for hers, and spoken to her with Tim’s soft way of speaking; had he not had a shock of fair hair like Tim’s, nor the wing of an air-gunner above his left tunic pocket.
Tim come back to her, his beautiful face burned beyond recognition; Tim, wearing dark glasses over sightless eyes. Not smiling, because to smile she knew to be difficult. But the hand she grasped was Tim Thomson’s hand and the voice that said, ‘Tatiana. Nice to meet you,’ was Tim’s voice. Even his height belonged to a sergeant air-gunner she had not seen for a few days short of a year.
She clasped the hand in hers, said, ‘Nice to meet you, too, Bill,’ then covered that hand with her free one and closed her eyes and whispered silently inside her, ‘God! How could you do this to me? How could you?’
‘We’re in good time.’ Sam speaking. ‘What say we find the bar and sink a crafty half?’
‘A crafty half it is!’ said a voice not a bit like Tatiana Sutton’s. Then she pulled Bill Benson’s arm into the crook of her own. ‘That okay with you, Bill?’
And he said it was and asked her to tell him – quietly, if she wouldn’t mind – when there was a step up or down; otherwise he could manage just fine.
And Tatiana thought it was just as well one of them could manage just fine, because she couldn’t. She was light-headed and hot and cold, both at the same time. And it hurt, almost, to breathe.
‘Give me your stick,’ she heard herself saying, ‘and you, Sam, walk on the other side. Relax, Bill. We’ve got you.’
Yet all the time she was shaking inside her. And her mouth had gone dry and it was hard, even, to think; think about getting Bill Benson up and down steps and stairs, that was, and fixing him up with a beer; finding a corner of the noisy, heaving bar where he could manage to drink it without being pushed or elbowed.
‘What are you drinking, Bill?’ Sam had asked when they had found a place to stand.
‘Heavy, please.’ There was no smile on his tight, rough lips, but there was a smile in his voice.
‘That’s bitter, in Sassenach,’ she heard herself explaining to Sam. ‘And I’ll have a glass of light, please, if that’s okay?’
‘You know your Scottish ales,’ Bill said with Tim’s voice.
And she took a deep breath and said, ‘But of course, hen.’
She hadn’t meant to be flippant, had not meant to use one of Tim’s words because Tim had often called her hen. And you shouldn’t be flippant, should you, when nothing about and around you was real; when all you could be sure of was the voice that wept inside you?
God! Why did you do this? Why did you take Tim away from me then send Bill Benson into my life?
Because Bill was Tim and Tim was Bill. Only sightless eyes and a cruelly burned face disguised them.
She found herself wondering if Bill liked to dance, only to hear a ragged voice whispering in her ear: It doesn’t matter if Bill Benson dances or not. He isn’t Tim. Tim is dead! He will never come back; you know he won’t.
She was grateful that Sam returned at that moment, carrying three glasses on a tin tray.
‘Y’know, Tatiana – there’s one good thing about being a wounded hero! You get served first!’
She took a glass, then said, ‘Bill,’ and he turned in the direction of her voice. ‘Your drink …’
He held out his hand and she arranged his fingers round the glass, then said, ‘Cheers!’ even though his hands had not been burned and could have almost been the hands that once touched and gentled her body.
Did you hear me, God? Why …?
Keth tapped on the door and pushed it open.
‘Hullo, sir. Come for your homework?’ asked the pleasant-faced ATS corporal.
‘Please. But tell me, Corporal, why are all the army girls around here sergeants but you?’
He felt pleased that his voice sounded so normal.
‘Because I’m not old enough. You have to be twenty-one in this setup. Only three months to wait!’
She looked very young; certainly not twenty and three-quarters. He wondered how much she knew; how far she was trusted, until she turned the dial on the safe to the left and right, then handed him a folder marked ‘237’.
‘This is yours, Captain. Will you sign for it, please?’ There was a docket stapled to the front of it and she wrote the date, the day and the time on it then offered it for his signature. ‘And will you sign the office copy, too?’
‘You look very young to be working in a setup like this.’ Keth initialled the second copy. ‘Do you find it a strain?’
‘No, sir. My own choice entirely. I wanted, initially, to be sent out into the field, but –’
‘Work for SOE, you mean? An agent?’
‘I work for SOE now,’ she smiled. ‘But yes, one day I’d like to go to France.’
‘But why?’ She was too young, too pretty, too vulnerable-looking.
‘For the same reasons as yourself, I suppose.’
‘Hey! Don’t get any ideas about me! I’m here because I made a bargain. I owe them one – and I suppose I’m going because I know more about – well –’ he faltered, ‘I’m going because I know more than most about what this particular trip entails. I’m certainly not going because I like danger, or anything like that. I want to get it over and done with, then settle into my boring routine again. And get married,’ he added, almost as an afterthought. Which was stupid, really, because he had become Gaston Martin only because he so desperately wanted to marry Daisy. ‘And should we be talking like this, Corporal?’ he asked more severely than he intended to. ‘What I mean is – well – will our conversation be reported to Himself in authority?’
‘No, sir,’ she said softly. ‘Not by me it won’t.’
‘Thank you.’ He smiled, relieved. ‘But tell me why someone like you should want to go on active service with SOE? Working here you must surely know what it entails?’
‘Yes, I do. But I love France, you see. All the special things in my life happened there. We went there a lot before the war, on holiday and every year to the same pension. I learned to swim in France when I was four. France was a happy place for me and my brother.
‘Then my parents sent me to school there, to finish me off, as they called it. I went when I was sixteen. When I came home for my seventeenth birthday they wouldn’t let me go back; they thought we’d soon be at war, you see, and home was the safest place to be. I’ve been trying to get back ever since.’
‘A young man?’
‘Partly,’ she said, without even the hint of a blush. ‘There was someone I was fond of, but his letters stopped. I suppose I’d be happy just to know what has happened to him – if he is still alive. But really, I just want to go back
