The Girls They Left Behind (46 page)

Yes, she knew they would have to talk seriously, and soon.

But this was Christmas. A time for peace. A time for standing still.

Dennis pulled her a little closer and she leant her head on his shoulder. The moon was a sliver of brightness in the sky, rolled on its back amongst the stars. The trees were dark shapes above the huddled hedges. No lights showed from neighbouring farms or villages, but despite the truce - for it was only unofficial and could not be wholly trusted - the thin pencil beams of searchlights played in the sky over Portsmouth.

They moved across the heavens like a web of silky light, tracing a silver lattice in space. Closer at hand, an owl hooted and Betty felt the velvet brush of its wings as it flew past her head.

‘There are some things we have to talk about,’ Dennis said quietly. ‘You know what it’s like, Betty. Tomorrow might not come. I can’t risk leaving it. I’ve waited a long time to tell you I love you.’

‘Dennis, I love you too.’ She turned in his arms, seeking his lips with her own. They clung together, their bodies pressed close, feeling their warmth in the cold night air. She felt the firmness of his arms about her and knew that his strength came from deep in his heart, that he would always keep her safe. Her heart spoke to him, making its own vows, but she knew that Dennis needed to hear her voice. With more time, the heart could be given its chance, but did they have that time? She imagined the sound of a bomber droning through the silence of the night and her arms tightened around him.

Dennis pressed his lips against her hair, against her temple, against her cheek and her neck. He found her lips and laid his own gently upon them, but the gentleness turned swiftly to passion and he caught her hard against him, his mouth suddenly fierce. Betty gasped, swung momentarily into terror, for she had never been kissed in this way before, and then her whole body responded, melting against him, her lips soft and yielding, her breasts swelling against his chest.

Briefly, she glimpsed the stars wheeling above, and then her eyes closed as Dennis lifted her in his arms and then laid her gently on the icy ground.

‘No. It’s too cold here.’ She felt his strength as he drew her up again into his arms and looked down into her eyes. She could see the stars reflected in his wide, dark pupils, shimmering through the tears that lay bright on her lashes.

Gently, he kissed each eyelid, and traced a line of tenderness down her neck to the hollow of her throat. His hand curved about her breast, his palm shaping itself to her softness, and she felt the leap of her heart beneath his touch. ‘Betty,’ he whispered, ‘Betty … I want to love you …’

Betty clung to him. Her body was surging with desire. She had barely noticed the iciness of the ground, would willingly have opened herself to him there and then. She was shaken with a torrent of feeling more powerful than any she had known before. Graham’s rumblings and her own half excited, half irritated response were no more than a pale shadow in comparison with this almost violent rush of emotion. It was like stepping from a familiar room into a jungle, where everything was new and nothing certain.

‘Love me now, Dennis,’ she whispered, pressing her body against his. ‘Oh please, please, love me…’

He held her tightly and groaned. Then he lifted his head and pushed her away from him. His arms were strong but she could sense the reluctance in him, the desire to pull her close again, and she laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to draw him back. But Dennis shook his head.

‘Not now. Not here. This isn’t how it should be between us. We should think, be sensible.’

‘Sensible!’ The word was jerked out of her body. ‘Dennis, there’s nothing sensible about the way I feel - sense doesn’t come into it. Not that sort of sense, anyway.’ In fact, all her senses were reeling and she knew it, knew that he was right, but refused to acknowledge it. ‘We love each other. What else matters?’

‘You know what else.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Betty, I love you, and because I love you I want to take care of you. I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you. Do you know what I mean?’

A little subdued, recognising his emotion, she said, ‘Yes.’

‘I can’t take any risks,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you, but it’s got to be done right. I don’t want any shotgun weddings.’

She thought of Graham. He’d said he loved her, but he’d been talking about a different kind of love, or perhaps it wasn’t love at all. What sort of love was it that would use a baby to get him what he wanted?

‘I don’t mind what happens,’ she said, ‘as long as we can be together.’

He looked down at her gravely and she saw the shine of his eyes in the starlight.

‘There’s a war on, Betty,’ he said. ‘We might not be able to be together.’

‘So love me! Let’s love each other while we can, while we’ve got this chance. It’s Christmas night, Dennis.’ She looked up at him, pleadingly. ‘There doesn’t have to be a risk, does there? Aren’t there things you can use? Or - or are Quakers like Roman Catholics and don’t believe in it?’

She saw him smile. ‘No, we’re not at all like Roman Catholics. But there aren’t many places open on Christmas night to buy those kind of things, Betty, and I don’t keep them in my pockets.’ He kissed her again and held her close.

‘Besides, you haven’t had time to think about it. I told you, I won’t rush you. You’ve got to be sure.’

‘I am sure,’ she said quietly, but he turned away from the gate and took her hand.

‘Let’s go back now, my darling. Let’s go back, and have our tea, and spend the evening by the fire with Mr and Mrs Spencer and that old grump Jonas. Let’s be just like a married couple, sitting on the settee and holding hands and knowing that all our loving is there to be taken later on, a part of us. It won’t be any the less for waiting.’ He kissed her once more, his lips lingering on hers, his cheek cold against her skin.

‘Let’s make this Christmas a Christmas we’ll always treasure, one we’ll look back on when we’re old and grey, one that will always shine in our memories because it was the Christmas we fell in love.’

Betty could not answer. With her hand in his, she walked back towards the darkened farmhouse. Inside, she knew, it would be warm and bright, filled with good smells and cheerfulness. Outside, it was black with the shadows of war.

A Christmas to be treasured. To shine in their memories for the rest of their lives.

Would it be really be any more treasured because we didn’t make love, because we took no risks? she thought. Wouldn’t it shine even more brightly if we had the memory of a sweet loving to carry with us through the years? Perhaps even a child, not used to get them their way as Graham had wanted, but conceived of their tenderness for each other, born of their passion. And shouldn’t such a conception be left to the God in whom Dennis believed so steadfastly?

Tea was ready when they went back indoors, a spread of sandwiches and salad, cakes and jelly. Betty thought of the family at home. They would all be there, except herself and Colin. Olive and Derek would have told their news, which had been conveyed to Betty in a slip of paper included with her present (a pair of mittens knitted by Olive). They would have eaten their Christmas dinner and had a walk in the afternoon and after tea they would be making a party of the evening, with games like Family Coach and the Jelly Race and Alibis. By now they would be singing, all the old songs like Tavern in the Town and Molly Malone, and some of the newer ones too —A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, and the one the popular young singer Vera Lynn had made so famous, which brought tears to everyone’s eyes, We’ll Meet Again.

There were tears in Betty’s eyes too as she thought of them, enjoying the first family Christmas she had ever missed. Did they notice the empty chair at the table, or had it been filled by someone else? Her mother had told her Mrs Brunner and Joy were coming to spend the day. They had never had ‘strangers’

in the house at Christmas before. Had it made a difference?

‘What sort of Christmas do you usually have?’ she asked Mrs Spencer, realising that she and Dennis were ‘strangers’

at the farm. ‘You must be missing your Gerald and Dick.’

‘I am.’ The older woman looked sadly into the fire. ‘It don’t seem right without them, and that’s the truth of it. And when I think of where they are and what might be happening to them …’ The Spencer boys were in the Army, fighting the Italians in the Libyan desert. ‘I know they say we’re winning there, but our boys are still getting killed, aren’t they? Perhaps at this very minute …’ Her eyes filled.

‘Now then, Ada,’ Mr Spencer said. ‘This is Christmas night, remember? There’s a truce on. Nobody’s getting killed now and our two aren’t going to be anyway. They’ve got hides like crocodiles, the pair of ‘em.’ He refilled her glass with ginger wine. ‘Drink up now. Dennis wants to hear about the old days on the farm, when we were young.’

‘Ah, it were different then,‘Jonas said in his gravelly voice.

‘We ‘ad to work in them days. None o’ this lazin’ around ‘alf the day suppin’ tea. And never did us a mite of ‘arm, either.

‘work never killed no one.’

Dennis smiled at Betty and squeezed her hand. And for the rest of the evening, they listened to tales of life in the country, of Christmases past, of summers when the sun never stopped shining, and of a time that was almost forgotten, when families were together and peace ruled the land.

It was a Christmas that was different, she thought after she had said goodnight and gone to bed, but it had been a happy one after all. Happiest of all because Dennis had said he loved her. But now, alone in the empty attic, she felt a great desolation wash over her. And she knew that she could not sleep without feeling his arms around her.

This is our Christmas, she thought. Our first. We ought to be together.

Quietly, she slipped out of bed. She found the old coat she used as a dressing-gown and pushed her feet into the slippers her mother had sent her for Christmas. Cautiously, she lifted the latch on the attic door and crept down the stairs to Gerald Spencer’s room, where Dennis was now sleeping.

The door opened without a creak. She pushed it gently and slid through the narrow gap. The room was uncurtained and lit faintly by the stars, and she could see the bed and the shape that was Dennis lying in it.

Betty stood for a moment with beating heart. What if he should send her away? What if he were angry, or rejected her?

What if he despised her for being so brazen?

Dennis moved. He lifted his head from the pillow and whispered, ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me. Betty.’ Her voice was strained, almost inaudible. ‘I - I couldn’t sleep.’ She came forwards and dropped on her knees beside the bed, her hands reaching out for him.

‘Dennis, let me stay. You don’t have to do anything. Just let me stay here with you. Just let’s be together, please.’

‘Betty’

‘You said it yourself,’ she whispered. ‘Tomorrow might not come. We have to take what chances we have. Hold me in your arms, Dennis, and love me. Let’s have this Christmas to remember.’ She lifted her face to his and touched his lips with her own. ‘I love you, Dennis. I love you so much.’

His arms slipped around her body and she felt the warmth of his skin beneath the thin fabric of her nightdress. Her blood surged and she felt the answering leap of his heart. He drew back the bedclothes and she shrugged the coat from her shoulders and lay beside him.

‘You’re sure about this?’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want to do anything you’d be sorry for.’

‘I’ll never be sorry for loving you.’

‘Betty,’ he breathed. ‘Betty …’

His lips were gentle on hers. Slowly, delicately, as if uncovering the most fragile of spun glass, he pushed aside the folds of her nightdress. Betty shivered as his fingers touched her skin and a tremor of desire shook her body. She touched his bare chest and felt the warmth of his heart. With a sudden need to feel closer, she pressed her body against his and then drew away to sit up and drag her nightdress over her head.

Dennis watched the movement of her arms as she lifted them, saw the shape of her breasts silhouetted against the window. He lifted one hand and traced the shape, and Betty slid down again and allowed him to twine his arms about her.

She felt his legs hard against hers, and the trembling desire deepened to a burning excitement.

Dennis caressed her body slowly, covering her breasts first with his hands, then with his lips. With the tip of one finger, he drew a line between her breasts and a curve in the crease beneath each one. He slid his fingers down her arm, lingering in the crook of her elbow where he planted another kiss. He stroked her waist, her navel and the crease of her thighs.

Betty felt the tenderness of his hands spread like a warm flame, enveloping her body. She was weak with desire and helpless in his arms. She lay soft in his embrace, as dizzy as if she were falling, and felt his touch slide from thigh to knee and back again, into the deepest crease of all.

She felt a sudden flare of sensation and twisted against him. With a gasp, Dennis came into her and suddenly Betty’s languor departed and she moved with him, responding to his sudden force with a strength she had not known she possessed. She lay beneath him, her hands on his shoulders, and then Dennis rose high above her, bracing himself on his hands, and threw back his head. In the pale shimmer of starlight, she could see his face, taut and concentrated in the shadows. She felt her own desire tingle through her body, felt the tremor reach to each outflung fingertip, felt the shudder of fulfilment lift her to a momentary peak of delight.

The few seconds were an eternity. And then eternity came to an end and Dennis lowered himself to lie close to her, once again enfolding her with his warmth and whispering his love in Betty’s ear.

It was a strange Christmas for many that year.

For Gerald and Dick Spencer, it was blisteringly hot. From the gentle scenery of a Hampshire farm, they had come thousands of miles to North African desert sand. From ploughing and harrowing, from milking and shearing, they had come to a battle to the death, with the roar of guns and mines and tanks in their ears. From rainstorms they came to desert storms, with sand driving merciless needles against their faces and into their eyes and throats, so that they almost preferred the threat of bombshells and the menace of the hidden mines.