Bobby went to claim a seat by the fire where she could warm up. She took off her felt ARP hat, put it down on the table and eyed it meditatively.
Silverdale felt so far away from the war that it was easy to forget – when you were walking through the sleepy meadows with their carpets of many-coloured wild flowers or relishing the untamed, open freedom of the fells – that somewhere not very far away the bombs were falling. It gave Bobby a jolt, sometimes, when she picked up a newspaper and was reminded of the chaos raging elsewhere around the globe. The cinema newsreels made it look like it was the end of the world. Perhaps it was. But the end of the world never could feel quite real here – not in Silverdale.
Nevertheless, the war was out there. Words that had been unheard of just a few years since – words such as blitz, evacuee, ersatz – were now part of everyday vocabulary on the Home Front. Overseas, men were dying every day – men like poor Billy Wilcox, who were little more than boys. With two brothers in the army, a sister in the Wrens and a… well, Bobby wasn’t quite sure what the right word for Charlie was, but for now she supposed ‘sweetheart’ would have to do – a sweetheart about to leave for training with the RAF, Bobby had felt it was high time she was doing her bit for the war effort too. When Silverdale’s elderly chief warden, Amos Horsely, had hung up his whistle last month, it was Bobby who volunteered to fill the empty place on the three-man team that monitored the village’s air raid precautions in shifts every evening.
Bobby had been on duty tonight since six. It was half past eight when she handed over her whistle and wooden rattle to the next warden on the rota. By that time, she was stiff, achy and numb with cold. She was hoping the beer would help to get her blood circulating again.
Not that there was much for an air raid warden to do around here. No bombs were going to fall on Silverdale. Three or four times a week when Bobby had finished her work forThe Tykemagazine, she donned her denim bluette uniform and overcoat and spent most of the evening sitting in the dark, damp, draughty little hut on the village green, sipping lukewarm cups of weak cocoa from her flask and humming dance tunes to herself as she tried to knit by the dim light of the ARP oil lamp. Every half an hour she would go out and patrol the village to check for blackout infractions, but there was rarely anything worse than an inadequately dimmed bicycle lamp to contend with.
Nevertheless, she felt better for doing something, small though it was. Yes, the war felt far away from the Yorkshire Dales – farther away than it ever had at home in Bradford, with uniformed folk on every street corner and the aftermath of the city’s bombing raid the previous year still very much in evidence – and yet she could feel its hand on her shoulder. War seemed to be creeping ever closer as 1941 progressed, shattering the centuries-old peace even of Silverdale. Ida Wilcox must be feeling tonight that the war was something very real and very near indeed, and she wouldn’t be the only one.
Bobby glanced around the pub. It was still largely a man’s realm, as it had been when she arrived in the village, although the Silverdale natives had grown used to seeing the city girl who lived in their midst make an occasional foray inside. But the regulars who drank from their pewter pint pots seemed older now than they had the first time she’d entered the Golden Hart back in the autumn. As with so many places, the war had stripped Silverdale of young, fit males. And some of them, like Billy, wouldn’t ever find their way to home and safety again.
One of them still remained, however, to help cheer Bobby’s nights and chase away gloomy thoughts.
‘What’re you doing over here by the fire?’ Charlie Atherton – handsome and boyish as ever, with an expression of lazy fun in his brown eyes – pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. ‘I’ve been waiting for you in the snug this half an hour.’
She smiled warmly at him. ‘Charlie. I’m glad to see you.’
He frowned. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Well, it’s rare that you confess you’re glad to see me. Although I know you’re only being coy and it secretly sets your girlish heart aflutter whenever I stride into view.’ He took out a Woodbine and lit it. ‘Did you forget our date?’
‘We didn’t make a date.’
‘Of course we did. We’ve got an arrangement, remember? Today’s Thursday. And since you’ve deliberately avoided me all day, that means I’ve been waiting here for the chance to make my regular Thursday proposal.’
Bobby couldn’t help smiling. ‘Must you keep asking?’
‘I’ll stop as soon as you like. All it takes is a yes.’ He removed the cigarette from his mouth and smiled his hard-to-resist smile at her. ‘How about it, Bobby? I can get down on one knee if it’ll help.’
‘You know I can’t. You’re going off to the RAF, I’ve got my work… Let’s just stay as we are for a while. It’s the best way.’
‘For how long?’
‘Until… I suppose until things are settled. One way or the other.’
Charlie reached out to turn her face towards him.
‘You look worried,’ he said in a gentler tone. ‘Did something happen during your shift? I fret about you out there on your own.’
She sighed. ‘Lizzie just told me the news, that’s all. Billy Wilcox.’
Charlie took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Isn’t it dreadful? I knew Billy all his life. I don’t know why that should make it harder to believe that he’s gone, but it does.’
Bobby reached out to press his hand. ‘You will be careful out there, Charlie, won’t you? You will… you will come back?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t think I can promise that until you offer me something worth coming back to. A wife would be just the thing.’
‘Don’t joke, please. Not about this. Just promise me.’
‘All right,’ he said softly, leaning over to kiss her cheek. ‘For you, Roberta, I promise.’
Bobby shuffled away from him, glancing warily around the pub.
‘You shouldn’t kiss me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Not here. Someone might tell Reg.’
