My Sweet Valentine Read Online Free PDF Page B

had proved surprisingly adept at tuning in the wireless, even though she complained that if she wasn’t careful the mesh on the front, close to the tuning dial, scratched her nail polish.
    Olive loved her wireless. She often listened to it when she was alone in the kitchen after the girls had gone to work, humming along to popular songs as she did her housework, listening carefully when Elsie and Doris Waters were in charge of the popular Kitchen Front programme with its tips for housewives anxious to make their rations stretch as far as they could. Both Olive and Audrey Windle agreed that they hated missing Mr J.B. Priestley’s Postscript broadcasts. Nancy, being Nancy, said that listening to music made housewives lazy and that she wouldn’t have a wireless in her house at all if it hadn’t been for her husband insisting.
    The kettle was boiling. Tilly and Agnes had got the teacups.
    ‘You sit down here, Mrs Robbins, then you can hearthe news properly. Tilly and I will sort out the tea,’ offered Drew.
    He really was everything that any mother could want in a prospective son-in-law – should she be wanting to see her daughter married – but the problem was that Olive did not want to see Tilly married, not for a long time yet.
    Right now, though, Olive wanted to concentrate on listening to the news.
    Accompanied by various ‘shushings’ and, ‘It was you wot spoke, not me,’ from the girls, the newsreader, Alvar Lidell tonight, began his broadcast in a very hushed tone as he reassured the country that, despite Hitler’s attempts to destroy the spirit of Londoners, the city was standing firm, and with it St Paul’s. Olive suspected that this wasn’t the only home in which a small cheer went up at this announcement. There was also an announcement confirming the news that a full corps of Canadians would be stationed in Britain.
    ‘So many people from the Commonwealth coming to help – Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, and Canadians – it’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ Olive murmured, ‘especially when many of them have never even been to this country before.’
    ‘What’s not wonderful is the way in which America is holding back,’ said Drew grimly.
    ‘That’s not your fault,’ Tilly assured him loyally. ‘You’ve been sending articles back to Chicago, that tell what it is really like here, Drew.’
    There was also a brief mention of the Greeks’ offensive against the Italians in Albania, plus an even more carefully worded announcement about the ongoing situationin the Middle East, before the news bulletin came to an end.
    War! No wonder they all crowded round the wireless to listen to the news. Those dry, dusty facts translated for so many of them into events affecting the lives of loved ones both at home and abroad, Olive thought sombrely as she went upstairs to wash and change into her smart WVS uniform ahead of her meeting.

TWO
    ‘Who on earth can that be knocking on the front door at this time of night?’ Olive complained, as she was hanging up her coat in the hallway. She had only just got in from her WVS meeting and was looking forward to what she hoped would be an uninterrupted night’s sleep in her own bed without any air-raid sirens going off. She’d made the air-raid shelter, at the bottom of the garden, as comfortable as possible but there was nowhere like your own bed, even though Olive made sure that the shelter beds had immaculately washed and ironed linen and cosy blankets.
    ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go,’ she called into the kitchen where the girls were making cocoa and toast, the smell of this homely but appetising fare making her empty stomach rumble.
    Automatically she switched off the hall light as she reached the front door to make sure that the house didn’t contravene the blackout regulations.
    The sight of a man in army uniform standing on the doorstep, his face shadowed by his cap, had her asking uncertainly who he was, recognition only dawning whenthe visitor