The Color of Secrets (4 page)

He strode over to his friend. Eva couldn’t hear what he said, but she could see the expression on the other man’s face. With a frown, a shrug, and a shake of the head, Bill’s friend turned away.

“Wow!” Cathy whispered. “Where did you find him?”

Eva just looked at her, tongue-tied. “I
. . .
I
. . .
is it okay?” she stuttered. “For him to walk us home, I mean?”

Cathy nodded. “Fine by me.”

Bill was coming back. “What do you say?” He looked from Eva to Cathy.

“Are you sure?” Eva asked. “Won’t you be late getting back to your camp?”

“It’s not a problem. I’ll wait for you outside, okay?”

He was halfway to the door, swallowed up in the crush of people leaving, when Dilys came bouncing up to them, hand in hand with her Dutch soldier.

“This is Anton,” she said, looking smug. “He’s from Holland: Maastricht.” She rolled the name of the city off her tongue and through her teeth like a purring tiger.

Eva held out her hand. He didn’t look any younger, up close. She wondered if he had any idea her sister was only just out of school.

“Guess what,” Dilys said, beaming, “he’s going to give us all a lift home!”

“Oh
. . .
” Eva looked at Cathy. “But we were going to walk
. . .
”

“Oh no! Who wants to walk when you can travel in style?” Dilys grabbed Anton’s arm. “He’s a driver! Gets to swank about in all the posh cars, don’t you, darling?”

Eva winced. Anton was gazing adoringly at her sister.

“So this is what we’ll do,” Dilys went on before Eva could get a word in. “Anton’s going to take his boss to the barracks and then come back for us—we’ll only have to wait for about a quarter of an hour—”

“But Dilys,” Eva cut in, “won’t he get into trouble?”

“’Course not!” Dilys laughed. “Don’t be such a spoilsport!”

Eva scanned the crowd of people by the door. Bill wasn’t among them. She took her sister by the hand and gave her a speaking look. Reluctantly, Dilys let go of her soldier and allowed herself to be taken to one side.

“Listen, Dil,” Eva whispered, “I’ll meet you outside in a minute, but I’ve just got to go and say good night to someone.”

“Mmm!” Dilys wiggled her eyebrows and cast about for a likely candidate. “Who is he, then?”

“Just mind your own business and leave me alone for five minutes, will you?” Eva hissed. “If you don’t, I’ll tell Mum all about you know who!” She cocked her head at Anton.

“Okay, keep your hair on!” Dilys flounced back to her man. “You’d better come with us,” she said to Cathy. “Don’t want to be a wallflower, do you?”

Eva rolled her eyes, mouthing “sorry” to Cathy, who shrugged and smiled before following Dilys and Anton out of the side entrance to the hall, which opened onto the street, not the square. This, presumably, was where Anton’s car was parked. Eva hoped Dilys wouldn’t be able to see her from there.

She needn’t have worried. There was no moon. It was now pitch-black outside. She had to call Bill’s name to find him.

“Look, it’s all right—I don’t want to get you into trouble,” he said when she explained what had happened. “Just promise me something, though, will you?”

“What?” She was suddenly aware of the sounds around her, of all the couples thronging the square, making reluctant, steamy farewells.

“Meet me next Saturday night, seven o’clock right here. We could go to the movies and I’ll take you for something to eat.”

“Next Saturday night?” The sound of her voice echoing his unnerved her. She nuzzled his chest, searching for the right words.

“Well? What d’you say?”

His eagerness shot her through with guilt. Would it be so terrible to say yes? A distant voice inside her head said that it would. That to take this any further would be as wrong as the punch that had felled him half an hour since. But she didn’t want to listen.

“Well, if the answer’s no,” he said wryly, “I’m going to have to give you this.” She felt him rummaging inside his jacket, which still hung from her waist. He found her hand and pressed something thin and hard and flat into it. “Here,” he said, “ransom for my jacket. I’d let you keep it, but I think someone back at camp might notice.”

“What is it?”

“It’s candy: a Hershey bar. Do you have them over here?”

Eva lifted it to her nose. The scent of it seeped through the wrapper. “Well, now, I
was
going to say yes to that date
. . .
but if it means I have to give this back, well
. . .
”

He grabbed her and kissed her, but she wriggled free.

“I’ve got to go,” she whispered, untying the jacket and hooking it over his arm. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Do we have a date, then? Really?”

“Yes.” She squeezed his arm. “We’ve got a date.”

Chapter 5

“It’s Curried Carrots or Spam Hash.” A woman in a hairnet bobbed up from nowhere, heaving a pile of plates onto the counter as Eva and Cathy arrived with their trays. “You’re lucky to get a choice on a Monday.”

“What about the pudding?” Cathy looked hopefully at the board above the hatch.

“Eggless Sponge with Mock Cream.”

“I can hardly wait,” Cathy muttered as the woman receded into the steaming kitchen.

“Never mind.” Eva pulled something from her pocket and slipped it under Cathy’s plate. “Have this—it’ll help take the taste away.”

Cathy’s eyes widened as her fingers found it. “It’s not
. . .
” She looked over her shoulder. “Eva,” she hissed, “where’d you get this?” Her head tilted as Eva busied herself collecting cutlery. “Was it that Yank at the dance? It was, wasn’t it?”

“It might have been,” Eva bit her lip to stop herself from smiling. “Sorry it’s not very much, but I gave a bit to David and a bit to Mum. I’ve been trying to ration myself, but it’s not easy!”

Halfway through the meal Cathy leaned forward and whispered, “I daren’t ask what you did to deserve a whole bar of chocolate!”

This brought on a spasm of coughing from Eva, who had been about to swallow a mouthful of curry. The look on Cathy’s face reminded her of her old headmistress.

“I only kissed him!” She hissed, reaching for water and gulping it down.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What about next time?”

“Who said anything about a next time?” Eva glanced over her shoulder. “I suppose the gossips are having a field day.”

“It’s okay, you know,” Cathy said. “You don’t have to feel guilty about it.”

“Don’t I?” Eva mumbled, still staring at her plate. “I’ve promised to meet him next Saturday night and I feel as guilty as hell. If I knew how to get hold of him, I’d call it off.” She prodded the congealing remains of her lunch with her fork.

“But you want to see him?”

Eva made a face. “Is it that obvious?”

“I could tell as soon as I saw you. Your eyes are all
. . .
you know
. . .
and you’ve hardly stopped smiling all morning—I mean, how can anyone
smile
when they’re eating Curried Carrots?”

Eva gave a helpless shrug. “It’s like he pressed some switch I can’t turn off. I’ve been playing the whole thing back in my head. Over and over. I can’t sleep for thinking about it.” With a sigh she pushed her plate away. “I know it’s wrong, but I’m desperate to see him again.”

“So do it.” Cathy’s voice was matter-of-fact.

“
You
wouldn’t, though, would you? If you were me?”

“But I’m not you. I can’t feel what you’re feeling and I can’t say what I’d do if I did.

Anyway, if I
was
to meet someone, I could go ahead and do pretty much what I liked, but you—you’re in an impossible situation.”

Eva traced a stain on the tablecloth with her finger. “I thought I was coping with it, though, Cathy. I was coming to work, looking after David, staying in with my mum most nights, just the odd trip to the pictures now and then. And I was okay. I didn’t sit there every night wishing I was out dancing or whatever. I’d got to a point where, secretly, I thought I didn’t really need a man at all. And then what happens? One night out and wham!”

“What’s his name, this Yank?”

“Bill. Bill Willis.”

“
William
Willis? His parents must have had a sense of humor!”

“Well, yes—I suppose it must be short for William. He didn’t say.”

Cathy smiled. “Too busy kissing, I suppose?”

Eva grunted. “We talked about all kinds of things, actually! Where he comes from, what it’s like at his camp, his thoughts about the war and
. . .
” she broke off, rubbing her finger around and around the greasy mark. “God, what must I sound like?”

“Worrying about Eddie’s not going to help, is it?” Cathy said gently. “How long since you heard anything?”

“Fifteen months since his last letter. Three weeks after that I got the telegram about his ship going down.” Eva raked her fingers through the tendrils of hair that had worked free from her cap. “Sometimes I have this nightmare that I’m with him on the ship and we’re trapped in a locked room with water pouring under the door. And when I wake up, I think for a second that he’s there in the bed beside me.” Her eyes pooled with tears and she swallowed hard. “Then I see David, fast asleep in his cot and it hits me. He’s never even going to remember Eddie. He’s never going to know what it’s like to have a dad.”

“I know,” Cathy squeezed her arm. “Mikey has no memory of Stuart. It’s hard. It seems so unfair.”

“But it’s different for you, Cathy.”

“Why?”

Eva’s finger stopped its relentless circling and she looked up. “You really loved Stuart, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t you love Eddie?”

Eva hesitated. “I don’t know. That’s what makes it so awful. When he left, we
. . .
we weren’t exactly on good terms.”

Cathy shook her head. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have asked. Tell me to mind my own business.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just that I’ve
. . .
well, I’ve never come out and said it to anyone before.”

“How long were you together?”

She blinked once, twice, before replying. “Two years when he went missing. But we spent a lot of that time apart.” Eva’s eyes darted to a patch of wall above Cathy’s head. “We got married on a special license a week after my old house was bombed. We were both eighteen and we’d only been seeing each other for a few months. Eddie lost his mother and sister in the bombing and I
. . .
I lost my dad.” She pressed her lips together until they disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” Cathy whispered. “Listen, you don’t have to
. . .
”

“I do.” Eva nodded slowly and deliberately, still staring at the wall. “I do.” She took a long breath. “We had to move here, to Wolverhampton. Eddie had just joined the navy and expected to be sent abroad straightaway. It was all so
. . .
” she paused again, tears prickling the back of her eyes.

Cathy waited, silent now.

“My life just changed overnight. Before we were bombed—before the war—I had the job in the library in Coventry. Dad was a signalman on the railway. Mum was at home, and Dilys was at school. We felt lucky because Dad was in a reserved occupation.” She took another breath. “When we lost him, I was suddenly the one in charge. Mum wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. For the first time in my life I had to behave like a grown-up. And getting married seemed a grown-up thing to do. Eddie and I just clung to each other. We were both in shock about the bombing, and Eddie was terrified of going to war.”

“How long did you have together before he left?”

“He was posted to the south coast two days after the wedding.” A fleeting, wistful look that was not quite a smile crossed her face. “I used to live for the times he came home on leave. Mum bought us a double bed as a wedding present. I remember going to sleep that first night thinking that if I had a baby, it would be lovely for Mum; that it was the only thing in the world that might help her get over Dad.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “It didn’t happen that quickly for us, though. I got pregnant on our first anniversary, when Eddie came home on leave.”

“Didn’t he want a baby?”

“No, it wasn’t that: he was thrilled about it, actually.” Eva paused, looking directly at Cathy now. “But David didn’t look like other babies: he was born with a big strawberry birthmark on his cheek. The doctor said it would disappear—which it nearly has—but Eddie hated it.” She closed her eyes for a second. “I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he saw David that first time. He tried to hide what he felt, of course, but he didn’t fool anyone. He wouldn’t hold him, wouldn’t come with me when I took him to the shops or the park. I don’t think he could face the idea that he’d created something less than perfect.”

Cathy bit her lip. “That must have been unbearable.”

“Yes, it was: as if he’d stuck a knife into me.” She crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing them as if she was cold. “It wasn’t only him: I used to get it from other people too. They’d stop when they saw the pram and lean in, and then they’d tut under their breath and give me pitying looks.” Eva unfolded her arms, pushed her plate aside, and unwrapped a piece of chocolate. “I despised them for being so ignorant. But I despised Eddie more for not being able to love his own flesh and blood.”

Cathy nodded. “Remember last week when Iris Stokes and Betty Pelham were coming out with all that rubbish about colored men?”

“What about it?”

“Is that why you got so worked up? Because of the way people reacted to David?”

Eva huffed out a breath. “Was it that obvious?”

“You do realize you’re going to get that all the time—if you start dating Bill, I mean.”

“I know.” Eva broke the chocolate in half and pushed a piece across the table. “You didn’t see what happened to him at the dance, did you?”

Cathy’s face clouded when she heard about the confrontation.

“If I refuse to see Bill just because of what others might think, that makes me as bad as them, doesn’t it?” Eva’s eyes flashed rebellion.

“Just as long as you can handle it.”

“Well, I’ll find out next Saturday, won’t I?” Eva screwed up the foil from the chocolate into a tiny ball.

“I don’t know—tall, dark, and handsome and a Hershey bar in his pocket—what more could a girl ask for?” Cathy leaned back in her chair. “Will you tell him about Eddie?”

Eva shook her head. “Not yet.” She looked away, aware that the very thought of seeing him again was making her blush. “This probably sounds terrible, but when he kissed me, all of a sudden I wasn’t David’s mother or Eddie’s wife anymore. I was just . . . me.”

“It doesn’t sound
terrible
.” Cathy smiled. “It sounds fantastic.”