June took her suitcase. It was a small well-travelled leather affair with a bracing strap around it. I’ve always liked women who can make do with a small travelling case.
I almost buckled at the knees when I lifted the box down. It was about a yard cubed, and made of very heavy-duty cardboard – the like of which no one had seen since before the war started – and weighed a hundredweight. The name Frank Hornby was overprinted in a huge flowing signature on one side.
I know that a hundredweight as a measure of weight will be difficult for some of you – but don’t go blaming me for your lack of a decent education. If you look in the front of your pocket diary, you’ll find its equivalent set out in kilograms. My generation still doesn’t like kilos, because they were the weight descriptors the Jerries used to grade the bombs they dropped on us. We still prefer the old Imperial measures we used for ours. The phrase ten-thousand-pounder still sounds like music to my ears, although I accept that a resident of Hamburg might have an entirely different opinion. Anyway, June’s cardboard box was heavy enough for me to wave in a porter, and his trolley. It was the only way we could get it to the car without a crane.
‘Strewth! What’s in here?’
‘Wait and see.’
I got number three then. Things were definitely looking up. The last woman to be this pleased to see me had been my mother, the time I came home on my first leave.
The barber’s shop in East Street was still open as we drove past. June said, ‘Stop a min. There’s a love.’
I was, and I did. I can cope with quick decision making,
‘What’s up?’
‘Go over there, and buy something for the weekend, will you?’
She was looking down, but smiling broadly at the same time.
‘You mean . . . ?’
‘I mean that being unprepared the first time was all very well, but one of the things I’m not going to do on Sunday is go back pregnant. Understand?’
I probably gaped, and I know I asked a stupid question. ‘How many?’
She looked up at me, still smiling. ‘I rather thought I’d leave that up to you.’
Sometimes you fall completely on your feet. The boys, Maggs and the Major liked her right off the shelf. On Saturday my friend Les drove down from Banstead to give her the once-over. It was beginning to look like a conspiracy to me. At the fag end of the war, Les, the Major and I had driven from an airfield in the North of France, through Belgium and Holland and into Germany. That’s where I found Dieter, and where Carly was dumped on me after his mother ran off. To be honest, Les did most of the driving, but he and James – the Major – and Maggs the Major’s woman had been a club of three at the core of my life ever since. I suspect that the Major had phoned him and said enough about June to pique his interest. For one reason or another, my little gang was gathering around me.
You will want to know what was in June’s cardboard box, of course, but if you’re over fifty you won’t have missed the clue I left you. The box contained the biggest O-gauge clockwork train set I had ever seen in my life. Three locomotives, with carriages, a dozen goods and guards wagons, a station and a signal box, and enough rails and scenery to fill the boys’ bedroom several times over.
‘My father’s,’ she explained. ‘He was going to give them to a charity, I think, but when I told him about you and your boys, he insisted that I brought them down for Christmas.’
‘They’re wonderful.’ We hadn’t seen Carly or Dieter since they began to unpack them. ‘I’m not going to be able to get them into bed before midnight at this rate. Your dad’s family must have been very wealthy to have bought him a train set that size.’
‘Not really. Grandfather was a country doctor. Dad’s the same, but there’s not as much money in it as before the war. If we’re still going out, after you come back from wherever they’re going to send you . . .’
‘Cyprus to begin with . . .’
‘If we’re still going out, then Dad will want to meet you. We’re still that kind of family I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t worry. So are mine, only I didn’t realize it until today.’
This level of quick intimacy was all very odd. The strangest thing about it was how natural it all seemed. I felt as if I had known her all my life, not just for an evening and a night. June went to bed soon after the boys had agreed to retire. I wasn’t too shy about where, because I’ve never hidden anything from them. After I joined her we lay for hours whispering before we made love.
Before we slept she told me, ‘You have to take care of yourself this time, Charlie: you have to come back.’
‘I always have before.’
‘This is different. This time I am relying on you.’ That was a thought, and I sensed a shadow in the background. She continued, ‘I had someone before who didn’t come back.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We say that so often about dead men that we don’t mean it any longer.’
I showed her my back, because that either angered or hurt me; I couldn’t make up my mind which.
She spoke again a few minutes later. I was dozing off, and was startled by the sound of her