Women on the Home Front: Family Saga 4-Book Collection. Annie Groves
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