As Time Goes By
Page 38
‘Savvy!’ Sam agreed, giving a small blissful sigh of happiness when he reached out to put his arm around her so that he could kiss her.
It was a very thorough kiss and a very long one, and Sam, nestling against him, knew that she had never been happier nor more thankful to be alive.
‘That was a bloody brave thing you did for me, Sam,’ Johnny told her. ‘And a bloody daft one, an’ all, risking your own life like that.’
‘Mine wouldn’t have been worth anything to me without you in it,’ Sam told him shakily.
‘There you go, being daft again – how the devil is Mr Churchill going to win this ruddy war without you to help him?’ Johnny teased her.
‘He needs your help more than he needs mine,’ Sam countered stoutly.
‘Aye, well, as to that,’ Johnny was holding her hand and now he held it tighter, ‘I thought I was a goner down there, Sam, I can tell you. I knew that eventually the lads would find me, but I reckoned it wouldn’t be before the morning, not with that bomb not being on the urgent list and me only having decided to take a look at it on me way home when I came off duty. And by that time I would have been drowned.’
Sam made a small sound of anguish and shook her head.
‘It’s the truth,’ Johnny insisted.
‘What about your leg? I know you’ve broken it.’
‘Yes, but it’s a clean break, luckily, and the doctor says that it should heal easily enough. Course, he’s told me that seein’ as they’re short of beds here he’s going to need to send me home, and that on account of me not being able to get around much under me own steam, I’m going to need someone around to look after me. Do you know anyone who’d be willing to take on that job, Sam?’
His words might be whimsical and light but Sam was only half listening to them. She was looking into his eyes, and what she could see there made her heart somersault as though it was in the hands of a juggler.
‘I … I think I might do.’
‘Mm.’ Johnny was leaning closer to her. He was going to kiss her again. ‘She wouldn’t be a long-legged blonde with the most loving heart there ever was, and a smile that could soften iron, could she, this girl you know?’ Cos if she is …’
His free hand was cupping the back of her head now, his breath warm against her skin.
‘’Cos if she is?’ Sam prompted him weakly.
‘’Cos if she is then I reckon that her and me are just about perfect for one another.’
‘Oh, Johnny.’
‘And what’s going on in here, may I ask?’
They sprang apart at the wrathful sound of Sister’s voice.
‘When you told me that you wished to thank Private Grey for her part in your rescue, Sergeant Everton, this was not what I expected to find!’
To Sam’s amusement, instead of looking chagrined, Johnny merely winked at the stern-looking woman standing in the doorway and said, ‘Didn’t want any other chap to beat me to it and propose to her before I could.’
‘You’ve asked Private Grey to marry you?’
Johnny’s smile broadened. ‘Not yet, but if you give me another five minutes or so, I intend to.’
After Sister had gone with a disapproving rustle of her starched uniform and a firm, ‘Five minutes and not a second more then,’ Sam whispered lovingly to Johnny, ‘It won’t take me five seconds to say “yes”, never mind five minutes.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘but think of how much I’m going to enjoy kissing you, to celebrate, for the other four minutes and fifty-five seconds.’
‘It’s really kind of you and Russ to come and collect me and Johnny, Hazel,’ Sam thanked her friend and her brother, as she checked that she had removed everything from her hospital bedside locker.
She and Johnny were both being discharged today and then the four of them were going to travel down south together to spend Christmas with Sam and Russell’s parents.
‘Johnny said he’d wait for us on his ward. He wanted to say goodbye to some of the other men.’
Sam’s face clouded slightly. Although she and Johnny had been kept in hospital for only a few days, it had been long enough for Johnny to strike up friendships with some of the other soldiers on the ward, many of whom had very serious injuries indeed.
She and Johnny were so very lucky. Sam gave a small shiver as the three of them left her small room and headed for Johnny’s ward.
The first person Sam saw when Russell opened the ward doors for them was Johnny. The second was the pretty young woman who was standing talking to him, laughing up at him. There was something about her that was vaguely familiar but Sam couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was at first, and then she realised that she was the young woman she had seen singing at the Grafton the night Johnny had asked her to dance. A friend from his past, someone who knew all those things about him that she did not.
‘What’s up?’ Russell demanded when he saw the way she was hanging back.
‘Nothing,’ she told him, but she knew that there was. Johnny hadn’t seen her yet. It was obvious that he was relaxed and at ease with the woman, and that she was someone he knew well. She had even put her hand on his arm as she said something to him, as though to emphasise some point she had been making. Their intimacy underlined for Sam with painful sharpness the fact that a large part of his life – all of his past, in fact – was forbidden territory to her, and that hurt, even though he had explained his feelings to her.
Johnny looked up and saw her, a tender loving smile immediately curving his mouth. He was on crutches now and Sam saw him saying something to the woman, before starting to make his way towards her.
She felt Russell giving her a little push, and then she was hurrying towards Johnny, meeting him before he had managed more than a few yards.
‘Come and meet Sally,’ Johnny told her. ‘She was singing at the Grafton that night …’
‘Yes. Yes. I recognised her,’ Sam stopped him. ‘You have a lovely voice,’ she told Sally.
‘Thank you.’
They exchanged slightly hesitant smiles.
‘I must go,’ Sally said. ‘I’ve left the boys with my … with Alex, and since he really came in to see one of his patients, I’d better go and get them.’
‘Sal just popped in to see how I was doing. I think she’s been hanging on so that she can warn you about me.’
Johnny sounded as though he was joking but Sam could see the anxiety in his eyes and it brought her love for him surging through her, pushing aside her self-consciousness.
‘No one could tell me anything about you that would change the way I feel about you,’ she told him lovingly.
‘See, Sal, I told you how it was.’ Johnny was smiling happily now. ‘Sam’s the girl for me, and I’m damned lucky to have her. She’s the best girl in the world.’
‘Hey, wait a minute,’ Russell joined in playfully. ‘My Hazel’s the best girl in the world.’
‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you there.’
Sally turned round to smile at Alex as he came into the ward with her sons, just in time to join in the conversation.
‘Sally takes that title, in my opinion.’
Suddenly they were all laughing and joking together, the ice broken by each man’s determination to speak up for ‘his’ girl, the girls themselves laughing and sharing that look that said how each of them felt about the man she loved and about being loved by him.
‘No more going out playing in the mud for you,’ Russell informed Sam in a lordly older brother way. ‘You’ve still got some behind your ear.’
‘What? No, I haven’t. You beast, Russ,’ Sam objected, joining in everyone’s laughter when she realised he was teasing her.
‘How long am I going to have to wait before I get you to myself?’ Johnny managed to whisper in that same ear as they all left the ward. ‘It’s been for ever since you last kissed me.’
‘Fibber. I kissed you at six o’clock this morning, when I brought
you your breakfast and pretended to be a nurse,’ Sam reminded him.
‘Oh, that was you, was it?’
‘Sam, Johnny, we’re never going to get that train if you two stop walking to kiss each other every few yards,’ Hazel scolded them as she turned round to see why they had fallen behind.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help:
Teresa Chris, my agent.
Susan Opie, my editor at HarperCollins.
Yvonne Holland, whose expertise enables me ‘not to have nightmares’ about getting things wrong.
Everyone at HarperCollins who contributed to the publication of this book.
My writing friends, especially those wonderfully generous fellow saga authors who have given me so much help and encouragement.
Tony, who once again has done wonders researching the facts I needed.
About the Author
AS TIME GOES BY
Annie Groves lives in the North-West of England and has done so all of her life. She is the author of Ellie Pride, Connie’s Courage and Hettie of Hope Street, a series of novels for which she drew upon her family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her most recent novels are Goodnight Sweetheart, Some Sunny Day and The Grafton Girls, which were inspired by wartime recollections from members of her own family who come from the city of Liverpool. Annie Groves also writes under the name Penny Jordan, and is an international bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 67,000,000 copies.
For further information go to www. annie groves. co. uk and visit www.AuthorTracker.co. uk for exclusive information on you favourite HarperCollins authors.
By the same author
Ellie Pride
Connie’s Courage
Hettie of Hope Street
Goodnight Sweetheart
Some Sunny Day
The Grafton Girls
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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