‘Thank you.’ The words seemed inadequate somehow. Rose shyly lifted her eyes to his face and found him staring at her lips. He belatedly lifted his gaze to meet hers. They fell silent as they looked at one another. His silent thoughts passed to her without need for words. He wanted to kiss her.
Her heart began to race, while her mind could not think at all. He wanted to kissher.If she did not know how to respond, her body did. It yearned for her to let him. She felt drawn towards him by a force beyond her control. She had not experienced this magic before, which she did not have the strength or will to fight.
Her silence and slight movement were all Nicholas needed. His lips, soft and warm, were a gift in their own right, passed from him to her. Although brief, it warmed her body, as well as her soul, and left her craving more. She opened her eyes to find him gazing down at her and she saw the same desire glinting in his.
It should have stopped there; a gentle peck of thanks between a man and a woman as a gift was exchanged. It would have remained respectable and innocent, and she could convince herself later that the kiss meant nothing at all. Yet, the draw to be with him would not be quenched by a single brief touch, no matter how sweet its taste, and before she knew it she was in his arms, kissing him as deeply as he was kissing her. Unbridled, passionate kisses, as if they were experienced lovers coming together to feed their needs. As the earth continued to spin and the inhabitants of the town slowly returned to their homes, Nicholas and Rose felt as if they were the only two people who existed. An alternative world — surreal, fantastic and joyfully accepted, because it felt, in that all too brief a moment, that all they would ever need was already in their arms.
Their kisses came to a natural end, for even the hungry must breathe. Nicholas escorted her home in companionable silence. They were both lost in their thoughts as to what this could mean. Sullenness had crept in, like a thief in the night, and began to taunt her for feeling happy. She wondered if Nicholas felt it too, for he had also grown serious, as if troubled by demons of his own.
‘It’s Saturday tomorrow. May I call on you?’
Rose was reluctant. She was unsure what her parents would make of a gentleman caller. They had finally come to accept Sam, but in recent months they had settled with the idea that Rose would always be home to take care of them. Although her parents were both able-bodied, their needs were many and exacting. What would they think of Nicholas, who might offer a route of escape from her life of monotony?
‘Or I could call on you after the weekend? I would rather it was tomorrow. I have things to do first, but perhaps I could come at six?’
Rose nodded haltingly, ‘Tomorrow would be fine.’ She turned away, to hide her smile, both thrilled and nervous for what this could mean. She had accepted his previous visits, but since their shared kiss, a meeting between them took on another meaning altogether. She mounted the step to her house before opening the door and turning to see him raise his hand in goodbye. She shyly lifted hers, before slowly closing the door with a click behind her. Rose took off her new hat, smoothing it carefully before she hung it on the coat stand with her coat. Her mother and father’s voices wafted to her from the next room, but instead of rushing to tend to their needs she navigated her mother’s hoarding to the bottom of the stairs. She looked at the piles of clothes, boxes and long-forgotten objects precariously filling each step. In the past the sight emotionally weighed her down, but not today. Nicholas had kissed her and the memory protected her in a shield of happiness. Rose skipped up the steps, from space to space, and made her way to her bedroom. She closed her bedroom door, flopped onto her bed fully clothed and allowed one arm to dangle, swaying it in mid-air to a cheerful tune in her head.
Nicholas had kissed her and what a glorious experience it had been. She had never felt like that with dear Sam. Nosurprises that took her breath away. No yearning for more before their kiss had even ended. She had felt true passion with Nicholas, the sort that made you want to touch skin on skin and not care for the consequences. No. It had never been like that with Sam. Her gaze rested on the cupboard door, which guarded a box of his letters. The letters had been written with love and she immediately felt a pang of guilt. She was betraying Sam. She did not deserve to find happiness with another man, yet Nicholas had walked into her life.
Why her? When her future had seemed just one endless road, he had walked into her tea shop with his smile, kind heart and understanding of all she was going through and all that she craved. He knew what to say, how far to push, how much to hold back. He knew what Sam had endured and had provided her with what she so badly needed to know. At times it felt like he had known Sam too. His comment about him smiling with a cigarette in his mouth had caught his essence so clearly, as did his philosophy of looking to the future and not the past.
Rose looked up at the damp-stained ceiling above her, tracing the cloud-like marks as she thought of Nicholas. A troubled frown pinched her brow as she recalled him saying that he should have waited until he was at her door before giving her the gift. Why at her door? The term seemed familiar, yet distant, like an old friend lost in a crowd. Gradually the old friend emerged. Rose’s eyes widened. The phrase came from a poem she once wrote. What was it now?
Your gift, tied with ribbon, brought with love to my door.
Rose leapt from her bed and opened her wardrobe, riffling through numerous small, neatly stacked boxes kept safe at its base. One by one she searched through them; a box of keepsakes from her childhood, a box containing her diaries fromwhen she’d had the mind to keep one. Another was filled with favourite recipes, lovingly collected and stored away. Finally she found what she was looking for: the box containing Sam’s letters, his familiar scrawl detailing all that he could bear to tell her from the Western Front. She gasped and choked back a sob when she saw them. She had not looked at them since she had received the last one. It had been too raw and she had been too cowardly to delve into those memories, but now she frantically opened each one with trembling fingers, slipping out the thin paper with tightly written lines, and reading them hastily as she sought what she was looking for. On the fifth letter she found it. She sat back on her heels as tears rolled down her cheeks.
1st December, 1917
My Dear Rose.
Do not concern yourself with how I will be spending Christmas this year. We have been posted away from the heavy fighting we have endured in recent months. No doubt we will be called upon again soon, but for now I am happy with our new posting and Christmas will be more tolerable than I had dared to hope before.
I am in good cheer and am thankful every day that I am still here, thanks, in part, to my fellow soldiers and someone looking over me from up there. Nicky Boy, a fine fellow, helps keep up our morale. He is one day younger than me which I use to my advantage, hence his nick name. I trust him with my life and I am sure we will remain good friends once this madness ends. So, dearest, do not concern yourself about my Christmas. Hopefully, thistime next year, we will be spending Christmas Day together. I want it to be perfect, so you must write to tell me what you consider a perfect Christmas to be like. Thank you for the knitted socks. They are a good fit and are the envy of my fellow soldiers.
Rose began to sob. Reading Sam’s letter evoked both the thrill and frustration of receiving them, as his letters were often censored by his regimental officer. She never did have the chance to spend a perfect Christmas Day with him. Loss turns one mad at times, and the need to know where he was based during the war left Rose with a gaping hole she needed to close. What had it been like for him, while she had been writing foolish poems and placing pressure on him to come home?
She had later learnt where he had been posted following conscription. She had found out from snippets of information gathered on the crowded platform of her local train station whenever she heard a soldier was returning home. She saw the sympathy in their eyes as they looked at her, for she had become a desperate woman asking for information that would not help to bring her fiancé home.
She’d found out that at the time of writing the letter in her hand, Sam had been briefly stationed in Italy in support of the Italian army as they defended their line, a relative respite when compared to his previous posting — the horrors of Passchendaele. In early spring of the following year his division had been hurriedly recalled to France. By June his letters had ceased. His silence was terrifying, yet she still hoped he was alive. Her hope was all but dashed when his mother arrived at her door with an army-issued form informing her of what they had feared. Killed in action, with no further explanation of howor why. A black cloud descended, but Rose still clung to the hope it had been a mistake.
Then his close friend had arrived, Nicky Boy, and stepped into his dead friend’s shoes to act out a poem she had written from the heart. Why would he do such a thing? She knew that war twisted a man’s humour. She had heard the returning soldiers’ banter often enough as they drank their tea and forgot she was there. But why now when the war had ended over a year ago? Because despite the peace there were still war-beaten soldiers in occupied Germany — bored, deprived of a woman’s comfort and eager for a quick fix when they returned home on leave. The poem would help a man who was out of practice with speaking to a woman. It was a list of things that would please her, and Nicholas had used it to his advantage. Was she part of some bet, cooked up over a smoky woodbine cigarette? Which soldier could find a girl before Christmas? Place your bets here. It was a cruel joke to play.
Her chest heaved with loud, aching sobs that sapped her strength. Her mother came to the door and, for once, there was concern in her deep-toned voice. Rose asked to be left alone, and her mother moved away, probably grateful for the excuse to leave.
Rose folded the letter carefully and returned it to the box. She sat holding it on her lap, blinking away her tears as her sobs slowly subsided with each breath that she took. Her despair, sudden and painful, now left her empty and fatigued all over again, although the true cause for the outburst was strangely unclear to her. Was she still grieving for the love she had lost through the war or the love she had lost during peace? She thought she knew the man who had kissed her only an hour before. She thought she was falling in love with a genuine and kind man, not one who had lied and was toying with heremotions. And the not knowing had a grief of its own that was as painful to her as feeling alone.
Chapter Eight
Saturday, 13th December, 1919
Nicholas stopped his car at the entrance of the grounds of Carrack House. He could no longer put off the inevitable. It was time to see what was his. The house and estate had belonged to his grandfather. Now it was his by default of his uncle’s untimely death leaving him as the only male surviving heir. Nicholas wondered how his grandfather had felt when he learnt that his only male heir had been conscripted to fight in the Great War and could be killed at any minute.
Two stone lions guarded the entrance, their mouths gaping wide in mid-roar as if to ward off unwelcome strangers. Since he was a child, Nicholas had had an image of his mother dancing towards him along a wide drive guarded by two roaring lions and lined by ancient trees. He had always believed the image had come from a dream, but now he realised it was not. It was from a faded, confused memory of his last visit here.
Nicholas gave himself a shake. He had a decision to make. It was not only the future of Carrack that was at stake, but the minimal staff who still remained there to run it in his absence. His mother planned to visit later. She felt it was important for him to see it alone as she did not want her memories to affect his first visit as its owner. He needed to fall in love with it on his terms, not on hers.
Nicholas turned the car into the wide drive which would take him to the house itself. It eventually came into view, rising up like a jewel before him, just as his mother had once described to him. He parked the car adjacent to the steps leading to the front door, but remained seated. This was his home now, yet he felt a stranger here. Such a simple task as entering the building threw up questions he had not considered before. Should he knockand wait for the staff inside to greet him or just open the door? He decided to delay the moment and look at the gardens first. According to his mother, they had been his grandfather’s pride and joy.
