‘You won’t object if I put my arm around you?’ he asked.
‘I won’t object.’
He did so, and Bobby shuffled closer to him.
‘So that’s the trick, is it?’ Charlie murmured, half to himself.
‘Pardon?’
‘I never know from one day to the next whether you’re going to push me away or throw yourself into my arms. But it seems I’m most likely to get a cuddle from you when you’re in fear for my life.’ He turned to look at her. ‘What are we, Bobby?’
She dropped her eyes. ‘We’re… friends. Good friends.’
‘Friends.’ He fell silent, his gaze following the silvery ribbon of the beck as it weaved its way down from a still snow-capped Great Bowside, the highest of the peaks that loomed over the village. The last of the mellow evening sunlight was fading and the pale light of the moon had started to take over. ‘Suppose I told you I wanted to be more?’
‘How can we be?’ She looked up at him. ‘There are things I want to do with my life, Charlie. You know that. My work onThe Tyke, with your brother… perhaps it doesn’t seem important to you, but it is to me. You’re a man. You’ve always known you could do anything you wanted with your life.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true.’
‘You can’t see it because you were born to it, but it’s the way things are. It isn’t the same for me as it is for you. There’s only ever been one thing I was expected to do with my life, and I’m sorry but I can’t be satisfied with that.’ She leaned forward and kissed him softly. ‘I’m fond of you, Charlie. I’d like to be with you, always. If that was all there was to it… but I can’t help feeling I’m going to be forced to make a choice, and it’s one I really don’t want to make.’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to give up your work on the magazine. Not if you didn’t want to.’
‘Wouldn’t you? A lot of husbands would worry it made them seem less of a man, having people think they couldn’t keep their wives.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t be that stuffy, old-fashioned sort. One of those husbands who expects his wife to be nothing except his wife. You know me better than that.’
‘You say so now. Marriage changes things.’ Bobby sighed. ‘Even if you didn’t ask me, it would be expected by others. Married women aren’t expected to work when their husbands can keep them. Mothers certainly aren’t, and the one will usually follow the other. I know your brother wouldn’t approve.’
‘We can persuade him. Mary would take our side.’
‘And how would we manage when a baby came along?’
‘We can cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Bobby was silent, gazing at the moon above the little humpbacked bridge. The silhouette of a dipper bobbed on a rock underneath, alert for food in the bubbling waters of the beck. She rested her head on Charlie’s shoulder. If only this moment was all there was – all there ever needed to be. Just her, Charlie and the moon, with the beck chattering past their feet and the pastel-blossom scent of a Dales springtime in the air…
But there was always life. Work and marriage, family and duty, and of course there was the war. There was everything that was expected of Charlie as a man and her as a woman, casting a shadow over the time they spent in each other’s company even as their feelings deepened.
As much as she cared for him, the thing Bobby dreaded most was finding herself trapped in the sort of life she knew she couldn’t bear. She wouldn’t give up her dreams. She wouldn’t lose her own self; see her identity, her soul, her very essence, swallowed up by wifehood and motherhood. She’d seen too many of her peers – once bright, eager girls with their whole lives ahead of them – become walking shadows, lost to the cares of domestic life. She couldn’t risk that, even for Charlie Atherton.
‘Besides, he’ll be leaving me soon,’ she murmured to herself.
‘All the more reason to make it official before he does,’ Charlie said, giving her a squeeze that snapped her out of her reverie. ‘That could be the thing that keeps me going when it gets hairy out there, couldn’t it? I can carry a lock of your hair with me and boast to the other boys about my girl back home.’
‘Don’t joke.’
‘I’m not joking. Not really.’ All of a sudden, he sounded earnest. He dipped his head to look into her face. ‘I won’t ask again if it’s going to make you unhappy. You know what I want. I love you, Bobby, and I want to plan a future with you. I want to know that’s what I’ll be coming back to when this madness is over. I wouldn’t ask you to choose between me and that damned magazine of my brother’s you care so much for, but I can’t keep on forever in limbo, neither one thing nor the other. It isn’t fair – not on either of us.’
Bobby turned away. ‘It’s dark. We’d better go before my dad starts to wonder where I am.’
He sighed. ‘All right. If that’s what you want.’
He removed his arm from her shoulders, and Bobby experienced a sudden, deep panic at the withdrawal of his touch; a sinking feeling of dread in her stomach, as if she’d been left bereft and alone.
‘Charlie.’ She put a hand on his wrist. ‘Don’t get up yet. Wait a moment.’
‘What is it?’
