Lou was crying. ‘He meant no harm. He was just a bit drunk. Oh, Gordon, I’m so glad to see you.’
Subdued, and looking a bit shamefaced, Gordon held her close. ‘How was I to know? Seeing someone apparently attacking my wife, I just knocked his bleedin’ block off. What sort of a welcome is that for a chap when he comes home?’
The scuffle ended with no serious injuries involved. Luc was cleaned up and returned to his colleagues, none the worse for his ordeal, apart from a black eye and a bruised ego. Lou went with Gordon to the Eagle’s head where they intended to book a room. ‘The honeymoon suite’, Lou declared with a wink.
Gracie and Adam were left to walk slowly home together. Eventually she felt calm enough to talk, as if the incident had united them in some way and drawn them closer. ‘I’m sorry that you felt in any way obliged to dance with me this evening. It was all your mother’s idea. You shouldn’t let her bully you, though I wouldn’t dream of blaming you for that. My parents are as bad. Always think they know best what’s good for me.’
‘Do they?’
‘Oh yes. That’s why I joined the Timber Corps, for a bit of freedom,’ and Gracie explained about her mother’s plans for her to be a teacher, while her father had intended her to follow him in the business, as well as their misguided attempt to abduct her from the Timber Corps. ‘It was farcical in a way, like something out of a Ma and Pa Kettle film. Father with two Jerry-cans of petrol so he wouldn’t have to stop, and me running off the minute Mother was forced to spend a penny. You had to laugh, really you did,’ and as she saw the sparkle of humour in his grey eyes, Gracie did at last see the funny side of it herself, and they both began to chuckle. Not wanting to dampen their more relaxed mood, she made no mention of getting lost in Exeter, or the horrors of the air raid. She was far too thrilled to find that his stiffness was thawing a little, that he might even be warming towards her, if only a little. It almost felt, for a moment, as if he quite liked her.
Adam said. ‘Mam’s been trying to find me a wife ever since I turned twenty-one. She’s in despair because I spend all my time working and don’t show enough interest in girls.’
‘You will, when the right one comes along,’ Gracie consoled him. ‘At least, that’s what Lou says, and I believe her. She never seems to have any trouble in finding a fella, as you can see, despite the fact that she’s already happily married. Some have it and some don’t, I suppose.’ Gracie giggled but Adam looked suddenly serious.
‘Don’t put yourself down. You’re a really nice girl, Gracie. I’m sure one day some man will be thrilled to have you for a wife.’ She managed to smile and thank him for his kindness before rushing upstairs to bed. It was the most charming put-down she’d ever received.
Luc made a point of calling at the cottage the very next day to apologise to Lou for his unseemly behaviour. ‘I am sorry your husband choose that moment to arrive. This is bad luck for us, yes?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Lou protested. ‘It was just as well, considering the state you were in.’ She then proceeded to lecture him, very kindly but firmly, so that he stood before her, red faced and hunched shouldered, hands in pockets, like a naughty schoolboy.
He looked so pathetic and sorry for himself that Lou couldn’t be too cross with him. Besides, she was far too excited by the fact that Gordon had succeeded in transferring to a ship that docked in Liverpool and would be here for at least a week, though he only had a twenty-four hours pass. Determined to see as much of him as she could, Lou begged some time off as they’d arranged to spend the following weekend in Southport. The prospect of a further two precious nights together before his next tour of duty, filled Lou with joy. She was ecstatic.
When Friday came, she persuaded Irma to let her have the zinc bath tub all to herself for once, and drenched herself in Lily-of-the-Valley talcum powder with a liberal dab of the same scent behind each ear. Dressed in her best navy blue suit, the one with the zigzag buttoned jacket and a skirt that just skimmed her knees, which seemed entirely appropriate for meeting a sailor husband, she bribed Arthur Rigg to give her a lift to the station at Ulverston.
Once Lou had gone, Gracie settled down for a quiet evening in with Irma, one in which she would no doubt be destined to listen to another of her convoluted tales. Instead, as the clock struck seven, Irma reached for her coat. ‘I did mention that I was going over to Madge’s, didn’t I?’
‘I don’t remember you’re saying anything of the sort, but don’t worry, Irma. I’ll be quite happy here on my own.’
‘Course you will.’ She began to quickly button up her coat. ‘Not that you’ll be on your own, will you?’ Irma pinned on her hat, picked up her bag and gloves and made a dash for the door, as if she were suddenly in a tearing hurry. Just before she disappeared from view, she put her head back round the door and beamed cheerily at Gracie. ‘You won’t mind just popping that minced beef pie in the oven, will you, for our Adam’s supper? There’s plenty for you both, of course. He’ll be in about half past, as usual.’
Gracie looked surprised. She’d forgotten about Adam. Of course, he would still be here. He rarely went out, except perhaps later to the Eagle’s Head for his regular Friday pint. ‘All right, Irma. I’ll do that.’
‘Thanks, love. What a treasure you are. Just right for my boy.’ At which she vanished into the night and Gracie closed her eyes in despair.
Irma had done this deliberately. She’d left her here alone to see to Adam’s supper and to sit with him all evening, just the two of them. What on earth would they talk about? No doubt she hoped he’d feel obliged to take her with him to the pub. Gracie groaned at the embarrassment of it. Could she perhaps just pop the pie in the oven on a low light and then go off somewhere herself. But where? She didn’t know anyone well enough to barge in, unannounced. Drat Irma. Why didn’t the silly woman realise that she was actually doing more harm than good with this stupid subterfuge and matchmaking. Adam wouldn’t take kindly to being manoeuvred into spending time with her, any more than she herself had taken to her own parents organising her future career. It would be another disaster, just like the dratted dance.
The back door slammed and Gracie flew into the kitchen, anxious to at least do the right thing by him. He would be hungry after a long day working outdoors. Adam was standing at the sink. He’d stripped off his pullover and thick check shirt and was sluicing himself down with cold water. She watched as the soap suds slid over the rippling muscles. Lithe, young and fit, Gracie could imagine the smooth wet skin beneath her hands, were she to offer to scrub his back with the loofah. She did no such thing. She mentally shook the image away and began to babble.
‘Sorry. I - I just came in to make your supper. N-no, no, your mam made your supper. Course she did. I mean, I’m supposed to put it in the oven.’ Gracie snatched up the pie from the larder shelf and, as she reached to open the oven door in the tiny scullery and Adam moved to get out of her way, they did a sort of two-step from side to side before finally colliding. The pie leapt out of her hand and would have dropped onto the stone-flagged floor, had he not managed to catch it most adroitly.
‘That was a close shave. Good job I was always a good fielder.’ He grinned at her and Gracie flushed. In that moment Adam realised, for the first time, that she was indeed pretty. Very pretty indeed. ‘So,’ he said with a smile. ‘There’s just the two of us for supper tonight then?’ and having safely set the dish on the oven shelf, Gracie shut the door on the blast of heat, her cheeks more flushed than ever.
‘Afraid so. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’ The smile deepened as he too appreciated that this was yet another situation of his mother’s devising. ‘I can’t say that I mind in the least.’
To be fair to Irma, the minced beef pie was delicious, as were the stewed prunes and custard to follow, and the two of them got on much better than either might have expected. Not for a moment would Gracie have termed it romantic, but they chatted happily enough, became quite friendly as they
exchanged details of their respective and decidedly different childhoods; shared hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future, once the war was over. All told, it proved to be a surprisingly pleasant evening. So pleasant, in fact, that as they washed up the dishes together in the intimate closeness of that tiny scullery, Adam expressed surprise that he’d forgotten all about going to the pub for his usual pint.
‘O-oh dear. I didn’t mean to spoil your evening.’
He laughed. ‘That’s not what I meant. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat.’ Then he asked if she’d like to go to the picture house in Ambleside with him, one day. ‘It’s not too far, and we could go in the van. We could do a matinee one Saturday if you prefer, and have high tea somewhere afterwards. Tomorrow perhaps? What do you reckon?’
‘Well,’ said Gracie, suddenly at a loss for words. ‘Well!’
‘It makes a change to go out, don’t you think?’
‘Yes. Yes, it does indeed. That would be very nice. Thank you.’
The very next day, since Gracie had the afternoon off, they went to see Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve, and Gracie wept, thinking of poor Gordon and how on earth Lou would survive if his ship went down too, just as HMS Torrin had done during the evacuation of Crete.
‘It’s only a film,’ Adam said, offering her a hanky to dry her tears.
‘But it isn’t, is it? Not really. This sort of terrible thing happens all the time. It’s so easy to forget there’s a war on, when we’re in the forest and the sun is shining, and we’re happily felling or lopping the trees. But then something happens to remind me, like this film, like an air raid I was in once in Exeter, and I remember. It comes back to me, all in a rush, why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s all so awful,’ and the tears flowed more than ever, so that Adam felt bound to put his arm about her shoulders and comfort her.
‘There, there, it’s all right. Don’t take on so. We’ll win. See if we don’t,’ and she gave him such a lopsided, watery smile that he put his mouth to hers and kissed her. It was only meant to make her feel better, and it did. It was a soft, sweet kiss and although there were still no fireworks, as Lou had predicted, she managed to dry her tears, accept the ice cream he bought for her and relaxed sufficiently to enjoy the rest of the picture.
After the film, as they sat and enjoyed spaghetti on toast in a nearby cafe, Adam asked about the air raid and Gracie told him. She related the full horror of that night in Exeter for the first time, freely admitting how badly it had affected her, how she’d suffered nightmares for weeks afterwards, waking in a sweat as she saw again the dead baby, the children strewn across the playground. Even now she wept as the images replayed in her head but he didn’t interrupt. He let her talk and when she was done, she felt cleansed, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She hadn’t even realised how much it had been pressing her down, like a great black shadow. He was so kind and sympathetic, so easy to talk to, that Gracie wondered why she’d ever felt shy with him.
‘We must do this again some time,’ he said, as they drove back to Beech Tree Cottage.
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Gracie said, and right then, at that precise moment, she truly meant it.
The following Saturday Adam again offered to take Gracie to the pictures. She accepted, for all a part of her felt an odd sort of reluctance. Though why this should be, she didn’t wish to investigate too closely.
This time it was Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson in Random Harvest; a wonderful love story of a music hall star marrying an injured ex-serviceman. Love among the cherry blossom in a wonderful English spring, so that Gracie didn’t object when Adam put his arm about her shoulders. Could she fall in love with him? Did love feel like this? This nervous, heavy feeling, almost of foreboding, deep in her stomach.
On the drive back to Satterthwaite, Adam stopped the car by a gate and turned off the engine. Gracie sat absolutely still, saying nothing, wondering what he might do next. Would he kiss her? Did she want him to kiss her? She wished that she knew how to flirt with a man, as Lou seemed able to do with such confidence. Of course, Lou was older and had more experience. She was also safely married, so nobody took her teasing and flirting too seriously. Except for poor Luc, who’d soon learned the error of his ways.
‘Would you like me to kiss you?’
In all of Grace’s romantic dreams, and she’d experienced plenty of those in her young life, she’d never imagined being asked this question. She’d always believed that kisses should be stolen. Nor could she think of any proper response. If she said yes, that might sound too forward. If she said no, too discouraging. Her mind whirled. ‘Um, well, I don’t think I’d mind,’ she said. There, that left the decision to him, didn’t it?
He pulled her into his arms, placed his mouth firmly against hers and began to kiss her. Gracie held her breath, half wondering how she should respond, and half hoping the kiss would be over soon before her lungs quite exploded. She was almost grateful when it did end and he began to nuzzle her neck. She supposed this was all part of the rigmarole of courting as well. Gracie wasn’t sure whether she liked it. His chin felt rather rough and scratchy and she had to concentrate very hard so as not to giggle. If only she’d asked Lou for advice on what one ought to do. Should she stroke his hair perhaps, or put her arms about his neck? She could smell grass on him, the cigarette he’d just smoked, and animal feed. Not unpleasant exactly but not quite as she would expect Ronald Coleman, for instance, to smell.
Nor did she recall Ronald Coleman bothering to ask Greer Garson, come to think of it, before he’d kissed her. They’d just seemed to melt together. Gracie felt far from melting. She felt cold and awkward in the car. The gear lever was poking into her knee and something even colder was pressing against her breast. With a slight shock she realised it must be Adam’s hand. Somehow he’d slid open the buttons of her blouse, eased up her brassiere and was kneading her breast as if it were made of dough. She felt her cheeks start to redden. This wasn’t at all what she’d expected. So methodical and detached, clinical almost. Not in the least bit romantic. And Gracie felt frighteningly vulnerable, as if she were pinned against the leather seat by that hand, the skin so hard and rough she was quite sure she’d be bruised by it. He must have felt her stiffen because he suddenly jerked away from her, as if he’d been stung, and abruptly sat back in his seat.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause offence. I thought - I thought you wanted - would expect me to do that. Most girls do, don’t they?’ Gracie had no idea what most girls did, so she said nothing. Some part of her stunned brain noticed that he didn’t seem particularly excited. Not like Ronald Coleman at all.
Finally she gathered her wits and said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what I want. I’m not very experienced at - these sort of things, you see.’
‘Yes, I see. Of course, I do see that.’
They both straightened their clothing and sat staring out of the misted windscreen. Abject misery settled heavily around Gracie’s heart. What had she done wrong? Why couldn’t she relax? She’d ruined everything now, by being stupidly shy and girlish.
‘Perhaps we’d better get back,’ Adam said, reaching to start up the engine. It refused to fire on the starter and he had to get out and crank it. It had begun to rain and he was soaked through by the time they set off. Gracie sat hunched in her seat and wished herself invisible.
On this same Saturday, Lou and Gordon were enjoying a blissful weekend in Southport. The boarding house where they stayed could hardly be called classy but it was clean and the landlady not the interfering type, which was just as well since they spent most of the weekend in bed, where Gordon thrilled her with his kisses and his love making, as always.
‘You’ll have me up the spout, if we go on like this,’ she gasped and insisted they take a brief spell of fresh air. They walked along Lord Street in the sunshine, dreaming of one day buying the carpets and furniture they could see through the taped up windows of the expensive shops, when they had a little house of
their own. They kept well away from the wide expanse of sands where coils of barbed wire could clearly be seen, so that they could pretend there wasn’t a war on at all.
On Saturday night they went dancing in the Winter Gardens, which cost three shillings for the pair of them. They swayed in each other’s arms to the strains of We’ll Meet Again. Don’t know where, don’t know when,’ and Lou wept on Gordon’s shoulder, overcome by the prospect of yet another parting. Then he blew another five bob on fish and chips in one of the national restaurants. He talked very little; telling of having once been involved in ‘some tricky stuff around Crete,’ and the huge tonnage of shipping consumed during the Africa campaign the previous year. Then, quite bleakly, he said, ‘This spring saw the worst losses of the war so far. We need more bombers on escort duties. I’m lucky to be here,’ after which confession he fell silent for a long time.
Lou asked no questions, partly because he wasn’t allowed to say much, but also because any details frightened her. She preferred to simply post her letters to the same place and have the authorities send them on to him, and not think too clearly about where exactly he might be when he received them, or what he might actually be doing. She didn’t want to know about bombers, torpedoes and battles in the Atlantic, or the threat of U-boats. She just hoped that Gordon blasted them all out of existence and came home safe and sound.
Chapter Fifteen
Grizedale Hall was set deep in the forest. Once the home of Harold Brocklebank, a Liverpool ship owner until his death in 1936, it was an ideal location in which to accommodate high ranking U-boat and Luftwaffe Officers. Surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by sentries, there had been one or two escapees but even the most daring rarely got far. They faced walking over miles of rugged fells before reaching the north-west coast and generally ended up lost, wet and cold, happy to be recaptured. Since it housed generally high ranking German Officers, locals had dubbed it “Hush-Hush Hall” or “U-Boat Hotel”. They spoke of a darkly brooding, strangely sinister air about a place which still boasted fine oak panelling, billiard room, library, drawing room and all the other accoutrements of country life that a wealthy gentleman had once enjoyed, as well as glorious stained-glass windows bearing mottoes, one of which read: “The whole world without a native home is nothing but a prison of larger room.”
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