Only a Mother Knows (3 page)

In the way that things were now happening during wartime David knew that those girls and the house on Article Row had become Dulcie’s mainstay and he also knew that communities, friendships and relationships destroyed by the war were reformed by its survivors. He also knew Article Row well, as it was very close to the Inns of Court where he had lived and worked before the war and where he intended to return once he left hospital.

‘And as for Wilder …’ Dulcie, aggrieved, was still talking and David realised he had to pay attention. ‘Well, I had a thing or two to say to him, I can tell you, especially after he asked Edith to come dancing with us next week.’

‘London is full of newly arrived Americans from what I’ve heard, Dulcie, why don’t you find yourself one who will treat you better than this Wilder chap?’ David suggested. He knew that she had been dating the American pilot, who had originally come over to England to join the Eagles unit of Americans attached to the RAF, for quite some time. He had never met him, of course, but from the way Dulcie talked about him and his wandering eye, David doubted he would like him very much if he did, and he certainly didn’t approve of the casual, not to say occasionally openly unkind, way in which he treated Dulcie.

‘What?’ Dulcie looked outraged. ‘Give him up and let Edith think she’s won and that Wilder prefers her to me? Never.’ Her response was determined. ‘Edith only wants him because she wants to get one up on me. I said as much to our brother, Rick, when he came home on leave from the desert and he insisted on taking me and Edith to see Mum and Dad.’

‘So your mother has been reunited with Edith, then?’ David said as the hot sun beat down on his face whilst Dulcie dabbed her cheeks with powder.

‘Oh yes,’ Dulcie said, pausing momentarily and looking over her gold compact. ‘Mum was all over her, carrying on as you’d expect. I was completely ignored for the whole afternoon; nobody would have known that it was thanks to me that they’d been reunited. I have the feeling that Edith would have been just as happy to leave her own family in the dark.’

‘What makes you say that?’ David asked, always interested in Dulcie’s chaotic lifestyle.

‘Well, it stands to reason, never once did Mum or Dad ask Edith why she hadn’t made a bit of an effort to find out where they lived after they left London at the beginning of the Blitz.’

‘Well, Edith knew where you lived, surely she could have contacted you?’

‘Exactly,’ said Dulcie with an emphatic nod of her head. ‘That’s precisely what I said, but no, it was all “how wonderful” to see her and Mum called it “a miracle” but did I get one word of gratitude? Not likely! And to think if I hadn’t seen her in the chorus line review they’d still be thinking she was a goner now.’

David’s heart went out to Dulcie knowing, first-hand, what her younger sister was like. He’d met her briefly when she came down to East Grinstead when Dulcie was on one of her regular visits. If he remembered correctly, Edith was a hard-faced, shallow little madam if ever there was one, he thought, concerned only with herself, and from what he could see nowhere near as pretty as Dulcie. He recalled that Edith had soon lost interest in him and the other men on the ward when she realised how badly injured they were.

‘As for letting another American serviceman take me out – and don’t think I haven’t been asked because I have. Many a time I’ve been invited out by some of those that have finally decided to join us in the war.’ Dulcie gave a small, proud toss of her head, seemingly satisfied that she had been stopped in the middle of the street by the new influx of Americans who had been arriving since last January and had become Briton’s active allies since the December bombing of Pearl Harbor.

‘If I was to see anybody else in uniform I think it would have to be one of them Poles, not another American.’ David watched her for a moment. Dulcie talked in a matter-of-fact way about everything, even her love life, which, he thought, was probably more exciting in her own mind than it ever was in real life – not that she didn’t have a wonderful time when she dressed to the nines and went out on the town dancing, but somehow there seemed a vulnerability in Dulcie that he was sure nobody else could see.

‘You’re too good for Wilder, Dulcie, let your sister have him and good riddance to the pair of them.’ David hadn’t intended speaking the words out loud but when he saw the surprised expression on Dulcie’s expertly made-up face he realised that he had done just that.

‘What! Let her have him? She’d crow till the cows came home and no mistake. She’d be on his arm before it had a chance to get cold, that one.’

‘Would that be so awful?’ David felt really sorry for her now. She didn’t deserve this treatment after all she had done for her sister, reuniting her with her family.

‘You bet your sweet potato it would,’ Dulcie said in an outraged tone. ‘She would make it her business to tell everybody she knows that Wilder dropped me for her and that ain’t gonna happen. You’d hear the crowing halfway over London.’

‘Well, you know best, Dulcie,’ David said with a hint of resignation, as he didn’t like to see her so upset like this.

‘And you’ll never guess what she did last week. She only sent Wilder a free ticket for her new show. Just the one ticket, mind, and Wilder is so trusting he probably thought she’d forgotten to send me one. I said to him, when I saw it fall out of his pocket, that she was trying to get her claws into him and he wanted to beware of her tricks to get him alone.’

‘Good for you,’ said David, realising how naïve Dulcie really was, now he’d been privileged enough to see beneath her brittle exterior. ‘What did you do after that?’ Just listening to Dulcie somehow eased the nagging, ever-present pain in his phantom lower legs. Other people might accuse her of being self-obsessed and even sometimes uncaring but David welcomed the fact that she didn’t make any emotional allowances for him, or treat him as though a part of his brain had been damaged along with his legs.

‘I ripped the ticket into a hundred pieces, that’s what I did.’ Her expression was one of relish, he noted, and then suddenly it changed to a frown when she looked up into the pale blue sky and announced, ‘That sun’s going to be in my eyes any minute now, here, let me turn you round so I can see you properly.’ Dulcie got up from the wooden bench and flipped David’s break with her foot so she could get a better view of him.

‘Has that mother of yours been in to see you recently?’

David gave a little half-laugh. Nobody else would ask something as directly as Dulcie did, nor with such candour. ‘No, I told her not to come. What’s the point? We can’t agree on anything. She can’t forgive me for not giving her a grandson and heir when it was still within my power to do so.’

‘She can’t hold it against you now, David.’ Dulcie was horrified.

‘You don’t know my mother,’ he said grimly. ‘Furthermore, I cannot forgive her for caring more about the title than she does about her own flesh and blood.’

‘Your mother sounds every bit as stuck-up as your wife Lydia was, if you don’t mind me saying. Serves them both right that neither of them got what they wanted in the end.’

David knew that Dulcie didn’t mean to sound unkind. She was just upset on his behalf, and as she turned his wheelchair around he could hear the regret in her voice. At least she was honest in her emotions, he thought, unlike his mother and his late wife.

As the summer sun rose in the sky and cast its scorching rays at the hottest time of the day, Dulcie asked David if he would prefer to go inside and he agreed. He didn’t want to add sunstroke to his list of ailments, he laughed. It didn’t take Dulcie long to settle him into the chair at the side of his bed; she prided herself at getting quite good at the exercise and was pleased that David had every faith in her ability to move him from his wheelchair to the chair or bed. Nobody had ever trusted her that much before.

Once he was settled she poured him a glass of water and unconsciously examined her perfect oval talons for any sign of breakage, her eyes widening when she said suddenly, continuing their earlier conversation as if she’d never had an interruption, ‘I told her straight, I said, “Edith, you lay one paw on my Wilder and there will be trouble,” and she got the gist.’

‘And will she?’ David looked thoroughly amused. ‘Lay her paws on him, I mean.’

‘She wouldn’t dare, I’d scratch her eyes out.’ Dulcie let his obvious cynicism sail over her perfectly curled blonde head.

‘I think you would, too.’ David could hold in his mirth no longer and laughed aloud. ‘Only someone as beautiful as you could say a thing like that and make it sound inevitable, Dulcie. You are such a tonic.’

‘Why thank you, kind sir, I do agree.’ She, too, laughed now. ‘Oh, you are such a good friend, David,’ she said eventually, ‘but you’ve delighted me long enough and I must be off.’ She gathered her bag and gloves from the bed. ‘I’ll see you soon, don’t go home without letting me know what day, I don’t want to waste my time coming all the way down here to see just anybody.’

‘Heaven forfend, Dulcie.’ David’s remark was laced with a tinge of irony but it was lost on her as she bent and gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek.

‘What would I do without you to pour my heart out to, David? Now, have you got Olive’s address?’

‘You gave it to me earlier,’ David smiled, nodding to the piece of paper as Dulcie fussed around the bed, uncharacteristically straightening the cover where she had been sitting – he knew she wouldn’t want people to think she was a slut and couldn’t tidy up after herself.

David nodded, but before he could say anything Dulcie, with swaying hips and the clip-clip heels of her ankle-band peep-toed shoes, moved towards the door at the end of the nightingale ward. When she reached it she turned and blew him a kiss and waved.

‘Toodle-oo for now,’ she mouthed, not waiting to see David raise his one good arm and wave back.

Only a Mother Knows

In the woods beyond the hospital, one of Dulcie’s fellow lodgers, Sally, was walking with her fiancé, New Zealander George Laidlaw. Sally’s two-year-old half-sister, Alice, was between them as, securely, they each held one of her hands.

Sally and George had originally met when she had left Liverpool to work as a nurse at Bart’s hospital in London where George had been training as a registrar. George was now working in East Grinstead under Archibald McIndoe. When the war was finally over they planned to marry and live in New Zealand close to George’s parents.

‘Have you had no word yet from Callum about us adopting Alice when we get married?’ asked George over the child’s head.

‘Not yet,’ Sally answered. ‘I’m not sure where his ship is and it may be difficult to get post to him. But I don’t think he’ll object, he wants what’s best for her, that he brought her straight to me when her parents were killed goes to prove it.’ A small shadow crossed Sally’s face. She had been adamant she would have nothing to do with her orphaned half-sister when Callum brought her late that night. After all, it was Callum’s sister, Morag, who had been her best friend before betraying her in the worst possible way by marrying Sally’s father within months of his wife’s death and had then become pregnant with Alice.

It had come as a great shock and Sally, usually so caring, was determined that Alice should be handed over to the authorities and put into a children’s home. Olive, her wonderful landlady, had taken over in that gentle way she had and before she knew what had happened for sure, Sally discovered the little girl had found a place in her heart.

Now she couldn’t envisage a life without her any more than she could imagine one without her darling, steady and caring George, whom she loved so very much. It seemed laughable that she had once had a youthful crush on Callum, who’d been a school teacher before joining the Royal Navy, imagining herself in love with him.

‘Swing!’ Alice commanded firmly, bringing Sally out of her reverie and causing the two adults to exchange understanding looks before obliging the toddler and lifting her off her feet in a swinging motion that had her laughing with innocent delight before demanding, ‘More, Georgie, more …’

Georgie was her own special name for George and it never failed to touch Sally’s heart to see how much the little girl adored him and how very much she was adored in return.

‘Every day she reminds me more of Morag,’ Sally told him as they strolled through the leafy wood and was quite surprised when he said, ‘She has your mannerisms.’ She had never imagined the child had watched her so closely as to pick up her ways and those of the other girls back in Article Row, where she also loved trotting around in Olive’s heels ‘helping her’ around the house. Sally knew that one day she would tell Alice the story of her parents and her loving home. She was determined now that the child would know the security and happiness of that kind of secure home life.

In Hyde Park another member of the household at number 13 was also enjoying the July sunshine. Tilly, Olive’s eighteen-year-old daughter, was sitting on the grass with her head in her American boyfriend Drew’s lap, whilst she read the newspaper article that carried his by-line.

‘Oh, Drew, it’s sooo good,’ she exclaimed when she had finished. ‘I do wish you’d let me read your book though.’

‘It’s our book,’ he told her, ‘but I don’t want you to read it until it’s finished. You know that,’ Drew reminded her, as he had done every time she begged him to let her read the book he’d started writing shortly after his arrival in London after the beginning of the war. But he softened his refusal with a tender smile and Tilly smiled back.

‘I can’t wait for you to finish and for it to be published. I think it should be published now.’

‘It won’t be finished until the war is over,’ said Drew, ‘and besides, there isn’t any paper to publish new books at the moment.’

‘That’s so true,’ Tilly said with a tinge of regret. ‘Like so much else,’ she mused as the country prepared to enter its fourth year of the war in September. ‘You could get it published if you took it back home to America. Your father owns a newspaper and publishing group after all.’

Immediately Drew sighed and then took hold of both Tilly’s hands, gently pulling her upright so they could face each other.