Women on the Home Front

by Annie Groves

  ‘Please do come in,’ Mrs Long urged her, holding the door open wide, so that Olive felt obliged to step inside.

  The immaculately clean hallway possessed a smell that Olive instantly recognised: the smell of carbolic and sickness and a certain fetid lack of air that came from trying to keep an invalid warm and a house clean.

  Olive followed Mrs Long to the back parlour, in shape and size the same as her own but, because this house was tenanted, slightly shabby and down at heel. Dark curtains hung at the window, making the room dim and depressing. The small leather settee under the window had shiny patches on its arms where the fabric had worn thin, and the cupboards either side of the fireplace were painted dark brown, like the skirtings and doors. A table covered in a chenille cloth was pushed up against the wall adjoining the two rooms, three chairs tucked into it so that there was just enough room for the old-fashioned winged armchair with a leather footstool in front of it drawn up close to the fire: Mr Long’s chair, Olive guessed.

  ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I’m expecting the doctor any minute,’ Mrs Long told her. ‘It’s kind of you to offer to help but Christopher, our son, is very good and he calls and gets the shopping for me on his way home from work.’ An expression of sadness shadowed her face as she spoke.

  Poor woman, she was no doubt as anxious about her son as she was about her husband, albeit in a different way, Olive thought compassionately. Christopher’s views on the war were bound to make life difficult for him, and what mother wouldn’t wish for a happy easy path through life for her child? Olive felt so sorry for Mrs Long. Thin and careworn, with an anxious expression and grey hair pulled back into a bun, she was looking into the hallway through the door she’d left open the whole time she was talking to Olive, her voice barely raised above a whisper. Olive, who had once been in her position herself, knew exactly what she was going through but was reluctant to say anything about her own experience. Mr Long was, after all, still alive, and Olive knew how desperately one clung to that and how desperately one hoped for a recovery. Telling her that she had lost her own husband might not be a tactful thing to do.

  ‘Yes, this is the very latest colour,’ Dulcie assured the customer who had spent the last half an hour hesitating over which lipstick to choose.

  ‘And you can assure me that this lipstick was made here in England and not America? Only my husband wouldn’t approve at all if I’d bought a lipstick that had taken up space in one of our convoys that could have been used for something much more essential to the war effort. He has a cousin in the navy, you see, and he’s very conscious of the dangers to our brave sailors in crossing the Atlantic.’

  ‘Our buyer would never countenance buying stock that risked sailors’ lives,’ Dulcie assured her customer without having a clue as to whether or not what she was saying was true, and privately thinking that her husband must be mean if he hadn’t ever bought a bit of something to carry in his pocket and bring home for his wife.

  Her reassurance seemed to convince her customer, who told her, ‘Very well then, I’ll take the lipstick.’

  Last night’s attack on the Manellis’ shop had left Dulcie with several bruises and the angry cut on her face, which she’d done her best to disguise with some powder. Of course, the other girls had been curious about it, so she’d lied and said that she’d been scratched by a cat.

  What had happened to the Italians was all over the papers, and at dinner time there’d been some snide comments from Arlene about the likelihood of ‘Dulcie’s Italian’ being picked up by the police and imprisoned as an enemy alien.

  For her own part, Dulcie had pretended not to notice, whilst talking to Lizzie in a very firm voice about how Raphael was in the Royal Engineers and how he was only at home because he’d been at Dunkirk. Not that she had done that for Raphael’s sake, of course; she had done it for her own. She certainly wasn’t going to have Arlene making out that she was romantically connected to an enemy alien.

  The staff entrance to Selfridges was a dark shadowy place that seemed always to smell of oil and exhaust fumes, from the delivery vans and cigarette smoke from the workmen who hung around the entrance, snatching quick fags, and the late afternoon heat of the city emphasised those odours.

  London’s air as a whole smelled and tasted dry and dusty to Raphael. For him it lacked the bracing salt tang of Liverpool’s air, blown in over the Liverpool bar on winds from the Atlantic.

  He’d arrived here well before six, determined not to miss Dulcie, knowing this was his last chance to see her and that he had a train to catch this evening to Liverpool, where his parents were waiting for news of his grandfather. Now he was leaning against a wall in the shadows opposite the store, waiting for her. He had managed to telephone his parents to discuss the dawn raids and they in turn had told him what had been happening in Liverpool. Not to them – Raphael’s father was a British citizen, after all. He worked as warehouse manager down on the docks, a good job and one he had wanted Raphael to follow him into until he had realised how determined Raphael was to train as an engineer. That was how he had come to be in the Royal Engineers instead of the regular army.

  Raphael saw Dulcie emerging from the building. He pushed himself off the wall, straightening up as he strode purposefully towards her.

  Dulcie saw him and stopped walking, a surge of triumph and vindication reinforcing what she told herself she had already known: that although he had pretended not to find her attractive, he had been drawn to her all along. Irresistible, that was what she was, Dulcie decided smugly. Well, if he thought that all he had to do was turn up here to persuade her to grant him the favour of a date, he was quickly going to learn that it wasn’t.

  She waited for him to approach her, smiling a triumphant smile when he reached her, but instead of pleading with her to go out with him, he told her instead, ‘I haven’t got much time. I’m leaving for Liverpool this evening, but before I go I just wanted to thank you for what you did for Mrs Manelli. She’s my father’s second cousin, and since she doesn’t have anyone of her own to thank you I’m doing it on her behalf.’

  Raphael looked down at his feet in their polished army boots. Coming here like this was a duty he would rather not have had. Dulcie wasn’t the type of girl he admired, and yet last night she had done something he admired very much indeed. He could see his own face in the gloss he worked into his boots.

  He exhaled and raised his head, telling Dulcie, ‘I’m not going to pretend that you weren’t one of the last people I’d thought would do something like that, and I’m not going to apologise for thinking it either, but I am grateful to you.’

  He hadn’t come here to ask her out, and far from finding her irresistible he was practically insulting her. Dulcie glared at him.

  ‘Grateful is it?’ she challenged him. ‘Well, you don’t sound very grateful, and as for not apologising for thinking I was one of the last people you’d thought would do what I did, that just goes to show that you shouldn’t go judging people and thinking things about them that aren’t true. Just because I don’t go round acting all holy and soft, that doesn’t mean I don’t know right from wrong. Those lads had no call to go acting like they did. Always kind to us when we were kids, Mr Manelli was, even if he was an Eyetie.’

  Raphael inclined his head in acknowledgement of her comment and then pushed back the cuff of his tunic to look at his watch.

  Dulcie watched him. He was impatient to leave and she certainly didn’t want to prevent him from leaving, so why, as he started to turn away from her, did she have to stop him by asking, ‘Did you get to see your granddad?’

  His, ‘No,’ was terse, and a signal that he didn’t want to waste any more time talking to her, Dulcie suspected.

  Well, that was all right by her; she didn’t want to waste her time talking to him. She hadn’t asked him to come here. He’d chosen to do that himself. She turned away in angry indignation.

  ‘He refused to see me, and then yesterday morning he was rounded up with
the others. They’re keeping them at Brompton Oratory School for now.’ Raphael paused and then said bitterly, ‘He’s eighty-one and for all his fiery Fascist talk, he’s about as much danger to this country as a day-old child. They took them all before it was light; most of them were bundled off so fast they weren’t even allowed to get dressed. I took some clothes down to the police station where they were holding my grandfather but they refused to let me see him.’

  ‘What will happen to them?’ She wasn’t really interested, Dulcie assured herself. She wasn’t so soft that she cared what happened to them, and yet deep down she knew that she did feel something that was more than mere curiosity.

  He had no idea why he was talking to Dulcie in so much detail, Raphael acknowledged, unless it was simply because he needed to get what he was feeling off his chest to someone whose own emotions wouldn’t be lacerated by what had happened.

  ‘We don’t know officially as yet. Although we have heard that the London detainees will be transferred to a camp at Lingfield racecourse in Surrey, prior to being interned. I must go otherwise I shall miss my train. Thank you again for what you did.’

  ‘I don’t want your thanks. I didn’t do it for you.’ The words were out before Dulcie could stop herself from saying them, causing her to hold her breath in case Raphael challenged her.

  But to her relief he simply said, ‘You may not want my thanks and my gratitude but you have them anyway.’

  And then he was gone, striding away from her, tall and broad-shouldered in his military uniform, quickly caught up in the bustle and the crowds of Oxford Street.

  She’d definitely go to the Palais this coming Saturday, Dulcie decided. She hadn’t gone last Saturday – for one thing her mother’s birthday present had left her a bit short of money, and for another she hadn’t really felt like it. Not because Tilly and Agnes had shaken their heads when she’d asked them if they wanted to go with her – she’d been doing them the favour, not the other way around and if they chose not to accept it then that was their loss, not hers. Personally she’d thought them daft for going on duty with that St John Ambulance lot they’d got so involved with. In their shoes she’d have come up with an excuse rather than miss out on a good night’s dancing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Tilly, Agnes seems very quiet. The two of you haven’t had a fall-out, have you?’ Olive asked her daughter, taking advantage of the fact that the two of them were alone as Agnes had been asked to stay on at work a bit longer because they were short-handed.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Tilly assured her mother. She had noticed herself that Agnes seemed a bit low but she had put that down to all the bad news in the papers. It made Tilly feel low herself.

  The kitchen was warm with the smell of ironing, the kitchen door open to let in some fresh air. Tilly was helping her mother by folding the ironing, the two of them working companionably together. Sally was working nights and Dulcie had gone home to see her brother, who would be rejoining his regiment once his leave came to an end. Tilly gave a small sigh. She had really liked Dulcie’s brother and when she had first seen him she had created all manner of romantic fantasies inside her head, most of which involved her doing something really brave, like saving his life, after which he clasped her to his chest and gazed deep into her eyes, telling her how wonderful she was.

  Dunkirk, and what she had seen and heard from the soldiers rescued from France’s beaches, though, had driven such silly school girlish daydreams right out of her head. Men weren’t fairytale princes; they were human flesh and blood, marked by the things they had witnessed.

  ‘I went to see Mrs Long today,’ Olive told Tilly.

  Tilly put down the petticoat she had been folding. ‘Christopher’s mother?’

  Olive nodded, testing the heat of her iron on a damp handkerchief. Some women might spit on their irons to test their heat, but Olive’s mother, having been in service, thoroughly disapproved of such common habits and had taught Olive to dampen a handkerchief and iron that instead. Having satisfied herself that it was hot enough to iron her smart cream linen summer skirt, she turned it inside out and slipped it on to the ironing board, carefully straightening its pleats.

  ‘Is Christopher’s father going to die?’ Tilly asked anxiously. ‘Christopher thinks he is. He doesn’t say so but I can tell.’

  ‘I think it’s possible that he may, Tilly,’ Olive answered her honestly, ‘although naturally one hopes that he will not. It will be very hard for Mrs Long and Christopher if he does.’

  ‘It must have been hard for you, Mum, when Dad died.’

  They rarely talked about Jim’s death. Although Olive had always made a point of talking to Tilly about her father, she had tried to talk about him in a light-hearted happy manner, wanting Tilly to know the best of her father rather than the dreadful final weeks of his life.

  Standing at the sink, dampening the clean tea towel she was going to use to press her skirt with Olive then turned round and looked at her daughter. Tilly was growing up so quickly now. The war had done that.

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply, ‘it was hard. I had your grandparents, of course. Your grandmother took your father’s death very hard. I understand now much better than I did then how she must have felt. To have raised a child to adulthood and then to lose them is an unthinkable, an unbearable pain.’

  ‘You must have missed Dad so much.’

  ‘Yes I did. But I had you and that made it easier for me, Tilly. I had you to love and look after and I knew that your dad would want me to concentrate on you and not on his death. It will be harder for Christopher’s mother than it was for me because they have been together so much longer, and hard for Christopher too.’

  ‘Poor Christopher. His life is already difficult, with him being a pacifist. You have to be very brave to stick to your beliefs when other people don’t always agree with them. I don’t really agree with them myself, but that doesn’t stop me being friends with Christopher.’

  Her daughter definitely wasn’t in any danger of falling in love with Christopher Long, no matter what Nancy might want to think, Olive acknowledged as she pressed the iron down hard on the pleats, filling the kitchen with sizzling steam and the smell of damp cloth.

  Agnes felt so wretched. Even more wretched than she had felt when she had been told that she’d have to leave the orphanage, as she sat in the small back room off the booking office, hidden from public view, eating the fish-paste sandwiches Olive had made up for her lunch. She hadn’t seen Ted for days, not since he had told her that he didn’t think there was any need for them to have tea together any more now that she had settled in at the booking office. And she suspected that he was deliberately avoiding her.

  Les, the new driver, on the other hand, she seemed to be bumping into all the time, but Les wasn’t Ted. He didn’t have Ted’s kind smile nor his cheery whistle. She’d never thought that this would happen and that Ted wouldn’t want to see her again. They had been such good friends – the best of friends – and Agnes missed him dreadfully. She couldn’t sleep properly at night for thinking about him and worrying that he might have guessed that what she felt for him was more than just friendship.

  Agnes didn’t know when she had first realised that what she wanted most of all was to spend the rest of her life with Ted. She’d certainly known there was something at Christmas when he had hugged her and then kissed her quickly before releasing her. She’d wanted him to kiss her again but he hadn’t and now he never would. A hard lump of emotion filled her chest, making it ache. She felt so ashamed of herself, feeling like she did about Ted when he didn’t want her to. That was a fine way to repay his kindness to her. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Tilly how she felt. Tilly was full of plans for what they could do together if the war continued, and once they were old enough. They could join the ATS or the WRNS, Tilly had said, and properly do their bit for their country. Agnes didn’t want to go into uniform; she wanted to stay here where she could at least be close to
Ted, but of course she hadn’t told Tilly that, because she knew that Tilly would worry about her if she thought that she was unhappy over Ted. Tilly was like that.

  She was so lucky to be living at number 13, Agnes acknowledged. She’d even got used to Dulcie’s sharp tongue and had grown to realise that it didn’t really mean anything and that it was just Dulcie’s way. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere where she could be happier, except of course if she was married to Ted and living with him. But that was never going to happen, Agnes acknowledged sadly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lying on the lawn under the shade of the apple tree in the back garden of number 13, taking a break from heeling in the new raspberry canes and blackcurrant bushes for Sally’s fruit garden, Tilly looked up through the leaves towards the brilliant blue, early evening August sky. In the distance towards the south she could see white vapour trails and tiny barely discernible planes. Tilly’s heart thudded with pride at the sight of them even though her stomach was churning with anxiety.

  July had heralded the beginning of Hitler’s attempt to destroy the RAF and thus leave the South Coast defenceless and ready for his invasion, and now, in mid-August, what was being called the Battle of Britain had begun in earnest, with aerial ‘dogfights’ taking place in the skies night and day, whilst the ground-based gun batteries did their bit to try to help the RAF.

  The noise of heavy gunfire had now become almost as familiar to Londoners as the cries of its barrow boys and newspaper sellers.

  There couldn’t be many people who wouldn’t now recognise the heart-thrilling shape of an RAF Spitfire – or the fear-inducing sight of an enemy German plane, so familiar was the almost daily battle in the skies over the South of England between the RAF and the Luftwaffe.