Promises to Keep E-Book

Rachel Moore

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 509

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

'Pardon me for interrupting, Ma'am. May I have the pleasure of the next dance with you?' He gave her that smile and she was lost. Spring 1944. A group of GIs arrive in Columbine, a village near Falmouth, causing a stir amongst the local young women. Kerry Penfold's sweetheart, Tom, is a serving soldier in France, so she is content to stand by and watch as her best friend Claire becomes smitten with one of the handsome Americans. But when charming Marvin Mcleod receives a Dear John letter from his girlfriend, Kerry becomes his shoulder to cry on and they grow close. When D-Day arrives, the GIs suddenly depart and all returns to comparative normality. But the war has left its casualties and the village is grieving for its losses. A few months later, Tom is wounded and discharged and Kerry is secretly relieved that he will no longer have to fight. But her joy soon turns to dismay when she realises how the war has changed him. Matters come to a head when dozen of the GIs return to the village, including Claire's sweetheart - and Marvin. Will Kerry finally have to choose between the two men in her life?

Leseprobe

Promises to Keep

RACHEL MOORE

Promises to Keep

Contents

Title PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYAbout the AuthorBy Rachel MooreCopyright

CHAPTER ONE

First nights were always fraught with nerves for the performers, however small the theatre – and Columbine village hall could hardly be called anything so grand. The portents didn’t look promising, in any case. Kerry Penfold put the finishing touches to her stage make-up, sure that the show by Mrs Holliday’s dancing troupe to welcome the arrival of yet more GIs in Falmouth and surrounding areas was going to be a disaster, since the dress rehearsal had already ended in panic, with one of the girls slipping and breaking her ankle. The performance had to be rearranged at the last minute – to say nothing of the poor girl wailing like a banshee, certain that the accident would ruin her chance to bag a handsome Yank for herself. The whole area was bursting with these good-looking blokes now, with vehicles rumbling back and forth, day and night, in preparation for something big. Everyone knew it. The only thing they didn’t know was what, and when …

‘Just listen to her,’ Kerry’s friend Claire said as the other girl had been whisked off in the ambulance to have her leg set in plaster. ‘You’d think this was a West End production, instead of a potty little village show out in the sticks. Who’d give porky Pam a second glance, anyway? You’re the one most likely to get off with one of them, Kerry.’

By now Kerry was trying to tame her wayward brown hair into submission and glaring at herself in the cracked mirror of the crowded back room that passed for a dressing room. ‘Well, for the tenth time, Claire, I’m not interested, so stop going on about it.’

‘Do you really think your Tom’s never given a second glance to another girl when he gets the chance? I bet there’s not many young chaps going abroad for the first time, even in the middle of a war, who don’t take advantage of what’s on offer, and he’s been away for months now. You should live a bit, kid, instead of writing those endless lovey-dovey letters to him.’

Kerry’s patience snapped. ‘And you should give it a rest! Tom and I have got an understanding, and I promised to write to him every day. Besides, I’m not interested in Yanks. They’re not all straight out of Hollywood, as you seem to think. Some of them probably live in backwaters just like this one, or worse.’

Claire snorted. ‘And some of them may not. Well, I’m glad I didn’t get myself half tied to some boy who was going off to war, but if that’s what you want to do it gives the rest of us more of a chance with the GI Joes.’

She preened herself, putting on another dollop of lipstick and swirling around in her wide-skirted dress with the frilly petticoats, then crossing her eyes at her image and making Kerry laugh. She couldn’t stay mad with her for long, even though they had very different ideas from one another. Maybe that was how they had remained friends since schooldays, despite the many arguments they had, which never lasted long, thank goodness.

‘Oh, come on, you look lovely, so stop titivating, or Mrs Holliday will have a blue fit if we’re not all ready for the opening number,’ Kerry added as she heard the small group of hired musicians tuning up.

Ancient relics, most of them, she thought with a silent chuckle, since all the able young men in the area had either enlisted voluntarily or been called up long ago. But the old boys were still capable of playing a cracking good tune, she added to herself loyally. The Yanks wouldn’t get any jitterbug music from them, and would probably find it all far too tame, she thought, with sudden nerves!

She smoothed down her own matching dress with the neckline that was far lower than she would normally wear, and felt her heart give a jump. Seeing herself in the cracked mirror, it was like looking at somebody else tonight. That was what performing did for you, even in such a small way. It took you out of yourself for a few hours, and gave a touch of glamour to everyday life. And, Lord knew, everyday life had changed so much over the last few years that it did people good to enjoy themselves without worrying over when the telegram boy would come knocking at the door with the news that everyone dreaded.

Down here in the far west of Cornwall, they might not get the amount of air raids and bombing that the poor devils did in London and other big cities, but they’d had their share, and their boys had gone off to fight, just the same. They already knew the effect of the dreaded arrival of the telegram boy, even here in sleepy Columbine, and no one could predict who might or might not be coming home at the end of it all.

Kerry shivered, willing away the gloomy thoughts. After nearly five years of war, everyone said it had to end soon, and here in Cornwall at the start of a soft and mellow summer, it was good for morale to forget the dangers and tragedies, even for a little while. And there was a show to go on.

It was also probably true what Claire said. She did spend far too much time writing long letters to Tom, and she never got back the screeds she wrote. She could hardly expect it, since he was fighting the Jerries somewhere in France. He couldn’t sit down every night the way she did, and pour out his heart to her, much as she would have liked him to do. Even when he did, half the letters he wrote were censored, the same as hers were, she guessed, with some of the words crossed through with a thick black pencil or even cut out.

Just as if they were all spies, she’d thought indignantly when she’d first seen it – or that the letters would be intercepted and strategic positions given to the Germans. It had made the letters she wrote – and especially those she got back from Tom – more cautious than necessary, since who would want some unknown official reading the things that sweethearts said to one another? They were for their eyes only, not for some cynical third party. Such an unwelcome intrusion into private feelings would add to the insular feelings of any girl who lived in a small Cornish village where nothing very much went on.

But tonight, she was going to be somebody other than herself. She was one of Mrs Holliday’s dancing troupe, and she wore one of the amazing costumes that Mrs Holliday somehow always managed to fashion out of scraps for her ‘poppets’, as she called them, which made them all feel different and special.

‘Don’t go letting one night onstage give you any ideas about getting above yourself, my girl,’ her aunt Lil had commented with mock severity as Kerry twisted and twirled to show off her costumes beforehand.

‘I’m not likely to do that,’ Kerry had retorted airily. ‘This will be my last time with the troupe, so if Hollywood hasn’t discovered me by now, I doubt that it ever will!’

Her aunt had laughed, thankful for the girl’s common sense. She had toyed with the idea of becoming a land girl in due course, but Lil had persuaded her against it, having known what farm life was like from her one brief stint with it years ago. Lil Penfold had never fancied having to do all those messy jobs with cows and the like. And since her middle-aged bones were becoming too stiff with the arthritis now to sit still for a couple of hours in a draughty village hall, not even to see her only niece performing, she was content to have a private showing in their own small cottage, tapping out her steps on the lino floor in the kitchen.

Lil had the dubious delight of having her cousin from Bristol coming to live with them in a week or so, finally taking fright from all the air raids when a whole street near her had been demolished by the bombing, so she’d hardly have been lonely while Kerry was off tending to the cows or pulling turnips, but she was glad her niece had decided to stay.

Kerry’s big regret that evening was that Mrs Holliday hadn’t managed to find any red tap shoes like the ones you saw at the pictures, since they were so hard to obtain nowadays. But at least they all wore matching silver ones, and she could clatter her way across the stage with the best of them. She had a solo spot too, which she was privately calling her swansong.

It had caused a bit of friction between her and Claire at first, and Claire was never going to let her forget that Kerry had got the plum part, as she called it. You’d think that now both of them were nearing eighteen, she could put such small pettiness behind her, Kerry thought, but that was Claire.

Anyway, there was no time now to think about anything but the show. The village hall would be packed to capacity that evening, with the newly arrived GIs from the neighbouring base and as many locals as could fit into the remaining seats. Most of the locals were more agog to see the latest arrivals of these fast-talking, gum-chewing strangers in the smartly cut uniforms and with their lovely manners – according to some of the girls who’d already had the pleasure – rather than the show.

At the end of it, when all the chairs were pushed back to one side, there was to be general dancing, and that was something else to make any red-blooded girl’s heart flutter, including Kerry’s. Despite the way so many GIs had infiltrated into their lives now, she had never danced with a Yank before, and that was a first in anybody’s diary!

Until recent months most of them had been based in different parts of the country, but it was common knowledge now that something big was in the offing, and that the big natural harbour at Falmouth was part of whatever hush-hush planning was going on, just as it had been when the troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, when ships, large and small, had taken the hazardous shipping route to France to bring their boys home. This was different, though.

There had been endless activity for weeks, especially around the US advanced amphibious training bases, now well established in the area, and far from getting a minority of GIs based here to arouse curiosity, they had certainly got their share of them now, Claire had commented gleefully. And this show was to welcome the latest intake. It was also Kerry and Claire’s last performance, since Mrs Holliday had an age limit for her poppets, and they had reached it.

And all right, Kerry acknowledged the small thrill inside her whenever she thought about the Yanks, even though her heart belonged to Tom Trevellyan and always would. It didn’t mean she had to turn into a nun, did it?

‘They’re here, Kerry!’ Claire’s voice almost cracked with excitement, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Take a look through the curtain.’

With some of the other girls, they crept to the middle of the small stage and parted the curtain a fraction to peep through. Mrs Holliday had informed her poppets proudly that she believed this was the origin of the expression ‘break a leg’, since the curtains were known as ‘legs’, Kerry thought, with a burst of apprehension as she saw their audience for the first time. As always, the Americans all looked large and smart and sophisticated. What on earth would they see in a little village production like this one? It was madness to think they’d be impressed. Bored, more likely.

‘At least we’ll get first chance for a dance afterwards,’ Claire was rattling on. ‘They’ll know we’re not clodhoppers after they’ve seen us onstage.’

‘No, but they might be,’ Kerry said, forcing her nerves to settle.

What was it Aunt Lil always said? Once you strip away the fancy outer trappings, everybody’s the same under the skin, so just imagine them that way. Modestly, of course …

At that moment Kerry’s eyes met those of a russet-haired, dark-eyed young man in the second row, with a look on his face that could almost be interpreted as nervousness. How weird, when she had assumed they would all be full of brash self-confidence like the stars of the Hollywood movies.

But why shouldn’t they be nervous? They were all as young as Tom, and they were thousands of miles away from home too, not knowing what the future held for any of them. They were already overseas, and going heaven knew where in the next days or weeks. As such thoughts whirled through her head, the soldier smiled at her, and she dropped the edge of the curtain as if it was red-hot.

‘Well, that one’s definitely yours,’ Claire whispered, not missing a thing as usual. Several of the other girls were clamouring behind them now, trying to get a good look before Mrs Holliday hissed at them to come away and line up in the wings for their opening number and stop showing themselves up.

And after all, they might all be amateurs, but they had always presented themselves as professionally as possible in their shows. Lately, of course, it was always to raise money for their troops overseas, and since there was no one amongst them who didn’t have a brother or a father or an uncle, sweetheart or husband serving for their country, it always gave them an added incentive to do nothing but their best.

For some reason the thought triggered the memory of the Promise they had chanted when Kerry and Tom were in their junior school branch of the Brownies and Cub Scouts respectively. It ran through her head now … even though the words were muddled after all this time, but the sentiments still counted.

I promise to do my best … to serve God and the king and my country … to help other people …

‘Right, my poppets, let’s put on a good show for our visitors tonight!’

As the music started up, the strident voice of Mrs Holliday put all other thoughts out of their minds, and as the opening chorus began, the curtains were drawn back to reveal the troupe of a dozen well-rehearsed girls tapping their way across the stage to much applause.

After that, there was no time to think of anything else but changing costumes and getting in the right mood for whatever piece they were performing. Most of it involved energetic tap dancing, but Kerry’s solo was a more balletic piece, with the rest of the girls swaying in the background, and as she flitted across the stage she was very aware that all eyes were on her, especially one pair of dark eyes in the second row.

‘Did you see how loudly he clapped you?’ Claire whispered when she took her solo bow at the end of the show. ‘Tom’s definitely got a rival there.’

‘Don’t be so daft, Claire, and stop trying to make something out of nothing,’ Kerry said, flushed with relief at how well it had all gone.

But, of course, she had seen it, and registered it, and when the girls had changed back into their normal clothes, still in a flurry of excitement at Mrs Holliday’s praise over the performance, the many helping hands pushed all the chairs in the hall around the sides of the room, and the general dancing began.

The hall was crowded, and Claire had gone off to find her parents and to get their approval, while Kerry took a breather and was talking to one of her aunt’s friends in the audience, when she suddenly became aware of a shadow in front of her, and that her companion’s chatter had died away.

It was one of those moments that was almost surreal, when you didn’t need to know who was there, or what was about to happen. It didn’t only happen to Cornish girls who believed in omens or signs, and it took no account of emotions or loyalty. It was fate taking over whatever else you might have planned for yourself, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, whether you wanted to or not. It was like an express train rushing towards you …

‘Pardon me for interrupting, ma’am, and I wonder if I might introduce myself? Lieutenant Marvin Mcleod of the United States military. May I have the pleasure of the next dance with you? It would be a real honour,’ came the oh-so-polite words from the soldier who Kerry knew instinctively was going to be the owner of that voice, as rich as honey.

Beside her, she heard the older lady giggle slightly at such charming formality. She would approve, though, Kerry thought, feeling a slight sense of panic as she finally looked up into the face she had known to expect. He held out his hand and gave her that smile again and she was lost. She squashed such ridiculous feelings. He was only asking her for a dance, for goodness’ sake.

‘I’d be happy to,’ she murmured, remembering that they were supposed to be welcoming their new visitors. The next moment she had put her hand in his as he led her into the middle of the room where others were already moving to the serene music of the waltz.

Why couldn’t it have been a hokey-cokey or a progressive barn dance? Anything that didn’t involve them dancing so close to one another, with one hand holding hers, and the other one in the small of her back where she could feel its warm pressure as he guided her past other couples.

‘I’m Kerry Penfold,’ she said primly, ‘and it’s good to welcome our American cousins to our shores, even in such uncertain times.’

Good grief, where did all that come from? She cringed inwardly, knowing she had never said anything so pompous in her life …

‘It’s good to be here, even in such uncertain times,’ Marvin Mcleod said, just as primly, and then he laughed. ‘So now we’ve got the preliminaries over, maybe we can just relax and enjoy the dance. What do you say, Kerry?’

She found herself laughing back. ‘I think that’s a very good idea.’

‘I guess I shouldn’t monopolise you for the rest of the evening, much as I’d like to,’ he went on, ‘but while I’ve got the chance, tell me a bit about yourself. Do you live around here? In Falmouth, maybe?’

He pronounced it ‘Fal Mouth’, which she decided to find charming … and she wished she could have said that she did and that she had some glamorous job, but she wasn’t about to start inventing things for somebody she would probably never see again after tonight …

‘I live here in Columbine, and I work in a village shop that sells a bit of everything – when we can get it, that is. There’s a war on, you know!’

She bit her lip, knowing what a stupid remark that was. Didn’t he know there was a war on? Why would he be here otherwise, miles from home?

But his eyes shone, seeming to find everything she said amusing. Was he laughing at her or with her, she wondered?

‘I love your accent. It’s so soft and gentle.’

Kerry blinked. ‘I don’t have an accent. Not like yours!’

They both laughed now. His hand pressed even tighter in the small of her back as he steered her out of the way of other dancers. He was no expert, but he knew his way around a dance floor, Kerry registered.

‘Let’s say we both have one, and that’s what makes us interesting to one another – or am I being presumptuous? You certainly interest me, Kerry Penfold, and when you were on that stage I couldn’t take my eyes off you, but you’re even more beautiful in the flesh.’

She felt a spark of alarm. He flattered her, and he still spoke in that oh-so-smooth way that could turn any girl’s head – if she let it. This wasn’t the way Tom Trevellyan had ever spoken to her, but Tom had known her all her life, and there was no need for flowery talk like this.

‘Well, thank you. My boyfriend would be glad to know I’m not letting myself become dowdy because of all the restrictions in this old war,’ she said, as clumsily as if she was a child.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Claire talking enthusiastically to the soldier in whose arms she was firmly held. Kerry was every bit as articulate as Claire, but tonight she felt almost tongue-tied.

‘I’d say you could never be dowdy in a million years, and your boyfriend’s a lucky guy,’ she heard Marvin Mcleod say, and then the music ended, and he escorted her back to the seat with his hand lightly beneath her elbow, and saying he hoped he might have another dance before the evening ended.

He was lost in the crowd before she could think of a reply, and then Claire was sitting down beside her, full of excitement over her dance with someone called Glenn, and how he had invited her to the night they were permitted to ask outsiders to the base to see a movie.

‘It didn’t take you long, did it?’ Kerry said, still trying to get her tumbling thoughts together.

‘Nor you! I told you that one fancied you, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you did, but I don’t fancy him, so don’t get any ideas about it,’ Kerry said almost crossly.

‘Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Kerry. It was only a dance, wasn’t it? Glenn thinks our old-fashioned dances are cute. I bet yours asks you again. Tom wouldn’t object, and besides, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, and I’m sure you don’t tell him everything in your nightly letter.’

‘Yes I do. It’s our special link and it keeps him in touch with home.’

‘You’re nuts,’ Claire said bluntly. ‘He’s seeing something of the big wide world, and you’re reminding him of what’s not going on in boring old Columbine!’

‘You’re the nutty one. He might be seeing something of the “big wide world”, as you call it, but it’s at the expense of losing his liberty. He didn’t ask to be caught up in a war, any more than these GIs did.’

Claire’s face altered at her friend’s words. ‘You’re right, as usual, and we shouldn’t be bickering like this. My fault, of course,’ she added generously. ‘Let’s go and get some lemonade and request a ladies’ excuse-me, and then see who else we can find.’

There was no stopping her, Kerry thought with a wry grin, but it was pointless for them to be arguing over things that couldn’t be changed, and to spoil what had been a successful evening so far. And ten minutes later, after a brief interval for refreshments, a ladies’ excuse-me dance was announced.

Claire sped off at once to find a suitable partner, and when Kerry subconsciously looked around for Marvin Mcleod, it was to find him already claimed by one of the other girls in the dancing troupe. Her flutter of annoyance was completely irrational, but she couldn’t deny it. And when the music stopped, and ladies were invited to break in and choose their partners, it was as if her feet moved of their own accord until she was tapping the other girl on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me, June. My partner, I think,’ she said steadily.

‘Thank the Lord,’ Marvin said as she slid into his arms again. ‘Your friend never stops talking, and I couldn’t follow half the things she said.’

‘Really?’ Kerry felt a wild urge to giggle. ‘I thought we were the slow talkers, not you!’

He didn’t rap out the words like the movie stars did, though. He spoke in a slow, modulated way that you wouldn’t normally associate with big cities – as far as she knew.

‘Where do you come from, Marvin?’ she asked, in the small awkward pause that followed. ‘No, let me guess.’ She rattled out the few American cities she had heard of. ‘New York? Or Boston, where the famous Tea Party happened? Or New England, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed?’

He laughed. ‘I see you know your history.’

She spoke airily. ‘We had to learn those things, if only to remind us that we were first to cross the Atlantic. Oh, flip, that sounds very patronising, doesn’t it?’ she added, hot with embarrassment.

‘Not at all. Americans are a mixture of many nationalities. My folks came from Scotland a couple of generations ago, hence the name Mcleod. I was hoping to be posted somewhere near enough so I could go and look up some family history, but it wasn’t to be.’

‘And instead you were landed down here in the sticks,’ Kerry said.

The music ended, and before she could quiz him further, someone else had claimed him, and she had to wait for the next break before she grabbed him again. It was merely to continue the unfinished conversation, she told herself.

‘So where do you come from?’ she prompted.

‘It’s a little town in Montana in the Midwest. My folks are farmers, and we grow wheat and other crops. You might think this quaint little place is out in the sticks, but you ain’t seen nothin’ – pardon my grammar – until you’ve seen a one-horse town called Jefferson with nearly two hundred miles between it and the nearest city!’

Kerry found that hard to believe, but she assumed it must be true. Maybe they didn’t do much jitterbugging in Jefferson either, she thought inanely. Then the music ended again, and the last waltz was announced. Before she knew it, panic set in. The last waltz was something special, and she didn’t want to float around the room to the strains of the emotive music in Marvin Mcleod’s arms.

Twisting free of him, she almost gasped that she had to leave to get home to her aunt and help her to bed, even though it was a downright lie, and the last thing her stalwart Aunt Lil would want was for a sprightly young whippersnapper to be helping her into bed. But Marvin Mcleod didn’t know that. All he saw was concern for an imaginary elderly relative, and the respect in his eyes almost made her blurt out the truth. Almost.

‘Can I see you again sometime?’ he said, still holding her arm.

‘I don’t know. I may be starting a new job soon, so probably not.’

Even as she said it, she didn’t know why she’d invented such a thing. She didn’t normally lie, but there had been no need to tell him anything at all. Why would he care? They were ships that passed in the night, and nothing more.

But she couldn’t stop him waiting for her after she had fetched her coat and bag, to a chorus of ‘mind the blackout’ as he opened the door for her. She fumbled for her bicycle from the rack outside the hall and thrust her tap shoes and bag into the basket, and he was still there.

‘I’d like to see you home, if it’s not too much of an imposition,’ he said.

‘Honestly, it’s not that far, and I know the way blindfold. I’m sure you’ve got transport waiting to take you back to the base, so I’ll say goodnight, Marvin – and it was nice meeting you,’ she said pointedly.

‘Goodnight, Kerry, and I hope we’ll meet again.’

She got on her bike and pedalled away with his voice echoing behind her, wondering why she felt such a darned fool, and why she couldn’t just behave naturally. But she knew why. It was the first time any young man, apart from Tom, had shown the slightest interest in her, and she didn’t need to be psychic to know that he had definitely been interested. And it scared her to know that she had been attracted to him too. Far more than an almost-engaged girl ought to be.

It might just have been because he was different, of course. The way he looked, and spoke, and behaved. It was all so different from the boys she had known since childhood. It was like getting a glimpse into another world from the one she had always known, and that was pretty damn stupid as well. From what he said, his world was as insular as hers. A little one-horse town in the wilds of Montana, wherever that was. And she was letting it all get out of perspective, and she honestly doubted that she would ever see him again.

‘Did you have a good time, dear, and how did the show go?’ Aunt Lil said, the minute she got indoors, the way she always did from her fireside chair. ‘Make us both a cup of cocoa before bedtime, there’s a love, and then you can tell me all about it.’

The ritual was always the same. Lil would wallow in Kerry’s description of the evening, sure that her girl had been the best performer, and Kerry would give her choice anecdotes of who was there and what they wore and what was said. And then they would each go to their beds, and Kerry would write the highlights in her diary, and finish the evening by writing her lengthy letter to Tom, the way she did every night, bringing him near with titbits of home.

Except that tonight, instead of being exhilarated that the show had gone well, she felt extraordinarily tired and the words that she wanted to say to him wouldn’t come. It would be best left until tomorrow morning before church, when her brain wasn’t so muddled. And when she didn’t have other words intruding inside her head, telling her that she looked beautiful in a voice that oozed with something she couldn’t quite explain, but which made her heart leap with something between anxiety and pleasure every time she remembered it.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I never thought I’d say it but I’ll be glad when your Aunt Maud arrives now,’ Lil said to Kerry a few days later, when the newspapers were giving graphic details of the bombing in various towns in England, and the news on the wireless was as cagey over details as the starchy announcer knew how.

‘Why wouldn’t you say it?’ Kerry asked. ‘Don’t you get on with her?’

Lil snorted. ‘Well, she was always a bossyboots, and you know what they say about two women sharing the same kitchen. She got a bit above herself when she married that Jim of hers too, just because he ran his own little shoe-repairing business. Fat lot of good his so-called empire did him when some baker’s van lost its brakes on a hill and ran him down.’

‘Crumbs, Aunt Lil, that must have been horrible for them both.’

‘I daresay, but she was always mutton dressed as lamb, and she never found it hard to find other company, and that’s all I’m saying about that, so you can get that nosy look off your face.’

Kerry grinned. ‘Quite a girl in her youth, then, was she?’

‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready to go to work? The shop won’t open by itself, and Mrs Polby won’t thank you for being late.’

Kerry had to be content with that. She had never met Aunt Lil’s only cousin, whom she only knew as Aunt Maud, but the snippets she had heard about her were always intriguing. They were a pretty sparse family, she sometimes thought. Her mother had died from polio when she was little more than a baby, and she had been whisked away to her Aunt Lil’s cottage for fear that she could catch it, and had lived there ever since her father died from a farm machinery accident a short while later. Aunt Lil was Kerry’s dad’s older sister, and had brought her up in a stoic and dutiful way, saying that it had still been something of a miracle that the child hadn’t succumbed to the polio as well. Somehow she had survived, which Lil always said was partly due to luck, and mostly due to the girl’s inborn stubborn nature. Sometimes, Kerry couldn’t help wondering guiltily how different life would have been if she’d had the normal two parents and brothers and sisters of her own, the way Claire did.

But there was no point in wishing for something that could never be changed. If you couldn’t have what you wanted, the only way to survive was to switch your wishes to something else. It was something she strongly believed in, especially when Tom had declared his intention of enlisting as soon as he was old enough, which had almost broken her heart. It was a surprise that he had chosen the army too, when he was a ferryman through and through, like his dad.

He might be two years older than her, but he was still her boy, and at the time she had bitterly resented his boy’s eagerness to go away and fight, just like Claire’s older brother. But now she was proud of him, and she gave him all the news from home as cheerfully as she could, never letting him guess how much she was counting the days until it was all over and they could be together again.

She had forgotten such inhibitions when she wrote to him on that Sunday morning after the show, pouring out all her feelings and uncaring whether it was censored. Let the military snoopers snigger if they must. Tom was her sweetheart, and she wanted him to know how much she was missing him.

She cycled to the shop that morning, still wondering what Aunt Maud was going to be like, and if there was going to be real friction between her and Aunt Lil, imagining two middle-aged women squabbling over who was cooking the sprouts! Mrs Polby was already in the shop, which sold everything from scrubbing brushes and blue bags to shirt collars and knitting needles and everything in between. And as the acknowledged fount of all village gossip, Mrs Polby had plenty to say and to find out as usual.

‘Enjoyed seeing you in the show on Sat’day night, Kerry love. You looked very pretty, and I reckon that young GI thought so too. Me and Polby both said he had his eye on you from the start. Young Tom would have summat to say if he’d been there to see it,’ she added with a chuckle, hardly pausing for breath. ‘Did you hear there’d been another scuffle in Falmouth between some local lads and the Yanks a couple of nights later?’

Kerry sighed. Yes, she’d heard it from Claire, and she hadn’t thought much about it. But she might have known Mrs Polby would have all the details.

‘What happened?’ she asked, wishing she didn’t feel compelled to know.

‘The usual bit of resentment over the Yanks and the girls, but you can’t blame any of them for wanting a bit of fun, can you?’ she said. ‘The girls need cheering up, and I daresay those GI boys are getting nervous, wondering where they’ll be sent to next. Polby says there’s more of ’em arriving by the minute. We’ll soon be turning into another Yankee state if we’re not careful.’

‘What does he think it’s all about, then?’ Kerry asked, sure that he’d have an opinion, if not inside knowledge!

‘A big onslaught on the Jerries, of course, so they need more troops than they can drop by parachute onto the French coast, which is why there’s so many ships in the harbour now, as well as our own airbases being so busy all the time. Besides,’ she added sagely, ‘what’s the point of having allies, if they’re not here to do their bit? That’s what Polby says, anyway.’

It must be right if Polby says it, Kerry thought dryly. But he was more often right than wrong, and as he spent so much time at the riverside pubs and hobnobbing with the Yanks, to say nothing of his Home Guard duties, he got to hear plenty. It was hard to say who was the biggest gossip, him or his wife. But at least it produced results, and everything was so hush-hush and full of wild speculation these days, it was good to know something. Much of it might be guesswork, but it was an open secret that an invasion was on the cards soon.

‘I hear that young Pam Wyatt was going to work as a land girl before she broke her leg,’ Mrs Polby suddenly said, with more acquired knowledge. ‘You had a fancy for it too, didn’t you, dearie?’

‘I did once. I wanted to do something useful for the war effort as well, Mrs Polby, and you don’t really need me here, do you?’

She couldn’t argue with that. Everything was in such short supply, and the village shop could hardly support one person, let alone two. Mrs Polby could manage perfectly well on her own, and she always had the customers to gossip with. But she didn’t see it that way.

‘People always need goods to buy, and your Aunt Lil needs you more than those old cows on Gillagy’s Farm,’ the woman went on, ‘and it would be a shame to go spoiling that pretty complexion by tramping in muck in all weathers.’

Kerry laughed. ‘Well, I reckon Pam will have to do what Farmer Gillagy tells her, if she ever gets there. He’s got two land girls already, and she struck lucky in being allocated somewhere close to home.’

‘How is your auntie? I haven’t seen her for a few days. Looking forward to having Maud Jenkins moving in?’ she said with a sniff.

Was there anything the Polbys didn’t know!

‘She’s well enough. What do you know about Aunt Maud, then?’

‘Only what I’ve heard from your auntie at Friendship Club, dearie, though I vaguely remember her from years back. I don’t think it’ll be a marriage made in heaven, if you get my meaning. I daresay she’s more than glad you’ll still be around to act as peacemaker.’

As one of Mrs Polby’s cronies came into the shop, the conversation came to an end, but curious as she was at Mrs Polby’s somewhat cryptic remark, Kerry didn’t like the thought of acting as any kind of peacemaker. She wondered again at the wisdom of Aunt Maud coming down to Cornwall, but she couldn’t blame her, even though there wasn’t much heard about any Bristol bombings lately. Their terrible blitz was in 1941, when so much of the city had been destroyed. But Kerry was intrigued to meet her. She was younger than Aunt Lil, and she sounded as if she had had quite an eventful life after her Jim had had his fatal accident – to put it kindly!

‘Well, I don’t envy you, living with two old dears,’ Claire remarked that evening after work, sitting on one of the benches alongside the meandering river that led down to the sea at Falmouth. ‘How old is this Maud, anyway?’

‘I’m not sure. Mid fifties, I would imagine.’

‘Like I said, two stuffy old dears,’ Claire said, dismissing them easily. ‘They’ll be getting you to join the knitting circle at their perishing Friendship Club before you know it.’

‘Not likely! Besides, Aunt Lil’s not a stuffy old dear. She can’t help her joints giving her trouble.’

‘She’s still getting on a bit. What will you do when she pops her clogs?’

Kerry leapt up from the bench, her nerves unexpectedly going haywire.

‘I don’t want to think about that! Why must you always be so negative about everything?’

‘I’m not! It happens, that’s all. People get born, they live their lives and then they die. You can’t change that, and for pity’s sake, sit down again. You look like an avenging angel, standing there with your arms crossed.’

They were so busy arguing they hadn’t noticed the group ambling towards them along the towpath, but at the sound of their low chuckles, they noticed them now.

‘Now, what are you two lovely gals doing here all alone? You look as if you could do with a bit of company,’ one of them said with a lazy twang in his voice. ‘Is there a local pub around here where we could buy you a drink?’

Kerry and Claire both started at the sight of the three American soldiers grinning at them now. One of them was oh-so familiar, making Kerry feel about ten years old as she stuttered out what had to be said.

‘We don’t go into pubs,’ she croaked.

‘Say, that’s a shame, but it’s no matter. How about if me and my buddies just join you and admire the sunset, all in the name of establishing Anglo-American relations, of course?’

So far, Marvin Mcleod hadn’t said anything, leaving it to his buddies to break the ice. Claire was giggling by now, and making room on the bench for the GIs to join them. One of them was Glenn, whom Claire had danced with, and the other was called Chuck, and Kerry was still standing with her arms crossed like an idiot and hardly knowing what to do next when Marvin finally spoke.

‘There’s not much room on the bench for five, so how about if Miss Kerry Penfold takes a walk along the towpath with me while you three get acquainted?’

She could hardly do otherwise now that he had made it obvious that he knew her name, but this wasn’t how this evening was meant to be. She had wanted a heart-to-heart with Claire, talking over things the way they always did, from Aunt Maud’s imminent arrival, to her own uncertainties at not hearing from Tom very much lately, to what the many ships in the harbour and the large influx of Yanks really meant, to the now burning question over whether or not her Aunt Lil could really be on her last legs …

Instead of which, she was walking awkwardly beside this man she had met for the first time a few nights ago, looking every bit as if they were a couple to anyone else who was also out and about before the enforced blackout shut out the night for good. It wasn’t what she wanted, and even less than that, she hoped she didn’t meet anyone who knew her.

‘Is something bothering you?’ Marvin said.

‘No. Sorry. I was just thinking.’

‘Don’t you know that too much thinking can be bad for your health?’ he said, so seriously that she jerked her head up to look at him, cricking her neck in the process, to see the laughter in his eyes.

She stopped walking, forcing him to do the same. ‘Look, I was just out for a while with my friend, and I’d like to go back there, if it’s all the same to you. We’ve got a lot to discuss.’

In the still of early evening, Claire’s burst of laughter could clearly be heard, and Kerry bit her lip. Trust her to take everything in her stride. Why couldn’t she do the same? It was only a walk, for God’s sake!

‘There’s another seat along there, so can we sit down for a moment? I’d like to show you something,’ Marvin said abruptly.

It would be churlish and infantile to refuse, so she simply nodded and joined him on the bench as he brought his wallet out of his pocket. Not knowing what to expect, she felt her heart beat much too fast. Maybe she was being totally idiotic, but he was a stranger, and she didn’t want any kind of relationship with him, Anglo-American or otherwise. She averted her eyes until she heard him speak again.

‘This is my girl. She’s quite a looker, isn’t she?’

Kerry looked down at the photo he was holding out to her. The girl looked like a film star, with tumbling blonde hair and a wide smile with the miles of white teeth all Americans seemed to have.

‘Her name’s Shirl, and if my attentions were bothering you, they needn’t, since I’m planning to ask her to marry me when all this is over,’ Marvin went on.

‘She’s very pretty,’ Kerry mumbled, feeling stupid.

‘She was Miss Montana last year,’ Marvin went on proudly, ‘and a cheerleader for the local college football team before that.’

Kerry had no idea what a cheerleader was, but she wasn’t about to admit as much. The fact that his glamorous Shirl had been Miss Montana last year seemed to put her streets apart from any normal girl, anyway, and in turn, that put Lieutenant Marvin Mcleod a world apart from her.

‘So tell me about your guy,’ he said, putting the photo back in his wallet. ‘Is he in the service?’

For a moment her mind went blank. They truly did speak a different language. In the service could mean anything – in the church, in catering, in hotel management – but of course, he meant none of that, she thought, her senses clicking into place again.

‘He’s somewhere in France,’ she said, trotting out the phrase that was commonplace nowadays. ‘He joined up two years ago. That would be before you became our allies, wouldn’t it?’

She hated herself for coming out with such an unintentionally bitchy remark. It was hardly his fault that the Americans didn’t come into the war until the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour! Nobody in Columbine, nor anywhere else, Kerry suspected, had even known where that was before the terrible Japanese raid that had destroyed so many valuable ships of the neutral American navy. And killed so many unsuspecting men too …

‘As a matter of fact, I was stationed at Pearl Harbour at that time.’

He said the words in such a monotone that she knew instinctively it hid far too many unsaid things that were too horrific to mention.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah. I lost a good few buddies. In hours, Pearl Harbour changed from being a little bit of paradise on earth to an unbelievable scene of bloody carnage, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.’

That he didn’t even apologise to her for his language told her that he was caught up in the memory. She hardly knew how they had become so serious. They could hear Claire’s chatter drifting along the towpath, followed by laughter between her and the two other GIs. She swallowed hard. Her annoyance at not hearing regularly from Tom was suddenly as nothing to what this man had seen.

‘Look, I really do have to go. We’re expecting my auntie’s cousin to come and stay with us for the duration, and I have to help get her room ready.’

Futile as it sounded, she wanted to get away from him before she could get any more involved in a life that had nothing to do with her, but which she already felt she knew far too much about. She knew of his glamorous girlfriend Shirl, who he was intending to marry; about his time at Pearl Harbour, where he would have seen as many horrific things as any Cornish boys who were fighting in France. She felt mildly ashamed of the way that she and Tom, and many like them, had felt scathing of the Yanks for waiting too long before entering the war. She didn’t feel like that now.

‘I hope we can meet again sometime,’ he said, standing up and not attempting to detain her.

‘Perhaps we will,’ Kerry muttered.

Without waiting for him to follow, she almost ran back to the bench where Claire was in full flow with the other Yanks now, and told her quickly that she was getting off home and would see her tomorrow. She turned and sped along the darkening towpath, where the moon was already turning the river into a sheen of silver ribbon. Moonlit nights were welcome, since it made the sky bright enough for enemy planes to be picked out by searchlights; it was mainly on the darkest nights that they heard the drone of enemy aircraft, near or far.

It wasn’t what moonlight was for, Kerry found herself thinking, almost hysterically. Moonlight was for sweethearts, not for planes to be shot out of the sky in a burning mass of twisted metal, with the poor devils inside them seared to a crisp … One of Claire’s brothers was a gunner in the RAF, and she didn’t want to think about that either.

She was almost sobbing by the time she reached home. She fell inside the door to lean against it, with her imagination taking her to places she didn’t want to go. Marvin Mcleod had somehow brought the impact of war home to her in a way not even the Jerry planes had done, despite the raids they had suffered recently, an onslaught in which many bombs had been dropped indiscriminately in isolated outlying areas and harmed no one. Such short-sightedness by the German pilots had made them complacent, even scornful, sure of their insularity, their invincibility. But nobody was invincible. Pearl Harbour had proved that.

‘What’s the matter, Kerry?’ she heard Aunt Lil say anxiously. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

Maybe she had. The ghost of the future …

‘I’m all right, Aunt Lil,’ she said quickly. ‘I ran home and I’ve got a stitch in my side, that’s all.’

‘Have you and Claire been squabbling again?’

Kerry forced a laugh at the natural assumption.

‘Something like that. I’ll be all right in a minute.’

‘You’ll be even better when you see what’s arrived for you,’ Lil said with a small smile.

She handed over the letter with the familiar handwriting on the envelope, and Kerry’s world turned the right way up again. She knew that Tom loved her, but she needed to see the words, to sense what he couldn’t say without feeling his arms around her, holding her close. But this was the best they could hope for in the circumstances.

‘I’ll take it upstairs to read, and then I’ll come down and help you get the front room ready for Aunt Maud,’ she said quickly.

‘Mr Coombes from the Friendship Club has already had the bed delivered,’ Lil called, but by then Kerry had sped upstairs with the precious letter in her hand. Once in her room she opened the envelope, her heart thudding.

Ten minutes later she was bursting with rage. Oh, all the usual sentiments were there, about how much he missed her and longed for the day when this ruddy war was over and he’d be back home again. But although the words were guarded as always, it was pretty clear that he, too, knew that something big was in the offing. And maybe she was feeling extra-intuitive that evening, but underneath it all she could read his boyish eagerness to get stuck into the fight, to be a comic-book hero, no matter what the cost. His barely hidden excitement totally deflated her. So much so that she screwed up the letter and flung it across the room, to rescue it a moment later, smoothing it out and weeping over it.

What in God’s name was wrong with her? This was her boy, her sweetheart, and all she could do was to pinpoint the thrill he was undoubtedly feeling, and hate him for it. It was a man thing … but he wasn’t a man. He was still a boy, her boy … but even as she thought it, she knew he was far more than that. All those young boys, little more than schoolkids, who had gone away so eagerly in the cause of king and country would come back as men. She should be proud, and she was proud.

She just wanted him home, the same as before, but for the first time she wondered if that was going to happen. He would be changed, the same as she was changed. Or was she? She felt the same, if a few years older. But none of them could remain the same for ever. It didn’t happen, and they were no longer children, any of them. You were born, yougrew older, you died. She gave a sudden shudder, remembering Claire’s blunt words.

‘Are you coming, Kerry?’ she heard Aunt Lil call out. ‘I’ve made some nice rabbit stew for our supper.’

‘I’m coming, Aunt Lil,’ she said quickly, smothering such depressing thoughts, and putting on a forced smile as she ran downstairs again.

‘You’ve been through all this before, haven’t you, Aunt Lil?’ she said later when she had given her a few details from Tom’s letter.

By now, replete with the succulent rabbit stew, they were making up the single bed in the front room for Aunt Maud’s use, and Lil paused.

‘There’s not many folk of my age, and older, who don’t know what it means to be worrying over a loved one caught up in a war, my love. They said the last one was the war to end all wars, but there’s always some madman somewhere ready to start another one, and to whip up his followers to do likewise. It’s a weird thing that this one started twenty-one years after the last one ended, though.’

‘What’s weird about it?’

‘The timing, girl. There’s always babies being born after the end of a war when the troops come home again and I don’t need to spell out what I mean by that. So those that were born a couple of years after 1918 are just ripe for serving in this one, aren’t they? It’s almost like God decided to produce fighting fodder, just in case, and I feel blasphemous even saying such a thing, but I can’t say I’ve never thought it, and I’m sure he’ll forgive me for it.’

Kerry was a bit stunned at her sudden passion, and even more at such a confession from her church-loving auntie.

‘Cripes, Aunt Lil, I’ve never heard you talk like this before!’

Lil whipped the final cover over the single bed and straightened up cautiously to ease her back. ‘Well, you don’t know everything about me, my love, so you go on writing your letters to your young man, no matter if you get as many back or not, because he needs to know that you’re still waiting for him when he comes home.’

‘He knows that already,’ Kerry mumbled, embarrassed to be sharing such intimate details. But it was a curious thing to say, and she said as much to Claire when she popped in at the small lending library where Claire worked.

‘Maybe she didn’t always write to your uncle as much as she should, and this is her roundabout way of telling you,’ Claire offered. ‘Wasn’t he killed in the Great War?’

‘Yes, but she never talks about that, and I don’t want to talk about it now, thanks very much.’

‘I’ve got some news, anyway. You know those two Yanks I was talking to the other night on the towpath? Well, Glenn came into the library earlier today and we’re definitely invited to go to their base to see a movie on Saturday night, which will be far better than having to take the bus to the picture house in Falmouth. What do you say, Kerry? Are you game?’

‘Are you sure they included me?’

‘Well, Glenn said it was a message from that other one as well, Marvin or something, and it was for both of us. You’d better say yes, because I know my dad won’t be too keen on me going there on my own!’

Kerry wasn’t keen on going at all. The thought of it conjured up too many sweet memories of sitting in the back row of a darkened cinema in Falmouth and snuggling up to Tom.

‘I don’t want to go,’ she said abruptly.

‘Kerry, you’ve got to!’ Claire wailed. ‘Oh, don’t spoil it for me just because you think Tom would object. You’re not married to him yet, and he doesn’t own you!’

‘I don’t think that at all. I can think for myself, and if I don’t want to go, it has nothing to do with Tom and me.’

But of course it did, and Claire knew darned well that it did. Just as Kerry knew she would back down, if only so that Claire wouldn’t think her a total wimp. She also had the backing of her Aunt Lil, and also from Aunt Maud, who arrived with due ceremony and far too much luggage on Friday afternoon, indicating a lengthy stay.

Aunt Maud was a younger and more garish version of Aunt Lil, thought Kerry, without the soft Cornish voice or much refinement. Maud was loud, both in voice and dress, and her response to Kerry’s comment that she was going to the US base unwillingly on Saturday night was a raucous and approving laugh.

‘You go and enjoy yourself, my girl, and never mind what folk say.’

‘I wasn’t minding any such thing,’ Kerry said crossly, annoyed that she had put the suggestion in her mind. ‘It’s a nice gesture from the Americans to do this and to invite some of the locals, and it’s not just for Claire and me. It’s more likely a thank you for the show we put on for them when they arrived.’

‘Oh well, you can think that, but two good-looking girls like you and your friend should make the most of it,’ Maud said with a grin. ‘You’re only young once. What do you say, Lil?’

‘I say that Kerry knows how to look after herself, and to remember her young man somewhere in France.’

‘There’s no danger of me forgetting where he is, Aunt Lil. Nor that the GIs will probably be over there with him pretty soon, from what Mr Polby says.’

‘Well, then. That’s what I mean, Kerry,’ Maud went on. ‘You’ve got to snatch a bit of pleasure where you can when there’s a war on. People learnt that in the last lot, didn’t they, Lil?’

To Kerry’s horror, her Aunt Lil’s face went a sickly white, and she turned abruptly and went out of the room, saying she was going to make some tea.

‘Aunt Lil, are you all right?’ she called out, but the door had closed behind her, and Maud snorted.

‘She was always one for shutting her eyes to what went on right under her nose, but you can’t stop human nature, whether you’re a prince or a beggar.’

‘Am I supposed to know what that means, Aunt Maud?’

As if realising she was being too free and easy with her chatter, Maud clamped her lips together before muttering that it was nothing, and when Lil came back she looked and acted so normally that Kerry began to wonder if she had imagined it all. But she was too intuitive for that. There was something here that she didn’t know, and neither of these two was going to tell her.

‘Well, what do you think it could be?’ Claire asked when they were cycling over to the American base on Saturday evening. ‘If it was something that happened in the last war, your Aunt Lil might have been having a fling with somebody while your uncle was away at the front. Can you imagine it?’ she added, giggling.