Things had changed an awful lot since the first time Tilly and Agnes had gone dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, Olive reflected ruefully, as she watched all four young women giving their appearances final checks in the hall mirror. In the small space the rustle of their party frocks mingled with the sound of high heels on the linoleum either side of the hall runner.
‘How do we look, Mum?’ Tilly demanded, twirling into the back room, her face alight with happiness and excitement.
‘You all look lovely,’ Olive assured her truthfully. She had been so anxious that first night she had watched them leave; now her concern was more for the young men who would have to deal with three stunning-looking confident young women, all intent on dazzling them, and one shy one whose quiet sadness was almost bound to draw their compassion.
Tonight would be Tilly’s first really ‘grown-up’ birthday, and the first she would not be celebrating at home, although of course they were having a traditional birthday tea tomorrow, at Tilly’s request. Today, though, the four girls would be having their tea at a Joe Lyons restaurant before going on to the Palais, and Tilly was as excited about that as though they were dining at somewhere like the Ritz. If Olive suspected that Sally might have preferred to spend her Saturday off with her doctor friend, who she mentioned increasingly in her chats, Olive wasn’t going to spoil either Tilly’s evening or Sally’s generosity by saying as much. Even Dulcie seemed to have made an effort on Tilly’s behalf, as Tilly had told her that Dulcie had instructed the young Canadian airman she had met at the Palais to make sure he brought plenty of his pals along with him, informing Olive earnestly, ‘so that we have lots of dashing partners. Dulcie says the Canadians are best, Mum, because they look smart in their uniforms, and they’re very respectful. Dulcie says they don’t flirt like the Australians, or the Poles, so we won’t have to worry about them making a nuisance of themselves.’
Tilly and Agnes were wearing the pretty floral sateen cotton dresses Olive had had made for them after another trip to the Portobello Market. This time there had been several characters there who Olive had thought distinctly shady, a sign, so Sergeant Dawson had told her when she had mentioned this to him, of the increase in black market trading.
Sally’s dress was pale blue with darker blue polka dots, the colour suiting her auburn hair and pale skin, whilst Dulcie was wearing a pink cotton skirt, the cotton embroidered with small black bows, and a black fine-knit top with pink bows at the neckline and on the puffed sleeves.
It was a warm enough night for the girls to insist that they didn’t need heavy coats and that their simple stoles would do.
Tilly looked so grown up in her new dress, wearing the pearl clip-on earrings she had persuaded Olive to let her borrow. The war was changing their lives, making the girls grow up so fast.
‘You know what to do if the air-raid siren goes off?’ Olive couldn’t help saying, forced into a rueful smile when four voices chorused together, ‘Yes, run for the nearest shelter.’
It had been a shock at first when German bombers had been seen over London on the night of 24 August, but the RAF had seen them off and bombed Berlin in retaliation. Although there had been plenty of scares since then, with the air-raid sirens going off at night with increasing frequency, disturbing everyone’s sleep when they all had to troop out of their beds to the nearest shelter – which in the case of Olive’s household was the Anderson shelter in the garden – after the first shock Londoners had begun to take the air raids in their stride. After all, they had the ground batteries with their heavy-duty ‘ackack’ guns, and the RAF, to protect them.
The girls had decided to have their tea at the Joe Lyons in Leicester Square but two buses had gone past them without stopping, obviously full already.
‘Here’s another, and it’s slowing down,’ Tilly cheered.
‘It’s going to Covent Garden, though, not Leicester Square,’ Agnes pointed out.
‘Never mind, let’s just get on it,’ said Dulcie, giving Tilly a push in the direction of the now stationary bus. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’
Tilly hesitated but the conductor was getting impatient and called out, ‘Are you girls getting on or not?’
‘We’re getting on,’ said Sally, stepping forward, the others following on behind her, clambering onto the platform and holding on tight.
‘It’s standing room only down here,’ the conductor told them, reaching for his ticket machine. ‘Upstairs, if you want a seat.’
Taking care to keep her skirt away from the stairs, Tilly went up first, followed by the others, half gasping and half groaning in protest as the bus lurched to an unwieldy halt at the next stop to allow more passengers to get on.
Agnes gave the café where she and Ted used to meet a forlorn look from the seat where the four of them had squashed up together at the back of the bus, and Tilly, who knew from her mother what was causing Agnes’s low spirits, affected not to notice, trying to distract her by pointing out a group of French military on the other side of the road, insisting that one of them had definitely looked like General de Gaulle.
‘Pooh, the French, they’re nothing. The Canadians are much better,’ Dulcie announced as their bus came to a halt at a stop just short of Covent Garden.
Covent Garden was relatively quiet as it was too early for the evening’s ballet-goers. The girls decided to cut across to Leicester Square via the backstreets to avoid the crowds Dulcie had warned them would be filling the square.
‘You should have seen it yesterday. You could hardly move for uniforms, most of them RAF. I suppose they deserve a bit of time off after all this fighting they’ve been doing.’
They had already walked down one street, when Sally broke into Dulcie’s conversation to demand, ‘What’s that?’ She looked upwards towards the sound they could all now hear – a sound that was growing louder and more ominous by the second, its dull droning now becoming a rumbling roar.
Up above them the sky was darkening, the light shut out by the mass of aircraft swarming towards the city.
‘Oh Gawd, it’s them. It’s the Germans,’ Dulcie gasped, reverting to the cockney accent she was normally so careful to keep hidden.
Tilly gulped in shocked silence, feeling Agnes’s arm trembling against her own.
Sally continued to stare upwards in horror. There must be hundreds of them: black bombers surrounded, escorted, protected by fighter planes, too many of them to count, the noise they were making as they flew over making conversation impossible. It was like a nightmare, so unbelievable and unthinkable that surely it couldn’t be happening. Not here in London. The Germans could not be here overhead in such a huge force that they almost blocked the light out of the sky. Where was the RAF? Why were the ack-ack guns silent?
In disbelieving terror the girls stood rooted to the spot as though shocked into a trance.
‘They’re heading for the docks,’ Dulcie, who knew her East End, broke the silence, mouthing the words to them, the four of them wincing as, hard on her words, they heard the sound of an explosion quickly followed by another and then another, huge plumes of smoke billowing up toward the skyline.
Never had the wail of air-raid sirens sounded so unnerving and doom laden.
‘Come on,’ Sally yelled. ‘The nearest shelter will be the one in Leicester Square.’ They started to run, their speed hampered by their heels and the summer-heat-greasy cobbles of the pavementless alley.
‘Oh, ruddy hell,’ Dulcie swore as her heel caught between two cobbles. The air around them was thick with the acrid smell of smoke drifting in from the bombed docks, the sound of sirens filling the air. Dulcie tried to free her heel with an impatient movement of her foot and then gasped in shock when the heel refused to come free, her own violent movement pitching her forward onto the cobbles. She put out her hands to save herself but it was too late.
It was Tilly looking back who saw her, calling out to the other two, ‘Stop. Dulcie’s fallen over.’
Sally tried to catch hold of her, all too aware of their danger, but Tilly had already turned back, Agnes going with her, leaving Sally with no option but to do the same. They were so vulnerable out here in plain view, and she was thankful that it was the docks and the East End the bombers were attacking, and not the city itself.
‘Dulcie, are you all right?’ Tilly dropped down on her knees at the same time as Dulcie struggled to get up.
There was blood on her forehead and what looked like a large bruise already swelling above her eye.
‘Of course I—’ she began, her sudden gasp of pain slicing off her words, as she sank down again.
‘I think Dulcie’s hurt,’ Tilly said to Sally, who had just reached them. ‘There’s blood on her forehead and—’
‘Dulcie?’ Sally queried, immediately the professional trained nurse.
‘It’s my ankle. I must have turned it when I fell. I’ll be all right once I’m standing up.’
‘We’ll help you,’ Tilly began, but Sally shook her head, her heart sinking as she looked at the unnatural angle of Dulcie’s foot, and saw the bruise on her forehead.
‘Well, come on then,’ Dulcie demanded impatiently. ‘Help me up.’
‘Dulcie, I need to look at your ankle. I think you may have broken it, and you’ve hurt your head. Do you feel sick, at all, or dizzy,’ Sally asked her crisply. There was no point in her mincing her words, but she didn’t want to frighten Dulcie more than was necessary by telling her that the bump to her head could result in delayed concussion.
‘No, I don’t feel sick,’ Dulcie told her crossly. ‘I just want to get out of here.’
The sound of another bomb exploding was so loud that she had to stop speaking.
‘You can’t,’ Sally had to tell her. ‘You won’t be able to walk on that ankle. We’ll need to get you some proper medical help.’
As a nurse Sally could recognise from the look on Dulcie’s face how shocked and frightened she was, even though she was trying not to show it, but there was nothing she could do to help her.
It was too late now to regret coming down this empty back alley with no sign of either a shelter or an ARP post. Normally Sally would have stayed with Dulcie and sent Tilly and Agnes to get help, but she was very much aware that Olive, even though she had not said so, expected her to keep the two younger girls safe. As she worried about who needed her the most, a fighter plane screamed overhead, causing them all to duck and Dulcie to wince with fresh pain.
Tears were rolling down Agnes’s face, and for once even Tilly was subdued and quiet.
But then it was Sally’s turn to be shocked when Dulcie told her in a thin but determined voice, with a jerk of her head towards Tilly and Agnes, ‘You’d better get those two to safety, ’cos if anything were to happen to them Olive would have my guts for garters. I’ll be all right here until you can send some help. Jerry isn’t going to come dropping any bombs down this back alley when he’s got the whole of the docks and the East End to bomb.’
They would leave her anyway, Dulcie reasoned to herself as she spoke, so she might as well be the one to send them away as lie here and wait for them to say they were going to leave her. In their shoes she wouldn’t waste a minute – not even a second – in running for safety, so why should they? And she certainly wasn’t going to have them thinking she was scared, even though she was. So scared that she secretly felt like begging them not to leave her, but of course she couldn’t do that. Her pride wouldn’t let her. If her own mother was here right now she probably wouldn’t stay with her because she’d be worrying about her precious Edith. She was nothing to these girls, just like they were nothing to her. She’d be daft to think that they’d care about her feeling frightened and alone.
What Dulcie said made sense, Sally knew, but before she could say anything, Agnes, who up until now had been crying silently, suddenly stopped and said fiercely, ‘We can’t leave Dulcie here. It wouldn’t be right. I’m staying with her.’
Dulcie stared at Agnes. Agnes wanted to stay with her. Agnes, who she had tormented and, yes, bullied and who was so unsure of herself that she never said a word, was standing there telling Sally that she was staying. Dulcie couldn’t believe it. Agnes’s face became a tearful unfocused image she had to blink her eyes to get back into focus. She wasn’t crying, or if she was it was only because of the pain in her ankle and because her head hurt, and not because of the aching pang of emotion she could feel inside her heart.
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Tilly agreed. ‘If Dulcie has to stay then we’re staying with her. We’re all in this together, friends together, and friends don’t go and leave each other, they stick together.’
Friends! Dulcie had never wanted friends. She’d never believed in them. Friends was just a word that meant palling up with someone because they were useful to you, and then dropping them when they weren’t. It didn’t mean risking your own life to be with them when you were free to walk away from danger and they weren’t.
‘It’s best if you go and get help, Sally,’ Tilly added. ‘’Cos you’ll know what to say, and me and Agnes will stay here with Dulcie.’
Tilly plonked herself down on the cobbles next to Dulcie as she spoke, the skirt of her dress billowing out around her.
She wasn’t going to be able to budge Tilly and Agnes, Sally recognised. Dropping down on her haunches she demanded, ‘Let me have another look at your ankle, Dulcie.’ Perhaps it was only sprained and not broken. But another closer inspection showed Sally that Dulcie’s ankle was quite definitely broken.
‘Should we try and get Dulcie’s shoe off?’ Tilly asked, eyeing the now swollen flesh puffing over the strap on Dulcie’s shoe.
Sally shook her head. ‘No, her shoe will help to give the broken bone some support.’
In the immediate anxiety of worrying about what to do, the ongoing bombing was something that Sally had pushed to the back of her mind, but now it couldn’t be ignored. Over towards the docks and the East End, they could still hear bombs exploding. It felt as though they’d been here in the alleyway for hours but a glance at her watch told Sally that they had actually been there only just over fifteen minutes.
‘We can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous.’ The words were spoken before Sally could halt them. ‘I’ll stay with Dulcie. You two run for the shelter.’
‘No,’ Tilly refused firmly. ‘If we can’t all go, then we should all stay. We’re in this together, and we should stick together.’
There was a moment’s silence, during which they all looked at one another, and then winced as another bomb exploded.
‘If me and Tilly made a chair with our hands, perhaps we could carry Dulcie and you could run on ahead, Sally, to get help. We used to make chairs that way at the orphanage,’ Agnes suggested
Sally’s training told her not to risk moving a patient until they had been assessed by a doctor but with the lives of three other young women to worry about, she knew Agnes’s suggestion made sense.
‘We could try,’ she agreed. The three of them could try to get Dulcie to her feet and if they succeeded then she could support Dulcie whilst the other two formed their chair.
Sally took a deep breath, warning Dulcie, ‘It’s going to hurt when we get you upright. Whatever you do don’t try to move your foot or put any weight on it.’
Dulcie nodded, resolving inwardly that no matter how much it hurt she would manage to deal with the pain. And not just for her own sake, she recognised with a stab of shock; she wanted to do it for the sake of the girls who had offered to stay with her.
Five minutes later, sweating and feeling sick from the pain, like a knife slicing into her, that had been beyond anything she had ever had to bear, Dulcie was standing up, her head and her ankle pounding. Sally supported her on the side of her broken ankle, whilst Tilly and Agnes stood behind her carefully forming a seat for her with their hands.
Dulcie had more guts than she had expected, Sally admitted as she lowered her patient onto the makeshift ‘seat’ as gently as she could. She knew how much pain Dulcie was in from her broken ankle, and she was concerned too about that bump on her head, but Dulcie had not uttered one word of complaint or one protest when they had lifted her up. Sally’s estimation of her had risen a great deal as she witnessed this stoicism.
They could make only slow progress, Dulcie’s arms round Tilly and Agnes as they carried her, all three of them urging Sally to go on ahead, Tilly calling out to her that they would be fine, before telling Dulcie, ‘It’s a pity we haven’t got some of those Canadian airmen here to help us.’
‘What, and let them see me looking like this?’ Dulcie joked back. ‘No, thank you.’
It couldn’t be far to the nearest ARP post, surely, Sally reasoned as she ran to the end of the alleyway following the dogleg of a slightly wider empty street round until, to her relief, she could see where it opened out into Leicester Square.
The bombing seemed to have stopped, and wasn’t that an ARP post at the bottom of the road?
‘Hey, you, miss. What are you doing out here? Can’t you see there’s a bombing raid going on? Didn’t you hear the sirens going off?’
The man confronting her was wearing a tin helmet, an ARP band on his arm, his face and voice both evidencing his irritation.
‘There’s been an accident. My friends need help. One of them has broken her ankle. I’m a trained nurse but we need help,’ Sally told him breathlessly.
‘What the devil . . . ?’ The ARP man turned back to the post, with its covering of sandbags, and shouted into it, ‘Hey, Fred and Bert, get out here, will you?’
Two men emerged, one of them cramming his tin hat onto his head as he did so, the other finishing a cup of tea.
‘We’ve got some girls needing help. What . . . ?’ he ducked automatically as up above them the sky darkened as the German bombers turned for home. The sound filling the air now was of their engines and thankfully not the explosion of more bombs.
The other girls had just reached the first part of the dogleg and had paused for a minute because Tilly had a bit of a stitch in her side, when they too saw the German aircraft overhead.
They’d just started off again, Tilly and Agnes both ignoring the pull on their now aching muscles from the effort of carrying Dulcie, when suddenly one of the fighters escorting the bombers peeled off, screaming from the sky to head directly toward them.
For a second they all froze, and then Dulcie told the other two to run. ‘Go, leave me . . . just run.’
‘Quick,’ Tilly urged Agnes, ‘that doorway over there.’
It wasn’t easy to run and carry Dulcie but somehow they managed it, sheltering in the narrow doorway as best they could whilst machine-gun fire from the fighter plane rat-a-tat-tatted over the cobbles in flares of bright burning flames. The plane had come down so low that they could see the pilot in his helmet as the fighter’s guns fired another burst of bullets, the girls wincing as some struck the side of the building, narrowly missing the doorway.
‘What are we going to do if he comes back?’ Agnes asked.
‘You two are going to run, now, before he does,’ Dulcie answered ruthlessly.
‘We aren’t leaving you,’ Tilly told her. She was more frightened than she had ever been in the whole of her life, but there was no way she was going to leave Dulcie here on her own to be gunned down by that German pilot.
‘He’ll get us if he turns back,’ Dulcie told her grimly. ‘He knows we’re here.’
‘Then he’ll just have to get us, won’t he, Agnes?’ Tilly declared. ‘Because we aren’t leaving you.’
Agnes nodded. She was surprised how calm she felt. But then what did it matter if she was killed? Not having Ted in her life any more was worse than being killed. At least that only hurt you once. Not seeing Ted hurt her every day.
‘Tilly, Agnes, where are you?’
‘That’s Sally,’ Tilly said unnecessarily, poking her head round the corner of their protective doorway to call back, ‘We’re here.’
At the other end of the street, the German plane banked and turned, with menacing intent, but then unexpectedly, and to their relief, instead of coming back it rose up and turned again before heading south at speed, leaving the sky clear for the girls to see the Spitfire following it, chasing it across the sky.
Thankfully, the three girls exhaled, no words necessary as they clung together. The smoke-tainted London air had never tasted sweeter.
Sally and the three men ran down the street, Sally offering up thanks for the girls’ safety. When she had seen the deathly bulk of that plane filling the other end of the street, she had been so sure that they would be killed. Now the relief was making her feel shaky and weak, but she was a nurse and she still had a job to do. She pushed her own feelings to one side, as they reached the girls and the men took charge, making a fresh, stronger chair for Dulcie.
‘We’ll need to get her to hospital,’ Sally told the men. ‘Barts will be best. I work there.’
‘We’ll try and get an ambulance sorted out for you once we get back to the post, although you’ll probably have a long wait. The docks and the East End have taken a real hammering. There’s hundreds been left dead, we’ve heard.’
Now that it was over the girls were silent, simply looking at one another with marvelling gazes, too filled with relief at their escape to be able to speak, other than to thank their rescuers. Besides, there was no need for words now. The bond that had been formed between them all in those terror-filled moments when they thought they would die, meant that they each knew exactly what the others were thinking and feeling.
In the air-raid shelter with the other WVS workers, Olive prayed that the girls would be all right. The Germans were bombing the docks and the East End, not Hammersmith, she tried to reassure herself. Mrs Weaver, the oldest member of their group, got out the knitting she always seemed to have with her. Olive envied her, wishing that she too had something to occupy her hands, even if the only thing occupying her thoughts was the safety of her daughter.
The girls had just reached Barts, Sally having decided that she would feel happier if Tilly and Agnes were with her rather than leaving them to make their way from the ARP post to the air-raid shelter and from there to home on their own, when the second wave of bombs were dropped on the docks and the East End.
The hospital was busy with the constant arrival of casualties from the bombing, and although strictly speaking Sally did not work in the Emergency Department, and was not on duty anyway, she insisted on being allowed to go there with Dulcie, pushing her wheelchair herself, to save the overbusy porters having to do so.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Dulcie demanded.
‘A doctor will examine you and then you’ll have to have that ankle set and put in plaster. They’ll take a look at that bump on your head and keep you in for a day or so to make sure that you aren’t suffering from concussion,’ Sally told her, handing her over to the ward sister. ‘Don’t worry, Dulcie. Everything will be all right. I’m going to offer to go on duty now, so I’ll be here and I’ll see if Sister will let me come down and see you later once they’ve made you comfortable.’
Dulcie, her defences weakened by pain, turned to Tilly and Agnes and told them emotionally, ‘What you two have done for me tonight, I’ll never forget. Never.’
Each of them holding one of her hands, they looked at one another whilst Sally looked on. They all knew that what had happened, what they’d shared, had forged a very special bond between them.
‘I’ve never been bothered about having friends,’ Dulcie continued. ‘I’ve never seen the point ’cos you always know that when it comes down to it someone who says she’s a friend will put herself first. I’d do the same myself. But tonight, well, you’ve taught me different; you’ve shown me what friendship really is. You’ve given me something that no one else has ever given me and I won’t ever forget that. From now on the three of you come first with me, and that’s a promise.’
Facing danger together bound people in a very special way, Sally acknowledged, listening to Dulcie. Tonight they had all individually and together shown a strength and a desire to put one another first that was the very best of human nature. Tonight a relationship had been forged between them that would last for the rest of their lives.
‘Friends?’ Dulcie asked gruffly.
‘Friends,’ Agnes, Tilly and Sally answered her, all four of them reaching out to place their hands one on top of the other.
It was daylight before Tilly and Agnes arrived back at number 13 to find Olive waiting anxiously for them. They had spent the night in a large public shelter close to Barts Hospital and had had to wait for the all clear to go off before they could leave.
Over hot strong cups of tea, Tilly told her mother what had happened, her daughter’s matter of fact, ‘Dulcie wanted us to run for safety and leave her but, like Agnes said, we couldn’t do that,’ leaving Olive torn between surprise that Dulcie of all people should have shown such selflessness, pride in Tilly’s bravery and shaky relief that they had all made it to safety.
‘Dulcie will have to stay in hospital until they say she can leave,’ Tilly continued, ‘and Sally said that when she is allowed out her leg will still be in plaster.’
‘Has anyone told Dulcie’s family what’s happened?’ Olive asked. ‘Only if they haven’t, I’d better go round and let them know.’
‘No one’s sent a message, as far as I know,’ Tilly answered her, hesitating before adding, ‘Dulcie’s family live on the edge of Stepney, and by all accounts that got badly bombed.’
Olive nodded. ‘I know. We heard about it last night after the all clear.’
What Olive didn’t want to say was that the ARP official had also said the devastation in the East End was beyond description and had spoken of stumbling across bodies, so many people had been killed.
The plain unvarnished truth was, according to the ARP official, that those in charge of areas like Stepney had simply not done enough to make plans in the event of a serious bombing raid.
‘You and Agnes have had a tiring night – why don’t you try and get a couple of hours’ sleep instead of going to church this morning, and I’ll try and call round on Dulcie’s family? I’ve got their address from when she first came here.’
‘Me and Agnes thought that we’d go up to the hospital this afternoon, Mum, and see how Dulcie is. We felt really bad about leaving her there last night, didn’t we, Agnes?’
Agnes agreed.
‘Of course, Sally will be there to look out for her,’ Tilly acknowledged before adding, ‘Dulcie was ever so brave, Mum, telling us to go and leave her.’
‘Yes, she was,’ Olive was forced to admit.
* * *
Later that morning, though, setting out to tell Dulcie’s family what had happened, Olive felt more concerned about the danger her own daughter had been in than she was about Dulcie. Not that she wished any harm on the girl, she assured herself as she headed for Stepney, but there was no getting away from the fact that helping Dulcie had put her own daughter’s life at risk and that was something Olive didn’t like at all.
Even though, mercifully, Holborn and the City of London beyond it had escaped the ravages of the bombing, the Germans having concentrated on the docks and the East End, there was still a pall of smoke hanging in the air, as Olive set out on what she knew would be a long walk, the pavements busy with ARP wardens, firemen and the police, as well as some of the more adventurous Londoners themselves, come to see the damage inflicted on their city.
Olive didn’t want to risk catching a bus, though, even if she could find one that was running, in case it couldn’t take her very far.
Not knowing what to expect, she found the sight of familiar buildings still standing, their sandbags still in place, reassuring. Her route took her past St Paul’s, thankfully untouched, but when she paused to look at the cathedral an elderly shabbily dressed woman standing close to her said, ‘St Paul’s might be standing now but them Germans will be back, you mark my words. Practically done for Stepney, they have. I was lucky I’d gone to the Tilbury shelter, off the Commercial Road, ’cos our whole street’s bin flattened.’
Olive made a small sound of sympathy.
‘My daughter reckons we’d be better off sheltering in the underground, but we was barred from doing that last night at Liverpool Street station. I’m off out of here this afternoon. Putting us on coaches, they are, to take us somewhere where they can rehouse us, so I thought I’d come have a look at St Paul’s just in case it ain’t standing when they bring us back.’
Already apprehensive about what she might find in Stepney Olive was now increasingly anxious at the old lady’s words, especially when she got closer to the area and saw how many people were trudging around in family groups, carrying bundles of possessions, the blank look on some of their faces giving a hint of what they might have been through.
Olive had almost reached Stepney when she had to stop because of the ARP men turning people back, and explaining that it was too dangerous for them to go into the area because of the number of bombed and collapsed buildings.
When Olive told them where she was heading, though, after consulting a street map she was told she could go ahead, and given instructions of how to get there.
It seemed that because Dulcie’s family’s home was in a street on the city side of the area, the houses were still standing, although by the time she got there Olive felt that she was almost choking on dust and smoke.
It was Dulcie’s mother who opened the door to Olive’s knock, her facial resemblance to Dulcie plain, despite her careworn appearance. However, the relief on her face when she opened the door changed to apprehension when she saw Olive standing there.
Thinking that her anxiety was on Dulcie’s account, Olive made haste to tell her, ‘It’s all right; Dulcie’s all right. I’m her landlady . . .’
But to her surprise, instead of greeting her news with relief, Mrs Simmonds simply said sharply, ‘Oh, yes, of course Dulcie would be all right, knowing her.’ She was looking past Olive now and out into the street. ‘It’s our Edith I’m worried about. She’s a singer, you know, and she’s going to be famous. She’s got a top agent looking out for her,’ she told Olive proudly, fresh apprehension colouring her voice as she added, ‘She was singing last night at a club up the West End. I just hope she’s all right.’
‘I’m sure she will be,’ Olive tried to comfort her. ‘The West End wasn’t bombed at all, according to what I’ve heard. But about Dulcie . . .’
‘What about her? She’s been causing trouble, I suppose. That’s Dulcie all over. She’s always been difficult and hard work.’
Although privately Olive might have agreed with the other woman’s comments, somehow hearing them spoken by Dulcie’s own mother made her feel unexpectedly protective of her lodger so that she said firmly, ‘I think I’d better come in.’
‘Well, if you must, but this place won’t be what you’re used to. Always singing your praises, Dulcie is, and telling us what a lovely house you have and how much at home you’ve made her; how you think so much of her and treat her like a daughter, asking her to look out for your Tilly.’ Mrs Simmonds gave a sniff of disdain. ‘Always going on about Tilly and Agnes and Sally, she is, saying what good friends to her they are and how much they think of her. Of course, she only does it to upset Edith, and why I don’t know. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter than Edith, good from the minute she was born, Edith has been, and sing – she’s got the voice of an angel.’ Fresh anxiety showed on Mrs Simmonds’ face. ‘Worried to death about her, I am, and I shan’t have a second’s peace until I know she’s safe.’
Olive’s thoughts were whirling after Dulcie’s mother’s revelations about what Dulcie had said to her. Normally Olive would have wondered what on earth had made Dulcie create such a fabrication, but after listening to Dulcie’s mother praising her younger daughter whilst criticising her elder, Olive suspected that she knew the reason for Dulcie’s behaviour. Against her will she felt sympathetic toward Dulcie, her compassion aroused at the thought of a child – any child – being rejected by its mother in favour of a sibling. It was no wonder that Dulcie was the way she was.
Mrs Simmonds showed Olive into a small, cramped and dark back room, lifting some clothes off a chair and putting them down on the table so that Olive could sit down.
‘Them’s our Edith’s stage clothes. Course, they cost a fair bit, they did, but then like she says, she’s got to look the part if she’s to get the good jobs. Her agent reckons she’s going to be bigger than Vera Lynn. I just wish I knew she was safe.’
‘Of course you must be worrying,’ Olive agreed. ‘That’s the price we mothers have to pay for loving our children, isn’t it? I don’t like to add to your worries, but I thought you’d want to know that Dulcie had a bit of an accident last night. She ended up with a broken ankle, and they’re worried that she might have concussion.’ Olive paused, waiting for Dulcie’s mother to express alarm and concern and then, when she made no comment, continued quietly. ‘She’s in hospital – Barts – I expect she’s told you that Sally is a nurse and works there. You’ll want to go and see her, of course.’
‘Well, ordinarily I would, I suppose, but I can’t go anywhere now, not when I’m so worried about Edith. It’s a pity our Rick isn’t here. He could have gone to Barts and seen her.’
Olive stood up. She had felt sorry for Dulcie’s mother before she had met her, and in some ways she still did now that she had seen how careworn she was, but it went against all Olive’s own feelings about motherhood to hear the other woman speaking so unkindly and uncaringly about her elder daughter. It was surely a mother’s duty to love all her children, because if she did not then who would?
Despite her feelings, Olive still managed to say politely as she left, ‘I hope you have some news of Edith soon.’
‘They say there’s dozens dead in Stepney, and even more in Silvertown, and they’ve hit the Woolwich Arsenal and the Docks. Dulcie’s dad was summoned first thing this morning to go and help clear some of the buildings that got blown up. He’s a jobbing builder.’
Olive nodded her head and then turned away. There was nothing she could say that would lighten the burden of anxiety the other woman was carrying. Only the safe return of her daughter Edith could do that. Olive knew how it felt to love one’s daughter but Dulcie’s mother had two daughters, not one.
It was with some troubled thoughts in her head that Olive made her way home, glad to have them interrupted when Sergeant Dawson called out to her when she walked past the church hall. He was wearing his Home Guard uniform rather than his police uniform and he told her that he and some of the rest of their local Home Guard had gone over to the East End as soon as it had come light, to do what they could to help.
‘Some of the houses in Silvertown have come down like a pack of cards,’ he told Olive as they walked towards Article Row together, ‘There’s whole families just walking around with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nowhere to go to. And they’re the lucky ones.’
‘We just weren’t prepared,’ Olive said unhappily, ‘and these poor people have paid the price for that.’
Her ankle still ached but the pain was nowhere near as bad as it had been, even if the plaster cast on her leg was driving her mad already, just like Sister, who had told her that she was to stay in bed and not move, and who had said, when Dulcie had told her that she wanted her handbag because she wanted to put her lipstick on, that she was in a hospital, not a dance hall, where she’d be staying until they were satisfied that she wasn’t going to suffer from delayed concussion.
Last night, racked with pain, her emotions overwhelmed by the relief of being alive and the kindness the other girls had shown her, and despite the flood of injured bomb victims being rushed into the hospital and filling the ward, Dulcie hadn’t really been aware of what all those injured people had meant.
This morning it was different. This morning her mind was as sharp as a knife, picking up on the conversations going on all around her as the occupants of the other beds talked about what they had experienced. And the more she heard the more anxious about her own family Dulcie became.
It wasn’t until Sally, on her tea break, came into the ward to see her that she was able to ask the question uppermost in her mind.
‘How can I find out which streets have been hit?’ she asked Sally urgently. ‘Only I’ve heard people saying that Stepney got it pretty badly.’
‘I can’t help you, Dulcie; I wish I could,’ Sally was forced to admit. She’d been in the operating theatre virtually all night as patient after patient was wheeled in, all of them victims of the bombing and most of them badly injured. There had been one little baby boy they’d had to operate on. He’d been eighteen months old and his right leg had been so badly crushed that they’d had to amputate it. Sally had seen the surgeon wiping away tears as he looked at him. She had cried herself afterwards. It was impossible not to be affected by such things.
Worst of all, George had told her, were the people who came in asking if their loved ones had been brought in, hoping desperately to find them alive when George knew that they were in the morgue.
Such had been the shock of the night’s bombing that Winston Churchill himself had been in the East End this morning to reassure people and praise them for their courage, so Sally had heard from another nurse.
‘I expect we won’t know properly which streets have been hit until we get tomorrow morning’s papers. How are you feeling? How’s your ankle? Is it giving you much pain?’
‘Just a bit of a twinge, and I’d be feeling a lot better if Sister would tell me where my handbag is and let me put my lipstick on.’
Sally laughed. ‘I’ve got your bag. I took it with me when I went on duty to keep it safe. I’ve got to get back on duty now, but I’ll get it for you when I have my next break.’
‘There’s no point in us all going,’ Olive had told Tilly and Agnes. ‘They’ll only let Dulcie have one visitor, and you’ll be able to see her tomorrow, Tilly, when you’re back at work. Besides,’ she’d reminded them, ‘you’ve both got St John Ambulance this afternoon, haven’t you?’
Olive had her own reasons for wanting to see Dulcie on her own.
From her bed in the middle of the ward Dulcie was able to watch when visiting time came and the ward doors were opened to admit the surge of anxious relatives waiting to see their loved ones.
Although she pretended she wasn’t doing so, Dulcie’s gaze searched quickly amongst the visitors, looking for Tilly and Agnes’s familiar faces. Not that she expected to see them, just because last night she’d gone and made a fool of herself, saying what she had.
The stream of visitors turned to a trickle, and Dulcie told herself that she wasn’t in the least bit concerned that hers was the only bed without a relieved relative standing next to it.
And then Dulcie saw Olive coming towards her, carrying a copy of Picture Post, which she dropped on the bed, to lean over, take both of Dulcie’s hands in her own and say emotionally, ‘Dulcie, that was so generous and selfless of you last night to tell Tilly and Agnes to save themselves and leave you. I do thank you for that, my dear.’ As she spoke Olive squeezed Dulcie’s hands gently in her own. For a moment neither of them spoke and then, to Olive’s own shock as much as Dulcie’s, Olive leaned down and gave Dulcie a hug, telling her fiercely, ‘I’m glad they didn’t leave you, Dulcie, and I’m glad that you’re safe. Number thirteen wouldn’t be the same without you.’
‘You mean it would be a lot better,’ Dulcie couldn’t resist quipping as Olive released her to smile ruefully.
‘I might have thought that once, I admit, but I don’t think it any longer. I’m sorry about your ankle. Oh, and your mother sends her love.’
‘You’ve seen Ma? Are they all right? Everyone’s been saying that Stepney got hit badly with the bombs.’
Olive’s heart ached anew for Dulcie when she saw her genuine concern.
‘Your parents are fine and the street hasn’t been touched. Your mother is a bit anxious about your sister, though, because she was out singing somewhere last night and still hadn’t come home.’
‘Oh, yes, Ma would be worrying about her.’
There was a raw ugly animosity to Dulcie’s voice now. Instinctively Olive reached for her hand again and held it, telling her, ‘We’re all looking forward to you coming home. We can put a bed up in the front room for you until you can manage the stairs. Nancy next door has a spare single we can borrow and I’ll ask Sergeant Dawson if he’ll give her Arthur a hand moving it round.’
Home? That was what number 13 was to her now, Dulcie recognised, with a stab of shock.
‘I know that things haven’t been all that good between you and me,’ Dulcie told Olive, determined to clear the air between them, ‘but they’re going to be different now that me and the others are going to be friends.’
‘I’m very glad to hear that, Dulcie, because after what you did last night, I can’t think of anyone I’d want Tilly to have as a friend more than you.’
‘Dulcie says she’s like a second daughter to you,’ Dulcie’s mother had told her, so as she stood up when the bell rang to signal the end of visiting time, Olive leaned forward and kissed Dulcie on the cheek and then gave her another hug.
‘We’ll all be thinking about you, and Tilly will be in to see you tomorrow.’