by Daisy Styles
‘Time is a luxury in wartime,’ Rosa thought ruefully. ‘When there’s always the fear that there will be no tomorrow.’
Seeing the yearning in Roger’s earnest brown eyes, Rosa took his hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s good to be here with you,’ she whispered.
Whatever else she might have said was lost as he crushed her into his arms and held her tight.
‘Oh, Rosa, dearest, dearest Rosa.’
7. Holkham Beach
The following morning, after a restless night on a hard metal military bed, Rosa woke up, and for a few seconds she wondered where she was. Peeping round the edges of the blackout blind, she saw a line of Nissen huts close to a runway on which fighter planes were parked, ready for take-off. Rosa, who didn’t know one plane from another, smiled to herself: Roger would know the name of every one by heart, she thought fondly. As she took in the scene, she heard a long, lone drone overhead, and looking up she saw planes approaching the base. One by one they dropped height and landed with a sharp bump before taxiing to a stop.
Realizing they must have just come back from a night raid, Rosa watched the pilots, grey with fatigue, emerge from their cockpits; immediately their ground crews rushed forward to greet them and to inspect and prepare the planes for their next take-off. Rosa spotted Roger speaking to one of the pilots, who, clearly upset, shook his head despondently; Rosa was touched by Roger’s response to his obvious sadness. Without any inhibition he slung an arm around the pilot’s burly shoulders, then clapped him hard on the back. Suddenly realizing that some of the pilots must have been lost in the night raid, Rosa’s eyes filled with tears; even so, tomorrow night more airmen would fly out over the North Sea, which had become a graveyard for so many shot down by enemy fire – and the killing would go on.
Seeing the pilots heading indoors to log their report, Rosa frantically tried to gather her wits together; she needed to get washed and dressed before Roger came knocking on her door and the day began in earnest. In a quandary about what to wear, she finally opted for a pair of thick tweed trousers that showed off her slim but curvy hips and a sage-green twinset. The outfit would keep her warm on a cold February day, but it also brought out the lustrous glow in her warm olive skin and large dark eyes.
Hoping they wouldn’t have to start the day in the officers’ mess with men ogling her over their beans on toast, Rosa was delighted when Roger arrived saying they’d eat breakfast in the car. As they sped along the narrow lanes overflowing with aconites and tiny primroses just starting to poke through the cold earth, Roger handed her a packet of sandwiches and a flask.
‘Tea’s up,’ he announced. ‘Be a darling and pour one for me.’
Balancing the plastic cup of hot tea on his knees, Roger drove with one hand whilst he ate a cheese-and-pickle sandwich with the other. Laughing, Rosa bit into her sandwich, which really was delicious, then she poured herself a cup of tea that she sipped as she took in the landscape.
‘We’re going to have the day all to ourselves,’ Roger told her. ‘Just me and you and the sea and the sky.’
Though familiar with the beauty of the Mediterranean, Rosa was nevertheless stunned by the loveliness of the beach Roger had chosen for their day out. The smooth white sand swept for miles along the coast, which was fringed by a thick pine wood and rolling dunes.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Rosa murmured as Roger, holding her by the hand, led her on to the beach. ‘Bellissimo!’ she exclaimed.
‘Holkham,’ Roger explained. ‘One of the most wonderful places in England as far as I’m concerned,’ he added, as they walked hand in hand towards the distant grey sea. ‘I often come here and think about you,’ he admitted without a hint of embarrassment. ‘I worry that you might have forgotten me or that some other chap might have stolen your heart?’ He turned abruptly towards Rosa. ‘Tell me truthfully, dearest, is there anyone else?’
Rosa blushed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she cried. ‘I work in a munitions factory on top of the moors – how am I going to meet any man who isn’t over fifty?’
‘Well, that’s a relief!’ he laughed, as he held her hand tighter, and then, to her astonishment, set off running along the beach, pulling her along with him.
The sound of crashing waves combined with the whistling east wind momentarily took Rosa’s breath away, making her feel as giddy and reckless as a child. Grasping Roger’s hand, she kept up with his long legs, running as fast as he did, until finally she shook him off and ran even faster.
‘Catch me!’ she called over the sound of the wind.
Diving into the dark woods, Rosa stopped and looked around. Spotting a stout pine tree, she crept behind it, stifled a giggle and waited. As her breath quietened, she heard Roger’s feet cracking on the fallen pinecones as he approached her hiding place; startled by his presence, several young rabbits shot past her when he loudly called her name.
‘Rosa! Where are you?’
Smiling impishly, Rosa hunkered down closer to the bole of the tree.
‘Stop teasing, Rosa, where are you?’
Just as he was about to pass the tree, she sprang out at him like a wild cat.
‘Haha!’ she yelled.
Flinging her strong arms around his shoulders, she held on to him as he swung her round; then, when she was completely dizzy, he gently lowered her on to the sandy ground soft with pine needles, and she lay spreadeagled, helpless with laughter.
‘I gave you a fright!’ she giggled.
‘You bloody well frightened me to death,’ he chuckled. ‘Little minx!’ he declared, as he threw himself on to the ground beside her. ‘Darling little minx,’ he murmured and gathered her into his arms, kissing her long and lingeringly on the lips.
This time Rosa had no doubts about responding to the warm lovable man who held her safe in the fold of his arms. In fact, she was surprised by the sudden surge of passion she felt as his lips pressed against hers and his hand wound around tresses of her silky dark hair. As they drew apart, Roger’s eyes, gentle with emotion, gazed down at her.
‘You pack quite a punch,’ he whispered, as he traced the line of her small nose, whose tip he kissed.
‘Have you forgotten I’m Italian?’ she teased. Assuming a phony Italian accent, she rattled on, ‘I am passionate, dramatic, eh, sono fantastico!’
Roger stopped her silliness with more kisses, which she returned with fervour. Coming up for air, she buried her face against his strong chest and inhaled the smell of his flesh through his RAF shirt.
‘You smell of soap,’ she murmured dreamily. ‘Sweet, scented soap.’
‘Mother sends me a bar of homemade soap every month,’ he admitted.
‘She must love her little boy,’ Rosa remarked without a hint of sarcasm.
‘She’s worried sick about me,’ Roger said in an unusually quiet voice.
‘How could she not be?’ Rosa asked. ‘It’s a heavy load to carry, knowing your son flies fighter planes over enemy territory almost every night.’ She shivered involuntarily. ‘I also worry.’
‘Your sweet face brings me winging back home, believe me,’ Roger assured her. ‘I would do anything just to be with you,’ he added in a voice that was tight with emotion.
Feeling empowered by his conviction that she kept him safe, Rosa couldn’t help but smile.
‘Why does opening my heart to you make you smile?’ Roger said, as her smile widened underneath his scrutiny.
‘The thought that I could save you,’ she replied. ‘When I couldn’t even save my own beloved brother.’ Looking Roger square in the eye, she asked sharply, ‘You do remember I have a brother, Gabriel?’
‘Of course,’ he assured her. ‘You told me about him when we met.’
She and Gabriel, her elder brother, had been forced to leave their home and their family only two years ago. On the run, they’d soon been captured and dispatched to a concentration camp in Germany, where Gabriel had bribed the guards by giving them everything he possessed to free his sister. Rosa never even got a
chance to say goodbye to her brother, let alone to thank him for his selfless sacrifice; all the time she was making her perilous escape she knew in her heart that by buying her freedom from the Nazis, Gabriel had put himself in an even more vulnerable position. If it was ever leaked that he had bribed the guards, he would be shot on the spot.
After grieving so long for her lost family and brother, Rosa was wary; was she ready to fall in love with a man who took his life in his hands every day of the week?
She struggled free of his embrace in order to sit up and say something that was of the most fundamental importance to her; if they were to have any kind of relationship, she needed to be totally honest with him.
‘I can’t take any more heartache,’ she said. Determined not to give in to tears, she swallowed hard and added, ‘I could not bear to love and lose another.’
Seeing tears brimming over Rosa’s eyes, wetting her long black lashes and slipping down her sweet, sad face, Roger sat up too.
‘Dearest girl, I would do anything to avoid giving you even more grief, but I cannot lie to you, Rosa,’ he responded in complete honesty. ‘I can’t guarantee that nothing will ever happen to me – my first duty is to my King and Country, and if my life is required I would offer it up, but’ – he took a deep ragged breath – ‘I will do my very best to stay safe, I promise. I want to have a future with you, Rosa, beyond this bloody war. I want to be with you forever.’
Rosa’s thoughts flew back to a poem she’d read in Pendleton Library not very long ago. Grieving her lost loved ones in the Great War, Vera Brittain had written:
Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.
The poem had haunted Rosa, who often murmured it when she thought of Gabriel. But now, here in these pinewoods with the breakers crashing on the beach, it came back to her with a powerful personal resonance. Why was she holding her emotions in so tightly? In the political climate of the moment, why was she hesitating? Why didn’t she take life by the throat and squeeze everything that was worthwhile out of it? Look what had happened with her and Gabriel: one minute they were in the concentration camp together, the next they were parted. This man with unruly hair that fell in a fringe over his earnest hazel eyes was laying his heart at her feet, and she – she was prevaricating!
‘What’s the matter with me?’ she demanded of herself. ‘Have I forgotten how to love?’
Seeing Rosa’s flushed cheeks, Roger misinterpreted her anguished expression; fearing he’d gone too far too quickly, he apologized. ‘I’m so awfully sorry,’ he blustered. ‘I didn’t mean it to be this way.’
Rosa smiled gently as she stroked his cheek. ‘What way is that?’ she whispered.
‘So quick and rushed,’ he blurted out. ‘I wanted to woo you, buy you presents, write you poetry, send you flowers – not swamp you with emotional declarations. Oh, God!’ he exclaimed, furious with himself. ‘Why do I always make such a damn mess of things?’ he said, as he laid his head on her chest and groaned in despair.
Rosa steadily stroked Roger’s sandy-brown hair until she felt his breath steady.
‘I’ve never met anybody like you, and I’m so afraid of losing you,’ he confessed. ‘You’re so beautiful and talented and clever – how could you ever fall for a blundering fool like me?’
‘Believe me, I’m having a lovely time,’ Rosa said with a sudden surge of giddiness. ‘I’m just wondering when you might kiss me again.’
Eager as a puppy, Roger’s head shot up. ‘Really? Would you mind?’
In answer she held her arms open wide to him and, abandoning her fears and inhibitions she locked her lips with his and sank into his passionate embrace.
8. Wrigg Hall
Sitting in her comfy sitting room, which was in fact the back room of her chip shop, Edna Chadderton’s green eyes grew as wide as saucers as she read, then reread, an article in the Manchester Evening News.
‘Malc!’ she cried excitedly to her husband. ‘Listen to this.’ Straightening her glasses, she read out loud from the paper.
‘Wrigg Hall, the ancient Jacobean seat of the Leonard family, has been requisitioned by the Red Cross. The need for more hospitals has necessitated the government taking over several stately homes in the area, primarily for nursing the sick and providing specialist care for those returning from hospital stations on the front line. Because of the acute shortage of nurses, the Red Cross are keen to recruit local volunteers – especially those who might have some past experience in physiotherapy and convalescent care. The British Red Cross are in the process of adapting the ancient building for the sick and wounded, who will shortly be arriving at Wrigg Hall.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that draughty old mansion would be suitable for sick men,’ Malc commented.
‘They’ll have to do summat about keeping it warm or the poor lads will freeze to death on arrival,’ Edna agreed.
‘I wonder what happens to the toffs when the government walk in and claim their ancestral pile?’ Malc mused.
‘There’s only old Lord Leonard in the Hall these days,’ Edna told him. ‘Mebbe he’ll move out when the Red Cross move in.’
Malc gazed fondly at his wife, whom he’d married on Christmas Eve only a couple of months ago. Since then he’d experienced such contentment and companionship with his new wife that he could hardly believe it. He could tell from the look in her eyes as she gazed into the fireplace, banked up with logs collected from the moors now that coal was sparse, that she was ‘cogitating’, as she would say. Nevertheless he was taken aback by what she had to say when she did speak.
‘I might just put myself forward as a volunteer,’ she announced.
Malc hid a smile as he shook his head; generous, impulsive Edna never ceased to surprise him.
‘And just how are you going to do that, sweetheart?’ he inquired. ‘You’re working every hour God sends as it is.’
Edna ran a flourishing chip shop that provided hot and cheap hearty food for the local mill workers. Though the workforce was depleted, with men having been called up for active service, the cotton mill had stayed open, and Lancashire cotton continued to roll off the looms. Edna’s customers arrived with their own tin bowls every dinnertime, which Edna heaped with chips, scallops, butter beans or mushy peas. In the good old days there’d been fresh cod from Fleetwood, but over the past five years of war fresh fish was a rarity. When Edna was lucky enough to be able to buy mincemeat or scrag end of mutton with her ration coupons, she always made delicious meat pies swimming in onions and rich gravy for her grateful customers.
Apart from her thriving chip shop, Edna also had another business: well before she’d met Malc she’d converted an old van into a mobile chip shop, which she drove up the hill to the Phoenix factory most evenings. Parked up in the dispatch yard, Edna served out a lot more than chips to the Bomb Girls, who were initially drawn to the van by the tantalizing smell of sizzling hot fat. As time went by, Edna’s mobile chip shop became a familiar landmark, which the workers were attracted to like iron to a magnet. Edna’s warmth and humour were special indeed, but the advice she doled out was fair and sensible, and she could always be trusted to keep a secret, For Edna the Phoenix became her second home. Initially she’d gone there for business, but these days she went out of love. Edna admired the Bomb Girls’ tough commitment; supporting them in whatever way she could was her bit towards the war effort. So Malc was right that she was already about as busy as it was possible for a person to be.
‘I can’t see you giving up your lunchtime openings or your night-time visits to the Phoenix,’ Malc continued.
‘I could put in a couple of afternoons a week at Wrigg Hall,’ Edna replied to her husband.
Knowing full well that when Edna had made her mind up to do something, there was no point in trying to change it, Malc struck a match and lit up a Player’s for b
oth of them. ‘Fair enough,’ he said, as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘Give it a go, lovie, and see how you get on.’
Edna wasn’t the only one who’d read and responded to the article in the newspaper. Nora also expressed an interest in volunteering, which amazed Edna, who knew just how squeamish the young girl was.
‘You’d better toughen up, my sweetheart,’ Edna said with a gentle smile. ‘You can’t have a touch of the vapours every time you see a drop of blood.’
‘I’m just hoping I’ll get used to it – I really do want to help them poor buggers coming back from the front,’ Nora said with tears in her big blue eyes.
Edna looked at Nora’s earnest face: she could see the poor kid meant well, and it would be a shame for her if she fell at the first hurdle.
‘Mebbe you should volunteer to do the tea trolley to start with,’ she said kindly. ‘Just till you get used to the lie of the land, like.’
Nora looked distinctly relieved at Edna’s suggestion. ‘Yes,’ she answered eagerly. ‘Tea I can easily do.’
Maggie said she couldn’t take on anything extra at the moment.
‘I know it sounds selfish,’ she said with an embarrassed smile. ‘But I want to concentrate on our wedding; I just want everything to be –’
‘Don’t say it,’ Edna laughed.
‘Perfect!’ Maggie’s friends around the van shouted in unison.
Maggie blushed at their teasing. ‘I know you think I’m mad – mebbe I am, I don’t care!’ she retaliated. ‘When I think of marrying my lovely Les, my knees turn to water,’ she confessed. ‘I want our wedding day to be a day we’ll remember till the end of our lives,’ she said romantically.
‘So we’ll take it that love’s young dream is off the volunteers’ list till after the wedding?’ Edna said cheerfully. ‘What about Julia or Rosa? Do you think they’ll be interested?’
‘We’ll ask Rosa when she gets back from Norfolk,’ Nora said. ‘That’s if she ever finds her way safely home,’ she added with a fretful sigh.