Women on the Home Front: Family Saga 4-Book Collection. Annie Groves
afternoon be all right for you?’
Olive nodded. Now that the driving lessons were actually going to take place she felt far more apprehensive about them than excited, dreading both making a fool of herself by not being able to learn, and wasting the sergeant’s time.
There was something about working nights that was intensely wearying, Sally thought as she suppressed a yawn. Maybe it was because the operations that took place on nights were emergencies, which meant that one was always somehow on the alert. Being on nights gave a person too much time to think because even on the ward, nights lacked the bustling busy routine of daytime shifts.
She had already been up to the ward to check on ‘her’ patients, and to make sure that they were recovering comfortably from their operations, talking quietly to the new junior nurse on the ward as she went with her from bed to bed.
‘What are you doing that for?’ the junior had asked her when Sally had leaned close to the bandaged stump of an arm that had had to be removed after being crushed when a barrel had fallen onto it from a brewery lorry.
‘I’m just checking to see how it smells,’ Sally had told her once they had moved away from the bed. ‘That’s something we can’t always do when the patient is awake in case it frightens them. Stumps that aren’t healing and are becoming infected smell of that infection,’ she had gone on to explain.
The junior nurse had shuddered and pulled a face. Sally suspected that she would be one of those who didn’t stick out her training.
‘Cocoa?’ Ward Sister offered. ‘I’m just about to make some.’
‘Yes, please,’ Sally replied.
On nights at home in Liverpool, Callum had often been there to meet her and Morag when they had come off duty, walking them home to make sure they were safe.
Callum. Even without closing her eyes she could picture his face with its high cheekbones and the blue eyes she had once thought possessed a gaze that was both understanding and kind. Kind! He certainly hadn’t been kind to her when he had called her selfish and cruel for refusing to welcome his sister’s marriage to her father. It was true that with Callum blood was thicker than water, his loyalty to his sister far, far stronger than the relationship she had thought that they were beginning to share. The blood tie between her and her father, though, had not been strong enough for him to understand the revulsion she had felt, and still felt, at the knowledge that he wanted to replace her mother with her best friend.
Olive hummed to herself as she hung out her Monday morning wash, pegging the sheets firmly to make sure they stayed on the line in the warm breeze. She’d just finished and was about to position the wooden prop to lift the line when Nancy’s head appeared over the fence.
‘Morning, Nancy,’ Olive called out, with a smile, ignoring her neighbour’s downturned mouth and disapproving expression.
‘Mrs Morrison was telling me after church yesterday that Sergeant Dawson is going to be giving you and her driving lessons,’ Nancy announced without any preamble.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Olive agreed, checking that the prop was fixed firmly into the lawn, before bending down to pick up her empty laundry basket. A couple of stray curls had escaped from the headscarf she wrapped round her head to keep her hair out of the way whilst she worked, and she stood up to tuck them out of the way, still smiling as she informed Nancy, ‘It was Mrs Windle’s idea. She had the offer of a van for the WVS to use but she didn’t have any drivers. It’s so kind of Sergeant Dawson to make the time to teach us.’
‘Kind, is it? Well I’ve got to tell you straight, Olive, that that’s not what I think and it wouldn’t be what your late ma-in-law would have thought either.’
‘What do you mean?’ Olive asked, bewildered.
‘What do you think I mean? Sergeant Dawson is a married man. And I don’t think it’s right or proper that he should be giving you driving lessons. It’s all right for Mrs Morrison, she’s got a husband to keep an eye out for her, but you haven’t, and you know how people talk.’
Olive didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry.
‘I’m only warning you for your own good, Olive,’ Nancy continued. ‘A woman in your position, widowed, and with a teenage daughter to look out for can’t be too careful about her reputation.’
‘Nancy,’ Olive protested, ‘it’s Sergeant Dawson who will be teaching me, not some stranger. And Mrs Windle has already said how pleased she is. It’s for the war effort that I’m doing it.’
Nancy gave a disparaging sniff. ‘You can say what you like, Olive, but I don’t think it’s right, a single woman like you spending time on her own with a married man, and I’m only telling you what your own ma-in-law would say.’
As Olive listened to Nancy’s warning a surge of uncharacteristic anger filled her. She knew what Nancy was trying to do. She was trying to bully her into backing out of having her driving lessons. And besides, what Nancy was suggesting – but not coming out directly and saying – about her being alone with Sergeant Dawson possibly leading to some kind of hanky-panky on his part towards her was ridiculous. Sergeant Dawson was a respectable and an honourable man. Anyone who was in his company for more than a few minutes couldn’t help but know that. Olive had come across her fair share of the other sort during her widowhood to know the difference. Oh, there had been nothing directly said by those men – some of them friends of her late husband and her in-laws, and most of them married – but it had all been there in the looks they had given her in private, the hints they had dropped suggesting that she, a young woman without a husband, must be ‘lonely’. She had made it plain to all of them that she wasn’t interested. The very idea was an insult! And Nancy’s hints about Sergeant Dawson were an insult to him. Olive felt angry with Nancy on his behalf when the whole neighbourhood knew what a decent sort he was. She certainly trusted him. But even so, Olive knew that once she would probably have given in and done what Nancy wanted simply to keep the peace. Things were different now: there was a war on, and that was what she had to think about, not Nancy’s disapproval.
She took a deep breath and then told her neigh-bour firmly, ‘You might not approve, Nancy, but I think that Jim would. He’d want me to play my part and do everything I can to help others.’ And with that Olive picked up her laundry basket and headed for her back door without giving Nancy the opportunity to come back at her. She was not a young girl like Tilly, she was a mature woman and one who was perfectly capable of judging for herself whether or not a man could be trusted, and what was and was not appropriate behaviour for her, without Nancy trying to tell her what to do, Olive decided determinedly, as she opened her back door and stepped inside without giving Nancy a backward look.
Chapter Eleven
‘That was a lovely smooth gear change. You’re really getting the hang of it,’ Sergeant Dawson praised Olive as she drove down Article Row, changing through the gears as she did so.
Pink with delight and pride, Olive remembered just in time not to look at her instructor but instead to keep her attention focused on the road in front of her.
It was just over a month now since she had had her first lesson. The ending of British Summer Time and the shortening days meant that there were fewer daylight hours in which Sergeant Dawson could give both her and Mrs Morrison their driving lessons. She had been right to follow her own judgement and not listen to Nancy, Olive congratulated herself, because Sergeant Dawson’s manner towards her had been all that she had known it would be: kind and friendly, but never ever stepping over the line that divided their relationship as neighbours and friends, mixed with a dash of professionalism from him as her driving instructor, from one that involved the kind of looks, comments and hints that would have warned her that he was looking for something else. She felt completely safe in his company, and knew that even her critical late mother-in-law could not have found anything to object to in his manner towards her.
Had things been otherwise she could not have relaxed and focused on learning to drive, Olive knew, as she waited automatically for that second when