My Sweet Valentine (18 page)

‘How do you know? How do any of us know what someone else really thinks? We can only know what they tell us, can’t we?’

Tilly couldn’t possibly know how guilty those words made Drew feel or how much they cut into his conscience. He should have told her the truth right from the start. If he had … If he had then she wouldn’t be with him like this now. If he had she would have rejected any advances he had made to her, he knew. He mustn’t think about that now, though. He must concentrate on reassuring Tilly that her mother truly loved he.

‘Your mother has always told you that she loves you,’ he reminded her gently. ‘You’ve said that yourself.’

‘She’s said the words, Drew, and I’ve always believed them, but now with her being the way she is over us, I can’t help questioning—’

‘Why don’t you talk to her? Why don’t you tell her what you’ve told me?’

‘What’s the point? She’ll only tell me what she wants me to hear. She wouldn’t want to hurt me, I know that. So she’ll say that I’m wrong, but how can I know that? How can any of us know what another person really feels?’ Tilly moved even closer towards Drew, seeking the comfort of his nearness.

Putting his arm around her as she nestled against him, her head on his shoulder, Drew closed his eyes briefly against the terrible weight of his conscience. He had been so close to telling Tilly everything, so very close. And if he had, would she now be putting him in the same category as her mother, as someone who – she felt she couldn’t trust to be honest with her? If only he’d told her right from the start. But he hadn’t known then that this – they – would happen, and by the time he had known it had been too late to tell her the truth because he had been afraid that the tenderness of their burgeoning new love wouldn’t be able to bear the strain of what he had to say and that she would reject him. Now they must both pay the price of his cowardice – he himself because of the wretched misery he had to live with because he hadn’t told her, and Tilly because his deceit placed in jeopardy her complete trust and belief in him.

‘Come on,’ he told her. ‘We’d better start heading back to Article Row. I’m getting hungry and your mom makes a terrific fish pie.’

Recognising that Drew was trying to lighten her mood, Tilly smiled. It was after all true that her mother was a wonderful homemaker and cook, somehow managing to make their rations stretch to genuinely tasty meals. Drew’s
insistence on ‘helping out’ because he was eating so many of his meals at number 13 benefited them all, of course, especially when it came to the boxes of food that came for him from his home in America. Tilly’s mother had tried to refuse this largesse but Drew had simply told her that if she did then it would be wasted because it was far too much for him alone. So her mother had accepted the food but had insisted on donating some of it to the WVS for distribution to those who were homeless.

Friday’s traditional fish pie, though, came from everyone’s rations, even if it was likely to be supplemented by tinned tomatoes from Drew’s mother’s gifts.

The people who eventually assembled at number 13 ready for Sergeant Dawson’s stirrup pump demonstration did not include every member of Olive’s group. Sally was working nights, for one thing, and had left for the hospital, and Ian Simpson and several other neighbours had all been called up for fire-watching duties by their employees. Dulcie, meanwhile, had retired to her bedroom, having flatly refused to get involved, saying that she planned to varnish her nails ready for her evening out at the Ritz. However, there were enough people there to fill Olive’s kitchen and spill out into her hallway.

All of them were, of course, familiar with the sight and the function of a stirrup pump. The devices had been around from the beginning of the war, after all, but since this was the first time they were going to be given the equipment in an official capacity as recognised fire-watchers, rather than individual householders, a mood
of determination and responsibility was very much in evidence amongst the older members of the group, especially the Misses Barker, who had been telling Drew how they had wanted to volunteer to drive ambulances during the last war but how their parents had refused to let them.

‘I expect that was because they wanted to protect you,’ Olive offered, overhearing the conversation and giving Tilly a meaningful look.

There wasn’t time for Tilly to retaliate, because a knock on the door had her mother going to admit Sergeant Dawson and one of the young messengers employed by their local ARP unit, who had wheeled round the wheelbarrow from which he and the sergeant removed a Redhill container, a long-handled scoop, a hoe, a galvanised metal bucket and the stirrup pump itself, carrying them into the kitchen, where they carefully put them down in the middle of the circle formed by the would-be fire-watchers.

‘Ideally every household should have its own pump, but we’ve been issued with only enough to provide each street with a couple at the moment,’ Sergeant Dawson informed them before accepting Olive’s offer of a cup of tea.

‘Olive’s given us chocolate as well,’ Miss Mary Barkers told Sergeant Dawson happily.

‘It’s from Drew really. His mother sends it to him from America,’ Olive put in quickly. Nancy wasn’t here but she’d become so aware of her neighbour’s tendency to find fault that automatically she felt defensive.

‘After we gave young Barney his English lesson the other day he asked us if he could have a look in our
tool shed to see if there are any spare wheels in there. Of course, we had to tell him that there aren’t.’

The two Misses Barker were retired teachers, and at Sergeant and Mrs Dawson’s request were giving Barney extra lessons to make up for the time he had had off school before they had taken him in.

‘He’s hoping to build himself a bit of a go-cart with some boys he’s got friendly with at school,’ Sergeant Dawson told them. ‘They’ve got some ideas of making their own fire truck. Some of the older boys started making them and following the fire engines, and now the younger ones want to do the same. Barney says that he wants to make an Article Row fire truck.’

‘Oh, how brave of him!’ Jane Barker applauded, asking her sister, ‘Might there be something in the shed amongst Father’s things that he could use, Mary?’

‘Aren’t you worried that Barney could get hurt?’ Olive asked the sergeant.

‘There’s no harm in him making his fire truck, but when it comes to him using it you can be sure that I shall be keeping a very watchful eye on him,’ he assured her.

Olive busied herself pouring the sergeant and the messenger boy cups of tea. After handing the messenger boy his cup she hesitated. If Tilly hadn’t been so deeply engrossed in her conversation with Drew she could have asked her to give the sergeant his tea, but as it was she had no alternative but to take a deep breath and then offer him the cup and saucer.

‘Thanks, Olive.’

When a man had large hands, as Archie Dawson did, it was unavoidable that that hand should touch her own
when he took the cup and saucer from her. That might be completely natural, but her own reaction to that brief contact was neither natural nor acceptable in a widow of her age where a married man was concerned, Olive mentally chastised herself.

‘I’ve heard that in some streets they’re setting up a collection so that they can buy their own extra pumps,’ Eric Charlton, one of the tenants who rented number 48, one of Mr King’s properties, announced. A short mousy-looking man with a thin moustache, who worked at the Ministry of Agriculture and who had turned his back garden into a model of a ‘grow your own’ plot, his comment earned him the immediate disapproval of Mr Whittaker from number 50.

‘Ruddy government,’ he said angrily, ‘making us pay for what they should provide us with. It’s bad enough having to form our own fire-watching team without being expected to pay for equipment as well.’ Scowling he glowered at poor Mr Charlton, who huddled closer to his rotund wife, as Len Whittaker gave vent to his feelings.

Anxiously Olive listened to him. His anger did not bode well for the unity of their small group.

As though he had guessed what she was thinking, Archie Dawson leaned towards her and told her in a comforting undertone, ‘Don’t worry about Mr Whittaker leaving, Olive. I reckon he’s just taken the huff because you’ll be having the stirrup pump at this end of the Row. After all, it isn’t as though he couldn’t afford to buy himself one. He’s reckoned to be pretty comfortably off.’

‘You wouldn’t think so from the state of his house,’
Olive whispered back, equally discreetly, as she stepped back slightly from him and tried not to blush when she saw the slightly questioning look he was giving her. She had to stop being so silly. Archie Dawson was a neighbour, after all, and a very good one. He had done nothing wrong. ‘I’ve started taking him down a plated-up Sunday dinner since the Longs left, and number 50 is so thread-bare inside you’d think that he didn’t have two pennies to rub together,’ she told him, determined to behave normally. ‘Poor Mr Charlton was only telling Sally the other day that he’s worried that the seeds from the weeds in Mr Whittaker’s garden are going to blow over and take root in his plot. He has to wage a constant war against them.’

‘A bit like us, then, with these,’ the sergeant told Olive with another smile, gesturing towards the waiting equipment before turning back to the assembled volunteers and telling them, ‘I know that most of you will be aware of how incendiary bombs work, but since we’ve had the Germans dropping this new and more dangerous version of them on us I thought that to start off I’d just run through with you exactly what they are. German planes drop a large bomb casing loaded with small sticks – bomblets – of incendiaries. This casing is designed to open at altitude, scattering the bomblets in order to cover a larger area. Originally the purpose of these was to light up targets for the following planes to drop much heavier bombs on, but since they’ve realised how much damage these incendiaries can inflict on people and their homes, the Germans have taken to dropping even more of them, and they’ve modified them to make them even more dangerous.

‘An explosive charge inside them ignites the incendiary material, which is usually magnesium. This causes a fire, which can extend six to eight feet around the bomb, showering anyone who tries to get close to it with burning pieces of metal. Magnesium can’t be put out by throwing water on it, although of course the fires caused by the sparks can be dowsed in water. It is because of these sparks that we have to have buckets of sand in which to dowse the incendiaries, and why we need to act with speed before they can explode properly.

‘The actual incendiaries, as many of you will have already seen, are bomblets weighing about two pounds, contained in a relatively narrow cylinder. At one end of this cylinder there is a set of sharp fins, which enable the incendiary to penetrate surfaces such as roof tiles and the wooden beams beneath them. It is very, very dangerous for anyone to try to pick up one of these incendiaries without taking the precautions I am going to outline to you in a minute. I must stress how dangerous these newer incendiaries are. They are at their most deadly when they are nearly burned out because that’s when their flames reach the explosive, which is located under the fin. It is therefore the fin and just above it that is the most lethal part of these devices.’

‘Well, I’d heard that the best way to tackle an incendiary, if it hasn’t got fastened into anything, is to grab hold of it, smash it down hard on something to separate it from the fin,’ Eric Charlton said.

‘I have heard of firemen doing that,’ the sergeant agreed, ‘and I’ve also heard of firemen who have lost a hand, or more, through doing it. Here on Article Row we aren’t looking for heroes, especially dead ones.’

Olive noted with gratitude the collective sucked-in breaths of his listeners. How wise he was to give them all a stark warning of the danger of trying to be too gung-ho.

‘Now,’ Sergeant Dawson continued, ‘when it comes to those incendiaries that can be dealt with, this is how to do that.’ Turning towards Olive he asked her, ‘If I could trouble you for a bucketful of water, Ol— Mrs Robbins?’ before turning back to his audience.

‘If you aren’t already doing so just make sure that you fill what you can with cold water at night, just in case, especially baths, because should a local water main be hit then your stirrup pump isn’t going to work.

‘Hitler’s incendiary bombs are designed to penetrate any roofs on which they land, via their sharp fins. Then once they’re safely inside, they’ll explode, showering whatever room they’re in with burning magnesium sparks that will quickly start fires. Our task as fire-watchers is to make sure that that doesn’t happen, and that’s why every time there’s an air-raid warning the first thing you do is make sure that those who are supposed to be watching for falling incendiaries do so. That’s why you need a team of watchers, in pairs say, one every five or six houses. It’s the same principle as that old warning that a stitch in time saves nine. Spotting where the incendiaries fall means that with luck your team can get to them and put them out before they get the opportunity to do any damage. And that’s where your Redhill container and your long-handled shovel and hoe come in.

‘Say, for instance, one of you saw an incendiary fall, the closest watcher would send his or her partner round to
the house concerned with their equipment. The long handle of the hoe and the shovel mean that it’s possible for whoever is using them to keep well away from the bomb itself whilst they scoop some sand out of the container to put on the bomb to put the fire out. The sand and the bomb can then be hoed up and placed in the container itself to be doubly sure it is out.

‘As an alternative, or if a fire has already taken hold, what you must do is carefully open the door onto the room with the fire, making sure that you keep the door between you and the fire, and then aim the water from the pump either at the ceiling to fall on the fires, or at the fire itself.

‘Keeping your sand in a wheelbarrow can be a good idea. Then you’ve got it readily transportable.’

‘Well, I certainly won’t be filling my wheelbarrow with sand,’ Mr Charlton protested. ‘I need my barrow for my gardening. And there’s no point in saying we buy more. They can’t be had.’