Chapter Ten #2
‘I had no idea,’ said Iris, her reeling mind now struggling to absorb that, too.
The Somers had always seemed so affluent to her, with their house parties, and motors, and weekends away.
‘They told us they were building a house in New Zealand,’ she said. ‘That they were leaving to get away from this war.’
‘Well, that certainly worked out for them,’ said Robbie, lighting the match and flicking it into the grate, his face glowing in the sudden crackle of flames.
‘I suspect though that they were most interested in saving face, and getting away from their debts. Their neighbours seemed to think they were carrying a lot of them.’
‘So they lied to us,’ said Iris. ‘They lied to me.’ She took a breath, digesting just how much their pride, their arrogant pride, had cost them both.
‘If they’d just been honest, said they couldn’t afford to pay the post office …
My God.’ She placed her hands to her face, digging her fingers into her cheeks, thinking of everything she might have done differently, if she’d only known. ‘I want to scream.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Want to scream? No.’
‘Why aren’t you angrier?’
‘I am angry. I’m furious.’
‘But you’re smiling.’
He was.
He was smiling at her.
And now she was doing it too, just because that was the kind of smile he’d always had.
She pelted him with the heel of her hand, very much as though they were still eight years old.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she demanded.
‘Because I finally know what happened,’ he said, his exhausted eyes alight with amusement at her regression back into childhood. ‘It can’t torture me any more. I’m free of it. And you’re here.’
‘I am,’ she agreed.
‘With me.’
‘Yes,’ she said, agreeing with that, too.
‘So, I don’t care about the Somers,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about my father.’ His gaze, tinted amber by the reflection of the fire once again became serious. ‘I care about you.’
I care about you.
She felt the wonder of those words, all through her.
She didn’t reply.
Not straight away.
The leaves hissed in the grate, the sticks smoked, and time once again stretched.
Then, ‘I care about you, too,’ she said. ‘There’s no one I care more about.’
And it was his turn to be silent.
He leant forward, towards her.
She didn’t move.
She thought he might be going to kiss her.
But he didn’t kiss her.
Not yet.
He asked her a favour.
‘Let’s not look back,’ he said. ‘I don’t want us to waste time on things that can’t be changed.’ His shining eyes entreated her. ‘I don’t want us to waste any time at all.’
‘No,’ she said, no longer smiling, but remembering what a precious commodity time had become. She’d forgotten there. Briefly. ‘I don’t want to waste it either.’
They wasted none that afternoon.
They made the most of every speeding second, talking, constantly, as the day’s meagre light outside faded, pulling them inevitably towards the looming night.
He was going to Italy, he said; he shouldn’t have been told that until his pre-operation briefing later, but all the pilots in 96 had clubbed together to bribe the station’s confidential clerk into keeping them informed on their upcoming movements.
‘And where were you last night?’ Iris asked.
‘Cologne.’ He stood, shrugging off his great coat.
‘I knew you were on your way before I went up. Fred, our group captain, told me after briefing that we were getting new radio operators.’ He grinned.
‘Never have I been more determined to come back.’ He crouched, making his coat into a cushion, and she shifted on to it, leaving room for him beside her.
‘I headed straight to the house after interrogation this morning,’ he went on, sitting back down.
His arm brushed against hers, and he didn’t move it away.
‘But you were locked in with Ambrose … ’
‘Ambrose?’ said Iris. That was what the adjutant was called?
He’d only told her and Clare his surname, which was Brown.
Flight Lieutenant Brown. He was a rank down from Robbie, which was actually quite gratifying.
Almost as much so as his incongruous first name.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone less ambrosial. ’
‘I gather from Beth Twinton that Ambrose thinks much the same of you and your friend.’
‘Clare. You’ll like her.’
‘I’m sure I will.’
‘I wish you’d come in and rescued us.’
‘I thought about it. But Beth said it would only get Ambrose’s back up more. And I didn’t want to see you for the first time with him there.’
‘No,’ Iris agreed, realising, now he’d said it, that she wouldn’t have wanted that either.
It struck her how glad she was that they hadn’t had any audience at all.
‘Beth told me you should be done with Ambrose by eleven,’ Robbie went on, ‘so I went back then, but you were still in there.’
‘He didn’t let us out until twelve.’
‘I went back again just after, but you were already gone.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘It was extremely frustrating.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I went looking for you … ’
‘I was desperate for the loo.’
‘Well, I didn’t go looking for you there. But I tried everywhere else.’
‘I looked for you everywhere too,’ she said. ‘I met Jacob … ’
‘That must have cheered you up.’
‘He introduced me to Piper.’
‘I think he might be making her depressed.’
‘Then I gave up and came here.’
‘Snap,’ he said. ‘I come here most days, actually. It’s felt very quiet, until now.’
‘How long have you been back?’ she asked, at once saddened by the idea of his lone visits, and moved, beyond words, that he’d kept coming.
‘Five weeks,’ he said. ‘We were one of the first crews to arrive.’
‘Have you been into Heaton?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your house? Father Bannister told me it’s been turned into a pub.’
‘The Heaton Arms,’ he said. ‘And yes, I’ve been. I couldn’t avoid it. Everyone goes.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Better with beer.’
‘I’m dreading going back,’ she confessed. ‘It’s been so long.’ She looked into the fire, thinking of her old cottage.
‘It hasn’t changed,’ he said, reading her mind.
He’d always been good at that.
‘Does anyone live there?’ she asked.
‘A family,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen the children playing.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said, liking that it hadn’t been left empty. ‘Did Lord Heaton sell it?’
‘He must have. I don’t think he held on to anything. He’s back in uniform, apparently, running a barracks in Preston.’
‘Poor Preston.’
He smiled. ‘What was it your gran used to call him?’
‘A silly show colonel,’ Iris said, smiling too. Then, she bit her lip. ‘What about my gran and mum’s graves?’ The question, which she’d taunted herself with ever since they’d died, was hard to ask. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve … ’
‘I’ve been, Iris,’ he said, softly. ‘I looked after them when you went. Don’t worry. I’ve looked after them since I got back.’
‘You’ve looked after them?’ she said, and the words tremored.
‘Of course I have.’
‘So … ’ She swallowed. ‘They’re not all overgrown?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
And she flung her arms around him again, in so much relief, and gratitude, and love.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘You don’t need to thank me,’ he said, holding her fast. ‘You never need to do that.’
When the fire dwindled, they went outside to fetch more kindling, and filled each other in on their wars, learning that they’d both been with the RAF from the off.
Robbie, who never had gone to Cambridge, had been with them since before the war even started.
He’d only intended to defer his degree for a year after his mother’s fall, but early in 1938, Tim had returned from his travels around Europe, and – appalled by what he’d seen of the Nazi’s growing power – had talked Robbie into applying for pilot training with him.
‘He didn’t actually last that long,’ Robbie said. ‘The night flying got him.’
‘Poor Tim,’ said Iris, who’d heard the same story from plenty of others.
It was meant to be terrifying at first, flying purely by instruments.
She could well imagine it. The idea of whizzing through a void of blackness, trusting entirely what a rickety dashboard was telling you, and not looking out, or down, because the dark was too huge, too empty, was, to her, the stuff of nightmares. ‘Did he panic?’
‘He nearly killed himself,’ said Robbie. ‘He refused to go up again, and transferred to navigation instead.’
‘But you carried on, obviously.’
‘I couldn’t have stopped. It gets addictive, very fast.’
‘Yes,’ said Iris, who’d heard all about that, too.
She’d yet to encounter a pilot who didn’t love to fly. However much they feared what they flew into.
‘Tim can’t wait to see you, by the way,’ Robbie said.
‘I can’t wait to see him either.’ She pictured him, with his socks around his ankles, and that picture of his father, held tight in his fist. ‘Does he still have all his tufty hair?’
Robbie gave her a bemused look. ‘Tufty hair?’
‘Yes, those blond locks. His mother never liked cutting it.’
‘Didn’t she?’
‘No. You must remember … ’
‘I don’t remember thinking about his hair at all. Unlike you, apparently.’ He kept his expression level, but there was amusement in his voice.
He was teasing her, she knew.
As her friend?
Or something more?
She knew what she wanted him to be.
She was almost certain of him wanting it too.
She’d been almost certain of it from the first moment she’d seen him again, and had grown ever more so with each moment that had passed since.
But she still wasn’t quite certain enough to do anything about it.
And perhaps it was the same for him, because, in unison, they looked away from each other, and got on with collecting more sticks.
‘Have you always flown bombers?’ she asked, to distract herself, but also because she wanted to know.
‘No, I was in a spit at first.’
That made her look up. ‘You flew that summer?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and didn’t elaborate.