scratched her feet through her sandals then thankfully climbed the fence into Brattocks Wood. Here, in the shifting half-light, the wood was settling down for the night. She squinted at her watch but could not see the time. About ten o’clock, she supposed. Not a light was to be seen. Official blackout time tonight was 8.31, though it would not be completely dark for a little while. Yet despite the extra hour of daylight the nights were drawing in now. Soon the leaves would begin to yellow and then would follow the misty mornings, with swallows chattering on the telegraph wires, making ready to fly away.
Clever little birds. They came in May and left, suddenly, when they knew the time was right. The war made no difference to their migrations. Swallows didn’t know about war.
A hunting owl screeched to frighten its prey into movement, and Daisy began to run towards Keeper’s Cottage.
‘Watch the blackout, lass,’ Tom warned as she opened the kitchen door. ‘Want to get us all locked up, do you?’ He glanced pointedly at the mantel clock. ‘And what time of night is this to be coming in?’
‘Nearly half-past ten, Dada. The little hand is on ten and the big one on five,’ she grinned mischievously. ‘I’ve been with Tatty – just walking and talking …’
‘Didn’t you see your Aunt Julia? She’s just this minute left.’
‘No. I came across the field and through Brattocks.’
‘And what have I told you about being in the wood alone at night? Anything could happen to you!’
‘Dada! I know Brattocks like the back of my hand – even in the dark.’
‘Happen you do, but you’ll come home down the lane in future, especially now the nights are drawing in. I could tell you things about that wood –’
‘What your dada means is that you could have been taken for a poacher,’ Alice interrupted hastily. ‘Or you could come across a tramp … Your Aunt Julia came to tell us about Drew. Seems his ship is based in Liverpool, so he’ll be nice and near when he gets leave. Only three hours by train to York. HMS Penrose, he’s on. We have to write to him care of GPO London, so no one will know where the Penrose is.’
‘But we do know, Mam, though I can’t believe Drew would say a thing like that over the phone.’
‘No. Seems the phone rang and Winnie on the exchange asked Julia if she would accept a trunk call, reversed charges. And it was Drew. Gave her his address and said they were tied up alongside, that was why he’d been able to ring, see? But he didn’t say alongside where. Then the minute Julia put the phone down it rang again. “Did you get your trunk call all right?” Winnie asked. And when your Aunt Julia said she had, Winnie dropped her voice all dramatic, like, and whispered, “Well, it was from Liverpool, but not a word to a soul, mind.”’
They all laughed, because it was good to hear from Drew and that he had sounded happy and sent his love and asked them all to write.
‘But not a word about this!’ Alice was all at once serious. ‘We’re family so we’re entitled to know, but we don’t shout all over the Riding where Drew’s ship is and what he’s doing. Drew has been lucky. He could have been sent all the way up to Scapa Flow – or even overseas. And the Germans haven’t bombed Liverpool much, so far. Not like when he was in barracks. I’m glad he’s left Plymouth.’
‘Hmm. Wonder where I’ll end up, Mam?’
‘What do you mean, Daisy – end up? You’ve only just had your medical. They told you it might be quite a while before you get your call-up papers.’
And then Alice’s blood ran cold and she wondered why she had never thought of it until now. Because they could well send Daisy down south where all the air raids were; where the fighter stations were being bombed and strafed day after day.
They could send her to Dover, which was being shelled from across the Channel every day, or to Plymouth or Portsmouth, where the invasion would be – if it came …
Julia unlocked the door of the room she had not entered for exactly a year. Next to it was the sewing-room where Alice once worked; the small back room in which they had shared secrets almost too long ago to remember. And this room – Julia slipped the key into her pocket – was Andrew’s surgery. Major Andrew MacMalcolm of the Medical Corps, killed just six days before the conflict they called the Great War ended. In this room she had created a sentimental replica of Andrew’s London surgery; a shrine, almost. Every piece of furniture, every book, pencil and instrument – even the grinning skeleton and the optical wall chart – had been brought here.
Once, she had found comfort from it; sat at his desk, picked up his stethoscope, willed him to walk through the door. Now she came here only once a year, on the last day of August.
She dusted the desktop, the chair, lifted the sheet that covered the skeleton then let it drop as she heard a footstep in the passage outside. Slowly, gently the door knob turned, then Nathan was standing there, eyes sad.
‘Sorry, darling. I’m not prying …’
‘Then why are you here?’ Julia was angry, not only at the intrusion into her other life, but that Nathan should witness this rite of remembrance.
‘I suppose because I thought you might need me. I do understand. Today would have been his birthday.’
‘Yes.’ The last day of August. Andrew had lived for just a little over thirty-one years. Today he would have been fifty-three and a consultant physician, maybe, or a surgeon; a father, certainly – perhaps even a grandfather. One year older than Nathan, who had neither son nor grandson because he had loved a woman who clung stubbornly to the memory of another man. ‘And very soon, Nathan, you and I will have been married for two years. I threw away a lot of happiness, didn’t I, being bitter? Yet I can’t forget Andrew. The part of me that remembers today loves him still. Does it hurt you to hear me say it?’
‘No. Andrew was a part of your life. If I were him, I wouldn’t want you to forget.’
‘And would you have wanted me to marry again if you were dead and Andrew alive still?’
‘Yes, I would. If I’d loved you as he loved you – and I do, sweetheart – then I would have wanted you not to be alone.’
‘From heaven, would you have wanted it, Nathan?’ she whispered, aware of the goodness of him and the compassion in his eyes.
‘From that other place we have come to call heaven – yes,’ he smiled.
‘Then let me tell you – Julia MacMalcolm has gone.’ She rose from the chair in which Andrew once sat and went to stand at her husband’s side. ‘I left her at a graveside at Étaples. And now I am Julia Sutton, who has been twice lucky in love; different loves, but each of them good. Can you accept that?’
‘Easily, because you are you and headstrong and sentimental and honest. I wouldn’t change what you are or what you were. And I shall go on loving you as long as I live, just as a young nurse will always love a young doctor. Nothing can turn back love, Julia, nor diminish it.’
‘You’re a good man, Nathan. Thank you for waiting all those years for me.’
She touched his cheek with gentle fingertips. She would not kiss him, not here in Andrew’s surgery. Instead, she walked to the window, drawing across it the flimsy cotton curtains that once hung in a house in a London street called Little Britain. Then she took her husband’s hand, leading him from the room, turning the key in the lock before placing it in his hand.
‘I shall not open that door again. When Drew is next home, give the key to him, will you? He’ll understand. And, Nathan – this woman I am now loves you very much, so will you kiss me, please?’
Alice