smallest slit in the centre. Thank heaven for white-painted kerbstones, she sighed. The times she had run off the road were too many to count.
The guardroom lay ahead and she stopped with a squealing of brakes that brought shouts and giggles from the back of the truck.
‘Ladies for the sergeants’ mess, plus one matelot,’ she called as the red and white pole that barred the road was raised.
Tatiana shivered with delight as she jumped down into Drew’s waiting arms because even though the door and all the windows of the Nissen hut that served as a mess were closed, she could hear the faint sound of music and the vibrating thunk and tap of bass and drums. She loved to dance and closed her eyes and fervently begged for her fair share of partners. It would be too awful, too degrading, if she sat out every dance when she had taken such trouble to look her best.
She need not have worried. Lady partners were thin on the ground and a cheer went up as they pushed aside the curtain that hung over the door.
Already the air was stuffy and thick with cigarette smoke. It wasn’t time for the blackouts to be put into place, but the windows had been nailed up during the winter and no one had bothered trying to open them since.
They laid their coats over a table at the end of the hut and Tatiana shook her head and ran her fingers through her long dark hair. Then she turned to look into eyes almost as blue as Daisy’s and smiled a breathless, ‘Yes, please,’ when a tall, fair sergeant asked if she would like to dance with him. He held her gently and not too closely and she matched her steps to his as they moved into a waltz.
‘You haven’t been here before.’ It was more a statement than a question. ‘I’d have seen you, if you had.’
‘No. This is my first time. I was only allowed to come because my cousin is home. That’s him,’ she nodded. ‘The sailor, dancing with the land girl. Maybe I won’t be able to come again,’ she sighed, wide-eyed.
‘Then we’ll have to make the most of tonight, won’t we?’ he smiled. ‘I want every dance – okay? Name’s Timothy Thomson – the Scottish Thomson, without the P. Tim.’
‘I’m Tatiana Sutton,’ she breathed, wondering why her voice wobbled and her lips were so stiff. ‘Tatty – and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ The words came out all in a rush.
‘Tatty’s a silly name. Where I come from, a tattie-bogle is a scarecrow and you’re no’ that. I’m very pleased to meet you, too.’ His eyes challenged hers, daring her to look away, claiming her, almost. ‘Tell me where you live. I want to know all about you.’
So she told him, and that her father was dead, but that very soon her grandfather would be coming to live with them when the military moved into the house they were going to take away from him.
‘Is that the old castle? I’ve often seen it when we fly over.’
‘It isn’t old and it isn’t a castle. It only thinks it is. It’s awful, really – sort of pushy. I think Grandfather’s glad to be leaving it for the duration.’
‘You must be rich.’
‘We aren’t, actually. We might have been if Father hadn’t been killed. He’d have inherited, you see. But I suppose, in the end, Bas will be stuck with it and he hates it.’
‘Bas?’ he frowned.
‘Sebastian Sutton. He’s my cousin – lives in Kentucky.’
‘And why, Tatiana Sutton, do you have a Russian name?’ The dance ended and he took her arm and guided her to chairs in the far corner of the floor.
‘My mother is Russian. Her family left because of the Communists. She’s called Aleksandrina Anastasia – Anastasia for the grand duchess. They were born on the same day, just a few hours apart.’ And because all at once she felt so easy with him, she told him about her Grandmother Petrovska, who was very sniffy and always wore black, and how she was very poor because most of what they owned had been left behind in St Petersburg, which Grandmother refused to call Leningrad.
‘You don’t know what poor is,’ he said bluntly. ‘Take me, for instance. I come from a Greenock tenement. I’m bright, though. Got a free place at the local academy. Should’ve been at university if the war hadn’t happened.’
‘But you’ll get there in the end,’ she comforted, ‘when the war is over.’
‘When this war’s over I’ll be long dead,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The survival rate for aircrews is pretty grim, and it’s grimmer for tail-gunners like me.’
‘Then why did you volunteer? Did you have to?’ she demanded angrily, because she had only just found him and she didn’t want, ever, to lose him.
‘Not really. But on the first Clydeside raid I lost family and friends and I went out in a rage and signed up.’
‘How old are you, Tim?’
‘Twenty. And you …?’
‘Eighteen. Nineteen next March. But can we dance again, please?’
All at once it wasn’t enough to be sitting beside him, her hand in his. She needed to be closer, his arms around her. She needed it especially because he was right; not only did aircraft go missing, but even when they got back the rear-gunner was sometimes dead. Tail-end Charlies they were called. Luftwaffe fighter pilots always shot up the gunner first.
He took her in his arms and she moved closer. ‘I think I’m falling in love with you,’ she whispered in her best Imperial Russian.
‘What did you say?’ he laughed.
‘I was speaking in Russian.’ She lifted her eyes to his. ‘I said I think – I think you are a very good dancer.’ Her cheeks flushed hotly because she had almost said it; had wanted to say it.
‘Thanks. You’re no’ bad yourself.’
He drew her closer still and rested his cheek on her head and she relaxed against him and let go her indrawn breath in a sigh of contentment.
She wanted tonight never to end. She wanted to stay in his arms until the war was over.
‘Will you ring me tomorrow?’ she murmured, suddenly bold.
‘If we aren’t flying. No one can phone out if we’re going on ops. Security, you see. But if there’s no call, wish me luck when I fly over?’
‘I will, Tim.’ With all her heart and soul she would wish him luck; will him safely back. He had to get back. He couldn’t get killed; not when they had only just met. Not when she loved him so much.
‘Sssh. We’ll wake them up,’ Daisy breathed as their feet crunched the gravel drive that led to Denniston House.
‘Can you see all right, Tatty?’ Drew whispered as she fumbled her key into the lock.
‘Fine, thanks.’ Carefully she swung the door open, then turned to fold her arms round Drew, kissing him fondly.
‘G’night, coz. ’Night, Daisy. It’s been just great. Thanks for getting me in, Gracie.’
‘No bother. I’ll let you know next time they send us an invitation.’
At an upstairs window, Anna Sutton pulled back the curtain, peering into the moonlit night. She needn’t have worried. Her daughter was safely home. She watched as Drew and Daisy and Rowangarth’s land girl waved a silent good night, then slipped back into bed, listening to the sound of the closing of the front door, the slipping home of the bolts, the creaking of the second stair from the top as Tatiana crept to her room. The knob of the bedroom door turned slowly, carefully.
‘I’m home,’ Tatiana whispered.
The light from the landing fell on Anna’s closed eyelids. Her mother was asleep. Gently she closed the door.
Anna’s eyes flew open and a smile tilted the corners