by Annie Groves
‘We’ve got a long way to go yet,’ Leonard had cautioned. ‘The only way we can win is via an invasion of the north coast of France. We know that, and so too, you maybe sure, does Hitler.’
‘We’ll win. I’m sure of it,’ Gina had forecast determinedly, and that had been their toast when the bells of London – no longer forbidden to ring – had rung out to welcome in the New Year.
At the Postal Censorship Office, the large room in which everyone worked smelled of damp clothes and stale air, but at least it was relatively warm stale air, Katie acknowledged as she made her way to her desk. However, before she could sit down the girl in charge of her desk tapped her on the shoulder and told her quietly, ‘Miss Pearson wants to see you in her office.’
Since Miss Pearson, who was in charge of them all, rarely summoned anyone to her office, Katie tried to think of anything she might have done wrong, as she hurried into the corridor.
To her astonishment, Miss Pearson herself was waiting just inside the open mahogany door, with its scrolled and etched glass upper half, through which one could only see the shadowy outlines of anyone inside.
‘Katie. Good. Come in and sit down.’ Ushering her inside, Miss Pearson closed the door behind them, reducing the busy hum from the main office to a faintness that only intensified Katie’s tension.
‘We haven’t got much time because Gina will be here in a second. You know one another very well, I understand.’
‘We’re good friends, yes,’ Katie agreed, bewildered by Miss Pearson’s questions.
‘You attended her wedding – you knew her husband?’
In her confusion Katie almost missed it – that significant and horribly meaningful use of the past tense, but when she realised what was actually being said, her heart started to thump heavily with dread.
‘I…yes. I was there when Gina and Leonard first met.’
‘She is going to need the support of a good friend, I’m afraid, which is why I’ve asked for you to be here. Ah…’ Miss Pearson looked up from her desk and over Katie’s head towards the door. ‘Here she comes now.’
Gina looked as bewildered as Katie had felt when she had first been ushered in to Miss Pearson’s office, giving Katie herself a look of enquiry before taking the chair next to her.
‘I’m really sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, my dear. There really is no easy way to tell you this,’ Miss Pearson announced without any preamble. ‘This office received a telephone call half an hour ago from your father-in-law.’
Katie reached for Gina’s hand and held it tightly.
‘One of the children?’ Gina asked, anxiously half rising from her chair. ‘Something’s happened…?’
‘No, it’s not the children. The authorities have been in touch with your father-in-law to advise him that his son, your husband, is missing in action, presumed—’
‘No!’ Pulling her hand free of Katie’s, Gina stood up, her denial as sharp as a burst of gunfire.
‘I really am sorry. Your father-in-law has asked that you be granted compassionate leave in order that you can return home, and that of course has been granted.’
‘No. I won’t believe it.’ Gina overrode her superior. ‘Leonard can’t be dead. He can’t be. He mustn’t be.’
‘I’m so sorry, my dear.’
Miss Pearson stood up and looked at Katie. ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to assist Gina with making her preparations to return to her husband’s family home. I understand that her father-in-law is concerned for the health of his wife, and that as yet the news has not been broken to the children.’
Katie nodded.
They were alone in Miss Pearson’s office. Gina was sitting staring blankly at the wall, the silence of the room thick with emotion.
‘It isn’t true. I won’t let it be true,’ she told Katie.
Katie reached for her hand. It felt cold, Gina’s wedding ring gleaming dully in the thin office light.
‘It can’t be true, Katie.’ Gina’s voice had started to rise, tears filling her eyes and spilling from them as she begged, ‘Please, God, don’t let it be true. Not Leonard.’
More silence and then Gina said fiercely, ‘It isn’t true. There’s been a mistake. There’s got to have been a mistake. Leonard can’t be dead. Not my Leonard. It’s too soon for me to lose him, Katie. God couldn’t be so cruel.’
‘Lou?’
June’s hesitant voice had Lou turning round to look at her former friend, as she headed towards the house. She’d had an unexpected day off after her collections had been cancelled, due to a holdup at the factory, so she’d walked into Thame, along the pretty Buckinghamshire lanes. It had been market day – not that there was much on the market stalls, thanks to rationing. After a cup of tea in a small teashop she had walked back. It was the kind of thing she would normally have done with June, had they still been friends. She and June had barely seen one another since she had tried to tell June the truth and June had walked off, because of the heavy workload the ferry pool had had to deal with, something for which Lou had been grateful. It was horrible knowing that the reason for the silence whenever she walked into a room where other pilots were gathered was because they had been talking about her.
Like June, this afternoon she was wearing her uniform skirt and jacket, and, of course, her red lipstick – applying it automatically now.
Uncertainly she waited for June to catch up with her, astonishment widening her eyes when June said uncomfortably, ‘I’ve been thinking about…about what you told me, Lou, and…well, perhaps I was a bit hard on you, flaring up at you the way I did.’ She smoothed down the skirt of her uniform, looking embarrassed.
‘That’s all right,’ Lou answered. ‘I shouldn’t have lied to you about what happened.’
They exchanged uncertain looks, neither of them paying any attention to the comings and goings around them.
‘Kieran’s coming to see me.’
Now it was June’s eyes that widened as she moved out of the way of two other girls who were obviously heading for the girls’ wing of the house.
‘So the two of you are an item—’ she began, but Lou shook her head, squinting into the sunlight.
‘No. What I told you about him and me was the truth.’
‘Then why does he want to see you?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but I suppose he’s heard the gossip.’
‘He’s bound to have done. When are you seeing him?’
‘Tomorrow. I’ve booked a day’s leave. I’m owed some for working over Christmas. I just wish I had never touched that drink,’ Lou sighed heavily.
‘That wasn’t your fault. How were you to know? It’s that Patti who’s the one to blame, for ruining your—’ June broke off and looked flustered.
‘It’s all right, you can say it,’ Lou told her. ‘After all, it’s the truth. My reputation is ruined.’
‘There’s a lot of talk still about the whole thing,’ June acknowledged reluctantly. ‘I think that some of the Americans are deliberately stirring the pot and keeping it going. Has anyone higher up said anything to you about it?’
‘No, but some of the senior girls have been pretty cool with me.’
‘Oh, Lou, I’m so sorry, but people are bound to forget about it in time,’ June tried to console her taking a step closer to her and putting her hand on her arm.
Lou looked down at the grass. It wouldn’t do at all to start blubbing, even if June’s kindness was such a relief that she did feel like crying.
‘In time,’ she agreed, ‘but in how much time – before the end of the year? Before the end of the war?’ She tried to smile. The last thing she wanted was for June to think her self-pitying.
‘You’d think we all had more important things to talk about,’ she went on, ‘with all the losses sustained by Bomber Command. I heard someone saying in the mess this morning that she’d heard that when the men were told in their briefing that Berlin was to be their target again, the other night, there were gasps
of horror. Twenty-eight Lancasters were lost in the first raid, and twenty-seven in the second, that’s seven per cent of all the planes dispatched lost.’
June shuddered. ‘I’d hate to be involved with a chap flying with Bomber Command.’
‘Me too,’ Lou agreed fervently.
‘Are you going back to your room?’ June asked.
‘I was.’
‘We may as well walk back together then,’ June told her, linking arms with her.
Christmas hadn’t been anything like as bad as she had expected, Jean admitted, as she rubbed a shine into the enamel of her cooker with a duster made from one of the twins’ old liberty bodices with the buttons taken off.
Of course it had been a shock when Francine had announced that she’d seen the son they’d all thought was dead. Sam reckoned that it would have been better for all concerned if Francine hadn’t seen him. By all accounts the lad was happy where he was, and very much loved by the woman who had taken him in. Jean felt for her younger sister, but there was no denying that it was demanding a lot of a young lad to expect him to take on board the fact that the woman he had thought was his auntie was really his mum. He was settled now and happy, even Francine had admitted that. But she was determined to win him round and to claim him.
She’d have to have a word with Bella, Jean decided, and put her in the picture, although it was probably best not to say anything to Vi, not after the upset she’d already caused over the way she’d treated the poor little lad, making him so unhappy that he’d never said a word to the woman who’d taken him in about his family.
‘So what is it you wanted to see me about?’ Lou asked Kieran.
They were sitting at a table in the corner of the centuries-old Buckinghamshire pub with its cavernous fireplace and its beams, the walls yellow with smoke, both from the fire and cigarettes.
Both of them were in uniform, and Lou so nervous that she was smoking.
‘You were seen leaving my hotel room.’
‘Yes, I know. One of Patti’s friends told me on New Year’s Eve, so you needn’t have driven all the way over here just to tell me that.’
‘I haven’t done.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘We’ve both got our good reputations to think about. It won’t do either of us any good to have everyone gossiping about the fact that we spent the night together. Questions are bound to be asked. Has anyone said anything to you officially about it?’
‘Not officially, although there’s been plenty of gossip,’ Lou admitted, telling him when she saw his frown, ‘I’m the one who’s going to get the worst of it, not you. After all, you’re a man, and spending the night with someone doesn’t count against men like it does women.’
Kieran shook his head in emphatic rebuttal. ‘I want to make a career for myself in flying after the war, and I’m not going to be able to do that if I’ve got the kind of reputation you’re talking about hanging round my neck. There’ll be money to be made and jobs to be found flying freight, after the war, and it will be pilots with good reputations, who are reliable and trustworthy, who’ll be taken on.’
Lou was grudgingly impressed that Kieran had obviously given so much thought to his future. All those who flew knew that wartime flying had brought a new dimension to transport, but Lou hadn’t heard anyone else talking about transferring that knowledge to a peacetime job.
‘The war isn’t over yet,’ she reminded Kieran, ‘and by the time it is everyone will have forgotten about us.’
‘Not the kind of people I’m talking about,’ Kieran contradicted her. ‘I’ve got a suggestion to make – something that will benefit us both.’
‘If you’re talking about us telling the truth, then I wouldn’t bother. I’ve already tried that with my best friend and—’
‘No, it isn’t that,’ Kieran cut her short. ‘What I think we should do is let it be known that we’re an item and that we’re planning to get engaged.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous,’ Lou protested, almost knocking her glass over in her agitation. ‘Anyway, no one would ever believe that we would want to get engaged to one another.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well…we don’t act like…like a couple.’
‘We spent the night together,’ Kieran reminded her.
‘No. It wouldn’t work. Everyone would know that we were pretending.’
‘Would they? Are you sure?’ As he spoke Kieran reached across the table and took hold of her hand, lacing his fingers between hers with a lazy intimacy that made Lou’s heart skid into her ribs. The pub door opened, and two RAF men walked in, bringing with them a surge of cold air.
Lou could see them looking towards her and Kieran, and then one of them nudged the other.
‘We’re being watched,’ she warned Kieran, who was sitting with his back to the bar.
‘I know,’ he responded. ‘I saw them walk past the window.’ He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, his gaze fixed on hers, his voice low but perfectly audible as he told her, ‘So it’s agreed then: as soon as this ruddy war is over, you and I are going to be married.’
‘Stop it,’ Lou demanded, but it was too late, the men standing by the bar had heard him and were exchanging grins.
‘There’s a dance on at our base this Friday. I’ve got tickets. We’ll go there together, as a couple and make it plain that we are a couple.’ Now Kieran’s voice was lower, so low that Lou had to lean closer to him to hear what he was saying.
‘No,’ Lou protested, in a frantic hiss.
‘We haven’t got any choice, unless you want your reputation to be completely ruined.’
‘Of course I don’t. But we can’t pretend to be planning to get engaged for ever.’
‘We won’t have to. Engagements are broken every day. It’s part and parcel of being at war.’
What Kieran was saying made sense, Lou had to admit. A soon-to-be-engaged young woman could be forgiven for letting her feelings get the better of her, even if, strictly speaking, what she had done wasn’t ‘allowed’.
‘People will ask why we didn’t say we were an item straight off,’ Lou pointed out.
‘Then we’ll tell them that we wanted to wait until I’d had the chance to speak to your dad,’ was Kieran’s prompt response.
Kieran watched the expressions chasing one another across Lou’s face. He hadn’t been best pleased when he’d heard the gossip about the two of them. Like Lou, he suspected that Patti had had a hand in keeping it stirring and of adding in a few ingredients that were pure fiction, but he had meant what he had said to Lou about his plans. The RAF had opened his eyes to the possibilities of the future and had given him ambitions that meant he would need a clean record, and a reputation for being morally responsible. And that was why he was doing this. No other reason. Certainly not because he felt he had any obligation to protect Lou Campion’s reputation, and to keep her safe from the predators who would now be on the prowl, given the gossip about her.
‘So it’s all sorted then,’ Kieran announced. ‘You’re officially my girl and the two of us are planning to get engaged, and from now on, the only man you’ll be dancing with is me.’
It would quell the gossip if people thought that she and Kieran were serious about one another, Lou knew.
‘All right then,’ she agreed, and then gasped in shock when Kieran leaned across the table and kissed her briefly full on the mouth.
Emily had always tried to be honest with Tommy and to talk openly with him, but she had no idea what to say to him about what had happened.
He had gone all quiet and had withdrawn into himself, and Emily was relieved when the school holidays were over. She hoped that being with his school friends would cheer him up and take his mind off what had happened. Not that she could take her own mind off it.
She couldn’t sleep for her misery and anxiety at the thought of losing him. But she had given her word and she meant to keep it – for Tommy’s sake.
It h
ad given her a real turn to learn that Con was Tommy’s father. He had never shown the slightest interest in Tommy, and had in fact demanded that she hand him over to the council, saying that she had to choose between him and Tommy. Well, she had, and she had chosen Tommy.
Everything had seemed so easy before she had known who Tommy really was. She had managed to convince herself that he was all alone in the world and that he was hers. She had told herself that one day he would talk to her about his family and tell her what had happened to them. She’d envisaged comforting him because he’d lost them, and listening whilst he told her about them, imagining that he’d had parents who were married to one another, a decent loving couple who’d been taken by the war, not a sixteen-year-old girl and her own husband. How was she to explain that to him? Con had been unkind to him and he certainly hadn’t been a father a boy could be proud of. In Emily’s opinion Tommy was better off with the fictional parents she had mentally created for him and not knowing who his real mother and father had been, but the decision to keep that information from him might not be hers to make.
Wilhelm had looked grave and concerned when she’d told him all about Tommy’s past.
‘These parents who were not really his parents, they will not want him back,’ he had tried to reassure her, but as Emily had told him, it wasn’t them who were trying to claim him, but his real mother.
She pinned a bright smile to her face as the back door opened and Tommy came in.
‘I’ve just put the kettle on,’ she told him. ‘You get your coat and scarf off and we’ll have a bit of toast.’
When Tommy didn’t make any response, Emily put down the loaf of bread she had just been about to cut and looked at him. He looked thinner and unhappy.
‘Why did she have to come here?’ he burst out, fighting back tears. ‘Why did she have to come here and spoil everything? I won’t go back to them. I’ll…I’ll run away if anyone tries to make me.’ His hands were balled into tight fists, coins of flushed colour staining his cheeks.
