The first thing Agnes heard about on Monday morning when she got to work was that people had tried to shelter in the underground, despite the fact that the Government had said that the underground was not to be used as a shelter.
‘Had some poor souls here from the East End,’ Smithy told her. ‘Bin walking around all day, they had, on account of their own houses being blown up and them having nowhere to go. It will be even worse tonight after last night’s bombing. I’d heard there was four hundred at least killed last night.’
Agnes shuddered and went pale. ‘We saw them on Saturday night, the bombers. We were going out for our tea and we saw them come over, then Dulcie got her heel stuck in the cobbles and broke her ankle and this German plane saw us helping her.’
‘Sounds like you had a lucky escape.’
‘We did,’ Agnes agreed in a heartfelt voice, thinking no more about what she had said as the queue built up at her ticket window and she got to work.
By the time Ted finished his shift at five o’clock that afternoon, though, the story about Agnes’s lucky escape had been passed on amongst the staff, its details embroidered with each telling so that when Ted heard it from one of the other drivers, the story was that Agnes had been badly hurt when a bomb had blown up in front of her.
The shock and despair that gripped him as he listened to the other driver was like no pain Ted had ever experienced. Agnes, his Agnes, was badly injured, and could be lying in hospital at death’s door. In that moment Ted knew that he would give up his own life willingly if only Agnes could be saved. Knuckling the tears from his eyes he made his way up the steps and out of the underground station into the smoke-tainted late afternoon air. He’d go round to where she lived, ask them, beg them, to tell him which hospital she was in and then he’d go and see her and he’d . . . Ted lifted his downbent head to blink back his tears and then came to an abrupt halt, because there, less than three yards in front of him and walking away from him was Agnes. He blinked, thinking he must have conjured her up from his own imagination, but then she dodged a group of commuters coming the other way, and he knew she was real. His heart surged and bounded with joy and relief. He ran after her, catching hold of her arm so that she turned toward him.
‘Ted!’
‘You’re safe! I thought . . . I heard that you’d been badly injured.’
‘No, Dulcie broke her ankle when we got caught up in the bombing, but I’m all right.’
All around them the tide of moving humanity ebbed and swelled but they were both oblivious to it, oblivious to everything and anything except one another.
Agnes told him disjointedly, ‘I thought, that is . . . I didn’t think you wanted to be friends with me any more.’
‘No! Agnes.’ Ted was reaching for her hand and holding it, clasping it tight in his own, his face working as emotion gripped him. ‘You mean the world to me, Agnes,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You’re the best girl a chap could ever meet.’
They stood on the pavement looking into one another’s eyes, still holding hands.
‘Then why haven’t you wanted to see me?’ Agnes asked him.
‘It was for your sake, because . . .’ Ted paused and shook his head, fighting to control his emotions, ‘. . . it was for you, Agnes, because I wanted you to be free to find someone who could give you all the things that I can’t.’
When she looked bewildered, he explained bleakly, ‘You know how we live. Mum couldn’t manage without my wages. The girls are only nine and eleven. It will be years before they are earning. I haven’t got anything to offer you, Agnes.’
‘You’ve got your love. I don’t mind waiting, Ted. Not for you.’
When he didn’t say anything she told him practically, ‘It won’t be that long before the girls are grown up, not really, and then when they’re bringing in a bit of money, you and me can marry and we can find somewhere a bit bigger, so that we can all live together.’
‘You deserve better than that, Agnes.’
‘There couldn’t be anyone better for me than you, Ted. I’ve been that upset and miserable, thinking that you didn’t want me. Last night, when that fighter plane came straight at us and Dulcie told us to run and leave her, all I could think was that I didn’t care about living if living meant being without you.’
‘Agnes.’
She raised herself up on her tiptoes and very daringly kissed him full on the mouth.
‘Agnes!’
The rough note of emotion in his voice made her tremble with happiness and then he was kissing her back, and telling her how much he loved her, and Agnes knew that this was the happiest day of her life.
‘Does this mean that we’re going steady now?’ she asked Ted breathlessly once he’d stopped kissing her.
‘It could be years before we can get married,’ Ted warned her.
‘I don’t care,’ Agnes told him. ‘Just as long as you love me.’
‘Of course I love you. How could I not do when you’re the best girl in the world?’ Ted told her emotionally.
* * *
Of course, Olive had to be told, Agnes’s face so alight with love and happiness as she explained what had happened.
Agnes was very young but Olive suspected that she was the kind of girl who, once her heart was given, would stay true to that first love all her life.
‘Ted wants us to get engaged. He said it will tell other lads that I’m spoken for, but he’ll have to save up for a ring first, so we thought we’d get engaged at Christmas. He’s going to tell his mum that she’s not to worry and that he’ll still be handing his wages over to her for her and the girls.’
‘I’m glad that Agnes isn’t going to marry Ted yet,’ Tilly told Olive later when they were on their own. ‘I wasn’t so sure how it was going to be when you first said about taking in lodgers, Mum, but now I’d hate it to be any different. Agnes and Dulcie and Sally – well, they’re like family now.’
Family.
Tilly was right, Olive thought. The girls she had taken in originally as lodgers as a means of earning some money had now all found and made their own special places in her heart: Agnes, who had been so vulnerable and in need of love; Sally, so practical and hard-working and yet with such a terrible sadness to bear; Dulcie, whose influence on Tilly she had feared and resented and who she had judged on Dulcie’s challenging manner, and who now, she had discovered, beneath that outer defensive attitude hungered for a mother’s love.
They were her girls now. Her London Belles, Olive thought with a surge of maternal love. The girls, her girls, reminded her of the joyous sounds of the many different bells of London’s churches, and how that sound lifted the spirits of those who heard them, just as the sound of the girls’ laughter and happy chatter lifted her spirits. Life had brought them together, and Olive prayed that life would keep them together and safe through the darkness that lay ahead, and that their hearts would always ring true.