“Hey, that’s not what she meant,” Guy yelled at the man who just grinned in response.
“They never do in the morning,” the man called back over his shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.
Guy continued to glare after him. “I oughta punch him in the nose.”
“Guy, for goodness sake.” She grabbed his sleeve and tugged him around to face her. “Never mind him. I’m trying to say good bye.”
“And I’m telling you that’s not going to happen.” His attention was fully on her and his eyes—they really were almost black—shone with sincerity. “Come here.” It was his turn to take hold of an arm as he pulled her into a small alleyway that ran beside the building that housed the café.
“I don’t know what you’re used to, but as far as I’m concerned tonight was special. I can’t just let that go, and you can’t tell me to just walk away from whatever it is we have together,” he said.
“But, Guy, we don’t have anything together,” Molly argued. “And we’re not going to. Let’s just leave it.”
“Don’t we?” he asked, and before she could utter a word of protest or denial, she was in his arms and his lips were on hers. There was nothing tentative about this kiss. It wasn’t an exploration to see how they’d suit. It didn’t ask permission. Guy kissed with authority. He knew this was right, and he wanted Molly to know it too. Any resistance she might have felt was swept away before it could even begin to form and she was kissing him back, meeting his expectations with her own. She didn’t know when her arms circled his neck. She didn’t care. She held and was held and their mouths became the crucible with which they forged gold.
They broke apart when a window above them was opened, and a cat leapt onto the garbage cans beside them, clattering them to the ground with a noise as if all hell had broken loose.
Molly put up a trembling hand to straighten her hair.
“That wasn’t fair,” she said, shakily. “We agreed there would be no kissing unless I started it.”
“That was last night,” Guy argued. “All bets are off come morning.”
“That wasn’t what you said last night.”
“Who cares what I said last night. I’m leaving town in about twenty minutes, and I want to know that I’ll see you when I get back again.”
“No one can know that. Life doesn’t hold any guarantees. Especially these days.”
Guy heard the despair in her voice and her doubt made him all the more certain. “And that’s why we have to grab what we’ve got with both hands. Precisely because no one knows what tomorrow will bring. My train may get blown up. You might not be so lucky on the next night watch. A million things could go wrong. Even stupid accidents don’t stop happening just because there’s a war on. Maybe I’ll look the wrong way when I cross the street because I’ll never figure out driving on the left side of the road and get hit by a bus. But even if the worse happens and I never see you again, I want to carry with me the hope that I will, if only for a few days.”
Molly looked at him steadily. He could see the doubt in her eyes. And then he saw resolution replace it. It took all his control not to kiss her again.
“How long will you be away?” she asked.
“Three days, four at the most. There’s a couple of places my uncle could be. I might have to track him down.” He tried to keep the hope out of his voice as he watched her intently, waiting to see what she had in mind.
“Do you think you could find your way to our rooftop again?” she asked.
“Damn right I can if I have to climb every staircase in London looking for it.”
“Then if we’re going to be foolish enough to pretend we might have a future, let’s be impossibly romantic as well. Meet me there at dusk in four days’ time.”
His face lit up. “Try and stop me.”
She smiled back at him. She couldn’t help it. “Now go and catch your train.”
“Let me walk you home first.”
“No,” she protested. “You’ll miss your train. I haven’t far to go. It’s just around the block.”
“There’s a train about every ten minutes in this country. I can catch the next one. Please let me take you home.”
He sounded so uncharacteristically humble that she relented. “Very well. It’s down here and to the right.”
They set off and were soon in one of those tiny squares that seemed to be scattered almost randomly throughout the city. Where once a small, enclosed greenspace in the middle of the square had stood, there were now carefully cultivated vegetable allotments and a small tool shed.
“I see what you mean about the trees,” Guy said.
“Yes, it’s a pity, but it can’t be helped.” She sounded more resigned to their destruction than she had in the night as she carefully scanned the rows of tilled earth. “Hello, Mr. Stewart,” she called when she spotted a bent figure sitting on a small stool in front of the shed. “How are you today?”
“Hello, my love,” the old man replied, struggling to his feet and walking toward them. “Thriving, thank ye for asking.” He smiled toothlessly at Molly before directing a pointed look in Guy’s direction and then back at her again.
“Guy, this is Mr. Stewart. He’s originally from Kent and was raised on a farm, so he’s kind enough to keep an eye on our little patch here and advise us poor ignorant Londoners on how to grow our bits of potato and onion. We’d be lost without him. Mr. Stewart, this is Guy…” she trailed off and turned to Guy. “How embarrassing. I don’t know your last name.”
“Corbett,” he said, extending his hand. “How do you do?”
“Yank, are you?” the old man said, taking the hand and shaking firmly, while giving him a suspicious look.
“Yes.”
“What you doing with our Molly, then?” he asked.
“Escorting her home.” Guy was more amused than anything. It was clear the old man saw himself as her cavalier.
“Guy stood watch with me last night, and he’s very properly walking me home before catching his train to Leicester,” Molly interjected. “So if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be on our way.”
“Sorry about that,” Molly said to Guy after they had left the old man to the contemplation of his garden. “He would have been dreadfully hurt if I’d just walked right past without stopping to chat.”
She halted in front of a smallish building that looked like it had stood in that same spot for a couple of hundred years and planned on doing so for at least the next century or so. Even so, the signs of war were clear in the holes in the stonework that had been left when the iron railings had been pulled out to be shipped to the weapons foundries. “Here we are,” she said. “Home, sweet home,” and turned to face him.
It was clear Guy was getting no farther than the doorstep. He was okay with that. He’d see Molly in four days. In the meantime he had a job to do. He stepped toward her and a look of panic swept across her face.
“Don’t you dare kiss me in front of Mr. Stewart, not to mention who ever might be watching out of all these windows. I’d never live it down.”
He laughed. “All right, my proper miss.” He took her hand in his own and peeled back the glove. Then raising it slowly to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers, he gently kissed her wrist. Her pulse leapt.
“Four days,” he said.
She blushed, nodded and quickly ascended the steps and hurried through the front door.
When he walked away under the watchful eye of Molly’s cavalier, Guy was whistling.
Chapter Eight
Molly rather felt like whistling herself. However, not sure whether her flat mate had managed to drag herself out of bed yet, she heroically restrained herself and tried to present a sober—and quiet—façade. It didn’t do any good.
Charlotte, Molly’s cousin as well as flat mate, was already up. Dressed in a silk robe, she was seated at the tiny breakfast table, voraciously consuming a cup of tea and a cigarette. She glanced up from the paper when she heard the door open.
�
��I remember a time before the war when respectable girls didn’t come home with the milk,” she began casually, “and now we don’t think twice of someone wandering home long after the sun’s come up. It’s a lovely opportunity if you think of it the right way.”
“Grandmother would say you were thinking of it in exactly the wrong way,” Molly said.
“Grandmother would say everything I think is wrong, one way or another,” Charlotte ruefully acknowledged, grinning at her cousin. Then her eyes narrowed and she looked more closely. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say that you’d spent the night off gallivanting instead of doing your duty and protecting the populace. What would Grandmother say about her golden girl if she could see the blush developing on your cheeks now, I wonder, never mind the shine in your eyes.”
“Oh, Charlotte, you do talk a lot of rubbish.” Molly tried to laugh off the other girl’s perceptive remarks, but she could feel how warm her face was.
“I certainly do,” Charlotte agreed immediately, her good humor unimpaired and her suspicions clearly rising. “But I’m not doing so now. Look at you blush! You cheeky wench. Tell me all about him right now.” She laid down her paper and looked at Molly expectantly.
“What do you mean ‘all about him’? There’s nothing to tell. I spent the night on a rooftop watching for enemy aircraft.”
“Don’t give me that. I’ve known you since you were in the cradle and I tried to snatch your lovely silver rattle off you. You can’t fool me, darling. If you did spend the night on the rooftop—and you’re so disturbingly truthful I’ll have to accept that you did—you didn’t do it alone. So tell me about him right now or I’ll accidentally let it drop to Grandmother that you’re seeing someone ‘most unsuitable’”.
“He’s not unsuitable,” Molly immediately protested, before adding doubtfully, “Well, he is American.”
“Aha! I knew it. There is something to tell,” Charlotte crowed. “Spill or accept the consequences.”
Molly knew Charlotte would rather pull out her tongue with her eyelash curler than betray Molly’s trust, and so she found herself telling her cousin, who had always been closer than a sister, about her night’s adventure. She discovered that talking about Guy recaptured some of the thrill of being with him. Once she started she couldn’t stop.
“A handsome, well-dressed engineer who is staying at the American Embassy and apparently has money to burn. I congratulate you, my dear. You seem to have landed on your feet,” Charlotte observed, when Molly paused for breath. “I hope you’ve made plans to see him again. It would be criminal to let someone who’s put the sparkle back in your eye escape. Had it been me, I’d have suggested lunch to give myself the opportunity to imprint my manifold charms on his brain before he had a chance to forget me.”
Molly laughed again. “Charlotte, there isn’t a man alive who could forget you once they’d met you. Anyway, he’s gone to Leicester so I couldn’t meet him for lunch even if I wanted to.”
“Gone to Leicester? That seems somewhat capricious. Why on earth would anyone go to Leicester?”
“He’s looking for his uncle.”
Charlotte was a big city girl who, except for occasional forays to country houses where suitable entertainment was lavishly provided, couldn’t imagine life anywhere except London. “Well, it seems an odd spot to have relatives. Perhaps he’s not as perfect as you think,” she said dubiously.
“I never said he was perfect.”
“Very wise. You’d be bound to be disappointed,” Charlotte approved. “And I dare say there are worse ways to show one’s imperfections than by having relatives in Leicester,” she added with an attempt at magnanimity.
“I dare say,” Molly responded dryly. “One could be unnecessarily critical of people who do have relatives in Leicester, for example.”
“That’s the spirit, my love. Stand up for him. Now, if he’s wandered off to Leicester and you’re stuck in London, when are you going to see him again?”
“We’re meeting on the same rooftop in four days.” Molly couldn’t help but blush as she spoke.
“Romantic! I heartily approve. As long as it doesn’t rain or snow or do something else to ruin your makeup and hair. Not to mention the possibility of an air raid. Putting out fires and dragging people out of collapsing buildings would definitely put a damper on the evening.”
“Well you seem to know everyone who is everyone. Do you think you could have a chat with Herr Goering and ask him to give the boys in the Luftwaffe the night off?” Molly asked.
“Done, darling.” Charlotte waved her hand, trailing smoke from her cigarette, as if in a gesture of dismissal. “But you’re on your own as far as the weather is concerned. I may need to bargain for a beautiful evening myself someday and one can’t be asking the gods for favors too often. It puts them off dreadfully.”
“I can imagine.” Molly paused, moving restlessly around the small room, needlessly rearranging the bits and bobs on the mantel over the gas fireplace and plumping up the cushions on the small chintz sofa. Charlotte watched her patiently, only making the smallest sign of protest when Molly carried the ashtray away to dump its contents in the steel bin in the kitchen.
“Charlotte, don’t read too much into this,” she finally said. “I’m only meeting him again because he insisted. And besides, agreeing to meet an agreeable man is hardly front page news.” She flashed a smile. “You do it all the time.”
“Oh, unkind,” Charlotte cried. “You’re starting to sound like you know who.” Then she shot her cousin the wicked grin that had captured more than one heart. “Besides, I don’t limit myself to meeting ‘agreeable’ men all the time. Virtue can be so very tedious.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“So I should hope. I’ve worked bloody hard to become so. But seriously, I’m glad to see you making some kind of effort in that direction, even if you do claim it was forced on you. You’ve spent the last six months walking around in a daze. Your body and mind have been carrying on brilliantly, but your heart and soul having been missing in action for much too long, buried away under that carefully constructed bunker you’ve built inside yourself. They’re peeping out at me again for the first time since Tom died, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see them.”
“Oh but Charlotte, I’m not sure I am. I’m afraid. I was very comfortable in my bunker with the little ration of emotion I’d allowed myself all neatly laid out for moderate and occasional consumption. If I let my heart and soul, as you say, come out again anything could happen.”
Charlotte stood up and came over to where Molly stood fiddling nervously with the tassel on a curtain. She put an arm around her and gave her a hug and a warm smile. “Yes, darling,” she said. “It could. Isn’t it marvellous? Now, let’s go to what’s left of Oxford St. and if we can’t find anything suitable there we’ll check to see if Harrods is still standing. We need to look for something for you to wear to your tryst before Mr. Churchill decides to start rationing the very clothes we walk around in.”
“Ration our clothes? Honestly, Charlotte, it’s hardly likely to come to that.”
“Lipstick then. Honestly I wouldn’t put anything past the old bugger.”
“Charlotte, that’s sacrilege or treason or something.”
“Well, darling, why else are we fighting this bloody war if not to have the freedom to say what we like? Now get out of those awful trousers you wear on night patrol—it’s a good thing there’s a blackout, your Guy would have run screaming if he’d seen you in them—and let’s go shopping.”
“He did see me in them. He took me into the Embassy after he knocked me down. And he still wants to see me again. So there.”
“Good lord, it must be love.”
“Charlotte…” Molly warned. “Don’t rush things.”
“Sorry,” was the breezy reply. “Now for heaven’s sake get changed. I’ll give you fifteen minutes, and then I’m going without you and you’ll be stuck wearing whatever I choose.�
��
“Considering you’re still in your nightgown and I’ve never known you to take less than three quarters of an hour to get ready for anything, I’ll take that threat with a grain of salt.”
Charlotte looked down at herself. “Goodness, so I am. It’s a good thing you noticed. Come on. We’d both better get dressed.”
They shared the flat’s tiny bathroom and wandered in and out of each other’s bedroom as they prepared for the shopping expedition. Molly took her time, knowing she would be the first one ready by several minutes. Suddenly struck by such unwarranted activity by her usually late sleeping cousin, she stopped in the middle of trying to turn her bedraggled locks into a hairdo she wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen in and asked: “Much as I enjoy shopping with you, what’s the hurry? I won’t be seeing him for another four days, and I have been up all night. I wouldn’t mind a little lie down before we start spending all my hard earnings on frivolities.”
“Darling, you know you’d only lie in bed thinking about him instead of sleeping, so what’s the point of trying? Besides all of Oxford St. could have been turned into a pile of rubble by then. And war or no war, you must have a decent dress to wear, especially if he’s only seen you in those awful trousers. Also, I’ve got a delivery to make in the morning, and I must leave for the aerodrome this afternoon. I don’t know where I’m going yet, so who knows when I’ll be back. I refuse to leave it up to you. You’d root through your closet and come up with something quite unsuitable.”
“I never wear something unsuitable,” Molly protested.
“Exactly my point. Your eminently suitable wardrobe is unsuitable. It simply won’t cut it for a rich and handsome American.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that. I don’t know why you think he’s rich.”
“They all are, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked carelessly as she meticulously outlined her lips with rouge. “Anyway, you told me he was well-dressed, staying at the Embassy and flew over. He must have bags of money.”
Molly could see her point. Perhaps a shopping trip wasn’t such an outlandish idea after all.
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