in line on the beaches whilst the Luftwaffe blew you apart and the sky above you remained empty of the RAF. It was seeing grown men cry for their mothers, seeing men die slowly over the long hours they waited for rescue; it was feeling that you would die of thirst but knowing you couldn’t risk losing your place in the line.
And after that, being back here in London, seeing people who were clean and not injured and safe, and knowing that they were as alien to you now as though they belonged to a separate race.
It was knowing that nothing ever could or would be the same.
Rick couldn’t risk speaking to Tilly because if he did he was afraid that he would tell her these things that could not be told to anyone, least of all a young girl like her.
It was gone eight o’clock in the evening before the flood of men was reduced to a trickle, and Tilly and Agnes were free to leave their posts and make their way over to where Olive was handing over responsibility for the tea urns to a new group of WVS.
‘We saw Dulcie’s brother,’ Agnes announced as they headed for the parked van, ‘didn’t we, Tilly?’
‘Yes. I had to look at him twice before I was sure it was him,’ Tilly told her mother. ‘All the soldiers look so defeated. It really tears at your heart. It isn’t their fault, after all,’ she defended her countrymen fiercely. ‘Everyone said that the Maginot Line would hold Hitler back. So many of them are angry with the RAF and blame them for not doing more to hold the Luftwaffe at bay whilst they were retreating.’
‘I know,’ Olive agreed. ‘I suppose it’s because the Government feel they need to hold back the RAF to defend the country.’
Tilly saw the looks her mother exchanged with the other WVS members she was taking back to the church hall.
‘You mean in case Hitler tries to invade?’ Tilly pressed her.
There was a brief silence and then Olive admitted tiredly, ‘Yes.’
It had to be faced after all, Olive acknowledged as she drove back to the church hall. Hitler had smashed through the defences of every country he had invaded, and now France too had fallen, something that no one had expected to happen. What was to stop them being next?
‘The Germans will target London first,’ Hilda Blackett, one of the WVS, warned them all, her voice sounding prophetically through the cramped stuffiness of the back of the van, where Tilly and Agnes were sitting hunched up to occupy as little space as possible.
‘Well, if he does let’s hope we’re better protected than the BEF,’ another woman said grimly.
No one challenged her because they had all seen and heard too much to do so, Olive recognised.
It seemed ironic now that she had worried so much that going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais might encourage Tilly to grow up too soon, when over the last four days she had had to grow up so brutally fast with what she was having to witness. Tilly couldn’t be protected from the cruel realities of war, though, not when men not much older than she was herself were returning from Dunkirk with the horror of what they had seen and experienced stamped so clearly on them.
On previous occasions Tilly had enjoyed the drive back to the church hall, happy in the knowledge of a job well done, secretly marvelling at her mother’s skill and very proud of the fact that she was the driver, but tonight the events of the last few days and what they meant weighed too heavily on her for that. The expressions on the faces of Rick and the young injured soldier refused to be ejected from her memory. Such grimness and pain couldn’t be forgotten or dismissed. Tonight she would say a special prayer to add to all her other prayers for the young man she had tended, in the hope that he would live to see his mother.
* * *
News of the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat and the desperate efforts to bring home as many of them as was possible might have the rest of the household at number 13 scurrying around and doing their bit, but Dulcie wasn’t going to allow it to change any of her plans.
Tonight was Saturday night and she was dancing at the Palais just as she would have been on any other Saturday night – especially since Arlene at work had read out to them all the news of David’s marriage with Lydia.
Not that she had ever expected anything else. He had as good as said himself that he had no choice, and it wasn’t as though she had ever tried, or wanted to try, to change his mind. She had done what she wanted to do, proved what she had wanted to prove, and that was an end to the matter. If Arlene thought that it meant anything to Dulcie to have his engagement announcement read out to her then she was wrong. Nevertheless, the fact that Arlene had made a point of showing it to her had rubbed against Dulcie’s pride, as had the sly, almost knowing look that Arlene had given her when she had made a comment about like always marrying like. Dulcie had longed to tell her that David might have married Lydia but he certainly didn’t love her, but she had held her tongue. After all, she hadn’t wanted David herself. Not really. Because if she had done then Dulcie knew she would have made sure that she got him, Lydia and marriage or no Lydia and marriage.
Even so, her pride demanded that the girls she worked with now needed to be shown that she could get a beau who was even more handsome than David. She wasn’t going to have them gossiping about her behind her back and laughing at her, just because David had paid her a bit of attention. That meant having a new and, of course, adoring beau she could flaunt in front of her work colleagues.
A couple of young Australian soldiers caught her eye, but Dulcie speedily dismissed them. They might be tall but they were also gangly. No, her new beau had to be handsome and stand out as special, someone better-looking than David and more eye-catching. She studied the groups of men clustered close to the bar, but they appeared too ordinary for her purpose.
She looked away and then tensed as a familiar group of Italian men came in. They always hovered on the edge of the dance floor, eyeing up the girls, but those in the know were wary of dancing with them, knowing perfectly well what they were after and that they were all destined at some stage to obey their mothers and marry a girl of their own sort. Tonight, though, there was a man with them whom Dulcie didn’t recognise, and she knew she would have done if she had seen him before. For a start he was taller than the others – at least six foot, she reckoned – and broader shouldered too. He even held himself differently, standing tall with his head up, not surveying the dancers surreptitiously but instead focusing on listening to the other man who was talking to him Best of all, though, he was good-looking. Very good-looking, matinée idol good-looking, Dulcie thought with growing satisfaction, and smartly dressed as well. He stood out against the group he was with like a silver coin in a handful of copper, and Dulcie made up her mind there and then that he was ideal for her purpose.
Confidently she got up from her seat at the table, saying over her shoulder to the girl sitting next to her, ‘Save my seat, will you, only I’m just going to the lav.’
Opening her handbag as though in search of a handkerchief, her head down, it was easy for Dulcie to stage manage accidentally bumping into her target and then dropping her handbag in supposed shock.
Of course he would pick it up for her, that was what men did and what Dulcie expected, but what she hadn’t expected was that he would also give her a level look from amused brown eyes, as though he knew perfectly well that what had happened was no accident.
Dulcie, though, didn’t respond to the knowing gleam in his eyes. Instead she thanked him prettily for helping to collect the powder compact and brush that had fallen from her handbag and then, as they both stood up, Dulcie making sure that
