Romily
I had been back at work for some weeks ferrying aircraft around the country when I was given a few days’ leave. I took the opportunity to go home to Island House, and then drive over to Tilbrook Hall in Norfolk.
Since I had made a full recovery and been discharged from the medical care at Tilbrook Hall, Matteo and I had exchanged letters on a regular basis. The pages of his letters contained exquisite little drawings in the margins. Sometimes a whole page was devoted to a sketch of something that had caught his eye – a child flying a kite, a butterfly sunning itself on a wall, a squadron of bombers flying overhead, an old man leaning against a stile smoking a pipe. In comparison, I feared he found my letters rather ordinary. Although he said not.‘You cannot know the pleasure I experience,’he wrote to me,‘when I see an envelope with your beautiful handwriting on it.’
I had decided to keep my return visit to Tilbrook Hall a surprise. And having saved up valuable petrol coupons, I was enjoying the freedom of driving my beloved MG. With the top down, I drove at speed along the winding country lanes, the sun shining down from a clear blue sky, my heart soaring at the prospect of seeing Matteo again. Untying the scarf from around my head, I shook out my hair, letting it catch in the wind. I hadn’t felt this carefree in a very long time. I began to sing at the top of my voice.
It was almost possible to believe there was no war raging, no bombs dropping, no rationing, no hardship, and no death. There was just this beautiful summer’s day to enjoy, and the prospect of spending it with a man whom I had fallen in love with. In the five years since I had been widowed, I had been told repeatedly that I would one day find love again, and perhaps when I least expected it. I hadn’t believed them. Or perhaps I hadn’t wanted to because it would have seemed like a betrayal of my love for Jack. But Matteo had changed that.
Stuck behind ahorse-drawn cart laden with milk churns, I was forced to drive the last mile at a snail’s pace. I knew better than to roar past and unnerve the horse, so quelled my eagerness to reach my journey’s end. When I entered the village of Tilbrook and parted company with the milk churns by taking the first turning to the left, I then pulled into the long driveway that led to the Hall. Part way along, and in the shade of a magnificent chestnut tree, I drew the car to a stop. Vanity prevailed, and I took out the necessary equipment from my handbag to make good the damage the drive had inflicted on my appearance. Hair combed and protected once again by the silk headscarf, perfume dabbed behind my ears, powder and lipstick reapplied.Make-up was in such short supply, all I had by way of lipstick was a measly stub of my favourite Chanellip-colour. I used it only for special occasions, and today was just that.
Reporting in at the office, a delightfulsun-filledsouth-facing room that had been the owners’ informal sitting room, I was told that Matteo was out working in the woods.
Picnic basket in hand, I crossed thesun-drenched slope of lawn and followed the directions I’d been given. I found him stripped to the waist and wielding an axe. He was fully immersed in the task of chopping down a tree, and taking advantage of his absorption, I observed him for a few moments, shamelessly enjoying the sight of the muscles in his back and shoulders rippling in the dappled sunlight.
Some distance from Matteo, two lumberjills were tackling a felled tree with across-cut saw. It was one of the girls who saw me first.
‘I’m guessing you haven’t come here to help?’ she said, weighing up the smart summer frock I had deliberated over first thing that morning. It contrasted forcibly with the uniform the two girls were both dressed in – sturdy dungarees with a beigeshort-sleeved shirt, and a green beret. The girl’s tone was teasing, but not unfriendly. Her fellow member of the Women’s Timber Corps turned to look, followed by Matteo, who promptly dropped the axe he was holding. He could not have looked more startled if the sky had parted and Moses had been standing before him, stone tablet at the ready.
‘Why did you not tell me you were coming?’ he asked, after the two lumberjills had given him permission to take a break, and not without a good deal of mischievous asides. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ one of them called out to us as we walked away.
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ I said.
‘You certainly did that,’ he remarked, a shy smile covering his face. He had now smoothed back his dark hair and put on his shirt. I had to admit privately that I experienced a flicker of disappointment as he did up the buttons and snapped his braces into place over his shoulders. It also did not pass my notice that he was all fingers and thumbs and the buttons of his collarless shirt weren’t correctly aligned.
‘Is it a good surprise?’ I asked, suddenly anxious that he might be annoyed I had caught him in a state of partial undress. POW or not, he was Italian and Italian men were the vainest I had ever come across.
He stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘Seeing you again is ... is like the sun bursting through the clouds after many weeks of rain.’
‘What a lovely thing to say,’ I said.
He smiled and took the picnic basket from me. As we walked on, he slipped his free hand through mine and a spontaneous spark of electricity ran through me. It felt so real, I half expected my hair to stand on end.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘To my favourite place. It is where I go when I want to think of you.’
‘Do you think of me a lot?’
‘More than I should say.’
‘What if I said that ever since I left here, I haven’t been able to get you out of my thoughts?’
‘I would then have the courage to say that you are the first thing I think of when I wake in the morning, and the last when I go to sleep. And if I am lucky, I dream of you.’
Hand in hand, we walked on without another word, the air fragrant with haymaking, the hedgerows filled with the fluttering of birds and their sweet song. Overhead a lark swooped and dived in the crystalline sky; its distinctive call adding to the perfection of the day.
Our destination proved to be a secluded spot on the riverbank. Unfolding a tablecloth from the basket, I laid it on thebone-dry grass. ‘I’m afraid it’s not much,’ I said, revealing the meagre picnic I had thrown together, ‘it was the best I could manage in the circumstances.’
‘For some reason I am not hungry,’ he said, his soft dark brown eyes settling on mine. I held fast to his gaze and as the moment – potent with a pulsating energy – stretched between us for the longest time, I smiled.
‘But it would be a shame for it to go to waste,’ I said finally, passing him a precious bottle of champagne to open. ‘And if you’re going to be felling more trees, you’ll need your strength.’
Having said he wasn’t hungry, and doubting my own appetite being this close to him, we made short work of the half loaf of bread I’d brought, along with the lump of cheddar, the small jar of Mrs Partridge’s homemade apple chutney, a clutch of pea pods, and the tomatoes I’d picked from the greenhouse. For dessert I produced the remains of an apple pie, again care of Mrs P.
As we ate and drank our fill, I thanked him for his letters, saying how much I had looked forward to reading them.
‘I could not say all that I wanted to,’ he said, lying on his side, his head propped up so he could look at me.
