My Sweet Valentine (11 page)

‘I do,’ Drew assured her, ‘but you know what I promised your mom, Tilly. What
we
both promised her. Don’t
look like that,’ he coaxed her, adding firmly, ‘Wait here. I’ve got something special to show you.’

As he released her and turned away to start to climb the stairs, Tilly made to follow him but Drew shook his head and told her firmly ‘No, Tilly. You must wait down here. Otherwise, I’m not going to show you.’

He meant it, Tilly could tell.

Reluctantly she stood in the hallway and watched as he bounded up the stairs two at a time. She heard a door open and then close. Drew’s bedroom door. Her heart turned over and then started to race. She looked at the stairs. If she followed him up to that room; if she kissed him as she had done before, then …

Then it wouldn’t be fair to Drew, she warned herself. Because he had promised her mother, and she loved him too much to want to make him break that promise, knowing how badly he would feel about it if he did.

The bedroom door opened and then closed again, and then Drew was coming downstairs toward her carrying a sheaf of typed papers.

‘I’ve started writing the book,’ he told her, shaking his head when she reached out to take the pages from him. ‘No, I’m not going to let you read it – not yet.’

‘When did you start? You never said anything.’

‘The night we went to see St Paul’s.’

Silently they looked at one another and Tilly knew that he too was remembering how close she had come to losing her life.

She stretched out her hand towards him and Drew took it, wrapping his large hand around her small one, making her feel safe and protected, and loved just as he had done then.

‘I wasn’t going to say anything yet, because I’m not sure … well, I don’t know how you’ll feel about it, but it just feels so right, even though it’s not exactly what I planned.’ He looked away and then back at her. ‘It’s about us, Tilly, about you and me and our war as well as the people of London’s war – the brave ordinary people of London – and I’m writing it so that we’ll never forget. I never want to forget what our war has been like, just as I know that I shall never be able to forget that moment when I thought that I might lose you.’

‘You’re writing about us … about me? I’m going to be in a book? But I’m not important enough to be in a book.’

‘Yes, you are, Tilly. You are the most important person in the world to me.’

‘When can I read it?’

‘Not yet. Not until it’s finished.’

Tilly’s heart swelled with loving pride. She just knew that Drew’s book was going to be wonderful.

‘I’m going to take this back upstairs and then you and I are going to go out and enjoy our Valentine’s evening,’ Drew told her.

‘However lovely my treat is, Drew, it can’t make me any happier than you’ve already made me,’ Tilly told him.

When he came downstairs again, though, Tilly remembered that she had something else to tell him – a message from her mother.

‘Mum’s decided that she’s going to go ahead and set up this fire-watching team for Article Row. She wants to ask you and Ian to join the team.’

‘I can’t speak for Ian. I’ll tell him, though, of course,
and needless to say I want to join. I think it’s really commendable of your mother to take this on, Tilly, but then she’s that kinda person, always wanting to help out where she can.’

‘I dare say she’ll rope in all of us at number 13. I can’t see Dulcie being keen, though. She’s already creating about having to do fire-watch duty at Selfridges. Oh, but you’ll never guess. The Misses Barker from number 12 got to hear about Mum’s plans – from Nancy, I suppose – and they’ve both said that they want to be involved.’ Tilly laughed. ‘That was definitely one in the eye for Nancy, although given their age I can’t image that Mum’s going to want them climbing on roofs or leaning out of attic windows so that they can spot falling incendiaries. They must both be in their sixties.’

Drew laughed too, but said, ‘No, but they will be able to help clear away any of the incendiaries that have fallen in the area. It will be team work that will keep Article Row safe, Tilly. Come on, we’d better make a move otherwise we’ll be late.’

‘Just one more kiss before we go?’ Tilly pleaded.

Not that she needed to plead very hard. She could see that from the look in Drew’s eyes.

Their train was predictably late in arriving at East Grinstead station. As George was meeting them at the station, Sally and Dulcie said their goodbyes to the others, who were all lodging within walking distance. As they queued to hand over their tickets to the waiting ticket inspector, Sally suspected that the majority of the passengers exiting the station had travelled to the small town to visit relatives at the hospital. With several
young women amongst them, it looked as though there would be a reasonable number of partners for the men at Saturday night’s dance, which gave her all the more reason to regret that she had ever invited Dulcie to join her.

That feeling increased when they were still waiting for George fifteen minutes later, and Dulcie had complained about his tardiness for every one of those fifteen minutes. It didn’t help that it had started to rain, a fine miserable freezing drizzle that was slowly soaking through Sally’s knitted gloves.

‘If you was to ask me I’d say the best thing we could do is get on the first train back to London,’ Dulcie informed her in a sharp voice. ‘I don’t know why I ever let you talk me into coming here.’

A car was coming towards them, its headlights dimmed for the blackout. It pulled to a halt right in front of them. It was a very smart and expensive-looking car indeed, Sally recognised. When the driver’s door opened and George climbed out she could hardly believe it, simply standing staring at him in disbelief until he opened the passenger door and called out, ‘Come on and get inside before you get even wetter.’

This was more like it, Dulcie decided, having immediately settled herself in the comfortable front passenger seat and pulled the smart tartan car rug she had found there across her lap, leaving George to deal with her weekend case, and Sally with no alternative other than to climb into the back of the car. Sally’s boyfriend must be doing well if he could afford a car like this.

Only, as George explained once he was back in the driver’s seat and indicating to pull back out into the road,
the car actually did not belong to him, but to his boss, the famous pioneering surgeon.

‘Mr MacIndoe said I could borrow his car to pick you up when he realised that our last op of the day had run over, and that meant I’d had to leave you both standing in the rain. He sends his apologies, by the way. Oh, and if you don’t mind I just want to drive back to the hospital before I drop you off and see that you’re settled in, just to check that my patient is comfortable. He was still pretty much out for the count when I left him.’

Before Dulcie could voice what Sally knew would be objections, she assured George quickly, ‘Of course we don’t mind. It’s a treat to be chauffeured in such a lovely car, isn’t it, Dulcie?’

‘So where’s this dance being held then?’ Dulcie demanded, not vouchsafing an answer.

‘At the hospital. We have a room there that we can use and it will be more comfortable for the men. Although the townspeople here are marvellous about not making the men feel self-conscious about their injuries, some of the patients are pretty reluctant to leave the hospital. That’s why Mr MacIndoe is so keen to have these social events. He believes that it’s as important to get the men back into living normal lives as it is to deal with their physical injuries. The mental and emotional trauma they suffer is every bit as bad as the physical stuff, although, of course, some of them handle it better than others. Those with families – wives and girlfriends who rally round – do the best, although we do get some who hate what has happened to them so much that they refuse to see them. We have to remember that most of these men are RAF – young, strong, good-looking men who had
the world at their feet before they were injured. Men that other men envied, men who girls always looked twice at in their smart uniforms and because they are heroes, instead of because of the severity of their injuries. Now, here we are …’ George told them as he swung the car into the road that led to the hospital, its bulk outlined as a dark shape against the slightly lighter sky by the thin moonlight escaping through the clouds.

‘I shouldn’t be too long,’ George told them as he brought the car to a halt. ‘I’ll have a word and see if I can get you each a cup of tea whilst you wait for me.’

‘Would it possible for me to go with you, George?’ Sally asked. ‘Just out of professional curiosity. That’s if Ward Sister will allow it.’

Sally knew from George and her previous visit that the nursing care provided to Mr MacIndoe’s patients was rather different from the ordered routine of Barts Hospital. Mr MacIndoe had a rule that the nurses smile at their patients at all times and, indeed, that they actually teased them and flirted with them a little, to help boost the men’s confidence.

‘Sister won’t mind – she’s an old Barts nurse,’ George assured her, as he got out of the car, opening the rear door for Sally first and then going round to help Dulcie out of the front passenger seat.

The minute they entered the hospital Dulcie wrinkled her nose against the fiercely pungent smell of clean linoleum and disinfectant.

‘I’ll leave you here in reception,’ George told her. ‘I’ll ask someone to bring you a cup of tea. We won’t be very long.’

Ten minutes later, growing increasingly bad-tempered, Dulcie wasn’t best pleased, having stopped a nurse who was going off duty to ask her where her cup of tea was, when the other girl said she didn’t know and then added, ‘Your stocking seam’s gone and run all over your leg.’

A quick look over her shoulder showed Dulcie that the nurse was right and that her carefully applied eyebrow pencil ‘stocking seam’ had run with the rain.

‘Where’s the nearest toilet then?’ she demanded.

‘Down the corridor, turn left, then right and it’s halfway down that corridor on your left.’

She was gone in a swirl of her cloak before Dulcie could say anything more. Showing off, Dulcie thought crossly. Not that she’d got any reason to do so, not with those thick ankles of hers.

Down the corridor. Well, that was easy enough. ‘Turn left, and then right, and it’s halfway down the corridor on your left.’

The other girl might have said just how long the corridors were, Dulcie thought indignantly when she finally found the ladies’, and was able to inspect the damage to her ‘seams’ by standing on the lavatory lid with the door open so that she could see the back of her legs in the slightly spotted mirror above the washbasin.

Ten minutes later, her seams fully restored to their original smartness, and her handkerchief rather the worse for wear, having been used as both a flannel and a towel, Dulcie set off back to the reception area.

Down the corridor and then turn into the other corridor and then … Had she come this way? Dulcie wasn’t sure, and the corridor she was in now seemed to go on for miles.

It never came easily to Dulcie to admit that she was wrong – about anything – but even she was beginning to feel that she was going to have to turn round and retrace her steps when, to her relief, up ahead of her she saw a pair of double doors. Hurrying towards them, she pulled them open and then came to an abrupt halt.

She was in a ward. It was filled with men – men sitting or lying in bed, men seated in chairs, men leaning against walls and talking to other men, men in uniform, men in pyjamas, men talking, men smoking, and men simply lying silently in their beds swathed in bandages. Tall men, short men, men with dark hair and men with fair hair. But men who all had one thing in common – the severity of their injuries.

Other young women might have turned away, unable to bear the evidence of what war could do to the human body, but Dulcie wasn’t like that. She lacked that delicate female sensitivity and imagination that made most of her sex so aware of the pain of others. On the other hand, she wasn’t the sort to shrink from such things either. It simply wasn’t in her nature. She had grown up in the poverty of the East End. In that world there had been adults who had rickets as children and as a result had weak and twisted limbs, men who had lost limbs during the Great War, a little boy three houses down from where Dulcie had lived had suffered horrendous burns when he had pulled a pan of boiling soup over onto himself.

Now, instead of turning away from the sight of young men with badly burned faces and missing limbs, she simply stared curiously at them.

One of the men who had been standing closest to the door, smoking a cigarette, put it out and called out, ‘Hey,
boys, look. We’ve got a stunner of a pretty girl come to visit.’

Immediately all the men who were able to do so turned towards her.

‘Who are you looking for?’ the young man who had spoken up asked her.

‘No one,’ Dulcie replied. ‘I got lost on my way to reception.’

Confident by nature and toughened by her upbringing, Dulcie felt no self-consciousness at being the only young woman amongst so many young men. Their obvious interest in her she took as no more than her due. Flirtatious comments and tributes to her prettiness were something she took in her stride, preening herself like a queen amongst her courtiers as she accepted them, whilst privately thinking that it was just as well that she had reapplied those rainwater-damaged ‘stocking seams’.

‘Well, reception’s loss is our gain,’ one of the men told her appreciatively.

This was Dulcie’s favourite milieu – being at the centre of male attention – and whilst it was true that these men bore the scars of their injuries very openly, they had enough confidence and enough youthful verve despite their bandages for her to decide that tomorrow’s dance might be good fun after all. And it would just serve Wilder right if she did have fun after the way he had let her down. In Dulcie’s opinion he should have made much more of an effort to see her tonight.

‘Going to the dance tomorrow?’ asked one of the young men, who had limped over to her. He was rolling a cigarette with one hand, the stump of his other, missing
arm heavily bandaged, like almost all of the left-hand side of his face.