The Bench

by Nigel Jones

  His letters to her were still the letters of a big brother. They did not mention his friend who had died whilst training, or the crash landing he’d had to make in the Lysander when its engine had failed crossing the coast after retrieving an airman from France. They’d been lucky, he had just enough altitude to be able to glide the beast to terra firma, thus avoiding a dip in the cold sea, something they all dreaded as survival time was limited to just a few minutes. That was the problem with single engine aeroplanes, when the engine stopped working they either became boats or stationary vehicles. Anyway, this time he was a hero and saved the valuable aircraft. The engineers drove down to a field some fifty yards from the coast in Sussex and changed the magnetos. So Jacques got to do a rare daylight take-off and returned to Tempsford.

  His letters did not mention anything that could scare his little Honeysuckle, and they had not mentioned Yvette or the fact that he was no longer a pilot, but a spy and a saboteur. In a modern world he could even have been described as a terrorist. No, his letters were about her world and the world of his own childhood.

  Jacques knew the speck on the pier would be Honeysuckle, and he found himself wondering what the small girl he’d not seen for eighteen months would look like. The speck got larger and made a little leap for joy when it saw Jacques wave back at her. Slowly the speck became a person, a person Jacques could barely recognise.

  She was a mere fifty yards away now and Honeysuckle was a young woman. Her mother had allowed her to wear make-up, and she had grown at least six inches in the past eighteen months. Her hair had also grown and was a mass of dark waves and curls that hung over her shoulders and framed that smile, a smile that lit up the whole world around it.

  Jacques would have been speechless had she been standing in front of him and he was glad he had a few minutes to prepare himself before greeting her.

  As he stepped from the boarding ramp she flew into his arms. He was wrong; she’d grown more than six inches because there were the heels as well. She seemed at least ten inches taller than when he’d last seen her, and she had acquired a figure, one hell of a figure.

  His face was buried in her curls as she hugged him to her. Eventually she pulled away and held his hands. “I’ve missed you, Jacques.”

  Jacques was still mesmerised by the woman she had become. He stood shaking his head, but saying nothing.

  Honeysuckle was delighted at the effect she was having on him. It is exactly what she had wanted and she gave him her smile once again, her generous mouth and eyes bewitching him. He just stared at her, still speechless.

  “Say something then,” she said, tossing her head to one side.

  “I can’t. I don’t believe what I see before me. You are stunning. My little Honeysuckle has turned into a beautiful swan.”

  “Are you saying I was an ugly duckling?” Her smile had turned into an attractive pout.

  “No, you weren’t ugly. You just weren’t, this.” His hand gestured towards her as if he were presenting a princess.

  The pout went and the smile returned. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. His only defence against it was to pull her to him and bury his head in her curls again as he hugged her once more.

  Honeysuckle was in heaven as she felt him close to her.

  “Where are my parents?” Jacques said after a while.

  “They are making tea and I am to take you straight there.”

  Jacques’s parents were now perfectly aware of how Honeysuckle felt about their son. Elizabeth had seen it first and had asked Honeysuckle’s mother, if what she thought she saw in Honeysuckle was true. “Oh yes, it’s true, she is besotted by him. It was seamless, the nature of the infatuation just changed from that of a small girl to that of a young woman.”

  “Oh dear, Audrey. I know he loves her, but I don’t know if he loves her like that. She has always been like his little sister.” Elizabeth had looked concerned.

  “I know, but Honeysuckle knows that too. All we can do is leave them to their own devices and wait to see what develops.”

  Big Jacques didn’t get it at first, he had noticed his surrogate daughter grow into a woman, but his wife and her best friend still had to explain to him in words of one syllable that Honeysuckle had also changed inside, which had altered the situation with his son. Still confused, he eventually grasped the nettle and simply said, “Why would she not love him? He is French.”

  The three of them had deliberately allowed Honeysuckle to meet him alone. They knew that what he saw would astonish him, and if their darling Honeysuckle were to have him, he must see her as a woman, albeit a young woman.

  Over tea they studied Jacques’s reaction to her. It was perfectly obvious that he saw her as a woman, but was she still his little sister?

  During the few days he spent at home they were as inseparable as ever. It was the school holidays and Honeysuckle usually helped her mother in the shop, but she had refused her daughter’s help and insisted she spend the time with Jacques.

  They had tea in the tearooms, and sat on the pier. They walked to Freshwater, and cycled to Headon Warren. One day they took a picnic and walked some of Tennyson’s Trail to Brighstone before getting the bus back along the stunning coast road, which the army had built, and they watched the waves crashing against the rocks beneath the chalk cliffs.

  Another day they took a picnic to the beach and sat in the late summer sun until the sun set in the west beyond the Needles.

  During these perfect days they talked. No longer the talk of children, but the talk of adults. Jacques told her all the things he had not said in his letters. He told her about the night in Normandy when he had been picking up a Resistance member and they were attacked. He told her about the bullets that hit his plane as he took off. He told her about friends who’d died at the hands of the Luftwaffe, and the bravery of the Resistance and the S.O.E. But he did not tell her about Yvette, or the fact that he was now a part of the S.O.E. and he was not sure of the reason why.

  He did know that he still enjoyed her company more than any person he had ever known. She was the most natural and delightful person to be with and when she smiled he wanted to kiss her, because her smile had a life of its own that almost hypnotised him.

  Why could he not tell her about Yvette? He wanted to share it all with her and he felt guilty that he was deceiving her in some way, but something was stopping him.

  Honeysuckle was in paradise every second that she spent with him. She was sixteen and she knew she was in love.

  She had been a little apprehensive about his coming home. In the previous eighteen months her mind had built him up out of all proportion, and she was aware of it. What if they had lost the special relationship they had? What if the war had changed him? What if he didn’t like the woman she was turning into? Or was she still just being a silly little girl with childish fantasies?

  The time they had spent together told her that what they had was special, and the way he looked at her told her that he saw the woman she had become. And his eyes told her that he liked that woman.

  They had spent their first days together as adults and there was hope, but he had not made any sort of advances to her, but that didn’t matter because she was only sixteen and that would come later. She would make sure it did, but if he would just kiss her once she would know how he really felt.

  They spent their last day together on the beach and it was wonderful. Their conversation never ceased even when they swam in the surf, as whenever their heads appeared above the waves again they would resume talking. They would run back along the beach to their towels and dry off before eating yet another of the morsels their parents had prepared for them.

  In the late afternoon Honeysuckle said, “Come on, let’s go back to Yarmouth and row up the Yar to the tidal mill like we used to when we were little. The tide will be in and we can have our last swim by the little beach there, it’s lovely.

  “What a great idea,” Jacques replied, already gathering up their towels.


  Back in Yarmouth they grabbed the tender to Big Jacques’s boat and Honeysuckle rowed him up the river to the mill, as she had done a hundred times before. He just lay back and encouraged his slave to row faster. At the age of ten she would just giggle all the way there, that giggle had now become the most wonderful husky laugh as he told her, “Put your back into it, wench.”

  They were escorted by a myriad of birdlife, as she pulled harder on the oars. Terns skittered to their right in the reeds and gulls followed them up the estuary. A heron stood motionless in the salt flats waiting to see what the tide would bring for his supper. Shortly the sun would disappear behind the headland, which looked down on Yarmouth with its Norman Church spire nestling perfectly in the middle of the town, whilst the old castle guarded the harbour entrance, woefully inadequate for any modern day battles.

  Honeysuckle loved Yarmouth, it was where she had grown up with Jacques, and here by the mill was her favourite place. She associated it with Jacques, her slave to his master; here they had always been alone together. She had not visited the mill or their little beach for eighteen months, she hadn’t wanted to, it would not have been the same without him.

  They beached the tender and stepped ashore, surrounded by perfect tranquillity. The only noise was the mill wheel turning gently on the tide some four hundred yards away.

  A little egret landed gracefully on the far side of the estuary opposite them as Honeysuckle peeled off her summer dress to reveal her unnervingly curvaceous body, which was covered only by her swimming costume.

  All day it had bothered Jacques that he should find himself looking at her, trying not to imagine her as he’d seen Yvette.

  She grabbed his hand and led him to the water, then she dived gracefully into the deep clear pool, her long legs giving a dolphin kick as she disappeared from view.

  Jacques shook his head in disbelief as he had done all day whenever she was not looking, and he followed her into the private pool that no one else seemed to know about. Beneath the water he watched her swim with a beauty and grace that a dolphin would be proud of. Her glorious hair streamed out behind her as she glided through the water, then she did two things that Jacques would never forget.

  There, five feet under the water she actually smiled at him, like a mermaid who lived in the sea perfectly at home in its depths. There in the water the smile was even more remarkable and even more beautiful. Then she took his hand, and still under the water they both swam the short distance to their little sandy beach.

  At the beach she allowed him to stand up then circled him under the water before rising up in front of him like a siren, her body brushing against him. With her soaking wet hair framing her now unsmiling face, she assuredly took his head in her hands and kissed him. She waited for his lips to part so she could explore his tongue. They did.

  Jacques had been mesmerised by the whole thing from the moment her ankles had flicked her beneath the surface. When her body touched his he had wanted to hold her, but his hands had not moved. When her lips had touched his he had no option other than to open his mouth and let her kiss him, he could not have stopped himself in a million years, he knew he was in the presence of someone quite extraordinary.

  The kiss was over, and there was the smile again. Not embarrassed or demure, but her radiant unselfconscious smile. “There, it is done, Jacques. It had to be done.”

  Jacques just stood there in complete shock, but knowing it had been the most incredible moment of his life. More incredible than the day he’d spent with Yvette all those months ago and those days he’d spent with her since. He did not know what to say, he just stood there.

  Honeysuckle laughed at him, it was a nervous laugh. Should she have done it? What was his reaction going to be? She already knew what one of his reactions had been, she could feel it against her stomach and butterflies had swarmed inside her when she felt him.

  She waited with an anxious look on her face, like a small child waiting to be chastised, and then he laughed.

  “Well, little Honeysuckle, so you’ve grown up!”

  “I’m sorry, Jacques, I’ve fantasised for so long about kissing you. I couldn’t stand it any longer and you are leaving tomorrow, I…”

  “It’s okay, Honeysuckle. I liked it, but you are only sixteen and….”

  “I know, but I had to see if our relationship could ever be anything more. Not now, but when I am older and the War is over.” She looked anxious, wanting some sort of affirmation.

  It was an unasked question and Jacques was totally confused. He loved Honeysuckle, he had always loved Honeysuckle, but could he be falling in love with her? He knew one thing, he didn’t feel the same way about Yvette, but how the hell did he feel about Honeysuckle? Yvette was a woman, an incredible woman, and Honeysuckle was? What was Honeysuckle?

  “Honeysuckle,” he wasn’t sure what he was going to say to her as she stared expectantly at him. “What we have is remarkable and quite frankly I’m confused about what just happened. You know I’ve always loved you, but it was always as a brother, and now,“ he hesitated; she looked forlorn at what he was about to say. “I don’t know, that may have changed. You are only just sixteen and still have a lot of growing up to do.”

  All Honeysuckle heard was, it may have changed. “I love you Jacques, and when I’m older and the War is over it may be possible?” There was a look of hope on her lovely face, and desperation in her eyes.

  The War had a long way to run yet. A thousand things could happen, he needed time to think about what had just taken place and he needed time to think about Yvette. Who knows what could transpire over the coming years? He had to leave Honeysuckle with hope though, but hope tempered with reality and part of him wanted to share in that hope.

  “It is possible, Honeysuckle, but I must tell you some things that may scare you and you must be realistic about the future and what it may bring.”

  ‘It is possible,’ again that was all she heard, but she would let him talk. Her silly Jacques thought he was wiser because he was older; he had no idea of what the future held. But Honeysuckle knew without any doubt in her heart.

  “I have joined the Special Operations Executive and will be working in France, liaising with the various French Resistance groups and preparing for the invasion that will eventually come. When we liberate France the war will be close to an end. It is very dangerous work and many of us are getting killed. I haven’t even told my parents yet, but I will tonight before I leave.” He waited while it sank in. “If you love me, Honeysuckle, either as a sister or as the woman who just kissed me, you must prepare yourself for the possibility that I may not return.” He did not mention Yvette; there was no need, not yet.

  Honeysuckle then did the third thing that he would never forget for the rest of his life. She touched his face and said without any doubt in her voice, “You will be fine, my darling. We will be together.” Then she reached up and kissed him on the lips, gently and assuredly, his equal in years and his elder in wisdom.

  From that moment on she would never just be his ‘little sister’ again.

  That night he told his parents about his new role in the War. His mother was fearful, as was his father, but his son, their wonderful son, would be fighting for France.

  That evening all three of their parents watched fascinated by the way the pair now interacted. There had been a change; firstly they were not talking to each other incessantly in French and when they looked at each other the childish smiles had gone, but something else passed between them.

  Even Big Jacques noticed the change in them and took his son to one side and clumsily tried to say, “I hope nothing err… She is only sixteen you know…” Torn between love for his son and that for his surrogate daughter.

  Jacques laughed. “Don’t worry, Papa. All we did was talk. We are a long way from that.“ It was only a small lie.

  Audrey stood with her arm in Elizabeth’s as the children said goodbye to each other on the quayside. The look on Honeysuckle’s face bro
ught a lump to their throats as she wrapped her arms around Jacques then leaned up to allow him to kiss her. It was not a passionate kiss, but neither was it the kiss of an older brother.

  As the ferry sailed out into the Solent, Jacques’s heart was heavy. There was so much he’d left unsaid to her, he believed it was to protect her but he knew, in part, it was to protect him. He thought of Yvette and felt guilty. Was he guilty of betraying them both?

  It was quite late when Buster and the man left the bench. The man talked to the bench for quite a while before they finally set off down the hill. He spoke to it every night and touched the plaque before they left. Buster did not know what he said, but the man was laughing as he talked and he seemed particularly happy.

  Anyway, the net result was that Buster missed his favourite television programme, Countdown. Dinner always came after Countdown and he’d been confused when his bowl was offered before it came on. ‘The man must have forgotten.’

  SIX

  The man hadn’t forgotten the sandwiches though, and they smelt like ham. Yes, his favourite. So he flew up the hill to sniff and prepare the bench for the man when he and the ham sandwiches finally caught up.

  When the man arrived Buster was sitting proudly by their bench with all potential sandwich thieves seen off. Before long they had both assumed their respective positions.

  Almost instantly Jacques was on the paddle steamer once again, still wonderfully baffled about what had happened with Honeysuckle. He was reliving her breathtakingly dramatic kiss and the smile she’d given him under the water. All he could imagine was that she’d been a mermaid in another life or another place. He knew he would treasure that moment for the rest of his life, however long that may be.

  With that sudden feeling of mortality, his thoughts returned to the R.A.F. training school at Brackley, near the village of Croughton in Northamptonshire. He had arrived with the other recruits, all of them wet behind the ears, and three of them were dead within a month. He remembered the exhilaration he’d felt the first time he’d pulled back on the stick to get the Tiger Moth airborne, with his instructor sitting behind him seemingly confident with his student’s ability to fly the beast. They’d practised steep turns and the relationship of pitch and power; how to climb and descend; the effect of drag and the importance of flap settings for take off and landing. All of this was done in one glorious hour before it was time to bring her in to land. The landing was the only part of the flight he was not in total control of. The instructor had asked Jacques to ‘follow him through on the controls,’ as he demonstrated the landing technique. After that he did every landing himself as they practised circuits and bumps, as his instructor described his practice landings. By the end of his first week’s flying the instructor stepped out of the aeroplane to ‘take a pee,’ and asked Jacques to pick him up when he landed next time. Jacques was half way round the circuit before he realised he was alone and he had been sent for his first solo flight. It was the most excited he could remember feeling. That night his first friend died.