My Sweet Valentine

Normally she would have walked to the vicarage with Nancy, her next-door neighbour, and her husband, but they had gone down to Nancy’s daughter’s in-laws in the country to spend Christmas and the New Year with them. Olive knew that Nancy wasn’t the most popular inhabitant of Article Row, especially with the younger generation, as she was one of those people who seemed to delight in finding fault with others, but they had been neighbours for a long time.

Olive had always got on reasonably well with her, although this last year she had found herself having to bite down on her tongue a bit over some of the things Nancy had said, especially about Sergeant Dawson. Olive liked Sergeant Dawson. He was a kind man – a good man – and Nancy had gone far too far when she had tried to suggest that he might be showing too much of an interest in women without a man to protect them. Nancy had been referring to her when she had said that, warning her, Olive knew, and ever since then she had felt uncomfortable about being in the sergeant’s company on her own. Not because she felt there was any truth in Nancy’s aspersions – she didn’t – no, it was because she suspected that Nancy might be peering round her lace curtains to see if her suspicions were being confirmed.

Poor Sergeant Dawson. They hadn’t had an easy life, he and Mrs Dawson, with losing their son when he had been a young boy, and then Mrs Dawson turning into a recluse because of it.

The vicarage was in front of her now. Olive opened the gate and walked up the path to the front door. The vicarage, the church and the church hall had all been built by the same wealthy merchant who had built Article Row.

Audrey opened the door to Olive’s knock, greeting her warmly, and then taking Olive’s coat, hat and scarf from her after Olive had tucked her gloves in the pockets.

‘Oh, Olive, I do love that dress. The colour is perfect on you,’ she complimented Olive with the genuine admiration of a true and good friend.

Olive smiled her thanks and tried not to shiver in the draught that was coming into the square hallway from under the badly fitting doors. A vicar’s stipend was only modest, Audrey Windle had given Olive to understand, and had not stretched to such luxuries as new doors and window frames, even before the war when such things had been readily available.

‘Come into the sitting room,’ Audrey invited, opening a door into the large, shabbily furnished room.

Two well-worn leather sofas and two armchairs that didn’t match either each other or the sofas were pulled up close to a sullen-looking fire in the large fireplace. The Afghan and tartan rugs on the chairs and the sofas showed how the occupants of the house normally tried to keep warm. Dark red velvet curtains, which had obviously come from somewhere else originally because you could see where the original hems had been let down, were drawn over the blacked-out windows. The only piece of really good furniture in the room was the baby grand piano, which was Audrey’s pride and joy.

The vicar, a quiet, kindly man, who always seemed to have a bit of a cold, was standing talking with his curate, whilst several fellow members of Audrey’s WVA group, along with their husbands, were clustered as close to the fire as good manners would allow.

War brought people together in so many new ways, forging friendships that would never have been possible before the war, Olive acknowledged. Now they had a common goal – to stay strong for their country and the brave men fighting for it.

‘Thank you for those sandwiches and the mince pies you brought down earlier, Olive, and for helping me set up the buffet in the dining room,’ Audrey said, adding, ‘Oh, and did I tell you that I had a letter from Mrs Long? She often mentioned how grateful she was for everything we did for her after she lost her husband.’

The Longs had lived at the last but one house on Article Row, number 49. Their son, Christopher, had at one stage attended the local St John Ambulance brigade with Tilly. As a conscientious objector Christopher had not joined any of the armed services. Initially he had been in a reserved occupation, with the Civil Service, but then he had been obliged to join the bomb disposal service, something that, according to Tilly, he hadn’t wanted to do one little bit. She was so lucky, Olive reflected. Some poor families went through such dreadful things. It was true that she had been widowed young but she had had her baby to keep her going. After she had been widowed Mrs Long had left London to return to her home town in the South of England.

‘Have you seen what the Luftwaffe did the other night?’ Anne Morrison asked Olive after the vicar had poured her a class of elderberry wine.

‘Yes. We all went down to have a look at St Paul’s,’ Olive replied.

The sitting room door opened again, bringing a fresh draught of cold damp air against Olive’s legs as she stood with her back to it.

‘Oh, it’s Sergeant Dawson. No Mrs Dawson, though,’ Anne informed Olive with a small sigh. ‘Poor woman. One does feel sorry for her.’

‘Yes,’ Olive agreed without turning round. Drat Nancy for going and making her feel so self-conscious when she had no need to feel that way. Those who said that Nancy was a bit of a troublemaker certainly had a point.

‘Good evening, ladies.’

‘Good evening, Sergeant Dawson,’ Anne acknowledged the policeman’s greeting happily. ‘I was just saying to Olive here how very lucky we were to have you teach us both to drive. My husband said so at the time although I know there were those – no names mentioned but she’s a neighbour of yours, Olive – who were inclined to disapprove of females learning to drive, despite the fact that they have benefited from us doing so.’

Anne was a large, solidly built, jovial woman, and when she laughed, as she was doing now, her whole body seemed to shake with good-natured mirth.

‘All the credit doesn’t lie with me,’ Sergeant Dawson responded with his own smile, tactfully avoiding her reference to Nancy, much to Olive’s relief. ‘I had two very able pupils.’

‘Oh, excuse me, will you, please,’ Anne stopped him. ‘Only I’ve just seen Vera Stands and I need to have a word with her about the church flower rota.’ With another smile she strode off, leaving Olive on her own with the sergeant and no ready excuse to take her own leave. She was about to ask politely if the Dawsons had had a good Christmas and then just in time she remembered that the sergeant had once told her that Christmas was naturally a very difficult time for them both, but especially for his wife, because of the loss of their son.

Instead, she asked him, ‘Is it definitely all official now, I mean about you and Mrs Dawson taking Barney in?’

‘Yes. He had to spend Christmas in a children’s home outside the city, much to his disgust, but he’ll be coming to us in time for the new school term. Mrs Dawson’s been getting his room ready for him. She’s had me giving it a coat of distemper to freshen it up a bit.’ A rueful look crossed the sergeant’s face. ‘I just hope that she isn’t going to spoil him too much.’

Olive could tell from both his expression and the sound of his voice how much the sergeant was looking forward to Barney’s arrival.

‘Oh, and there’s something I ought to tell you,’ he continued. ‘It’s about Reg Baxter and that vacancy there was going to be at the ARP station, the one that I thought you should put your name forward for?’

Olive nodded. She’d felt both surprised and a bit overwhelmed when Sergeant Dawson had suggested that she volunteer to fill a vacancy at their local ARP unit, but the sergeant had insisted that she would be an ideal candidate.

‘It seems that Reg Baxter has decided not to retire and move after all,’ the sergeant told her, ‘and the other vacancy, the one that Mrs Morrison had applied for, that’s gone to a chap from Court Street.’

Olive was surprised to discover how unflatteringly she was thinking of the men who had turned down the opportunity to have someone as capable as her fellow WVS member join them. Before the war such a thought wouldn’t have crossed her mind. The war, though, had shown her just how capable and resourceful her own sex was, and how proud she was of what women were doing to help with the war effort.

That neither she nor Mrs Morrison had been offered the membership of the local ARP unit wasn’t Sergeant Dawson’s fault, however, and Olive could see from his expression that he felt slightly uncomfortable about the news he had had to give her.

Even so, she couldn’t resist saying with a small smile, ‘Sergeant Dawson, the ARP unit doesn’t know what it will be missing in not taking on Mrs Morrison. She’s a first-class organiser, and she makes the best hotpot I’ve ever tasted. She regularly brings one round for our WVS suppers.’

‘Archie, please, Olive. We agreed when I was teaching you to drive that we had known one another long enough to be on first-name terms. Hearing you address me as “Sergeant Dawson” makes me feel that you think of me as someone of your late in-laws’ generation.’

‘Oh, no, I would never think that.’ Was she blushing? Her face certainly felt hot, and no wonder after such a silly gauche remark, far more suitable to someone Tilly’s age than her own. Of course she didn’t think of Sergeant D— Archie … as someone of her late in-laws’ age. How could she when it was perfectly obvious that he wasn’t? His dark hair might be greying slightly at the temples now, whilst fine lines fanned out around his eyes when he smiled, but he was still tall and lean, with a very manly bearing and …

And nothing, Olive stopped herself firmly, allowing herself to say only, ‘Somehow I don’t think that Nancy would think it proper for me to call you Archie. You know how she is about such things.’

‘Yes, I know how she is,’ he agreed, ‘but in private, when we are talking to one another, then surely it can be Olive and Archie?’

She ought to say ‘no’ but that would be rude. He didn’t know, after all, about that silly awareness of him she had developed – or those secret, dangerous, unwanted and unacceptable thoughts of envy she sometimes had for the obvious contentment of the marriage he and his wife shared.

‘Very well,’ she agreed.

Nestled in Drew’s arms, her head tucked into his shoulder, as they moved slowly together on the dance floor, Tilly gave a small sigh as the final strains of ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ died away. The song had been one of the hits of the year and now, on New Year’s Eve, as the dancers and those sitting out broke into applause, and the band stood to take their break, she told Drew, ‘It’s such a lovely song that it always brings a lump to my throat. But it’s hard to imagine any kind of bird singing in any of London’s squares right now, thanks to the Blitz.’

‘It’s a song of hope for the future, for better times ahead,’ Drew reminded her, his arm round her as the lights came up over the darkened dance floor and they started to make their way towards their table – Dulcie’s favourite table, which she had bagged the minute they had arrived.

‘Dulcie’s brother seems a nice guy,’ Drew commented. ‘He was really friendly last night back at Ian’s when I was asking him about the desert campaign. Of course, there was stuff he couldn’t tell me but he gave me a real good idea of what it’s been like for them out there. I’ve noticed that you don’t say much to him, though. Don’t you like him?’

Tilly felt a pang of guilt, her straightforward nature making it impossible not to be honest with Drew when she loved him so much.

‘It isn’t that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Rick, it’s just, well, I had a bit of a crush on him for a little while, when I first met him.’ She pulled a small face. ‘So silly, and I’m ashamed of myself now. I’d grown out of it even before I met you, but I was just a girl then. I wanted to tell you but I didn’t want you to think—’

‘What I think is that he’s the one who is keen on you, not the other way around,’ Drew astonished her by saying.

‘Rick, keen on me? Oh, no.’ Tilly shook her head vehemently. ‘No, he wasn’t in the least bit interested in me.’

Hearing the honesty in Tilly’s voice made Drew smile. She was the best girl any guy could want. He didn’t for a single minute doubt her, but he knew his own sex and he’d seen the looks Rick had been giving Tilly when he thought that no one was watching him.

‘Take it from me,’ Drew corrected her, ‘he’s interested, but no way is he going to get a look-in.’

‘No way at all,’ Tilly agreed, stopping at the end of the dance floor to kiss Drew’s cheek. ‘You’re the only man I want, Drew.’ She paused to tuck her arm through his as they headed for their table, then asked him, ‘Have you told your family yet – about us, I mean? Mum had a lovely letter from your mother with her Christmas card but it didn’t say anything about you and me, but then if you have written to them they probably wouldn’t have got your letter before they sent the Christmas Card.’

‘I’ve told them that I’ve met a very special girl,’ Drew answered her, turning his head as he did so, so that she couldn’t see his expression. He changed the subject to warn her, ‘Dulcie’s heading our way with Wilder, and I know he isn’t your favourite person.’

‘I don’t like the way he treats Dulcie,’ Tilly admitted. ‘I know she seems worldly-wise on the outside but I’m afraid that Wilder might hurt her. You said that you don’t think she’s the only girl he’s seeing, but I don’t think she knows that.’

Drew nodded, feeling guiltily relieved that she had taken his lead on the subject. It wasn’t that he wanted to deceive Tilly – there was nothing he wanted more than to be completely honest with her – but it just wasn’t possible. Not at the moment, not yet. Just as it wasn’t possible for him to be totally honest with his family about his feelings for Tilly. If he wasn’t being totally honest with Tilly then it was because he loved her and wanted to protect her, that was all.

‘Not long until midnight now,’ Dulcie announced, coming to sit down next to Tilly as Drew pulled up a chair for her.

‘So don’t you go and disappear with some fast piece,’ Dulcie warned her brother. ‘I don’t want the only member of my family I’ve seen over Christmas disappearing with some girl just as it strikes midnight.’

‘If anyone’s likely to disappear to have an illicit bit of how’s your father with some girl he’s just met, it’s that fly boy of Dulcie’s, not me,’ Rick muttered in an aside to Drew whilst Dulcie was talking to Wilder. When Rick realised that Tilly had overheard him, he apologised. She shook her head in response to his, ‘Sorry …’ She was more concerned about the fact that Rick’s opinion of Wilder matched her own than she was about his sturdy male language. She was very fond of Dulcie and would hate to see her hurt.

‘Do you think there’ll be many there?’ Agnes asked Ted as they hurried arm in arm through the cold night air in the direction of Trafalgar Square, to share in the traditional way of bringing in the New Year.

‘I should think so,’ Ted assured her. ‘Londoners aren’t going to let something like a few German bombs stop them from celebrating.’

At Barts Sally looked at the watch she wore pinned to the front of her uniform apron, as she emerged from the operating theatre for her break. Ten minutes to go. She and George had promised that they’d think of one another the moment midnight started to chime. For someone who prided herself on being so matter-of-fact she was surprised how emotional she felt that they weren’t seeing out the old year and welcoming in the new one together.

Setting off in the direction of the stairs, she thought that she might as well go to the canteen, where she could at least welcome in the New Year amongst the other staff who were on their breaks.

She almost made it, would have made it, if she hadn’t been stopped in her tracks by the totally unexpected sound of George’s voice calling out breathlessly from behind her.

‘Sally.’

She spun round to stare at him in disbelief, then she was running towards him, ignoring the rule that nurses never ran unless there was an emergency. After all, there was an emergency of sorts, the emergency of reaching the man she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with, before the clocks struck midnight.

Her, ‘What are you doing here?’ was muffled against his lips as he kissed her and then kissed her again, lifting her off her feet to hold her tight, his face cold from the air outside, but his body warm beneath his overcoat as she unfastened the buttons and burrowed close to him.

‘I wanted to see in the New Year with the girl I love,’ he answered her question.

‘You got leave?’

‘Not exactly, but I’m off duty until tomorrow evening, so I thought I’d risk coming up to London. I’ll have to go back on the first available train, though,’ he warned her.

‘You came all the way to London, because …’

‘Because I wanted to kiss my girl and wish her a Happy New Year,’ he finished for her.

For a minute Sally just looked at him, and then her voice trembled slightly as she whispered, ‘Oh, George.’

‘It’s midnight,’ he whispered back. ‘Happy New Year, my darling girl, and may it be just the first of a lifetime of Happy New Years for us.’

‘Oh, George, don’t say that,’ Sally begged him. ‘Don’t tempt fate by talking about the future. Just kiss me instead.’

‘Oh, Ted.’ Tears filled Agnes’s eyes as she turned towards her fiancé amongst the crowd of people who had braved the threat of Hitler’s bombers to come out to celebrate the arrival of the New Year around the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Unlike before the war, there were no lights to illuminate the scene, only starlight shining fitfully through the still heavy pall of smoke, but from what Agnes could see, the couples who turned to one another didn’t seem to mind the lack of light – quite the opposite.

People were reaching out for one another’s hands, the sound of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ growing louder and stronger. As she looked at Ted, Agnes was sure that the diamond in her ring sparkled even more brightly than usual. She was so lucky, and so happy too, even if sometimes she did wish that Ted’s mother would be a bit more friendly. Ted had told Agnes not to worry about his mother’s lack of warmth towards her, stating in his calm good-natured way that eventually she’d come round. Never having known the love of her own mother, she had dearly hoped that Ted’s mother would take to her. Maybe one day she would, Agnes told herself hopefully, as she snuggled closer to Ted.

‘I love you,’ Drew mouthed to Tilly, knowing that it would be impossible for her to hear his voice in the cacophony of cheers, whoops and ‘Happy New Years’ that had filled the dancehall as midnight struck. Now they were standing up for ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the dance floor packed, people covered in streamers and the balloons that had been let down from the net above them.

‘I love you too,’ Tilly mouthed back to him. Everyone was laughing and hugging, Rick looking very happy with the pretty little redhead on his arm, and Dulcie glowing from all the male attention she was getting from single servicemen eager to get their share of the kisses being exchanged to bring in the New Year.

‘Where’s Wilder? He’s missing all the fun,’ Tilly asked Dulcie, cupping her hand to the other girl’s ear so that she could hear her, her other hand holding tightly onto Drew’s.

‘Gone to the gents’,’ Dulcie yelled back.

Truth to tell, she wasn’t as concerned about Wilder missing the countdown to midnight as she might otherwise have been, thanks to the admiring attentions of a young naval officer who, Dulcie had to admit, looked far more handsome in his immaculate uniform than Wilder did in the worn leather jacket that he had insisted on keeping on, despite the heat in the packed the dancehall.

In fact, if anything, the young naval officer, with his open delight in her company, was far better company than Wilder, who had been offhand all evening, complaining that London’s way of welcoming in the New Year was a poor drab thing compared with New York’s.

‘Well, New York isn’t being bombed by the Germans, is it?’ Dulcie had snapped at him at one point in the evening, turning her back on him to sit with her arms folded dismissively across her chest. That was when the young naval officer – Mike – had seen her and had given her a look of bashful hope.

When the band had played a ladies excuse me, and Wilder had announced that he didn’t want to dance, she’d gone over and asked Mike to dance instead, encouraging him to come over to join their table, where she’d introduced him to the others, telling Wilder prettily that she’d felt it was her duty to take pity on ‘one of our brave servicemen, who hasn’t got a dance partner’.

Wilder had responded with a grunt, and the unkind comment that Britain’s armed forces might be brave but they weren’t strong enough to defeat Hitler, and then he’d got up and walked off.

That had been half an hour ago.

Well, if Wilder thought that she was the sort of girl who got all anxious and upset about that kind of behaviour, he was going to find out that he was wrong, Dulcie decided, getting up to go and grab hold of her brother’s hand.

‘Come and dance with me, Rick …’

Later, from the dizzyingly blissful delight of Drew’s arms as they swayed romantically together beneath the dimmed lights to an intimately slow dance number, Tilly murmured to him, ‘I think that Dulcie and Wilder have had a bit of a tiff.’

‘Mmm,’ Drew murmured back. ‘Have I told you that your hair smells of honey and roses, and that your lips taste of paradise?’

Tilly closed her eyes and melted into him.

They had been so close tonight, mentally, emotionally and physically. Being held this close to him, being able to feel all of him against all of her was dangerously exciting. There was an ache low down in her body that made her want to press even closer to him, an awareness within her that the kisses they shared, no matter how sweet they were, could not alone satisfy the need that ached inside her.

Tilly knew what married intimacy entailed but she had never imagined until she had met Drew that she would hunger for that intimacy so strongly and passionately before marriage.

They stayed on the floor until the notes of the last waltz of the evening had died away, returning to their table to find Rick and Dulcie waiting there for them but no sign of Wilder. He appeared a couple of minutes later, removing his handkerchief as he did so, Tilly’s heart hammering as the lights came up and she saw on it the telltale marks of bright orange lipstick. Bright orange when Dulcie was wearing deep pink.

Anxious for her friend, Tilly deliberately leaned across to block Dulcie’s view of Wilder, asking Rick with forced nonchalance, ‘When did you say your leave finished, Rick?’

He too leaned forward, and the look in his eyes suggested to Tilly that he too had seen those lipstick marks as he folded his arms on the table, forcing Wilder to sit back.

‘Tomorrow.’

Tilly nodded, glad of his sensitivity to Dulcie’s feelings.

It was later, after the taxi had dropped the four of them off at the top of Article Row – Wilder remaining in the taxi, having turned down Drew’s suggestion that he stay the night at Ian Simpson’s, insisting that he needed to get back to his base – that Tilly told Drew what had happened as they hung back behind Dulcie and Rick.

‘That’s one of the things I love about you,’ Tilly told him, cuddling up to him. ‘The fact that you’re so honest, Drew. I know you’d never deceive me about anything.’

Drew swallowed hard, conscious that there was something he hadn’t been honest about with Tilly, and it was a very big something, a something that grew harder for him to bear with every fresh kiss they exchanged and every promise of shared love they made. What would happen when he did tell her? Would he lose her? He wouldn’t be able to bear that. He loved her so much, with her brave bright spirit, her fierce loyalty to those who mattered to her, her compassion for others, and her passionate nature.