‘It’s mostly just about parties and girls’ things. Nothing you’d care about,’ Bobby informed him airily. ‘But she has got some leave in August, same as our Jake. I’ll read what she says.’
Bobby read out the first paragraph: the one that Lilian had deemed suitable for a father’s ears.
I’ll be coming home the week of the 9th. The house is still full of soldiers, I suppose, so I’ve arranged to lodge with Clara Stockwell. Why don’t we make a holiday of it, if you can take time off from work? You and Dad can come over for Bowling Tide and take a room with Clara for the festival week. It’ll be just like old times, and we won’t allow even a single mention of the war for the whole seven days. Write back and say yes at once, or I’ll be very cross indeed.
‘What do you think, Dad?’ Bobby said. ‘Would you like to go home for Bowling Tide? It would be nice to have all the family together again and catch up with old friends.’
She half-expected him to say no. Her dad had never been one for a party and, left to himself, would probably hardly leave the house except to visit a pub. He nodded, however, with something like enthusiasm in his eyes.
‘Aye, I could fancy a visit home,’ he said. ‘Funny. You spend your life packed in wi’ all that smoke and muck, working every hour God sends, wishing you could be in some place like this instead. But you can’t help missing it once you’re gone, all t’ same. Suppose it’s in the blood.’
‘I know. I feel the same way.’ Bobby patted his arm. ‘Now go to bed and I’ll bring you some hot milk before I turn in.’
He treated her to a rare smile. ‘Well, you’re a good lass. Just watch yoursen wi’ them young men, that’s all. Not right for a girl to be wandering around at night on her own.’
‘It’s war, Dad. We all have to do our bit. Besides, I can take care of myself. This is Silverdale, not Bradford.’
When her father had retired to his bedroom, Bobby made two mugs of hot milk, diluted with water to make it go further. She brought her dad’s in to him, then took herself off to bed so she could enjoy the rest of Lilian’s letter in private.
Bobby couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy as she read about her sister’s exploits among her new friends in Greenwich. What she was allowed to say about their work made it sound difficult but interesting, and Lilian quickly seemed to have built up a camaraderie with the girls in her billet – ‘even the toffee-noses from down south aren’t so bad when you get to know them’, she wrote. The Wrens’ evenings were spent going out to dances with the handsome naval officers they mixed with in the course of their work or the soldiers from a nearby barracks, although most of the girls preferred to stick to their own service when it came to courting. Lilian, of course, had several boyfriends anxious for her favours: turning boys’ heads was a skill she had mastered in their schooldays. However, Lil wrote that she was starting to grow rather weary of going out on dates with different boys. Now she was on the hunt for something more serious – a man who might make her a good husband.
Bobby was rather surprised to learn this. Her twin loved to be admired, particularly by men in uniform, and although Lilian adored the idea of being in love – the sort of love she saw in the films – she had always enjoyed the company of admiring boyfriends far too much to settle into anything steady for very long. But, of course, she was getting older – they both were – and perhaps it wasn’t surprising that at nearly twenty-four, Lilian’s thoughts had turned to settling down.
Bobby wished her sister was here, so they could talk through their feelings properly. It did feel as though their carefree days were slipping into the past. Growing older, husbands, babies – these were new and scary things that deserved a deeper conversation than could be had by letter.
Bobby tucked the letter under her pillow and tried to settle down to sleep, letting the low bleats of the sheep, and muffled hoots of the owls and other night prowlers, lull her as they usually did. And yet sleep wouldn’t come. Lilian’s letter, the suggestion she might be entertaining thoughts of marriage with a suitable man, were fresh in Bobby’s mind. That, combined with the drone of a plane flying overhead, led her inevitably to thoughts of Charlie.
Six weeks, then he’d be gone. What would happen to the two of them then?
Bobby couldn’t help being angry at herself when she reflected on what had happened between them earlier. She tried so hard to keep Charlie at a little distance, in spite of her feelings for him. Not because she wanted to go on dates with other boys or anything of that nature. She never had been much interested in that sort of thing, until Charlie had turned up and shaken her resolve not to get entangled with any man. Now that he was in her life, there was an understanding that they were reserved for one another, even without any official engagement. Charlie had even managed to stop flirting with every woman he met – or at least, he’d tried to. Charlie Atherton flirted like other men breathed, Bobby reflected wryly. It seemed to happen instinctively, without any input from his brain.
Nevertheless, Bobby tried to be at least a little aloof with him. Some days she might greet her lover with kisses, other days with coolness, just so he wouldn’t make any assumptions about where their relationship was headed. She never had told Charlie, until tonight, what her real feelings towards him were. Although he’d said it to her on several occasions, the words ‘I love you’ had never escaped her lips. But this evening, with thoughts of Ida Wilcox’s loss fresh in her mind, she hadn’t been able to help telling him – and showing him, through the kiss she’d given all of herself to – exactly how she felt.
She knew she was trying to have her cake and eat it when it came to Charlie. She knew it wasn’t fair to keep him hanging on while she dithered over marriage. It was all so confusing! She wanted to be with him. She couldn’t bear the idea of not having him in her life. But there were other things she wanted to do too – important, meaningful things that mattered deeply, at least as much as Charlie himself. She wanted to make a success of her career as a country reporter and help Reg turnThe Tykeinto the sort of magazine that might one day be described as an institution, chronicling the lives of the people here so they wouldn’t be forgotten. She wanted to live her own life. She loved Charlie, in a way she felt she never would be able to love any other man, but wives and mothers were wives and mothers. They couldn’t be anything else. Motherhood was the highest calling a woman could aspire to, according to an old saying – the problem was that once it happened to you, it was also the only calling you could aspire to.
This was usually the point in her musings when Bobby started to develop a headache. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be a wife, or a mother either. She and Lilian had stepped into that role for their two younger brothers at the tender age of fourteen when their own mother had died. Bobby got on well with children and doted on her two young nieces: Susie and Rose, her brother Raymond’s daughters. It was just that once you became a mother, society refused to allow you to be anything else. Why must men be so free and women so restricted, when they had so many talents outside of the home? It felt so unfair! But she couldn’t change the way the world was, as much as she may want to. All she could do was to make what choices she could, and try to forge a path that belonged to who she was and not what she was constantly being told she’d been born to do.
And that had seemed easy – until Charlie had come along. Now Bobby couldn’t work out what she ought to do. She wanted to be with him, but when it came to marriage, it felt that the sacrifice she was being asked to make was just too big. They tried to be discreet in their relationship, or at least Bobby did – especially around her father and Reg, who were wont to disapprove – but it wasn’t exactly a secret they were walking out together. The residents of the village whispered confidently to one another that Charlie Atherton – Silverdale’s most eligible, and most notorious, bachelor – and the ‘lass from t’ paper’ would be altar-bound before backend was upon them. Bobby didn’t know which she feared more: that they were wrong, or that they might just be right.
So now they had six weeks. Six weeks to live and love and be together before he left her – perhaps forever. And that, the idea she might lose him irrevocably… that was the most unbearable idea of all.
Chapter 4
Bobby was arranging her hair when there was a knock at the cottage door early the next morning.
Washing and dressing were always a challenge in the spartan environs of Cow House Cottage, which meant an early start for Bobby on workdays. Although it had been used as a human habitation for probably about a century, the place still felt more like a barn than a home.
The occupant before Charlie – whoever that might have been – had made some modernisations to the place, including the addition of stone partition walls to create two bedrooms, a parlour and a kitchen from what had previously been a single large room. Apart from the surgery in an attached side building, all the rooms shared the same high-beamed ceiling – rather like animal stalls. There was also the outhouse, a separate structure that they shared with Moorside Farm.
Charlie had added some home comforts during his residency too. Cow House Cottage now had mains electricity, which meant Bobby and her father could listen to the wireless without the need for a heavy accumulator battery that would have to be driven into town for recharging once a fortnight, and there was a telephone in the surgery that could be used in an emergency. The cold was a constant problem, however. No matter how many layers of clothing Bobby wore to bed, she always woke up with numb fingers and toes.
Her first job was to get the fire in the parlour lit before her father woke up, which helped to take the chill out of the air. Then she boiled some water so she could tackle the ice that had formed on her mirror overnight and started preparing herself for work. She was halfway through removing her curlers when the knock came. Hastily, she wrapped her hair in a headscarf and went to answer it.
‘Morning.’ Charlie removed his hat. ‘Sorry to turn up so early. I’ve got Fred Midgeley bringing one of his dogs in at half past seven and I need to get the surgery ready. I’d have told you last night, but he didn’t telephone until late.’
‘That’s all right. Um… do you want tea or anything?’
‘Don’t worry about me. You go finish doing whatever it is you need to do to your hair. I’ve been a bachelor long enough to know how to boil a kettle.’
