Avalanche of Daisies (14 page)

‘Just,' she told him, and when he grimaced, ‘well head an' shoulders then. I wouldn't show it to no one else. It'ud be mine.'

He ran a loving hand down the long curve of her naked spine. Without the boxiness of her clothes, she was all luscious curves, her flesh golden in the gaslight. He was bewitched by the sight and scent and sensation of her, those rounded arms so soft about his neck, those lovely sloping shoulders – which he hadn't suspected when they were squared by shoulder pads – that belly so wondrously rounded, those tip-tilted breasts so full and beautiful that he grew taut with desire simply to see them.

‘And you're mine,' he said, pulling her towards him. ‘All mine. I still can't believe it.'

‘I know,' she said, lifting her mouth to be kissed again. ‘Thass like a dream.'

From time to time, as they lay in one another's arms, the dream was interrupted by the steady drone of Allied bombers heading out to France and Germany, but neither of them spoke of it. Once they saw a squadron of Hurricanes hurtling through the sky on their way to strafe the German defences, but they watched without comment. They were out of the war for the time being and sated by pleasures great and small. And that was all they needed.

On Saturday it was so warm and they were so exhausted that they spent the morning out on the green, lolling about on the grass.

‘This is our first anniversary,' he said. ‘D'you realise that? We've been married a week.'

She smiled at him lazily, replete with happiness. ‘Happy anniversary!'

‘Yes,' he said, admiring her. ‘It is. You've caught the sun.'

‘So have you,' she told him, returning his admiration. ‘You got freckles all over your nose.'

‘I have
not,'
he protested and leant forward to kiss her into silence. But as he moved, he caught sight of a distant figure heading towards them down the footpath. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘There's somebody coming.'

‘There can't be,' she said, turning to look too. ‘There's nobody here but us an' nobody knows that, do they, except the milkman an' the greengrocer. An' your aunt Sis.'

But she was wrong. There was a postwoman peddling towards the green and she was waving a letter.

Steve's heart sank. ‘Maybe it's not for us,' he said, hoping against hope. ‘I mean, it could be for someone in one of the other bungalows. They could be coming down. For the weekend.' But of course it
was
for him, as he knew only too well, and it was in an official brown envelope, OHMS. He held it in his hand, waiting for the privacy to open it, afraid of what it contained.

Unfortunately the postwoman was chatty. ‘Here on holiday?' she asked.

‘Yes,' Barbara told her, after an anxious glance at Steve. ‘Thass right.'

‘You're not from round
these
parts, are you,' the postwoman observed. ‘I can tell.'

Barbara confessed to her Norfolk origins, and as the cheerful questioning continued, acknowledged that King's Lynn was a long way away, explained that they'd had a week's holiday and agreed that they'd ‘got the weather for it', while Steve withdrew further and further into his thoughts, holding the letter between finger and thumb and tapping it absent-mindedly against his leg. But he didn't open it until the postwoman had trundled round the bend in the path and was out of sight.

Barbara watched him as he read it. ‘Thass bad, ain't it?'

‘I been called back,' he told her, proud that his voice was calm. ‘I've to report to the Rail Transport Officer at Liverpool Street station by eighteen hundred hours tonight.'

Her face crumpled into distress. It was as if they were suddenly surrounded by guns, as if jack boots were kicking into their quiet house, trampling their lovely, fragile, short-lived happiness, as if he were being physically torn from her arms. ‘That ain't fair! They've took our last day! Our very last day. They could've left us
that.
What's a day to
them
?'

He pulled her into his arms to comfort her but now that she'd begun, she couldn't stop. ‘This bloody war!' she raged. ‘This bloody awful bloody war! Pullin' everyone apart. Turnin' us inside out. They don' care. They could've let us have our honeymoon. That wouldn't have hurt. One more day. Thass not so much to ask, is it? One more day. But no! They got to pull us apart. That ain't fair!'

He let her weep, kissing her hair and wiping away her tears with his thumbs, touched and torn and infinitely tender. Being sent to France was as intolerable to him as it was to her. ‘It has to be done,' he said.

‘I don' see why!'

‘You do,' he said gently. He wasn't rebuking her. It was a statement of fact, spoken most lovingly. ‘We all do. It's got to be done.'

She admitted it, even in the throes of her distress, sniffing back her tears, struggling for control. ‘Yes, all right. I know. I know I shouldn't be goin' on like this …'

He kissed her salty mouth. ‘Come to bed,' he begged.

So they retreated to their kingdom to make love for the last time, as much for comfort as desire. But this time, they were driven by an anguished greed that left them both unsatisfied and weeping.

‘Don't cry,' he begged, hiding his face in her hair so that she couldn't see his own tears. ‘There'll be other times. They won't send us straight away.'

But neither of them really believed it and when he made to move away from her, she clung to him, begging him not to move, her face anguished. ‘Cuddle me! Please! Don't go.'

‘We shall miss our train,' he said, trying to be sensible.

‘There'll be another one. Please!'

He'd worked out exactly what train they had to catch so that he could escort her back to New Cross and call in and say goodbye to his parents. If they missed the next one, it would be a scramble, and he might be late reporting to the RTO. But how could he leave her, when her cheeks were damp with tears and she was clinging to him with such passion? So they stayed in one another's arms until they were both quieted and they'd heard the missed train come and go.

Then they got up and made their last pot of tea together and took refuge in chores, working in harmony and saying little, contained in a protective gentleness. They did the washing up, packed the trunk and the kitbag, folded the blankets, swept the floor, gathered the remains of their food into the shopping basket, took one last look at their pretty living room and left, locking the door on their dreams.

It was a sad journey back to New Cross. They sat side by side, holding hands like children, while he told her what he planned.

‘You can stay with Mum and Dad till I know where I've been sent. You'll get your wife's allowance – you cash it at the Post Office – and I've arranged for an extra seven shillings a week to be taken out of my pay for you, so you'll be all right. I'll write as soon as I get there. You'll have a letter first post on Monday, I promise. And as soon as I know where I've been
posted, we'll find a flat or a room or something near where I am, an' we can be together when I get time off.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes.' Trying to smile. But she could barely understand what he was saying.

They were still holding hands as they walked into his parents' flat in Childeric Road.

His father was in the kitchen sitting in his chair in the corner mending his work-boots. There was a card half full of blakeys on the table beside him and the air was sharp with the smell of newly cut leather. ‘You're back early,' he said. ‘We weren't expecting you till tomorrow.'

Steve explained, quickly and without emotion, suggested that Barbara could stay with them ‘for the time being. That's all right isn't it?' while Barbara stood by the kitchen table clutching the basket before her like a shield, remembering the way his mother had looked at her and knowing that this wasn't a good idea. But how could she tell him? In a matter of minutes they would be saying goodbye.

‘Leave it all to us, son,' Bob Wilkins said. ‘She can have your old room. She'll be all right with us, won't you Barbara. Now have you seen your mother, Steve?'

Steve admitted that he hadn't, explained that he had to catch the next train to London Bridge, avoided his father's eye because he was ashamed to be rushing off like this. ‘I've got two minutes to change,' he said, heading for his bedroom. ‘Give her my love. Tell her I'll write to her.'

Before Barbara could make up her mind whether she ought to go with him, he was back in the kitchen in full uniform with his kitbag over his shoulder. Then they were running down the road to the station, rushing to buy a platform ticket, struggling through the barrier, as the train steamed in.

She stood on the running board and he leant out of the window to kiss her goodbye, quietly and tenderly but without making a fuss. It was far too public for that
and there was too much noise, whistles blowing, doors slamming shut, people shouting at one another above the racket. But when the engine huffed into action and the train began to move, her face crumpled into misery no matter how hard she tried to control it.

‘Jump down, sweetheart,' he warned. ‘It'll be dangerous in a minute.'

She clung to him for the last torn seconds. ‘Write soon,' she begged.

‘It'll be the first thing I do,' he promised. ‘You'll be all right with Mum and Dad.' And he tried a joke. ‘I've left you plenty of reading material.'

‘What?' she said, as she jumped back onto the platform.

But it was too late for him to explain. The train was picking up speed, pulling them apart, the distance between them growing too far and too fast.

‘I'll see you soon,' he called. ‘I promise.'

But the engine was shrieking and she couldn't hear what he was saying.

There was nothing for her to do now but stand on the platform and wave as the train swept him away, shrinking his tanned face until it was nothing but a pale oval framed by the window. ‘I hate trains!' she cried into the noise of his leaving. He was out of earshot so she could say what she liked. ‘I hate trains an' I hate stations an' RTO's, an' platform tickets what won't let you leave the platform an' go with him, an' officers what won't let you finish your honeymoon, an' being left with your mother-in-law, an' everythin' to do with this bloody, bloody war.'

It was suddenly much colder and the sky above the station was ominous with rain cloud. Now that the train had gone the track was revealed in all its squalor, grease-black and full of litter, dog-ends, crushed cigarette packets, bits of paper so ancient they were as brown as dead leaves. They shouldn't allow that to get in such a state, she thought. Thass not hygienic. The
sight of it reminded her of the yard at home. And, suddenly and unaccountably, she was miserably homesick.

Now stop that gal, she said to herself. There haint no point standin' round in this nasty ol' station feeling sorry for yourself. You got a new life to lead now and you'd better get on with it.

Heather Wilkins was most upset when she got back from work that Saturday evening, hot, sweaty and bone-weary, to find that her son had come home a day early and left without seeing her. She knew instinctively that this was the invasion coming. It had to be. So how
could
he have gone without saying goodbye? When she might never see him again.

‘Why didn't you stop him?' she said angrily as she turned on the tap to wash her dirty hands.

The excuse sounded feeble even to
Bob's
ears. ‘He was in a rush.'

‘Rush?' she said, scrubbing hard to subdue her anxiety. ‘What d'you mean rush? He's never in a rush. Not our Steve. He has everything planned down to the last little detail. Always. He could've nipped in and seen me on his way to the station. That I
do
know. It wouldn't've taken him more than a minute.' Then she noticed the straw hat and the shopping basket standing beside the dresser and was suddenly and bitterly jealous. ‘I suppose
she
was with him. That's what it was.'

‘Well 'course she was,' Bob said. ‘She's his wife. And while we're on the subject, I've said she can stay here till they know where he's been posted.'

Heather's frown deepened. ‘Why can't she go home?' she said, shaking the water from her hands.

‘Her home's with Steve now,' he pointed out, doggedly patient. ‘It's only till she knows where he's gone. Then they'll get a room or a flat or something.'

The answer was sensible but she was still irritated. ‘I tell you what, Bob, I'm beginning to think the girls
were right. She
has
run away from home. I thought they'd got hold of the wrong end a' the stick at the wedding but I'm not so sure now. If she's going to stay here …'

Bob picked up his repair box and put it away in the broom cupboard, hoping to placate her by tidiness. ‘It'll only be for a little while,' he said.

She wasn't placated. ‘That's all very well. How long's a little while?'

His next answer made it impossible for her to argue any further. ‘Till they get a flat or till the invasion.'

So he'd worked it out too. ‘This is it then?' she asked, her face set. ‘Is that what you're saying?'

He answered calmly. ‘Looks like it.'

‘Does
she
know, d'you reckon?'

‘She never said nothing,' he told her cautiously. ‘Neither of 'em did, come to that. But like I told you, they was in a rush.'

She took her kitchen apron from its hook behind the door, put it on and started to unpack her shopping basket. ‘Oh well,' she said wearily, ‘I suppose she'd better stay, if that's what he wants.'

‘We won't say nothing about the invasion, will we.' It was half question, half command. ‘Let her tell
us
.'