her lathering without comment, agitating the water into bubbles.
‘You see, Sparrow, I’m trying to tell myself that something wonderful hasn’t happened – and it has. I told you about Tim?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘Well last night it wasn’t Tim, exactly. He was called Bill Benson. And he was Scottish and just about Tim’s height. And he had fair hair, too, and –’
‘And he was an air-gunner, like your Tim was?’
‘Yes.’ She picked up a plate, drying it ponderously. ‘It threw me, at first.’
For just a little while it had been too much to accept. It got so out of hand that in the dimness of the theatre, when Bill leaned close to whisper to her, he sounded so much like Tim she had wanted to get away; push past everyone, run out and never go back.
‘So now you’re going to pretend it’s your young man come back to you with his face burned?’
‘No, Sparrow! Don’t say that! It’s cruel!’
‘It’s fact, girl, and you’re being morbid! Your young man hasn’t come back. The one you took to the theatre last night wasn’t Tim. And I’m not being cruel about their poor faces. Far from it. I think they should all have a medal, Lord love them! But don’t get entangled, Tatiana. Your mother put you in my care and I won’t have you getting yourself upset all over again. And maybe this Bill has a young lady – maybe even a wife. Did you think to ask?’
‘I didn’t, Sparrow, because it isn’t important,’ she said softly, though she knew as soon as she spoke that it was important because she was so certain in her dreamings that the young man who sat beside her had some part of Tim in him, that she had wanted to reach for his hand, entwine her fingers in his, just as she and Tim always did in the intimate, shoulder-to-shoulder darkness of Creesby picture house. Would have, only a voice, very much like Sparrow’s, had called a warning, and she was forced to tell herself it was not Tim who sat beside her and that even to think such a thing was being unfaithful to his memory.
But for just a moment, until she regained control of her feelings, Tim had not died in a crashed bomber on Holdenby Pike. Tim survived, dreadfully burned and blinded, too, her foolish heart insisted, and had come back with a different name. And even his name was uncanny. Tim Thomson. Bill Benson. Even the cadence was there.
‘Well, if it isn’t important, you’ll maybe stop trying to rub the pattern orf that plate and shift yourself so we’ll be done in time to listen to Tommy Handley! And maybe it’d be better if our Joannie sent you someone different next time.’
‘No!’ She said it much, much too quickly. ‘I mean – well, I promised Bill and Sam I’d see them both again next week. We got on well together the three of us, and Sam is such a help with Bill. I couldn’t go back on my word, Sparrow. Not the word of a Sutton.’
‘Well, if you say so. Only don’t go filling your head with day dreams or you’ll get hurt again – especially if he’s married. And there was a letter for you from Liverpool. I left it on the hall table. Did you see it?’
Sparrow knew Daisy’s handwriting; had known Daisy since she was a little thing in her mother’s arms, and living in Hampshire.
‘Sorry – I didn’t look, actually. I’ll read it later. And don’t worry about me, Sparrow – though I’m glad, really, that you do. It was just that meeting Bill Benson last night was a bit of shock, that’s all. I’m fine now. It’s all under control. I know what I’m doing.’
But did she know what she was doing, she thought that night as she lay snug and cosseted in bed and thought about Tim Thomson and Bill Benson. Because she didn’t know what she was doing if she were scrupulously honest, and to say she did was like spitting into the wind, which was a very unladylike thing to do – apart from being messy!
She turned over with an exaggerated sigh, then plumped up her pillows. Frightening though that meeting had been, she knew there could never, ever, be another man in her life after Tim. And that was a pity, really, because never to be able to fall in love again was a terrible thing to have to accept; like becoming a nun and not being able to go back on your word.
But those three wonderful months she and Tim spent together were worth a lifetime of being alone. Indeed she was, she thought, very lucky to have met Tim at all. If she hadn’t gone to the dance at Holdenby Moor aerodrome she would never have have known the joy of loving completely and being completely loved in return.
She smiled softly and sadly and said good night to Tim as she always did, then made her mind a blank, because she must not think about Bill Benson. Perhaps Sparrow was right and Joannie should ask some other volunteer to take him out on the town.
Trouble was, she had promised, and anyway, next week she would most probably wonder why she had ever thought Bill Benson was in the least like Tim. There could never be another Tim Thomson. Not ever. It was as simple – and awful – as that.
Drew and Kitty leaned against the landing-stage railings, thighs touching, hands clasped, gazing across the river to the Cheshire side. Sharp against the skyline the jagged outlines of bombed buildings were gentled by a setting sun that scattered the river with a sparkle of rubies.
‘Kind of beautiful, isn’t it?’ She smiled up at him. ‘If it wasn’t so sad, I mean. Wish I could paint. It’s so dramatic.’
‘Then I’m glad you can’t because knowing you, your canvases would either be terrible, or very good indeed.’
‘And in this case,’ she pointed to the wartime skyline, ‘scary. Y’know, honey, it’s like we’re standing back, looking at something we’ve no power to do anything about; all of us puppets, having our strings pulled.’
‘We’re nothing of the kind! You and I are living, breathing people. We have minds of our own and we’re going to be married,’ Drew said firmly. ‘And one day, all this will be behind us. Last time, Mother said, when they thought their war would never end, it was suddenly all over.’
‘Sure, and they had to pick up the pieces and wonder if it had all been worth it, just as our generation will wonder.’ She turned her back on the stark outlines that were already being dimmed and softened around the edges by the blocking out of a scarlet sun behind a tall, distant building. ‘And I know we have minds of our own, darling, but sometimes there’s no choice but to do things we don’t want to.’
‘Like?’ He pulled sharply on his breath.
‘Like me coming over here to work with ENSA and being willing to go anywhere, kind of …’
‘So you are leaving Liverpool! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I didn’t want to spoil tonight, I guess. Because in a few hours you’ve got to be back on board and next time you dock I’ll be gone. To London.’
The river ferry came broadside on to the landing stage and they looked down, not speaking, to watch the gangway fall with a clatter and people hurrying across it.
‘Let’s not go dancing.’ It was Drew who broke the uneasy silence.
‘No. Let’s go back to the digs.’ To Ma MacTaggart’s cheap theatrical lodgings; to Ma, who never thought to remark that the bed in the room Drew took for
