Chapter 6 #2
He shrugged. ‘I’ll miss the boys in my squadron, but to tell the truth I’ll be glad to get out of it for a while. Catch up on some sleep, enjoy knowing my life’s my own. If I’m lucky, maybe your boyfriend will have won the war by the time I’m due to fly again.’
‘I’m to go too,’ she said soberly.
‘Yeah? Where?’
‘I don’t know yet, but into one of the auxiliary services. My medical’s tomorrow, then I guess it’ll be a matter of weeks until I’m drafted. Unless I make a case for hardship.’
‘Are you a hardship case?’
‘Perhaps. If I go, there’s no one to keep house for my dad.’ She looked up at him. ‘I suppose you think that’s dreadfully wrong.’
He shrugged. ‘No. Why would I?’
‘Well, because it’s my duty. What right do I have to shirk it? Given your recent brush with death, I’d have thought you’d feel pretty strongly about it.’
‘I do, but not the way you think,’ he said quietly. ‘Wars and armies are no place for dames. Makes them hard. Makes them forget what it means to be women.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘You should see some of the girls at our camp. If they joined up to do their patriotic duty, you could’ve fooled me. All I see is them rouged up like sidewalk strollers, acting loose with a lot of different fellers. All they want is to get drunk and have a good time with guys they pick up.’
‘The way men do, you mean,’ Bobby said, but the irony in her tone was lost on Ernie.
‘Exactly. Wouldn’t like to see any girl of mine in uniform. Hell!’
This time it was Ernie who lost his footing on the ice. He flailed for the drystone wall as he went down, but it was no good. A second later he was flat on his back, and Bobby, her hand still under his arm, was pulled down on top of him. Her torch dropped beside her.
‘Oh gosh,’ she said, laughing breathlessly. ‘That was a tumble. Is your injured arm OK?’
‘Don’t worry. Luckily you missed the tender spots when you decided to dive on top of me.’
‘You pulled me down! Is anything else hurt?’
‘Just a bruised ego and a bruised – well, never mind what else is bruised,’ Ernie said, laughing. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, but – my foot. It’s caught up in a bramble or something,’ Bobby said as she wriggled to extricate it.
‘Take your time. I’m in no hurry.’ Ernie put his mobile arm behind his head, for all the world as if he were sunbathing. ‘I guess you think I did that on purpose.’
‘I’m sure you’re far too much of a gentleman,’ she answered automatically, still wrestling with the troublesome bramble that held her captive.
‘You think so, do you?’
Ernie’s voice sounded different suddenly.
Lower, huskier, the teasing merriment all gone.
He met Bobby’s eyes with a look she hadn’t seen there before: a look of pure fire, which brought the colour rushing to her cheeks.
She gave her foot a final hard tug, cursing as she felt her last decent stockings tear, then hastened to grab her torch and scramble back to her feet.
‘Going to need a hand here, Slacks,’ Ernie said, holding out his good arm.
Reluctantly she helped him up. Ernie tried once again to tuck her hand under his arm, but this time Bobby pulled it away, opting to support herself using the wall alongside the road.
Ernie raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything.
‘So. I guess your fiancé feels differently than I do about this broads-in-battledress business,’ he said, picking up the threads of their conversation.
‘Yes. I could tell he was disappointed with me when I told him I was thinking of making a case for hardship. He says we all have to be in this together if we expect to win.’
‘That’s Brits for you,’ Ernie said. ‘You guys always go big on that honour and duty stuff. If you ask me, the primary duty of a woman in wartime – if she’s a woman who loves a man out there fighting – is to try her hardest not to change a whit.
Her man wants to think about her keeping herself pretty and soft for him, and feathering a nice nest for him to come home to.
Not living it up with other men, swearing and drinking and forgetting how to be feminine.
Hearth and Home should always come before King and Country for the fairer sex. ’
She smiled at him. ‘Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of an old stuffed shirt, Ernie?’
‘Yeah, you,’ he said, smiling back. ‘Nothing wrong with being a little old-fashioned, is there?’
‘But women don’t exist only to be what their men want them to be. They might not be called on to fly fighters or sail ships or fire a gun, but they’ve got lives to lead all the same. We’re people, not an ideal.’
‘I think you girls should be looked after is all. You’re better than us – always have been. Some of us want to see you stay that way.’
‘Not me though.’
‘Oh, no, not you,’ he agreed solemnly. ‘You’re the absolute pits, Slacks.’
She laughed, feeling the awkwardness of that moment on the ice ebb away as he teased her. ‘So you think I should make a case for hardship?’
‘Sure I do, and fight for it. Your place is here, looking after your old man. Have a word with Topsy. There’s sure to be some pal of her father’s can get you out of it.
’ They had reached the old packhorse bridge that led from the village to Moorside Farm, with the squat silhouette of Cow House Cottage visible ahead.
‘The parting of the ways. I guess this is goodbye.’
‘Not forever though,’ she said as she returned his greatcoat to him.
He put it over his shoulders. ‘Depends what the RCAF decides to do with me once I’m fighting fit again.’
‘You’ll at least be back for the wedding?’
‘For Topsy’s, as long as they let me out for it. Not for yours, so you can spare yourself the invite.’ He put out his hand to her. ‘Put it there then, Bobby Bancroft. I won’t forget you.’
Bobby smiled as she shook it. ‘I swear I’ll never understand you if we stay friends a hundred years. Are all Canadian men like you?’
‘Oh, no. Not nearly so good-looking.’ He bent towards her, and before she could object he’d planted a kiss on her forehead. ‘You’re a swell kid, for all your odd ideas. Hope to see you again.’
He strode off into the darkness, leaving her staring after him. In his own way, he was as much of a puzzle to her as Charlie.
She would miss him when he left Silverdale.
Ernie King had brought something into her life, these last few months they’d been getting to know one another.
Something exciting and fun and carefree.
But as Bobby watched that tall, broad figure walk away and thought back to how he had looked at her, lying under her on the ice…
perhaps she had imagined it, but still, she felt strangely relieved that he was going to be out of her life for a while.