She went to get out of the car but Ashley leaned across her and calmly shut the door again, the fielded her against his chest.
‘Kissy kissy,’ he demanded. ‘Pucker your pretty lips and prepare for the experience of a lifetime.’
He kissed her. After a moment he stopped kissing her and held her away from him, peering down at her in the moonlight.
‘Hmm. About as exciting as kissing a pound of cod, I’d say,’ he murmured. ‘What’s the matter, sweet Tess? Cross?’
‘Oh, Ash, I’m tired of saying you should start trying to find a girl who appreciated you a bit more! I said if we went on going out it must be no strings; I told you I wanted your company and your friendship, not a lot of mauling.’
‘Mauling! I was kissing you. Rather nicely, I thought. Only even the world’s greatest lover needs a
leetle
encouragement and that, it seems, you were not prepared to give. And I thought you’d enjoyed our evening out.’
‘I did!’ Tess said remorsefully. ‘I’m sorry, Ash. I think I’m just very tired.’
‘Hmm. Try again?’
Tess remembered his sister’s friendship, his mother’s kindness, his own eagerness to help her in any way he could. She put her arms gently round him and this time, when he kissed her, she kissed him back, allowing her mouth to soften and her body to curve towards him.
‘Better,’ Ashley murmured. ‘Tess . . . I fool around a lot, but I do love you, you know.’
‘You don’t, Ash,’ Tess said quickly. ‘You like me, as I like you, but love – well, I think love’s something quite different. I don’t think we’ve known one another long enough to fall in love.’
‘Time has nothing to do with it. The moment I saw you I fell. Look at that Aussie bloke this evening – one look at you and he went head over heels. Oh yes, I noticed even if you didn’t. For two pins he’d have tried to cut me out.’
He sounded indignant. Tess laughed, unable to help herself.
‘As if he could, and you so wonderful! Look, I’d ask you in for a hot drink, but you’ve got a long drive, and . . .’
‘Thanks, I’d love a drink. You go and get the cocoa on whilst I park the car deeper on the verge. I dare not leave it out in the road, last time I did that stupid old fart you call a copper rode into it in the dark and gave himself a black eye. My name was mud – and he fined me two bob!’
‘Righty-ho,’ Tess said, hopping out and heading for the front door. ‘Don’t be long; I’m tired if you aren’t, and I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’
In the dimness she saw Ashley shake his head. ‘Shan’t be a tick. Tess . . .?’
‘What? Do hurry up. Ash, I’m really quite cold.’
‘Nothing. Tell you in a minute.’
Tess went into the hall and closed the front door gently behind her. She stole across to the kitchen and switched on the light, then began, hastily, to make two cups of cocoa. She had a nasty sort of feeling that a serious Ashley might be even more of a problem than a jokey one. But he came in presently, still cool from the night air, took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the door as though he owned the place, and then kissed her lightly on the nose and headed for the pantry.
‘I want bickies,’ he said from the depths, rummaging. ‘Damn rationing, what I hate most is no nice little titbits to eat when you’re hungry and it isn’t mealtime. Aha, I knew Mrs Sugden would have a secret supply.’
‘What have you found? Are you sure it isn’t special, not to be touched?’ Tess asked suspiciously. Marianne’s pantry was always full of special food, not to be touched by wandering landgirls. ‘Mrs Sugden’s been good to me, I don’t want to upset her.’
‘No, it’s all right, honest. She told me last time I came that she kept a tin labelled “Bits and Pieces” in the pantry, and this is it, see? She fills it with odds and ends for workers or her kids or anyone who happens by . . . oh boy oh boy oh boy, cheese straws! Bless her – wonder where she got the cheese from? Lovely, indigestible food, cheese straws. Oh, and under the first layer of greaseproof . . . yes, yes,
yes
! Shortbread, and oatcakes, too. Come on, if the cocoa’s ready we’ll have a midnight feast.’
The cocoa was soon made and Tess, thinking wistfully of her bed, sat down beside the kitchen table but Ashley refused to allow anything so sloppy.
‘Midnight feasts are eaten in wicked luxury, either in your bedroom – me too, of course – or in the front parlour. Which?’
‘The parlour, I suppose,’ Tess said gloomily, following Ashley and the tin with a mug of steaming cocoa in each hand. She had no desire to find herself wrestling with Ashley on her bed. ‘Only I really am tired, Ash, so don’t let’s play for
too
long.’
‘Play? What d’you mean, girl? Well, never mind . . . come and sit on the couch, by me, so I can give you the odd cuddle.’
Tess heaved an exaggerated sigh and sat beside him, then at his behest, dipped her fingers into the tin of goodies and the pair of them were soon munching in companionable silence.
‘Phew, that’s better,’ Ashley said at last. ‘Aren’t midnight feasts grand when you’ve been dancing half the night? I say, Tess, do you have nightmares?’
‘Everyone does after cheese and oatcakes and things late at night,’ Tess said accusingly. ‘Especially other people’s cheese and oatcakes. But drink your cocoa like a good boy and you may be lucky this time.’
‘I don’t mean cheese nightmares. I mean the other sort.’
‘What other sort? The crocodile in the bath sort?’
‘No,’ Ashley said. ‘The sort where you’re in the pilot’s seat and the kite bursts into flames and you can’t get out, or you do manage to get out but your parachute doesn’t open, or you can hear your chief screaming over the intercom and when you turn your head you can see that one of the bombs the chaps have sent down is heading back up towards you like a surfacing shark. That sort.’
He was shivering. Tiny shudders rippled through him, and his face had gone pale and grim, with no laughter in the dark eyes, no teasing smile on his lips. Tess was horrified. She’d heard all about the strain the aircrews were under, she’d seen with her own eyes some of them break down, coming back from ops, but it simply hadn’t occurred to her that Ashley was frightened, too. He seemed so cocksure, so full of jokes and fun . . .
She turned to him and wrapped her arms round him as tightly as she could. Then she kissed the side of his face with little, soft kisses, whilst murmuring that it was all right, everyone had those dreams, she’d heard dozens and dozens of aircrew say something very similar. Why, she had a fearful nightmare herself, the recurring sort, which had haunted her all through childhood, haunted her still.
‘But I’m not a girl,’ Ashley said at last through stiff lips. ‘I’ve been back on active service ten days and I’m a full-grown bloody bloke, and yet there’s times when I shake like a bloody blancmange and – and dammit, I
know
I’m going to die. I wasn’t like it first time round, but I’m too knowing, now. No one could be so lucky that they did fifty ops and got put on to training, then went back on ops . . . oh Tess, if it weren’t for you, waiting for me, I don’t think I could go on.’
‘Of course you could,’ Tess crooned, cuddling. ‘Of course you could, Ash dear. And you are lucky, and you’re going to go on being lucky. Now you drive slowly and carefully back to Blofield and go to bed. We’ll both forget all this in sleep.’
‘Right. You’re sure you can’t come home with me? Only if you could, and if I had a real shocker and yelled out, you’d have my permission to come and jump into my bed and make me better; right?’
Tess laughed. ‘Right. Come on, and put that tin down, eating late at night really encourages bad dreams.’
She went with Ashley out to the car, but just before he drove off he jumped out, put his arms round her and kissed her.
‘I know you say you aren’t in love with me, Tess, but you will be, one day, I’m sure of it,’ he muttered against her hair. ‘Don’t go off with anyone else, please? I’ve loved you for an awfully long time, you know. Ever since I first saw you.’
‘Oh come on, Ash, you surely can’t believe in love at first . . . at first sight,’ Tess finished slowly. She had just remembered Mal and the electric shock of his touch, his glance. Was that love at first sight? If so, how wonderful, how world-shaking, it was. And if Ashley really had fallen in love with her, how horribly he must suffer when she teased him, turned from him.
‘It’s true, love at first sight really does exist. Tess? Say you’ll give me a chance, let me show you that I can be what you want, the sort of person you could be happy with for the rest of your life. Promise me you won’t go with anyone else!’
‘I can’t make promises like that, Ash,’ Tess said. ‘I’m not experienced enough to know how I feel, even if you are. And now, dear sir, I’m going to bed.’
She went back into the farmhouse, locking the door firmly behind her, and presently, after a short wait, she heard Ashley’s car roar off down the road.
Fourteen
TESS WOKE BECAUSE
she was having a nightmare; not the usual one but something new and different. She dreamed she was standing on an airfield looking up at a plane which was coming in to land, and she knew that Ashley was flying it, knew he was in trouble.
‘He’s lost his undercarriage,’ someone near her whispered. ‘And the rudder’s gone. The pilot’s got a bullet lodged in his hip and he’s had his face cut up by flying glass. It’ll need a hell of a lot to get him down in one piece.’
The plane came towards them, staggering, one wing too low, then passed them by, pulling itself up into the air again, clearly going to try another approach. And as it passed Tess saw Ashley, pale-faced and with horror in his eyes, staring at her through the perspex window. As she watched he leaned out and called to her, his voice beseeching.
‘Tess, oh Tess! I won’t die if you’ll promise not to leave me, it’ll be all right if you’re there for me. Promise you won’t leave me!’
And she had promised, shouting her vow to the great wheeling plane above her, and then she had woken up with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Now, she lay on her back, gazing up at the ceiling, recovering. What a truly horrible dream – it must have come about because Ashley had told her, last night, of his fears. Well, she was very sorry but she could not ruin her whole life for Ashley, who was a handsome and capable young man, well able to find himself a girlfriend other than her if he so wished. She had promised to ring Mal – well, she hadn’t promised, exactly but she had said she would. And the deeply tanned, slow-spoken young Australian pilot officer meant something to her already, though she did not know quite what. He wasn’t handsome, like Ashley, he was of a stocky rather than athletic build and would doubtless prove to be a very ordinary bloke. But for a few moments, last night, she had known such a strength of attraction towards him that she had felt as if she was one half of a magnet and he the other.
So I can’t not telephone him just because of a dream, she told herself. I have to talk to him, to arrange a meeting. I can’t just walk away from someone who could be so important to me.
Presently she fell asleep again and woke when her alarm clock shrilled. She got up at once, washed and dressed, guessing that the other landgirls, Molly and Susan, would still be fast asleep. But she was on milking with young Harold, so it behoved her to get a move on – Harold was fourteen, cheeky, wicked, but always on time for milking. He’d nag her something horrible if she was so much as five minutes late.
Tess grabbed herself a round of bread from the loaf and spread it with honey; thanks to Mrs Sugden, there was always plenty of food around. Then she stirred the fire, pulled the big old kettle – filled by one of the girls the previous evening – on to the hob and headed for the back door. Breakfast was eaten after milking, not before, but the bread and honey would stop her stomach from rumbling, she hoped.
She unbolted the kitchen door and pushed it open. A milky, misty morning met her eye, the sun still out of sight beyond the horizon, the pale-blue sky its harbinger. She inhaled deeply; there were lovely smells in the yard first thing in the morning, but before she could begin to analyse them Pup, the second of the Sugdens’ two sheepdogs, came running across the yard and bounced all over her. He got the last of the bread and honey by default – Tess dropped it – and grinned gratefully up at her, licking his chops.
‘Wasn’t that nice?’ Tess said. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do – where’s young Harold?’
‘Here,’ young Harold growled, coming over the gate and swishing with his curved ash-stick at the mist which hung around him. ‘Where’s Minnie?’
Minnie, the older of the two sheepdogs, came out of the stable block. She was licking her lips too; Tess guessed she had been eating something a good deal less acceptable than bread and honey, but smoothed a hand over the dome of the old dog’s head anyway.
‘Morning, Min. Come on, the cows’ll be at the gate by now. You coming, Harold, or will you get the parlour ready?’
‘Jacob ’ull do it. He enjoy that better’n chasin’ after the herd.’ Harold, his hair in spikes all over his head, his working boots and trousers a size too large to allow for growth, clicked his fingers at the dogs, who promptly belted across the yard, heading for Moss Bank, the steep, downward-sloping pasture with its mossy banks on which silver birches and rowans mingled their branches. Further on, right at the end of the pasture, the brook had carved its way between the two meadows, creating, at one end of the field, an area of bog in which iris, burr-reeds and water forget-me-not flourished. The cows would have spent the night grazing on the rich new grass at the bottom of the meadow, but by now they would have made their way up the steep slope and would be milling hopefully around beside the mossy old gate, poaching the soft ground there into another, though less sightly, bog.
‘Right. Come on then. Race you to the gate, Harold!’
Much later, work over for the day, Tess went up to her room and fetched her purse. The other girls were planning an evening of letter-writing and various other indoor activities but Tess said: ‘Shan’t be long!’ and left without actually telling anyone where she was going.