A Kestrel Rising (8 page)

“You’ll get notification in the post.” Sergeant Flack regarded her with sad eyes. “We’ll be sorry not to see you back here. I know the lads will miss you.”

Ilona swallowed that the lump in her throat. Her eyes burned. “I’ll miss them too, Sergeant Flack, sir.”

It wouldn’t be Catterick and most of her was relieved at that news, because she wasn’t sure she could live with the memories that flooded the place—where she would see Ian’s ghost around every corner, where the thrum of the Blenheims would raise a false and futile hope inside. She needed to go home then she needed to go far away from the Dales and the moors, Faith and Sandy and everything that had been so wonderful and good about this place.

The men rose with a scrape of chairs, they shook her hand and wished her well.

“Someone will take you to the train station tomorrow morning. We’ve informed your parents, so they’ll doubtless be waiting for you at the other end.” Corporal Harris gave her shoulder a little squeeze.

“Thank you.” Ilona shook his proffered hand and did the same with Sergeant Flack. After they left she fell back on the pillows and stared at the ceiling, wanting it all to be over and to be home.

* * * *

In the morning, the nurse helped Ilona dress. Someone had brought her belongings over from the WAAF hut, and she dressed in her uniform. She still hated the starched collar but the chafing was a welcome distraction as she picked up her suitcase and walked to the infirmary door. She was not prepared for what was waiting, not just a van, but Faith and Sandy, who was pale and red-eyed with grief. He stood in the sunlight, blinking, sad and clutching a shoebox. Ilona let Faith hug her and tried to find the strength to hug her back. Her arms fell away and she looked at Sandy, who looked down at the box in his hands.

“Ian wanted you to have this.” He took a deep breath then swallowed. “He said he wasn’t going to write a letter that would make you cry, in case anything happened to him. He hated the thought of you being sad. He made me promise to give you this. There are a couple of things that he wanted you to have, things that would mean something to you.” He pressed the box into her hands.

It was tied up with a bit of string and she did not want to open it there. Untying the string would take time and she needed somewhere quiet and private because she knew that opening it would hurt.

She managed a weak smile. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry, Ilke. I really am. I don’t know what to say because Ian made me promise that…” He paused, swallowed and looked up at the sky. “I shouldn’t say anything that would make you cry. The problem is”—he ran his hand quickly across his eyes—“the bugger never gave me any ideas what I should say. He was always so bloody glib and clever and had something to say for every occasion, just not this one.”

Ilona touched his hand. “Don’t worry, Sandy. It’s all right.” She envied him his tears, because she still could not find hers. They were somewhere deep inside her, waiting. She dreaded it and was relieved that the van driver was glancing pointedly at his watch. “I have to go,” she told Sandy. “Thank you, for keeping your promises.”

“Thank you for giving my best friend the happiest months of his life.” Sandy threw his arms around her. “Look after yourself, Ilke.”

Ilona found the strength to hug him back and he helped her into the van. She gave a half-hearted wave as it pulled away and headed toward the gates. She stared straight ahead, not wanting to see the ghost that lingered in the sunlight or the planes that waited in the summer grass beside the runway. What Ilona could not avoid seeing, as the van approached the gates, was the cluster of airmen who waited at the side of the road. She recognized them all and rolled down the window as they saluted her progress. She leaned out of the window and solemnly returned their salute, hoping that they would see out the war. She wished that she had the words to say goodbye to them, but she could not speak. The crews waved as the van pulled away from the gates. Ilona rolled up the window. She didn’t want to smell the breeze that had come down off the moors to say goodbye.

Chapter Seven

Ilona was grateful that the numbness remained with her for the duration of the journey home. The trains were crowded, full of troops going here and there. She was lucky on every train. Something in her expression must have compelled soldiers to pity because someone always gave up their seat for her, moving aside and offering her tea or sandwiches. She would thank them and decline, preferring to sit in whatever corner she found, with the little box on her lap. There was some solace in gazing at the scenery. The countryside drowsing gold and green in the summer sun and patchworks of well-tended fields, hemmed by copses of trees, or stone walls. She began to understand why everyone was so keen to fight for it. It was beautiful enough to keep her quiet and calm while she made her way home.

When Ilona stepped on to the platform, she found her parents waiting for her. She looked at her mother, saw her own grief mirrored in her mother’s eyes and something huge and dark clawed its way out of her. She started to cry, great heaving sobs that left her unable to walk unaided.

“It’s all right, darling.” Her mother took her in her arms. “You’re home now, and you can cry all you want.”

Ilona clung to her and howled. She didn’t care that they were standing on the station platform. She leaned against her mother and, somehow, made it to the car. When they reached the house, her father helped her up the stairs to her room. She collapsed onto her bed, still clinging to the box, and couldn’t stop crying, even though her throat was raw and her tears stung her eyes.

Ilona lay on her side and faced the window. Her mind was full of Ian—how it felt to lie in his arms, the scent of his skin, the faint musk beneath the aftershave. It did not seem fair that she only had a handful of nights but she remembered every moment. She remembered his easy grace when he moved inside her and his long sighs of pleasure as she rose to meet him. The realization that he would never make love to her again was too much to bear, that he was gone forever, lost in a place where she couldn’t follow. It seemed impossible that he would never hold her again, that she would never feel the slow and steady beat of his heart beneath her hand or see his smile as he woke, all rumpled and warm from sleep. They were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together, dancing to the radio on long summer evenings. It wasn’t fair to be left behind with nothing but memories and a dreadful, eternal longing that would never be fulfilled. He had been so alive, so beautiful and good and it had not been his time. He was supposed to live and be a husband, a lover and a father. Now it was all gone and all that remained was darkness and an emptiness that would not fade.

She heard her mother, felt her weight when she sat on the bed. She soothed the hair from her forehead.

“It’s all right, darling,” she whispered. “Just cry as much as you can. You need to cry.”

“I can’t stop, Mama.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

Ilona grabbed a pillow and wrapped her arms around it. It smelled of sunlight and lavender and she clung to it, willing it to become flesh. But it remained a pillow, soft and lifeless. She wept into it while her mother stroked her hair and whispered words of comfort that brought none. She did not know where all the tears came from, but they seemed endless and she let them come until exhaustion overwhelmed her and even her sorrow could not hold back sleep.

* * * *

Ilona woke to twilight and silence. It took her a few moments to realize where she was and to realize that she was still in her uniform. She rose and undressed, finding a nightdress that had been left out for her. It was cool against her skin. She sat down on the window seat and gazed at the sweep of lawn. The trees cast long, blue shadows across the grass and the sun was caught in the treetops as it began to slide into the west. She rested her chin on her knees and wept. Ian would never see this and she had wanted to bring him here to show him why home was so important to her, why she loved this house. She felt tired and empty.

“I love you so much,” she whispered.

She sat in silence, listening to the plaintive call of a dove but there was no answer. She looked at the rumpled bed, the pillow and the box, still unopened. Ilona picked it up and returned to the window seat. The string fell away beneath her fingers. She lifted the lid and set it aside, not knowing what to expect and half afraid of the consequences. There was a book—an anthology of poetry. She held it in her hands and it fell open to a well-thumbed page and to a dried sprig of heather that marked one poem. She squinted in the fading light and read it, imagined Ian’s voice speaking Robert Burns’ words as he had, more than once, to her.

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June…

The tears slipped onto the page. Ilona touched the heather with a cautious finger, afraid that it would fall apart. For a moment, she was on a wild moor, listening to the bees while Ian slept in her arms. That day belonged to another Ilona. She leaned back and closed her eyes, and almost heard him—a soft whisper, but it was only the curtains in the breeze. She looked back into the box. She didn’t remember this photograph but she remembered the day. The War Office had sent a photographer to take some pictures. There had been the usual ones, of the squadron in their flight overalls all lined up and grinning in front of one of the Blenheims. Ilona had been asked to drive them out to the runway. The men had wanted her in the photograph because they’d said she was as much a part of the squadron as they were. She had been too embarrassed to accept and she had been with Ian while the photographer had taken informal pictures. The picture in the box took her by surprise because she hadn’t realized the photographer was there. He had captured a moment—Ian, his hair lifted by the wind, leaning against the fuselage of his plane, talking to her. They weren’t touching in the photo but any observer would have known what was between them by the way she had been looking up at him and laughing. On the back, in his inelegant scrawl, Ian had written,
Ilke and me, Catterick, 2nd March, 1940.
She moved her finger across the photograph, touching the place where his hair was. The ache inside her became huge once more. All that remained of him was a book, a sprig of heather and this photograph—a moment of happiness frozen in time. Ian and Ilke forever smiling at each other, and it hurt too much to look at it anymore. She placed it back in the box with the book and put the lid back on. She cried again while the twilight gave way to a night illuminated by a Bomber’s moon.

* * * *

Her mother woke her in the morning, slipping into the room with a cup of tea and a plate of toast. She sat on the bed and waited until Ilona finished her breakfast.

“How do you feel, darling?”

“Drained,” she replied. “Empty, exhausted.”

“I know, sweetheart. I remember all too well.”

She glanced at her. “You do?”

Her mother sighed and took her hand. “I’ve been through what you’re going through, Ilke, during the last war. Your father said I should tell you everything because you need to know, and he is always right about these things.” She tucked her legs underneath her and continued, her eyes distant. “I was engaged during the last war. He was a wonderful man, handsome, charming, and clever. He was like no man I had ever met. We fell in love in the summer before the War. It was a glorious summer. Every day was like a pearl on a string, equally special, regardless of how we spent the time. When war broke out, Richard rejoined his regiment. He didn’t have to. He’d long since served his time, but he was a soldier to the bone and just refused to stay at home.”

She paused and gazed past Ilona to the open window and the drifting curtains. “I was so upset when he told me, but I let him go. He went away to Aldershot and I managed to spend one very memorable day with him.” She smiled and her cheeks colored. “One day, but it was worth it, Ilke. It was
so
very worth it. I only saw him one more time, when he came back home for that first Christmas. It was only twenty-four hours, but he asked me to marry him on Christmas morning and made it the best Christmas that I’d ever had. A few months later, he was sent to France and became completely caught up in the War. He wrote letters and he sent me gifts. He remembered Christmas and he always told me that he loved me, but he never came home. He was killed by a shell.”

She fell silent and Ilona was surprised to see her mother’s eyes damp with tears.

“I remember that afternoon so well. There was a storm coming. The air was heavy with it and the telegram from your Uncle Connor arrived. It was so awful to see those stark black words. It seemed so final and so brutal. I just fell to pieces. I just remember feeling like my world had collapsed around me, like there was nothing left but darkness and heartbreak. I didn’t think that I would ever feel the same again. Just like you feel.” She unfolded her leg and squeezed Ilona’s hand. “It does get better, darling. I know it doesn’t feel like it now.”

Ilona tried to imagine how it must have been for her, and she knew and she understood. “Will I ever get over this, Mama?”

“No, darling, I won’t lie to you. You won’t. Ian was special to you. He was your first love and he was everything to you. You’ll learn to live with it and, perhaps in time, you will fall in love again.”

“No. That won’t happen, not again.”

Her mother shook her head and smiled. “That was me speaking all those years ago, before I met your father. I never thought that I would love anyone as much as I loved Richard, but there are different types of love, Ilke. None will ever be as precious as the first and no one will ever replace Ian. Believe me, I love your father. There will never be another man like him and he came along at a time when I least expected to find love again. He came out of a snowstorm, like an angel, and I was lost.” She rose and kissed her cheek. “You take your time, my darling. You can get up and get dressed or you can stay here. It’s entirely your choice. I understand that you need time, but don’t shut yourself away for long.”