‘Not unless anybody saw you coming in. We told the duty Wren you were in the bathroom when she did last rounds. How did you get in, by the way?’
‘I remembered what you said about the pantry window, then came up the back stairs. And bless you both for fixing it for me. Mike was really concerned.’
‘Mike?’ Vi frowned. ‘I thought his name was Nick.’
‘Sorry. Must have got it wrong. His name is Michael Farrow, actually, and he’s in the Air Force.’ Best not explain too much. Blind dates were one thing; being picked up by an American was altogether another. Or had she picked him up? ‘He – he’s stationed at Machrihanish and he’s very nice, Vi. Truly he is.’
‘No business of mine who you go out with,’ Vi grumbled, ‘and for Pete’s sake get yourself into bed or we’ll all be in the rattle. Y’know, I seem to remember you said eight o’clock. What really kept you, Lucinda?’
‘Nothing, honestly. I just felt sorry for him, that’s all. Wounded, and all that way from home. Actually, he’s an American.’
‘A Yank? What the ’eck’s he doin’ in our war?’
‘I really don’t know. I suppose he has his reasons. Said he didn’t like seeing people pushed around.’ Lucinda pulled on her pyjamas. ‘Anyway, I think it’s extremely noble of him to join in the scrap with us and that’s why I said I’d go out with him again.’
‘Again?’ Vi cocked an eyebrow. ‘And what would your Charlie say to that, if he knew?’
‘He won’t know. Mike is in Craigiebur on a seventy-two-hour leave pass. He’ll be going back to Machrihanish early Tuesday and that’ll be the end of it.’
‘Ar, hey, come off it, queen. Machrihanish isn’t the other end of the world. A feller that’s come all the way from America can find his way back to Ardneavie, no bother at all!’
‘Vi! I said I won’t be seeing him again after tomorrow night and I won’t.’
‘That’s all right then, isn’t it? I bet you didn’t tell him you were engaged, though.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Why ever should she? What a fuss Vi was making. After tomorrow night it would be all over, wouldn’t it? And was she expected to live like a nun when the war might go on for years and years? ‘And I didn’t ask if he was engaged, either. Oh, Vi, it’s all right. I promise you it is.’
‘Look, queen, you don’t have to answer to me. What you do is your own business. But be careful, eh?’
‘I will. I really will. And thanks for getting me off the hook. It was awfully sweet of you both.’
Parts of this war, thought Lucinda as she snapped off the light and got into bed, were really rather nice. Since leaving home she had met such lovely girls: Vi, Jane, Molly, cabin ten and the lovely duty Wren who had turned a blind eye to the unlocked pantry window. She really was most grateful to Goddy for getting her into the Wrens. In years to come she would look back on it all with affection, and surely just a little freedom before she settled down wasn’t all that much to ask. Tonight had been fun, and tomorrow night would be even better.
Her toes wriggled in anticipation of a night spent dancing with Michael Johnson Farrow, the second of his names given for Alice Johnson, his beloved English grandmother who had gone to America as a governess when Queen Victoria was on the throne, and though she had married a citizen of the United States and never returned to the country of her birth, even to visit, she had steadfastly clung to her Englishness. A very stubborn lady, it would seem, and Mike was a chip off the old block, Lucinda smiled, one who liked having his own way. Like tonight, for instance, when he had flatly refused to let her hitch a lift back to Ardneavie and insisted on walking the whole three miles with her.
‘But Mike, your leg …’
‘Aw, to hell with my leg. The MO said it needed exercise and, anyway, you’re not supposed to notice it, honey.’
So she had left him at the pantry window and begged him to take it easy on the walk back, but he had laughed and told her not to be late tomorrow night.
Tomorrow. Seven-thirty, at the jetty and, oh dear, what would Charlie say to that, if he knew? Vi had implied he might not like it and probably she was right, but she wouldn’t mind betting, Lucinda pondered sleepily, that Charlie had the odd date or two. Charlie had fun, and he’d probably go on having fun long after they were married – which would be all right, she supposed, as long as he did it discreetly.
And tomorrow night she too would be discreet and thoroughly well-behaved, and when it was over she would offer her hand to Mike and wish him luck and she wouldn’t even kiss him goodbye.
She sighed and closed her eyes, and her lips tilted into a smile of pure contentment.
A parrot called Mavis, indeed …
When she awoke that morning, there had been nothing, Jane considered, to indicate that the coming day was to be so completely unforgettable. It had started with an early call, as it always did, and progressed by bleary-eyed stages to the breakfast queue and the realization that this was Monday; tomatoes on toast was always Monday.
Jane glared at her plate. ‘When this war is over, I will never, ever, eat another tinned tomato.’
‘Nor me. It’d do a whole lot more for the war effort,’ Fenny Cole sighed, ‘if they were to leave them in their tins and drop them on Berlin!’
‘If there is anything more revolting than tinned tomatoes on toast,’ Lucinda fervently agreed, ‘it is tinned tomatoes on toast gone cold and soggy. What a way to start the day. Ah, well, it can only get better, can’t it?’
So they had called a goodbye to Vi, who was scraping the uneaten breakfasts into the pig-swill-for-victory bucket, and hurried down the jetty, as they always did, to the launch that always waited there.
‘It’s going to be hot again.’ Lucinda lifted her face to the sun. Indeed, there had never, the locals said, been a June like it. For the entire month the sun had shone from a near-cloudless sky. The good weather had come with the new moon and would last, they predicted, until the next one.
Jane eased a finger round the neck of her shirt. This was not a day for the wearing of starched collars and ties and itchy wool stockings, and she thought with envy of the off-duty Wrens who would roll bathing costumes in towels and make for the head of the loch and the cool, shallow water that lapped the shore.
‘We’re in for another scorcher,’ she said to Jock. That was all she had said, but it had been the start of something wonderful, something unbelievable, almost; the day on which despair vanished and the pain and hopelessness that had wrapped her round since that May night dropped from her in the speaking of a word.
‘You could be right, lassie. I was talking to an old body in the pub last night and he told me it was the hottest summer in his remembering; in eighty-three years, he said.’
‘I’d agree with every word.’ Jane used a signal pad as a fan. ‘But don’t you think the old ones remember only what they want to remember? My mother does it all the time. The summers were different when she was a girl. They could always be sure of a good haytime and corn harvest, and summer began on the first day of June and ended when the apples were picked and stored safely in the loft and not one day before. Or so she said.’
‘I mind fine just what your mother means. I do it myself all the time. Nostalgia, I suppose.’ Jock smiled. ‘Now when Flora and I were married there was nothing so certain but that we were on our way up in the world. The Glasgow tenements we’d both been reared in weren’t half good enough and we found ourselves a little house