A Girl in Wartime (22 page)

It might seem as if she had put her other son from her mind, maybe too painful to think of, but Connie knew it was there, in her eyes, hovering like a spectre somewhere in her brain, waiting to escape and sweep over her. Then she would need all the cuddles and comforting one could give. But for now she was determined not to break down in front of her family, especially in front of Albert.

He had sunk down on a chair as if his legs had suddenly given way; Dad had also sought his own favourite chair by the low-burning fire.

Mum said suddenly and briskly, ‘Does anyone want to finish their dinner?' to which everyone shook their head.

It was then a thought caught her and she looked towards her son. ‘Oh, Bertie, I was fergetting. Look, love, I'll dish up a nice dinner, just for you. You must be ever so hungry after travelling all this time.'

He pulled a wry face and shook his head. ‘I am a bit, but I couldn't eat just at the moment,' he answered. ‘Maybe later.'

‘Right then, love.' She looked at Connie. ‘Help me clear the table, love, there's a dear. We'll all have a nice cuppa tea, and we might 'ave our afters later on – fer our tea, maybe. It's jelly and custard. But I'll sort you out a nice hot dinner, Bertie, which you can 'ave the moment you fancy it.'

He smiled, nodding his gratitude.

It had been just over a week since Albert had gone back to the front, and the house had an empty feel to it. It had been marvellous having him here, except for the news he'd brought about Ronnie. His presence had made the whole house come alive. Even when he'd popped out to see Edie, the place seemed to retain a sort of lingering warmth that had nothing to do with the fire burning in the grate.

He'd bring her back, the two sitting holding hands or he with his arm about her. The intimate way they talked together had made everything feel so comfortable. But having to watch them, Connie felt tormented, wishing it were her and Stephen, the family talking as easily to him as they did to Edie. Would they ever welcome him as they did her? She tried not to doubt it but was already imagining the tension there'd be.

It wasn't just that they'd see him as too old for her, but his background was also different to hers: his family was well mannered, well spoken; hers were working class with working-class ways, and working-class speech. They would feel uncomfortable, even resentful, she was sure. Without having to think about it she could imagine the tension every time he came, whereas Edie and Dorothy had both been welcome, Dorothy fitting into the family so naturally and Edie already part of it. But they'd have to meet Stephen one day and she so wanted to marry him.

Only Edie had gone with Albert to see him off at the station, while the rest of the family stood waving him off from their door, watching his tall, upright, uniformed figure recede as he made his way down the street, turning several times to wave, pausing at the far end to wave one last time.

Connie had lingered, after Mum and Dad went back indoors, just in case he reappeared, backtracking to give that one final wave, just as she used to as a child when bidding goodbye to her grandparents after visiting them, running back to the corner time and time again to give them yet another wave.

But he hadn't turned. Albert had more on his mind than playing childish games. He was a man, a soldier, a fighting man having witnessed his brother losing a leg and who would be from now on a cripple on crutches, no use as soldier or civilian, for who'd give a crippled man a job after the war, so many of them returning maimed?

Hastily she turned from such dismal thoughts. This evening she and Stephen were going out to dinner. An early celebration of her birthday in three weeks' time, he'd laughed lightly. Nineteen, a wonderful age for a young woman to be. He had made it seem of great significance and she understood what he meant.

His twenty-eighth birthday, in June, had made him ten years her senior. Next month would see her birthday bringing the difference down to only nine years. Odd how just six months could make the gap in their ages feel so great yet come December it wouldn't seem half so bad. But she still feared Mum and Dad would not see it that way.

But it was Stephen she loved. He understood how things were and sometimes she wondered if he didn't speculate about what impact their difference in ages might have on his work colleagues. He seemed to strive not to give any of them any inkling of their relationship. Sometimes it made her angry, though she knew how he felt. But she suspected someone must have seen through those ‘work' dinners they always had together.

Later that day, at dinner, sitting across the table from him having enjoyed as near a good meal as present government regulations allowed, she watched him dip his hand into his jacket pocket and draw something out.

‘I've been thinking of this for some time,' he said quietly. ‘It never seemed the right moment, but tonight I think it is.' He leaned towards her, taking her hand as it lay on the table by her empty dinner plate, still to be collected. Turning her hand palm upwards, he laid a small, square, dark blue box on it. ‘For you, my darling,' he whispered.

But already her heart had leapt. The expression on his face told her what the box held before she even lifted the lid, and there as she did so, nestling inside was a ring with a single large diamond glinting and flashing in the low glow of the restaurant lights.

‘I did intend to wait until you were nineteen,' he said, ‘but I need to say it now. Will you marry me?' he went on as she continued to stare, adding, ‘if you'll have me.'

If she'd have him? Dear God! Of course she would have him! Had there been just the two of them, sitting close together in his flat, his arm around her as she opened that box, he taking up the ring to gently, lovingly, place it on her finger, whispering, ‘Will you marry me?' and in the hush of the room they'd have kissed, she would have breathed, ‘Yes, oh yes, darling!' He'd have held her close, she his fiancée, his proper fiancée, and they'd have made love properly, for the first time, and afterwards she would have lain in his arms, dreaming of her life as his wife.

Instead, sitting in this low-lit restaurant filled with the quiet buzz of diners, how could she reply as she yearned to? All she could do was gaze down at the ring still in its little box, and suppress her joy. She loved him beyond anything in this world. Would she have him? Had he needed to ask? But how could she throw herself at him, fling her arms about his neck and cry out, ‘My darling, of course I will!' with all these diners all looking on, grinning, making her feel like an idiot?

Instead, she closed the lid slowly, almost reverently, and held it out to him, already spoiling the rapturous moment, hearing herself saying, ‘Not here, love – when we get home to your place and on our own.'

Home! She'd said home. Yet it wasn't home. Home meant having complete access to all parts of a place. After all this while together, she still hadn't – had still not seen the other side of his bedroom door.

She would, in time, break down the barrier her parents would put up in regard to the difference in her and Stephen's ages. But would she ever break down the one he himself had unconsciously erected in his heart?

The waiter had brought their sweet. She saw Stephen wave it away, heard him say abruptly, ‘The bill, please; we need to leave.'

She watched the surprised man take up the plates, ask if everything was all right, saw Stephen nod, saying everything was fine but an urgent matter had come up. She watched him pay the bill and leave a more than generous tip. Moments later they were being handed their coats by the cloakroom girl, the restaurant door opened for them by a courteous doorman into whose hand Stephen dropped a second tip.

In the taxi home he did not speak the whole journey, nor did she. Nor did she speak as the lift took them to the second floor, nor as they entered his flat. Instead of pouring a nightcap for them both or putting a record on the gramophone, he came and sat close to her.

Drawing the little box from his jacket pocket, he took out the ring and, taking hold of her left hand, let it hover poised over the tip of her third finger.

She let it happen as if powerless. But as he paused, saying in a soft voice, the ring still over the tip of her finger, ‘Connie, my dearest heart, will you marry me?' she found herself hesitating.

Flooding back that question of his ever-closed bedroom door. Why had he never taken her into that room to make love? Was it that in that room was the bed in which he and his wife had made love? Was it still a shrine to that time? If so, what was she doing here?

If he loved her, surely he would put his first marriage behind him. She didn't expect him to erase its memory. But to carry it like an emblem on his sleeve – what did that make her? All that was needed was for him to take her into that bedroom and make love to her on his bed. But this very gesture of reluctance to take her there made it appear to her that his dead wife stood between them and always would. She wanted to burst into tears and run out of the flat, away from him.

She couldn't help herself. ‘Why do we only kiss and cuddle here on the sofa?' she said before she could check herself.

He sat back looking at her, the ring leaving her fingertip.

‘Darling,' he said gently. ‘I don't intend to make love with you until you and I are married. I would never be so selfish.'

That wasn't the answer she'd looked for. No, even though he'd made her cry out from that wonderful need she'd felt, which must have tempted him sometimes, he never took his own need to its conclusion, and she adored him for that, he a lovely, caring, thoughtful man. But she needed to be honest about how she felt.

‘You've never once taken me to your bed. You've never even let me see inside that room, Stephen. Why?' When he didn't answer, she ploughed on. ‘Is it because you hold that bed sacred to your wife's memory?' That sounded cruel, but she couldn't help it. ‘Is that why I've never been allowed in there – because you still cling to your wife's memory?'

The way he was looking at her made her hesitate. She had said too much, had been cruel and careless. But her life was with him now and the question needed to be asked. How could she marry him if he still carried his wife's memory like a burden on his back? What sort of marriage would that be? True she could never ask him to lay the memory of his wife aside – that wouldn't be natural – but to have it come between them …

‘I'm sorry,' she said, mortified.

‘I'm sorry too,' he replied, and she knew this was the end. He would tell her it was all over.

Instead, he said, as if the previous conversation had never been, ‘We must tell your parents the news: I've proposed to you and you've accepted. You do accept, don't you, my dearest? You want to marry me?'

‘Oh, yes!' she burst out, her earlier hesitation forgotten. ‘More than anything in this world!' And without effort this time, she put her fears aside as gently he eased the lovely engagement ring on to her finger.

It was easier said than done – there were too many things on her parents' minds for her to worry them about the fact that she wanted to marry a man nine years older than her and previously married, for all that his wife was dead.

She'd promised Stephen she'd tell them on her birthday, as nineteen seemed to make the difference in their ages not so huge, but she couldn't. Nor would it be much of a birthday. The family already had so many worries: Ronnie, crippled for life and still in hospital in France; how would he fare when finally sent home? How would he find work to support his little family? And Albert could be killed at any time – hundreds of thousands dead, and for what? And here at home people losing heart at news of stalemate, men just killing each other. Here, food shortages, continuing raids over English cities. How could she add to her parents' problems?

It had been some days since she had accepted Stephen's proposal, and the ring he had given her remained unworn on her finger. Instead she wore it on a ribbon around her neck – close to her heart.

‘I can't tell them about us, not yet,' she pleaded with Stephen, back at his flat one evening. ‘Once Christmas is over, then I'll tell them.' But even she doubted her words.

One of the current tunes, ‘If you Were the Only Girl in the World', was playing on the gramophone. Stephen held her hand, his grip tight. His kisses were becoming even more urgent, and suddenly his body was taking what hers was yearning to give him. But he'd forgotten to wind the thing and the music was already falling away, lower and lower, dying altogether as they'd sat in silence, each recalling what had happened.

‘I'm so sorry,' he said in a low voice, silence now filling the room. ‘I let myself get carried away. I'm so sorry.'

‘It's my fault,' she said softly, her head against his shoulder. ‘I let you.'

‘No,' he said. ‘It's my responsibility to look after you – I blame myself.'

She didn't answer but a thought was forming in her head. ‘If I were to get pregnant,' she said slowly, ‘they'll have to let me marry you.'

She couldn't help but think of Dorothy, cast out by her own parents, and Mum, good woman that she was, taking her in, looking after her, helping her with her son's child. And Ron, miles away in some French hospital. If her mum could care for a virtual stranger, as Dorothy had been when she'd come seeking help, surely she would break all the rules for her own daughter and the man she loved?

Stephen's voice cut through her thoughts. ‘Becoming pregnant isn't the answer. I'd never insult you by my carelessness. I want us to marry with your parents' blessing, Connie, not their contempt. So you're going to have to tell them about us. I'll be with you and we'll face them together.'

‘What if they won't let me marry you? Until I'm twenty-one, I'm in their charge. Could we run off and get married secretly?'