‘I’m being given an instructor post with your boys – the RAF, I mean, showing sprog pilots how to handle their bombers.’ He grinned at her. ‘Will you miss me?’
Bobby chose not to answer that.
‘How do you feel about it?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll miss the boys in my squadron, but to tell the truth I’ll be glad to get out of it for a while. Catch up on some sleep, enjoy knowing my life’s my own. If I’m lucky, maybe your boyfriend will have won the war by the time I’m due to fly again.’
‘I’m to go too,’ she said soberly.
‘Yeah? Where?’
‘I don’t know yet, but into one of the auxiliary services. My medical’s tomorrow, then I guess it’ll be a matter of weeks until I’m drafted. Unless I make a case for hardship.’
‘Are you a hardship case?’
‘Perhaps. If I go, there’s no one to keep house for my dad.’ She looked up at him. ‘I suppose you think that’s dreadfully wrong.’
He shrugged. ‘No. Why would I?’
‘Well, because it’s my duty. What right do I have to shirk it? Given your recent brush with death, I’d have thought you’d feel pretty strongly about it.’
‘I do, but not the way you think,’ he said quietly. ‘Wars and armies are no place for dames. Makes them hard. Makes them forget what it means to be women.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘You should see some of the girls at our camp. If they joined up to do their patriotic duty, you could’ve fooled me. All I see is them rouged up like sidewalk strollers, acting loose with a lot of different fellers. All they want is to get drunk and have a good time with guys they pick up.’
‘The way men do, you mean,’ Bobby said, but the irony in her tone was lost on Ernie.
‘Exactly. Wouldn’t like to see any girl of mine in uniform. Hell!’
This time it was Ernie who lost his footing on the ice. He flailed for the drystone wall as he went down, but it was no good. A second later he was flat on his back, and Bobby, her hand still under his arm, was pulled down on top of him. Her torch dropped beside her.
‘Oh gosh,’ she said, laughing breathlessly. ‘That was a tumble. Is your injured arm OK?’
‘Don’t worry. Luckily you missed the tender spots when you decided to dive on top of me.’
‘You pulled me down! Is anything else hurt?’
‘Just a bruised ego and a bruised – well, never mind what else is bruised,’ Ernie said, laughing. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, but – my foot. It’s caught up in a bramble or something,’ Bobby said as she wriggled to extricate it.
‘Take your time. I’m in no hurry.’ Ernie put his mobile arm behind his head, for all the world as if he were sunbathing. ‘I guess you think I did that on purpose.’
‘I’m sure you’re far too much of a gentleman,’ she answered automatically, still wrestling with the troublesome bramble that held her captive.
‘You think so, do you?’
Ernie’s voice sounded different suddenly. Lower, huskier, the teasing merriment all gone. He met Bobby’s eyes with a look she hadn’t seen there before: a look of pure fire, which brought the colour rushing to her cheeks. She gave her foot a final hard tug, cursing as she felt her last decent stockings tear, then hastened to grab her torch and scramble back to her feet.
‘Going to need a hand here, Slacks,’ Ernie said, holding out his good arm. Reluctantly she helped him up. Ernie tried once again to tuck her hand under his arm, but this time Bobby pulled it away, opting to support herself using the wall alongside the road. Ernie raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything.
‘So. I guess your fiancé feels differently than I do about this broads-in-battledress business,’ he said, picking up the threads of their conversation.
‘Yes. I could tell he was disappointed with me when I told him I was thinking of making a case for hardship. He says we all have to be in this together if we expect to win.’
‘That’s Brits for you,’ Ernie said. ‘You guys always go big on that honour and duty stuff. If you ask me, the primary duty of a woman in wartime – if she’s a woman who loves a man out there fighting – is to try her hardest not to change a whit. Her man wants to think about her keeping herself pretty and soft for him, and feathering a nice nest for him to come home to. Not living it up with other men, swearing and drinking and forgetting how to be feminine. Hearth and Home should always come before King and Country for the fairer sex.’
