Charlie thought about this.
‘I don’t know about being you, but if I were me… I’d have to go,’ he murmured. ‘If you realised how sticky things were out there, Bobby, the things we hear are happening in Europe…’
She frowned. ‘What sort of things?’
‘Nothing I’d ever want you to know about,’ Charlie muttered darkly. ‘Still, things are going to come to light before long that will open a lot of eyes. Perhaps I didn’t always think as I do now about it all, but I’m a long way from playing soldiers. Now I know what I know, there’s very little I wouldn’t sacrifice to win this thing.’
Bobby twisted round to look into his eyes. She was filled with such admiration for him, this man who loved her. But it frightened her, too, to hear him sound so unlike his old self.
‘You talk so differently these days,’ she whispered. ‘Sometimes you’re the same old you, and other times you’re so unlike yourself that I barely know you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, a faraway tone creeping into his voice. ‘I can’t help it. One side of me just wants to soothe and hold you, and tell you everything you want to hear. But there’s another part of me that made a promise to fight this thing till the end, and that part of me has to tell the truth. I respect you too much to lie to you, Bobby.’
For a long time they didn’t speak, listening to the plaintive mew of a cat as it begged to be let in from the cold.
‘Poor creature,’ Bobby murmured.
‘Me or the cat?’ Charlie said, and she could tell from his tone that he was smiling once more. She found these fleeting butincreasingly frequent dark moods so hard to understand. They seemed to pass as quickly as shadows on the face of the moon.
She leant back to rest her head against his shoulder, and Charlie stole the opportunity to plant a kiss on her lips.
‘Ernie’s missing,’ Bobby told him quietly.
Charlie frowned. ‘Canadian Ernie, from your pantomime?’
‘Yes. He didn’t arrive back at his billet after an op. His friends are waiting for news, but it’s hard not to fear the worst.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. I hope it’s nothing.’ He reached up to stroke her hair. ‘Do you still have my picture?’
She smiled. ‘Of course. By my bed, so that whenever I go to sleep it’s the last thing I see.’
‘And then you’ll dream of me.’
‘That’s the idea. Although last night I dreamt Mary’s hen Hetty had grown to the size of a house and was pecking at the chimney pots, so it doesn’t always work.’
Charlie laughed, and Bobby experienced a thrill as she felt that deep chuckle vibrate through her. Her fiancé was so often solemn now, it gladdened her to hear him laugh as of old. The carefree boy she had first fallen in love with was gone for good, she supposed, but it lifted her spirits to be reminded that the man he had become could still be merry.
‘And you’ll be ready?’ he whispered, burying his face in her neck. ‘As soon as I’ve got the Binbrook CO’s permission to marry and I can beg twenty-four hours’ leave, I expect you to be waiting for me in a white dress, pink lipstick and satin undies. I don’t care if I have to kidnap a vicar on my way home to do it.’
‘I’ll be ready.’ She turned to look at him. ‘You are sure, Charlie, that it’s still what you want? Because if you’d rather wait…’
He took her hand and rubbed her glove where the hump of the sapphire engagement ring he’d given her stood out. ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything. So don’t think you can wriggle outof it that easily, Roberta Bancroft.’ He met her eyes. ‘You haven’t changed your mind, have you?’
‘Of course I haven’t. I want you to be certain, that’s all.’
‘I am certain. There’s nothing I want more than to be able to say that you’re mine at last.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘And on a more practical note, I want to know you’ll be provided for if the worst does happen. Get your widow’s pension.’
Bobby shivered. ‘Oh, please don’t say that. It’s tempting fate.’
‘We have to think about it, Bob,’ Charlie said gently. ‘I wish we didn’t, but men are dying up there every day. I can’t presume I’ll be one of the lucky ones.’
‘I don’t want to rush into marriage for that. Not for something so grim.’
‘It isn’t only for that. We love one another, don’t we? What’s to wait for?’
‘It’s just such an odd thing to be married when there’s a war going on,’ she said with a sigh. ‘You can’t set up home, have a honeymoon or do any of the things married people did before all this. I know wartime brides who say that when their husbands come home on leave, they’ve seen so little of them they feel like strangers. And…’ She flushed. ‘Well, war changes people so. Suppose your squadron was to be posted overseas, and it was years before we saw one another again? I would understand, if you said you’d rather wait until it was all over.’
‘What I want is to come home on leave and do this, legally, without any of those blighted sensible voices in my head telling me I have to stop. And I fully intend to do so before the summer comes around again.’
