Annie Groves - My Sweet Valentine

‘What’s not wonderful is the way in which America is holding back,’ said Drew grimly.

‘That’s not your fault,’ Tilly assured him loyally. ‘You’ve been sending articles back to Chicago, that tell what it is really like here, Drew.’

There was also a brief mention of the Greeks’ offensive against the Italians in Albania, plus an even more carefully worded announcement about the ongoing situation in the Middle East, before the news bulletin came to an end.

War! No wonder they all crowded round the wireless to listen to the news. Those dry, dusty facts translated for so many of them into events affecting the lives of loved ones both at home and abroad, Olive thought sombrely as she went upstairs to wash and change into her smart WVS uniform ahead of her meeting.

‘Who on earth can that be knocking on the front door at this time of night?’ Olive complained, as she was hanging up her coat in the hallway. She had only just got in from her WVS meeting and was looking forward to what she hoped would be an uninterrupted night’s sleep in her own bed without any air-raid sirens going off. She’d made the air-raid shelter, at the bottom of the garden, as comfortable as possible but there was nowhere like your own bed, even though Olive made sure that the shelter beds had immaculately washed and ironed linen and cosy blankets.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll go,’ she called into the kitchen where the girls were making cocoa and toast, the smell of this homely but appetising fare making her empty stomach rumble.

Automatically she switched off the hall light as she reached the front door to make sure that the house didn’t contravene the blackout regulations.

The sight of a man in army uniform standing on the doorstep, his face shadowed by his cap, had her asking uncertainly who he was, recognition only dawning when the visitor announced cheerfully, ‘It’s me, Rick, Dulcie’s brother, Mrs Robbins. I’ve come to see Dulcie.’

‘Rick!’ Dulcie exclaimed excitedly from the dark hallway, obviously having recognised her elder brother’s voice, rushing past Olive to throw herself into his arms. ‘I know you said you’d got leave and you’d come and see me, but I thought that you wouldn’t be able to get here, with London being out of bounds to servicemen on leave because of the bombing.’

‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ her brother told her, tapping the side of his nose in a knowing way. ‘I’d have been up in London before now, but Mum was a bit pulled down so I stayed on there longer than I’d planned.’

‘Dulcie, let Rick get inside so that we can shut the door and put the light on,’ Olive protested.

It was Rick himself who took charge in a nicely masculine way, smiling at her and then bundling his sister inside before calmly closing the door, at the same time managing politely to remove his cap.

The conversation in the hall could be heard through the open kitchen door, and Tilly felt her stomach muscles tense. She’d had a huge crush on Rick when she’d first met him. He’d made it clear, though, that he wasn’t interested in her, and he’d hurt her by doing so.

But things were different now. She’d been a girl then; she was a woman now, and more importantly, since then she’d met and fallen in love with Drew. But she’d never said anything to Drew about Rick or her silly crush on him.

Drew. She pressed closer into the curve of his arm, whilst the five of them, Drew and herself, and Agnes and Ted and Sally, looked towards the hall door.

Once he was in the kitchen and the introductions had been made Rick allowed himself a second look at Tilly. She’d been a pretty girl and now she was an even prettier young woman, and one who’d got herself a steady bloke, by the look of things. Pity that; he’d been looking forward to seeing her and dancing with her on New Year’s Eve. In fact, he recognised, he’d thought rather a lot about Tilly recently, imagining and anticipating that pretty giveaway blush of hers when she saw him. Only she wasn’t blushing and she wasn’t interested in him at all. Rick was an easygoing good-natured young man with a philosophical outlook on life. There were plenty of other pretty girls. But Tilly had been that little bit special, even if his sister had warned him off her, telling him that she didn’t want him flirting with the daughter of her landlady, who was a very protective mother.

Once again Sally went to fill the kettle. Now it was Dulcie’s turn to perch on a male knee as she sat close to her brother.

‘Desert was it, mate?’ Ted asked with a nod in the direction of Rick’s well-tanned face.

‘North Africa,’ Rick confirmed, adopting the same brisk economical way of speaking.

‘Sidi Barrani?’ Drew guessed, removing his cigarettes from his pocket to offer them around.

Rick nodded as he lit one and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs, the kitchen light illuminating the angles of his battle-hardened desert-tanned profile before he blew it out again.

‘Which reminds me,’ he told Dulcie, ‘I met up with a friend of yours in the desert – that Italian guy from Liverpool. Good chap. It can’t have been easy for him, seeing as it was the Italians we were fighting, but he never hesitated for a minute. He’s on leave as well. He’s gone home to see his parents in Liverpool.’

Dulcie tossed her head. It was a pity that Wilder hadn’t been here to listen to Rick’s comment. She’d have to get her brother to repeat it in front of him. The good-looking Italian she’d flirted with at the Hammersmith Palais in an attempt to make some of the other Selfridges girls jealous didn’t mean anything to her, but it wouldn’t have done Wilder any harm to hear that another attractive man was keen on her.

Olive, who had been watching Tilly closely, knowing how she had once felt about Rick, wasn’t as relieved as she once would have been to see how uninterested in him Tilly was. Olive wasn’t at all happy about the way Tilly had been behaving tonight. She had sensed a new, almost reckless determination in her strong-willed daughter, and she was relieved that Tilly lived at home under her own watchful maternal eye.

‘How are your parents, Rick?’ Olive asked politely ‘Have they settled down all right in Kent?’

After the death of Dulcie’s younger sister, Edith, Dulcie and Rick’s parents had moved to Kent to get away from the bombs.

‘I suppose Mum is still going on about Edith, is she?’ Dulcie asked before Rick could answer Olive. ‘She always was Mum’s favourite. I expect she thinks she’s up there in heaven caterwauling along with the angels now.’

‘Dulcie,’ Olive protested, but Dulcie simply tossed her head. ‘Well, it’s true. She was Mum’s favourite and that is what she will think.’

Everyone at number 13 knew about the rivalry that had existed between Dulcie and Edith when they had both been living at home before the war. Edith had been their mother’s favourite and favoured child, a fact about which Dulcie had vigorously complained for as long as they had all known her. Initially Olive had believed that Dulcie must be exaggerating. It seemed impossible to her, as the parent of a much-loved only child, that any mother could favour one child to the extent that Dulcie had claimed. However, after Dulcie had damaged her ankle during an air raid, Olive had visited Dulcie’s mother to alert her to the fact that Dulcie was in hospital. She had discovered then that Dulcie’s mother did indeed favour her younger daughter above her elder, and the compassion that Olive now felt for Dulcie, despite her often brash manner, dated from that visit. Not, of course, that she would ever hurt Dulcie’s keen pride by letting her know that. Hence her chiding comment.