“You were.” She touched his face.
“I was happy to get away to the RAF and start flying again. I figured that, in time, maybe I could have another go. In the meantime, I kept myself busy and tried my best to forget about you. When I heard, through the family grapevine, that you were engaged, I thought, ‘Right. That’s it’. I threw myself into by job. I told myself that I loved you enough to be happy for you, because you deserved a good life.” He trailed his hand across her cheek. “I was genuinely sorry to hear what happened to your fiancé, and I knew I had to stay away, as much as I loved you, as much as I wanted nothing more than to comfort you. I also knew that the last thing you needed was another pilot pining for you. I thought that I did pretty well. I slipped up that once, by sending you that record. Part of me didn’t want you to forget me, and I just couldn’t forget you. Then, just when I thought I could do it, you walked into that hospital ward, cross and soaking wet from the rain. You’re even beautiful when you’ve been caught out in the rain, my love. I knew I had to put things right between us. I had to try I couldn’t bear the thought of you walking out of my life again. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when you agreed to letting me write to you. I knew I stood a chance.” His lips lingered on her palm and her wrist.
She closed her eyes, reeling in the knowledge that he really did love her.
“That Christmas was wonderful and the day we spent in Cambridge, I wanted to tell you, even then, that I loved you, but I was afraid. I didn’t want to spoil what was good between us. I nearly gave it away, that evening in Duxford. It was so hard not to, standing there in the twilight.” He kissed her. “Kissing you like this with the birds swooping overhead. You kissed me back and I had some hope for the first time in years. Then, there was the whole mess of Dieppe and those four lost months. All I wanted to do was get back to you. I only hoped that you knew I was alive”—another kiss—“I loved coming home to you that Christmas and I knew that I had to find some way to keep you, to bring us closer. When you said that you would go away with me and that you needed as me as much as I said I needed you, I could have danced and cheered, and you made me very happy. Those five days were the happiest days of my life, making love to you, being with no one but you. I didn’t think it was possible to fall so completely in love with someone, but I did. I just can’t believe how stupid I was to hurt you the way I did. I still can’t believe what a selfish idiot I was, what an absolute, stubborn fool. I hurt so many people after that. Poor Harry, I’m sure that he wanted to clout me more than once because I was a bastard. I can’t believe that he stuck by me and put up with my temper and my sulks, but that’s Harry for you, patient to the last.” He rested his forehead against hers. “As for you, my darling, I can’t thank you enough for not giving up on me, and for finding it in your heart to forgive me. If you had told me to get lost, it would have only been what I deserved.” His breath was soft on her skin.
Ilona wanted the moment to last, to cherish Francis’ touch. “I couldn’t do that because I loved you. I couldn’t have given up, even if I’d tried. I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time, Francis. I have stopped myself so many times from telling you because I didn’t think you’d want to hear it, not until the war was over, and I didn’t want to scare you off.”
He smiled. “It’s all right, and you didn’t have to say anything. Didn’t I say that I knew you better than you know yourself? Your face is very easy to read, my love. I’ve always known, probably even before you realized it.”
“You did?”
“I did, and I have waited nearly six years to say this. Ilke, I love you.”
“I love you too.” She kissed him.
He gathered her into his arms as a kestrel rose out of the barley and soared away, calling out into the late morning silence.
After a while, he spoke again into her hair. “Now we have to think about the future, my love.”
“I know.”
“I’m going home tomorrow. I’ve done more hours than I should have done, so they’re shipping me back and I’ll be resigning my commission. I’m done with it and I’m ready for a quiet life now. Dad is ready to retire and he wants me to take over the factory. I’ll be spending the rest of my life in Mayville, making furniture, and I think it’s what I need to do. I’ve done more and seen more than I could have ever hoped to. I’ve flown the finest planes I could have ever hoped to fly and, in them, I was lucky enough to leave the earth behind me. I’ve flown under a bomber’s moon and found my way home by the stars. I had the privilege of serving with brave men and I survived when many of them didn’t. Then there was Blakeslee, who was the best of all the COs I flew with.”
He picked up her hand once more and traced the lines on her palm with his fingers.
“Now I have a house of my own to go back to. Mom and Dad moved in with Dad’s parents a couple of years ago, before they passed away, and they’ve given their old house to me. Now the choice is yours, Ilke. I want you to marry me.”
He turned and put his finger on her lips. “But don’t answer me now. I want you to think about this. You’ve spent the last few years working. I’d be asking you to give that all up. It will be a quiet life, darling. There isn’t much to Mayville. For four or five months of the year, at least, you won’t see the ground for all the snow. There’ll be days when you won’t be able to leave the house. I don’t want you to answer now, because there’s a lot to think about. I don’t want you to say yes, because it’s something to do or because it’s a choice that you didn’t have before. You will be leaving all that you have known behind and living in a strange land. I know how much you love this place and your family and it’s a big leap in the dark. We’ve spent a handful of nights together in the midst of war. In peace, it’ll be different. I won’t be a fighter pilot any more. I’ll just be plain old Francis Robson, maker of furniture—an ordinary man with an ordinary life. You know what I’m like, and you’ve never backed away. You, alone, know how scared I was, how I hated the pain. If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve crashed that plane in a fireball in a field in France, but you gave me a reason to get back.”
“There is nothing ordinary about you, Francis Robson,” she replied, touching his face. “But I’ll do what you ask. I’ll think about it, carefully. I promise.” Ilona didn’t care if he lived in a shed and collected newspapers for a living. She would live with him anywhere. “I will really think about it.”
“Don’t write to me,” he told her. “Your parents will be coming to visit mine soon. If you decide that you want to spend the rest of your life with me, just come with them. Because, if you decide that you can’t, I don’t think I want to know. If you said no, there’s nothing you could say that would make me feel better. If you come with them, we can get married while they’re there. It’s still only twenty-four hours’ notice in New York. We can do what my parents did, because I think we’ve waited long enough. I want to spend the rest of my life with you without having to worry about snatching a night here or a day there. I want to know that at the end of every day, you will be there.”
She nodded and he stood up, pulling her to her feet.
“I told you that I didn’t have long. I have to get back to Debden tonight. You’d think that they’d be more generous with the leave, since we’re finished here, but nope. I would’ve loved to have stayed but we didn’t get much notice that we were flying out tomorrow.”
“But you only just got here.”
“I know, but I had to see you again and say my piece.”
“You’ve certainly done that.”
“You look stunned, my love.”
“I am. It’s not every day that the man that I love turns up out of the blue, tells me he’s loved me all along and then asks me to marry him, before being whisked off again.”
He grinned, a cheeky, boyish grin. “But confess… It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“It was wonderful. I want to dance and I want you to make love to me, but I suppose we had better get you back to t
he station.”
They walked hand in hand back to the house. Ilona’s head was still spinning. She found it incredible that he had traveled halfway across the country just for those few, brief, precious minutes. Had he not been holding her hand, she would have thought it a dream.
“By the way,” he said, as they left the woods, “I did ask your father’s permission.”
“You did?”
“Of course. I wanted to do it properly and I told him that I wanted you to think about your answer and he was very impressed.”
“You never cease to amaze me. What did he say?”
“He said, ‘It’s about time you made an honest woman of her, son. Her mother and I will make sure she makes the right decision, the one that’s best for her.’ He shook my hand, your mother cried and wished me luck, and that was it.”
She spotted the sitting room curtain twitching as they strolled across the lawn. “I think they’re waiting.”
They were waiting, hovering anxiously on the edge of the settee in the small sitting room.
“Well?” her mother asked.
“I’ve said that I will give serious thought to Francis’ proposal.”
This was followed by a lot of hugging and tears then Francis said that he needed to catch his train or there would be hell to pay if he didn’t get back to Debden on time. Ilona drove him to the station and they stood on the empty platform as they had many times before.
“I’ll miss you,” he whispered as he drew her into his arms.
“I’ll miss you too.” She leaned against him, holding him as he sighed into her hair. The previous hour had been a mad dream and now reality was arriving in the shape of a train and an uncertain separation. It was one thing to be separated by a matter of miles and a war, but the prospect of an entire ocean between them was something entirely different.
“I’ll wait for as long as it takes,” he told her. “Just come when you’re ready, when you’re sure.”
“I will.” she kissed his neck, wondering when she would get that chance again. She could hear the train approaching, the relentless rhythm of the engine as it slowed.
“I love you. It feels so good to be able to say that.”
Ilona managed a watery smile in return. “I love you.”
He kissed her with more than an echo of the old longing and desperation and let her go. “Look after yourself, for me.” He opened the door and stepped onto the train, leaning out of the window.
“I will, and you… Take care.” She took his outstretched hand and kissed it then the train lurched forward and his hand fell away. She waved until he was out of sight and stood on the platform for a long time after the train had gone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Much to Ilona’s frustration, the pre-war passenger ships either were tied up by the war in the Pacific or were still being converted from troop ships. The news that there would be passenger planes flying across the Atlantic had come as an exciting relief and her parents were adventurous enough to consider it. She took great pride in paying for her one-way ticket herself, from the wages that she’d collected during her five years in the WAAF.
To pass the time, she’d persuaded Mrs. Maplin to admit her into her domain and teach her how to cook. It was all very well marrying Francis, but she couldn’t let him live on omelets alone. The cook, very patiently, taught her the basics and, by the time she was ready to leave, her teacher declared herself satisfied that she would not let her husband starve. There’d been some mishaps along the way—burnt pans, soggy dumplings, a cake rendered inedible by a surfeit of baking soda and a stew so bad that even the neighboring farmer’s pigs turned their noses up at it.
“He’s a lovely young man, Miss Ilke,” Mrs. Maplin had said. “He needs spoiling, not starving. Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it.”
Ilona agreed. She had, as she’d promised Francis, given the proposal a great deal of thought. She’d dismissed the notion that she would marry him simply to escape an aimless life. She knew that, if she wanted to, she could find a job or learn a trade, even if it was office work. Grace had written to her, offering her a job in her father’s accounting office, which she’d politely declined. Francis’ assertion that he was ‘an ordinary man’ was equally easy to dismiss. The reasons why she shouldn’t marry him fell by the wayside within two weeks of his departure. Her only lingering doubt was leaving home and leaving England. The fact that Aislinn and her family seemed to have settled permanently in their parents’ home had made it a place that she didn’t want to stay. Charlie had managed to find a job in Reading and it was convenient for them to stay at the house until he’d saved up enough money to buy a place of their own. As much as Ilona loved her family, she’d outgrown them a long time ago when she’d left home for the first time. She knew that if she missed anything, it would be the land itself. The green fields sleeping under the sun, the late summer breeze moving through the ripening barley and the cry of a kestrel as it swept along in the wind. She would be leaving the landscape of her childhood behind, but she needed to live in the future and that future was with Francis.
A small part of her fretted that, if she left England, she would be leaving what remained of Ian behind. It was something that was on her mind when she went to Faith and Sandy’s wedding. The wedding, attended by only close friends and family, was held in the village church that Sandy had been christened in. Ilona had been the only bridesmaid. She stood shivering in the morning chill of the ancient chapel while the minister finally sealed a bond that had held together through six years of enforced separation, worry and danger. The August sunlight spilled through the stained glass windows and across the flagstone floors. Light bathed the bride as she smiled up at her new husband and, for a moment, Ilona thought of her own wedding and wondered what it would be like. Faith was beautiful and, for the first time since Ilona had known her, she looked impossibly happy as Sandy kissed her. Afterward, the guests returned to Sandy’s parents’ house for a modest reception. Because the weather was kind, everyone lingered in the garden, sitting in the shade of an ancient oak well into the evening. The setting sun colored the sky with a soft, rosy pink and swifts reeled around the church spire, calling out in the dusk.
“Have you enjoyed yourself today?” Sandy found Ilona admiring the roses.
“I have, thanks, yes. I’m just so glad to see you both married at last. It’s been a long time.”
He took her arm and they strolled toward the bottom of the garden, where children were watching the fish rise for midges from the pond. “I hear you’re going to be married, to your Yank.”
“One of these days, yes, if I can find a way across the ocean.”
“I’m glad.” He ruffled her hair. “I hope you’ll be happy, Ilke.”
“I think I will be.” She paused and stared at the church spire, dark against the twilight. “Do you think Ian would mind, Sandy?”
“Of course he wouldn’t.” He grinned. “He’d be happy to know that you’re getting on with your life, even if you are marrying one of those fancy-arsed fighter boys, and a Yank at that.” He swallowed and looked sad for a moment. “I wish he’d been here today. He’d nagged me for ages about making an honest woman of Faith. I still miss him.”
“So do I. I love Francis with all of my heart, but there’s part of me that will always love Ian and will always miss him.” She wiped her eyes.
“He was your first love and what you had with each other was untouched by rows or silences or sulks. He adored you and you adored him. Of course you’ll always love him.” He kissed her cheek. “But you’re doing the right thing. If there’s one thing the war taught me, it’s that you can’t take anything for granted and you can’t hide away from life, good or bad. Marry your Yank, Ilke. Don’t feel guilty about loving him. Ian wouldn’t want that.”
“I won’t, not now.”
“Well, once Faith and I are settled, we’re coming to visit you and make sure that your fly-boy is treating you right, or he’ll have me to an
swer to.”
With her mind made up, she wanted nothing more than to write to Francis to tell him, but she reluctantly honored his request. She imagined his reaction when she turned up, unannounced, on his doorstep. It would be worth the long wait and she asked her parents to make sure that his parents did not tell him that she would be there.
* * * *
“Heavens, Ilke, I swear I haven’t seen you fidget like this since you were the twins’ age,” her mother said as the train rolled slowly along the track.
Ilona peered out of the window, trying to take in the unfamiliar and large landscape. The hills were covered in trees, stripped of leaves now that it was November. Farms dozed in the heart of bare fields. “I’m sorry, Mama. I can’t help it. I just can’t settle. This train seems to be crawling. Why couldn’t it be like the one we were on yesterday?”
“Because,” her father replied, “this is a local line. Thank goodness we couldn’t sail. I’d hate to think what you would have been like having to spend five days on a ship instead of fourteen hours on a plane. You’ve waited six months, I’m sure another hour on this train won’t kill you.”
“I suppose so.” It had been a long six months, made worse by the lack of letters and by the uncertainty that she would ever find a way across the Atlantic.
A Kestrel Rising Page 28
