone to Selfridges to tell Dulcie’s manager what had happened, and had come back with a message that Dulcie was to stay off work until she could walk properly, so that was exactly what Dulcie intended to do. She hadn’t really been expecting a visit from any of her work colleagues, even Lizzie, who worked on the counter closest to her own, Lizzie being on bath salts and the like, and Dulcie being on a much more glamorous makeup and scent counter.

  Small, homely-looking and now engaged to her long-term boyfriend, who was in the army, Lizzie was kind-hearted enough – not like Dulcie’s arch enemies at Selfridges, Arlene on one of the other makeup counters, and Lydia, the ultra-snooty daughter of one of the store’s directors. Not that they saw much of Lydia in the store since she had married her barrister and now RAF fiancé, David. Even so, Dulcie didn’t want Lizzie getting the impression that she was not suffering with her broken ankle, so she wasn’t at all pleased when the first thing Lizzie said to her when Dulcie hobbled into Olive’s front room was an envious, ‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one?’

  ‘Lucky? With me ankle in plaster and being on crutches?’ Dulcie scoffed. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t mind a bit of time off work right now, with all these bombs falling,’ Lizzie told her. ‘It took me nearly two hours to get into work this morning, the trains were running that slow, and there’s me worrying myself sick about the bombs.’

  ‘Never mind being off work,’ Dulcie retorted in typical fashion, ‘what about not getting my wages, and ruining my best shoes? I suppose Selfridges have sent you to spy on me, have they, to make sure that I’m not swinging the lead?’

  ‘Of course they haven’t, and if they had asked me to I wouldn’t,’ Lizzie responded indignantly. ‘I was worried about you. Mind you, it looks as though you’ve got yourself a really nice billet here.’

  ‘Of course it’s nice. You don’t think I’d stay anywhere that wasn’t, do you?’

  Dulcie had never told anyone at work that she came from the East End. Some of the girls were so snooty they’d have refused to have anything to do with her or, worse, made fun of her, and now she was glad that it was here in Olive’s house that Lizzie had come to see her.

  ‘Everyone was really shocked when they heard what happened.’

  ‘Everyone?’ Dulcie raised an eyebrow. ‘What, you mean including Arlene?’

  ‘She’s leaving. She said so this morning. She said that her parents don’t think it’s safe for her to come in to London to work any more and they certainly don’t approve of her having to do fire duty up on the roof, like Mr Selfridge had us all trained to do, before he stepped down and retired.’

  ‘That’s typical of Arlene, running home to her mum and dad. Not that I’m going to miss her. Got right up my nose, she did, always making out she was something special.’

  ‘She’s not the only one who’s left.’ Lizzie stopped speaking when Olive opened the door and came in with cups of tea on a tray for them both.

  ‘I’m just off out now to the WVS, I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ she told Dulcie.

  ‘None of us know if we’re even going to get back at all these days,’ Dulcie pointed out truthfully, which made Lizzie shiver slightly.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ she complained, as the door closed behind Olive. ‘It’s made me start worrying about my Ralph all over again. I still can’t believe I’m actually going to be marrying him in three weeks’ time.’

  A dreamy look came over her face and Dulcie eyed her with irritation. Lizzie was supposed to be here asking after her, not mooning over her fiancé and their wedding.

  ‘Of course, I’ll be staying at home with my parents, with him being in the army, but like he says, it will be company for me. Oh, I nearly forgot! Arlene said this morning that she’d heard that Lydia’s husband, who joined the RAF, has been shot down and is in hospital, badly injured. I know you never liked Lydia, Dulcie, but you can’t help feeling sorry for her.’

  Dulcie, who had just picked up her teacup, put it down again abruptly, keeping her face averted from Lizzie as she told her in a sharp voice, ‘If I were to feel sorry for anyone it would be for him, for being married to her.’

  ‘That’s typical of you, Dulcie, it really is, making a remark like that. Of course you always did have a bit of a soft spot for him, I seem to remember,’ Lizzie scolded her good-naturedly.

  ‘Well, you remember wrong,’ Dulcie snapped rudely.

  ‘You wanted him to take you out dancing,’ Lizzie reminded her, holding her ground.

  ‘Only because of her – Miss Smarty Pants – and the way she carried on like we were all beneath her and she was something special, that was all. It had nothing to do with him,’ Dulcie retaliated swiftly.

  David – shot down and badly injured. David, with his thick well-groomed head of hair, his knowing and amused hazel eyes. Somehow it didn’t seem possible. That was the kind of thing that happened to ordinary men, not posh men with double-barrelled names and a title to look forward to, like handsome, charming David James-Thompson, whose sense of entitlement to be
what he was through birth and upbringing had secretly been one of the things that had attracted Dulcie to him.

  Attracted her to him? He had meant nothing like that to her, she reminded herself. She had just flirted with him, that was all, and only then to annoy Lydia. After all, she had turned him down when he had offered her a bit of fun on the side, hadn’t she? Sent him packing straight off! David . . . Dulcie could see him now striding in through the doors of Selfridges and smiling at her, even though it had been Lydia he had been walking out with. Dulcie had known then from the look in his eye that he liked her. She could have taken him off Lydia good and proper if she had really wanted him.

  ‘What do you mean, badly injured. How badly injured?’ Somehow the words had been uttered through her dry lips and throat without her being able to stop them.

  Lizzie gave her a shrewd look.

  ‘I’m only asking,’ Dulcie defended herself, shrugging angrily. ‘Can’t a girl ask? Only a couple of minutes ago you were accusing me of being unfeeling and now when I show some feelings you’re giving me that kind of look.’

  ‘I don’t know how bad his injuries are,’ Lizzie answered, her expression softening.

  Lizzie liked Dulcie even though she knew that she wasn’t very popular with some of the other girls. That was because Dulcie, with her long blond hair, her big brown eyes and her curvaceous figure was so very, very pretty. Dulcie being so very pretty and so very forward and flirtatious didn’t worry Lizzie. Her husband-to-be was the steady, serious type who would run a mile from a girl like Dulcie, but some of the girls they both worked with excluded Dulcie because, Lizzie suspected, they felt that if they welcomed her into their groups she would cast them into the shade. And knowing Dulcie, she probably would, Lizzie thought ruefully. She had certainly made it plain when she had first seen David James-Thompson that she wasn’t going to let the fact that he was virtually engaged to Lydia Whittingham stop her from flirting with him.

  Remembering that, Lizzie felt bound to remind Dulcie warningly, ‘It’s Lydia, his wife, who’ll be most concerned about that and about him, especially with them not being married all that long.’

  ‘She certainly won’t be pleased if it means there’s not going to be any little James-Thompson heirs coming along,’ Dulcie said frankly. ‘And neither will that snobby mother of his. She was the one who was desperate for him to marry Lydia, not David himself.’

  Lizzie was scandalised. ‘You can’t know that, Dulcie, and it’s a mean thing to say.’

  ‘It’s the truth and I do know it,’ Dulcie retaliated. ‘David told me himself that his mother is a snob.’

  ‘I thought you said you barely knew him. Him telling you things like that doesn’t sound much like you barely knew him to me.’

  Lizzie had caught her out and Dulcie knew it. But Dulcie wasn’t the kind to give in – over anything.

  ‘So him and me just got talking to one another – that doesn’t mean anything.’

  Only, of course, they had done far more than just talk. David had kissed her and she had let him. Dulcie would never let her heart rule her head, but there had been something in that kiss that had left her feeling unexpectedly vulnerable.

  ‘Not to you, perhaps,’ Lizzie agreed, ‘but I dare say that Lydia wouldn’t like it very much if she knew that her husband had been exchanging confidences with you. I wouldn’t like it myself . . .

  ‘Oh, did I tell you that we’ve managed to book an hotel for our honeymoon?’ she demanded, her own upcoming marriage pushing everything else out of the way. ‘It’s only for the one night, ’cos my Ralph can only get a forty-eight-hour pass, but we’ve managed to get booked in at this hotel in Southend, although heaven knows how long it will take us to get there, the trains being as slow as they are right now and filled with troops. I can’t wait . . .’ she sighed, that dreamy look on her face again.

  ‘What for?’ Dulcie said scathingly. ‘To start slaving away for a man? You’d never catch me doing that. And that’s what men expect once you marry them. A girl’s better off single, and being treated like she’s special.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘I heard that Buckingham Palace was bombed this morning in that raid we had, and that the King and Queen only just escaped being hit,’ Mrs Windle told Olive as she sat next to her in the front passenger seat of Gerry Lord’s van. Gerry’s parents, who owned a local grocery shop, had loaned the van to the WVS whilst Gerry was in the army. Olive and Mrs Morrison, another WVS member had been taught to drive it by Sergeant Dawson. Now Olive was driving as many of their group as had been able to cram into the small van towards the rest centre where they were to be on duty that afternoon to help those who had lost their homes and their possessions in the bombings.

  It wasn’t easy driving through London with so many streets blocked off because of damaged buildings and unexploded bombs, but Sergeant Dawson had taught Olive well.

  ‘But the King and Queen are all right, aren’t they?’ Olive asked Mrs Windle anxiously.

  ‘Yes, thank goodness. I do admire them for insisting on staying in London. It sets us all such a good example.’

  ‘It’s no picnic, though, is it?’ Nancy Black, Olive’s next-door neighbour complained.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ someone agreed. ‘We were without electricity, gas and water on Sunday.’

  ‘Do you think it’s really true that Hitler is about to invade?’ Mrs Morrison asked from the back of the van, whilst Olive drove carefully round a bomb crater in the road, and then equally carefully over the fire hoses that lay beyond it. Blackened buildings still smoked and Olive glimpsed a small party of people, white-faced with plaster dust, being escorted away from a half-collapsed house by two rescue workers.

  ‘Well, Mr Churchill seems to think so, since he warned us all about it last Wednesday on the wireless,’ another member of the group answered.

  Olive’s hands tightened on the steering wheel of the Austin van. She tried not to think about what would happen if Hitler did invade. To do so would be to add another layer of fear to those the war had already brought. No woman with a young daughter who had just entered womanhood could help but be fearful of what an invasion would mean for that daughter, never mind for the country itself.

  ‘The RAF will never let Hitler invade, and neither will Mr Churchill.’ Mrs Windle spoke up firmly. ‘I’ve heard that with every raid the Germans make, our boys are shooting down more of their planes.’

  That was the kind of stirring talk they all needed to hear, Olive acknowledged gratefully.

  ‘Well, of course you’re bound to say that, Mrs Windle, with your nephew being in the RAF,’ Nancy replied, ‘but if you don’t mind me saying so, I think the RAF have been a bit slow off the mark. Where were they on Saturday night when the raids first started? That’s what I want to know.’

  It was typical of Nancy that she should find fault, Olive thought, as she started to turn into a street and then had to reverse when she saw it was blocked halfway down by a fire engine.

  She felt rather sorry for Mrs Windle, and cross with Nancy when the vicar’s wife leaned close and whispered to Olive, ‘I can’t say so publicly, of course, Olive, but my nephew hinted to us that the reason the RAF didn’t appear the first night of the bombs was because they’d been ordered not to. Apparently the authorities wanted the Germans to think that they’d done for the RAF so as to give our boys a better chance of getting more of them now. The Battle of Britain lost us so many planes and pilots that they needed to build up the numbers again. Not that I’d want to say anything about this to Mrs Black.’

  Olive nodded, knowing what a gossip Nancy could be.

  ‘I dare say there’s a lot goes on that we don’t know about,’ she said to Nancy, in support of Mrs Windle.

  Olive felt that that was the truth, but she was glad that she wasn’t the one who had to make what must be very difficult decisions, putting the future of the country in the long term above the safety of some of its people in the short term.

  T
he next street was passable and within a few minutes she was able to park the van outside the school that had been taken over as a rest centre.

  ‘Just look at that queue, poor souls,’ said Mrs Morrison, as they passed the long straggling line made up mainly of worn-down-looking women and grubby children, some of the women clutched bundles of possessions, others tightly gripped the hands of their pale-faced, undernourished-looking children.

  Poor souls indeed, Olive thought compassionately. The East End wasn’t that far, as the crow flew, from Article Row but, in terms of how so many of its people lived, it was almost another world.

  ‘I hope you’ve remembered to bring that disinfectant spray, Olive,’ Nancy warned, running true to form as she gave a dark look in the direction of the queue.

  Olive exchanged a rueful look with the vicar’s wife. It was true that the smell from some of the really poor people from the East End was very pungent and unpleasant, but one had to be charitable and do the best one could to ignore it, and to think how lucky one was to have the life one did.

  ‘A cousin of mine who works as a social worker told me yesterday that she’d had to cover her nose with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne when she went with a group of dignitaries to inspect one of the public shelters. No toilet facilities,’ Mrs Morrison explained succinctly. ‘Apparently the council had simply not thought to provide anything more than a couple of buckets and a curtain. They’d had over four hundred people crammed into the shelter, so you can imagine the result.’

  ‘Some councils have been very lax about providing adequate resources in the shelters,’ Mrs Windle agreed.

  Their WVS uniforms proclaimed their status and their purpose, allowing them to go ahead of the queue into the school, where they were welcomed with relief by the hard-pressed volunteers.

  In a cloakroom to the rear of the main school hall, with its green paint and wooden floors, Olive removed her smart WVS jacket and hung it on a peg. The smell of chalk, damp woollen coats, and cabbage, which hung in the air, took her back to her own schooldays. She took an apron from her basket and put it on to protect her uniform blouse and skirt, whilst a weary-looking fellow WVS volunteer waited for her.