London Belles (10 page)

Rick winked at them and joked, ‘How about making room for a little ’un, girls? One of you could always sit on my knee.’

The girls giggled whilst pretending to disapprove, and Rick was just on the point of taking things a bit further when Dulcie turned round in her seat to call out, ‘You can pay for me, Ricky, and make sure you keep an eye on that suitcase.’

Having realised that he was ‘with’ Dulcie, the four girls looked disapproving at him, obviously jumping to the conclusion that they were a couple, and were now studiously ignoring him.

‘Trust you to flirt with the likes of them,’ Dulcie told him scornfully, once they had got off the bus in High Holborn, Rick having to tussle with the case to get it past the queue of people pressing forward to get on the bus. ‘Common as anything, they were, and if you carry on like that you’ll end up having your name written against the name of a kid that might not be yours, on its birth certificate.’

Unabashed by this sisterly warning, Rick shook his head. ‘No way would I fall for anything like that. When I do write my name on a kid’s birth certificate, it will be my kid and its mother will be my wife. But I’m not up for that yet, not with this war, and plenty of girls fancying a good-looking lad in uniform. Fun’s the name of the game for me.’

Dulcie couldn’t object or argue since she felt very much the same, although in her case there was no way she was letting any chap think she was going to take the kind of risks that got a girl into trouble. Being tied down in marriage with an unwanted baby on her hip wasn’t what Dulcie wanted for her future at all.

Everywhere you went London’s buildings were now protected by sandbags, the windowpanes covered in crisscrosses of sticky brown tape, which the Government had said would hold the glass together in a bomb blast and prevent people from being cut by flying fragments.

Outside one of the public shelters a woman was haranguing an ARP warden, demanding to know whether or not Hitler was coming and when, whilst a gaggle of girls in WRNS uniform hurried past in the opposite direction, carrying their gas masks in smart boxes.

‘Cor, look at those legs,’ Rick commented appreciatively, taking a break from carrying the case, to flex his aching arm muscles as he turned to admire the girls’ legs in their regulation black stockings. Out of all the services, only the WRNS were issued with such elegant stockings, but Dulcie eyed them disparagingly.

‘You can get better than that in Selfridges’ hosiery department,’ she sneered.

‘Maybe so, but I’ll bet they cost a pretty penny.’

Dulcie nodded, feeling smug that she’d had the good sense to snap up half a dozen pairs from a consignment in which the boxes had been damaged, rendering them unfit for sale in Mr Selfridge’s opinion and so sold to his staff at a discount price.

Dulcie had heard that it wasn’t entirely unusual for some consignments of luxury goods to end up being ‘damaged’ thanks to an arrangement between the delivery drivers and the men who unloaded them, and that most of the damaged stock was then sold in one or other of the East End markets.

‘This way,’ she instructed Rick, indicating the turning that would eventually lead to Article Row.

She hadn’t said much at home about Article Row and so she had the satisfaction of seeing her normally unimpressable elder brother come to a halt and stare around himself to take in the well-tended line of houses.

‘Bit posh, isn’t it?’ was all he allowed himself to say, but Dulcie knew him and she knew that he was impressed.

Sergeant Dawson, leaning on his front gate and watching the world go by, spotted them and straightened up. He’d heard initially on the Row’s grapevine via its best gossip, Nancy, that Olive from number 13 was taking in lodgers; he’d seen Sally arrive, and then the thin little waif accompanied by the larger older woman, guessing that the girl must be the orphan recommended for a room by the vicar’s wife, but this young woman walking toward him confidently now, well, Nancy and the other old biddies would have something to say about her, the sergeant reflected, not altogether unappreciative of the slim length of Dulcie’s legs in her nylon stockings, or the way in which the skirt of her fitted poppy-red dress, with its white collar, just reached to her knee, its white belt showing off her narrow waist. He didn’t think, however, that Mrs Dawson would be equally appreciative, and he felt sorry for Olive, whom he knew and liked, having to deal with the kind of lodger this one looked as though she could turn out to be, and accompanied by a lad as well. The Row would not approve of that! Respectable single ladies was what Olive had advertised for, not too-pretty young girls of a type that would attract men like honey attracted bees.

He nodded a brief welcome in their direction though, causing Rick to respond with a smile, and gesture toward Dulcie’s case.

‘You’d think she’d got enough clothes in here to fit out the whole street.’

‘Row, lad,’ Archie Dawson corrected him. ‘You won’t be very popular round here if you call Article Row a street.’

‘See, I told you it was posh,’ Rick told Dulcie as she gave him a warning look and determinedly marched past the policeman.

It was Tilly who saw them first. The orphanage matron had left, her mother was showing Sally the garden, so she’d come upstairs to help Agnes unpack, feeling sorry for her when she saw how little she had, and all of it looking second-hand. Poor girl, Tilly thought as she watched Agnes hang her uniform and her other small collection of clothes in the half of the wardrobe Tilly had cleared for her. The dull brown dress Agnes was wearing didn’t do anything for her, making her look thinner than ever because it was too big for her, and turning her skin slightly sallow.

‘I’ll be downstairs, when you’re ready,’ Tilly had told her, thinking that Agnes might want to use the bathroom or perhaps unpack a few personal treasures in privacy, but then with her foot on the top stair, she’d turned back to go into her mother’s room and look down the Row again.

And that was when she saw Dulcie, in her smart red dress and her white high-heeled peep-toed shoes, followed by the best-looking young man Tilly had ever seen carrying a large suitcase.

As though he sensed that he was being studied, the young man looked up at the window, causing Tilly to step back, clasping her hands over her chest to calm her excited heartbeat as she did so.

Was he Dulcie’s young man? He must be, Tilly decided, racing downstairs and out into the garden to warn her mother breathlessly, ‘Dulcie’s nearly here.’

Although she smiled and turned to make her way back to the house, Olive wasn’t happy about her daughter’s obvious excitement. This was just what she had feared. Tilly was at an impressionable age. Because there weren’t 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.