She made a wry face. ‘It’s not important because it brings us to a point we’ve been approaching for some time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s face it, this never was a real engagement, was it? You only proposed in order to shut my mother up, and I suppose I said yes for the same reason. What else could we do, caught like that? Since then we’ve seen so little of each other that it’s just drifted, but maybe the time has come to be realistic.’
‘Meaning what?’ he asked in a strange voice.
‘You never really wanted to marry me any more than I…well…’
‘Any more than you wanted to marry me,’ he supplied.
‘It was an act of desperation,’ she said merrily. ‘You proposed marriage to get yourself out of a hole, I’ve always known that.’
He was very pale. ‘Meaning that you think I wouldn’t have gone through with it?’
‘Gone through with it,’ she echoed. ‘That says it all, doesn’t it? You only have to go through with something if it’s an effort, and I think you would have done. You’d have made the effort and done your best to be a good husband. But you wouldn’t have been a good husband because your heart wouldn’t be in it, and I don’t want a man who has to force himself.’
She paused. He was staring at her. Slowly, she lifted her left hand and slid the ring off her finger.
‘I’ve always known you didn’t love me,’ she said. ‘Not enough to marry. It’s better to end it now.’
She held out the ring but he seemed too dazed to move.
‘You’re dumping me?’ he asked in disbelief.
‘That’s all you really care about, isn’t it?’ she asked with a touch of anger. ‘You’re afraid people will know that I broke it off. Don’t worry, everything’s different now. You’re a hero, one of “the few” and girls are queuing up for the honour of your attention. When they know you’re free, they’ll throw a party. You won’t remember that I exist.’
She said it lightly but he stared at her in shock. ‘That’s the first time I’ve known you to say anything cruel.’
‘I’m not being cruel, Mark, I’m being realistic. You’ll find another girl, like you did last time. Our marriage would have been a disaster. Here.’ She held the ring closer to him. ‘Take it.’
Glaring, he did so. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘What I want,’ she murmured. ‘I could never tell you what I wanted. We didn’t have the chance.’
‘And now we never will,’ he said, looking at the ring in his palm.
‘Mark, when you think about it, you’ll see I’ve done the right thing for you. You’re free, as you need to be.’
‘Free,’ he murmured. ‘Free.’
She gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, my dear. Take care of yourself.’
As she slipped out of the door his eyes were still fixed on the ring in his hand. She couldn’t even be sure that he knew she’d gone.
That night her dreams were haunted by a little boy running through an empty house, opening door after door, calling, ‘Where are you?’ with mounting despair.
She awoke, shivering. After that she couldn’t get back to sleep, but lay weeping in the darkness.
The Blitz lasted for eight months, officially ending in May 1941, although attacks on London continued sporadically for long after.
Somehow Dee kept going. With Mark’s departure, all hope seemed to have fled from her life, but there was too much work for her to brood. The hospital was overflowing with the wounded.
Even so, there were moments when she couldn’t escape her thoughts, when she would lie awake longing, with every fibre of her being, for the man she’d lost. It was useless to tell herself that he’d never really loved her, that they would have had no chance and she was better off without him. Somewhere in the depths of her misery a voice whispered that she’d been too hasty, that she could have managed things better, bound him to her and won his love.
Instead, she’d done the common sense thing because that was her way. She was wise, realistic and sensible. And her heart was breaking.
She knew that a really sensible woman would discard Mad Bruin rather than keep a constant reminder of an unrequited love, but she couldn’t bring herself to go quite that far.
She knew when the planes took off for a sortie because their route lay over the city. Londoners would come out and stand looking up at the sky, not always able to see the aircraft through the clouds or the darkness, but listening until the sound faded. Hours later, they would come out again to hear the return, wondering how many planes and men had been lost.
She had no news of Mark. He never wrote. He’d accepted her rejection as final.
‘How’s that fiance of yours?’ Mr Royce asked one day.
‘I don’t know. He’s not my fiance any more.’
She described their breakup briefly and without visible emotion. He listened sympathetically and never mentioned it again, except that he always seemed well informed about the activities of that particular squadron and was able to assure her that Mark was still alive and unhurt. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known.
At work her life was filled with satisfaction, yet there was no joy. In the evenings she would travel home on a bus that crawled along at a snail’s pace because the whole country was under ‘the blackout’. When she got off, she felt her way carefully home in the near darkness. Curtains and blinds kept the house almost invisible from the outside. Once inside, there was the relief of a small lamp.
Joe had joined the Home Guard, a civilian ‘army’ consisting of men who were too old to join the regular forces, or in reserved occupations such as doctors, miners, teachers and train drivers. Their job would be to fight off an invasion, and they were equipped with uniforms and weapons. Joe was proud to bursting point and regular visits to the local church hall for training sessions helped keep his spirits up.
Helen fared less well. At first Dee had been able to bring home the letters Sylvia sent to the hospital, and in this way they learned that Sylvia had given birth to a son.
‘I want to go and see her,’ Helen insisted.
‘You can’t, Mum. She’s never left a return address and she didn’t have the baby in hospital.’
They kept hoping but, as time passed, Helen realised that her daughter had truly rejected her and she couldn’t see her grandson. Her hair rapidly became white and her eyes grew faded.
‘Things will get better,’ Dee tried to tell her. ‘They have to. The war will end, we’ll find Sylvia and the baby and we’ll all be happy again.’
Helen would smile faintly but without conviction. Her health was visibly failing and she began to have dizzy spells. She always passed these off as ‘nothing’ and brushed aside Dee’s attempts to care for her. These days, she seemed indifferent to everything and everyone.
When the blow fell, it came with shocking suddenness.
One morning, as Dee was arriving for work, the ward sister looked up urgently.
‘Ah, good, there you are. Go and see the new patient in bed five. She came in two hours ago, and she keeps saying your name.’
The woman who lay there was thin and weary, with heavy bandages on her head. All her previous beauty had fled, yet Dee knew her at once.
‘Sylvia-oh, Sylvia, wake up, please.’
Sylvia opened her eyes and a faint smile touched her mouth. ‘Is that really you?’ she murmured.
‘Yes, I’m here. I can’t believe it-after all this time! Whatever happened to you?’
Her sister was in a bad way, her face bruised, her lips swollen.
‘A bomb hit the house,’ Sylvia murmured. ‘A wall fell in on me before I could escape. They got me out in the end but-’ Her voice faded.
Dee drew up a chair and leaned forward, clasping Sylvia’s hand. ‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you let us come to see you? Mum’s been worried sick.’
‘I didn’t want to shame her. How would she explain me to the neighbours?’
‘They don’t matter. It’s you that matters. What about Phil? Are you still with him?’
‘He died at Dunkirk. It’s just me and the baby now, but-I don’t know where he is. When they rescued me they must have found him as well. But where is he-
