Mal, some girl rang, said she didn’t know the rest of your name.
The words were engraved on his memory, saying them was like saying a familiar childhood prayer, a guarantee that . . . that . . .
Deeply and immediately, Mal slept.
‘He hasn’t rung,’ Marianne said patiently, as soon as she heard Tess’s voice on the phone. ‘But I’m sure he will. You are not unattractive, Tess. Did you give him this number? I forgot to ask before.’
‘No . . . but I thought he’d look it up in the book,’ Tess said, grinning to herself over Marianne’s choice of phrase.
You are not unattractive
, indeed! ‘Surely he’ll do that, Marianne?’
‘Well, perhaps. But we are still in the telephone book as P. Delamere, and now that I think about it, there are two P. Delameres, your father and your Uncle Phil. Friends, of course, know that Phil lives in Norwich and we live in Barton, but for a young man who does not know us well, it might prove a stumbling block.’
‘Oh well,’ Tess said. ‘I expect Uncle Phil will pass on the message that I live at Barton. So if you get a call, Marianne . . .’
‘All right, I’ll see that he knows where you’re to be found,’ Marianne said briskly. ‘When will you be home next?’
‘Umm . . . probably in about a week. Marianne, if – if he gets in touch, will it be all right to bring him back with me? He’s an Aussie, so he won’t have parents or anything to stay with on his leaves.’
‘But Tess, you don’t even know his surname! You don’t really know him at all, yet you’re suggesting that he come here, to your home . . .’
‘I’ll know him by then,’ Tess said. ‘I’ll be bringing him home when I next come if he’s free. Bye, Marianne. Love to Cherie.’
Having got her message across to her stepmother, Tess waited for twenty-four hours and then decided that the onus of getting in touch would probably be on her. She went into the village and entered the box, asked for the number, clattered a respectable number of pennies into the box, and waited. After a couple of rings the receiver in the officers’ mess was snatched up. Tess pressed Button A and spoke.
‘Oh, hello, it’s Tess Delamere speaking, I’d like a word with Pilot Officer Chandler if he’s around,’ she said politely. ‘I’m in a call box, though, so if he isn’t near a telephone perhaps I could leave a message?’
‘No need, Miss. Mal . . . it’s for you!’
Tess heard the phone clatter down, then it was picked up – and all at once she was shy, so shy that she was rendered speechless. She stared at the mouthpiece, then gingerly applied the earpiece to her ear.
‘Hullo? Malcolm Chandler speaking.’
The voice she had longed to hear sounded different, the accent more pronounced. Was it him, or had she somehow got hold of the wrong bloke?
‘It’s Tess Delamere,’ she said bleakly. ‘I don’t . . .’
‘Tess!’ Suddenly his voice was just right, she could hear his delight clearly across the miles. ‘Oh, Tess! I thought . . . I thought . . .’
‘So did I,’ Tess admitted. ‘I’ve rung ever so many times but you’ve not been around and now I’m in a box in the village and it’s my dinner hour so we’d better be quick. My boss is cutting the wheat and he hates it if we’re late, so . . .’
‘Your boss? Cutting
wheat
?’
He sounded bemused, the slow Australian drawl sharpened a little by surprise.
‘Yes, my boss, he’s a farmer. I’m a landgirl, didn’t I say? The Sugdens are very nice, but you know what farming’s like – no, you probably don’t – only the weather has to be right and . . .’
‘Oh, my word,’ Mal said. ‘If anyone knows about farming, it’s me. Listen, where are you? Can we meet?’
‘That would be lovely,’ Tess said. She hadn’t known quite how to say it, but Mal had – straight out, no holds barred. ‘I live in a little village called Barton, and I work at Catfield, which is the next village along. The farm isn’t on the telephone, unfortunately, but I go home sometimes, so I’ll give you my home telephone number and you can ring there.’
‘Not on the phone? What’s your address?’
‘It’s care of the Sugdens, Willow Tree Farm, Catfield.’
‘Grand. I’m glad you got in touch, Tess, I was scared I’d never see you again.’
‘Me too,’ Tess said shyly. ‘Do you have leave coming up?’
‘Bound to. I’ve not taken any yet. You?’
‘Yes, I get a forty-eight quite often. I start a forty-eight in three days’ time.’
‘Good on you. We’ll meet then. All right?’
‘Very all right,’ Tess said, and even as she spoke she realised that they had passed over the commonplace preliminaries of a relationship as though they were totally unnecessary. It was usual, she knew, to get to know a fellow before letting him have such details as your address and home telephone number. In fact, it was not done for a girl to give such information to a total stranger. But how could she think of him as a stranger, after what they’d shared? If they had shared anything, that was. She had felt all sorts of extraordinary feelings whenever he looked at her, but who could say whether it had been the same for him? Perhaps he would think her forward, pursuing a young man she’d met once, giving him her telephone number so that he might ring her. What if he didn’t want to ring, anyway? But he did, of course, since he had suggested meeting in three days’ time.
‘Thank God you rang again,’ he said fervently, now. ‘I thought your last name was Delmar – I rang ten of them. Imagine!’
She laughed. It was easy to laugh, now.
‘I can imagine, but I’ve got to go. Where shall we meet? In Norwich? Or you could come over to the farm, if you don’t mind buses and things.’
‘No. Not the farm, somewhere quiet, where we can talk. I’ve got some leave due, I’ll take it. When and how?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Tess saw a movement. Someone was standing outside the telephone booth, face almost pressed to the glass. It was young Harold; he’d split on her unless she was specially nice to him, and he was obviously longing to use the telephone. Of course Mr Sugden couldn’t dictate what she did in her dinner hour, but she knew, really, that she should have stayed in the harvest field. What was more, her pennies were running out.
‘Can’t stop, there’s someone I know waiting for the phone, quick! Where? When?’
‘Right. Ten hundred hours, Friday. Where?’
‘Oh, oh, I can’t think . . . oh the pips, I’ve not got . . . Where? I know, the GPO on Prince of Wales Road.’
She was about to add under the portico not inside the building when they were cut off. Tess put down the receiver and erupted from the box. She screamed over her shoulder, ‘Sorry, Harold, I tried to hurry,’ as she rescued her bicycle from the hedge and struggled aboard. Harold grinned at her, then shot into the box in his turn and Tess cycled off down the road in the direction of the farm.
Back at the harvest field it was generally assumed that she’d gone back to the farm for some purpose and had had her food there. Tess, unfed, scarcely noticed. With stars in her eyes she toiled over the sheaves, sucked her sore fingers and dreamed of Friday morning at ten.
Tess arrived at nine-forty-five, and stood self-consciously in front of the huge building, with the eyes of the world upon her, or so she felt. The vast bustling conglomeration of roads which met at this point was always busy, so she had a good look round before taking up her position. She could see no one in RAF uniform, however, so assumed she had arrived first, and stood against one of the pillars which held up the portico, feeling both small and conspicuous. She had caught the workers’ bus into the city which meant she had been here an hour already and was growing increasingly nervous.
The meeting place, which had seemed eminently sensible when she had suggested it, began to seem the height of idiocy once she was back at the farm. She was suddenly sure that something would go wrong, she even suspected that the GPO might no longer be on Prince of Wales Road or that it might be bombed out of existence before Friday. Her friends scoffed at such wild and unfounded fears, but as Tess said, you never knew with Hitler; he could easily send a bomber over to bop the General Post Office just to destroy her day out.
However, she had arrived early and the GPO had survived any attempts to remove it; at least it was still there, looming vast and important, with the Shire Hall on the corner, the Agricultural Hall next to it, and the GPO last in line.
Mal hadn’t arrived, though. If Tess checked once that he hadn’t misunderstood her meaning and was waiting inside, she checked a dozen times. And then she wondered whether he was waiting outside Shire Hall, or the Agricultural Hall, the Royal Hotel . . . they were all on this particular stretch of road, he could easily have misunderstood, the pips had gone whilst she was still talking . . .
Then she remembered that he would be travelling through a city which was strange to him, or fairly strange. She didn’t know how long he’d been in England. And he’d probably be coming by bus and buses are always late, and sometimes leave gets cancelled . . .
She hadn’t asked him what time his bus got in, or even whether he was coming by bus. She had simply hoped that he had heard before they were cut off.
Now, Tess glanced at her wrist-watch. It wasn’t ten o’clock and wouldn’t be for another ten minutes, and already, she was convinced, people were staring at her, thinking that she was some poor kid whose boyfriend had stood her up. She wasn’t wearing uniform, but had opted for a navy-blue skirt, a blue cotton blouse and her pearl-grey mackintosh, worn casually unbuttoned. It wasn’t raining, which was practically a miracle, but she still felt damned conspicuous, waiting here. He didn’t have a car, she was fairly sure of that, so surely he would be coming by bus? If she walked up to Surrey Street, what was more, it would give her something to do and she would not feel so self-conscious once she was moving.
She was half a dozen yards from the pillar when it occurred to her that the easiest thing in the world would be to miss one another like this. And it still wasn’t ten o’clock! What’s the matter with you, you silly thing, he said ten hundred hours and he meant ten hundred hours, she told herself fiercely. Just get back to that pillar and lean against it, casual-like, and bloody
wait
!
She watched the hands of her watch creep round to ten . . . to one minute past . . . and decided to walk a little way along the pavement towards the Cattle Market. The liberty trucks came in there, she knew, if he’d managed to catch a liberty truck . . .
She turned and ran straight into someone. She stopped, gave a breathless giggle, started to apologise . . . and recognised him.
‘Oh, it’s you! Gosh! I was just . . . I thought I’d have a bit of a walk around, go up to the Cattle Market . . . I know the buses come in there . . . the trucks, I mean . . . and then I wondered if I’d recognise you . . . we’ve only met that once . . .’
‘I’d know you anywhere,’ Mal said. He said it matter of factly, as though he was just stating the obvious. ‘Come along.’ He took her arm, turned her towards Castle Meadow.
‘Where are we going?’ Tess said. Not uneasily, because the touch of his hand on her arm was strangely, lovingly, familiar. They had not danced together at the Samson, but she felt she knew what it would have been like, had they done so.
‘Ever heard of a place called Stokesby? There’s someone doing decent food there; a little pub. Riverside place, I’m told.’
‘Oh! But Stokesby’s miles from anywhere, isn’t it? I bet there isn’t a bus to get me back to the Old House tonight!’
Tess did not like to say she had intended to invite him to go home with her, just in case. She did not know in case of what. It simply seemed wrong to invite someone home within moments of meeting them.
He looked down at her. His eyes were quiet. It occurred to her that he was a peaceful person, that in his company she, too, would feel peaceful. It was a good feeling.
‘We’ll get a taxi. I’ve got enough money.’
After a second of stunned silence, Tess laughed. ‘All the way from Stokesby to Barton? Honestly, Mal, it’ll take every last penny. Why don’t we catch a bus to Wroxham, if you want the river? There are several pubs there which do meals.’
He laughed too, looking relieved as well as amused.
‘No, honestly, I’ve worked it all out. We can get a bus from the pub into the city, and from there we’ll get a taxi to Barton. I really think you’ll like this Stokesby place. One of the fellers told me about it, said it was a bonza place. You’d better ring your mother, tell her you won’t be home till the late, though.’
‘I have a stepmother, actually. I call her Marianne,’ Tess said carefully as they drew nearer to the bus station. ‘I’ll ring her from this pub, if that’s possible. Or I suppose there’s a public call box in the village. How do we get to Stokesby?’
‘Well, we’ve missed the bus which goes all the way, but we can ride to Acle and walk the rest of the way. Or we can hire a carrier, or a taxi, even, if you don’t fancy walking. But it isn’t terribly far.’
‘I like walking,’ Tess said. ‘We’ll want the number 7, I suppose.’
‘Yeah . . . there it is! Run!’
They ran, climbed aboard, managed to get seats together, sank into them, Tess suddenly self-conscious. What would they talk about for a whole day? This bus journey would be hard enough!
It wasn’t hard at all. For a start, Mal took her hand and this sent Tess into such a dizzying spiral of delight that talking did not seem at all necessary. And then, when he did turn to her, the conversation was natural, inevitable.
‘Tell me about where you live, your family and so on. Unless you’d rather I told you, first?’
‘Well, my father was killed in the first few months of the war and my stepmother lives with my stepsister, Cherie, in our family home,’ Tess began, and found the rest was easy. Describing Peter, the Old House, Cherie, Marianne even, was fun when she was describing them to Mal. She said, wistfully, that she wished Mal could have met Peter and realised she meant it. He hadn’t liked Ashley, he hadn’t ever met the adult Andy, but she knew that anyone with an ounce of sense would love Mal, and her father had been, above everything, a sensible man.
‘We’ve got a lot in common,’ Mal said as they climbed down off the bus. ‘You’ve got a stepmother. I’ve got a stepfather. You’ve got a stepsister, I’ve got two stepbrothers. Wonder if there’s anything else? Well, we’ll find out over the course of today, I dare say.’