On one side of the trunk is a heart-shaped hole from a lightning strike. The wood is still blackened, though the seasons have long since washed away any trace of soot or charcoal. On stormy days, they have sometimes squeezed inside and stood pressed against each, kissing and giggling in the dark, like two children playing in a cubbyhole under the stairs, as the wind shook the leaves above their heads and the branches creaked and scraped against each other.
Martin spreads the rug under the tree and they lie down, staring up through the canopy of leaves. A cloud floats across the sun, the sky blackens and a few drops of rain begin to fall. Nancy pulls her cashmere cardigan tighter around her.
‘What do you want to be . . . ?’ Nancy lets the question hang in the air.
‘ . . . when I grow up?’ Martin laughs.
‘Well, let’s start with when you leave Oxford.’
‘I don’t want to be a lawyer, for a start.’
‘That’s what you’re studying, isn’t it?’
‘I know. But I find it so dull.’ He sits up and lights a cigarette. ‘I’d love to write . . . ’
‘Poetry? Like your uncle?’
‘Not sure I have the talent.’ He blows a smoke ring, then swallows it. ‘How about you?’
‘I think I can confidently predict that typing in an insurance office is not going to be my life’s work.’ She sits up next to Martin, clasps her knees. ‘By the way, I got that part I auditioned for in London.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ Martin enthuses. ‘With the Players’ Company?’
Nancy nods. ‘It’s just a small, walk-on part. But I’ll have to attend the rehearsals, so I’ll get a chance to see how it’s all done. Luckily, they’re all in the evening.’
They fall silent, each lost in their thoughts. Then Martin reaches over and kisses her. Nancy closes her eyes and lies back. His kisses become more passionate, and he begins to slide his hand up her thigh. She pulls away, but he grabs her and carries on trying to reach up under her skirt.
She sits up abruptly and straightens her clothes. ‘Tino, we’re at the beginning of a journey.’ She takes his hand and strokes it. ‘There is so much more to find out about each other.’ She kisses him on the tip of his nose. ‘And if we go too fast, then the happiness . . . ’ she looks into his eyes ‘ . . . and pleasure that could be ours – should be ours – might be spoiled.’ She knits her eyebrows together. ‘I want us to be special.’
‘Me, too,’ Martin replies. He pulls a slim volume of poetry out of the picnic basket, searches for the page. She lies back, staring up into the branches of the hollow oak. A wood pigeon coos, as Martin reads, clear and unfaltering from ‘Our True Beginnings’ by Wrey Gardiner.
Her hands are clasped in the blue mantle of heaven
And the sea, her haven, is flecked with the white of love
‘That’s how I feel about us.’ He brings his lips to hers, his heart thumping in his chest at what he is about to say. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’ Nancy kisses him. Deep and long. ‘The very white of love.’
Familiar stations flash by in a blur of rain. Seer Green and Jordans. Gerrards Cross. West Ruislip. Martin has managed to get back to Whichert House for another weekend before term ends in December. They sit side by side, legs touching, hands clasped. It’s Nancy’s daily commute to her job as a secretary at an insurance firm in Holborn. Now he is sharing it with her. At Marylebone, they get on the bus to Oxford Circus, sit up top in the front seat, like excited children, watching London scroll across the glass screen of the double-decker’s window. She has a new outfit: a little black dress, with a grey velvet jacket, which makes her look like a film star. She points out her favourite landmarks. This is her city, Oxford his. Each stone, each street has a story, a story they are becoming part of together.
‘Us on a bus . . . ’ Martin starts to hum a tune by his favourite jazz artist, Fats Waller. Nancy joins in.
Riding on for hours
Through the flowers
When the passengers make love
Whisper bride and groom
That’s us on a bus
They run down the stairs, laughing, and jump off the bus. But they are soon wrenched back to the dark clouds of the present. As they walk through Soho, a man in a threadbare overcoat bellows the Evening Standard headline: ‘Night of the Broken Glass. Read all about it!’
Martin counts out a handful of coppers, points to the headline. ‘At dinner the other evening, one of the college tutors was saying that all this about the Jews is propaganda by the Rothschilds and the rest of the bankers.’ Martin frowns. ‘To drag us into a war with Hitler.’ Martin shakes his head. ‘There are loads of students, too, who think Hitler is the best thing since tinned ham.’ Martin indicates the newspaper headline. ‘Tell that to my uncle, Philip Graves.’
‘The foreign correspondent?’ Nancy sounds impressed.
‘Yes. He was one of the people who helped expose that hateful book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as a forgery!’
Nancy nuzzles against him. ‘You come from such a talented family.’
‘Somehow it seems to have bypassed me.’
‘You got the looks.’ She kisses him on the nose.
They have an hour until the performance begins. Nancy is taking him to a musical revue at the Players’ Theatre Club, in King Street, the company where she has got a small part in a production next season. They are making waves on the London theatre scene. Churchill is a fan and, through rehearsals, Nancy is meeting the actors, including the famous comedienne, Hermione Gingold.
She leads Martin through a warren of streets, their shoes keeping time together, his chunky Church’s brogues next to her tiny, brown boots, their soles touching the same pavement. Love is opening new paths, streets he would never have known if it were not for her, fields where they have walked hand in hand, cafés and bookshops he would never have entered without her, places that are now special to him because of her. And as they walk side by side, he thinks about the thousands of other places that they will visit, the lakes they will see, footpaths they will tramp. England. France. Perhaps Italy. Shared journeys stretching into the future.
‘How about this?’ She has stopped in front of a little Italian bistro on Greek Street: a bog-standard Italian with red and white check tablecloths; cheap Chianti in straw-covered bottles; framed photos of Italian tourist spots; wicker baskets of day-old bread. Martin stares at her reflection in the window. Another place, transformed by love.
‘Perfect.’ He puts his arms around her and turns her face towards his, bends and kisses her: a kiss that seems to go on and on.
They take a table by the window, it’s so cramped Martin hardly fits on his chair, but they have their backs to the other diners and can look out onto the street, watching their own private Movietone of London in 1938.
Nancy orders linguine with clams in a red sauce. Martin chooses lasagne. They share a salad