by Kate Hewitt
Tom gave her a squeeze. “Anything you want, baby.”
Lily couldn’t bear to look at them. There was something so smug about the way Lieutenant Reese had his arm around Sophie’s waist, and the glitter in her sister’s eyes seemed dangerous. If their mother could see Sophie, she’d be utterly appalled.
And yet, Lily acknowledged, Sophie wasn’t acting any differently than a hundred women in this very ballroom—or a thousand, a million, in London. Women who flirted and danced, who managed to snag a GI, who seized their moments when they could, whether it was up against a brick wall or in the narrow bunk of an air-raid shelter. Lily had seen it before and averted her eyes from the sight of twined bodies moving sinuously together under the cover of darkness, or merely a thin blanket.
Her mother talked darkly of loose women of low morals, of the mysterious and bitter ends they invariably came to. And yet that was the reality of the terrifying world they now lived in—perhaps a single night of snatched pleasure was all anyone could hope for, all anybody could dare to get.
It is my painful duty to inform you…
What pleasure had those poor boys had?
“And listen to this,” Sophie continued as she snatched the book up once more. “‘You will be naturally interested in getting to know your opposite number, the British soldier, the “Tommy” you have heard and read about. You can understand that two actions on your part will slow up the friendship—swiping his girl, and not appreciating what his army has been up against. Yes, and rubbing it in that you are better paid than he is.’” Sophie threw her head back and laughed. “You’re not rubbing it in, are you, Tom?” She made it sound dirty.
“Who, me?” Tom made a face of exaggerated innocence before he caught Matthew’s eye; the other man, Lily saw, was scowling now. “What’s gotten you looking so down in the dumps?” he demanded. He nodded, a bit dismissively, to Lily. “Why don’t you go dance with her?”
Matthew smiled tightly; there was nothing friendly about it. “I’m not a jive bender like you.” He made it sound like an insult.
“So why don’t you give it a whirl? She looks like she’d like a spin around the floor.”
Lily sat frozen in her seat, mortified by the exchange.
“Yes, go on, Lil,” Sophie said. “Go bebop.” She’d put on the American accent again, and both she and Tom laughed far too loudly at her supposed witticism.
Lily glanced at Matthew, who had risen from his chair.
“Shall we?” he said, without any particular enthusiasm. He held out his hand, leaving Lily no choice but to take it.
Out on the dance floor, they were surrounded by jitterbugging couples, moving with such swift assurance their limbs were nothing more than a blur of motion.
“I’m really not a good dancer,” Lily said, feeling she had to remind him.
“My feet have been warned.” He put one hand on her waist, warm and firm, and Lily put her hand on his shoulder.
While couples flew and spun around them, they managed a simple box step.
“I’m sorry about Tom,” Matthew said after a moment. “He’s a bit high-spirited. I don’t think he means any harm.”
“Neither does Sophie.”
“A good match, then.”
“Or a very bad one. They’ll egg each other on.”
Matthew raised his eyebrows. “Would that be so bad?”
“I don’t know,” Lily admitted. What was she so afraid of, when it came to Sophie? When it came to herself? “I don’t really have enough experience to say,” she admitted, then blushed.
“Experience?”
“Of life. Of… romance.” She blushed even more, amazed she’d said such a thing. She never would have, if she hadn’t had that slug of whatever it was in the flask, still burning in her belly.
Matthew seemed unfazed by her confession. “That’s no bad thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Better to wait for the right person than waste your hopes on someone wrong.”
What was he saying…? Lily glanced up at Matthew’s face, shocked to realize just how close he was. He wasn’t handsome in the hale and hearty way of Tom Reese, the way she expected all Americans to be, but there was something compelling about his dark looks, his sense of quiet containment. She only wished she knew what he was thinking, how he felt.
“Am I terribly boring to you?” she blurted, emboldened further. “Do I seem like such a…” She swallowed painfully. “A little girl?”
Matthew glanced down at her, his dark eyes narrowed. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“I’m only two years older than you.”
“Are you?” She’d thought him much older, perhaps near thirty. “I feel as if everything I’ve said tonight has been a bit stupid and foolish.”
“Not at all.” He nodded back towards the table. “You’re a font of wisdom in comparison.”
Her lips twitched at that. She realized she liked the way he spoke—so clearly and precisely, choosing each word before deciding to speak it, as if each one mattered. She liked a lot of things about him. “Your standards must be rather low, then,” she teased, and he raised his eyebrows.
“Not at all. Quite the contrary.”
The firmness of his words thrilled her, and she had to look away. “You may not be a—a jive bender,” she told him. “But you are certainly no dead hoofer.”
“When it comes to the box step, no,” he agreed. “My mother taught me when I was young.”
Lily could picture it—the wireless playing a waltz, an elegant woman with upswept hair, dark like Matthew’s, leading him around a little sitting room, a gentle look on her face.
“She’d be proud to see you now,” she said.
Something flashed across his face, like a lightning streak of pain. Jolted, Lily felt as if she’d said something clumsy or wrong, and she started to stammer an uncertain apology, only to be cut off by Matthew’s quiet voice.
“I hope she would be,” he said, and then the music ended, and he was leading her back to the table, and Lily felt as if she’d spoiled it—if there had even been anything to spoil.
Tom had bought a bottle of wine—no more lettuce for champagne, it seemed—Lily saw as she took her seat, but at least Sophie wasn’t on his lap anymore.
She glanced at her watch and saw it was after nine; their parents expected them home by ten, although Lily suspected her sister would not come willingly, as most of The Berkeley’s patrons would be dancing half the night away.
“So, what do you Yanks do for fun?” Sophie asked as she lit yet another cigarette.
“Whatever we can,” Tom returned. “You’ll have to come to Rainbow Corner with us and see what it’s all about.”
Lily had seen Rainbow Corner—the club for GIs run by the American Red Cross on Shaftesbury Avenue that offered a slice of American life to homesick servicemen. She’d also seen the queues of her countrymen outside, snaking around the corner, desperate to get inside and sample its delights.
“Oh, will you take us there?” Sophie asked. “Wouldn’t I have to have my name on a list?”
“I think I can manage it.”
Lily wondered if he could. Tom Reese seemed full of swagger and brash talk, and his wallet was certainly bulging with money, but he was only a second lieutenant, after all, and he couldn’t be much older than Matthew’s twenty-three, if that. Yet her sister had clearly decided to cast her lot with him; she’d shown more affection to Lieutenant Tom Reese than any other man Lily had seen her with before, and she couldn’t help but let it worry her. Where would it lead?
The music was still thumping and Lily’s head ached. Her mouth tasted stale from the alcohol she’d drunk, and the room had become stuffy with the smell of sweat and cigarettes. She realized just how badly she wanted to go home.
She sank back into her chair as Sophie led Tom back onto the dance floor. It felt as if the evening would never end.
“I’m sorry you’re not enjoying yourself
,” Matthew remarked as he glanced at her. He hadn’t drunk anything, Lily noticed, and he looked as coolly unflappable as always.
She made a grimace of apology. “I’m sorry. I have enjoyed myself, it’s just it’s getting late and I’m tired. I’m afraid I’ve never been much of one for parties.”
“Nor have I.”
“Did you go to many, in New York?” Her only image of the city was what she’d seen on a newsreel, but she pictured fancy cars and movie stars, endless parties and dances.
“No.” He paused. “I only moved to New York in 1939, when I was eighteen. I’m not from there.”
“Oh? Where are you from, then?”
Another pause, this one longer and more considering. “A small town. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
Lily sensed something repressed about his tone, and decided not to ask anything more.
Matthew seemed content to be silent, and Lily realized she didn’t mind. It was enough simply to sit at the same table, watching the dancers blur by, knowing they were in agreement about much of the evening.
Eventually, Sophie and Tom came stumbling back to the table, and then drank more wine, and flirted outrageously, before, finally, at nearly eleven, Lily was at last able to pry her sister away.
Outside, the air was sharp and cold, and an icy fog lay over the darkened city. Despite the late hour, there were plenty of people about, cabs gliding through the dark streets like predatory shadows, and people linking arms as they made their stumbling way to the Tube station, singing drunkenly. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces…”
There was a feeling of bonhomie that Lily couldn’t help but enjoy, despite the awkwardness of the occasion. Sophie and Tom had their arms wrapped around one another, her head leaning against his shoulder. Meanwhile, Matthew walked a sensible two feet away from Lily, and both of their heads were tucked low. She dreaded the inevitably awkward moment of farewell, and when it came, it was just as she’d feared.
At the steps down to the station, Sophie turned to Tom and twined her arms around him. While a few GIs nearby whistled and catcalled, the pair kissed, and Matthew and Lily stood mutely and waited, neither of them looking at the embracing pair, or each other.
Then, when she least expected it, Lily caught Matthew’s eye and he gave her the glimmer of a smile—a wry quirk of his lips that suggested a shared joke, a lovely secret. As Tom and Sophie broke apart, Lily felt herself smiling back, her heart lifting improbably, buoyed inside her.
As the train rattled back towards Clapham, Sophie’s gaiety drained out of her like champagne from a bottle. She leaned against a pole, her face pale, her lipstick blood red and slightly smeared, seeming to sink into herself the farther they traveled.
“I don’t think Mother will be too cross,” Lily said by way of encouragement. “We’re not that late, and she knows tonight was something special.”
“I don’t care about Mother,” Sophie answered, and turned away to stare out the window at the blackness of the tunnel they were trundling through.
As it happened, Carol Mather was cross, but only a little. “What if there had been an air raid?” she demanded as Sophie and Lily took their coats off in the hall. “We wouldn’t have known if you’d got to safety. We would have been worried to death.”
“Surely not to death,” Sophie tossed back, and Carol pressed her lips together. “Besides, The Berkeley has its own shelter. We’d have been as safe as houses.”
Carol harrumphed but left it at that; the hot-water bottles she offered them for their beds felt like a peace offering.
Upstairs in their bedroom, with the blackout curtain drawn tightly across and the water bottles warming their beds, Lily slipped off the dark green dress that had seemed frumpy next to Sophie’s silver frock.
“You and Lieutenant Reese certainly got on,” she remarked as Sophie unpinned her hair.
“Oh, don’t sound so stuffy,” she returned, and yawned. “He’s all right.”
“I’m not being stuffy,” Lily objected, knowing she could have been a good deal stuffier. “You think he’s just all right?”
Sophie shrugged and sat down to unroll her stockings. “He’s going to leave, isn’t he? Tom said they were only in London for a short while, until they’re transferred to a base somewhere.”
“They could still come to London on leave.”
“There’s a hundred willing girls for every GI,” Sophie answered with another shrug. She sounded more matter-of-fact than despondent.
Lily frowned, surprised by her sister’s sudden low mood. “He was certainly taken with you,” she persisted.
“Perhaps, but even so…” Sophie paused, a stocking in one hand, her gaze resting on some distant shore. “He’ll be over there soon enough, won’t he? Fighting for victory. And, meanwhile, I’m here, taking dictation from an—an old fart!”
“Sophie—”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Sophie’s voice was fierce as she turned to face her. “It’s all true. Every day, I sit in a stuffy office and type boring letters, while some smarmy old coot smacks my bottom and tells me what a ‘fine gel’ I am. I can’t stand it, Lily. I can’t stand another minute of it.”
Lily stared at her sister in wordless shock. She’d never heard her sound so impassioned, or so despairing. “But you’re doing your bit—”
“If that’s my bit, I don’t want to do it! Look what else I read in that silly little book.” Sophie reached for her handbag and yanked out the little book of Tom’s that he’d carelessly given her. “‘A British woman officer or non-commissioned officer can—and often does—give orders to a man private. The men obey smartly and know it is no shame. For British women have proven themselves in this way. They have stuck to their posts near burning ammunition dumps, delivered messages afoot after their motorcycles have been blasted from under them.’” Sophie’s voice trembled, but she kept reading, her voice full of an angry determination. “‘They have pulled aviators from burning planes. They have died at the gun posts and, as they have fallen, another girl has stepped directly into the position and carried on. There is not a single record of any British woman in uniformed service quitting her post or failing in her duty under fire. Now you understand why British soldiers respect the women in uniform. They have won the right to the utmost respect. When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic—remember she didn’t get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich.’”
Sophie tossed the book onto the top of the bureau, her face full of a loathing Lily didn’t understand. “What have I done to be worthy of such respect, Lily? I haven’t even knit any socks.” She let out a humorless laugh as she stripped off her silver dress and flung it carelessly to the floor.
“Not everyone can be a hero,” Lily said quietly. Sophie had been requisitioned by the War Office thanks to the secretarial course she’d completed when she was seventeen; there was no shame in it, none at all.
While Sophie fumed silently, Lily picked up her dress and hung it on the back of a chair. If it belonged to one of the girls at the War Office, she’d want it back in good nick.
“I don’t need to be a hero,” Sophie said at last. “I just want to feel useful. If a bomb flattened me tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter in the least.”
Lily stared at her, horrified. “It would matter to me—”
“I don’t mean to people. I mean to the war. I’m not doing anything, Lily. Not one thing I can be proud of, and I don’t think I ever will.” Pulling her nightgown over her head, Sophie slipped under the covers of her bed and turned her back to Lily, the conversation clearly over.
Lily undressed in silence and then got into her own bed. Despite the welcome warmth of the hot-water bottle, the bed sheets were freezing. She closed her eyes, her mind spinning a little from the alcohol, Sophie’s surprising and desperate vitriol, the whole evening. Yet the last thing she thought of before sleep claimed her was Matthew Lawson’s
funny little smile as they’d said goodbye.
Chapter Seven
ABBY
Abby stood on the porch as Simon came up the dusty drive in his rental car, one hand waving out the window as he pulled up in front of the farmhouse.
She hadn’t told her dad where she was going today; she didn’t usually and, in any case, he was out in the orchard spraying all afternoon, and it had seemed easier not to say anything. She’d given Bailey her morning walk and was meant to be balancing the farm’s books and getting ahead on the publicity for the harvest weekend they held every year, but she could work this evening, and it wasn’t pressing anyway.
Simon turned off the engine and climbed out of the car, smiling at her in a way that made her stomach give a little leap. She never did stuff like this. Never went anywhere much, and certainly not with a man she found attractive. Because, yes, she was willing to admit she found Simon Elliot attractive, which was why she felt so nervous now, even though she knew she shouldn’t be. This didn’t have to be a big deal. She’d told Shannon it wasn’t, when her friend had called her asking about “her Englishman”.
“He’s not mine,” Abby had protested, but Shannon wasn’t having it.
“Not according to the Ashford grapevine. First dinner, now a date?”
How, Abby wondered, did everyone know everything in this town? She could guess how it had happened—Simon had mentioned something to Betty at the Citgo Station, and she’d passed it onto her husband Merv, who worked at the hardware store. He’d told Shannon’s mother, who stocked shelves there part-time, and there they were.