room for the four of us to sit down together at the table all at the same time, never mind five of us,’ Ted had explained to her, and Agnes had understood. She might have been abandoned at birth by her mother and raised in the orphanage attached to the Row’s local church, but Agnes had seen how proud Olive, her landlady, was of her home and she had quickly grasped what Ted was not saying, which was that his mother felt embarrassed about inviting her to their small home. Or at least that was what Agnes hoped Ted had meant. She couldn’t quite stop worrying that Ted’s mother might think an orphaned girl who didn’t know where she came from was not be the kind she wanted her son to get involved with. Agnes didn’t like thinking about the circumstances of her birth and subsequent abandonment. Doing so made her feel all prickly and upset inside.
Now that the children and staff from the orphanage had been evacuated to the country, the building was used as a drill hall, and potential rest centre, should the unthinkable happen and the area be bombed, making people homeless.
Of course there was no question of her and Ted getting married any time soon. Not with Ted being the only breadwinner in the family and having his mother and two sisters to support. Ted had been honest with her about that, and Agnes fully understood what he had said to her. He wouldn’t have been her good kind Ted if he hadn’t looked after his family.
Ted was off duty at the moment and he’d told her that he would bring his family down early in the evening to make sure they got settled in a good spot before he went back to work, but the stream of people approaching the station was getting heavier now, and Agnes was worried that she might somehow miss them in the crush.
Predictably, of course, Mr Smith had initially thoroughly disapproved of and objected to the public more or less ‘taking it upon themselves’, as he had put it, to have the right to sleep in the underground. But once Winston Churchill himself, of whom Mr Smith was a great admirer, had sanctioned this, his objections had slowed to muttered grumbles about the mess people were making, especially those who had no homes to go to any more, and who brought with them what belongings they had been able to salvage.
Agnes, on the other hand, felt sorry for them. She was so lucky to have her lovely room at number 13 Article Row, her kind landlady Mrs Robbins, and her wonderful friends there, especially Tilly. She didn’t want to think of how it would make her feel if she were to lose any of that.
She scanned the growing crowd of people approaching the steps to the underground, searching for Ted’s familiar face, feeling both excited and nervous at the prospect of meeting his family – and especially his mother – at last.
However, when they did arrive Agnes almost missed them. An elderly woman was so laden with the weight of her possessions that her slow progress was holding other people up. Some were losing patience and starting to mutter complaints so Agnes stepped in to help her.
Once she got her down the stairs, though, the woman refused to let go of her, and Agnes tried not to react to the musty smell of stale sweat and bad breath coming off her as she dragged the girl closer with one grimy hand to insist, ‘I ain’t done with you yet, missie. I want you to find me somewhere comfy to put me bed. I’ve got it rolled up in here.’ She patted the bundle Agnes had taken from her. ‘Sleep in ’yde Park normally, I do.’ She tapped the side of her nose. ‘I knows all the ways of avoiding the park keepers, an’ all. They won’t catch me, they won’t, and neither will ruddy Hitler.’
As Agnes guided the woman along the platform one small boy protested to his mother, ‘I don’t want her near me, Ma. She stinks.’
It was true, and Agnes was glad to escape from her. She was almost at the top of the steps, struggling to pick her way through the mass of people coming down, when she heard Ted’s voice calling her name. He stood at the top, beaming her a smile.
To other people Ted might be a relatively ordinary-looking young man of middling height, with a wiry frame, mouse-brown hair and ears that stuck out, but to Agnes he was a hero and his bright blue eyes were the kindest she had ever seen.
Immediately she made her way towards him, until he could reach out, grab her hand and haul her onto the top step where he was standing,
‘I was getting worried that I must have missed you,’ Agnes said breathlessly.
‘As if I’d let that happen,’ Ted replied with a grin, giving her that special look that made her heart do a somersault.
‘Come on, you two,’ he called out, reaching into the shadows behind him. ‘Come and say hello to Agnes.’
The two small girls who emerged to stand beside him had Ted’s brown hair and blue eyes. Their hair was neatly plaited and their eyes filled with apprehension as they pressed closer to their brother, whilst staring saucer-eyed at the crowd which was now pouring down the stairs in front of them.
‘Marie, Sonia, you hold tight to your brother’s hand. Ted, you just make sure you don’t let go of them.’
The small thin woman, who had now materialised on Ted’s other side, and who it was obvious from her looks was Ted’s mother, hadn’t looked at Agnes yet, but Agnes could understand that her first concern must be for her younger children, just as she understood the bashful shyness that kept the two girls themselves silent as they looked swiftly at her, then away again.
‘Don’t fret, Mum, I’ve got them both safe.’
The sound of the calm loving reassurance in Ted’s voice made Agnes’s heart swell with pride. He was so very much the man of the family, the one they all relied on, just as she had known he must be.
‘This is Agnes, Mum,’ Ted was saying, putting an arm protectively round his sisters’ shoulders as he reached for Agnes’s hand to pull her gently closer.
But although Ted had drawn them altogether like a proper family, and although he was saying with pride in his voice, ‘Come on, girls, give Agnes a smile. After all, she’s going to be your sister,’ neither of the girls would look at her, and Ted’s mother didn’t speak to her at all.
Agnes had been used to dealing with girls younger than she was at the orphanage, and she guessed that the girls’ reluctance to look at her sprang mainly from shyness, but Ted’s mother’s refusal to smile or extend her hand to her was another matter.
Instead of responding welcomingly to her, there was coldness and disapproval in Ted’s mother’s eyes when she looked at her, and hostility too, Agnes feared. But now wasn’t the time to do anything about that because suddenly the air was filled with the shrieking rise and fall of the air-raid siren, causing panic to descend on those still at the top of the steps.
‘Come on,’ Ted instructed his sisters, grabbing each of them by the hand. ‘Mum, you take Sonia’s hand, and, Agnes, you take Marie’s. Don’t let go, either of you,’ he warned his sisters as he hurried them down the steps. ‘Stay close to me, all of you.’
The crowd pressed in on them from all sides, and Agnes felt it was more by good luck than anything else that she managed to keep her feet on the steps. She was sure that she would have panicked herself, worried that she’d fall and be trampled underfoot, if she hadn’t had the role of looking after the elder of Ted’s two sisters. But she kept hold of the little girl’s hand and tried to protect her by keeping as close to her as she could.
They could already hear the planes and they weren’t even down at the bottom of the stairs. The dull menacing thrum of their engines became louder with every breath Agnes took, and she tried to ignore the sounds of panic behind her from those who had yet to make it inside, and the angry protests from those
