18 JANUARY 1940: The English Channel
1 FEBRUARY 1940: Wahagnies, France
13 APRIL 1940: Mousehole, Cornwall
22 APRIL 1940: Northern France
14 MAY 1940: A Road Near the River Ath
15 MAY 1940: Waterloo, Belgium
19 MAY 1940: A Road Near Gaurain-Ramecroix
23 MAY 1940: The Road to Hazebrouck
24 MAY 1940: The Road to Hazebrouck
25 MAY 1940: Hazebrouck, northern France
3rd SEPTEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage
9 SEPTEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage
22 SEPTEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage
6 OCTOBER 1940: Blythe Cottage
11 NOVEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage
CHRISTMAS DAY 1940: Blythe Cottage
19 JANUARY 1941: Blythe Cottage
6 SEPTEMBER 1941: Thurlestone Sands, Devon
ENGLAND & FRANCE
SEPTEMBER 1938 – MAY 1940
Dear Aunt D.,
I’ve fallen madly in love with Nancy Claire Whelan. You’ve every right to laugh when you read that, but I’m terribly happy to have found someone so fond of me, who leaves everyone else I’ve met in the cold. I’m sure you’ve seen her riding her bicycle about town. She lives down the road from you at Blythe Cottage. She is an only child – and a redhead! Her father is in the Revenue Department of the civil service. She was at school in Oxford so she knows it well and she has also lived in France and Germany. She speaks the languages, she sings and acts, she’s intelligent, pretty and, a thing I envy her for, has a good and interesting job.
He lifts the pen and looks out of the window. Outside, a soft rain is falling. Just thinking of her makes him want to dance around the room. But he doesn’t want to tell his aunt everything.
Meeting her was a strange and fateful coincidence . . .
Martin opens his eyes. There’s a thudding pain in his head, as though someone has inserted a fist into the back of his skull and is trying to force the knuckles out through his eyeballs. He groans and rolls over. Fragments of the previous evening float to the surface of his alcohol-curdled brain, like bubbles in a pond. They’d started at the Red Lion, across the street from Whichert House, tankard after tankard of warm beer followed by shots of Bell’s. Hugh Saunders, who is also up at Oxford, had driven over from Gerrards Cross, one of a network of friends in south Buckinghamshire Martin got to know while staying with his Aunt Dorothy during the school holidays. As children, they rode bikes together, played golf and tennis, and later courted the same girls. A couple of old friends had also come down from Aylesbury. It’s the holidays. Four weeks away from Oxford University where Martin is about to start his second year. Four weeks with no essays to write or tutorials to attend. Aunt D. and the rest of the family are off fly-fishing in Scotland. He can come and go as he pleases, stay up as late as he wants, drink too much.
From the Red Lion they’d driven to the Royal Standard of England: a cavalcade of cars swerving down darkened lanes. Hugh bet him half a crown that he’d get to the pub first. ‘Nobody beats the Bomb!’ Martin shouted, as he leapt into his racing-green Riley sports car, pulled his goggles down and raced off down the narrow lanes, throwing the Bomb into blind corners at sixty miles an hour, Hugh’s headlights so close to his rear bumper that Martin kept thinking at any second Hugh’s Alvis would come crashing through the back window. On the hill down from Forty Green, the crazy fool had tried to overtake him! Their spoked wheels almost touching, it was all Martin could do to keep the Bomb from mounting the hedgerow.
At the Royal Standard, they’d laughed and told stupid jokes about girls,