As Time Goes By (23 page)

‘And you’d know a lot about that, would you?’

‘As a matter of fact, I would,’ she told him truthfully. ‘A friend of my brother’s died from septicaemia. He cut his leg on a rusty scythe in his grandfather’s garden. It was only a small cut, nothing much at all, but then his leg started to swell up. They tried to save him. They amputated his leg but it was too late and he died.’ Sam spoke as briskly as she could, not wanting to remember the horror she had felt when the boys had talked about how Terry had died.

‘I’ll drive you over,’ she told him.

He turned his head and looked at her, turned a smoky dark grey-eyed gaze on her that for some reason cause her heart to flip over. She half expected him to refuse to let her, and held her breath in anticipation of an argument.

‘If you must,’ he told her, giving in with a small shrug.

The medical unit was on the far side of the barracks, set apart from the other buildings. Sam parked the Bentley outside it and switched off the engine.

‘Not coming in with me?’ The laconic question caught Sam off guard.

‘Well …’

‘I’d have thought you’d want to make sure I see the doc, seeing as you seem to be taking personal responsibility for me avoiding death by gangrene,’ he told her.

‘It isn’t something to joke about,’ Sam insisted. Perhaps she should go with him just in case the major asked her to report back to him on the sergeant’s condition.

‘You looked as sick as a cat earlier at the site. What was up?’

‘Nothing,’ she denied.

‘Liar. I’ve bin watching you: you don’t like getting too close to the diggings. Why?’

‘It isn’t any of your business.’

‘Everything that goes on around those bombs is my business, and if you were to go and do summat daft, like falling into one of them—’

‘No!’ Her sharp cry of panic had betrayed her, tipping her into the trap he had set for her, Sam realised as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘Yes, all right,’ she admitted angrily. ‘I am scared silly that I might fall in. Go on, laugh if you want to.’

‘I’m not laughing. What happened? And don’t tell me nothing. Something must have done.’

He was using his free hand to remove his cigarettes from his pocket. He took two and lit them both, passing one over to her. Sam was too astonished to refuse it. She inhaled and then blew out the smoke, feeling it calm her nerves. He wasn’t going to let the matter drop until he had got the truth out of her, so she might as well tell him, she acknowledged.

‘I got trapped in a tunnel my brother and his pals had dug when I was a kid. It’s stupid of me, I know, but now I can’t …’ Her voice was shaking again. She took another deep drag on the cigarette. ‘I still have nightmares about it.’

‘We all have those.’

Sam looked at him uncertainly. She couldn’t imagine him being vulnerable in any way, never mind admitting it.

‘Dunkirk,’ he told her as though he had read her mind. ‘The first boat I was in got hit and turned turtle. I thought I was going to drown.’

They looked at one another, and it was Sam who had to look away first. She opened the driver’s door and got out of the car, leaving the sergeant to do the same, then she locked it. Sam was determined not to look at him again, but somehow or other she found that she was.

He threw down his cigarette and crushed it out with his foot, straightening up to lounge against the side of the car.

Putting out her own cigarette Sam went towards
him. As she reached him, to her shock he swayed and lurched forward. Immediately she went to support him.

He must have lost more blood than he’d admitted to, Sam decided worriedly when he sagged against her as they walked the short distance from the car to the Medical Unit.

‘Here, let me help you.’ She put her hand under his elbow on his uninjured arm. ‘Mind the step.’

‘What’s all this then?’ the nurse of duty asked briskly.

‘Major Thomas asked me to bring Sergeant Everton over. He cut his arm whilst he was working on a pump,’ Sam explained.

‘Hmm, let’s have a look.’

Sam saw the sergeant’s mouth tighten slightly as the nurse briskly removed the bandage from his arm.

‘Not very pretty, is it, but you’ll live. I’ll clean it up for you so that the doctor can get a proper look at it. This way.’

There was no real reason for her to stay and wait for him, but nevertheless Sam felt honour-bound to do so. It had shocked her when he had leaned on her. Somehow he just wasn’t the sort of man she had expected to see give in to any kind of weakness, especially not in front of her.

He wasn’t gone very long, returning in about ten minutes, a clean bandage on his arm.

‘Now remember what the doctor said – no getting that wound wet or dirty until it’s healed.’

‘Cat got your tongue then, or are you just disappointed
that they didn’t keep me in to cut my arm off?’ Sergeant Everton taunted Sam as they walked back to the car.

For some silly female, womanly reason, the thought of him without his arm made Sam’s eyes sting sharply with threatening tears. Tears for him? This man who made her feel … but no, better by far that she didn’t think of that. Just like she hadn’t been thinking of it all week, pushing it out of sight because she was afraid? Quickly she blinked her tears away, not trusting her voice not to betray her as he opened the car door for her.

‘The Bentley needs petrol,’ she told him without looking at him.

‘Fine,’ he answered. ‘I don’t mind the ride.’

Sam said nothing. She had been going to suggest that she dropped him off first and then drove to the fuel store.

‘You handle the car well.’

‘For a woman?’ Sam suggested through gritted teeth.

‘I didn’t say that. Turn left here,’ he told her

Thinking he knew a short cut to the petrol store, Sam automatically did as he had instructed, only to find she had driven into a narrow cul-de-sac surrounded by windowless stores.

‘What …?’ she began, but the sergeant shook his head.

‘Switch off the engine for a minute.’

‘What for?’

‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

Something … didn’t he really mean someone,
that someone being Frank Brookes? He didn’t know just how very badly he was getting things wrong, and she intended to make sure that he never knew, even if that meant letting him continue to think badly of her. If she had been in danger of having some kind of silly crush on the other sergeant, she definitely didn’t have one now, and the reason she was so clearly aware of what her true feelings were was sitting right here next to her, and those feelings were becoming clearer – and stronger – with every hour, never mind every day, she spent in his company. Not, of course, that she could ever or would ever tell Sergeant Johnny Everton that she had done the most stupid thing she could and that she suspected she had fallen in love with him.

‘What kind of something?’ she asked him warily.

‘This kind of something.’

For a man whose arm was heavily bandaged he was able to put it round her very quickly and easily, but Sam wasn’t able to say so for the very good reason that with him kissing her the way he was doing she wasn’t capable of thinking or saying anything.

So this was kissing … proper kissing … the kind that made a ‘good’, ‘nice’ girl forget that she was any such thing and ache very much to be something else. Her heart was beating so heavily and loudly it was drowning out any inner warning voice that might have been trying to make itself heard.

When Johnny lifted his mouth from hers she
made a small soft sound and declared in a wobbly voice, ‘You kissed me!’

He still had his arm around her, and she could see his mouth curving into a smile.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘and I’m going to kiss you again.’

This time the pleasure was deeper and sweeter, running through her body like liquid heat, making her physically aware of herself as a woman; making her wrap her own arms around his neck and hold on to him whilst she closed her eyes and trembled under the shocking intensity of their intimacy.

She was still trembling slightly when the kiss ended, and so, she saw with swift hot pleasure, was Johnny.

‘Why?’ she asked him dizzily, both of them knowing that she wasn’t asking him why he had kissed her so much as why this had happened to them; why they had both been caught up in this intense desire for one another, which neither of them had encouraged or wanted. ‘We don’t like each other.’

‘You’re not exactly my type,’ he agreed.

Jealousy, sharp-clawed and sabre-toothed, savaged her, making her catch her breath. ‘And you aren’t mine.’

‘Maybe not, but you haven’t had time to experience what your type is. I have.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that I should know better. Less than a month ago you were mooning around all big-eyed over Frank, looking at him like a kid with
her nose pressed up against the window of a sweet shop, and with about as much understanding of men-and-women stuff as that kid. You’re a baby still, a tomboy who hasn’t learned yet to be a woman.’

‘I’m twenty-one,’ Sam defended herself.

‘What I’m talking about doesn’t have anything to do with age. Some girls are born as old and knowing as Eve, but not you. This is crazy. If I had any sense I’d walk away from it and from you right now, for your sake as well as mine.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She didn’t. She felt as though her heart was being wrenched in two. How could he have kissed her in the way that he had and now be saying what he was?

‘No, of course you don’t. How can you? There’s too much of a gulf between us for you and me to be right together. You’re still learning things I learned long ago. By rights I ought to leave you to do your growing up with boys who are doing some growing up of their own, boys who you can flirt with and then walk away from. I’ve already done all of that. And more,’ he told her meaningfully.

Sam’s heart gave a funny little painful thud. ‘I could do those things with you,’ she forced herself to say.

He was looking away from her now, but she could see the way his mouth hardened.

‘Yeah? The fact that you think so is just one of the reasons why you’re too young for me. You haven’t been to those places yet, and I need a
woman who has. A woman, Sam, not a naïve girl. And even if I could find her I’d have no right to ask her to share my life, and even less right to ask you.’

Sam gave a small whimper of anguish. ‘You can’t say that.’

‘Yes I can.’ He swore savagely beneath his breath. ‘Have you any idea what the average life expectancy is for someone working on UXBs?’ he demanded.

Now it was her turn to look away from him. She knew perfectly well how dangerous what he was doing was and that on average the lives of men working on the ground in bomb disposal were measured in months and not years, and that that was why most of the men were unattached.

She heard him exhale, then saw his chest expand as he refilled his lungs with air. Out of nowhere she was filled with a longing to touch him, to press her hand against his flesh and to feel the beat of his heart beneath it. She knew that for as long as the war continued she would never be free of her fears for his safety, and that her love for him was what chained her to that fear.

‘I should never have started any of this.’

‘Yes, you should,’ Sam told him.

‘I should have left you to do your growing up with someone else. You’re such a kid still.’

‘No. I’m not.’

He looked at her in derision. ‘You didn’t even know that I wanted you until I kissed you, did you?’

‘No … but …’

‘But what?’

‘I knew when you did kiss me how good it felt and how much I wanted you.’

It was the wrong thing to have said – if she had still been that girl he was deriding. But she wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t wrong for the woman she now was. For her, that woman, it was entirely right, and she could feel that in the grip of his fingers on her arms, see it in the glitter of his eyes, hear it in the rapid way he was breathing.

‘Don’t,’ he groaned. ‘That’s one hell of a dangerous thing to say to a man, especially when he’s been thinking the thoughts about you that I’ve been thinking these last few weeks.’

He was weakening, Sam could sense it.

‘We’re living in dangerous times,’ she reminded him. ‘Life is dangerous and precious, too precious to be wasted, so why shouldn’t love be the same?’

There, she’d said it, that one small word that changed everything between them beyond any going back.

‘Love!’ He breathed the word as though it was torturing him, sliding one hand into her hair, his fingers splayed against the back of her head as he twisted her round so that she was half lying against him; half lying
beneath
him, the weight of his torso pressing her into the leather seat whilst he kissed her fiercely and possessively, teaching her the potent intimacies of kissing as easily as he had shown her the sensuality of dancing. But even more extraordinary to her than how he felt about her
was her own uninhibited and eager response to him, her complete willingness to be swept up and possessed by the feelings he had aroused within her. It was like flying, Sam decided helplessly, dizzy with joy and excitement, a kind of freedom and delight that took her soaring to heights that giddied her, into an atmosphere where what she breathed released bubbles of intoxication into her veins.

‘You haven’t the first idea of what love is, or what it does to a man.’

Her heart was thudding so heavily she felt sure he must be able to feel it. ‘Then show me,’ she urged him softly.

She could see shock, followed by excitement, darkening his eyes. He exhaled again as though in defeat.

‘You’re playing with fire now,’ he warned her. ‘Do you know that?’

Mutely Sam shook her head, although she knew perfectly well what he meant. He might call her naïve, but she wasn’t that naïve.

‘I’ve been wanting you like this ever since that first night,’ Johnny was telling her, softly rubbing the pad of his thumb over the swollen contours of her mouth and then smiling when he saw her response to his touch. ‘Even though I’ve fought like hell not to. All that blood I’ve lost must have weakened me, and now look what’s happened.’