‘Sorry, darling, they kept us waiting around while they evaluated the results. Bloody waste of time.’
He threw his shoes across the room and slipped his braces off his shoulders, unbuttoning his flies and getting out of his blue-serge trousers as fast as he could.
It was only then that he realized that Rosemary hadn’t said as much as a word, and was standing by her dressing-table, hand on her hip.
For a brief, awful moment he thought she had had a relapse; then he saw what she had in her other hand, and the twinkle in her eye. She had got it from a box in his bedside cabinet. He always bought them every time he visited his barber.
Biff could hardly restrain himself, crossing to her, picking her up with both hands cupping her bottom as she wrapped her strong legs around his waist, arms about his neck, kissing fiercely. He carried her to the bed, collapsing on top of her, running his hands up her thigh.
She was wearing no knickers, laughing at the look on his face as he suddenly found out.
Rosemary had already opened the little square packet. She pulled down his shorts, helped with one hand by Biff, then she deftly rolled the french letter on to him.
At that moment she lost control as Biff, a ravenous hunger for his lovely, beautiful wife – denied to him for so long – at last got the better of him.
He pinned her arms to the pillow above her head with one hand, as with the other he bared her breasts and ran his fingers over the hardening nipples.
Then he penetrated her with ease; Rosemary’s body was more than ready for him.
For several minutes they rucked with increasing fury until at last, with explosion after explosion in his head and loins, he collapsed beside her.
They lay side by side gasping for air. Several minutes passed before Rosemary managed to whisper:
‘I’m so sorry, darling, I’m so sorry.’
He pulled her on to her side as he rolled to face her, and took her in his arms, gently kissing her all over her face, lifting a strand of blonde hair out of her eyes and hugging her very gently.
‘Stop darling, stop. You’re back now – that’s all that matters.’
Throughout June and July they played tennis, went to the local ‘rep’ to see plays, and saw a succession of wonderful films: Goodbye Mr Chips with Robert Donat, Wuthering Heights with Olivier and the stunningly beautiful Merle Oberon, and Dark Victory with Bette Davis.
On the newsreels the King and Queen visited America, the first reigning monarchs to do so since the revolution. Later, on another occasion, they saw the Princess Elizabeth, now a young woman, meeting Royal Navy officers including a handsome young prince of the Greek royal family.
They got tickets for Wimbledon, eating strawberries and cream with lots of sugar, before watching the ladies final as Alice Marble beat Kay Stammers 6-2, 6-0, and raised the silver Rosewater Dish in front of her.
On the same day they watched one of the rounds of the mixed doubles. When it was over Rosemary said wistfully: ‘Konrad and Anna would have loved that.’
Biff didn’t reply, just nodded.
So, she still thought of them, as he had many a time, especially when she had been so depressed.
The first of August found them on holiday in Cornwall. They’d rented a fisherman’s cottage for a week, in Port Isaac. Hand in hand they climbed the steep streets and then the lanes and, at the last, a dirt path, toiling in the sun, listening to the bees busy on the flowers and gorse, until they reached the top of the headland, and the full breeze of the green-blue Atlantic cooled their fevered brows.
Following the rocky coast the path dipped into a steep fern-covered combe. Water bubbled down the hillside, sparkling in the sun, before running on, cold and clear over the stones in the deep shade.
‘Here – this is the place.’
Rosemary pointed at a flat sheltered area of short grass flanked by rocks and the edge of the stream, and surrounded by ferns. Further back, a dense clump of short trees, deformed by the ceaseless wind, formed an almost impenetrable screen.
Black-and-white cows grazed the small fields above.
Biff pulled the strap of his haversack off one shoulder and swung it to the ground.
Rosemary had a large bag. From it she took a tartan blanket and spread it carefully out on the grass. Biff delivered their thermos and various tins.
The scratched red Oxo box contained their sandwiches; another, little jellies she’d made the night before. From her bag Rosemary set out two glasses and a bottle of Tizer. Lastly, Biff placed the portable gramophone, which he’d carried separately, on a flat piece of rock.
He sat down cross-legged.
‘I’m famished.’
Rosemary settled herself with her legs to one side, and handed him a linen napkin.
‘Really, Biff, after that huge breakfast – you’ll be getting fat.’
She pushed at the metal device attached to the stopper on the Tizer bottle. With a hiss the stopper opened and the fizzing reddish liquid welled up out of the neck. She poured two tumblerfulls and handed him one.
‘Here, quench your thirst.’
He did as he was told as she opened the Oxo tin. Inside, wrapped in greaseproof paper, were the egg sandwiches she’d made that morning.
Rosemary offered them; Biff took one.
Before she could take one herself he’d wolfed it down.
‘That’s good.’
Rosemary tut-tutted. ‘For heaven’s sake, Biff.’
They ate their way steadily through all the sandwiches, jellies and cakes, finishing with coffee and some petits fours.
‘I’m stuffed.’
Biff lay flat, legs bent at the knee, arms behind his head, staring straight up into a blue sky with fluffy white clouds racing by, listening to unseen skylarks.
Leisurely, Rosemary packed everything away, leaving only the blanket on which they sat, and turned her attention to the portable gramophone. She selected a favourite record, put it on to the turntable, then cranked the winder until it would go no more. With a click the black wax disc started turning. Rosemary raised the arm, and brought the needle down on the undulating surface. She flopped down beside Biff, her head resting on his arm as the first notes of ‘Smoke Gets in your Eyes’ rose into the air.
She snuggled into him.
‘Hmm, this is heaven on earth.’
He gave her a squeeze and closed his eyes. When the plaintive song ended, Rosemary murmured: ‘In a few weeks it will be the first of October. We should have been meeting Anna and Konrad.’
He nodded. ‘I know, darling.’
Chapter Eleven
A vicious pain was sliding down his neck and arm. It was pitch-black.
There seemed to be no glimmer of light anywhere. Where was he? What had happened? He couldn’t remember. The pain was awful, like an iron band around his chest. In a cold sweat Biff lay looking up into the blackness. He wondered about pressing the alarm thing around his neck, but then, mercifully, he lost consciousness again.
As they walked back, there was a deep roar of several aircraft engines. Biff searched the sky but there was nothing to see.
‘Must have been the other side of the hill, they sounded very low down.’
It was the RAF’s big August exercise. He wondered how the squadron was faring.
On their last day they drove through the winding high-banked lanes to St Ives, famous for its artists. Barbara Hepworth a sculptor was busy in her workshop, according to a man who was addressing a little group outside the house. Suddenly the door opened and the woman herself invited them inside. Biff grabbed Rosemary’s arm and towed her in as if they were part of the group.
Afterwards he asked had she enjoyed it?
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but I can’t really say I understood those shapes.’
They went to the harbour and looked at the fishing boats with their bright red and blue hulls lying high and dry on the sand at low tide.
A naval high-speed patrol boat was anchored out in deep water.
On a table outside a little shop they enjoyed scones with cream and jam, and a pot of tea, watching people drift past, some wearing Kiss Me Quick hats, some eating ice creams, and candy floss.
A Salvation Army band came marching along with a little crowd following behind, and children running alongside. They stopped, and an officer got on a box and spoke to the crowd. The band then played one of the Olney hymns: ‘Amazing Grace’. A collection was taken, before they marched off to ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’.
He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get a move on.’
It marked the end of their holiday.
Next day, on the long journey home, the car boiled up in Bridgwater. After letting it cool Biff refilled the radiator with a kettle of water provided by a woman outside whose house they’d stopped.
She also looked around and found several bottles which she filled with more water for the journey.
It was a good thing she did. They boiled up again outside Taunton, and although he was not a member, a passing AA man on his yellow motorbike and sidecar, helped with water from a large can he was carrying.
Finally, just short of Bristol, Biff had to replace the splitting water hose, which meant walking a mile to the nearest garage as Rosemary read a book. The garage man brought him back in his Ford truck.
It took him another half an hour to replace the hose, fill the system up from a can provided by the garage, and bleed out the bubbles.
Midnight came and went before the pale yellow of his headlights lit up the cottage. Rosemary was fast asleep. When he gently aroused her she groaned and rubbed her neck.
‘I’m so stiff.’
Biff got the key in the door while the headlights lit up the front of the house.
By the time they got into bed it was two o’clock in the morning.
He had to report to the squadron at seven.
The rest of August passed quickly enough. He was just home, getting ready to go to the tennis club for an evening of ‘friendlies’ and supper when the wireless broadcast the early evening bulletin for 27 August. He could hear it from downstairs. Herr Hitler was demanding Danzig and the Polish corridor.
Biff froze, sagged down on to the bed listening, his trousers around his knees, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He knew that the end was near now: the end of peace.
There was a subdued atmosphere at the club that night, none of the alcohol-fuelled wildness of the partying that had gone on in some quarters of society all summer.
Three days later Poland mobilized.
A white-faced Rosemary turned from what she was doing in the kitchen when he walked in.
‘What’s the word on the squadron?’
He shook his head. ‘We’re in the dark as much as everybody else.’
They had their usual glass of sherry, while in the oven a steak-and-kidney pie bubbled and dribbled out of the airhole in the pastry and down the sides of the dish.
‘What do you think is going to happen, Biff?’
He took a deep breath.
‘It’s serious Rose, but who knows? Mr Chamberlain may pull something out of the bag again?’
When they made love that night it was with a quiet intensity.
Afterwards they remained close together, just hanging on to each other, not wanting to be physically parted.
Next day Germany was reporting a Polish attack on one of their radio stations in Gleiwitz.
It seemed so unlikely as to defy reason.
On 1 September German armies crossed into Poland.
Britain and France issued demands that they must be withdrawn.
Two days later Neville Chamberlain addressed the nation, his tired, defeated voice ending with: ‘and consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
It was a Sunday, but Biff drove immediately to the airfield and was told to go away, come in as normal on the Monday. So he returned to a worried Rosemary and did some frenzied digging in the vegetable patch. Later, as was their custom, they went to the tennis club. The courts were closed, the nets taken down and already packed away. The mood in the clubhouse was subdued. There were no displays of patriotism such as their parents had shared a generation before, Passchendaele and the Somme had seen to that. But there was a quiet air of resigned determination that their cause was righteous.
Rosemary turned to him, obviously with something important to say, but finding it difficult.
Anxiously he asked: ‘What is it, darling?’
She swallowed and for the first time he realized that she had tears in her eyes.
‘This means that you and Konrad are enemies now, doesn’t it?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll never be enemies, Rosemary.’
But sadly, he knew they were – technically.
The Blenheims were first in action, though Biff was not one of their pilots.
Ten aircraft had attacked German warships in the Heligoland Bight, but had failed to achieve any real damage.
Worst of all, the losses were terrible. Half of them failed to return.
They’d all been affected. From his wedding guard of honour Allan ‘Dicky’ Dickinson and three others were not at their places that night.
The war was less than a week old, and already one of the most decent of men, a true Yorkshire man and salt of the earth, was gone. It was difficult to believe that he would never hear his gritty ‘bugger off’, said with a certain twinkle in the eye; never again have the benefit of his earthy wit and wisdom, his pithy comments on Biff’s performance at Rugby.
The morale of the squadron had taken a big knock.
Biff felt a mixture of guilt and frustration. He’d trained all these years, wanted to prove himself, and had felt it keenly when his aircraft had been pronounced unserviceable just as they were to be briefed.
But he was still alive.
Rosemary, when he was allowed off station, flew into his arms as he stepped out of the car. After they’d made love they lay side by side, holding hands. Rosemary let go and found her cigarettes, offered them, but Biff shook his head.
She lit up, then lay back, exhaling smoke, watching it drift up towards the ceiling.
‘God, I needed that. I’m smoking more than ever now, worrying about you, where you are, what you are doing. Every time a Blenheim goes over I get jittery.’
He squeezed her hand.
‘Don’t be. All I’ve done are some anti-shipping patrols.’
He didn’t say anything to her about the enormous fear of imminent attack when he was in the air. When he’d got back from the first patrol his back ached, his neck ached, and he had a headache from straining to see tiny dots falling out of the sun on to him – enemy fighters. It got better as the weeks passed, his fear was still there, but was now confined to somewhere at the back of his mind, though his eyes still ceaselessly roamed the sky for danger.
‘I’ve got a forty-eight. What would you like to do?’
She turned her head, smiled.
‘Stay here and make love, morning, noon and night.’
Biff still remembered that terrible time of a few months ago.
‘Very well, madam, be it on your own head.’
With that he rolled on to her, Rosemary screaming: ‘Watch my ciggy! Biff – Biff!’
The German army took until 4 October to subdue the last remnants of Polish resistance and annex Western Poland, the Russians taking the Eastern half in the unholy alliance that had been the secret Soviet-German Treaty. Everybody in the Air Force, and most civilians too, had noted the firebombing of Warsaw by the Luftwaffe.
On 5 October Adolf Hitler denied he wanted war with Britain. The only action so far had been by U-boats, sinking the liner Athenia soon after war was declared. One air-raid had occurred, but everywhere else was all quiet.
The British Expeditionary Force was now well deployed in France, as the happy scenes at the cinema of grinning, gap-toothed Tommies in French villages with young girls on their arms demonstrated. The newsreel ended with a stirring co
mmentary to the effect that if Hitler made a move on France, these were the chaps to give him a bloody nose.
Rosemary finished her ice cream and put the tub under the seat. She had been looking forward to the big film, and didn’t want to know anything more about the war for now, thank you very much.
As the opening scenes of Ninotchka with Greta Garbo flickered on the screen, she leant against her husband, content and happy for at least another twelve hours.
With the turn of a screw though, the war did become more brutal the following week when a U-boat got into Scapa Flow and sunk the battleship HMS Royal Oak, with 833 sailors drowned.
Life went on as usual, Biff flying his anti-shipping patrols, Rosemary still working in her estate agents, though it got very slow. She did enrol in the Women’s Voluntary Service, and manned a mobile canteen on half-closing day, taking it to railway and bus stations in the area.
There was excitement in December when three Royal Navy cruisers cornered the pocket battleship Graf Spee at the battle of the River Plate, forcing it to take shelter in Montevideo harbour. Four days later the Germans scuttled her.
Everybody hailed the great victory, but Biff and Rosemary did wonder about Konrad. Could he have been on the ship? If so, was he alive and well, though interned, not able to see Anna for probably a couple of years.
If it were true, Rosemary would be envious, worrying as she did every day about Biff. But she would be pleased for Anna.
They were together for Christmas, paying flying visits to both sets of parents, travelling by dirty, heavily overloaded trains.
On the day itself they were on their own, roasting a locally provided goose before settling before a log fire, listening to the King’s speech from the floor, where they were cracking nuts that she had bought before the war, drinking sherry and Watney’s brown ale, and getting through a whole box of chocolates that her mother had given them as a present.
He had already told her that he wouldn’t be with her for New Year’s Eve; the squadron had been ordered to France to join the air component of the BEF and the Advanced Air Striking Force. She had accepted it resignedly. Even without any fighting the war had already taken over their lives. Nothing would ever be the same, she thought, even if it all went away tomorrow. They’d already lost some of the innocence of their youth. Maybe, of course, it was just that they would have changed anyway: they were getting used to being married, after all.
Tears of Autumn, The Page 13