Free My Sweet Valentine by Annie Groves Page B

wind out of Nancy’s sails, Olive could see, but knowing her neighbour as she did, Olive suspected that sooner or later Nancy would find a way of getting her own back. Olive didn’t know why she was finding it so difficult to get along with her neighbour these days. They’d always managedto rub along well enough before. But that had been when she had merely been a daughter-in-law in her in-laws’ home. Since number 13 had become hers, Nancy had been noticeably more critical of her. Olive tried to be charitable and to put Nancy’s almost constant carping about her young lodgers and Tilly down to the natural reaction of a mother parted by the war from her own daughter and her grandchildren, but there was no doubt that Nancy could be hard work.
    ‘I’m so glad you’ve decided to organise a fire-watching team for Article Row, Olive,’ Audrey told her later as they said their good nights.
    Olive had deliberately held back on the pretext of wanting to ask the vicar’s wife more about Government’s provision of stirrup pumps so that she wouldn’t have to walk home with Nancy, who had gone off in a very bad mood indeed.
    ‘Nancy isn’t very happy about it,’ Olive felt bound to admit.
    ‘I’m afraid Nancy makes it her job not to be happy about a great many things,’ Audrey sighed ruefully. ‘Now, I’m going to ask the vicar to have another word with the warden to arrange for someone to come along and give everyone who’s interested a proper demonstration of a stirrup pump. Everyone who signs up for fire-watch duties will be given a hard hat as well as the stirrup pump, and every local council has been asked to provide supplies of sand for people to use. You might want to think about having some moved to Article Row so that your team can access it easily if need be.’
    ‘Yes, we could put it in one of the gardens. I’d say mine, but Nancy is bound to think I’m giving myselfpreferential treatment if I do that. Maybe Mr King will let us put it in the back gardens of one of his houses, since they’re unoccupied at the moment,’ said Olive.
    Mr King was a local landlord who owned several now empty properties at the other end of Article Row from Olive.
    ‘That’s a good idea,’ Audrey approved.
    ‘We’ve got a couple of rakes in the garden shed. My father-in-law used to be a keen gardener and Agnes’s fiancé, Ted, came over and cleaned and sharpened everything in he autumn for Sally. She’s very kindly taken charge of the garden and its veggies for us.’
    A little later, making her solitary way home, Olive discovered that although initially she had worried about what she might be getting herself into, now she actually felt rather proud of herself for making that decision. For all that Nancy had been so unpleasant about it, surely it was far better to get involved and do something to protect the homes of which they were all so proud rather than risk an incendiary starting a fire that no one spotted until it was too late, and it had taken hold, possibly threatening the whole Row.

FOUR
    ‘I expect that you and your young man have got something special planned for the evening of Valentine’s Day on Friday – that’s if Hitler doesn’t come calling with more bombs,’ Clara Smith, the girl who worked with Tilly in the Lady Almoner’s office at Barts Hospital, asked as they sat side by side in front of their typewriters, shivering in the room’s icy February chill. The two girls were working through yet another batch of new patients’ details for their files, and trying to keep warm with extra layers of clothing because the radiator in their office had been turned off to conserve precious fuel.
    Tilly loved her job and felt very proud of the fact that her head mistress had recommended her for the post. She’d worked hard not to let her or the Lady Almoner down, even though the war had brought an increase to her workload that had felt daunting at times.
    ‘Drew is taking me out for dinner,’ Tilly