Fourteen

London, January 1941

DOLLY HANDED OVER her umpteenth cup of soup and smiled at whatever it was the young fireman had just said. The laughter, the chatter, the piano music were all too loud to know for sure, but judging by the look on his face it was something flirtatious. It never hurt to smile, so Dolly did, and when he took his soup and went in search of somewhere to sit, she was rewarded, finally, with a break in the flow of hungry mouths to feed and an opportunity to sit down and rest her weary feet.

They were killing her. She’d been held up leaving Campden Grove when Lady Gwendolyn’s bag of sweets went ‘missing’ and the old woman had descended into a tremendous misery. The sweets turned up eventually, pressed into the mattress beneath the grande dame’s grande derriere; but by then Dolly was so strapped for time she’d had to run all the way to Church Street in a pair of satin shoes made for no greater duty than being admired. She’d arrived out of breath and sore of foot, only to have her hopes of sneaking in beneath the veil of carousing soldiers dashed. She was spied mid-flight by the team leader, Mrs Wad- dingham, a snout-faced woman with a terrible case of eczema that kept her in gloves and a filthy mood, no matter the weather.

‘Late again, Dorothy,’ she said, through lips as tight as a dachshund’s arse. ‘I need you in the kitchen serving soup, we’ve been run off our feet all evening.’

Dolly knew the feeling. Worse luck, a quick glance confirmed her haste had been in vain—Vivien wasn’t even there. Which made no sense because Dolly had checked carefully that they’d be working the evening shift together; what was more, she’d waved at Vivien from Lady Gwendolyn’s window not one hour before, when she was leaving number 25 in her WVS uniform.

‘Get on then, girl,’ said Mrs Waddingham, making a scoot-scoot motion with her gloved hands. ‘Into the kitchen you go. The war’s not going to wait for a girl like you now, is it?’

Dolly battled an urge to fell the other woman with a sharp jab to the shins, but decided it wouldn’t be proper. She bit back a smile—some- times imagining really was as good as doing—and gave Mrs Wadding- ham an obsequious nod instead.

 

The canteen had been set up in the crypt of St Mary’s church and the ‘kitchen’ was a small draughty alcove across which a trestle table had been dressed with a skirt and a string of union jacks to form a counter. There was a small sink in the corner, a paraffin stove to keep the soup hot and, best of all as far as Dolly was concerned right now, a spare pew leaned against the wall.

She took a last glance at the room to make sure her absence wouldn’t be noticed: the trestle tables were full of satisfied servicemen, a couple of ambulance drivers were playing table tennis, and the rest of the WVS ladies were busy clicking their knitting needles and tongues in the far corner. Mrs Waddingham was among them, her back turned on the kitchen, and Dolly decided to risk the dragon’s wrath. Two hours was an awfully long time to be on one’s feet. She sat down and slipped off her shoes; with a sigh of sweet relief, she arched her stocking-clad toes slowly back and forth.

WVS members weren’t supposed to smoke in the canteen (fire regulations), but Dolly dug inside her bag and pulled out one of the crisp new packets she’d got from Mr Hopton the grocer. The soldiers always smoked—no one had the heart to stop them—and a permanent grey tobacco cloud hugged the ceiling; Dolly decided no one would notice if a little more drifted its way. She eased herself onto the tiled floor and struck the match, giving herself over finally to thoughts of the rather momentous thing that had happened that afternoon.

It had all got off to rather an ordinary start: Dolly had been dispatched to the grocer’s after lunch and, embarrassing as it was to remember now, the task had put her in a foul mood. It wasn’t easy to find sweets these days, sugar being rationed and all, but Lady Gwendolyn was never one to take no for an answer and Dolly had been forced to trawl the back streets of Notting Hill in search of the friend of someone’s uncle’s landlord, who—it was whispered—still had such contraband to sell. She’d only just got inside number 7 two hours later and was still removing her scarf and gloves, when the doorbell rang.

The type of day she’d been having, Dolly had fully expected to find a rabble of pesky kids collecting scrap metal for Spitfires; instead, she’d found a tidy little man with a thin moustache and a strawberry birthmark covering one cheek. He was carrying an enormous black alligator briefcase, bulging at the seams, the weight of which appeared to be causing him some discomfort. One glance at his neat comb-over was enough to recognise, however, that he wasn’t the sort to admit vexation.

‘Pemberly,’ he said briskly. ‘Reginald Pemberly, solicitor at law, here to see Lady Gwendolyn Caldicott.’ He bent forward leaning closer to add, with a secretive hushing of the voice, ‘It’s a matter of some urgency.’

Dolly had heard mention of Mr Pemberly (‘A mouse of a man, not a patch on his father, knows how to keep a clean ledger, though, so I permit him to do my business …’), but she’d never come face to face with the man before. She let him in, out of the freezing cold, and ran upstairs to check that Lady Gwendolyn was happy to see him. She was never happy, not really, but where matters of money were concerned she was ever vigilant and so—despite sucking in her cheeks with sullen disdain—she waved a porcine hand to signal the fellow might be admitted to her bower.

‘Good morning, Lady Gwendolyn,’ he puffed (there were three flights of stairs, after all). ‘So sorry to call suddenly like this, but it’s the bombing, you see. I was hit rather hard back in December, and I’ve lost all my papers and files. Dreadful nuisance, as you can imagine, but I’m putting it all back together now—I’m going to carry the lot on my person henceforth.’ He tapped his bulging bag.

Dolly was dismissed and spent the next half hour in her bedroom, glue and scissors in hand, updating her Book of Ideas, and glancing at her wristwatch with increasing anxiety as the minutes ticked ever closer to her WVS shift. Finally, the silver bell tinkled upstairs and she was summoned again to her lady’s chamber.

‘Show Mr Pemberly out,’ Lady Gwendolyn said, pausing to concede a bloated hiccup, ‘then come back and tuck me in for the night.’ Dolly had smiled and agreed, and been waiting for the solicitor to heave his bag, when the old girl added, with customary insouciance: ‘This is Dorothy, Mr Pemberly, Dorothy Smitham. The one I was telling you about.’

There’d been an immediate shift in the solicitor’s bearing after that. ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ he’d said with great deference, and then he’d stood back for Dolly and held open the door. They’d exchanged polite conversation all the way down the stairs and when they reached the front and were conducting farewells, he’d turned to her and said, with a hint of awe, ‘You’ve done a remarkable thing, young lady. I can’t think that I’ve ever seen dear Lady Gwendolyn so cheerful, not since the terrible business with her sister. Why, she didn’t so much as raise a hand in anger, let alone her cane the whole time I was with her. Splendid stuff. Little wonder she’s so tremendously fond of you.’ And then he’d stunned Dolly by surrendering a little wink.

A remarkable thing … not since the terrible business with her sister … so tremendously fond of you. Sitting on the flagstones in the crypt canteen, Dolly smiled softly as she turned over the memory. It was just such a lot to take in. Dr Rufus had hinted at Lady Gwendolyn changing her will to include Dolly, and the old woman sometimes made teasing comments along those lines, but it wasn’t the same thing, was it, as actually talking to her solicitor, telling him how fond she was of her young companion, that they’d become like fam—

‘Hello there.’ A familiar voice cut through Dolly’s thoughts. ‘What’s a fellow’s got to do to get some service around here.’

Dolly glanced up, startled, and saw Jimmy leaning to peer over the counter at her. He laughed, and that lock of dark hair fell forwards across his eyes. ‘Playing hookey are we, Miss Smitham?’

Dolly felt the blood drain from her face. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, scrambling to her feet.

‘I was in the area. Working.’ He indicated the camera slung over his shoulder. ‘I thought I’d swing by and collect my girl.’

She lifted a finger to her lips and shushed him, extinguishing her cigarette on the wall. ‘We said we’d meet at Lyons Corner House,’ she whispered, hurrying to the counter and straightening her skirt. ‘I’m not finished my shift yet, Jimmy.’

‘And I can see how terribly busy you are.’ He smiled, but Dolly didn’t.

She glanced beyond him at the busy room. Mrs Waddingham was still nattering about knitting and there was no sign of Vivien—all the same, it was risky. ‘You go on without me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can.’

‘I don’t mind waiting; it gives me a chance to watch my girl in action.’ He leaned across the counter to kiss her but Dolly pulled away ‘I’m working,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘I’m wearing my uniform. It wouldn’t be proper.’ He didn’t look entirely convinced by her sudden dedication to protocol and Dolly tried a different tack. ‘Listen,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘You go and sit down—here, take some soup. I’ll finish up, get my coat, and we can leave. All right?’

‘All right.’

She watched him go, and she didn’t exhale until he’d found a seat, way over the other side of the room. Dolly’s fingers were tingling with nerves. What on earth had he been thinking, coming here when she’d been so explicit about meeting him at the restaurant? If Vivien had been working as she was scheduled to, there’d have been nothing for Dolly to do but introduce the two of them, and that would’ve been disastrous for Jimmy. It was one thing at the 400, with him so dashing and handsome in the guise of Lord Sandbrook, but here, tonight, dressed in his usual clothing, all tattered and dirty from a night out working in the Blitz … Dolly shuddered to think what Vivien would say if she realised Dolly had a boyfriend like him. Worse, what would happen if Lady Gwendolyn were to find out?

So far—and it hadn’t been easy—Dolly had managed to keep Jimmy a secret from both of them, just as she’d been careful not to overwhelm him with chatter about her life at Campden Grove. But how was she supposed to keep her two worlds separate if he made a habit of doing the very opposite thing of what she asked? She fed her feet back inside the painful pretty shoes and chewed her bottom lip. It was complicated, and she’d never be able to explain it to him, not so that he’d understand, but it was Jimmy’s feelings she was trying to spare. He didn’t belong here at the canteen, just as he didn’t belong at number 7 Campden Grove or behind the red cord at the 400. Not like Dolly did.

She glanced over at him, eating his soup. They’d had such fun together, the two of them—the other night at the 400 and afterwards in her room; but the people in this part of her life couldn’t know they’d been together like that, not Vivien and certainly not Lady Gwendolyn. Dolly’s whole body burned with anxiety imagining what would happen if her old companion found out about Jimmy. The way her heart would break all over again if she feared herself at risk of losing Dolly, just as she’d lost her sister …

With a troubled sigh, Dolly left the counter and went to fetch her coat. She was going to have to have a talk with him; find a delicate way to make him understand that it was best for both of them if they played things a little cooler. He wouldn’t be happy, she knew; he hated playing pretend; he was one of those terribly principled people with a habit of seeing things too rigidly. But he’d come around; she knew he would.

Dolly was almost starting to feel positive when she reached the storeroom and slipped her coat from its hook, but then Mrs Wadding- ham brought her spirits right back down. ‘Taking an early mark, are we Dorothy?’ Before she could answer, the other woman sniffed suspiciously and said, ‘Is that tobacco smoke I smell back here?’

 

Jimmy sneaked his hand inside his trouser pocket. It was still there, the black velvet box, just as it had been the last twenty times he’d checked. The whole thing was becoming a bit of a compulsion, really, which was why the sooner he put the ring on Dolly’s finger, the better. He’d been over it countless times in his head, but he was still nervous as hell. The problem was he wanted it to be perfect and Jimmy didn’t believe in perfect, not generally speaking, not after everything he’d seen, the broken world and all its death and grief. Dolly did though, so he was going to do his best.

He’d tried to make a reservation at one of the fancy restaurants she mooned over these days, the Ritz or Claridge’s, but it turned out they were fully booked and no amount of explanation or appeal could convince them to give him a table. Jimmy had been disappointed at first, and the familiar old feelings of wanting to be better established, richer than he was, came to the surface. He’d pushed them aside, though, and decided it was for the best: he didn’t go in for all that fancy stuff anyway, and on a night as important as this one Jimmy didn’t want to feel he was pretending to be something he wasn’t. Anyway, as his boss had joked, with rationing as it was you could expect to be offered the same Woolton’s Pie at Claridge’s as you’d get at Lyons Corner House, only dearer.

Jimmy looked back at the counter, but Dolly wasn’t there any more. He supposed she was fetching her coat and fixing her lipstick, or one of the other things girls thought they had to do to be beautiful. He wished she wouldn’t; she didn’t need make-up and fancy clothing. They were like veneers, Jimmy sometimes thought, concealing the essence of a person, the very things that made her vulnerable and true and therefore most beautiful to him. Dolly’s complications and imperfections were part of what he loved about her.

Idly, he scratched his upper arm and wondered what had been going on before, why she’d acted so strangely when she saw him. He’d surprised her, he knew, turning up at the kitchen like that, calling out to her when she thought she was alone, hidden away with a cigarette and that distracted dreamy smile on her face. Dolly was usually thrilled at being taken unawares—she was the bravest, most daring person he knew, and nothing made her jumpy—but she’d definitely been nervous when she saw him. She’d seemed a different girl from the one who’d danced beside him through the streets of London the other night, and then led him back to her room.

Unless she had something behind the counter she didn’t want him to see—Jimmy took out his cigarette packet and fed one out onto his lip—a surprise for him perhaps, something she was planning on showing him later at the restaurant. Or maybe he’d caught her remembering their night together, that might explain why she’d seemed so startled, almost embarrassed, when she looked up and saw him standing there. Jimmy struck a match and dragged hard, considering. After a moment he exhaled, letting the query go. It was impossible to guess, and as long as the odd behaviour wasn’t one of her games of pretend (not tonight, please God, he had to stay in control of tonight), he supposed it didn’t matter.

He slipped his hand inside his pocket and then shook his head, because of course the ring box was right where it had been two minutes ago. The compulsion was getting ridiculous; he needed to find a way to distract himself until he could slip the damn thing on Dolly’s finger. Jimmy hadn’t brought a book, so he took up the black folder in which he kept his printed photographs. He didn’t usually carry it with him when he was out on the job, but he’d come straight from a meeting with his editor and hadn’t had time to take it home.

He turned to his most recent photograph, one he’d taken in Cheap- side on Saturday night. It was of a little girl, four or five years old he guessed, standing in front of the kitchen of her local church hall. Her own clothes had been destroyed in the same raid that killed her family, and the Salvation Army hadn’t had any children’s clothes to give her. She was wearing an enormous pair of bloomers, an adult-size cardigan and a pair of tap shoes. They were red and she’d adored them. The St John’s ladies were fussing about in the background, finding biscuits for her, and she’d been tapping her feet like Shirley Temple when Jimmy saw her, as the woman minding her kept an eye on the door in hopes that one of her family would miraculously appear, whole and intact and ready to take her home.

Jimmy had taken so many war pictures, his walls and his memories were clogged with various strangers who stood defiant in the face of devastation and loss; just this week he’d been to Bristol and Portsmouth and Gosport; but there was something about that little girl— he didn’t even know her name—that Jimmy couldn’t forget. He didn’t want to forget. Her little face made happy by so little after suffering what was surely a child’s greatest loss; an absence that would ripple across the years to change her whole life. Jimmy ought to know—he still found himself scanning the faces of bomb-blast victims, searching for his mother.

Small individual tragedies like this little girl’s were nothing to the larger scale of the war; she and her tap shoes could be swept as easily as dust beneath history’s carpet. That photo-graph was real, though; it captured its moment and preserved it for the future like an insect in amber. It reminded Jimmy why what he did, recording the truth of the war, was important. He needed to be reminded sometimes, on nights like this one, when he looked around the room and felt his lack of uniform so keenly.

Jimmy killed his cigarette in the soup bowl that someone be-fore him had helpfully set out for the purpose. He glanced at his watch—fifteen minutes had passed since he’d sat down—and wondered what was keeping Dolly. Jimmy was debating whether to gather his things and go looking for her when he sensed a presence behind him. He turned, expecting to see Doll, but it wasn’t her. It was someone else, someone he’d never seen before.

 

At last Dolly had managed to extricate herself from Mrs Waddingham, and was coming back through the kitchen, wondering how shoes that looked such a dream could possibly hurt one’s feet so badly, when she glanced up and the world just about stopped turning. Vivien had arrived.

She was standing by one of the trestle tables.

Deep in conversation.

With Jimmy.

Dolly’s heart started to rabbit in her chest and she hid herself behind the pillar at the edge of the kitchen counter. She tried not to be seen while making perfectly sure to see everything. Eyes wide, she peered around the bricks and realised with horror that it was worse than she’d imagined. Not only were the two of them talking together, by the way they were gesturing back towards the table—Dolly stood on tippy-toes and winced—at Jimmy’s folder, open on its surface, she could only deduce that they were discussing his photographs.

He’d shown them to Dolly once, and she’d been horrified. They were awful, nothing at all like those he’d used to take back in Coventry, of sunsets and trees and lovely houses in rippling meadows; neither were they like any of the war newsreels she and Kitty had been to watch at the cinema, the smiling images of returned servicemen, tired and dirty but triumphant; children lined up waving at railway stations; stalwart women handing oranges to cheerful Tommies. Jimmy’s photos were of men with broken bodies and dark hollowed cheeks, and eyes that had seen things they ought not to have seen—Dolly hadn’t known what to say; she’d wished he hadn’t shown them to her in the first place.

What could he be thinking, showing them to Vivien now? She who was so pretty and perfect, the very last person on earth who ought to be troubled by that sort of ugliness. Dolly felt protective of her friend, there was a part of her that wanted to fly over there, slam the folder shut and end the whole thing, but she couldn’t. Jimmy was just as likely to kiss her again, or worse, refer to her as his fiancee and make Vivien think they were engaged. Which they weren’t, not officially— they’d talked about it, of course, back when they were kids, but that was different. They were older now, and the war changed things, it changed people. Dolly swallowed hard: this moment was everything she’d feared most and now that it had happened she had no choice but to wait in excruciating limbo for it all to be over.

It felt like hours passed before Jimmy finally closed his folder and Vivien made to leave. Dolly breathed a huge sigh of relief, and then she panicked. Her friend was coming straight up the aisle between the tables, frowning slightly as she headed for the kitchen. Dolly had been so looking forward to seeing her, but not like this, not before she knew exactly what Jimmy had said. As Vivien neared the kitchen, Dolly made a split-second decision. She ducked down and hid behind the counter, pretending to fossick beneath the red and green Christmas valance with the demeanour of someone engaged in terribly important war business. As soon as she’d felt Vivien brush past, Dolly grabbed her bag and hurried to where Jimmy was waiting. All she could think of was getting him out of the canteen before Vivien saw them together.

 

They didn’t go to the Lyons Corner House in the end. There was a restaurant by the railway station, a plain building with boarded-up windows and a blast hole patched by a sign that said ‘More Open than Usual’. When they reached it, Dolly declared that she couldn’t possibly walk another step. ‘I’ve blisters, Jimmy,’ she said, feeling like she might be going to cry. ‘Let’s just duck in here, shall we? It’s freezing out—I’m sure it’s going to snow tonight.’

It was warmer inside, thank goodness, and the waiter found them a nice-enough booth in the back with a radiator burning nearby. Jimmy took Dolly’s coat to hang by the door and she unpinned her WVS hat, setting it down by the salt and pepper. One of her grips had been digging into her head all night and she rubbed the spot briskly as she eased off her wretched shoes. Jimmy stopped on his way back and spoke briefly to the waiter who’d seated them, but Dolly was far too preoccupied with what he might have said to Vivien to wonder why. She shook a cigarette out of her packet and struck the match so hard it snapped. She was certain Jimmy was hiding something, he’d been acting nervously ever since they left the canteen, and now, coming back to the table, he could hardly meet her eyes without quickly looking away.

No sooner had he sat down than the waiter brought them a bottle of wine and began pouring two glasses full. The gurgling noise seemed very loud, embarrassing somehow, and Dolly looked beyond Jimmy to take in the rest of the room. Three bored waiters stood muttering to one another in the corner while the bartender polished his clean bar.

There was only one other couple dining, the two of them whispering over their table as Al Jolson crooned from a gramophone on the bar. The woman had an over-eager look about her, rather like Kitty with her new beau—RAF, or so she said—running a hand down the fellow’s shirt and giggling at his jokes.

The waiter set down the bottle and adopted a posh voice, telling them there’d be no a la carte menu tonight due to the shortages, but that the chef could prepare them a set menu du jour.

‘Good,’ said Jimmy, hardly looking at the fellow. ‘Yes, thank you.’

The waiter left and Jimmy lit himself a cigarette, smiling at Dolly briefly before shifting his attention to something just above her head.

Dolly could stand it no longer; her stomach was churning; she had to know what he’d been saying to Vivien, whether he’d mentioned her name. ‘So,’ she said.

‘So.’

‘I was wondering—’

‘There’s something—’

They both stopped, they both dragged on their cigarettes. Each considered the other through a haze of smoke.

‘You first,’ said Jimmy with a smile, opening his hands and looking directly into her eyes in a way she might’ve found exciting if she weren’t so anxious.

Dolly chose her words carefully. ‘I saw you,’ she said, flicking ash into the ashtray, ‘in the canteen. You were talking.’ His face was hard to read; he was watching her closely. ‘You and Vivien,’ she added.

‘That was Vivien?’ said Jimmy, eyes widening. ‘Your new friend? I didn’t realise—she didn’t say her name. Oh, Doll, if you’d only come sooner you could have introduced us.’

He seemed genuinely disappointed, and Dolly breathed a sigh of tentative relief. He hadn’t known Vivien’s name. Maybe that meant she didn’t know his either; nor how he came to be visiting the canteen tonight. She tried to sound nonchalant. ‘What were you talking about then, the two of you?’

‘The war,’ he shrugged a shoulder and dragged nervously on his cigarette. ‘You know. The usual.’

He was lying to her, Dolly could tell—Jimmy wasn’t a good liar. Neither was he enjoying the conversation; he’d answered quickly, too quickly, and now he was avoiding her gaze. What could they possibly have discussed that was making him so cagey. Had they talked about her? Oh God—what had he said? ‘The war,’ she repeated, pausing to give him an opportunity to expand. He didn’t. She offered him a brittle smile. ‘That’s a rather general topic.’

The waiter arrived at their table, sliding a steaming plate before each of them. ‘Mock fish scallops,’ he said grandly.

‘Mock fish scallops?’ Jimmy sputtered.

The waiter’s mouth twitched and his facade slipped a little. ‘Artichokes, I believe, sir,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Chef grows ’em on his allotment.’

Jimmy watched Dolly across the white tablecloth. This was not the way he’d planned it, to propose to her in an empty dive, after buying her crumbed artichoke and sour wine, and making her burn with anger. Silence set up camp between them and the ring box weighed heavily in Jimmy’s trouser pocket. He didn’t want to be arguing, he wanted to be sliding the ring onto her finger, not simply because it bound her to him—though of course he longed for that—but because it honoured something good and true. He poked at his food.

He couldn’t have messed it up more if he’d tried. Worse, there was nothing he could think of doing that would fix it. Dolly was angry because she knew he wasn’t telling her everything, but the woman, Vivien, had asked him not to repeat what she’d said. More than that, she’d pleaded with him, and there’d been something about the way she looked when she did so that made him close his mouth and nod. He dragged his artichoke through some miserable white sauce.

Maybe she hadn’t meant Dolly, though. Now there was a thought— they were friends. Dolly would probably laugh if he told her, and wave her hand and say that of course she already knew. Jimmy took a sip of wine, thinking it through, wondering what his father would have done in the same situation. He had a feeling his dad would’ve observed the promise to Vivien, but then again, look what happened to him—he’d lost the woman he loved. Jimmy wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to him.

‘Your friend,’ he said casually, as if there’d been no awkwardness between them, ‘Vivien—she saw one of my photo-graphs.’

Dolly’s attention came to rest on him but she said nothing.

Jimmy swallowed, shutting out all thought of his father, those talks he’d given Jimmy as he was growing up, about valour and respect. He had no choice tonight, he had to tell Dolly the truth and, really, what harm could possibly come? ‘It was of a little girl whose family was killed the other night in a raid over Cheapside way. It was sad, Doll, terribly sad, she was smiling, you see, and wearing—’ He stopped himself and waved his hand, he could tell by Dolly’s expression she was losing patience. ‘That’s not important—the thing is, your friend knew her. Vivien recognised her from the picture.’

‘How?’

It was the first word she’d spoken since their meals arrived, and although it wasn’t exactly unreserved forgiveness, Jimmy lightened. ‘She told me she has a friend, a doctor, who runs a small private hospital over in Fulham. He turned over part of it to care for war orphans and she helps him sometimes. That’s where she met Nella, the little girl in the photograph. She’d been taken there, you see, when no one else came forward to claim her.’

Dolly was watching him, waiting for him to continue, but there wasn’t anything more he could think to say.

‘That’s it?’ said Dolly. ‘You didn’t tell her anything about yourself?’ ‘Not even my name, there wasn’t time.’ In the distance, from somewhere in the dark cold London night there came a series of explosions. Jimmy wondered suddenly who was being hit, who was screaming right now with pain and grief and horror as their world came down around them.

‘And she didn’t say anything else?’

Jimmy shook his head. ‘Not about the hospital. I was about to ask her if I could go with her one day, take something for Nella—’

‘You didn’t though?’

‘I didn’t get a chance.’

‘And that’s the only reason you were being so evasive—because Vivien told you she helps her doctor friend in his hospital?’

He felt foolish in the face of Dolly’s incredulity. He smiled and shrank a bit and cursed himself for always taking things so seriously, for not realising that of course Vivien had been overstating things, and of course Dolly already knew—that he’d been agonising over nothing. He said, a bit limply, ‘She begged me not to tell anyone.’

‘Oh, Jimmy,’ Dolly said, laughing as she reached across the table to brush his arm gently. ‘Vivien didn’t mean me. She meant for you not to tell other people, of course—strangers.’

‘I know.’ Jimmy stilled her hand in his, felt her smooth fingers beneath his own. ‘It was stupid of me not to realise. I’m not myself tonight.’ He was aware suddenly that he was standing at the edge of something; that the rest of his life, their life together, began on the other side. ‘In fact,’ he said again, his voice cracking just a little, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Doll.’

 

Dolly had been smiling distractedly as Jimmy stroked her hand. A doctor friend, a male friend—Kitty had been right, Vivien had a lover, and suddenly everything made sense. The secrecy, Vivien’s frequent absences from the WVS canteen, the distant expression on her face as she sat in the window at number 25 Campden Grove, dreaming. She said, ‘I wonder how they met,’ just as Jimmy was saying, ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Doll.’

It was the second time that night they’d spoken at once, and Dolly laughed. ‘We have to stop doing that,’ she said. She felt unexpectedly lucent and giggly, as if she could laugh all night. Perhaps it was the wine. She’d had more to drink than she realised. Then again, the relief at knowing Jimmy hadn’t revealed himself made her feel rather euphoric. ‘I was just saying—’

‘No,’ he reached to press a fingertip to her lips. ‘Let me finish, Doll.

I have to finish.’

His expression took her by surprise, it was one she didn’t see often, determined, almost urgent, and although she was desperate to know more about Vivien and her doctor friend, Dolly closed her mouth.

Jimmy let his hand slip sideways to caress her cheek. ‘Doro-thy Smitham,’ he said, and something inside her caught at the way he said her name. She melted. ‘I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. Do you remember, that cafe in Coventry?’

‘You were carrying a bag of flour.’

He laughed. ‘A true hero. That’s me.’

She smiled and pushed her empty plate aside. She lit a cigarette. It was cold, she realised, the radiator had stopped ticking. ‘Well, it was a very big bag.’

‘I’ve told you before there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.’

She nodded. He had, of course, many times. It was sweet, and she didn’t want to interrupt him when he was saying it again, but Dolly didn’t know how much longer she could keep her questions and thoughts about Vivien from bubbling to the surface.

‘I meant it, Doll. I’d do anything you asked.’

‘Do you think you could get the waiter to check the heating?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘So am I, it’s freezing in here all of a sudden.’ She wrapped her arms across her middle. ‘Can you feel it?’ Jimmy didn’t answer, he was too busy digging in his trouser pocket for some-thing. Dolly glimpsed their waiter and tried to get his attention. He appeared to see her, but then turned and headed back to-wards the kitchen. She noticed then that the other couple had gone and they were the only ones left in the restaurant. ‘I think we should leave,’ she said to Jimmy. ‘It’s late.’

‘Just a minute.’

‘But it’s cold.’

‘Forget the cold.’

‘But Jimmy—’

‘I’m trying to ask you to marry me, Doll.’ He’d surprised him-self, she could tell by his face, and he laughed. ‘I’m making a bit of a mess of it, apparently—I’ve never done it before. I don’t intend to do it again.’

He eased out of his seat and went to kneel before her, taking a deep breath. ‘Dorothy Smitham,’ he said, ‘will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

Dolly waited to understand, for him to break character and laugh. She knew he was joking; he was the one who’d insisted back at Bournemouth that they wait until he’d saved enough money; any minute now he’d laugh and ask her if she’d like to order some dessert. But he didn’t. He stayed where he was, staring up at her. ‘Jimmy?’ she said. ‘You’ll get chilblains down there. Hop up, quickly.’

He didn’t. Without looking away, he raised his left hand and revealed a ring between his fingertips. It was a band of yellow gold with a small stone in a claw setting—old enough not to be new, too modern to be a real antique. He’d brought a prop, she realised, blinking at it with surprise. He really was doing a splendid job playing his part; she had to admire him; she wished she could say the same for herself, only he’d caught her off guard. Dolly wasn’t used to Jimmy initiating games of pretend—that was her job; she wasn’t sure she liked it. ‘Let me wash my hair and think about it,’ she quipped.

His own hair had fallen across one eye and he tossed his head to shift it. There was no hint of a smile on his face as he stared at her for a moment, as if he were collecting his thoughts, as he sighed. ‘I’m asking you to marry me, Doll,’ he said, and something in the honest woody quality of his voice, the complete absence of subterfuge and doublemeaning, made Dolly feel the first inkling of suspicion that he might in fact be in earnest.

 

She thought he was joking. Jimmy almost laughed when he realised that. He didn’t, though; he swiped his hair out of his eyes and thought about the way she’d taken him upstairs the other night, the way she’d looked at him as her red dress dropped to the ground, as she lifted her chin and met his gaze, and he’d felt young and strong and so very glad to be alive right then, right there, with her. He thought about the way he’d sat up afterwards, unable to sleep for the blessed knowledge that a girl like her could possibly be in love with him, the way he’d known as he watched her dream that he would love her all his life and hers, until they were old together, sitting on comfortable armchairs in their farmhouse, their children all grown up and flown away, taking it in turns to make each other cups of tea.

He wanted to tell it all to her, to remind her, to make her see the picture as clearly as he did, but Jimmy knew that Dolly was different, that she liked surprises and didn’t need to see the ending when they were still right at the start. Instead, when all his thoughts had been gathered like leaves, he exhaled slowly and said as plainly as he could, ‘I’m asking you to marry me, Doll. I’m still not a rich man, but I love you, and I don’t want to waste another day without you.’ And then he watched as her face changed, and he saw in the corners of her mouth and the minute shift of her brows that finally she understood.

As Jimmy waited, Dolly sighed, long and slowly. She reached for her hat, frowning a little as she turned it round and round by the brim. She’d always favoured the dramatic pause, so he wasn’t really worried as he followed the perfect line of her profile, just as he had on that hill by the sea; as she said, ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ in a voice not quite her own; as she turned to him and he saw a fresh tear sliding down her cheek: ‘what a thing to ask; what a damnable thing to ask me right now.’

Before Jimmy could ask her what she meant, she hurried past him, bumping her hip against another table in her hurry to get away, disappearing into the cold and the dark of wartime London without so much as hinting at a backwards glance. It was only after minutes had passed and she still hadn’t returned that Jimmy finally understood what had happened. And he saw himself suddenly, as if from above, as if the subject of his very own photograph, a man who’d somehow lost everything, kneeling alone on the dirty floor of a dingy restaurant that had become very cold.

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