Page 68 of Last Letter Home
‘It’s nothing.’ It was from a piece of falling masonry; he hardly felt it now. He went and lay beside her in his drawers under the bedclothes, one arm cradling her head. For a time, neither of them moved. They felt the beats of one another’s hearts, the warm smoothness of skin against skin, then gently he began to stroke her breast through her petticoat, eased the straps from her shoulders. Sarah sat up and lifted the shift over her head, making her hair crackle with static, but then she hesitated, crumpling the garment protectively across her caged breasts, and from the way she looked at him he knew she had something important to say, something she’d been dreading, but which she would not shirk from, not if there was to be complete honesty and openness between them. He waited, heart thudding.
‘Paul, I’ve been thinking how to say this.’ She paused. ‘It’s not my first time.’
He tensed, the hurt rising in his throat. Gently he disengaged himself and lay apart from her, the back of his arm resting on his forehead. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but not this. He sensed her rolling over, then she lifted his arm to see the expression in his eyes, must have read his pain and uncertainty. She snuggled down again next to him and lay staring at the ceiling as he was. There was a large patch of discolouration there, suggesting there had been a leak in the roof. He wondered if the water had dripped down through the mattress and to the floor beneath and tried to think what to say. He struggled to understand why what she’d said mattered, but eventually he did. He must make his own confession.
He turned his head to look at her and whispered, ‘I’m sorry, I should have imagined. We’re not so very young, there’s so much about you I don’t know. Please, don’t think I’m judging you, I only need to accommodate myself. It is mine, you see. My first time.’
She was silent and when he turned to her he saw her eyes were shining with unshed tears and his heart melted. What did it matter, after all? What she had done was long before he’d met her and now, seeing her sad, he felt confident again that he could make her happy. He smiled, and bent to kiss the tears away, then her arms were round his neck and they both laughed with the joy of each other. Gently he kissed her neck and his hand explored the soft fullness of her breasts. After that her body guided him in what to do.
Bright spring sunshine glowed through a gap in the blackout curtains by the time the lovers awoke. After they had visited the freezing bathroom down the landing and dressed, they went downstairs to find that their vampish landlady was as good as her word and brought them a rasher of bacon each and a mound of hot toast, which they devoured hungrily, trying not to giggle about her sentimental glances. She must really have taken a shine to them, for she agreed to look after their luggage while they spent much of the day visiting the Kensington museums and walking in the park, exhilarated by the blustery wind.
The time was all the more precious because it was about to come to an end.
‘This has been the most wonderful twenty-four hours of my life,’ Paul told Sarah as they strolled back to the hotel, her arm tucked in his.
She smiled up at him. ‘And mine,’ she said simply. It had taken time for him to realize that she did not express her feelings as easily as he, but he loved her for it. He loved everything about her: her neat, lithe figure, the way she wore her hat tipped back, ready to face the world, the generosity in her smile. He felt so proud to be walking with her on his arm and was dreading the moment of parting.
‘Goodbye,’ she said simply when she saw him onto his bus. His last view of her was as a brave, upright figure, her gloved hand raised in a wave, becoming smaller and smaller until a bend in the road hid her from sight.
Thirty-two
June 1942
Suez, a busy, dusty port at the top right corner of the map of Egypt on the ops room bulkhead. Because of the Axis domination of the Mediterranean, Paul’s convoy had had to slip down one side of Africa and up the other to reach it, a voyage lasting nearly eight hot and tedious weeks. They’d docked on several occasions for supplies and each time Paul had been glad to stretch his legs and see new places. He’d found himself in markets vibrant with colourfully dressed natives and chattering monkeys that swung down from palm trees to steal ripe fruit from angry stallholders. In Cape Town, Table Mountain had been obscured by mist, and he’d had to rescue one of his cabin mates, found huddled dead drunk outside a brothel, his wallet gone. And now here he was at his destination, and as they all crowded on deck waiting for the order to disembark, he felt a mixture of excitement and disappointment.
Paul had had his wish. He was on the high seas. And now, finally, they were in Egypt, that was the excitement, but what he could see did not accord with his mental expectations of the country. There was plenty of sand, indeed, but it was grey and stony, and the buildings were greyish, too, and functional in appearance.
‘Where are the pyramids then and the crocodiles?’ the chap next to him, Bob Black, known as Blackie, was asking, which was a more simply put version of what Paul was thinking.
He smiled. ‘At least there are camels, look.’ The beasts in question, three of them, were kneeling in the shade of a scrubby tree at the roadside below, and were also greyish, weary, patient beasts. Their drivers squatted beside them in the dust, playing a game of dice to pass the time. Further along the road, the late morning sun glinted off a long line of army trucks, waiting to ferry the troops onward.
The heat was already unbearable on the ship by the time the gangplank was fitted firmly into place. As the men began to swarm downwards, whispers spread back like wildfire.
‘Tobruk has fallen, yes, Tobruk. We surrendered to the Jerries.’ Paul digested this worrying news with a thrill of shock. Tobruk, everybody knew, was a key strategic port on Libya’s Mediterranean coast, right next to its border with Egypt. It had been besieged for months and bravely held by the Allies, but now . . .
‘That’s it, I suppose,’ pyramid-loving Blackie declared cheerfully. ‘They’ll be sending us right over to defend the road to Cairo. Cannon fodder, lads, that’s us.’
‘If that’s what we’re here to do then we’ll have to do it,’ Paul murmured. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it, what he was trained for, to see action, to fight for his adopted country against the people in power who had killed his father. In a way, he was lucky to be here, he told himself, remembering how it had happened.
The second letter that he’d sent the adjutant more than a year ago now had initially not been answered. He’d written then to Sir Henry at the House of Lords, asking if it were possible to meet with him. He was surprised to receive a handwritten note from the man himself, inviting him to dinner one night in March at his club in St James’s.
The patrician figure of Sir Henry who rose from the leather seat in the bar to greet him was thinner and more worn than Paul remembered, but his grip when they shook hands was as firm as ever and his smile lit up his wise and wary eyes. ‘Ah, Hartmann, glad you could make it. Don’t suppose there’s much let up for you lads at the moment.’
For after a two-month lull the bombers had returned. Over the previous week thousands of incendiary bombs had been dropped over London and Paul’s company of Pioneers were scrambled to help with immediate clearance after the rescue teams had finished. It was dangerous, distressing work and there seemed no end to it. It was never long after darkness had fallen and they’d returned to barracks after a hard day that the sirens were in full cry for the next onslaught. Paul would lie awake in the crowded public shelter tensing at each explosion, astonished that so many of the people around him had fallen quickly back into the routine with their thermoses of hot soup, their blankets and their knitting. It was the frightened eyes of the children that got to him. It wasn’t right that little kids should go through this, he thought, and his mind wandered to Hamburg, where he fervently hoped the same thing wasn’t happening to German children.
‘What’ll you have?’ Sir Henry asked. ‘They manage a pretty decent Martini here. Shame there’s no ice, but you can’t have everything.’
The Martini was indeed sustaining and Paul began to relax a little. He asked after Lady Kelling and Robyn and was briskly told they were both quite well.
Over dinner, which included an actual pork chop and a range of spring vegetables, Sir Henry listened sympathetically to Paul’s request.
‘I should think they need good sports like you,’ he agreed, tapping salt onto the rim of his plate. ‘And your knowledge of the lingo could be invaluable. I can’t make any promises of course, but I’ll put in a word with the colonel.’
‘That’s very good of you, sir.’
‘Not at all. I’m sorry you’ve had such a thin time of it, especially during the, er, emergency last year, but my hands were tied on that front, you do understand?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’ The reminder of his internment was a painful one, but Paul no longer felt it so keenly.
