Always I'Ll Remember (31 page)
Read Always I'Ll Remember Online
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
When they walked into the village hall an hour later, Abby saw immediately that Rowena had been right. The solid, righteous citizens who were busy making the young wife’s life hell hadn’t felt so outraged that they had refused the Americans’ food and drink. The aroma of fresh coffee pervaded the air, and on a separate table there were bottles of spirit along with the usual homemade wine and beer. Another table was laden with cakes and sandwiches.
‘There, told you.’ Rowena frowned. ‘Such hypocrisy!’ And then she grinned at Abby. ‘Still, as good old Winnie would say, it’s not worth getting your knickers in a twist about.’
Abby smiled back. It was always amusing to hear Rowena say such things in her upper-crust accent. ‘Let’s forget all our troubles and have a dance or two,’ she suggested, slipping her arm through Rowena’s.
‘And a drink or two, or three! We haven’t anything else to spend our wages on. I can’t believe I’ve actually saved money since I’ve been in the Land Army. The allowance Daddy used to give me at home slipped through my fingers in no time.’
It was moments like this that reminded Abby that Rowena came from a different world, which made it all the more amazing her friend had taken to farm work the way she had. Until Clara had joined her at the farm, Abby had sent most of her wage home to her mother, but since then she had decided Nora had no excuse not to work and support herself. Consequently she now had a considerable amount of money stacked under James’s chocolate box in the cloth bag, but as Rowena had pointed out, there was rarely anything to spend it on. Unlike Rowena, however, she would need every penny she could save now for after the war when she would have to support Clara and herself, because there was no way she was letting her sister go back to live with their mother.
‘I think you’d better make it two drinks,’ she said to Rowena as they skirted the dance floor. ‘You’ve got to drive us home, don’t forget.’
‘Believe me, the speed that old lorry goes I could drive it blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back.’
‘Possibly.’ Abby’s voice was dry. The sporty little number Rowena had apparently driven before the war was one thing, the lumbering lorry another, but Rowena’s driving didn’t account for any differences and sometimes it could be hair-raising. ‘But I’d prefer not to spend the night in a ditch, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘No appetite for danger, that’s your trouble.’ They were giggling as they reached the drinks table. The current barn dance finished and the band took a break. One of the musicians put a record on the gramophone in one corner of the stage.
Having bought a glass of wine each they found two seats at the edge of the dance floor and sat down, surveying the couples presently dancing to ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’. Rowena was just saying that the farm’s lack of electricity was the thing she missed the most when a group of GIs came through the door and the record was whipped off the turntable and replaced with ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me’.
‘They’ve done that on purpose.’ Rowena was instantly up in arms. Everyone knew the popular Andrews Sisters song expressed fighting men’s real concern that their wives or girlfriends might be tempted into affairs in their absence. Rowena glared her disgust across the room to the band member who had put the record on. ‘That is a definite dig at the Yanks and I think it’s absolutely disgraceful.’
‘I don’t think the GIs are so sensitive they’ll go home in tears.’ Abby looked across to where more Americans were entering the room. ‘In fact I should imagine it’ll make them more determined to find a girl and dance all night.’
‘I should hope so.’ And then Rowena’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your doctor’s just walked in, Abby.’
It took all of her willpower not to turn her head again. Instead she said casually, ‘If you mean Ike Wilmot he’s not my doctor.’
‘Your doctor or no, he’s spotted us and he’s coming over.’ Rowena raised a hand, smiling.
The next few seconds were the longest of Abby’s life, but then he was standing looking down at them, his dark eyes warm as he said, ‘Hi there, I was hoping you might be here tonight. No Winnie?’
‘I’m afraid a dance can’t compare to Joy,’ Abby said, her tone light. ‘Which is just as it should be, I suppose.’
‘Sure thing.’ He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
‘We haven’t seen anything of you all over the last weeks,’ Rowena cut in when it became clear Abby wasn’t going to say anything else. ‘We thought you’d forgotten about us.’
‘No way.’ He glanced at the empty seat next to Abby. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘Go ahead.’ Rowena said.
‘There’s been a bit of trouble with one of our guys and a local woman, I don’t know if you’ve heard about it?’
Both girls nodded.
‘So we got read the riot act and reminded about the official booklet of advice we all got before we came over.’
‘Official booklet?’ Abby asked, trying to seem relaxed although she felt far from relaxed so close to him. He smelled wonderful, a fresh and lemony scent coming off his skin, and she’d forgotten how big and broad and altogether masculine he was.
‘Yeah.’ He grinned. ‘A little thing about stopping and thinking before we sound off about lukewarm beer or cold boiled potatoes, or the way English cigarettes taste. That kind of thing. And of course we were told to never make fun of British speech or accents, never to criticise the King or Queen and, most important of all, not to brag or bluster or “swank”, as you British say.’
Abby smiled. ‘A tall order.’
‘I guess.’ He stretched his long legs, moving one arm casually along the back of her seat. ‘But can we help it if the kids have taken to our comic-book heroes such as Superman, or if your women are clicking their fingers to the rhythms of swing and jazz gods like Artie Shaw and Fats Waller? It’s a free country. That’s what we’re all fighting for.’
‘So you don’t think your man was at fault then?’
‘Hey, I didn’t say that. I can understand why some of your guys are spitting bricks. We swan over here into their territory while they’re away fighting, we earn five times as much and we wow the ladies with nylon stockings and perfume and the rest of it. I can see why they’re mad.’
‘You plead a good cause for being irresistible though,’ Abby said, half laughing. And then she blushed. Was she flirting? He might think so. But she did like him. She didn’t think he could ever make her heart threaten to jump out of her chest like James had, but there was definitely something about Ike Wilmot that was terribly attractive. It wasn’t just his craggy good looks, it was the man himself. A woman would always feel protected, safe, feminine with a man like him.
‘Irresistible?’ He leaned towards her and there was a wry smile on his lips as he said, ‘I don’t think so, do you?’
Well, she had got herself into this and she had no one to blame but herself. Aware her cheeks were burning, she forced a laugh. ‘Let’s just say there are still women who look beyond nylon stockings and nail varnish.’
‘Not this one.’ Rowena grinned at them both, finishing her drink in one swallow. ‘Not if the alternative is gravy powder and a friend with a steady hand. It took Abby five minutes to get the lines straight at the back of my legs.’
‘She kept wriggling.’ Abby blessed Rowena for getting her over a sticky moment.
‘She tickled.’ The record finished and the band returned to the stage with a lively dance number. ‘I’m off to find myself a dance partner as I presume you two are going to cut a rug.’ Rowena stood up and moved away before Abby could restrain her.
‘Cut a rug?’ Ike said. ‘That’s another of your cute English sayings, right?’
‘It means have a dance,’ said Abby, flustered and taking her blessing back. How could Rowena more or less order Ike to dance with her? It was so embarrassing. He’d probably been about to get up and go.
He disabused her of that idea when he said, very softly, ‘Would you dance with me, Abby? It’s why I turned out tonight, the idea you might be here and that I could hold you in my arms.’
She stared at him, totally taken aback. The few times when he had been at the farm he had been very circumspect. Friendly, admittedly, but nothing like this.
‘I understand from something Rowena said the last time I was at the farm that you were engaged to be married but he was killed at the beginning of the war,’ Ike went on quietly. ‘That it was three years ago?’
She nodded, and when he put out his hand and took hers she didn’t draw away.
Abby hadn’t spoken but was just looking at him, and his face was serious when he said, ‘When my wife died I thought it was the end of the world, and it was for a time. Not that I would have wished her to continue the way it was, not with the cancer.’ He swallowed, moving his head a little. ‘But that was five years ago and since then I haven’t dated.’ He looked straight into her eyes. ‘Does that surprise you?’
Did it? No, not with a man like Ike. He would feel things deeply, there wasn’t a shallow bone in his body. Quite how she knew this about him Abby wasn’t sure, but she was certain she was right. ‘No, that doesn’t surprise me,’ she said softly.
There was silence between them, the noise and laughter and people whirling around a few feet away hardly registering on either of them. Then he said quietly, ‘I like you, Abby, and I would appreciate the chance to get to know you better. I’d like us to . . .’ He paused, half smiling as he continued, ‘What is the English word for dating?’
‘Walk out?’ She smiled back. ‘At least that’s what we say where I come from.’
‘Walk out it is then. Will you? Will you begin to walk out with me? I’m older than you, I know, some fourteen years older, so if you feel that’s too much of an age gap—’
‘Of course it isn’t.’ She saw his shoulders relax and realised he had been holding himself very tensely, despite his apparent equanimity. The sudden rush of tenderness she felt surprised her. ‘It isn’t at all,’ she repeated, and then, more shyly, she added, ‘And I’d like to walk out with you, Ike.’
‘You would?’ He grinned and squeezed her hand. ‘That’s swell, just swell.’
Suddenly he appeared much younger, almost boyish, and again Abby felt an emotion stirring she hadn’t expected to feel again, at least not for a long, long time. It was quite scary, the more so because there was still a war going on and no guarantees that if she let herself fall for him he wouldn’t be sent into the thick of things.
‘What is it?’ She had dropped her head. ‘Not regretting it already, are you?’ he said, his voice jocular enough but a seriousness underlining the words which brought her face up to meet his gaze.
She did not give him a direct answer. Instead she said, ‘I didn’t know how to bear it when James was killed.’
He nodded in understanding. ‘I felt the same when Eleanor went and I shut myself away in here,’ he touched his temple, ‘for years. I don’t want to remain like that for the rest of my life, Abby, shut away and going through the motions of living, not when it’s possible I’ve found something I thought had gone from me for ever. Do you?’
Her eyes were misty as she shook her head.
‘So we’ll brave it together and see what happens, OK? Because the thing is,’ he paused, his voice becoming even softer, ‘I’ve found life is a beautiful, crazy roller-coaster of a ride again and I don’t want this feeling to leave me. Does that make sense?’
She couldn’t reply for a moment or two, and then her voice was as low as his and he had to bend nearer to hear her. ‘It does to me.’ She loved James, she would always love him but he had been destined to forever remain a poignantly handsome young man on the screen of her mind. He wouldn’t grow old, he wouldn’t get wrinkles or grey hair. He would just always be her darling, her first love. Her James.
PART FIVE
Grasping the Nettle
1944
1944
Chapter Seventeen
‘
C
heer up. This is supposed to be a wedding not a funeral.’ James was smiling as he glanced at his father standing next to him at the front of the church, but there was no answering smile on Horace Benson’s face. ‘It’s not too late, you know,’ his father said, ‘not till the ceremony is over. Are you sure about what you’re doing?’
C
heer up. This is supposed to be a wedding not a funeral.’ James was smiling as he glanced at his father standing next to him at the front of the church, but there was no answering smile on Horace Benson’s face. ‘It’s not too late, you know,’ his father said, ‘not till the ceremony is over. Are you sure about what you’re doing?’
‘Don’t, Dad, not now. I’ve no other choice and you know it.’
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