This time the flicker of response was so violent Rosanna was hard put to hide it, and almost told him not to come again. But she couldn’t think of a feasible excuse, and her tone was cold in sheer self-defence as she told him seven-thirty in the evening would do very well.
Ewen smiled with regret as the doorbell rang. ‘My cab. Goodnight, Rosanna.’
‘Goodnight.’ She opened the front door. ‘Don’t stay up late reading Harry’s letters. In fact, take my advice— read them tomorrow, not tonight.’
‘Why?’
She smiled wryly. ‘You’ll find out when you read them!’
CHAPTER TWO
FEELING oddly restless after Ewen Fraser had gone, Rosanna took her grandmother’s letters to bed to read, which was a big mistake. In their own way the letters were as innocently erotic as the outpourings Rose Norman had received from Harry Manners.
Rosanna already knew how the two young people had met from the entries the young VAD had made in her diary. Rose Norman had been sent to France. With a couple of girl drivers for company, sometimes only one, she travelled in the unwieldy old ambulances of the time to transfer the seriously injured from casualty clearing stations to base hospitals further away from the front line.
2nd Lt. Harry Manners, one arm in a sling, a stained bandage round his forehead, flagged down Rose’s ambulance one day to beg transport for two of his wounded men. The men were crammed in somehow, at which point a flat tyre was discovered. Rose managed to help Letty Parker, the driver, change the tyre with instructions from the young platoon commander, who promptly collapsed in an unconscious heap the moment they finished the job.
Between them the girls managed to heave him into the front seat, Rose holding him as upright as possible on the journey back to the base hospital. Harry Manners’ forehead had been grazed by one sniper’s bullet, and his shoulder pierced by another which missed the jugular vein and the spine by a hair’s breadth, a ‘Blighty’ wound which sent him back to England to recover.
Fate sent Rose Norman home on leave on the same train, helping with the wounded on the journey. When she came across Harry he was light-headed and obviously feeling wretched, but utterly delighted to see her again. They were able to talk only briefly, but Harry begged her home address, and the moment he was discharged from the hospital in Denmark Hill called to see Rose on a day when her mother was helping Rose’s sister, Amelia, with the children’s measles in Kensington.
Far into the night Rosanna lay in the same bedroom her grandmother had occupied as a girl, riveted by the account of a love affair all the more passionate and poignant for the modest, unaffected style of Rose Norman’s letters. Referring to the diary from time to time, Rosanna read how Harry cut short his stay with his parents, and saw Rose every day, courtesy of the measles which focussed her mother’s attention away from her younger daughter.
When Harry asked her to marry him, Rose, still shadowed by the loss of one fiancé, was superstitious, and implored him to wait until the war was over.
‘But in the meantime,’ wrote Rose, ‘we are madly, wildly in love, and alive.
‘Today,’ said the next entry succinctly, ‘we became lovers.’
The diary was blank after that until Rose arrived back in France, not earlier than scheduled due to curtailed leave, as she told her mother, but on the due date after a week of illicit bliss with Harry in a Brighton hotel.
Their next meeting was in France, when Rose managed to get time off to stay with Harry in a pension in Rouen before he went up to the front. When they parted Harry gave his love a brooch in the shape of a gold rose, and kissed Rose’s tears away when she sobbed in his arms.
Rosanna slept late the following morning, and woke to a feeling of guilt. Overnight she’d had time for regrets, very much aware that there was no real necessity for Ewen to bring back the papers in person. Any future dealings with him could have been done by post. But she liked him. In fact, after just one meeting she felt as though she’d known Ewen for years. Or in some other life. Which was dangerous. It stemmed from Harry and Rose, of course. Their love story had fostered an intimacy that would never have happened if she’d met Ewen in other circumstances.
Ewen Fraser was an attractive, intelligent man loaded with charm. But, Rosanna reminded herself, apart from his great-uncle and his success as a writer she knew very little about him. Women, if the press were to be believed, flocked around Ewen Fraser in droves. For all she knew he might even be married. Not that it was any concern of hers if he had a wife or an entire harem.
The day was hot, and Rosanna spent most of it in the garden, topping up her tan. And later, after a quick salad supper, she took time with her appearance, choosing clothes that would show off her newly acquired glow. Some of which, she realised, eyeing her reflection, wasn’t entirely due to the sun. She’d left her hair to lie loose and glossy on her shoulders, and in sharp contrast with the demure look of the night before wore a sleeveless pink shirt and brief denim skirt. Knowing she looked her best heightened anticipation hard to control as she went downstairs to wait for Ewen Fraser.
He arrived punctual to the minute, dressed in a thin white cotton shirt and pale khakis, and presented Rosanna with a bunch of roses, making no attempt to hide the pleasure he took at the sight of her.
‘Hello, Rosanna. You look different with your hair down.’ He smiled and handed over the flowers. ‘Your garden’s probably full of these, but nothing else seemed suitable.’
‘Why, thank you. How kind.’ Rosanna’s smile masked the now familiar leap in her blood. ‘I’ve been lazing in the garden. Would you like a drink out there before we tackle any more papers?’
Ewen agreed with alacrity, and Rosanna sent him off to sit in a garden chair while she put the roses in water. She took her time, breathing in their heady scent, feeling light-headed. There was no mistake, after all. During the day she’d tried to convince herself that Ewen Fraser was just a pleasant, rather clever young man, but nothing out of the ordinary. One look at him again tonight had scotched that theory. He wasn’t handsome exactly, but his tall, rangy body and slanted gold eyes were just as appealing on second acquaintance as at first. Ordinary he was not. Rosanna went out into the garden with Ewen’s beer, and sat down in one of the other deck chairs.
‘You read the letters?’ she asked at once, to emphasize that they were here for a purpose.
‘Yes. I couldn’t resist reading them last night after all,’ he said ruefully. ‘I couldn’t get to sleep for hours. They were a revelation. Harry’s love for Rose was blazingly physical, yet at the same time it’s plain he absolutely worshipped her.’
‘It was mutual.’ Rosanna touched the gold rose pinned to the lapel of her shirt. ‘This is the brooch he gave her in Rouen, the last time they saw each other.’
Ewen leaned closer to examine the pin, close enough for Rosanna to breathe in the scent of expensive soap and healthy male, and she moved away instinctively. He drew back at once, and for a moment there was an awkward silence. They broke it at the same time, then stopped and laughed a little.
‘You first,’ said Rosanna.
Ewen breathed in deeply. ‘I was about to say I’ve already done the major part of the research—war records, and historians and war poets of the time. But Harry’s diaries and the letters he wrote to Rose are even more valuable in some ways. They conjure up the mood and atmosphere of the time so vividly I felt I was living it with them.’
‘I know what you mean,’ she replied with feeling. ‘Rose was a well-brought-up girl sheltered from the squalor and suffering she soon witnessed, but she was so determined she even lied about her age to get accepted. It’s clear from her diary that she found rich rewards in helping the wounded.’ She sighed. ‘It makes my life seem horribly trivial.’
Ewen