The Light Over London(19)

She thumbed past the first entry and began to read.

15 February 1941

Kate’s wish was granted. I went to the dance dressed in her crepe, which really does suit her better even though she said it fit her too tightly in the chest three times before we’d even left her house. But I went, and would you know, something actually happened there. A real, honest-to-goodness exciting thing. I hardly know where to start, but I’ll try, for I think this was one of those nights I’ll want to remember for the rest of my days.

I met Paul. He’s an officer and a pilot. I thought at first he was one of Kate’s admirers, but then he hardly looked at her all evening. Instead he danced with me. At first he overwhelmed me, as though he could see straight through to my soul and know exactly what it was I was thinking. I’ve never felt that before.

When he returned me to Kate and her airmen, she wouldn’t stop asking questions, and I became flustered. How do you explain something you can’t seem to understand yourself? But when I stepped outside for some air, he followed me. We talked, and he kissed me. It was sweet, all butterflies and heat. When we went back inside, all I wanted to do was dance with him, and we hardly left each other’s side all evening.

We danced and danced, as though there was no worry and no war. I could see Kate watching us, wondering what it was that had happened when we both disappeared outside. When she and I finally had to pull our coats on to cycle home, she tried to ask, but I pretended the wind made it too hard to hear. By the time we made it back to the village, the edge of a storm had caught us up in the wind and rain, and she had to pedal home or risk being soaked through. I’ve never been so happy for rain in my life.

I’m not ashamed of having kissed Paul, although Mum would be horrified if she found out. She is so determined that Gary and I should be married after the war, no matter how many times I tell her I could never think of him that way. To me he’ll always be the little boy tumbling over his undone shoelaces as he raced around at the back of the pack of neighborhood children.

There was always something different about Gary. The solicitor’s son. The most well-off boy in the village. While we ran wild in cotton smocks and knitted wool sweaters always threatening to burst at the elbows, he had little navy sport coats and crisp white shirts. He was a Moss, and we all knew that meant he was better than us, even if he never made us feel it. Perhaps because he knew that it really didn’t matter what his father did or that he lived in the big white house with a stone gate around it at the edge of town. He was never going to leave the village either.

I know Mum worked hard to become friends with Mrs. Moss, although it’s strange, because surely Mrs. Moss sees that Mum only wants to be friends with her because she has the largest house in the village. Still, I know Mrs. Moss encourages Gary and asks him in every letter if he’s written to me, which is why I receive one a week like clockwork, bland enough to make it through the censor with hardly a mark.

Paul is the very opposite of bland. Handsome and erudite, he seems worldly in a way no one else here does. He told me he comes from London and went to Cambridge for university. He dances beautifully, and he’s easily the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. I still wonder why he chose me out of all of the girls at the dance, but when he kissed me, it was as though it was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do.

That is what I couldn’t explain to Kate as we rode home. To her, the airmen are nothing more than a constantly changing buffet of admirers. From time to time, she’ll allow one of them to buy her an ice cream or take her for a walk along the beach, but she knows better than most how to keep them at arm’s length. When I asked her about it once, she told me it isn’t wise to become too attached. They’re bound to be sent away from Cornwall at some point, and knowing that they’re out there on the battlefield when we’re at home safe is too difficult.





5


LOUISE


It was so easy for Louise to slip out of the house undetected while her mother hung out the washing on Monday afternoon she wondered why she hadn’t tried it before.

She’d worked earlier that day at Mrs. Bakeford’s, nipping home to have a lunch of a sausage, a shredded bit of one of the cabbages from Dad’s vegetable patch, and some bread Mum had baked fresh that morning, spread with a scraping of margarine. She’d choked down her glass of milk, which had been reconstituted from a powder that the Ministry of Food claimed tasted no different from the real thing. Louise would gladly have forsaken it, but her mother still set it out for her at every meal. It was easier to simply drink it than to argue.

The breeze off the Atlantic played with Louise’s brown hair as she stuck her hands into her dark green wool coat and buried her chin a little deeper in her muffler. The rains of the previous week had given way to a gloriously crisp day, the brilliant sun breaking through the winter gloom, but there was still a wicked bite in the air.

As she rounded the bend in the lane, she spotted Paul, tall and handsome in his dark uniform. Her heart leaped up when he turned, his eyes brightening. He threw away his cigarette and grinned. “There you are.”

He moved to kiss her on the cheek, but she pulled back, glancing around.

“We mustn’t. Not here,” she said. No one was out digging for victory in their vegetable patches, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching.

“Nosy neighbors?” he asked.