‘It doesn’t pay to think too deeply given the times we’re living in.’ He took his hat off, rubbing his fingers across a short buzz cut before nodding at her and taking a step forward. He had a limp she saw, by the awkward way he moved. ‘I’m Henry Johnson by the way. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ He thrust his hand out toward her.
‘Constance Downer.’ She forgot to be embarrassed by her work stained hands as she took his hand giving it a small shake in return. She snatched her hand back instinctively as a spark of unfamiliar feelings flared at his touch and was hopeful that the dimming light would hide her reddened cheeks. She waited for a beat, composing herself before agreeing with his sentiment. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t pay to dwell on things.’ She decided to wade on in with the truth. ‘I was imagining the technicolor wardrobe I’m going to have when this war finishes.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘See, I told you it wasn’t deep; in fact, it’s rather shallow.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He smiled, his hand dipping lazily into his trouser pocket and reappearing with a tobacco tin. ‘A technicolor wardrobe you say?’
She liked the richness of his vowels, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him. ‘I do say, and one day I’m going to have dresses in every colour of the rainbow.’
The dimples on either side of his cheek gave him a schoolboyish charm, and she guessed he was around the same age as Teddy had been. She took advantage of the opportunity to stare as he deftly rolled a cigarette.
‘Smoke?’
‘No thank you.’ She hoped she didn’t sound prim and added hastily, ‘But maybe a puff?’
He flashed her a grin, and she felt something soften and begin to melt inside her. A flame flared, and it illuminated him for a split second as he lowered his head and lit his smoke. As he raised his gaze Constance was struck by the colour of his eyes, neither brown nor green, somewhere in between, and the lashes framing them had a tinge of gold on their tips. She watched as he exhaled with languor, the pungent tang of tobacco drifting toward her. He held the cigarette out, and she reached for it holding it uncertainly between her fingers before putting it to her mouth and taking a small puff. She coughed as it burnt the back of her throat and her eyes watered. She passed it back, scalded.
He looked amused but not, she saw condescendingly so, and swallowing the burnt taste of ash away she cast around for something to say not wanting their exchange to end just yet. ‘You’re from Canada?’
‘Good guess. I don’t like to be mistaken for a Yank. It’s a bit like calling a Scotsman, English from what I gather. Vancouver’s where I call home to be exact which is why I’m down here now. I needed to see the water and breathe in the sea air.’
‘It’s hard to make it out what with all those out there.’ Constance pointed at the ships.
‘It’s enough to know it’s there.’
‘What’s Vancouver like?’ Her eyes lit up with the wonderlust of a young woman who’d been no further abroad than Portsmouth, and even that had been years ago now.
She listened raptly as he described his city’s delights from the exotic sounding China Town to the Capilano Suspension Bridge that swung out over a deep canyon and was surrounded by totem poles. It was when he began talking about Stanley Park—all four hundred hectares of it—though, that his face lit up. She watched his expression grow animated as he told her about the bald eagles that flew over it, the mute swans and the great blue herons.
‘When I was a kid I used to help out at a bird rescue sanctuary after school. That’s what I want to do when this—’ it was his turn to gesture to the naval boats consuming the Solent, ‘—is over. I’m leaving the airforce, and I’m going to go back to school. I want to be a wildlife biologist.’
Constance had never heard of such thing but didn’t like to show her naivety, and so she remained quiet.
‘If I’ve learned anything since I’ve been away it’s that you only get one life and you have to do everything you can to make it the best life it can be.’ He looked a little surprised at his impassioned speech, but it was a sentiment that Constance agreed with wholeheartedly.
‘You’re right.’ They exchanged a smile over the haze drifting smoke.
‘What about you, what do you do?’
Constance touched her hand to her face aware that her skin still bore the smudges of toiling at the factory, but it was too late to feel self-conscious now. ‘I’m working in the shipyard at Cowes, riveting.’ It was honest and necessary work, but she wished she’d been able to come up with something a little more glamorous to impress this handsome, young Canadian.
‘That’s not easy work I’d imagine, and when this is over?’
It surprised Constance that she didn’t know, she’d never really thought that far ahead and besides, her path to date had been mapped out for her. She’d not had any say as to what she wanted to do, and she knew she was not unique in this, it was a side effect of the war. It had been a case of what was needed and therefore what she should do. She didn’t mind—it was the way it was.
Looking at Henry, she gave a small shrug. ‘My parents run a haberdashery shop opposite the Pier.’ She waved her arm down the Esplanade in the general direction of Ryde Pier. ‘It’s quiet now, but we scrape by with mine and my sister’s
