Whisper on the Wind (25 page)

Frowning, Arnie gazed up over the folds of the handkerchief. The smell from the oven was tantalizing and unmistakable. Meat and potato pie, that’s what, and rhubarb and custard, he shouldn’t wonder.

‘It was only a baby tooth,’ he said airily.

‘So you weren’t frightened, Arnie? Not even a little bit?’

‘Nah,’ he retorted scathingly, pushing the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘Hey, Aunty Polly,’ he grinned, opening his mouth wide. ‘Want to see the hole?’

After they had found a room, they spent the remainder of the afternoon walking the walls that circled the old part of the city.

Roz had held her breath as the door was opened to Paul’s knock and she had forced her head high, returning the smile of the young woman who wished them a good afternoon and asked them to come inside.

She had only two rooms for letting, she apologized, and one was already spoken for; would they mind the smaller one, at the top? They could take a look at it first, if they wished?

Paul had said that wouldn’t be necessary, that he was sure it would be fine – without asking how much it was, even.

He’d signed the little book that served as a register, then;
Mr and Mrs Paul Rennie. Bath.
He’d signed it firmly and surely; smiling at her gently as he laid down the pen.

She sighed, remembering, leaning her elbows on the walls; loving him, loving this day.

‘Do you suppose they ever envisaged our war – those men, I mean, who once stood guard on these walls?’ She frowned. ‘What would they have thought, those bowmen, if they’d seen your Lancaster flying over, Paul?’

‘That the end of the world had come, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He laughed, taking her hand.

She leaned closer. She would remember today; would remember sights and sounds and scents. Every smallest thing she would photograph mentally; the blueness of the sky, the blossom in the gardens below them, the chestnut trees breaking into bright green leaf. And ahead of them the Minster, standing uncaring like a great, ages-old watchdog keeping guard over the city.

‘Shall we come back here when we’re very old, and remember today?’

‘Fifty years from now, you mean?’ He laughed at his use of her own favourite phrase. ‘It’ll be almost the year two thousand. So many years ahead, will you still love me?’

‘You know I will. What shall we do tonight. Paul –
before
, I mean …’

She would like to dance, if they could find somewhere. She liked dancing with Paul; the tallness of him and the delight of their closeness. Or would they just walk? She didn’t really care what they did as long as she didn’t have to leave him. But tonight there would be no last kiss, no parting. She closed her eyes, sighing. Even tomorrow morning he would still be there.

‘Why the sigh?’

‘Not a sigh; not really.’ She smiled up at him, eyes bright with love. ‘I was just letting a little of the happiness out of me, that’s all. I’d have gone off pop! if I hadn’t.’

‘I love you. Did I ever tell you?’

‘Often. And I’ll never love you more than I do now, Paul Rennie, though I’ll try. I promise I’ll always try.’ She closed her eyes to hold back the tears; the lovely, silly, happy tears, and begged her god not to ask too high a price for this wonderful, shining happiness. ‘Fifty years from now, I’ll still be trying. And did you mean it at Micklegate Bar when you asked me to marry you?’

‘Did you mean it when you said you would?’

‘You know I did and oh, Paul, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could announce it in the paper? Something like, on the twenty-eighth of April, 1942, at Micklegate Bar at about four in the afternoon, Paul Rennie, RAFVR to Rosalind Fairchild. But we can’t. Not yet.’

‘We’ll tell them, soon. When I’ve got the last one behind me; when we’ve finished our tour.’

‘Yes. I’ll take you home then to meet Gran. And we’ll tell her we want to be married. It’s all right for you, Paul; you’re over twenty-one. But I’ve still got two years to go. She’ll understand, though. She’ll let me.’

It was growing dark as they crossed the Ouse Bridge, walking hands clasped to Micklegate and the bed-and-breakfast place. When the clouds parted they saw the moon, full and bright, all at once lighting hidden corners, giving shape to old buildings, towers and churches.

‘I’d forgotten the moon, Paul. Moonlight sort of hides the war, doesn’t it; makes everywhere look mediaeval again.’

‘I hadn’t – forgotten it, I mean. It’s a bomber’s moon.’

‘Not tonight. Not for you, it isn’t. And tell me why you’re smiling?’

‘I was thinking about when I was signing the register. You pulled your gloves off and I nearly yelled,
“Don’t!”
I thought she’d see your left hand, but you’d swapped your ring over. And I do love you, Roz. I keep wanting to tell you. Crazy, aren’t I?’

‘No. Never that.’ They had come to a phone-box. ‘Look – can you walk on a little?’ There was a call she must make and she didn’t want him to hear her when she said she was stranded in York. Lying was bad enough; to have Paul hear would cheapen tonight, and that was far worse. ‘Just want to ring home.’

‘You’ll be all right, Roz?’ He understood and his face showed concern.

‘I’ll be all right. Just wait for me at the corner.’

Turning her back on him she reached into her pocket for the two sixpenny pieces she had put there especially, then lifting the receiver she asked for the Alderby St Mary number.

‘Have one shilling ready, please,’ the operator said. ‘I’m ringing the number now.’

‘I’m sorry, Gran,’ she whispered inside her as she waited, breath indrawn, for the phone to be answered. ‘So very sorry to do this to you …’

The room at the top of the tall, narrow house in Micklegate was small and the big old-fashioned bed took up most of it making it seem even smaller. At the window, the blackout curtains had already been drawn and the rose-patterned curtains that matched the bedspread pulled over them. On the wall opposite stood a washstand with a bowl and jug, a white, fluffy towel on the rail at its side. But because of rationing, there was no soap in the rosebud china dish.

‘Paul – I haven’t brought any soap with me.’

There had been a half-used tablet in the bathroom but she couldn’t have taken it. Gran would have known then, wouldn’t she?

‘It’s all right.’ He opened the small case and took out his toilet bag. ‘I’ve got some. And it’ll be all right. Don’t worry, sweetheart.’

‘I’m not. I won’t. Gran didn’t believe me, though, when I rang. I told her I’d missed the last bus and the last train as well. She didn’t
say
she didn’t, but I knew. She sounded surprised, and hurt.’

‘She must have been, and I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I wish it could have been different. If there hadn’t been a war; if I wasn’t flying, we’d have all the time in the world.’

‘But there
is
a war, Paul, and we might not have time.’

‘I know. But it
will
come right for us. That Lancaster is a lucky old kite. When we’ve done our thirtieth we’ll be taken off operational flying – maybe they’ll send us somewhere as instructors. Could be we’ll have a whole year away from ops.’

‘Mm.’ A year was a long, long time. When you lived each day as it came, a year was forever, almost. ‘And, darling, I know that tonight isn’t our first time, but it’s the first time we’ll be properly together and I feel just a little – well, edgy. I want it to be perfect, you see.’

‘It will be. No snatching tonight. And no picking bits of hay off your coat.’

‘There’ll be tomorrow morning, too.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what’s going to be so wonderful – opening my eyes and finding you still there.’ She took his face, his dear, tired face in her hands. ‘Fifty years from now we’ll come back to this place and fifty years from now I’ll still be loving you. But till then, we’ll always have tonight and this lovely, lovely room. Just you and me.’

She wouldn’t think about tomorrow; wouldn’t think of the hurt in Gran’s eyes nor Polly’s button-round, indignant mouth. Tomorrow was a lifetime away. All that mattered was here and now when her name, just for tonight, was Rosalind Rennie.

Hester Fairchild lay in the pink-eiderdowned bed, worrying about the phone-call from York. Roz hadn’t missed the last train, except by choice. Roz had known, when she left the house that afternoon, she’d thought as she replaced the receiver, that she wouldn’t be home tonight.

After the phone-call, a suddenly-old woman had gone to her granddaughter’s room, opening drawers and cupboards, doing things she would never before have dreamed of. And everything had been there; her dressing gown hanging behind the door, her slippers beside the bed where she always kept them, and beneath the pillow – and she had blushed as her hand searched there – Roz’s pyjamas lay, folded neatly.

Could it be, she frowned, that Roz had
not
gone to York prepared to stay the night? Perhaps it was as she had said – her watch had stopped and she really was stranded there. She had been glad that her suspicions were without foundation. Then she opened the bathroom door and her eyes were drawn to the tumbler beside the wash-basin and the white toothbrush that should have been there, and wasn’t.

‘Why couldn’t you have told me, Roz?’ she had whispered. ‘Why must it have come to this?’

Now she tossed unsleeping, the moonlight making patterns through the uncurtained window, shining mockingly on the loneliness of the woman who lay there. Take care, Roz. She sent her anguish winging. If you are with him, with the airman from Peddlesbury, tell me about him when you come home. Don’t lie to me. Trust me? Believe me when I say I know what it’s like to love a man until it hurts – and to love and want him still.

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and she let it slide unhindered, down her cheek. For the life of her she didn’t know who that tear was for. For Roz? For herself? Either way it was wrung from the very deeps of sadness, and tasted bitter on her lips.

That same moonlight touched the house in Micklegate and lit the little top room. Roz had pulled back the curtains so it should light their nakedness and stand witness to their love, make it special. She had wanted to see him, too; to remember the need and love in his eyes.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly two, I think.’

‘Don’t go to sleep yet, Paul.’ They mustn’t waste a moment of this night in sleep.

‘I love you.’ He raised himself above her, chin on hand, looking at her shoulders, her mouth, sensuous now; her small, round breasts, the nipples hard from wanting him and red like cherries, after their loving.

‘I wonder what the world is doing out there,’ she murmured. ‘I want it to be written in the sky for everyone to see.
Paul and Roz. They love, they have loved, they will love …
’

‘Get out of bed and look.’

‘No. I don’t want to leave you.’ She wanted him again.

‘Was it good?’

‘It was good, Paul. Tonight, we should make a love-child.’ All babies should be made in moments this good, this perfect.

‘No. Not yet. I love you too much.’

‘But we will have children, Paul?’

‘We’ll have children. When there’s no more war.’

‘Everything’s so quiet.’ She reached up to kiss the hollow at his throat. ‘The world’s holding its breath, for us.’

She traced the outline of his jaw with her fingertips, ran her fingers through tousled hair that made him look like a boy awakened from sleep.

‘The moon’s watching us, though. It’s a lovers’ moon tonight, not a bomber’s moon.’

‘It’s going to be all right for us, you know that, don’t you, Roz? That night when Jock bought it – thank God I had you, darling. I thought I’d never fly again but I’m sure, now. Every time we get back it’s thumbs up for another one behind us.’

‘We were lovers that night. The first time, remember? It was so cold. Not like now, in this beautiful room.’

‘It’s a very ordinary room, woman. When we’re married we’ll have a bridal suite – do it properly.’

‘When we’re married we’ll come back here. There’ll have to be a moon and we’ll arrange for the world to stand still, like it is now …’

The world outside was not standing still. In other, more ordinary rooms, children cried in the night and were comforted. In the sleeping streets of that old, old city, policemen walked their beats and women on switchboards blinked sleepy eyes, waiting for morning and the end of their watch, another blessedly quiet watch, thanks be. And air-raid wardens wondered if the ration would run to another pot of tea, for this was the ungodly hour when eyes longed to close and bodies were cold from fatigue. A hot, reviving mug of tea would help keep them awake until morning came.

The air-raid warden was stirring his tea, wishing there was sugar to spare to spoon into it when the telephone at his side began to ring.

‘’Allo. ARP Priory Street.’

‘Purple alert,’ said the voice. ‘Repeat. Purple alert.’

The air-raid warden said ‘Ta’, picked up his pen, dipping it ponderously in the ink bottle, then wrote
Purple alert. 0236. 29th April
in the log book.

Hostile aircraft, and a purple alert meant they were only minutes away. Mind, it’d probably be Hull again, poor sods. There was nothing here for Jerry to waste his bombs on.