Steve placed an arm around Nancy. ‘Is that all right with you?’
‘I’m happy to let our mothers do the arranging. The only thing that matters to me is that we will be married.’
‘Me too.’ He pulled her out of the chair and steered her towards the door, calling over his shoulder, ‘Do what you want, mothers.’
They walked a little way from the house, happy to be on their own at last, and after a long embrace, Steve looked down at her. ‘Are you still wearing the ring around your neck?’
‘Yes, I’ve never taken it off.’ She then removed it from the chain and handed it to him.
He slipped it on her finger. ‘We are now officially engaged. I promised that one day I would put a wedding ring next to it, but at that time I couldn’t see how that would ever be possible.’
‘Neither did I, but you will now be able to keep that promise. I tried so hard not to fall in love with you, but I just couldn’t help myself.’
‘We were in a very difficult situation while flying missions, and although I had fallen in love with you, I held off because you had lost your brother and would be wary about forming a loving relationship with someone who could suddenly disappear from your life.’
‘But thank heavens you came through.’
It was a clear night and, wrapped in each other’s arms, they stared up at the sky. ‘On a night like this we would have been heaving Lancasters off the ground and into the sky to join all the others.’
‘Yes, and leaving the rest of us to worry the hours away until we heard the sound of the planes returning, and wondering how many weren’t going to come back. Do you miss flying those monsters?’
‘Yes, they will always have a special place in my heart, as will the friends we lost. It was a time that will never be forgotten.’
‘It is a part of who we are now.’ She sighed and tipped her head right back. ‘The stars are very bright here.’
‘They are even brighter when you are up there with them. As a crew we were under those stars together. But right now, this is the only place I want to be, and that is looking up at them with you, knowing that against all the odds we are going to spend the rest of our lives together.’
Epilogue
6 Years Later
When Steve walked in with his friends and their families there was a yell of delight from his three-year-old son, William Daniel. He grabbed hold of Luke’s son, Stevie, who was about the same age, gathered up Ricky’s two daughters and dragged them over to see his new toy – a model of a Lancaster.
The three men stood watching the mayhem with smiles on their faces. ‘Shame Sandy couldn’t come,’ Luke said, ‘but Helen is eight months pregnant and it wouldn’t have been wise for her to make the journey, especially as they are expecting twins.’
‘Twins!’ Steve exclaimed. ‘He didn’t tell me that in his letters.’
Ricky grinned. ‘Yeah, they are hoping for two boys or one of each, as they’ve already got a daughter.’
‘I’m going to have to get a bigger plane.’
Nancy came over and handed her husband their sixteen-month-old daughter, Sara Jean. ‘Look after your daughter while I see if everything is ready for the buffet lunch.’
The little girl smiled as she settled in her father’s arms, after giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek, then she leant towards Luke and Ricky. ‘Kiss.’
Steve held her out so she could do this, then she settled down again. Suddenly something caught Steve’s attention and he caught hold of her hand before she could put it in her mouth. ‘No, sweetheart, you can’t have those. You mustn’t take things out of your dad’s pocket.’ He prised the star tokens out of her fingers and put them in his trouser pocket.
‘Do you still carry those with you?’ Luke asked.
‘Every time I fly, and they are precious to me, not only because of who gave them to us, but because they hold many memories.’
The two men nodded and also tapped their pockets, indicating they had them with them as well.
‘Of course, Steve, you have one more memory we don’t know anything about,’ Ricky reminded him. ‘Surely you can tell us what you did at Tangmere now?’
‘I flew a Lysander into France and picked up agents.’
The friends stared at him in amazement, and Ricky swore under his breath. ‘How many runs did you do?’
‘Two.’ He then went on to tell them about the flights.
By the time he finished, Luke was shaking his head. ‘It was just as well we didn’t know, or we would have been frantic with worry.’
Sara Jean was getting restless and began hitting his shoulder to gain his attention and repeating ‘Bes’ over and over again. He began looking round the room and found the item on a chair behind him. She beamed when he gave it to her.
‘Hey, a rag doll,’ Ricky exclaimed. ‘Where did you get that, Steve?’
‘From a market stall one day when we were out shopping. I named it Beth.’
‘Do you still hear from that farmer?’ Luke wanted to know.
‘We receive a card and a letter every Christmas.’
Bill came over and held out his arms. ‘Come to your grandpa, my darling girl.’
She reached out eagerly, and Steve handed her over. ‘Kiss,’ she said, wrapping her arms around Bill’s neck and giving him a kiss.
Steve sighed. ‘Some day I am going to have to persuade her not to kiss all the men in sight.’
‘We’re hoping for a girl next time,’ Luke told him, smiling broadly as he watched the little girl kissing Tom as well.
‘Have you had any luck getting Harry to come out here and live?’ he asked Luke.
‘No, he won’t leave London and all his friends, but we’ve made it clear there is a place waiting here for him if he changes his mind at any time.’
The three men fell silent then and gazed around the room. Their wives were busy seeing to the huge layout of food, and the grandparents, Bill, Rose, Sally and Tom were joining in a boisterous game with the children. Tom and Sally had never regretted their decision to make Canada their home, and the addition of grandchildren had helped the loss of their son. His loss would always be a sadness, of course, but they had learnt to live with that and enjoy what they now had.
‘If we hadn’t survived, then none of this would have happened,’ Luke pointed out. ‘These children would never have been born, and I am grateful for the happy years we have been given.’
The other two nodded agreement, each one of them remembering their time together under the stars, knowing they had been among the lucky ones.
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About the Author
Beryl Matthews was born in London but now lives in a small village in Hampshire. As a young girl her ambition was to become a professional singer, but the need to earn a wage drove her into an office, where she worked her way up from tea girl to credit controller. After retiring she joined a Writers’ Circle in the hope of fulfilling her dream of becoming a published author. With her first book published at the age of seventy-one, she has since written over twenty novels.
By Beryl Matthews
Hold on to Your Dreams
The Forgotten Family
Battles Lost and Won
Diamonds in the Dust
A Flight of Golden Wings
The Uncertain Years
The Day Will Come
When the Music Stopped
When Midnight Comes
Friends and
Enemies
From This Day Forward
Together Under the Stars
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1F 8AN
allisonandbusby.com
This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2021.
Copyright © 2021 by Beryl Matthews
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2766–7
Together Under the Stars Page 31