Windflower Wedding. Elizabeth Elgin

pushed back his chair, put on his cap, then saluted and left the room, hoping with all his thudding heart that the colonel knew what he was talking about.

      Clockwork. He would say it over and over again. It would be his good-luck word. The submarine boys would get him there and someone would get him out. With the package. And he would want to know more about that package and about what he would do when he stood up to the ankles in sea water and the submarine lads were getting the hell out of it!

      He thought about the last war and men who were given no choice but to crawl over the tops of trenches into No Man’s Land through barbed wire and uncharted minefields, to face the machine gunners. His thoughts went back to a churchyard in Hampshire; to the grave of the man who had gone over the top many times. And in that moment he felt a strange, fatalistic calm and very near to Dickon Purvis, his father, who, if there really was a hereafter, would be looking down tonight on his son. And understanding.

      ‘Well, that’s everybody been and gone – well, almost everybody,’ Gracie sighed. ‘Drew and Kitty, and Tatty. And Daisy goes tomorrow.’

      ‘You’ve forgotten young Keth. He hasn’t been. And what about Bas, then?’ Catchpole demanded.

      ‘The idiot!’ Bas had decided not to take the one Sunday train to York, saying he would rather stay a few hours longer, then hitch a lift back to his billet at the Army Air Corps base at Burtonwood. ‘He was absent without leave, you know. Someone was covering for him, but I hope he made it back all right. Stupid!’ Gracie fretted, pushing her hoe angrily into a very small weed. ‘One of these days he’ll run into the Snowdrops and his feet won’t touch the ground!’

      ‘Snowdrops?’

      ‘Their military police. They call them that because they wear white gaiters and white helmets.’

      ‘Hm. Snowdrops is nice little flowers. Pretty and dainty – and welcome. You alus know winter is almost over when the snowdrops flower.’

      ‘Well, those military police are neither pretty nor dainty. Big bruisers, Bas says they are, and some of them real nasty with it. And he didn’t phone me last night, either!’

      ‘Last night,’ said Catchpole severely, ‘he was busy thumbing a lift back to camp – or avoiding those Snowdrop lads. On the other hand, he might have got hisself caught …’

      ‘Oh, Mr Catchpole, you don’t think he has?’

      ‘He could have, but I hope not.’ He would miss his tins of tobacco.

      ‘And so do I! Going AWOL is a serious thing.’

      ‘It is. In the last war they shot ’em for it, but they’re a bit more civilized now. Reckon these days he’d only get three months in prison!’

      ‘You’re joking, Mr Catchpole!’ It didn’t bear thinking about; three months without seeing Bas!

      ‘Happen I am, lass. There’ll be a phone call for you tonight, don’t fret. He’s as taken with you as you are with him. He’ll get through.’

      ‘He can please himself!’ Gracie jammed her hoe deep into the ground so it stood upright between the rows of early chrysanthemums, shivering and swaying. ‘I’m going to make tea,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Not that you deserve any!’

      Head high, she made for the potting shed, heels crunching the gravel. Then she filled the little iron kettle at the standtap and set it to boil on the hob, taking deep, calming breaths, chiding herself because she’d let Mr Catchpole get under her skin, because there was more than an element of truth in what he’d said. She was taken with Bas Sutton. She looked forward to his visits, to dancing with him and kissing him. And the way he smiled made delicious little shivers run all the way from her toes to her nose.

      Yet shivers apart, she always managed to count to ten; always refused to say she loved him and always said no, very prettily, each time he asked her to marry him. She was losing count of the times he’d said, ‘Marry me?’; losing count of the number of times she had closed her eyes, taken a deep breath and thought, really hard, about Daisy and Keth being so far apart and them not knowing when they would meet again. And Drew, fretting because Kitty could be sent to London to work for ENSA. And as for poor Tatty and Tim …

      She tipped the twist of tea and sugar into the pot, determined not to get upset next time Mr Catchpole teased her about Bas or blush furiously or say things she didn’t mean because she was almost sure she could fall in love with him, though not for anything would she admit it to a soul!

      She glared at the kettle, willing it to boil and all the time thinking about Bas and the Snowdrops and hoping they hadn’t stopped him and asked him for his leave pass. Because Bas getting caught just didn’t bear thinking about!

       6

      Daisy removed the On Leave disc from the hook beneath her name, replacing it with one bearing the words In Quarters, Cabin 4A. Then she glanced at the criss-crossed letter board. None there for her, but in all probability Lyn had taken them.

      Returning from leave was less traumatic now, she acknowledged, as the cramped familiarity of Cabin 4A reached out to her. This, for most of the year, was home; this small space with room only for a two-tier bunk, a chest of drawers and two wooden chairs she had shared for a year with Lyn who would soon be returning from watch. And shared it amicably, too. They were firm friends, their only cross words caused by Drew who was now engaged to Kitty. His feet-first fall into love with Kitty was sudden and thorough. Exquisite disbelief rocked him on his heels to find that after five years apart, his tomboy Kentucky cousin had grown into a head-turning beauty. The engagement pleasantly shocked everyone who knew him – with the exception of Lyn Carmichael, who was still devastated by it.

      Daisy removed her hat, then pulled her fingers through her hair, smiling to see two letters on her pillow just as she expected and a sheet of notepaper on which was written large and red, ‘WELCOME BACK. YOU’VE HAD IT, CHUM!’ Had her leave, that was, until the New Year. Lyn, on the other hand, would start hers next week, which was a crafty move when you considered she would miss her week of night duties.

      Daisy smiled, pushed the note into her drawer, determined to leave it on Lyn’s pillow in two weeks’ time, and carefully opened the two envelopes. Then she kicked off her shoes and lay back on her bunk to read them at least twice. The first time to savour their contents; to close her eyes and recall kisses and whispered love words; the second time to read between the lines for small phrases, names deliberately misused; any irregularity, no matter how small, that would hint at something the Censor had not seized upon.

      Yet there was nothing, save that he loved her, missed her, wanted her. Nothing about the work he did in Washington nor if there was even the slightest chance he might be sent back to England with the same indecent haste They had sent him away. But They could do anything They wanted and usually did. Without explanation; without giving Keth even a forty-eight-hour leave pass to let them say goodbye. By the time this war was over, They would have a great deal to answer for!

      A glance at her watch told her it was time for evening standeasy or, had she been a civilian, a bedtime drink and a snack. She had not eaten since midday and all at once realized she was hungry. She wondered as she spread viciously red jam on her bread what news Lyn would have and thought that in all probability there would be none. These days some of the sparkle had left Lyn’s eyes and a lot of her joie de vivre, which was a pity because she and Drew seemed so good together. Until Kitty, that was …

      She balanced her plate on her mug and walked carefully back to Cabin 4A. Eating in cabins was forbidden but rules were there to be broken. Life would be very dull without the occasional tilt at Authority and at the moment the common room was cold and cheerless without the fire which could not be lit until October because of the shortage of coal.

      It made her think of the leaping log fire in the black-leaded grate at Keeper’s Cottage and