Only a Mother Knows Read Free

going to cast aspersions on her daughter.
    Olive had just reached the top of the street when she literally bumped into Sergeant Archie Dawson, who was ambling around the corner. She was heartily glad that Nancy had retreated into her own house as he caught her deftly around the waist to stop her stumbling into the road and into the path of a horse and cart. Olive could imagine only too well what her vindictive neighbour would insinuate about her innocent friendship with the upstanding policeman. Feeling the warmth of colour rising to her cheeks, she chided herself for being so gauche. She wasn’t a girl any more, with a head full of starry dreams; she was a grown woman with a grown-up daughter … who was having starry dreams of her own right now.
    ‘Oh, hello, Archie, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ Olive could feel her heartbeat quicken and reprimanded herself for being foolish. However, she didn’t want to dwell on what Archie, a married man and serving police sergeant, would think. Instead she concentrated on a couple of children stretching a length of rope across the street and wondered where they came about such a good length, as everything was needed for the war effort.
    ‘Hello, Olive,’ Archie Dawson said with that usual warmth in his kind, mellow voice as he held her securely until the cart had passed. ‘You look a little flushed, is everything okay?’ He used the latest expression that seemed to be doing the rounds due to the huge influx of American soldiers, who the young ones referred to as GIs on account of the initials on the padded shoulders of their very smart uniforms which stood for Government Issue.
    Olive smiled. She never would have imagined someone as upright and respectable as Sergeant Dawson using American slang, but it showed that he was keeping up with the times and that he wasn’t as buttoned-up as the impression he gave to the rest of the community. And if she was honest, she thought it sounded quite good coming from him.
    ‘Oh, I’ve just had a bit of a run-in with Nancy Black,’ Olive explained. ‘That woman would try the patience of angels.’
    ‘Oh, you don’t have to say any more, the old witch gave me chapter and verse about …’ He stopped abruptly and Olive could see he was trying to be tactful when he continued ‘… about Tilly and Drew carrying a suitcase and going off in a taxi cab. But we’ll talk no more about it,’ Archie Dawson said gallantly, taking his hand from her waist and giving a low rumbling laugh that seemed to soothe Olive’s bubbling indignation. ‘Suffice it to say, Olive, you are right, she would try the serenity of a saint.’
    ‘Oh, Archie.’ Olive smiled for the first time that day and in doing so felt all her tension slip away.
    ‘Not that I’m saying you are not a saint, Olive, you are a very good woman, hardworking, a pillar of the community …’
    ‘Oh, Archie, you flatter me, I’m nothing of the sort,’ she laughed in that carefree way he always provoked in her. ‘You will have my head swelling.’ Olive could feel little sparks of delight shoot through her. However, they were quickly followed by a heaviness that reminded her she was a busy widow and he was a respectably married man with a young, impressionable foster son who needed the close eye of a decent man to keep him on the straight and narrow. Suddenly, her attention was drawn to Nancy, who was now hurrying up the street resplendent in her carpet slippers.
    ‘Some of us haven’t got time to stand around indulging in idle chit-chat,’ Nancy said as she hurried by. ‘There is a queue forming outside the butcher’s shop; Mrs Finlay just told me he’s got oxtails on the go.’ In seconds she had passed them and was halfway up the street before turning and saying in a loud voice, ‘Oh, Sergeant! Was that your wife I heard calling just now?’
    Olive and Archie watched in stunned silence as Nancy scurried past them in the direction of the