‘Huh. Until you found his wage for the week had gone on a horse or into the till at the Hart,’ he muttered. ‘Do you think I’d send you out there getting stories when you’re in the family way, Bobby? A woman reporter finds it hard enough to be taken seriously out here as it is, and you’d have your health and the health of the babby to consider. And what about after it’s born? Do you think I’d watch my brother’s bairns left to fend for themselves with some half-interested minder so you can play at newspapers here with me?’
‘It wouldn’t be that way. Lots of mothers doing war work leave their children with minders nowadays – they have to, when there aren’t enough men left to fill vital jobs. My sister-in-law leaves her littlest with an elderly neighbour every day now so she can go out to work making parachutes.’
‘But you aren’t doing war work, are you?’
‘That doesn’t mean what I do isn’t important. At least, it’s important to me, just as it is to you.’
‘It’s a woman’s lot, Bobby. Motherhood’s both her punishment and her reward. Nowt to do but embrace it.’ He gave her shoulder a sympathetic pat. ‘I know it’s not what you want to hear, lass, but it’s the way it is – the way it’s always been. And while everyone round here thinks there’s nowt matters more to me than the mag, there’s one thing that does: not seeing bairns of my own flesh and blood neglected because their mother would rather collect bylines than have a happy husband and children. Happen you might like to bear that in mind when you’re deciding what answer to give our Charlie.’
He limped back to his desk, and Bobby knew there was no point saying anything else. That was the end of the conversation. Lilian’s suggestion that she throw herself on Reg’s mercy had failed, and the choice she’d always known in her heart that she’d be forced to make had been laid out plain in front of her. She could have her job, or she could have Charlie. She couldn’t have both.
That evening, Bobby was on duty in the ARP shelter, wondering if it was time to make another round of the village. There was rarely anything for her to do there, but it at least helped her warm up. The cocoa in her Thermos flask had long since gone cold, yet she still nursed her tin cup in both hands, trying to suck some warmth from it. It was a wet, chilly evening for early summer – ‘backendish’, as Yorkshire folk called it – with thick fog in the air and a steady, driving drizzle.
The hut was a dark, damp, dismal little place: a temporary structure of corrugated metal, lit by a dimmed oil lamp. There was nothing inside but a single chair and a small table, on which was laid out the tools of the warden’s trade: a little pamphlet titledBasic Training in Air Raid Precautions, a wooden rattle to be used in the event of a gas attack and a first aid kit. There was also an unused and neglected stretcher propped against the wall, mould starting to spread over the canvas. Bobby was sure it would have come in very handy during the air raid that was never going to happen. They were so far from the cities that even on a foggy night like tonight, a Luftwaffe pilot would have to be very lost and confused indeed to drop his load out here.
The wooden rattle always sent a chill down her spine when she looked at it. What a terrible thing a gas attack on civilians would be! It made her think of her father, who had lost comrades in a mustard gas attack at Ypres in the last war. He rarely spoke of it, and never without turning his colour. It was a painful, gruesome death, he said – worse than anything else he’d witnessed out there. And now little children skipped to school with their Mickey Mouse gas masks in boxes over their shoulders, too young and too innocent to understand that human beings could ever be responsible for such atrocities.
She peered at her watch in the gloomy light of the dimmed oil lamp. It would be half past eight before she could hand over to the next warden on duty, and it was now barely a quarter to. Didn’t the minutes drag!
Bobby jumped when someone knocked at the door. A moment later, Charlie’s head appeared around it.
‘Charlie,’ she said, smiling. ‘You know you’re not supposed to be here when I’m on duty.’
‘This is a special occasion. I’ve got something exciting to show you.’
‘Well, be quick. I have to go make my rounds.’
‘Here, come outside and see. It’s still light.’
‘All right, for a moment then.’
She followed him outside into the drizzle. To say it was ‘still light’ was rather stretching the truth. Yes, it was daylight – in the long days of double summertime, it could sometimes feel as though the sun never went down – but in the thick fog, driving drizzle and heavy cloud cover, it might as well have been night. Still, Bobby could see better outside than in the dull light of the hut’s oil lamp. Charlie started unbuttoning his overcoat.
‘Well, what do you think?’ he said when he’d removed it, putting on the forage cap he’d been carrying under his arm. ‘Aircraftman Atherton at your service. Am I handsome or aren’t I?’
‘You are both handsome and modest,’ she said as she ran her eyes over the brand-new RAF uniform. ‘When did you get it?’
‘Today. The greatcoat’s going to be waiting for me when I get to my digs. Oh, and look what else I got.’
He took a pipe from his pocket and put it in his mouth, striking a pose.
Bobby laughed. ‘You look like J.B. Priestley.’
‘I needed to complete the costume, didn’t I? All those flyers smoke pipes. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet, but it’ll come to me.’ He took it out of his mouth again to grin at her. ‘So, how about a kiss for the brave fighter pilot from his best girl?’
She glanced around. ‘Just one. I am on duty.’
He took her in his arms to kiss her. Afterwards she stayed there for a moment, breathing him in. The lingering pipe tobacco and the new uniform meant he smelled different from the Charlie Atherton she knew. This Charlie smelled like a man going to war.
‘You are very handsome,’ she murmured, touching her finger to the eagle badge on his shoulder. ‘I just wish the uniform didn’t mean… what it has to mean.’
‘None of that gloomy talk. Not tonight. Nothing can upset me tonight.’ He took a note from his pocket. ‘Look at this. All for us, to be spent on nothing but pleasure.’
‘Oh my goodness, a fiver?’ she said, staring at it. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Pete Dixon gave me a tip on a horse. I like to see it as a sign that my luck’s changing.’
This reminded Bobby of her conversation with Reg earlier, when he’d warned her that she wouldn’t be able to rely on Charlie’s salary once they were married. She often wondered what Charlie would be like as a husband. His love of a good time, his often impulsive behaviour – buying Ace for the children being a case in point – were some of the reasons she loved him, but they worried the more sensible part of her brain.
