Chapter 5 #2
‘I don’t mean in general,’ she said. ‘I mean when it comes to love and… and the things that go along with love, or with desire anyhow. The world lets your sex do as they like about it. If they want to walk away from the consequences of their actions, they can. While a woman has one moment of weakness and every choice she’s presented with seems terrible. ’
‘You’re right, it is easy for us to walk away. Which means that if this Scott fellow has stepped up for Lilian, he can’t be all bad. Maybe you’re wrong about him just like you were wrong about me.’
‘Even if that’s true, she doesn’t love him.’ Bobby paused. ‘And yet it’s still the best outcome. She did so want the baby. I wish I could stay at home, and do what I can to help when the little one comes. Between worrying about her and worrying about my dad, my brain’s aching.’
‘You said there was a hardship loophole.’
‘There is, but…’ She nestled her face into the collar of his RAF tunic and dampened it with tears. ‘Even if I did apply, do I have that right?’ she whispered. ‘Others have to go. You have to go. That’s why I needed to see you tonight.’
Charlie turned away to look out over the faint silhouettes of the headstones.
‘I see,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘You needed me to tell you it was all right. That it was allowed.’
‘I suppose… yes. At least, I wanted your advice. I feel like I’ve never been needed more at home, but if I try to get out of it, I’ll be haunted by the thought that I cried off while others did their duty.’
Charlie was silent for what seemed like the longest time. He no longer kissed her neck, and his arms circled her waist loosely, as if he’d forgotten they were there. Bobby tried to shuffle off his knee.
Charlie roused himself, and his arms tightened around her waist.
‘Don’t go,’ he said softly. ‘You’re keeping me nice and warm.’
Bobby felt her cheeks heat, despite the chill in the air. ‘I thought perhaps you didn’t want me here any more.’
‘Why would I ever not want you here?’
She smiled, relieved, and pressed his hand. ‘You went so quiet I thought you must be angry. You want me to go, don’t you? Join the forces, I mean.’
‘I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay right where you are, with Reggie and Mary, and stay exactly as you are.
I want everything at Moorside to stay just as it was when I left, not even a picture moved in the parlour, so when I’m in the thick of it I can remember there’s a home worth going back to.
I want you to stay out of it, so at least one of us hasn’t been tainted by this filthy war.
’ He paused. ‘I mean, if I was being completely selfish then that’s what I’d want. But…’
‘But you think it’s my duty to go.’
He sighed. ‘Honestly, Bobby, I don’t know what to tell you. There are so many people risking their lives to win this thing, it feels like if we aren’t all in it together then it’s as good as giving Hitler and the rest of those evil buggers a free pass.’
‘Mary says women aren’t soldiers,’ Bobby said vaguely. ‘That our first duty is to our homes, and the people who need us to care for them.’
‘Says that same redoubtable Valkyrie who once marched me up a mountain to rescue injured men from a burning plane. I’ve never seen anyone who looked more like a general at the head of their troops than you did that night, Bobby.’
‘Be serious, please.’
‘I am being serious,’ Charlie said quietly, and it was true that there was no mirth in his tone.
‘When there are men fighting with not much to keep them going other than the thought of making the world safe for the girls they love, it seems hard that those same girls won’t answer the call when it comes. No one’s asking them to fly to Berlin.’
Bobby’s face burned with shame, although he was only articulating what she had been thinking herself. Again she moved to get up from his lap, and again he held her tight.
‘Please stay,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to say things that will hurt you, but I have to tell you what’s in my heart.’
He was trembling – not, she felt sure, from the cold.
‘Charlie, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m afraid, Bob,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve never been more afraid in my life. Every day I think about those men we found on the mountain.’
‘I know, love. They’re on my mind a lot too.’
‘I find myself shaking from thinking about it. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe, and my heart beats like it might burst out of my chest. What do you think that makes me?’
‘I don’t know. A human being, I suppose.’
‘You don’t think I’m a coward?’
‘For being afraid, and doing your duty in spite of it? Don’t be daft.
I’m ever so proud of you.’ She sought one of the hands at her waist and linked her fingers with his.
‘I want to do what’s right too, Charlie.
I’m not afraid of sacrifice, where it purely concerns me.
If it was only leaving my home, or my job… ’
‘I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty,’ he said, and she felt the welcome pressure of his lips against her neck once more. ‘I do understand about your dad. Surely now he’s got his job things are better though? You said he’d all but stopped drinking.’
‘Apart from the odd pint in the Hart, and a glass of spirits when he wakes in the night.’ She lifted the hand she was holding and peeled back his glove to press the skin to her lips. ‘But I never know when something might send him spiralling. I told you what happened when he lived alone.’
‘You did.’
‘What would you do? If you were me?’
Charlie thought about this.
‘I don’t know about being you, but if I were me… I’d have to go,’ he murmured. ‘If you realised how sticky things were out there, Bobby, the things we hear are happening in Europe…’
She frowned. ‘What sort of things?’
‘Nothing I’d ever want you to know about,’ Charlie muttered darkly.
‘Still, things are going to come to light before long that will open a lot of eyes. Perhaps I didn’t always think as I do now about it all, but I’m a long way from playing soldiers.
Now I know what I know, there’s very little I wouldn’t sacrifice to win this thing. ’
Bobby twisted round to look into his eyes. She was filled with such admiration for him, this man who loved her. But it frightened her, too, to hear him sound so unlike his old self.
‘You talk so differently these days,’ she whispered. ‘Sometimes you’re the same old you, and other times you’re so unlike yourself that I barely know you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, a faraway tone creeping into his voice.
‘I can’t help it. One side of me just wants to soothe and hold you, and tell you everything you want to hear.
But there’s another part of me that made a promise to fight this thing till the end, and that part of me has to tell the truth.
I respect you too much to lie to you, Bobby. ’
For a long time they didn’t speak, listening to the plaintive mew of a cat as it begged to be let in from the cold.
‘Poor creature,’ Bobby murmured.
‘Me or the cat?’ Charlie said, and she could tell from his tone that he was smiling once more. She found these fleeting but increasingly frequent dark moods so hard to understand. They seemed to pass as quickly as shadows on the face of the moon.
She leant back to rest her head against his shoulder, and Charlie stole the opportunity to plant a kiss on her lips.
‘Ernie’s missing,’ Bobby told him quietly.
Charlie frowned. ‘Canadian Ernie, from your pantomime?’
‘Yes. He didn’t arrive back at his billet after an op. His friends are waiting for news, but it’s hard not to fear the worst.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. I hope it’s nothing.’ He reached up to stroke her hair. ‘Do you still have my picture?’
She smiled. ‘Of course. By my bed, so that whenever I go to sleep it’s the last thing I see.’
‘And then you’ll dream of me.’
‘That’s the idea. Although last night I dreamt Mary’s hen Hetty had grown to the size of a house and was pecking at the chimney pots, so it doesn’t always work.’
Charlie laughed, and Bobby experienced a thrill as she felt that deep chuckle vibrate through her.
Her fiancé was so often solemn now, it gladdened her to hear him laugh as of old.
The carefree boy she had first fallen in love with was gone for good, she supposed, but it lifted her spirits to be reminded that the man he had become could still be merry.
‘And you’ll be ready?’ he whispered, burying his face in her neck.
‘As soon as I’ve got the Binbrook CO’s permission to marry and I can beg twenty-four hours’ leave, I expect you to be waiting for me in a white dress, pink lipstick and satin undies.
I don’t care if I have to kidnap a vicar on my way home to do it. ’
‘I’ll be ready.’ She turned to look at him. ‘You are sure, Charlie, that it’s still what you want? Because if you’d rather wait…’
He took her hand and rubbed her glove where the hump of the sapphire engagement ring he’d given her stood out. ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything. So don’t think you can wriggle out of it that easily, Roberta Bancroft.’ He met her eyes. ‘You haven’t changed your mind, have you?’
‘Of course I haven’t. I want you to be certain, that’s all.’
‘I am certain. There’s nothing I want more than to be able to say that you’re mine at last.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘And on a more practical note, I want to know you’ll be provided for if the worst does happen. Get your widow’s pension.’
Bobby shivered. ‘Oh, please don’t say that. It’s tempting fate.’
‘We have to think about it, Bob,’ Charlie said gently. ‘I wish we didn’t, but men are dying up there every day. I can’t presume I’ll be one of the lucky ones.’
‘I don’t want to rush into marriage for that. Not for something so grim.’
‘It isn’t only for that. We love one another, don’t we? What’s to wait for?’
‘It’s just such an odd thing to be married when there’s a war going on,’ she said with a sigh.
‘You can’t set up home, have a honeymoon or do any of the things married people did before all this.
I know wartime brides who say that when their husbands come home on leave, they’ve seen so little of them they feel like strangers.
And…’ She flushed. ‘Well, war changes people so. Suppose your squadron was to be posted overseas, and it was years before we saw one another again? I would understand, if you said you’d rather wait until it was all over. ’
‘What I want is to come home on leave and do this, legally, without any of those blighted sensible voices in my head telling me I have to stop. And I fully intend to do so before the summer comes around again.’
He grabbed her collar and pulled her on to his lips.
The kiss was so sudden and so intense that it took Bobby’s breath away.
Charlie had never kissed her that way before.
He was passionate, yes, but there was always control.
Always a holding back. This kiss wasn’t holding back.
It was the sort of kiss that was equal parts tender and fierce, bruising the lips and setting every nerve on fire – a kiss filled with vitality and need.
Bobby was glad they were in public and not alone together somewhere.
Or was she?
When Charlie drew back, panting heavily, Bobby was speechless. All she could do was let out a gasp. Charlie gave a breathless laugh.
‘What’s up, Bob?’ he asked, grinning. ‘Kiss got your tongue?’
‘Huh.’
‘That’s all you’ve got to say about it?’
‘That was… some kiss,’ she managed to pant as her breath returned. ‘But you’ve no need to look quite so pleased with yourself.’
‘I’ve every right to be pleased with myself, and a more gracious kissee than you would be entirely on my side.’
‘Who taught you to kiss like that? I’m sure it couldn’t have been me.’
He shrugged. ‘I saw it in a film.’
‘Liar. They’d never get a kiss like that past the censors.’
‘Well, let’s say you were the inspiration if not the tutor,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m saving the rest of it for the day I carry you over the threshold as Mrs Atherton. And it had better be soon, Bobby, because I’m just about done waiting.’