all day today and the previous day, helping to get small children onto the evacuation trains organised to take them away from danger and into the country.
Newspapers were full of photographs of lines of children being marched away from their homes and their parents, many of them escorted by their teachers, ready to be handed over to waiting groups of volunteers once they reached their destinations. Only mothers with very young children and babies were being evacuated with their children. As Agnes had said the previous evening, after going straight from work to the orphanage to help with the evacuation, it really broke your heart to see the children’s tears as they were taken away from everything and everyone they loved, unable to understand that it was for their own sakes and their own safety.
Olive watched her daughter as she made the tea, worried about her safety.
As though Tilly had guessed her thoughts she said quietly and in a very grown-up voice, I’m glad we’re staying here, Mum. It would be awful if we all deserted London, and those who can’t get away were left on their own. And besides, if anything does happen, if Hitler does bomb us, then I want to be with you, because you’re the best mum in the world. When I listen to poor Agnes talking about growing up in the orphanage and being left on its doorstep, I try to think how I would feel if that was me; if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have you as my mother.’ Her voice broke slightly, causing Olive to blink away her own emotion.
‘Oh, sweetheart, we mustn’t blame Agnes’s mother too much. We don’t know what she might have gone through, poor girl. No mother gives up her baby willingly, I can promise you that, and as for us staying here in London, well, I hope I am doing the right thing, Tilly, and that I’m not just being selfish wanting to be here in this house. A home means a lot to a woman but it never means more than her children and those she loves.’
‘We’ll be all right, Mum, I’m sure of it. Besides, how could Hitler bomb London when we’ve got all those barrage balloons and anti-aircraft batteries, never mind everything else, and the RAF?’
Sally, coming into the kitchen in time to catch Tilly’s fiercely patriotic words, exchanged a brief look over her head with Olive, before agreeing firmly, ‘That’s right, Tilly. This city, and this country, are well defended and we’ll stand firm when the time comes, no matter what Hitler might try to do.’
‘Has everyone gone now?’ Tilly asked her as she removed an extra cup from the cupboard to pour Sally a cup of tea. ‘It seemed so strange when I left earlier, coming through the main hall and it almost being empty. It felt funny, sort of ghostly, making me think how old the hospital really is. I’d never felt it before today.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Sally agreed, ‘and yes, everyone who’s going has mostly gone now, and we’ve sorted out the operating theatres in the basement.’ She didn’t add that she’d heard that orders had been given for thousands of cardboard coffins to be made for the dead the authorities were anticipating should the city come under attack from Hitler.
‘I almost don’t want to do this,’ Olive announced as she switched on the wireless for the six o’clock news bulletin.
‘Come on, Dulcie, it isn’t like you to hang on after we’ve closed for the day,’ Lizzie teased good-naturedly. ‘We’re the last on the floor by the looks of it as well.’
The cosmetics floor was indeed deserted, and had been unusually quiet all day, allowing Mr Selfridge to order each floor to do a practice run of its fire-watching duties, a new regime instituted earlier in the week and which Dulcie loathed. Who wanted to go up onto the roof and act as a look out for non-existent fires started by equally non-existent bombs being dropped from nonexistent German planes? But Mr Selfridge had said they had to, just like he had said they all had to learn how to use a stirrup pump as well as know the correct evacuation procedure from the store, should that be necessary, and his word was law.
She couldn’t hang around here any longer, Dulcie admitted, even if this morning she had woken up feeling sure that today would be the day she saw David James-Thompson again. She had even planned how she was going to give him a big hint about how he could find her at the Hammersmith Palais tomorrow night, sitting at her favourite table, the one in the middle of the front row, facing the band. There was always a crowd of knowing girls who headed for that table, so there was no risk of her ending up sitting there on her own, and they were all there for the same reason: so that they could be seen to advantage by everyone else. Dulcie was so on edge she felt like smoking a cigarette, something she didn’t do very often. Ciggies cost money, and meant that if she bought them she’d have less to spend on her clothes, so normally Dulcie only smoked if someone else offered her a cigarette.
‘Oh, come on then,’ she said to Lizzie, who had now finished putting away her own stock, ‘I just hope we get a few more customers in tomorrow, otherwise I’m going to be dying of boredom. You’d have thought with all this fuss about there going to be a war on that every lad in the city would be coming in here with his girl to treat her to a bit of something, and that every woman without a chap would be coming in to get herself a lipstick so that she could get one before they all go off to war.’
Lizzie gave Dulcie a wry look. ‘I dare say that most people will have more on their minds than buying lipstick, Dulcie.’
‘Such as?’ Dulcie demanded as they walked towards the staff exit to the stairs that led down to the basement-level staff cloakroom.
‘Such as worrying about their children being evacuated if they are young enough, and worrying about their sons going to war if they are old enough. Same thing goes for courting couples. They’ll be wanting to spend what time they’ve got together, not coming in here. Ralph and I are going looking at engagement rings tomorrow,’ she added. ‘Funny but when I was growing up I imagined that when my boy took me to buy an engagement ring it would be the most exciting and happy thing in the world but now it feels like the most frightening and upsetting, because I know that we’re getting engaged now and married at Christmas, just in case.’
Dulcie heaved a bored sigh as they reached the cloakroom and she removed her overall and put it out for the laundry. Mr Selfridge insisted that his staff presented an immaculately clean appearance, which meant that a laundry service was provided for their overalls and uniforms. She was fed up with all this talk of war. Every night at number 13, when everyone else gathered round the wireless to listen to the news, she felt like stamping her foot and saying why didn’t they have some music on instead so that they could have a bit of a dance. Not that that suggestion would go down well with Olive. Dulcie reckoned her landlady would have her out of the house if she gave her the smallest excuse to do that. Well, she wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. And she certainly wasn’t going to give up her comfortable room, or her big bed, and definitely not the wardrobe she had all to herself. Tilly was daft for going soft and sharing her own room with the orphan. She wouldn’t have done that, especially not with a plain dull girl like Agnes, forever creeping around in that shabby brown dress, making Olive feel sorry for her. Well, she didn’t feel sorry for her; if anything, she felt sorry for herself for having to put up with her.
‘So what is this blitzkrieg that everyone’s going on about?’ Dulcie demanded, the four of them – Agnes was still at the orphanage – sitting round the wireless that Olive had just switched off. Everyone apart from Dulcie herself had left their tea virtually untouched, and there was an almost palpable air of grim acceptance in the kitchen.
‘It means lightning war, Dulcie,’ Sally explained. ‘That’s the kind of war that Germany inflicted on Poland when the German army invaded Poland this morning.’ When it invaded Poland and swept all before it, she thought emotionally, including the brave but hopelessly outdated Polish cavalry, which still waged war on horseback. They had been utterly unable to stand against the might of the Wehrmacht force of over a million men with armoured and motorised divisions. The Luftwaffe had blown up Poland’s railways and blown its air force out of the sky. It was over: Poland’s defences lay in ruins, and Poland as an autonomous state had ceased to exist.
Seated across the table from Sally, Olive removed a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and blew her nose firmly, blinking hard as she did so.
‘So