Whisper on the Wind. Elizabeth Elgin
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in love, and you don’t know it, she wanted to cry. Instead she said, ‘Don’t think I’ll be coming to the dance. Most of the girls at the hostel are going, but I want to get properly settled in, and wash my hair tonight. I’ll be there next time, though.’
It was strange that a married woman could go to dances now without her husband – provided she went with a crowd and came home with a crowd. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.
‘Don’t really know. This is my first day here, too, but we’ll be all right once Mat decides what to do with us. Think we’d better pop over and ask. Leave your gum-boots at the door, by the way. Grace doesn’t allow them in the kitchen. And Kath – I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Me, too.’
She was. And happy to be living in the country, even though it was winter and unbearably cold. There was such a feeling of rightness about being here, of belonging, that she felt sure she had been born of country stock. She saw nothing of the drabness of dead, cold earth nor of winter-bare trees, only the beauty of skeletal oaks and beeches, stark against a grey velvet sky. This morning, the early light had gilded everything it touched so that all around her had looked like a picture in a shop window.
She wasn’t just happy and glad and sure, now, that she had been right to become a landgirl – there was something else, too; something she couldn’t define or even begin to understand. Yet it was there, churning inside her like the day she had volunteered, and yesterday, when the front door banged behind her and she had known there was no going back. Now it was there again, only stronger than ever before; a feeling of joy waiting to explode; a certainty that one day, just around a corner, something wonderful awaited her. It made her feel glad and afraid and happy and guilty.
She swallowed hard and kicked off her gum-boots. Guilty? Whatever could there be to feel guilty about?
‘Wait!’ she called urgently. ‘Wait for me, Roz!’
Huddled into her coat, Roz waited at the door of the gymnasium in which the dances were held. Already the music had started, but she always slipped away as the local girls and the landgirls from Peacock Hey climbed down from the RAF truck and filed through the heavily-curtained doors. No use their meeting inside when the need to hold each other and kiss away the time between was so urgent. Always, the first to arrive would wait in the darkness and tonight it was she, Roz, who stood unmoving, ears straining against the music for a whispered, ‘Roz? You there, darling?’
She dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat, calling back the night of their meeting, marvelling at the intensity of their love. She had never thought it could be like this; never imagined that loving this deeply could have so changed her life.
When she was very small and her prayers had been said, she would whisper, ‘And please let me marry a prince, God, so Granny and me can live at Ridings for ever.’ And later, when she understood how large bills could be and how very little money they had she would yearn, Wouldn’t it be lovely to fall in love with someone rich; someone who would care for Ridings as we do …
But all that changed the night she and Paul met. Even the old house and the need to hold on to it would come a poor second, had she been asked to choose between it and Paul.
Now she was in love; deeply and for ever in love as Gran had been and most times her happiness was shining and golden. There were the bad bits, she admitted, when the squadron took to the air over Peddlesbury and she was sick with anxiety until they were back and the phone rang and a voice whispered, ‘Hi! I love you.’ She never minded so brief a message; not when it really meant he was safely home, and that soon they would meet.
But what would happen now with the morning milk-round to be done and she no longer able to wait beside the phone to snatch it up immediately it began to ring, Roz worried. She couldn’t ask Gran to take a message because Gran didn’t know about Paul, and to wait for a call at the phone box in the village during the milk-round wouldn’t work, even with Kath to help, because she never knew when he would be back. She determined to talk to Paul about it. There had to be some other way he could let her know he was all right.
She heard his footfall on the gravel – that was something else about being in love, knowing the way your man walked, even in the blackout. She coughed and he called, ‘Roz? Sweetheart?’ All at once everything was all right again and they were touching and kissing and oh, dear, sweet Heaven, how she loved him.
‘I missed you,’ she whispered.
‘Two days?’ His laugh was indulgent.
‘Two hours,’ she murmured, ‘is too long. They’re getting worse, Paul, the bits between.’
Practically all she did between their meetings was fervently wish away the hours and days until they were together again.
‘Why can’t we be married, Paul?’
‘Because I’m flying and you aren’t twenty-one.’
‘That’s no excuse, and you know it. And it isn’t what I meant. You know what I’m trying to say.’
‘Sssssh.’ He tilted her chin, searching with his mouth for hers, but she jerked her head aside.
‘No, darling! I won’t be shushed! It’s getting unbearable, the way I want you!’
‘And you think I don’t want you? Haven’t you thought it might be every bit as bad for me? When I’m flying I’m thinking, “Christ, I was mad to get into this mob. Suppose we don’t make it back? Suppose I never see her again …”’
‘Then why, darling, when we love each other so much?’
‘Because it wouldn’t be fair to you. What kind of a mess would you be in if something went wrong, then I didn’t get back?’
‘If you didn’t come back, don’t you think it’s all the more reason for us to have loved – really loved?’
‘Roz, sweetheart. You might get pregnant and I might be killed.’
‘Don’t!’ She stiffened in his arms, sudden fear taking her. ‘Don’t ever say that word again – not ever! I love you, Paul Rennie. I want to be with you always. Fifty years from now, I want to be with you!’
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was low with regret.
‘And I’m sorry, too, so let’s not talk about it any more – well, not tonight.’ She pressed close again, touching his chin, his cheek, the tip of his nose with little teasing kisses. ‘Only I do love you so. And I want you. Nothing will change that.’
‘And I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I want you, too.’
He unbuttoned his greatcoat then wrapped her into it, pulling her even closer. Their lips met and both knew the need to belong and both silently accepted its inevitability.
Roz stood contented against him. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. They would be lovers. The time would come and they would each recognize the moment. If she got pregnant and if she were left alone, then she would manage somehow. Women usually did. Only never to have belonged, even briefly, would be unbearable.
Presently she stirred in his arms. ‘Let’s go into the dance,’ she whispered.
3 1942
A crescent moon lay pale in the sky; the early morning air was sharp. Another year, a new, exciting beginning. Kath pedalled briskly, more sure of the road now, thinking back to the happiest Christmas she had ever known.
It had started with the same too-early call, for even on Christmas Day farm animals must be fed and watered, the cows milked, and she had done the morning round with Roz, touched to find greetings cards and small gifts left beside empty bottles.
When they had finished