Home for Christmas. Annie Groves
no longer had the power to hurt her. And besides, Sally reminded herself as she replaced her cap firmly over her curls, there was a war on and she had a job to do.
On Article Row another member of the household at number 13 was already on her way home, or rather she had been until she’d bumped into a neighbour.
‘Tilly, let me introduce you to Drew Coleman,’ said Ian Simpson. ‘He’s an American and he’s going to be my lodger.’
Tilly smiled politely as Ian turned from her to the tall, broad-shouldered, hatless young man, whose open raincoat was flapping in the breeze.
‘Tilly’s mother knows all about lodgers, Drew. She’s got three of them. All girls too,’ Ian grinned.
Article Row possessed only fifty houses, all built by the grateful eighteenth-century client of a firm of lawyers in the nearby Inns of Court, whose fortune had been saved by the prompt action of a young clerk articled there.
Number 13 had belonged to Tilly’s paternal grandparents originally. Tilly and her parents had moved in with them when Tilly had been a baby because of her father’s ill health. Tilly couldn’t remember her father. He had died when she was a few months old, his health destroyed by his time in the trenches during the Great War. Her mother had nursed first Tilly’s father, then later her mother-in-law, and then her father-in-law through their final illnesses. It had been after the death of Tilly’s grandfather, just before the start of the current war, that Tilly’s mother had decided to take in lodgers to bring in extra money.
‘Four girls all living under the same roof?’ the young American queried with a smile. ‘Oh, my. I’ve got four sisters at home, and they fight all the time.’
‘We don’t fight,’ Tilly informed him reprovingly, shaking her head so that her dark brown curls bounced, indignation emphasising the sea green of her eyes and bringing a pink flush to her skin. ‘We’re the best of friends. Sally – she’s the eldest, she works at Barts Hospital – St Bartholomew’s, the oldest hospital in London – like I do. Only she’s a nurse, and I work in administration for the hospital’s Lady Almoner. And Agnes, she . . .’ Tilly hesitated, not wanting to tell this stranger that poor Agnes was an orphan who had never known her parents. ‘Agnes works at Chancery Lane underground station, in the ticket department. Then there’s Dulcie, who works in the perfume and makeup department of Selfridges, the big department store on Oxford Street. She’s ever so stylish, although she’s got a broken ankle at the moment.’ A small shadow crossed Tilly’s face at the still raw and frightening memory of what had happened only a few nights earlier, on her own eighteenth birthday, when the four of them had been caught in a German bombing attack on the city on their way out to celebrate. Dulcie had caught her heel in the cobbles of the street and had fallen over, breaking her ankle and banging her head. As all of them had admitted to one another afterwards, they’d thought they were going to be killed, but they had stuck together, determined not to run for safety and leave Dulcie to her fate. Now, because of that, a bond had been formed between them that they all knew they would share all their lives. Tilly really felt that she had grown up that night.
‘Drew here has been sent over to London by the newspaper he works for in America to report on the war,’ Ian explained to Tilly.
Tilly nodded as she surreptitiously studied Ian’s lodger. He looked as though he was in his early twenties, his thick mid-brown hair slightly sun-bleached at the ends. He had warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, his smile revealing white, even teeth. On his right hand he was wearing an impressive-looking gold ring with what looked like a crest on it. Not wanting to seem too curious, Tilly looked away politely.
Ian Simpson worked as a print setter on Fleet Street, for the Daily Express. His wife and their four young children had evacuated to Essex at the start of the war, and Tilly’s own mother had often said that it must be lonely for Ian living in the house on his own during the week.
Tilly had heard American accents before, but Drew was the first American she’d met in person. She gave him a friendly – but not too friendly – smile. At just eighteen, and with the experience of several months of war behind her, which had included her foolish crush on Dulcie’s handsome army brother, Rick, Tilly now considered herself wise enough not to pay too much attention to a good-looking young man, and Drew was good-looking, she had to admit.
Tilly glanced back in the direction from which she had come, at the pall of dust hanging on the air, the result of nightly bombing raids on London’s East End by the German Luftwaffe.
‘Well, you’ll certainly have had plenty to write about for your newspaper, with the bombings we’ve had these last few nights,’ she told the young American gravely.
‘Yes.’ Drew’s voice was equally grave. ‘I went over to Stepney in the East End this morning. I thought I had the makings of a good journalist, but finding the words to describe the devastation and horror of what’s happened there so that the folks back home will understand . . .’ He shook his head, and Tilly knew exactly what he meant. As they talked Tilly resisted the temptation to look up at the sky. These last few days of relentless air raids had left everyone’s nerves on edge, but she certainly wasn’t going to give in to her fear in front of this young American.
‘I’ve heard there were over four hundred killed on Saturday night, and three hundred and seventy on Sunday in the East End with over sixteen hundred injured,’ Ian told them. ‘And I’ve lost count of the number of air-raid alarms there’s been. Three times this afternoon we heard the air-raid warning go off, and had to leave the printing presses to get down to the shelter.’
‘It was the same with us at the hospital,’ Tilly agreed. ‘Our shelter is down in the basement of the hospital, and they’ve got the operating theatres down there as well. We can hear the bombers, even down in the shelters, though.’
‘I think you British are being magnificently brave,’ Drew told her with great sincerity.
‘It’s all very well being brave, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t hear our own anti-aircraft guns firing at the Germans,’ Tilly said with some concern.
‘Well, I might be able to answer that question for you,’ Drew told her. ‘You’ll have heard of Ed Murrow?’
Tilly nodded. Ed Murrow was a well-known American radio broadcaster.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘He does the nightly “This is London” wireless programme to America doesn’t he?’
Drew beamed her a smile of approval. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Well, I heard him talking to some other journalists last night in the American Bar, and he was saying that the Government has left the skies open for your own fighter planes to blow the Germans out of the air.’
Tilly gave him a wan smile. She knew he had wanted to cheer her up, but as far as she could see from the terrible damage being inflicted on the city, their own fighter planes didn’t seem to be doing very much to stop London being blitzed by German bombers. Not that she was going to say so, of course. She was far too patriotic to do that.
Being patriotic, though, did not mean that there were times when she didn’t feel afraid.
All the occupants of number 13, with the exception of Sally, who was on duty, had spent the last two nights in their Anderson shelter in the garden, all of them pretending to sleep but none of them actually doing so, Tilly was sure. They had lain in their narrow bunk beds, listening to the dreadful noises of the assault on the city. The worst, in Tilly’s opinion, were those heart-stopping few minutes when all you could hear was the approaching relentless menacing purring sound made by the engines of the German bombers coming in over the city. Your stomach tensed terribly against what you knew was going to happen when the bombs started to fall. She could feel herself holding her breath now, just as she did at night when she lay there waiting for the full horror she knew was imminent: the whistle of falling bombs; the dull boom of huge explosions, which shook the ground. Somewhere in the city houses were being destroyed and people were being killed and injured. In Article Row they had been lucky – so far – but she had seen at