Avalanche of Daisies (7 page)

‘The one you been hossin' around town with,' he elaborated. ‘Off on manoeuvres, so they say.'

‘Thass none of your business,' she told him sharply. ‘Careless talk costs lives or ain't you heard.'

He wasn't the least bit abashed. ‘Thass no secret, though, is it?' he said. ‘Like a dance?'

She looked him up and down with disdain. ‘No thanks. I got more respect for my feet.' Then she was off to join her friends, pushing through the crowd at the edge of the dance floor, hair bouncing, red dress flicking like a flag in a gale.

Vic turned on his friend in fury. ‘Why don't you keep your big nose out of things?' he said.

‘Well thass nice,' Tubby said, looking aggrieved. ‘I onny asked. I mean to say … Thass a free country.'

‘Hang on!' Victor called after the red flag. ‘I bought you some chocolate.'

But she was lost behind a mass of uniformed backs and he didn't find her again until the waltz was over and the floor was clearing. Then he heard her laughing on the other side of the hall.

‘Sorry about that,' she said, when he pushed through the crowd to join her. ‘But that Tubby's such a know-all, him an' his big mouth. He get on my nerves.'

‘Mine too,' he told her, happy to be her ally even against his oldest friend. ‘I've give him what-for. Like some chocolate?'

That was what was so nice about Vic, Barbara thought. He might holler a bit now an' then but he took your side when you needed it and he was really generous. She was touched to be offered part of his sweet ration especially after the way she'd treated him these last few weeks. ‘Keep it for on the way home,' she said, smiling her thanks at him. ‘We'll eat it then.'

So they danced again – and again – and joked with their friends in the old easy way, and when the dance was over the entire gang walked back to the North End together. But although she seemed to be herself again, he wasn't such a fool as to think that the soldier was out of her memory. He noticed that she hadn't danced a single waltz with anybody and there was something different about her, even when she was laughing and horsing around. Bright but too bright, laughing with her mouth but not her eyes. He'd have to play his cards very, very carefully if he was to win her back.

‘Pictures Wednesday,' he suggested, casually, as they reached the North End.

There was general agreement. ‘Yeh!' Joan approved. ‘You comin' an' all, Spitfire?'

Barbara considered it, but only for a second. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘Why not?'

It wasn't until later that night that she faced why not. Although she'd exhausted herself at the dance, she couldn't sleep for troubling thoughts. She lay, wide awake beside her snoring bed-mate, and tried to make sense of them. It infuriated her to think that she and Steve were being gossiped about. Her love for Steve – if it
was
love, she wasn't even sure about that yet – but if it
was
, it was simply theirs, a world of their own, too precious and private and delicate to be made a public display. The thought of being watched by a great fat oaf like Tubby was like standing in a gale while all the lovely bloom of it was stripped to tatters. How dare he spy on them! Horrid creature. Well I'll soon see about that, she thought. Just watch if I don't. He got no
business prying into my affairs. We'll go somewhere private from now on, somewhere out of town where he can't see us. We made it too easy for a spy, always meeting in the market square and going to the same places.

It was horrible to think that they were such public knowledge. She hadn't told
anyone
how she felt about Steve, not even Joan and Mavis, and they'd always known everything there was to know about old Vic. And that was another thing. She knew quite well she wasn't being fair to Vic. He'd been really nice that evening, buying her chocolate and sticking up for her and asking her to the pictures and everything, and all the time she'd been thinking of Steve and wishing he'd been there to waltz with her. If she'd seen anyone else going on like that, she'd have said she was giving him the run around. I ought to tell him, she thought. But what could she say? She wasn't sure enough of her feelings to tell Steve. It was impossible. And yet she
did
miss him. So much. She simply couldn't wait to see him again. It made her yearn to think of it. But was that love? Six more days, though. A whole working week. It was an achingly long time. Just as well we're going to the pictures. At least that'll be something to do.

They went to all three pictures that week, safe in the gang with lots of giggling and teasing and no chance to talk to anyone seriously. And Steve sent her a letter every single day, just as he'd promised, joking about the mud, the iron rations and sleeping in the open, and saying over and over again how much he was looking forward to being back in Lynn. ‘
I can't wait to see you again. Roll on Saturday night.'

That Friday, when there was just one more day to endure without him, she went to the shops in her lunch hour and blew half a crown and four clothing coupons on a new short-sleeved blouse, made of cream cotton, embroidered all over with little green flowers, with a
row of little pearl buttons all down the front. It was a wicked extravagance, which made it all the more pleasurable. With her green skirt and her green clogs, she'd be worth looking at. And it was important to be worth looking at, when he couldn't wait to see her again.

It took her a lot longer than usual to get dressed that Saturday night. Her restlessness was so bad it was making her clumsy. She smudged her lipstick and had to do it all again, broke a comb in her hair and spent several painful minutes disentangling it, and finally snagged her last remaining pair of stockings, swearing as she watched the ladder run inexorably from calf to ankle.

Becky Bosworth laughed at her. ‘You'll jest have to dance bare-legged, thass all gal,' she chuckled. ‘Good job thass a warm night.'

It had been pleasantly warm all day, almost as though it were already summer. Now it was a gentle evening and the dusk was pearl pink. And she would see him again in a matter of minutes. Half an hour at the outside.

Joan and Mavis were waiting for her at the bandstand. The warmth of the day had left the hall decidedly stuffy. They'd made themselves fans from folded newspaper and elastic bands and were flapping them energetically.

‘You look glam,' Joan said approvingly. ‘New, is it?'

‘Thass like an oven in here,' Mavis complained. Her dark hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat. ‘D'you wanna fan?'

‘No ta,' Barbara said, ‘I'm not hot.' And was then caught up in such a rush of heated pleasure that her cheeks burned with it. For there he was, striding towards her, looking tanned and wind-blown and heart-stoppingly handsome. Oh the rhythm of those long long legs. The set of that jaw. The love in those brown eyes, smiling, smiling.

He caught her about the waist and pulled her towards
him as if he was going to kiss her, there and then, in front of everyone. ‘You look gorgeous!' he said.

They were held in a trance of delight and desire. ‘Do I?' she asked breathlessly.

‘Good enough to eat,' he told her. He was breathless too but he remembered his manners. ‘Hello Joan. Hello Mavis.'

The greeting brought Barbara back to her senses and allowed her to move again. She seized his hand and ran into the crowd on the dance floor, pulling him after her, and then they were in each other's arms, which was all right because it was a waltz. ‘Oh I
have
missed you,' she said.

He kissed her hair as they swayed. And remembered the dream that had woken him yearning for the last ten lonely nights, lying beside her, both naked and kissing and … It took an effort of will not to tremble. ‘Me too,' he said.

The waltz swung them together for delicious minutes, she with an arm round his neck, breathing in the scent of his skin, he with both arms about her waist, holding her close, aware of the lovely length of her body, the swell of her breasts, her breath against his cheek.

‘Let's go out,' he said. ‘There's too many people in here.'

They went to the Walks – where else? – and stood beneath their favourite elm as the dusk lapped about them, silky soft and secret as water, and kissed until their lips were sore, immersed in the sharp, sweet, endless pleasure of sexual feelings fully roused and tantalisingly ungratified. It wasn't until they paused for breath and realised that the clock was striking eleven that she remembered her plan.

‘Let's not meet in the square tomorrow,' she said.

He was too taut with desire to care where they met. ‘Um. Kiss me.'

‘I'll be on the quay,' she said, struggling to be sensible, ‘by the Custom House. D'you know it?'

‘Um.'

‘Three o'clock?'

‘Um.'

‘I thought we'd go somewhere different.'

He accepted that too. He would have accepted anything. They had less than an hour now and he hadn't kissed her for thirty seconds.

Sunday afternoon was as warm as summer and the air was so still that the river Ouse was as pale as milk and flowed without a ripple.

‘Where to?' he asked as she came tripping towards him, bright in her green skirt and her new blouse, barelegged and bare-armed and glowing in the unaccustomed sunshine.

‘What you reckon to a country walk?'

‘Smashing. It's too nice to be indoors.' And the country was quiet and private.

They took the ferry across to West Lynn, sitting side by side in the stern and apart from the other passengers. Then they walked through the village hand in hand, past the two pubs and the church until the road petered out and became a footpath and they were all on their own in the open country, free to stroll arm in arm through fields of green corn, between hedgerows that chirruped with nesting birds, busily darting back and forth with beaks full of insects for their young. The sky was summertime blue, there were bees buzzing in the blossom, and from time to time a swarm of midges rose from the rankness of a stagnant ditch to dance about their faces, once so thickly and incessantly that Steve had to beat them off with his beret.

‘It's too warm for this sort of caper,' he said, folding the beret and tucking it into his epaulette.

Barbara was comfortably warm – but then she hadn't been fighting off midges and she wasn't wearing a coat. ‘That uniform's too thick,' she said. ‘Why don't you take your tunic off?' Which he did, and rolled up his shirtsleeves for good measure.

He looked devastating, his forearms brown and sinewy and covered with soft golden hairs. Being the only girl in the family, she was used to the sight of hairy males. Norman had so much dark hair on his arms and legs that she used to kid him he was related to a gorilla. But this hair was different, not bristling and dark and threatening, but soft, tender and strong, all at the same time. And wondrously sexy. She put out her hand and stroked it gently.

It was too much for his fragile control. He threw his tunic to the earth, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her with such passion that it made them both breathless. Now that he'd removed his battledress, she realised how much the thickness of it had been getting in the way. With just a shirt and blouse between them, she could feel his heart thundering as he kissed her, could run her fingers down the length of his spine, from the sharp short hair at the nape of his neck all the way to the leather barrier of his belt. Oh the wonder of being kissed like this. By the time he finally lifted his head she was panting and so giddy that she had to cling to him for support.

‘We should be sitting down,' he said. Or lying down. But where could they lie in this huge open landscape? ‘There ought to be a grass bank or something somewhere.'

‘Let's look,' she suggested.

He picked up his tunic, holding it over his shoulder with one hand while he cuddled her with the other, and they strolled on along the empty footpath, clinging together and kissing at every other step, following their instincts – and the curve of the path. And there, in the shade of a burgeoning oak tree, was a half-used haystack, one side straight and neat and thatched, the other scooped into an untidy straw cavern. It was just the thing.

They scrambled up, dislodging straws with every movement, and he threw his tunic inside the cave and
they tumbled into it together, mouth to mouth, rolling over and over in an ecstasy of sensation. He was unbuttoning her blouse, kissing her throat, her breasts, her nipples – should he be doing this? probably not, but oh, how she wanted him to – his lips hot and searching as she held his head between her hands. ‘Steve, Steve, oh my dear darling Steve.' And then everything happened too quickly to weigh up the consequences or even to give them a thought. He was inside her, and they were moving together, fitting together, made for each other, sensation growing and growing, higher and higher, until it exploded into such a crescendo of pleasure that she caught her breath. And at that he made an odd groaning noise and after a little while he stopped moving too.

She lay where she was with her eyes still closed. It was amazingly peaceful. The sun was warm on her head and her bare arms and she could hear a dog barking a long way away and a mouse rustling in the straw next to her ear. And doubt rustled into her mind. We shouldn't have done that, she thought. Now that she was reasonable again, she knew it quite well. I should have stopped him, said no, before we … She remembered the warnings. Nice girls don't go all the way. Nice girls keep themselves pure until they're married. She wasn't even sure whether nice girls were supposed to enjoy it.

His voice came to her blurred and from a distance. ‘Are you all right?'

She opened her eyes and looked at him for a long thoughtful second. His face looked so happy and so satisfied, although there was a shadow of anxiety in those brown eyes. My darling Steve! Whatever her worries she couldn't say anything about them. Not to him and certainly not now. ‘I'm wonderful,' she said, trying to speak lightly. ‘Why shouldn't I be?'