Sentimental Journey (20 page)

“I’M STEPPING OUT WITH A MEMORY TONIGHT”

The next afternoon Skip stared down at his notes on the desk and tried to think of anything else he needed to include in his report.

The Defiant tested out pleasantly enough, handled well and without any vices. Its Merlin engine with increased boost pressure from 6 to 12 psi for short periods is as fine as it is in the Hurricane or the Spitfire. The possibility of a two-seater, pilot and gunner, is admirable, but therein also lies the basic flaw of this aeroplane. While an original concept, the massive four-gun turret set in the fuselage behind the cockpit creates a distinct division between the pilot maneuvering the aircraft and the gunner trying to line a sight. The pilot must anticipate the gunner’s needs—an impossibility. With no fixed forward-firing armament, the craft has a blind spot and is vulnerable to an enemy attacking beneath the tail . . .

He replaced his pen into the silver inkwell, and put his report in an envelope for the post. One thing was certain, the Defiant was no Spitfire. He’d flown his first Spit about eight months before the war began, when his squadron had received the new planes.

The Spitfire was a monoplane, designed with a new concept: cantilever construction. In a biplane you could look out and see the lines that held the wings together. The monoplane’s construction was hidden and didn’t seem at all plausible. The first time he took her up, he kept looking at the wings, expecting them to fly off at any moment, especially when he took her speed to full force.

But he and the other pilots found that the Spitfire was just what her name implied, an aeroplane that soared as elegantly as an eagle and handled as if you were flying a dream. She could reach an unprecedented four hundred miles per hour in level flight, easily carried a total of eight Browning machine guns, and was so maneuverable that she could outdive and outclimb any other British aerocraft. She was sleek. She handled beautifully. And she looked fast.

There was an old saying that if an automobile looked good, then it was good. The same proved true for planes, and no plane looked better than a Spitfire.

The doors to the third floor library suddenly swung open with a clatter.

Skip looked up.

Greer stood there beaming at him.

Yes, if something looked that good, it was that good.

She was wearing some kind of filmy, flowered frock that clung to her figure and floated near her bare calves. She had told him once that the thing she missed most since the war began was her silk stockings.

But he loved her legs without those stockings. He would walk into their dressing room and see her in her lace slip, bent over a stool as she creamed her bare legs with almond oil that made the narrow room smell of Christmas marzipan. He loved that he could sweep his hand over her bare leg and feel her, not some sheer fabric.

“Look here!”

He pulled his gaze away from her long, sleek legs and looked up at her.

Her face was flushed, as if she had run all the way home, and she proudly held up two fresh brown eggs, something so precious and scarce that the egg produce of British chickens could have rivaled that from the House of Faberge.

“No powdered eggs for us tomorrow morning.” She danced in a small, silly circle like one of those American comediennes at the cinema, only she held an egg in each pale hand.

He stood quickly and stepped around the desk while her back was to him, her hips moving seductively to the catchy Latin band music playing from the wireless in the corner. She finished dancing in a circle and he was waiting for her, swept her into his arms, then danced her about the carpet in a smooth rumba.

“Watch the eggs!” She frowned and stepped out of his arms.

“Married scarcely half a year and my wife is already pulling away and scowling at me. The next thing you know we’ll be sleeping in twin beds, then separate rooms, next on separate floors, and within a few years, separate houses. You will be in
Devonshire
and I shall be holed up in a garret in
London
, my pain spilling from a brush onto an oil canvas and me a bitter soul who can do nothing but mourn what might have been.”

“You bitter? Mourning? And an artist?” She laughed. “Never, darling. Besides which, as I recall, you do not paint, not even the dressing room walls, which you were supposed to do before we married.”

She never let him get away with anything. She had known him since he was a gawky lad from a neighboring estate, one who used to climb elm trees to sneak a peek into the maids’ bathing room, and who taught her to throw chestnuts at the hares in the woods whenever they happened to move too near an iron trap. The two of them together had saved hundreds of hares that summer when she was eight and he was ten.

“If you knew what I had to go through to get these eggs. The queues took hours this morning, and you know how much I dislike waiting in lines.”

“You have no patience. Your family spoiled you terribly.”

“I’m not spoilt. I only find queues a waste of time, especially when I could be with you. I must tolerate them for the war effort.”

“You must tolerate them because you have no choice in the matter.”

“That too.” She grinned. “But listen. Fortune was with me this morning. I saw Aunt Jane’s cousin and I was able to barter for these two lovely and wonderful eggs.”

“If fortune is with me, you will have bartered away that dragon of a table that haunts the foyer.”

“I love that table.” Her voice turned indignant and she gave him a mock glare. “It’s priceless.”

“It’s a nightmare.”

With a sidelong look she stepped closer, lowering her voice the way she did whenever she truly wanted to have her own way. “I wonder how you would feel about that same table, darling, if we were to make love on it?”

He slid one hand down over her bottom and pressed her hips against him. “I wouldn’t take the chance, love. If you conceived, the child might be born with a long forked tail, gilt teeth, and breathing fire from its mouth.”

She pulled back and searched his face for a moment.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She smiled softly. “Perhaps I might be the one who breathes fire.”

He moved his hands up to her breasts.

She swatted them away. “Now stop trying to seduce me and listen.”

He wanted to ask who was seducing whom, but instead he stepped back, hitched a hip on the desk, and crossed his arms. He could wait and hear her out.

“Along with Loretta, was—”

“Who’s Loretta?”

“Aunt Jane’s cousin. Oh, I suppose she is removed a few times, but she was at our wedding. You remember her.”

“Five hundred people were at our wedding.”

“I know you would recognize her if you saw her. Now, as I was saying, her very own good friend, a Mrs. Woodleigh, whose husband, Edmund, is a farmer and who has had no cigars for all too long a time—”

“Mrs. Woodleigh smokes cigars?”

“No. Her husband, Edmund. Now stop that! Do you want to hear my tale or not?”

“I’m not certain.”

“Now, Skip darling, you know how very much I dislike your cigars.”

With a sick feeling he leaned back and lifted the humidor lid.

It was empty.

“I made a marvelous trade.”

“You gave someone my last five imported cigars in exchange for two . . . eggs?”

“Rid yourself of that frown. I also left with three pounds of fresh butter, a side of pork, a huge hank of beef, green beans, lettuce,
and
tomatoes!”

“All that for the last few cigars of the war,” he said wryly.

“Now, darling, you know very well that cigar smoke makes me ill. Those odorous things reek up the house. Anything that smells that horrid cannot possibly be good for you.”

He stood, then pulled her close and began to slowly dance with her again. To hell with the cigars.

“Wait! The eggs!” She leaned over his arm and placed those precious eggs of hers in a blue Chinese bowl on the corner of an end table; then she turned easily back into his arms, slid hers about his neck and her fingers into the hair at his collar while their bodies moved slowly and easily to a Vera Lynn love ballad that crackled from the wireless.

She rested her head against his shoulder and hummed along for a moment, then she said casually, “You know, darling, if you truly wish to trounce my toes, we should go to the
Savoy
tonight, where you can cripple me to a live band. It’s so much more elegant that way.”

“You are a cheeky thing. First you give away all my cigars, then you insult my dancing skills and now you want me to reward you and take you out on the town.”

“Um-hummmm.”

“Tonight?”

She leaned back in his arms, her expression suddenly serious. “Would you mind terribly? I know you only have five days this leave.”

“I would hate it.” He pulled her back against him and looked over her head. “What sane soldier, especially one who has been away from home for over a month, would want to spend the evening with his wife’s body slithering against his?”

She laughed softly, then grabbed the knot on his tie and pulled his face down close to hers. “I slither well, flyboy.”

“Yes. You do.”

She kissed him then for a long, long time, before she broke away and looked up at him. “Then you will take me dancing?”

“I’d rather take you to bed,” he whispered against her ear.

“Why, George Agar Inskip. You are becoming dull and predictable.”

“Dull? Watch it, wife!” He grinned and reached out to give her a soft swat on the bum.

She scampered away towards the doorway while he was laughing at her.

“Wear the red frock tonight, my love.”

She grasped the doorjamb in both hands, then swung out and away from it like Katharine Hepburn playing a ditzy American debutante. She cast him a seductive glance, grasped the fabric of her skirt, and slowly raised it halfway up her thigh. “The red gown with the slit up the leg?”

“Yes.” He smiled when she stuck her long leg out like some pinup girl. “
That
red gown.”

“Sure thing, flyboy.” She winked and disappeared around the corner.

“STOMPIN’ AT THE
SAVOY
”

They were in the ballroom at the
Savoy
, dancing slowly to the last song when the music suddenly stopped. The bandleader stepped up to his microphone. “We have just received word that all leaves have been cancelled immediately. Every member of the military is to report to their bases by
midnight
.”

In less than five minutes the darkened hotel entrance was crowded with couples vying for lampless cabs and cars that had to make their way awkwardly in the dark to the narrow entrance. Skip and Greer stood under the awning, while five taxis ignored his signal.

“Must be the uniform,” he muttered, then decided he’d had his fill and stepped out into the middle of the street.