She didn’t know much about Canada, even less about Vancouver, but she did know it was the country’s third-largest city. She’d always paid attention when the teacher had turned to the topic of geography at school. It had fascinated her because the world she knew and occupied was such a small one compared to what lay beyond their island home.
‘Yeah it is, but the people here are kind, real kind. It’ll sound kind of weird but what I miss is the smell of the Douglas Firs. They’re sweet and fruity, and they just smell like home. Most of all, though, I miss my family.’
‘Do you have a large family?’ She pictured him as the middle son with a bossy older sister and a younger brother who was forever getting into trouble. He would be the peacemaker.
‘No, it’s just me, my mom and my baby sister. My dad died a couple of years back. He’s why I joined the airforce. I was born in Canada, but I’m half British, Dad was born in Kent. He was in the airforce too. Flew a Handley Page during the Great War. I grew up hearing stories of his time in England, and I guess I wanted to see it for myself and follow in his footsteps. My mom’s done it tough since he died, but we get by. It’ll be hard putting myself through college when I get home, but I’ll do it. We'll manage somehow, and hey it’s gotta be easier than this.’ His gaze drifted above her head out to sea, and something in those unusual eyes of his looked lost, a clue that he would have seen and done things that no young man should ever have to experience.
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ Constance said and then found herself telling him about Ted and how Ginny, his widow, lived with them. Henry’s sympathy was genuine. He took one last drag of his smoke and had the good sense not to offer it to her again, sparing them both the embarrassment as he ground it out with his foot. She noticed the motion caused him to grimace. His leg obviously pained him. Constance felt rude for not patting the seat beside her and asking him to join her, but she wasn’t sure that would have been right.
‘So where are you billeted?’ she asked this with what she hoped was an air of nonchalance.
‘I’m at Darlinghurst House just a ways down the road there.’
‘Oh,’ popped out of her mouth. That explained his limp, his injury must be recent. Darlinghurst House was where she and Norma had collected the basket full of socks in need of darning. They’d whiled away their Saturday nights this last month at the library where Norma was on fire watch duty once a week chatting over the fact that they were there knitting no less! And not at a dance flirting with handsome soldiers like Evelyn undoubtedly was. The most excitement offered to them on a Saturday night was giving their needles a rest as they headed outside to watch the dogfights in the skies over the Solent. That was another thing both girls had in common; parents who kept their youngest children on a tight leash since the war had escalated. Darlinghurst too was where her dreaded solo was to be sung in just over a week thanks to the powers that be at the shipping yard factory.
‘I’ll tell you a secret.’ Henry interrupted her thoughts.
Her eyes widened, and she wished Norma could be a fly on the wall to this exchange as he gave her a cheeky grin. She would turn pea-green unable to believe her friend’s luck in meeting a handsome Canadian at the old folly no less!
He bent down and tugged his trouser leg up. ‘I’ve got you to thank for the fact my feet are warm and dry now because my socks don’t have holes in them anymore.’
Constance clapped her hands. She remembered him now. It had been Henry who’d answered the door at the manor when she and Norma had come to return the pile of mended socks they’d laboured over. She recalled having winced at the sight of his battered face, his head had been swathed in bandages, but his eyes had held her attention and she’d thought them rather beautiful. He’d been on crutches, unable to take the basket she, and Norma carried between them, and had called over his shoulder for help from the passing matron. She’d shooed him past where the two girls were poised on the doorstep to the expansive lawn outside to make the most of the sunshine, tsking about there being no better tonic for the soul than sunshine.
‘It was you who opened the door when Norma and I returned the basket of mended socks!’
He grinned and said, ‘I did indeed, and I don’t mind telling you it was a tonic to see your pretty face standing there after some of those po-faced nurses that had been looking after me. More of a tonic than sitting on my own in the garden, sun or no sun.’
Constance giggled at the compliment. ‘I’ve heard stories about there being weevils in the porridge at the hospital. Is it true?’ Her pert nose wrinkled.
‘It’s true, but beggars can’t be choosers.’
She shuddered at the thought of being hungry enough to eat the writhing oats. ‘Are you better now? I mean you look well apart
