My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  ‘Tilly,’ Drew protested, ‘you know what I promised your mother. Look,’ he added quickly when she started to move towards him, it’s nearly one o’clock – why don’t we have our sandwiches?’

  ‘Sandwiches? You’d rather eat sandwiches than kiss me?’ Tilly protested.

  ‘No,’ Drew admitted ruefully, ‘but I’m afraid that if I start kissing you now I won’t want to stop.’

  He had looked so handsome this morning when he had arrived to collect her, wearing a navy-blue blazer, which he had now taken off, over a pale blue V-necked sweater and white open-necked shirt, his smart grey trousers perfectly creased. Drew was always well dressed in good-quality clothes – clothes that in London, Tilly knew, were expensive, but she assumed that they must be less expensive in America because she knew also that Drew didn’t earn an awful lot as a junior reporter.

  Her own dress was new, made for her by a local dressmaker, one of two she’d saved up for and paid for herself, and a good buy now that clothes could be bought only with clothing coupons. She and her mother had got the fabric in a clearance sale from a warehouse that had been damaged in the April bombing. This red dress had a smart little white short-sleeved bolero, and her other dress, which was made from a lovely floral-patterned cotton sateen in shades of blues and lilacs and purples against a dark gold background, was smart enough with its halter-necked style to wear in the evening, as well as making a very pretty sundress for daytime wear, and it too had a matching bolero jacket.

  Of course she’d brought more casual clothes with her in the small suitcase that Mrs Windle had lent her: shorts and a pretty blue and white spotted shirt-style top, which tied at the waist, a dirndl skirt in royal blue with a white scalloped hem she could wear with a white blouse and cardigan, and, very daringly, a pair of trousers, which had become all the fashion now that girls were having to take on men’s jobs. Her mother had been a bit concerned they might be too modern for a quiet little village but Tilly had insisted they would be perfect for cycling in, and very sensible if the weather turned cold.

  Drew had told her that he was packing his tennis whites in case there was a nearby court. Tilly didn’t have a tennis dress, and nor could she play tennis, but Drew had said that he would teach her and that she could wear her white shorts, plimsolls and a white top and she would be fine.

  The village where they were staying was several miles inland from the coast. They were to leave the train at Budleigh Salterton, and then take a branch-line train to the village of Astleigh Magna on the River Otter. Drew had planned the whole route, drawing diagrams and showing them all at number 13 the route they would take. Tilly had felt so proud of him for being so organised and manly.

  Now, as Tilly unwrapped their egg and cress sandwiches from her mother’s carefully hoarded greaseproof paper, the excitement fizzing up inside her felt as exhilarating as any champagne. Three whole days – and nights – completely alone with Drew. Well completely alone, that is, apart from the owners of the pub and their other patrons.

  The sunlight streaming in through the carriage window lightened the shiny rich darkness of Tilly’s curls and glinted on the gold of Drew’s ring as it lay against her creamy skin revealed by the sweetheart neckline of her pretty dress. She was so wonderful, his Tilly, Drew thought as his heart swelled with love for her. So deserving of the very best of everything. It was excellent to see her restored to her old good spirits after the misery she had endured during the Blitz. All he wanted, all that really mattered to him now that he knew her, was Tilly’s happiness. He was so lucky to have met her, and even luckier to have her love. She was so trusting, so giving, so adorable in every way.

  ‘Was it like this when you and your family went on holiday to the lake when you were little?’ Tilly asked him curiously, gesturing towards the landscape outside the window. ‘How long did it take you to get there? Did you go by train?’

  About to take a bite out of his sandwich, Drew stopped, his appetite gone as the guilt that was never very far away robbed him of his desire to eat. Like dark clouds on the horizon threatening the best of sunny days, the truth he had kept from Tilly threatened their happiness together.

  He looked at her. She was so sweet and innocent, so trusting and unknowing. He tried to imagine her in the forbidding shuttered house in Chicago, which belonged to his father, but he couldn’t. The life that was lived there would choke the joy out of her. But she didn’t need to know about Chicago. He could stay here in England and protect her from it. Liar, liar, a contemptuous inner voice derided him. Tilly was looking at him now, her face radiant with her love for him, expectation and happiness shining from her.

  She was still waiting for him to answer her question. Drew looked away from her, through the carriage window.

  ‘The lake’s up in the mountains. There’s lots of trees, but not fields.’

  The heaviness of his voice and the sombreness of his expression made Tilly view him with concern. Lovingly she reached out and touched his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve made you sad, talking about your home, haven’t I? You must miss it and your family, Drew. I know I would in your shoes.’

  ‘I don’t miss anything or anyone when I’m with you,’ he assured her.

  By the time they’d finished their egg sandwiches the train was slowing down as it approached their station.

  Of course, the name of the station had been painted out to make it difficult for any Germans who might try to invade to know where they were. Prior to them setting out, though, Drew had counted the number of stops the train would make before reaching Budleigh Salterton, but he still checked with the uniformed guard as they alighted from the train to make sure they had the right stop.

  A brisk nod of his head and a few words in an accent that had Tilly’s eyes widening as she heard his Devon burr, and a porter was wheeling away their luggage, leaving them to follow him to the platform for their local train, after he had asked them, ‘Do ee want the Astleigh Magna branch line, ’cos if ee do then him be this way?’

  After exchanging a look with Drew and trying not to giggle, Tilly nudged Drew and said, ‘Just look as these flowers. Everything is so pretty,’ as she admired the flowerbeds bright with colourful bedding plants in red, white and blue.

  ‘Won the best East Devon station prize four years running, us beds have,’ the porter told them, overhearing.

  It wasn’t long before their train arrived, and half an hour later Drew was helping Tilly down off the train in a chocolate-box-pretty sleepy little village that was drowsing in the late afternoon sunshine.

  From the station they could see the pub, which was at the far end of a row of thatched cottages, the first of which was a post office. As they walked past the cottages the air was filled with the sound of bees humming in the cottage gardens. Outside one of the cottages, an elderly lady sat knitting, a small fat dog snoring at her feet.

  ‘I’ve got to take some photographs of this place,’ Drew told Tilly.

  As they approached the pub they could see that beyond it, in a dip in the land, lay the river, and a bridge that crossed it led to the church and a row of almshouses. Drew had read up about the village, which originally had been part of a large estate and had housed estate workers. Outside the pub three elderly men sat on wooden benches. Brief nods of their heads was the group’s only acknowledgement of the newcomers’ arrival, as Drew ducked his head under the low lintel of the pub’s open door. Inside it was dark and cool after the warmth of the sunlight. It smelled of polish and beer.

  A woman emerged from behind the bar. Plump and rosy-cheeked, she eyed them and then announced, ‘You’ll be that young couple as have come down from Lunnon. If you leave your cases here, I’ll show you up to your rooms and John boots can take your cases up later for you. You’ll get your tea served at five o’clock sharp, before we open, and then there’ll be a bit of supper for you after last orders. With you not arriving until after opening time today, I’ve put a bit of cold pie and some salad to one side for
you. Breakfast is at seven thirty, and you’ll have to make your own arrangements for your dinners. It’s this way.’

  To Tilly’s surprise she led them out of the pub via a back door and across a garden planted with vegetables to another building that made an L-shape to the pub.

  ‘Used to be a barn, this did, in the days when there was coaches and horses,’ the landlady explained as she opened the wide doors and led them up the steep stairs to a long narrow landing with several doors off it.

  ‘These two rooms are yours,’ she told them, indicating the two rooms that were furthest away from one another, one at one end of the corridor and the other at the other. ‘Bathroom’s here,’ she opened the door in front of them, ‘and there’s a key in each of your doors. I’ll thank you not to take the keys out with you on account of them getting lost. I’ll leave you to settle in now. John boots will be up with your cases in a few minutes and then when you’re ready if you come down to the bar I’ll sort you out with your food.’

  ‘Which room do you want?’ Tilly asked Drew after they had waited to hear the door downstairs close on the landlady.

  ‘I don’t mind. Let’s have a look at them both, shall we?’ Drew suggested, ‘and then you can choose.’

  Half an hour later, when John ‘boots’ brought up their cases, they were both agreed that there was nothing much to choose between the rooms. Both were the same size, both possessed high old-fashioned double beds, small dormer windows with views over the surrounding countryside and large open fireplaces in which dried flowers had been placed since it was summer.

  ‘I wish we’d been given rooms next to one another,’ Tilly told Drew with a small sigh.

  ‘I rather suspect that our landlady wouldn’t have approved of that,’ Drew smiled. ‘Come on, let’s unpack and then go down and have something to eat. Then we can go for a walk and explore.’

  It was gone midnight. Tilly knew she ought to be asleep, but she wasn’t. Her double bed was clean and comfy, the bed linen smelling of fresh air and summer. She and Drew had had a lovely long evening walk through the village and across the river to the church, closed for worship now, they had been told by the landlady, with worshippers having to travel to another local village to attend church since the death of their last vicar. Drew had shown her the fish basking beneath a rock in the river in the last rays of the dying sunlight, and she had picked him a nosegay of wild roses from the hedgerows as they had ambled arm in arm. It had been a long day, a wonderful day, and there was no reason for her to be lying here wide awake, on edge and unable to sleep. No reason except that Drew was in another bedroom separated from hers only by the length of corridor. She so much wanted to be with him.

  Parting from him tonight had been such a wrench, and right now more than anything else she wanted to go to him, but they had promised her mother, and Drew would want to keep that promise, Tilly knew.

  In London at number 13 Olive too was unable to sleep, worrying about the temptation she knew Tilly would be facing.

  Sally was also lying wide awake, knowing that this was only the first of many nights when she would lie here aching for George and his love.

  TWENTY

  ‘I wanted to be with you so much last night.’

  They’d picked up the cycles they’d arranged to hire from the post office that morning, where Drew had also enquired about obtaining a fishing licence and hiring a fishing rod so that he could show Tilly how to fish, and now, after a morning spent exploring the area, and stopping off at a teashop in another village, they were lying on a grassy embankment watching clouds drift across the sky.

  ‘We can’t, Tilly,’ Drew reminded her.

  ‘I know. Tell me more about your family, Drew,’ she urged him. ‘I know we aren’t officially engaged but … well, it would be nice to be able to write to your sisters and your mother. What is it?’ she demanded when she heard Drew’s indrawn breath.

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered, but Tilly knew that he was concealing something from her, as surely as she knew that a cloud overhead had just obscured the sun.

  ‘There is something, Drew,’ she insisted. ‘And I want to know what it is. You don’t want me to write to your family, do you?’

  ‘It isn’t that, Tilly.’

  ‘Then what is it? Will they think I’m too young, like Mum does, is that it?’

  It was so unlike Drew not to answer her questions openly and immediately that instinctively she knew something was wrong.

  This was the moment he had always known would come, and now it was here Drew’s heart felt heavy with guilt and anxiety.

  ‘Tilly, there’s something I have to tell you … something I should have told you before …’

  The heavy portent in his voice and his expression made Tilly feel as though someone had seized her heart in a vicelike grip.

  ‘There’s someone else?’ she asked him, half stumbling over the words. ‘Someone you loved in America before you loved me? Who is she, Drew? Tell me about her.’

  Drew looked up at the sky and then back down at the ground. He reached for Tilly’s hand and then stopped. Tears filmed her eyes. Right now she badly needed Drew to hold her hand. She was so afraid of what she was going to hear, so afraid of the dark uncertainty with its threat of heartache that had come out of nowhere. It was too late now, though, to wish her questions unasked.

  ‘Let me explain to you a bit about my family background, Tilly. You know that my family live in Chicago and that I work for a Chicago paper as a reporter. All that’s true, but what I haven’t told you is that my father owns the paper. In fact, he owns several papers.’ Drew exhaled. He was sitting up, his arms wrapped round his knees, and now he dropped his head toward them as he fought back the images and memories that were seething inside his head.

  ‘My father had to work very hard to get where he has. He married late in life – my mother’s family owned a rival newspaper he wanted to acquire. Her father, my grandfather, died of a heart attack after my father forced a buyout on him. My father desperately wanted several sons to mould in his own image to inherit from him, and after four girls my arrival … well, let’s just say that my father had decided even before my birth what my life would be. He wanted more sons but an accident shortly after my birth meant that that couldn’t happen. He’s confined to a wheelchair, but woe betide anyone who thinks they can treat him as an invalid. My father rules his empire with an iron fist. And he rules us, his family, in the same way. I have never really been the son he wanted.’

  ‘Drew …’ Tilly protested, but Drew shook his head.

  ‘No, it’s true. I take after my mother’s family. Her brother, who died of TB in his early twenties, wanted to be a writer, just like I do. My father doesn’t understand why I would want to write. Writers, reporters – to him they are simply people who shape the news the way he wants them to shape it, so that he can control the opinions of the readers of his newspapers. The only reason my father allowed me to come to London in the first place was because of his vanity, his belief that having me based here, reporting back, would reflect well on him.

  ‘I let him think that I agreed with his views of the way I should report back. That’s something I’m ashamed of now, but it was the only way I could come here. Somewhere in mid-Atlantic I deliberately jettisoned the Drew who was my father’s heir and forced to go along with everything he wanted or risk seeing my mother half bullied to death by him for my sins of omission that were laid at her door, to become the Drew that I am today. But it was you who truly gave me the courage to be the person I’ve wanted to be, Tilly. You, with your love and your faith in me, your belief in me and your lack of concern for wealth and status. You allowed me to be myself, truly myself, for the first time in my life. You’ve allowed me to believe that money doesn’t matter, that there are more important things, that being true to myself and my own dreams is the right thing for me to do.’

  ‘And the girl? The girl you were to have married?’

  ‘It was never anything formal.
Just something my father wanted me to do – one day. We didn’t even date. I never really even thought about her until I met you and I realised what love truly is. Can you forgive me, Tilly, for not telling you before? I can’t promise you a life of financial comfort, I can’t even promise you that I will make it as a published author, or even that I’ll have a job once my father realises that I don’t intend to go back. I can, though, promise you all my love for ever.’

  Tilly could feel her heart thudding. Drew’s revelations had shocked her. She had had no idea he was keeping such a secret from her, and hurt that he had. But she knew Drew.

  She knew that he loved her and she knew that he would never want to hurt her. If he said that other girl had never meant anything to him and that he had never made a true commitment to her, then she, Tilly, was prepared to believe him.

  ‘I don’t care about your father’s money. All I want is you, Drew. But what about your family, your mother? She must—’

  Drew felt his eyes sting with tears. She was so true and honest, his Tilly.

  ‘My mother isn’t like yours, Tilly.’ He looked away from her and then reached for her hand.

  ‘Once my mother must have been a young woman who had dreams, or at least I hope that she was, but she was a very rich man’s daughter, used to having the best of everything. When her own father died and my father proposed to her I think she felt it was easier to accept his proposal, with all that that would mean, rather than to risk suffering a drop in her standard of living. She loves all of us, her children, but her fear of our father means that she always has to put his wishes first.’

  ‘She wouldn’t approve of me, would she?’ Tilly guessed.

  Drew’s grip on her hand tightened. ‘I’ll never let my father control our lives the way he has done the lives of my sisters. His wealth and his power, his need for that power, have corrupted him. That isn’t going to happen to us. Our lives, mine and yours, will be lived here in England. If that’s what you want. If I am what you want.’