My Sweet Valentine (32 page)

No, handing her over to the authorities was definitely
the right and the best thing to do – for everyone concerned.

In her own bed later that night, lying in the darkness, Agnes said a special prayer, begging that little Alice wouldn’t be abandoned as she had been. They had been kind enough to her at the orphanage, but that hadn’t stopped her always yearning for a family of her own, and since she had come here to number 13 she had realised even more just what she had missed out on. She would have loved to have had a mother like Olive, a loving, kind wise mother, who had loved her as much as Olive loved Tilly.

It had only been since she had come here and since she had met Ted that she had realised what maternal love actually was. Ted’s mother loved her children every bit as much as Olive loved Tilly, even if Ted’s mother’s love for her son and her two daughters was a fiercely protective kind of love, which seemed to want to exclude Agnes from its magic circle.

Being orphaned was dreadfully lonely, more lonely than anyone who wasn’t orphaned could ever imagine. So lonely that you could feel as though you were the only person in the world, even when you lived in an orphanage packed with other children. There was a coldness, an emptiness about not having anyone of your own, an envy of the happiness of families when you saw them together, a longing to be able to creep close to the warmth of their family life and an awareness that you never ever could because you didn’t belong there.

Poor little Alice. Right now she knew nothing of this, but one day, if Sally handed her over to an orphanage,
she would. But then Sally didn’t understand what being orphaned was like.
She
did, though, and if she and Ted had already been married she’d have taken the baby in herself, Agnes thought sadly.

‘You seem a bit preoccupied. Is everything OK?’

Sally nodded in response to her fellow sister’s concerned question. ‘We’ve got a full operating list for tonight already and I suspect that we’ll have more emergencies coming in if there’s more bombing tonight.’

It was the truth, and she hoped she was professional enough to give her full attention to the patients who needed it. But she also couldn’t deny that her mind was also on what had happened at number 13 earlier. She couldn’t possibly keep the child, even if she had wanted to, which she didn’t. But Agnes’s reaction to her announcement that Alice would have to go into an orphanage had touched a nerve within her that she hadn’t realised existed.

And then there was George. It had been one thing not to tell him about her father when he had not been part of her life in any way, nor was likely to be, but now his death and the arrival of Alice complicated things.

Her father’s death: his burial in a mass grave, because so many had been killed at once by the blitz in Liverpool. Sally closed her eyes to squeeze back her tears. Why should she want to cry for him, though, when she had lost the father she had once believed she had had over two years ago? Confusing, irrational, overemotional thoughts were threatening her normal self-control, and Sally didn’t like that. She liked her life to be ordered
and structured, calm and uncomplicated. She didn’t care for drama and too much emotion.

She looked at the watch pinned to her uniform pocket and then went in search of one of her two juniors to ask her to fetch some cleaning fluid for the equipment trolley, before making her way to the theatre to make sure that everything was in order ahead of the first operation of her shift.

SEVENTEEN

On her way to her room Tilly paused on the landing as she heard her mother talking to Alice through the open door, as she walked up and down her bedroom floor with her.

‘She was crying, poor little mite,’ Olive told Tilly when she saw her. ‘And no wonder. It must give her a fright when she wakes up in such unfamiliar surroundings and with so many strange faces around her.’

‘Do you think that Sally really will put her in an orphanage?’ Tilly asked, unable to resist smiling coaxingly at Alice’s tear-dampened face.

‘I don’t know, Tilly. Are you and Drew going out after the football’s over?’ she asked, changing the subject. The truth was that in the few short days Alice had been with them, Olive had grown very attached to her. Once Olive had explained the situation to Audrey Windle and the other members of their local WVS group, they had all rallied round, and now Alice had a pram, a high chair, a playpen, several sets of clothes, some nappies, and a whole host of cooing admirers
who were already offering to babysit, should their services be required.

‘Seeing her reminds me of how much I want to be a grandmother,’ Mrs Morrison had told Olive ruefully, ‘and how much, at the same time, I don’t want our Ian rushing into marriage whilst he’s still in uniform.’

Hearing her WVS friend saying that had made Olive feel better about her refusal to allow Tilly to get married. But just like Mrs Morrison, she had discovered that Alice had made her realise how much she would enjoy being a grandmother – when the time was right.

‘We aren’t going out. Drew said that he’d probably end up going to the pub with the friend he’s going to the match with, but he would come round afterwards. We decided London’s bound to be busy with so many football supporters up for the FA Cup. I hope we don’t have an air raid tonight.’

Alice was drifting off to sleep in Tilly’s mother’s arms. The arms that had held her as a baby, only then her mother had been very young.

‘It must have been hard for you, Mum, without Dad, and having me,’ said Tilly abruptly.

Olive looked at her. They had been at odds for so long that Tilly’s comment had caught her off guard.

‘Did you ever … did you ever wish that you hadn’t had me? I mean, it would have been easier for you—’

‘No. Tilly, you must never think that,’ Olive protested, the sudden movement she made making Alice give a small baby protest before Olive settled her back comfortably in her arms.

‘Well, I thought because you don’t want me to get
married that perhaps it was because you regretted being left with me.’

‘Oh, no, Tilly, never that. You were my strength, my reason for going on after I lost your dad,’ Olive sighed. ‘I know you think I’m being unfair and unkind in refusing to let you and Drew marry until you’re older, but I promise you that I am doing it for your sake.’

‘When Dad was sick,’ Tilly persisted, ‘did you worry then about him not being there and how you’d feel?’

‘I couldn’t believe it when the doctors told us. I suppose I didn’t want to believe it. None of us did, even though we could all see how much weaker your dad was getting. Of course, we were living with your grandparents, and it was your grandmother who took charge and who did most of the nursing. I had you to look after, and he was her son, after all.’

Tilly tried to imagine how she would feel if she was prevented from spending that last precious time with a dying Drew – if she was relegated to the role of onlooker. She would hate it, she knew.

‘That must have been hard for you.’

‘Well, yes, it was, but I had you to look after as well, and your grandmother loved your dad so much. I’d hate you to be in the position that I was, Tilly, not wanted and even perhaps a little resented and blamed for someone’s ill health. Your grandmother wanted your father to herself, you see. He was her son, her child. She felt that marrying me had been too much for his health.’

‘I worry so much about something happening to Drew,’ Tilly admitted. ‘He says it’s silly. He says that nothing happens to reporters unless they’re reporting
from the front line, but I can’t help it. Whenever he isn’t with me I worry. Ever since that night when the incendiaries came down and I thought he was going to die … I don’t feel frightened of the bombs for myself. Just for Drew. I’d rather we were both killed together than live without him.’

‘Tilly …’

‘I can’t help it, Mum. I never realised that love could be like this and that I could feel so afraid. All I want is to be with Drew.’

‘Marriage wouldn’t take away your fear, Tilly,’ Olive told her gently.

‘No, but I’d have my memories, memories of being his wife.’ Tilly’s face went pink and Olive knew that she herself was colouring up a bit too. They both knew that Tilly meant memories of how it felt to be held close to the warm naked body of the man you loved, after he had loved you. Jim had been a gentle careful lover – when he had been able to be her lover. After Tilly’s birth, when his health had started to get worse, the sight of him crying silently in their shared bed when he felt too weak to be a proper husband to her had hurt Olive far more than his inability to make love to her.

‘I just hope that Sally doesn’t put Alice in an orphanage, Ted. She’s ever such a lovely little thing. As good as gold, hardly ever cries except when she wants her bottle. She’s settled in so well at number 13, and when you think of what she’s been through …’

‘Now don’t you go upsetting yourself,’ Ted urged Agnes, recognising that she wasn’t far from tears as
they walked hand in hand towards Leicester Square and the Odeon in the early evening light. They weren’t the only ones out and about: the city was busy with people making the most of the new Double Summer Time.

‘I can’t help it,’ Agnes admitted. ‘I can’t bear the thought of poor little Alice growing up thinking that she’s got no one of her own and that no one loves her.’

Ted squeezed Agnes’s hand. He knew how much her own abandonment on the steps of the orphanage still hurt her.

‘Well, you were the one who suggested coming to see a show instead of going dancing,’ Dulcie reminded Wilder when he complained that the theatre just off Shaftsbury Avenue, in which they were now taking their seats, was small and ‘nowhere near as good as anything you’d get on Broadway in New York’.

Dulcie felt that if anyone had the right to complain it should be her. After all, she already suspected that the only reason Wilder has initially chosen this particular review show was because the newspaper advertisement had claimed it had the highest kicking chorus line in London.

With the house lights still on, Dulcie could see that the red plush seats were faded, but then what wasn’t looking the worse for wear in London these days?

The seats around them were certainly filling up, and many of the men were in uniform. At least Wilder had bought them good seats in the circle. She frowned again, though, when she saw him slipping a coin into the machine that dispensed a pair of opera glasses, the better
to see the stage, but without offering to pay for a pair for her.

The lights dimmed, the curtains swishing open. The orchestra in the pit struck up a popular slightly saucy review number, the dinner-suited singer breaking off from singing it to tell the audience, ‘Here come the girls’, as the chorus came onto the stage from either side.

Dressed in fishnet tights, and a uniform of shorts, tightly fitted jackets and little hats perched on their curls, the chorus did a parade ground march to the shouted orders of their ‘drill sergeant’, much to the approval of some of the men in the audience.

The girls were all singing as they danced, and one of them in particular caught Dulcie’s eye, her heart slamming into her chest as she stared at her in disbelief. She’d recognise that face anywhere, and that skinny body.

Edith. But it couldn’t be. Edith was dead. Dulcie looked again, harder this time, as she focused on the blonde three in from the end of the line, who was making big eyes at the audience and wiggling her behind just that little bit more than the others, and then reached across and grabbed the binoculars with which Wilder had been studying the chorus line with far too much enthusiasm, ignoring his objecting, ‘Hey,’ to study closer the young woman who looked so like her sister.

Her mouth had gone dry, and her heart was racing. If it wasn’t Edith then she had a double. Dulcie would have recognised those small pale blue eyes anywhere, even if she had tried to make them look bigger with all that bright blue eye shadow. Always been jealous of her own
lovely eyes with their thick dark lashes, Edith had. How Dulcie had laughed at her for putting Vaseline into her own much sparser ones at night in the belief that it would make them grow.

She’d obviously peroxided her hair too. It had never been anything more than just short of mousy naturally, and she was probably wearing a hairpiece to thicken it up. Dulcie wasn’t deceived, though. That was definitely her sister. Through the opera glasses she’d even been able to see that small chip out of one of her front teeth where she’d fallen as a ten-year-old. Never one to allow anything to get the better of her, Dulcie was already mastering her initial shock, even though her recognition of her supposedly dead sister had given her a really nasty turn. That was typical of Edith, it really was, not thinking about how someone who knew her was going to feel, seeing her like that, alive and large as life when she was supposed to be dead.

Hard on the heels of the initial shock that gripped her, Dulcie felt a fierce surge of anger.

Well, of all the … She was certainly going to have something to say to Edith the minute she got off that stage, letting their mother get herself in the state she had because she’d thought she was dead. Yes, and going on to her, Dulcie, about it like she had, Dulcie decided wrathfully.

The number was coming to an end. Dulcie stood up, putting the opera glasses down.

‘Where are you going?’ Wilder demanded when she made to get past him.

‘I’m going backstage to see my sister wot’s supposed to be dead, but isn’t, since she’s just been cavorting around
and screeching on that stage down there, to find out what she thinks she’s doing, pretending to be dead when she isn’t. Mind you, I dare say I’d prefer to have people think I was dead than know that I was alive and working in a place like this.’

‘Dulcie,’ Wilder protested, but it was no good, Dulcie was already out in the aisle and making her way down towards the exit that led to the stairs.

‘’Ere, you can’t come in ’ere,’ a stagehand tried to stop her when she got backstage, but Dulcie ignored him, storming past and leaving Wilder to follow her. The babble of female voices led her down a short, dark, dank corridor smelling of cigarettes, stale air and dust, until she reached the open door at the end of it.