He pulled her against him again, settling his chin on her head. ‘Wait until we’re there together, honey. I’ll guarantee nightingales.’
The singer’s eyes were focused on a spot high at the back of the hall; a spot that was Alexandria, maybe, or Iceland or Hong Kong, but only she who sang for a faraway lover could know.
‘The girl who’s singing has heard nightingales,’ Lucinda whispered, ‘I can tell …’
‘Sure, honey, I know. Love songs are best sung by people in love. Wonder when she last saw her guy.’
Suddenly Lucinda felt wretched. But wasn’t that what this war was good at: drawing people together then tearing them apart again? Wasn’t it happening to her and Mike? Last night had been a whim of Fate, the great puppet-master. Fate had caused them to meet, manipulated them closer. Yet in so short a time he would tire of his game and let the slender strings slacken and sag, and it would all be over for them.
‘Mike, I know all dances have a last waltz,’ she whispered, ‘but I’m afraid the very next one will have to be ours. I couldn’t get a late pass so I’ll have to get the ten o’clock transport back to Ardneavie. Late passes take twenty-four hours, so I couldn’t manage one for tonight. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I suppose it’d be pushing your luck to try the pantry window again?’
‘I’d better not …’
‘What time do you normally have to report in?’
‘Ten thirty, but we are allowed two late passes till eleven.’
‘Ten thirty? Holy cow! That Ardneavie House must be worse’n a convent!’
‘It isn’t, Mike. Not a bit like one,’ Lucinda giggled. ‘It’s very nice, really. And I’ve got two lovely friends. That’s why, I suppose, I don’t want them to have to stick their necks out for me again. You do understand?’
‘Sure I do.’ He tweaked her nose playfully then gathered her into his arms as the waltz began – and as the words reached her – of loving you always, with a love that's true – they couldn’t, Lucinda thought vehemently, have played anything more unsuitable had they searched through their music all night.
Mike sang softly with the sad-eyed ATS girl, his lips murmuring against Lucinda’s ear.
This was not right, Lucinda fretted. Mike was not playing fair, and thank goodness that after tonight he’d be out of her life. Pushing him away she choked, ‘Mike! Don’t do that, please. Singing in my ear gives me a very peculiar feeling.’
‘Sorry, honey.’ He drew her close again. ‘Won’t happen again,’ he said comfortably, returning his lips to exactly the same position, breathing slowly and deeply so that with luck the peculiar feeling would return.
‘Mike,’ Lucinda warned, but she did not push him away again because, what the hell, this was their last dance and, anyway, it was a rather pleasant peculiar feeling.
How disturbing songs seemed to be, these days; how evocative and suggestive and sensuous, Lucinda thought from the safety of Mike’s arms. And wasn’t it nice how everybody now seemed to sing as they danced, as if it were possible to sing the war away.
The waltz ended, the pianist called a twenty-minute interval and the musicians picked up their empty glasses and left for the nearest public house.
Immediately a replacement band took the stage. An army sergeant carrying a violin case took the lady saxophonist’s seat, a Wren draped her jacket over a chair, then, rolling up her sleeves, sat down at the piano; a flaxen-haired soldier wearing trews of the Black Watch tartan claimed the drum kit.
‘What a free-for-all it’s going to be,’ Mike grinned. ‘Sure wish we could stay behind and listen.’
They left, reluctantly, by the door at which a small elderly man with an indelible purple ink pad and a rubber stamp marked the back of each outstretched hand with a star.
Lucinda received her stamp. ‘Thanks, but what’s it for?’
‘That’s your pass-out, Jenny. You’ll no’ get back in here without it, unless you want to pay again, that is.’
The dancers were hurrying to favourite pubs, hoping for a glass or two of best Scottish mild before the night’s ration ran out and the landlord was forced to call that the beer was finished, and that was all till tomorrow. The deprived drinkers would mutter then, and grumble and ill-wish the cause of their privation. Being conscripted into the armed forces most men reluctantly accepted; having their children evacuated to the countryside even made some kind of sense; putting up with food rationing and clothes rationing and shortages of absolutely everything could be endured in the name of Victory, but to tamper with a man’s rightful supply of ale was altogether a different matter and one for which Hitler could never be forgiven.
‘Want to try and grab a quick glass?’ Mike was developing a shuddering affection for British beer.
‘Don’t think we’ll have time.’ Lucinda was enjoying the cool night air and the beauty of the sunset. ‘Look, Mike, it won’t be long till blackout time. Keep your eyes on the bay; it’s fascinating to watch …’
Arms linked, they leaned on the rusting promenade rail. There were no street lights, but to their left and right, strung out along the sweep of the bay like low, bright stars, house lights shone bravely. Then, almost as if an alarm bell had been rung, the lights disappeared one by one as blackouts were placed in position and curtains reluctantly drawn. In less than three minutes the bay was totally dark, the houses barely discernible against the wooded hills.
‘There now. Wasn’t it amazing? It always gives me a strange feeling to see the lights go out so completely. I think the blackout is the most unnatural thing about this war. Oh, Mike, won’t it be lovely having lights again!’ But when, when, when?
Duty steward Vi McKeown also had reason to resent the blackout. It was her responsibility to darken ship, and tonight there had been complications. The exact cause of her discomfort was the pantry window, which was left, by unspoken consent, until all latecomers were safely accounted for. Only then, its purpose served, could the catch be slipped and the wooden shutters folded over. And there would have been no bother at all had not Leading Cook Kathy MacAlister gone in search of a tin of marmalade and switched on the pantry light.
That one unthinking act brought the pier patrol to Ardneavie House with uncanny speed, and banging on the front door they ordered, ‘Get that bloody light out!’
Anyone would have thought, Vi grumbled, that it was a searchlight MacAlister had switched on and not the insignificant glow a sixty-watt bulb gave to a window measuring two feet by three.
‘Watch it,’ the leader of the naval patrol warned, ‘or somebody here’ll get slapped in the rattle!’
Whereupon Chief Wren Pillmoor, attracted to the scene by the noise and upset, quickly ascertained that her own rank was superior to that of the aggressive petty officer and archly advised him that if anybody at Ardneavie House was going in the rattle, she would put them there, thank you very much, and wouldn’t the pier patrol be better employed getting the drunks back on board Omega and leaving the Wrennery blackout to someone more suited to deal with it?
‘Damn that window!’ she hissed. ‘I’m sick and tired of it, McKeown! But any more nonsense and I’ll have it nailed up, so help me, and that’ll be the end of it,’ she added darkly, leaving Vi in no doubt at all that the pantry window and its after-hours use was no mystery to Chief Wren Pillmoor.
That was when Vi walked down the path, looking up and back towards the house, making sure that not one pinpoint of light showed. And that was when the camouflaged Army truck pulled up at the gate and an officer, pushing down the window, demanded her attention with