any other young people in the Row of her age, and because her mother had been so busy nursing Tilly’s late grandfather, Tilly hadn’t had the opportunity to go out and have fun as much as other girls might. Olive was aware of that, just as she was aware of the increasing restlessness she had seen in her daughter over the summer months. There was fun and fun, though, and Olive did not want her quite naïve daughter getting involved in the kind of ‘fun’ she suspected someone like Dulcie enjoyed.
When Olive opened the door to Dulcie’s firm knock, though, it wasn’t the sight of Dulcie that set maternal alarm bells ringing inside her so much as the sight of the far too handsome young man standing behind her, one arm draped loosely around Dulcie’s shoulders. Her mouth firmed, her expression cooled, but before she could say anything Dulcie forestalled her.
‘It’s all right. Rick here is only my brother. He’s come to help me move in on account of my case being heavy. Rick, this is Mrs Robbins.’
Her brother and not a boyfriend. Olive allowed herself to relax a little. Rick’s smile was open and warm, his handshake firm and his uniform indicating that it was unlikely that he was going to be around very much, to Olive’s relief, as she recognised the effect having such a very good-looking and friendly young man in and out of the house could have on her daughter. Rick had the kind of smile, looks, and easy charm that would melt any girl’s heart.
‘I’ll show them up, shall I?’ Tilly suggested happily from the hallway, having just learned that the handsome young man was Dulcie’s brother and not her boyfriend.
But to her disappointment her mother told her, ‘I’m sure that Dulcie can remember which is her room and you’d only be in the way of her brother getting her suitcase up the stairs. Go and put on the kettle instead, please, Tilly, so that Dulcie and Rick can come down and have a cup of tea when they’re ready.’
‘Well, I have to admit that you’ve fallen on your feet here,’ Rick pronounced after he had dragged the heavy case up to Dulcie’s room and thoroughly inspected her new living quarters.
‘Told you,’ Dulcie reminded him. ‘I’ve got a whole room to myself and my own wardrobe, and there’s a bathroom on this floor that I only have to share with this nurse that’s taken the other room.’
‘All right, but don’t you forget that promise you made me,’ Rick warned her as he picked up the now empty case.
Olive was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, ushering them into the kitchen, ruefully aware of just how pleasant and charming Dulcie’s brother was in contrast to Dulcie herself. Pleasant and charming and far, far too good-looking for the peace of mind of the mother of an impressionable girl, especially when that impressionable girl was currently gazing at him with the kind of dazed expression girls her age normally reserved for matinée idols, Olive thought with a small sigh. She directed Tilly to fetch some milk from the larder, and then to go and bring Agnes and Sally in from the garden so that they too could have a cup of tea.
When the three young women returned Dulcie’s eyes widened at the sight of Agnes in her dull ill-fitting brown dress, and then narrowed with hostility when Olive told her pointedly, ‘This is Agnes, who should have had your room. Luckily she doesn’t mind sharing with Tilly. Come on and sit down, Agnes,’ Olive coaxed the hesitant-looking girl, her voice and expression warming as she welcomed her.
Her new landlady’s obvious approval of the shabbily dressed orphan and her equally obvious disapproval of her raised Dulcie’s hackles and brought out the same fighting instinct that her mother’s favouritism of Edith always aroused. The orphan was nothing compared with her so why should Olive make such a fuss of her? Deliberately and very disdainfully Dulcie brushed off the skirt of her own dress as Agnes’s shabby frock touched it, the pearl-pink nail polish she was wearing catching the light as she did so.
Little madam, Olive thought grimly, treating poor Agnes like that, although fortunately the other girl hadn’t noticed Dulcie’s deliberate slight. Dulcie, though, noticed Olive’s reaction and immediately her dislike of Agnes for her shabbiness hardened into dislike of the girl herself, because Olive obviously favoured her. Agnes was another Edith, ‘a favourite’ to be fussed over whilst she was pushed to one side and ignored.
‘Just been called up?’ Sally asked Rick, whilst Tilly looked on, envious of the older girl’s calm ability actually to speak to Rick whilst she could only stare at him in speechless awe.
‘Yes,’ Rick acknowledged. ‘I leave in a few days to start my training, and I reckon that we’ll be at war before I finish it, from what they’ve been saying in the papers.’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,’ Sally agreed.
‘The sooner we get Hitler sorted out and put in his place, the sooner life can get back to normal. I reckon we’ll give him the roundabout and boot him back to Germany in no time at all,’ Rick assured her confidently. ‘He’ll never get past the Maginot Line, even if he does dare to try and invade Belgium.’
‘That’s what the Government is saying,’ Sally confirmed.
Olive hugged her arms around her body. ‘I hate all this talk of war, after what our men went through the last time,’ she said, ‘but if it has to come then it has to come. Turn on the wireless, will you, Tilly? It’s almost time for the news.’
Obediently Tilly went to switch on the wireless, feeling all fingers and thumbs and very self-conscious as she did so, because Rick was sitting closest to it.
The announcer’s voice, when it did come through, was slightly fuzzy, and immediately Rick turned in his chair, leaning over to Tilly. ‘It needs a bit of tuning – want me to do it for you?’
Before she could answer, he was reaching out towards the control knob, so that his fingers brushed against hers as she moved away.
Scarlet colour dyed her skin, her heart flipping over like an acrobat whilst her pulses raced with excitement and delight, mixed with even more self-consciousness.
‘There, that’s it,’ Rick told her as his small adjustment brought the sound back in balance, his smile for Tilly warm and friendly. She was a very pretty girl, but very young, not much more than a school girl. Had she been a couple of years older he might have been tempted to tease her a little and really make her blush, before he asked her out and kissed her – had she not been Dulcie’s landlady’s daughter and had he not been about to leave London. Right now, as far as Rick was concerned, Tilly was just a nice kid.
All of them fell silent whilst they listened to the news, even Dulcie. Not that there was much to learn unless you were interested in the fact that Poland had mobilised all its reservists and France had called up all of hers which Dulcie wasn’t, not really She was more interested in wondering when she was next going to see David James-Thompson. When she was going to see him, not if, because she knew that she would. She really could do with getting hold of a decent bit of material and having a new dress made, Dulcie decided, because when David James-Thompson took her to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse she wanted to look her best, so that he’d know that every other man there was looking at him and envying him because he was with her. Dulcie loved that kind of admiration; that feeling of knowing that she was the best.
The newsreader was talking about Britain’s plans for evacuating children from the cities, and whilst Olive and Sally sighed and said how awful that was going to be for their mothers, Tilly sat with her chin in her hands pretending to listen intently, whilst in reality what she was looking at was Rick.
It had been such a busy evening she hadn’t had
