‘Are you coming in for a drink? Mam said she’d leave a tray for us.’ She pushed open the door, still unlocked, then switched on the kitchen light, her eyes automatically turning to check the blackout curtains. ‘Sit down, Drew. Won’t be a minute. My, but you had a good time – danced with Gracie most of the night, didn’t you?’
‘Mm. I like her. She’s fun. She’s a good dancer, too. Taught me some new steps. She says there’s a dance in Creesby on Wednesday night – shall we all go?’
‘Drew Sutton, I believe you’re sweet on her! You haven’t fallen for her, have you?’
‘Of course not!’ Drew’s cheeks coloured.
‘You kissed her good night …’
‘I kissed Tatty good night and I suppose I shall kiss you good night too, Daiz, but I haven’t fallen for any of you!’
‘Then you disappoint me. Here you are, almost twenty-three and still heart-whole. Are you going the way of all sailors with a girl in every port?’
‘Sorry, Daiz, no. I’d like to have just one special girl – fall in love with her. I like Gracie. She’s pretty and she’s great to be with. And could you lend her a dress, do you think, for the Creesby dance; just until her mother sends her one from home, and her dancing shoes? She says it’s awful going to a dance in breeches and a shirt and tie.’
‘Course I will, but are you sure you aren’t just a little bit in love?’
‘I like Gracie a lot – I’ve just said so – but she isn’t the one. I’ll know the minute I kiss her when the right girl comes along. And when she does, you’ll be the first to know, Daiz, I promise you!’
Julia lay still in bed, not wanting to move lest she awakened Nathan. Her mind buzzed with silly thoughts and tired as she was, sleep would not come.
She supposed she should try counting her blessings as her mother did. ‘Better than counting sheep, dear.’ And blessings Julia Sutton had aplenty. Drew was home and her husband had no fear of call-up. Nathan was fifty-two, next; her brother Giles’s age, had Giles lived. Giles would’ve been pleased she and Nathan were married.
Why had she waited so long? Why hadn’t she known Nathan loved her, had always loved her, even when he assisted at her wedding to Andrew?
Almost two years, now, since she and Nathan had been married quietly in York, yet even on their first night together she felt she must surely be cheating him; that never again could she love as she had loved Andrew.
That first, long-ago loving had been deep and passionate because for an army doctor and a young VAD nurse there were no tomorrows; just here and now and living wildly their moments together. Yet in all the three years she and Andrew had been married, only ten nights were spent in his arms.
Yet being married to Nathan was equally good, but in a different way. This time it was gentler and sweeter and safer, somehow, because for her and Nathan there was a tomorrow.
She swung her feet to the floor then padded to the window to pull aside the curtain. Delight washed over her at the sight of trees silvered by a bright, full moon, gilding the stable block and the outline of the bothy behind the wild garden; making a mockery of the blackout.
She stood, breath indrawn. Not a sound outside. No bombers airborne tonight. Unsafe for aircraft to range the skies silhouetted darkly against the brightness, easy targets for hunting night-fighters.
Tonight the crews at Holdenby Moor were grounded and doubtless dancing without a care because tonight at least they could be sure of one tomorrow. Drew had put on his uniform and gone to that dance with Daisy and Tatty and the new land girl. Now it was almost midnight and he wasn’t home yet.
‘Julia …’
‘Sorry, darling. Did I wake you?’
‘I wasn’t asleep. Come back to bed. Drew’s a grown man now. Bet he stays out later than this at Plymouth.’
‘Yes, but he’s at the aerodrome and outside it’s like daylight.’ She pulled back the covers and lay down beside Nathan. ‘On nights like this, German fighters come nuisance raiding, remember; flying in low out of the moon and shooting up our aerodromes and –’
‘Julia, for goodness’ sake! Drew is all right and Daisy and Tatty, too.’
‘Y-yes. I suppose so. But how did you know I was thinking about Drew being out?’
‘Of course you were. I know you so well that knowing what you are thinking comes easily.’
‘It does?’ She turned to face him, kissing him gently, her breath soft on his cheek. ‘Then tell me, what am I thinking now?’
‘You are thinking,’ he said huskily, drawing her closer, ‘that you want me to make love to you.’
‘Mm.’ She kissed him again. ‘My darling – how well you know me …’
Yesterday, Mary Strong returned from Creesby in triumph, having found the blue silk cabbage roses with which to trim the wide-brimmed biscuit-coloured hat she was to wear to her wedding.
‘I tell you, Tilda – no silk flowers to be found. I’d just about given up hope when I went down a side street and found them in a poky little shop. Dust all over everything, mind, but there they were, just what I’d been looking for and exactly the same blue as the frock!’
‘Lucky,’ Tilda murmured, glad that in four days Mary would be Mrs Stubbs, and wedding talk a thing of the past.
‘I’ll take them over to Alice to sew on the hat.’ Mary eased on the biscuit-coloured wedding shoes she was breaking in for Saturday, because not for anything was she walking down the aisle at All Souls’ squeaking with every step. ‘Won’t be more’n a couple of minutes. Table’s laid for dinner – you know they want it a bit earlier, tonight?’
On account of Drew going to the dance in Creesby, that was. Daisy was going, too, and the land girl, Mary learned only that morning when she had gone to the kitchen garden with Tilda’s vegetable list. Indeed, it had been the land girl’s idea for Mr Catchpole to make a finger-spray of flowers instead of a posy for her to carry.
‘Pale pink carnations and white gypsophila, that’s what, with a little loop underneath so you can slip it over your middle finger. And a pink carnation, perhaps, for your bridegroom’s buttonhole …?’
Mary had taken at once to the idea though truth known she had never heard of finger-sprays before.
… and the bride, dressed in conflower blue and given away by Mr Thomas Dwerryhouse, carried a finger-spray of pink carnations. It would read very well in the Creesby Advertiser. A nice girl, that Gracie, even if she did go dancing with Sir Andrew and presumed to call him Drew after only six days’ acquaintance.
She sighed, though with pleasure or relief she couldn’t be sure. Relief, she supposed, to be getting wed at last.
Tatiana Sutton looked critically at her reflection in the full-length mirror and was pleased with what she saw. And she would look better still once she was able to put on her lipstick and dab a little of her precious perfume on her wrists. But the finishing touches must wait until later or her mother would become suspicious if she went to Daisy’s house all dressed up. If Mama really knew where she was going she would put on her Grandmother Petrovska face and forbid the Creesby dance, even though Drew and Daisy would be there. Creesby dances were not allowed because, unlike the Holdenby hops, they were frequented by people – men – of unknown pedigree, who could be relied upon to take liberties with young ladies in general and Tatiana Sutton in particular.
The