In the quiet that followed, and worried that the cooling air temperature might not agree with Romily, he added sometinder-dry twigs on the fire, together with some larger pieces of tree branches that he’d gathered and hoarded during previous visits.
‘I’m just a caveman at heart,’ he said when she commented how organised he was. ‘Or maybe I’m instinctively preparing for my own funeral pyre.’
‘What a strange thing to say.’
‘We’re all nothing but a heartbeat away from death. I have no problem accepting my life is finite. Who knows, it might be tomorrow for us all if Kennedy can’t stop the Soviets from plunging the world into a nuclear war.’
‘Some deaths you just never see coming,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Like Marilyn Monroe’s. When she died back in August, you’d have thought the world would stop turning such was the shock.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
‘Sure, a few times.’
‘Was she as beautiful in real life as she was on the screen?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess.’
Romily raised an eyebrow. ‘You must be one of the few men in the world not to rave about her exceptional beauty.’
‘I am that rare man who prizes brains above beauty,’ he said with a smile. ‘Not that she was stupid. She wasn’t.’
‘The gossip columns would have us believe otherwise, that you prize beauty above all else.’
He laughed. ‘Have you been doing your homework on me?’
‘I found a pile of old magazines in the guest cottage in a cupboard. You’re quite the ladies’ man, aren’t you?’
‘You should know better than to believe a word of that trash. But enough about me, I’m much more interested in hearing something of your wartime escapades flying with the ATA.’
‘How do you know about that?’
He tapped his nose. ‘I’ve been doingmyhomework.’
‘In that case you know all you need to know.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Why would you want to know any more?’
‘Because I’m genuinely interested. Because we’re two friends sitting in the desert getting to know each other over a mug of bourbon.’
And because I could sit here all night chatting with you, he thought. Or did he mean sparring?
Chapter Thirteen
Hamble, Hampshire
April 1944
Romily
The day had started off just as any normal day did; that is to say, I had no idea what to expect. Ever since I’d joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, no two days were ever the same; we took whatever was thrown at us.
It had been a busy period for me. According to my logbook, in the last six weeks I’d delivered a total ofsixty-one military aircraft from British factories and maintenance units to RAF airfields. I’d flown Mustangs, Mosquitos, Spitfires, Hurricanes, a couple of Grumman Avengers and a Corsair, and my most hated of machines, the Walrus. I had also notched up tentaxi-days, ferrying pilots about the country.
Much to my amusement, there were still some RAF aircrew who resented a woman in the cockpit, believing we should be at home darning socks and making jam. But as with all my female colleagues, I took the sneers andput-downs in my stride. We had more important things to worry about.
