by Annie Groves
Christmas must be a very sad and lonely time for the Dawsons, Olive thought, her sympathy for them driving away her own momentary sense of loss.
Sergeant Dawson was standing up, announcing, ‘I’d better get on.’
‘Oh, yes. You won’t want Mrs Dawson worrying.’
‘She’ll have gone to bed. She doesn’t sleep well and she says my snoring keeps her awake if she doesn’t get off first. She prefers it when I’m working nights.’ He was holding out his hand to her so Olive extended hers so that he could shake it, her hand almost engulfed by his, the feel of his skin against her own warm and roughly male. How long had it been since she had felt the touch of a male hand against her flesh in a caress of intimacy and love?
Quickly Olive snatched her hand free, guilt and confusion staining her face with hot colour. What on earth had got her thinking like that? She’d been a widow for sixteen years and never once during that time had she so much as thought of another man. She hadn’t had the time or the inclination. And she didn’t now, Olive assured herself, as she made herself focus on the dancers.
It was getting dressed up in her new frock that had done it, Olive decided. She knew she shouldn’t have given in to Tilly’s pleas to have something ‘nice’ made from the velvet she and Agnes had bought her.
On the dance floor Tilly tried to draw Christopher out of his shyness. Concentrating on him was far less painful than thinking about last night and the way Rick hadn’t so much as looked at her after their dance, never mind asked her to stand up with him again. It must be as Dulcie had told her on their way home: Rick preferred older girls who knew what was what and that he’d only danced with her because Dulcie had asked him to do so.
In the papers conscientious objectors were often vilified and labelled as cowards. But Tilly felt more sorry for Christopher than contemptuous of him for not joining up.
‘What made you become a conscientious objector?’ she asked him curiously as they stood together in the queue for the buffet table.
‘I don’t agree with wars and fighting, and killing people. Not after what the last war did to my father.’ His gaze burned with intensity as he spoke.
‘But the country has to be defended from Hitler,’ Tilly told him.
He didn’t make any response, turning away from her.
‘Mrs Windle said that your family had only recently moved here, but most people are moving out of London, not into it,’ Tilly persisted, trying to engage him in conversation.
‘We used to live with my grandmother, but she died six months ago, and with me being in the civil service Mum said it made sense for us to move over here.’
Tilly nodded. There were a lot of Government offices in the Holborn area, including Somerset House.
‘Mr Ryder from number eighteen, who’s retired, used to work at Somerset House,’ she informed Christopher, ‘and Mr King, who owns six of the houses lower down the Row, used to have several tenants who worked in the civil service. Most of them have moved out now because of the war.’
When Christopher made no response Tilly suppressed a small sigh. She was a sociable girl who enjoyed the company of others and meeting new people, but trying to get him to talk was like drawing teeth, she decided ruefully. But good manners meant that she had to keep trying.
They’d almost reached the buffet table so she changed the subject and told him proudly, ‘You must have one of the mince pies, and a sausage roll. My mother made them.’
He nodded and then blurted out, ‘I’d prefer it if you call me Kit, not Christopher, and thanks . . . for dancing with me. I don’t think the vicar really approves of me being a conscientious objector, only, being a man of God, he can’t really say so.’
‘You’re still doing your bit,’ Tilly told him stoutly, indicating his St John Ambulance uniform.
The dance finished early, in time for the midnight carol service. As Tilly told her mother, linking arms with both her and Agnes as they set off for number 13 afterwards, there was something special about singing carols on Christmas Eve.
At St Barts, Sally shared Tilly’s feelings, her eyes stinging slightly with emotion when she left the chapel where one of the chaplains had just finished conducting the Christmas Eve midnight service.
‘We never did get to manage that meal out together,’ George Laidlaw told her, catching up with her as she walked down the corridor.
She’d seen the young doctor only briefly since his return from his posting with their evacuated colleagues, their only exchange brief nods of recognition, and sometimes a few words as they went about their duties.
‘The theatre lists have been busy,’ she told him. ‘With most of the staff evacuated and a reduced number of operating theatres, there’s been more pressure on those that there are, especially with all the blackout accidents that have been coming in.’
‘If you haven’t already got a partner for the hospital’s New Year’s Ball, and you aren’t on duty, perhaps you’d consider letting me take you to that?’
Automatically Sally opened her mouth to refuse and then closed it again. What was the point in looking backwards to what might have been?
‘I’m not on duty, and yes, I’d like that,’ she answered.
‘You will?’ George looked delighted.
Ten minutes later as she stepped out into the cold night air, her cloak wrapped warmly round her, Sally discovered that she was still smiling at George’s obvious pleasure in her acceptance.
Part Two
June 1940
Chapter Seventeen
‘Is there any more news about Dunkirk?’ Tilly asked Olive anxiously, having raced home from work to change into her St John Ambulance uniform, ignoring the discomfort of its heaviness in the heat of the early June afternoon. Like the rest of the country, she had far more on her mind than herself.
‘No real news, but according to Mrs Windle the troop trains are still full when they reach London, which must mean something.’
Dunkirk. How quickly the name had become familiar, so that over the space of a handful of days it was on everyone’s lips, the echo of its horror and bravery the beat of everyone’s heart.
Dunkirk – the beach beyond which the British Expedition Force had retreated until they could retreat no further, after the Germans had smashed through the supposedly unsmashable Maginot Line.
Dunkirk – from where not just the might of the British Establishment but the love and bravery of Britain’s ordinary citizens, in their small vessels, had plucked the waiting men to safety, bearing them home across the Channel in voyage after voyage.
Olive and Tilly had seen what Dunkirk had done to once-proud fighting men. Olive manned one of the many WVS tea urns, and Tilly helped the walking wounded when they arrived at St Pancras station, one of the London stations into which troop trains came pouring to disgorge weary retreat-scarred men from the British Expeditionary Force; men who had left behind in France not only their guns and equipment but also their pride.
In three short days Tilly felt she had left her own youth behind her, just as those men had left behind them their dead comrades and their self-belief. The sight of grown men with blank expressions and eyes that constantly looked beyond her, as her St John Ambulance unit worked amongst the wounded, no longer shocked her as it had done that first day.
Men in dirty mud-spattered uniforms, rank with the dried sweat of fear, who couldn’t look her in the eye; men with dirty bandages wrapped around wounds; men who broke down and wept with shame and relief when they were greeted with a hot cup of tea and a warm smile – Tilly had seen them all.
Because it was her turn to drive the WVS van, Olive said that she would take Tilly to St Pancras along with the members of her WVS unit she was due to pick up from the vicarage. Crouched in the back of the van, Tilly was filled with admiration for the way her mother drove, manoeuvring it with the new confidence the last few days had given her. Olive had even been co-opted into ferrying some of the walking wounded to various London hospitals for out-pa
tient treatment.
The most seriously injured men and the stretcher cases had been sent to hospitals closer to the coast, Sally had told them. The London hospitals were only dealing with the more minor cases; cleaning up wounds, before the men travelled onward to take advantage of the two weeks of home leave they had all been granted.
One of Tilly’s jobs had been to check with those arriving at St Pancras that they had sent off one of the postcards they had been issued with on arrival on British shores, to tell their relatives they were safe.
It was as she handed out postcards to those who, for one reason or another, had not already sent them that she had a glimpse of what was concealed behind the men’s blank expressions, as though the thought of those waiting for them at home was the key that turned the lock on their emotions.
This evening the number of men filling the platforms seemed larger than ever.
Craning her neck, Tilly tried to see where the milling mass ended, as she and Agnes stood together with their bag of postcards and their instructions to send those men who looked most in need of medical attention to the St John Ambulance post behind them on the station’s main waiting area, where they would be checked over and dealt with or sent on to hospital for further medical treatment.
Men were caked in a mixture of mud from the retreat across France, sand from the beaches, salt from the Channel and, in some cases, oil as well. After three days Tilly had learned enough to know that oil meant the men had been rescued from torpedoed ships.
Down at the other end of the concourse, closer to the exit, her mother, along with various other WVS groups, would be serving the men tea and biscuits, the first drink, some men told her, they had had since leaving France.
A soldier, grey-skinned and dead-eyed, standing in the line a couple of yards away from them caught Tilly’s eye. He was being supported by the man next to him, who looked equally done in.
‘Grab these two,’ Tilly told Agnes, the two girls stepping up to the men, and only just in time, Tilly recognised as the soldier being supported stumbled, and almost fell into her arms.
‘Sorry, miss,’ his companion, hollow-cheeked with exhaustion, his face grimy with oil and dirt, apologised. ‘No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Tilly assured him, gesturing to her uniform. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Has he got any injuries, do you know?’
She could almost see the soldier, who had been looking defensive and wary, relax a little at her words, as Tilly gently set the semi-conscious man back to his feet so that his companion could once again support him.
Tilly had learned that every soldier seemed to have a pal, a mate, someone from his unit who stood by him and for him, and who took charge of him when he was injured.
‘Shrapnel in his leg. They wanted to hospitalise him when we came ashore but he refused. He’s from up north – Newcastle – and he wants to get home. His brother’s bought it, see, and he wants to tell his mam and dad himself. Doesn’t want them to hear from anyone else.’
Tilly nodded and swallowed back her pity, telling the soldier, ‘That’s all very well but his parents won’t thank him if he makes his own wounds worse. That leg needs attending to.’ They both looked down at where fresh blood was seeping through the grimy bandage wrapped round the other soldier’s thigh.
Tilly could see both relief and gratitude in the companion’s eyes. ‘Just as well he’s out of it,’ he told Tilly with an attempt at a grin. ‘That’s the trouble with these ruddy North-Easterners, they don’t know when they’re down.’
‘Got to get home,’ the injured man suddenly muttered, pulling away from his friend. ‘Got to tell me mam and dad about our Tommy.’
He lurched forward and then stopped his eyes widening with shock before he looked down at his own thigh. Bright red blood was now soaking through the bandage. He put his hand on it and then removed it, staring at his own bloodstained hand.
He was haemorrhaging, Tilly guessed.
‘Quick, Agnes, go and get Mr Ogden. Tell him we’ve got a haemorrhage. We need to lie him down and lift his leg up.’
Almost before she had finished speaking soldiers were moving into action, clearing a space, lying their comrade down. Tilly had her first-aid kit with her, but it contained only the basics, she was reluctant to apply a makeshift tourniquet when there might be shrapnel in the wound that her actions could push in further.
The soldier had opened his eyes, and Tilly could see the panic in them.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him softly. ‘You’re home now, and you’re safe.’
‘Gotta see me mam. Don’t let me die before I’ve seen her,’ he pleaded, tears filling his eyes and running down his cheeks, making clean runnels in the dirt.
‘We won’t let you die,’ Tilly assured him. He had reached for her hand and she held it tightly, and kept holding it just as she held his gaze as Agnes returned with the leader of their brigade and two of the more senior members.
‘It might be a shrapnel wound,’ Tilly told the brigade leader quietly. ‘He wouldn’t let them hospitalise him when he came ashore. He wants to get home to tell his parents about the loss of his brother.’
The other members of the brigade were working quickly and efficiently to stem the bleeding as Tilly spoke, sliding a stretcher beneath the young soldier.
It wasn’t until the soldier was being stretchered away that Tilly looked up and realised that one of the men who had assisted with him was Dulcie’s brother, Rick, although she had to look twice before she could be sure that it was him. There was no sign of the good-looking charm on his face now. Even his curt nod in her direction in confirmation of his recognition of her was a world away from the easy manner she remembered. Not that she had any fondness for Dulcie’s brother now. He had led her on, no doubt to boost his own ego, without thinking how she might feel about his behaviour. She had been such a naive girl then, she thought ruefully with the benefit of nearly six months of extra maturity behind her. An idiot, really, to be taken in by someone as vain as Rick, and not worth wasting her tears on. Well, she knew better now. She was a popular girl, with young men eager to take her out, but Tilly had learned her lesson in one sharp and very painful evening. She would never allow herself to be so gullible or easily hurt again. Nor would she ever be naive enough again to fall for a handsome face. In fact, she was off men, full stop, and had decided that instead of risking getting her heart broken she was going to concentrate on putting her energy into helping as much as she could with the war effort.
Her glance at Rick was cool and professional, letting him know that she wasn’t the silly young girl who had quivered with delight just to be in his arms. Then she saw in his expression and bearing what she had seen in so many returning soldiers. It wasn’t just the loss of friends and comrades that marked them, it was the loss of pride and confidence as well. They had been saved from potential death and imprisonment not by their own endeavours but by the endeavour of others, rescued from France’s beaches like helpless children, as one soldier had already described it to her.
‘You stand there in line waiting, not knowing if you’re even going to make it to the boats. Three days we were standing there waiting. It does something to you inside your head,’ he had told her. ‘It takes something from you that you know you’ll never get back.’
Nodding brusquely at Tilly – how could a girl like her possibly understand the hell that had been Dunkirk? – Rick still felt raw and shocked by what he had experienced. Raw and shocked and shamed by the way they’d had to turn tail and run. It didn’t matter how often he’d heard older, more experienced soldiers saying, ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day,’ his pride, not just in himself but in his country, had been put through a firestorm from which he had emerged harder, angrier and determined to defeat the Germans . . .
Rick turned away from Tilly to rejoin the remnants of his unit. The lad who’d been stretchered away was seventeen. He’d lied about his age so that he could enlist with his older b
rother, the brother they’d had to leave behind in the mud with his head shot off and his brains splattered all over the road, after an aerial attack by the Luftwaffe. Rick had yelled out a warning but Tommy had been helping a young mother with her children, carrying a young boy too exhausted to walk, as they fled along with others, because the Germans were invading their country.
The mother and her children had died with Tommy, and the dozens of others the Luftwaffe had sprayed with gunfire.
Tommy’s brother had insisted on burying what was left of Tommy, after he had finished throwing up. Rick suspected that the boy had half hoped to be killed himself, watching the risks he had taken afterwards.
It wasn’t glorious and heroic: it was dying on the roadside with your head blown open; it was blackened arms and legs separated from rotting bodies strewn along the road to the coast like lifesize dolls’ limbs; it was fear and sickness, and screams of agony, both physical and mental; it was the fury and frustration of standing in line on the beaches whilst the Luftwaffe blew you apart and the sky above you remained empty of the RAF. It was seeing grown men cry for their mothers, seeing men die slowly over the long hours they waited for rescue; it was feeling that you would die of thirst but knowing you couldn’t risk losing your place in the line.
And after that, being back here in London, seeing people who were clean and not injured and safe, and knowing that they were as alien to you now as though they belonged to a separate race.
It was knowing that nothing ever could or would be the same.
Rick couldn’t risk speaking to Tilly because if he did he was afraid that he would tell her these things that could not be told to anyone, least of all a young girl like her.
It was gone eight o’clock in the evening before the flood of men was reduced to a trickle, and Tilly and Agnes were free to leave their posts and make their way over to where Olive was handing over responsibility for the tea urns to a new group of WVS.
