Home for Christmas

by Annie Groves

  There was a war on; there was nursing work to be done, Sally reminded herself briskly, making her way through the busy station, and she remembered the heartfelt promise she had made to her mother’s memory to be sure that her grave wasn’t left untended. With the anniversary of her mother’s funeral so close, now was the time to keep that promise. The fear of seeing Callum and being weakened by her feelings for him, which had kept her away in the past, was no longer relevant. She had George in her life now. She was a very different young woman from the betrayed, angry, helpless person she had been when she left Liverpool – run away, in fact, from the pain she could not bear. Living at number 13, having Olive’s wise gentle counsel, witnessing with more mature eyes the blessedness of maternal love there, had helped her to put aside her angry grief and to think instead of the love her mother had given her, the love they had shared, and which had survived her mother’s death.

  Then there was George, playing his own role in her life. A role she had been reluctant to allow him, fresh, as she had been, from the misery of having to abandon her dream of finding love with Callum. George’s steadfast patience had won her round, though, and now Sally admitted she was ready to lower her defences. Her mother would have liked George.

  Her mother. Sally exhaled unsteadily. She was stronger now, strong enough to do what she knew must be done. She had a daughter’s duty and it was a daughter’s love that was urging her to be at her mother’s graveside on that all-important date.

  Squaring her shoulders, her head held high, Sally headed for the station exit.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘That washing of yours will never dry in this weather. I’ve been ever so glad that I got my hubby to put me up one of those airing racks in my kitchen. Gets my washing dry in no time, it does. Mind you, I’m not saying that it didn’t cost, because it did, but then I’ve never been one for buying myself or our Linda fancy new clothes instead of spending money on something practical. But then we can’t all be the same, can we, and I dare say some folk like to wear their money on their backs.’

  Olive was standing in her back garden, trying to peg out her washing as quickly as she could in the sharp brisk wind that was already turning her damp fingers blue with cold. Nancy, on the other hand, with only the washing for two people to have to deal with inside, was leaning on their shared fence, obviously intent on having her say. And when Nancy decided she wanted to have her say there was no power on earth that could stop her.

  Ignoring her neighbour’s obvious busyness, and before Olive could say so much as a word, never mind react to what she suspected what Nancy’s dig at the new clothes she had bought for herself and Tilly when the war had first started, Nancy was off again.

  ‘The clothes I’ve seen being brought in to be sorted out for second-hand – ’ she gave a disapproving sniff – ‘some of them look like they’ve come off someone on the stage, not an ordinary decent person.’

  ‘I dare say that some people feel that it cheers them up a bit to have something smart to wear, Nancy. I know that I’ve been glad that I was lucky enough to buy some good fabric and get some clothes made up for me and Tilly last year.’ Olive was tempted to remind Nancy just how she had come by her prized paisley scarf but she didn’t really have the appetite for the avalanche of defensive arguments that would inevitably follow the merest hint to Nancy that she was being criticised.

  Olive reached down into her laundry basket for a pillow slip. At least the wind was strong enough to dry off her washing, even if right now she was looking forward to putting the kettle on and making herself a reviving brew of scalding hot tea.

  ‘Smart isn’t what I’d call some of the things I’ve been seeing. There was underwear brought in from a house in Chelsea that should have been burned. Shocking, that’s what I say. Just a few scraps of silk and lace. Disgusting, it was.’ Nancy’s lips folded into a grim line. ‘And that reminds me. I saw that Mrs Hallows, who’s been renting number thirty-two this morning. Dressed up to the nines, she was, and when I asked her where she was going – thinking perhaps that that husband of hers, who she says is in the navy, had perhaps got leave, she told me as bold as brass that she’d just been to the butcher’s. Not our butchers, but one on Sparrow Road. Said without the slightest bit of shame that it paid her to go down there on a Monday, and it was obvious what she meant. Reeking of cheap scent, she was, and with her coat open over a blouse with half its buttons undone.’

  ‘Meat’s on ration, Nancy,’ Olive felt bound to remind her neighbour, as she pegged the last of her washing on to the line and then put her hand on her hip for a minute as she stretched her aching back.

  ‘You mean it’s supposed to be. There’s always some who are willing to break the law – if it suits them.’

  Olive was glad to escape back indoors away from her neighbour. The war was changing people, Olive thought ruefully, as she filled her kettle. In some people it brought out the best, but with others, like Nancy, it seemed somehow to focus their less likeable qualities.

  Nancy had been right about one thing, though: she wouldn’t get her washing completely dry on a day like today, Olive acknowledged.

  Next she’d have to go down to the cellar and fill the coal scuttle.

  She’d heard of some people emptying their cellars to use them as shelters, but then others said that cellars were dangerous because you could end up trapped if your house was bombed. Olive’s father-in-law had always insisted on keeping the cellar well stocked with coal, and, thanks to the fact that number 13 had always given him a good regular order and been good payers, the coalman had let her have a few extra bags, which meant that she could stoke up the stove to finish drying her washing. Olive did feel a bit guilty about her own good fortune when she knew that other people were going without, but the occupants of number 13 sleeping in damp sheets wasn’t going to do anything for the war effort, she told herself.

  She poured herself a cup of tea and took a quick sip before getting out her mincer ready to mince what was left of Sunday’s roast. The fact that there was a shortage of onions might mean that her rissoles – padded out with potato to make the meat stretch further – would be less tasty than she would have liked, but at least it also meant that her washing wasn’t going to smell of onions.

  Olive fixed the mincer in place on the edge of the table, and then went into the larder to get the meat. You had to try to see the bright side in these dark days.

  Dulcie frowned as she covertly subjected to sweeping scrutiny the entrance to Selfridges ground-floor perfume and makeup department from behind her counter. This involved the much-practised batting of her carefully mascared eyelashes. It was gone four o’clock in the afternoon and the only Americans she had seen so far had been two smartly dressed young women complaining about the dearth of stock in the store, comparing it unfavourably to the stores in New York.

  She felt like giving them a piece of her mind, she really did. Coming in here and complaining about what British women couldn’t get their hands on for love nor money, whilst wearing what Dulcie was ready to swear was Max Factor’s newest lipstick shade for the winter. Dulcie suspected she knew how they had come by that! Wilder had boasted openly on Saturday night about how well supplied Americans were by their Government, with all the necessities and luxuries they might want especially shipped in for them.

  The two girls Dulcie had seen had been talking about their jobs at the America Embassy, and if the American Ambassador couldn’t get whatever he wanted shipped over, then Dulcie suspected no one could. It wasn’t right, it really wasn’t. That lipstick would have suited her far better than it did them. They looked smart enough, but they weren’t as pretty as she was, Dulcie comforted herself. Nowhere near.

  A few more weeks and it would be Christmas. Selfridges staff had done their best to give the store a properly festive air, but there was no doubt that the previous year’s decorations looked a bit worn and faded, and there were definitely far fewer things on sale, although a special effort had been mad
e in the toy department.

  There were men in uniform wandering around the sales floor: a couple of naval officers were carrying brown attaché cases, their caps under their arms; half a dozen army officers, following in the wake of a portly red-faced senior officer with grey hair, a limp and rows of medals. There were even a group of RAF men, obviously up in London on leave and in the mood to enjoy themselves, from the flirtatious badinage they had engaged in with several of the salesgirls, including, of course, Dulcie herself. But none of them was Wilder. Not that he’d said he’d call in today, but naturally Dulcie had expected that he would want to prove to her that he was keen on her.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a couple come in. The man tall, fair-haired, wearing an RAF officer’s uniform, was smiling down at the dark-haired young woman at his side. Dulcie almost dropped the duster with which she’d been pretending to look busily occupied keeping her counter immaculately dust free. Her heart gave a terrific bound. David! Only when she looked properly she could see that it wasn’t.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Lizzie asked her. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘More like I’m about to become one myself, with being bored to death on account of us not having many customers,’ Dulcie quipped back. ‘I thought you said we were supposed to be getting some new stock ready for Christmas.’

  ‘I only told you what I’d heard one of the other girls saying,’ Lizzie defended herself.

  Dulcie let her disparaging sniff tell Lizzie what she thought.

  ‘You will look after her, Drew, won’t you?’ Olive, ever the anxious mother, begged the American, as he and Tilly were on the verge of leaving number 13 for Tilly’s promised evening out with him to see how he worked.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ Tilly protested impatiently, ‘I’m not a baby. I can look after myself.’

  But Drew simply said, ‘You can depend on it, Mrs Robbins.’

  ‘Honestly you’d think I’d never been out on my own before,’ Tilly grumbled, as she and Drew headed towards Fleet Street.

  ‘It’s only natural that your mother should worry about you. My mom worries about me. She writes me all the time to make sure I change my socks and don’t sleep in damp sheets.’

  Tilly laughed.

  ‘It’s true,’ Drew insisted. ‘And it isn’t just my mom. I get letters from my sisters, telling me the same thing. That’s what comes of being the only boy in the family.’

  ‘They must be fearfully proud of you,’ Tilly told him admiringly, ‘especially now that you’re going to be writing a book.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t told them about that yet,’ Drew admitted, a strained note in his voice.

  When Tilly stopped walking to look at him in the dim beam from her torch, which she was supposed to keep pointed downwards in case the light was seen by a passing German bomber, Drew explained, ‘The thing is that my folks – well, my dad – wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t approve of you writing a book?’ Tilly’s mystification showed in her voice.

  ‘I guess my dad thinks that his son should—’

  ‘Work in an office or a bank or something?’ Tilly guessed sympathetically.

  ‘Something like that,’ Drew agreed. He sounded relieved, because she understood and sympathised, Tilly thought, feeling very grown up to be having this kind of conversation with him.

  ‘I know what you mean. Since the Germans started bombing London I’ve wished that I was doing something more . . .’

  ‘More adventurous?’ Drew teased her, as they started walking again.

  ‘Something that does more,’ Tilly corrected him. ‘I’d thought about joining the Auxiliary Fire Service,’ she told him, ‘but of course Mum would worry, so I can’t talk to her about how I feel. It’s hard, isn’t it, not being able to talk to anyone about how you feel about things? I know I’ve got the girls to talk to,’ she acknowledged when Drew didn’t say anything, ‘but, well, Agnes will be getting engaged soon, so I don’t think she’d really understand. Dulcie is terrific fun, but she’d just pull a face and say that you’d never get her wearing a uniform, and Sally’s already doing her bit because she’s a nurse. I just feel that I’m not doing enough, Drew.’

  Drew reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘You can always talk to me, Tilly.’

  Tilly knew then that he understood.

  ‘Perhaps you could work in an office and be a writer – when the war’s over, I mean,’ she offered, wanting to help him. ‘I suppose that’s what your father does, is it, work in an office, I mean?’

  There was a small pause. ‘Yes. That’s right,’ Drew agreed.

  They’d reached Fleet Street now.

  ‘This way.’ Drew took Tilly’s arm and guided her across the street,

  ‘We’ll head for the Ye Old Cheshire Cheese pub first and see what news we can pick up there. It’s one of the first ports of call of the most experienced newshounds.’

  ‘Which building do you work in?’

  ‘The Daily Telegraph Building, almost behind us,’ Drew answered her. ‘They’ll be setting up the printers now for the first editions although they’ll try to hold the front page for any news of fresh bombing raids tonight. We might be lucky and not have one tonight, seeing as the air-raid siren hasn’t sounded yet.’

  The normal time for the siren to go off was between six o’clock and half-past.

  ‘I’m going to keep everything crossed that there isn’t one tonight.’ Tilly told him, as they had to pause on the pavement to wait for several cars to go by, their headlights dimmed as the law required. ‘So many cars,’ she marvelled.

  ‘It’s all those newspaper barons surveying their kingdoms, and then being summoned to see the Prime Minister,’ Drew teased her, adding, ‘I’m only joking. Most of the cars will belong to top reporters. They get a petrol allowance, and of course they’ve got to be able to race to the scene of an incident. Come on,’ he urged, cupping her elbow, ‘we can cross now, but no jaywalking, OK?’

  ‘Jaywalking, what’s that?’ Tilly asked him.

  ‘It’s an American term,’ Drew explained, as they dashed between slower-moving cars, to the other side of the road.

  Even though it was only a weekday evening, Tilly had still worn her very best coat, feeling that her old coat, which she now wore for work, with its let-down hem and school-girlish style, made her look younger than she was. Luckily it wasn’t raining and the knitted beret she’d crammed down on top of her curls was keeping her warm despite the chill in the evening air.

  The Cheshire Cheese pub looked every bit piece of ‘olde England’ as its name implied, and even though she was with Drew, because she’d never really been in a public house before, Tilly hung back hesitantly as Drew guided her into the passage to one side of the bow-windowedfrontage, telling her, ‘The door is just here.’

  The minute Drew opened the door Tilly forgot her nervousness in the wave of noise, warmth and the smell of beer that rushed out to engulf her. Inside, the Cheshire Cheese was almost as dark as the road outside, the cigarette smoke so dense that it might have been a real pea souper of a London fog. To Tilly, though, the smell of the smoke was as sophisticated and exciting as everything else about the atmosphere she was now absorbing with giddy delight.

  ‘I’ll show you round. The whole place is a rabbit warren of rooms and passages,’ Drew told her.

  He took her through a maze of busy, fuggy rooms and passages, each one of them – or so it seemed to Tilly – filled with men in trench coats, arriving, leaving, talking and calling for fresh drinks, all of them generating an atmosphere that was unlike anything Tilly had ever known.

  ‘It makes me feel giddy just watching them, never mind listening to them,’ she told Drew.

  ‘This place, here on this street, is the centre of the world when it comes to news,’ Drew told her. ‘It’s got something that nowhere else has. If printers’ ink runs in the blood of those who work on Fleet Street, then printing presses drive their hearts and their
minds to a beat that’s faster and more reckless than anything else could ever be. There are men – and women – who come in here, who work here on this street, who take the kind of risks to get their story that no sane person would ever dream of taking. Maybe that’s what you need to be a good newspaper man – a touch of insanity. Maybe that’s why I’d rather be a writer, because I just don’t possess it.’

  ‘Drew,’ Tilly protested, concerned by the bitterness she could hear in his voice, ‘of course you’re a good newspaper man. You must be for your newspaper to have sent you over here.’

  Drew smiled in acknowledgement of her praise but there was still a shadow behind his smile. That had Tilly, whose naturally sympathetic nature made her want everyone to be happy, change the subject to ask him, ‘Which room is best for us to hear news of a good story?’

  ‘All of them,’ Drew assured her, with another smile. And this one wasn’t shadowed at all, Tilly was glad to see.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged her, ‘let’s grab that table over there. And I’ll order us both a drink.’

  Tilly was relieved to see that she wasn’t the only female in the pub, although the other young women there looked very professional and slightly intimidating, their trench coats cinched in around narrow waists. One of them, Tilly noticed, torn between shock and admiration, was actually wearing a man’s trilby pulled down over her blond hair at a rakish angle, a cigarette dangling from one side of her mouth as she engaged in an animated and what looked like a rather cross – on her part, at least – conversation with the tall, dark-haired, similarly dressed man. He wasn’t cross, though, In fact, he was standing looking down at her with what seemed to Tilly to be amusement.

  ‘Do you know those two over there?’ she asked Drew, who had returned to their table carrying a half-pint pot of beer and a glass of lemonade.