a coincidence.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw what she’d done,’ Rick admitted. ‘She’s not exactly the type to put herself at risk for someone else, isn’t Dulcie.’ He spoke openly, somehow finding the sight of Raphael’s uniform making it easy for him to do so. Raphael might be Italian but he was a soldier, like Rick himself, and right now that formed a bond between them that meant Rick could speak frankly to the other man.
‘Of course, once she’d got herself involved I’d no option other than to do the same. She is my sister, after all.’ Rick shook his head. ‘Women. I’ll never understand them, doing something as risky and daft as that, just because old Mr Manelli used to put an extra dollop of ice cream in our bowl when we were kids.’
‘I obviously owe your sister my thanks as well then,’ Raphael told Rick. ‘It’s a bit late for me to call round at your home now, but—’
‘You wouldn’t find her there anyway,’ Rick stopped him. ‘Dulcie doesn’t live at home. She’s got digs in Holborn and a landlady who doesn’t take too kindly to men she doesn’t know turning up on her doorstep asking for her lodgers. Your best bet would be to go to Selfridges. Dulcie works there in the cosmetics department.’
Now was the time for him to come clean and tell her brother that he already knew Dulcie and where she worked, Raphael knew. That would be the right and honest thing to do. He battled with his conscience. He liked what he’d seen of Rick, and as a man honesty was important to him. However, he knew that Rick wouldn’t like hearing about how he had come to know his sister – as her brother he was bound to be protective of her; that was only natural. In the circumstances it was best that he didn’t say anything, Raphael decided, but that didn’t stop him feeling guilty.
‘I’ll go and see her at Selfridges, as you suggest.’
‘Will Mr Manelli be all right?’ Rick asked him.
‘I hope so.’ Raphael reached into his tunic pocket to remove a packet of service-issue cigarettes, offering the pack first to Rick, who took one, and then lighting Rick’s cigarette for him before lighting one for himself.
‘Been in the army long?’ he asked Rick.
‘Joined up just in time to be sent out to France with the BEF. And you?’
‘Same. We were working on an airfield down near Nantes when the order came to pull out. We were lucky. We got taken off the beach at St-Nazaire by a Finnish vessel and taken to Falmouth. Not that we thought we were going to be lucky at first, not when we’d seen all the RAF lot being given preference to get on board this warship they’d got at St-Nazaire, packed with women and children as well as the RAF. Poor sods. There wasn’t any room for us.
Raphael narrowed his eyes and looked into the distance before telling Rick, ‘The warship got bombed by the Luftwaffe – those on board didn’t stand a chance.’
Both men drew heavily on their cigarettes in shared silence, each knowing why the other didn’t speak.
Olive was in the kitchen when Dulcie came in. The girls had already gone up to bed taking their cocoa with them, but Olive had hung on downstairs. Not because she was concerned about the fact that Dulcie was still out, like she would have been had she been Tilly or Agnes. It was no business of hers what time Dulcie came in or where she’d been, only she had said that she was going over to her parents’ because it was her mother’s birthday, and the look on her face had said that it wasn’t a visit she was particularly looking forward to.
Her walk back to Article Row took Dulcie around forty-five minutes and had given her time to think about what she had done, and once the euphoria of feeling that she’d triumphed over all those who thought they could look down on her by doing something brave had worn off, Dulcie had started to recognise the risk she had taken and to feel a bit shaky. The last thing she wanted as she walked into the kitchen, intent on making herself a spirit-strengthening cup of tea, was Olive, and the sight of her sitting in a chair as though waiting for her return brought Dulcie to an abrupt halt. No one had ever waited up for her. It was Edith her own mother worried about and sat up anxiously for, refusing to go to bed until she knew she was safely home. When Dulcie had pointed out that she had never waited up for her, her mother had simply said that there wasn’t any need for her to do that because she knew that Dulcie was perfectly capable of looking after herself. Not that Olive would be waiting up for her to get in, of course. It would be Tilly and Agnes she was sitting there for.
‘Tilly and Agnes not in yet?’ she asked Olive, as she headed for the kettle. Her mouth felt dry and her head ached painfully.
‘Yes. They’ve gone up,’ Olive told her, adding without intending to, ‘You’re later back than I expected.’
Dulcie had turned towards her, the kettle she had just filled in her hand, the light falling sharply onto her, causing Olive to gasp in shock when she saw the dried blood on Dulcie’s cheek where a sharp-edged pebble – one of a handful thrown by one of the mob – had caught her and cut her skin. There were other marks on her clothes, dusty marks, and another cut on her leg.
‘Dulcie, what on earth’s happened to you?’ Olive demanded, getting up to go and take the kettle from her.
Immediately Olive got close to her Dulcie recoiled, telling her abruptly and dismissively, ‘There’s no need to make a fuss. It’s nothing. Just some lads who’d had too much to drink.’
When Olive’s eyes widened in shock, Dulcie realised that her landlady was jumping to the wrong conclusion and she told her fiercely, ‘It wasn’t anything like that. I’m not daft enough to let any lads try doing something they shouldn’t with me. It was all this fuss about the Italians being Fascists and being taken away. A group of lads were throwing stones at the Manellis’ shop window. Me and Rick told them to leave it out. Mr Manelli wasn’t even there. The police had already taken him away.’
Olive had heard about the mobs going round attacking the premises of Italian businesses whilst she’d been at her WVS meeting and had been horrified by their behaviour, but somehow she hadn’t expected to hear that Dulcie had stepped in to prevent one of those attacks.
Dulcie’s mouth thinned when she saw Olive’s expression and guessed what she was thinking.
‘That’s the trouble with people like you,’ she told her sharply. ‘You think that unless a person goes running around wearing something like a St John Ambulance uniform they’re nothing, and you can look down on them.’
‘Dulcie, that’s not true,’ Olive denied, but even as she spoke she recognised that there was a grain of truth in what Dulcie was saying.
‘Yes it is,’ Dulcie told her flatly.
‘The doctor’s been again this morning to number forty-nine,’ Nancy announced over the hedge.
Olive paused on the steps to her back door, balancing the weight of the washing she had just been to collect from the local Chinese laundry more securely on her raised knee.
‘It can’t be long now, not with the doctor coming nearly every day. I said to my Arthur when they moved in that I didn’t reckon the husband would last very long.’
Olive felt that sometimes Nancy took too keen an interest in such morbid subjects, almost relishing it when one of her dire warnings became true.
‘Mr Long is very poorly at the moment,’ she felt obliged to agree, whilst pointing
