Kitabı oku: «The Hidden Years», sayfa 4

Women were such fools. Tell them you loved them and they’d give you anything…everything…

‘What a pity we can’t pretend that you don’t have to go in here,’ he murmured softly to her, as the hospital came in sight. ‘Then we could just keep on driving…run away together and never, ever come back. Would you like that, my sweet? Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me?’

Lizzie’s heart thumped frantically with a mixture of shock and delight.

She heard him laugh and knew that she was blushing… knew that he must be able to read her feelings in her eyes.

‘Shall we do that?’ he continued to tease her. ‘Shall I steal you away, take you somewhere where it would be just the two of us…?’

His voice had developed a deep, caressing, almost mesmeric quality. Totally unable to take her eyes off his face, Lizzie discovered that she had virtually forgotten to breathe and that suddenly her lungs were labouring desperately to take in air.

Taking advantage of her bemused state, he allowed the tone of his voice to change, to deepen with regret as he told her, ‘How I wish I could do just that, but I can’t, can I…? There’s a war to be won.’ He allowed his eyes to darken, his whole manner to become subtly infused with purposefulness; he had discovered very early on in the war that if there was one thing women fell for even more than being told he loved them, it was the suggestion that he as a man of honour had to put his country before his feelings. This one, he could see, was no exception.

Lizzie was aching inside. Soon they would be going their separate ways, and she doubted that she would ever see him again, despite what he had said. A tearing, sharp pain splintered inside her, making her catch her breath and lose her colour.

‘I think you’d better drop me off here,’ she told him as they approached the gate. The matron had very strict views about the girls keeping their distance both from the men and from their visitors.

‘Fraternisation forbidden, is it?’ he guessed, understanding at once and stopping the car.

Lizzie couldn’t open the door and she watched breathlessly as he leapt over his own and came round to help her out, not opening the door for her as she had expected, but instead leaning down inside the car to lift her out bodily, so that for a brief, dazzling moment of time she was held against him, body to body, looking down into those teasing blue eyes, feeling her chest tighten and her muscles coil in heady excitement as he slowly lowered her to her feet, holding her tantalisingly and dangerously just off the ground, while he looked at her mouth and whispered to her.

‘Tiny little thing, aren’t you, just made to fit into a man’s arms, with a mouth just made for a man to kiss? Has anyone kissed you before, sweetheart, or have you been saving yourself for me?’

Her heart was pounding so heavily, so noisily that she could barely hear what he was saying. She felt both light-headed and yet at the same time as though everything around her had somehow become dazzlingly clear and sharp, as though she was seeing the whole world with new eyes.

‘You know what’s happening to us, don’t you?’ he pressed. ‘You know that you and I…’ He broke off, his face suddenly tense and fierce, his hands gripping her so tightly that it almost hurt. ‘I’ve got to see you again,’ he told her with an urgency that thrilled her. ‘When will you be free?’

Free… She struggled to hold on to her sanity, to reason, but they had both been swept away and were no longer of any force in her life.

This was what mattered, this sweet sharp bliss, this delirious sensation of floating above the ground, of suddenly living life to the full, of knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that she had met the man who embodied every single facet of all her yearning daydreams, that she had in fact fallen headily and instantly in love.

‘I…after lunch,’ she heard herself telling him in a thick, unfamiliar voice. ‘I was going to write to my aunt. I write to her every week. She has arthritis and so she can’t always write back…’

‘I’ll pick you up here at half-past two,’ he told her softly, ignoring her flurried, strangled words.

And then, as he lowered her to the ground, his lips brushed lightly against her own, the merest touch—a touch which another and more aware girl would have recognised as deliberate provocation, but which to Lizzie appeared to be a gesture of the deepest reverence and respect, the most chaste kind of embrace, as though he hardly dared to do more than merely allow his lips to touch hers. So, in her reading, had the heroes hardly dared to sully their adored ones with the male carnality of their desires, cherishing their purity, even while they ached to possess it.

Lizzie knew nothing of the real world of real emotions, of the careless urgency with which men like Kit Danvers physically possessed her sex, claiming their compliance as their right as men who daily, hourly faced death.

‘And, sweetheart…’

As she looked up at him, mute and adoring, he touched her braided hair and said, ‘Wear this loose, and something pretty. I like my girls to look pretty…’

Just for a moment a cloud seemed to obscure the sun, chilling her skin. His girls, he had said… She frowned, her dizzying, bemusing dream suddenly darkened with reality, but then he touched her face, tracing the delicacy of its bone-structure, and the clouds were burned away in the intensity of the heat that shook her…

As she waited for him to unstrap her bike, Lizzie found herself wishing that it were already half-past two, that there were no long, tense hours to wait before she could see him again…hours which would be shadowed with fears that he might change his mind…that he might meet some prettier, more appealing girl whom he might favour with his smiles instead of her, and already, though she didn’t know it, she had taken her first step into a dangerous and unfamiliar new world.

She found Edward ready and waiting for her, his face set and tense.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she apologised. Some instinct that was beginning to grow with her own maturity gave her an insight into the feelings of others which she often wished she did not have. It was hardly less painful to be so receptive to the emotional pain of others at second hand than it was for them to experience it themselves. Today she was particularly receptive to Edward’s pain, her own emotional nerve-endings curling back in sensitive reaction to his anxiety.

‘I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind. You shouldn’t be spending your free time with me… Pretty girl like you should be out having fun.’

That was the second time in one morning a man had described her as pretty, but this time she felt none of the soaring joy she had experienced when he had described her thus, only a sharp anguished knowledge of Edward’s own awareness that, while a woman might feel compassion for him, she could never feel desire.

As she wheeled him outside, she saw him lift his face towards the warmth of the sun. His skin had a grey, sickly undertone, the bones slightly shrunken under his flesh. He had lost weight in the long months he had been with them and her heart ached compassionately for him, as she contrasted him again with him.

The rhododendrons were set on a sloping bank just outside the formal gardens, and Lizzie, who had genuinely wanted to foster the tiny spark of interest she had seen in Edward’s eyes the last time she had taken him there, had discovered that they had originally been planted by an owner of the house who had travelled extensively in China before the Boxer uprising. A keen botanist, he had collected various specimens in the wild and created this special area for them.

Where the formal gardens of the house had now gone to make way for vegetable plots, the rhododendrons had been allowed to remain.

Lizzie was slightly out of breath by the time she had pushed the wheelchair up the overgrown path that led to them, but her efforts were well rewarded when she turned a corner and stopped the wheelchair so that Edward could take in the full glory of the scene in front of them.

She heard him catch his breath, and, when she quickly kneeled down to look at him, she discovered that there were tears running down his face.

‘They’re beautiful,’ he told her quietly. ‘So very much like those at Cottingdean… My grandmother adored her garden.’

‘Who lives there now?’ Lizzie asked him, more because she sensed his need to talk about the house he obviously loved so much than out of any real curiosity.

‘No one. It was requisitioned during the early part of the war, but it’s empty now. It’s too remote to be of any real use—on the edge of a tiny village tucked away in the Wiltshire hills. Ultimately, I suppose, it belongs now to my cousin. His father was the elder son, mine the younger. Sometimes during the night I dream that I’m back there…’ A bitter smile twisted his face. ‘Pure escapism. If I do go back, it won’t be as a boy free to run around but as a useless cripple…’

Lizzie bit her lip, wondering if she had done the right thing in bringing him out here…wondering if she had perhaps not been kind in stirring up memories of his childhood.

Without saying a word, she turned the wheelchair round. She knew from experience that when these moods of deep despair came down on him it was best to simply let Edward speak. Rather like letting poison drain out of a wound, only for his particular wound there could never be any total cleansing and healing.

They were halfway back to the hospital when she saw the man walking down the path towards them. She recognised him immediately, her heart giving a tremendous bound of pleasure and shock. He was walking with the sun behind him, so that his dark hair had a golden nimbus, his easy, long-legged stride so male, so unconsciously arrogant that her heart bled a little for Edward, whom she could see gripping the arms of his wheelchair.

Such was her incandescent joy at the sight of him that there was no time, no room in her mind to question what he was doing. All she wanted to do was to fly towards him, to feel his arms tighten around her, his man’s body press close to hers, his mouth find hers to possess and cherish it until the tremulous joy flooding through her burst into a wild surge.

But it wasn’t her he addressed—he seemed not to notice her at all, speaking instead to Edward, saying casually, ‘Ah, there you are, old boy. They told me I’d find you down here somewhere…’

‘Christopher…’

Christopher… His name was Christopher… It suited him somehow… She savoured it silently, tasting it, rolling it around her mouth, marvelling at the foresight of parents able instinctively to choose a name so fitting.

‘I’ll push this for you, shall I?’

Engrossed in her bemusement, she hadn’t seen him move, and now suddenly he was standing beside her, her body instantly aware of his, so that she longed to move closer to him, to bathe in his body heat, to breathe in his special scent.

She tried to look at him and couldn’t, paralysed by unexpected, awkward shyness. In front of her she heard Edward saying, ‘Lizzie…this is Christopher Danvers… My cousin… Christopher, Lizzie is—’

‘I know. Lizzie and I have already met… This morning when I practically ran her down…’

He held out his hand and gripped hers. The pressure of his fingers against her own made her quiver with delight.

‘Call me Kit,’ he told her softly, while his blue eyes laughed dangerously into hers.

She was so bemused, so entranced by him that it wasn’t until several seconds after he had released her hand and she had turned away from him that she became aware of Edward’s tension.

And then, hypersensitive to a point where she almost felt as though she had stepped inside his skin, she could feel the pressure he was placing on his fragile muscles and instinctively moved towards him and then stopped, confused by her own actions.

For a moment she had wanted to place herself protectively between Edward and Kit. But why…? And why to protect Edward…? Kit was his cousin…

She was in love with him. He was wonderful, perfect. She couldn’t understand Edward’s antagonism towards him.

‘You always did drive too damn fast,’ Edward was saying curtly.

‘Well, luckily there was no harm done, and when your ministering angel told me that she was spending her time off charitably entertaining one of her patients I had no idea she meant you.’

‘What are you doing here, Kit?’

The way Edward Danvers asked the question was brusque, almost as though he disliked the other man, which startled Lizzie.

‘Felt I ought to, old chap, now that the old man’s finally gone. Duty. Head of the family and all that. Came to see how you were getting on. What plans you’ve got for when all this is over…’

‘I won’t be burdening you with my presence at Cottingdean, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ Edward said stiffly.

Lizzie was beginning to feel uncomfortable. There was something here between the two men which she felt instinctively should not be aired in front of a third party.

‘I… I think I’d better go,’ she began uncertainly, and appealed to Kit, ‘You’ve obviously got private family business to discuss…’

She started to move away down the path, but Kit followed her, standing between her and Edward and blocking her view of the wheelchair as he bent his head and murmured, ‘You haven’t forgotten about our date, have you? I shouldn’t be too long with old Edward… Half-past two, remember.’

Her heart gave a tremendous thud as happiness burst into a million tiny effervescent fragments inside her.

‘Half-past two,’ she agreed shakily.

Both men watched her walk out of sight, and then Kit drawled, ‘Pretty little thing for a skivvy.’

‘She is not a skivvy, she is a nursing aide… By rights she ought to have done more years at school. She’s far too bright for this kind of work.’ Edward moved restlessly in his chair and cursed bitterly, ‘Damn this war… Damn it to hell…’

‘Steady on, old chap. Can’t say I blame you, though. Tied to that thing and not able to do a thing about it, while you’ve got a pretty little bit like that fluttering round you. Must say, I’d feel pretty frustrated myself.’ He watched in cynical amusement as he saw his cousin’s skin turn dark red.

Edward always had been over-prudish, which was perhaps just as well in all the circumstances when you thought about it. Kit hadn’t been looking forward to this visit. While his father had been alive he had carelessly pushed the thought of his cousin and his plight out of his mind; he had more important things to think about, such as winning a war and in the process laying as many pretty girls as he could… One of the perks of being one of Britain’s bravest. As a pilot, it was virtually expected of him. Not that he found it any hardship… But now his father was dead, and his CO had made one too many comments about Edward’s plight, so that he had felt obliged to drive down here and see how he was doing, and to make it plain to Edward that once this war was over they would both have their own separate lives to lead.

‘You leave her alone,’ he heard Edward saying grimly. ‘She’s still little more than a child. She doesn’t understand the kind of rules you play by, Kit. She’s an innocent…’ He broke off, realising that he was only affording the other amusement, and asked instead, ‘I take it you are still engaged to Lillian?’

‘Of course. All that money, you know… Besides, I don’t have much option, do I?’

‘If you don’t love her—’

‘Love? What a fool you are, Edward. You’ve been spending too much time on your own,’ he added derisively. ‘I need a wife like Lillian, but that doesn’t mean I can’t amuse myself in other directions.’

‘You haven’t changed, Kit. You never did care about people’s feelings and you never will.’

‘While you always cared too much, which is why you’re in that wheelchair. If you hadn’t been so damned heroic, you’d still be a whole man, instead of a helpless cripple,’ Kit taunted him. ‘You’re a fool, Edward, you always were and you always will be… And by the way, old man, once Lillian and I are married, don’t expect to find yourself a billet at Cottingdean, will you? I dare say I shall sell the old place anyway. Lillian wants a flat in London, and I dare say by the time this is over Cottingdean will only be fit for knocking down.’

Kit always had had a cruel streak, Edward reflected silently; as a boy he had been inclined to bully and torment. That hadn’t bothered him then… He suddenly realised how tired and sick he felt, how helpless and vulnerable. He felt his eyes mist with the helpless tears of impotence and frustration, and he wished, as he had wished so many times before, that he had the strength and the courage to put an end to it all.

CHAPTER TWO

‘GOT a date, have you?’

Lizzie flushed, even though the question was asked in a friendly enough way. The moment she had left Edward and Kit, she had collected her bike and ridden back to the hostel.

Mindful of Kit’s commands, she had rifled frantically through her meagre wardrobe, looking in vain for anything that might be described as ‘pretty’. There wasn’t anything, of course, but she could unpin her hair from its braids, brush it until it shined and leave it hanging loose.

That it felt odd and slightly uncomfortable didn’t matter. Kit had demanded it of her, and for him she was prepared to make any sacrifice…do anything that might please him.

Now though, confronted by the amused scrutiny of the other girls who also had the time off from working at the hospital, she felt acutely self-conscious, her face burning as she stammered an assent.

‘Not going to go out wearing that, are you?’ another girl commented, grimacing.

Lizzie blushed harder. She wasn’t used to confiding in others, to encouraging intimacy with them. Aunt Vi always kept her at a distance and had taught her to do the same to others.

‘I…I don’t have anything else.’

It shamed her to admit it. She bent her head forwards, so that her curtain of hair swung across her face.

‘I could lend you something,’ one of the girls offered. ‘We’re about the same size.’

‘Give over, Rosie, you might be the same height, but she’s much thinner than you.’

‘Not that much,’ Rosie protested. ‘She could wear that dress I got from Meg the other week. With a belt round the waist.’

‘Well, I suppose she could try it, only she’s going to need a bit of make-up as well, isn’t she? And some decent shoes. What size do you take, Lizzie?’

Thoroughly bemused, Lizzie stood there while they argued good-naturedly and loudly all around her.

‘It’s a pity you didn’t think to put your hair in rags last night,’ one of them told her. ‘Then it would have a bit of a curl to it. You’re lucky to be so blonde. Men really go for that. What is he? Yank?’

‘No, no, he’s—’

‘Here’s the dress,’ Rosie interrupted. ‘Come on, Lizzie, try it on.’

Suddenly she was one of them, an outsider no longer, but she flinched when they laughed at her sturdy utilitarian underwear.

‘Heavens, just look at it,’ one of them derided as she slipped off her cardigan and blouse to reveal the heavy cotton brassière which, like the rest of her clothes, had been inherited from someone else.

Normally she tried to undress and dress in privacy. Aunt Vi had always made her feel somehow that her body was something she ought to be ashamed of and, even when she had had the luxury of her own bedroom, she had always studiously avoided looking at herself.

Now she blushed deeply as one of the older girls announced cynically, ‘My God, whoever he is, he’s going to get a shock when he sees that. Let’s hope he’s in the artillery. They’re used to dealing with armour plating.’

The other girls laughed, but it was good-natured laughter, Lizzie recognised.

‘You’ll have to take it off,’ Rosie told her decisively, and before she could protest the other girl had stepped behind her and unsnapped the fastener.

She had never stood in front of anyone before clad in only her knickers and she felt a sharp stab of shock ricochet through her system as she realised how easily she was shedding Aunt Vi’s rules.

‘Look at her,’ someone said mockingly. ‘She doesn’t need to wear anything. There’s hardly anything of her.’

‘No, but at least what she’s got is in the right place,’ another girl responded.

Rosie turned to her and said kindly, ‘Don’t pay any attention to Mavis, she’s jealous because her boyfriend says her chest is too big… Poor Mavis. She’s used to them thinking it’s wonderful. She needed taking down a peg or two. The rest of us were sick of hearing about how wonderful her forty inches were… Here you are, get this on,’ she instructed, handing her a flimsy cotton garment.

Lizzie hesitated as she stared at the fabric, its white background rather dingy from too many washings of a poor-quality cloth. The fabric was overprinted with a too-busy design of bright red and yellow flowers that made her feel slightly dizzy, but everyone was waiting and if she refused she would offend Rosie and probably everyone else as well. They were, after all, trying to be helpful.

As she put the dress on and fastened the buttons down the front she realised how much plumper Rosie must be. The dress, which on Rosie hugged the waist, hung loosely on her, and the V-neckline was surely much more revealing on her than it was when it strained across Rosie’s plump breasts.

She tried not to feel relieved as she reached for the buttons. ‘It’s kind of you, Rosie, but it doesn’t look anywhere near as good on me as it does on you,’ she said tactfully.

Although she was loath to admit it she was actually longing to get back to Lady Jeveson’s cast-offs. At least in them she felt she was decently dressed. She had been horror stricken to realise that through the thin fabric of Rosie’s dress it was actually possible to see not only the outline of her nipples, but also the dark shadowing of their surrounding areola.

‘No, keep it on,’ Rosie protested, ‘all it needs is a belt. You’ve got a red one, haven’t you, Jean…? Bring it here and let’s see how it looks…’

Jean Adams was a tall thin girl, with dark hair and dense brown eyes. The belt in question was made of bright red shiny plastic and had been a present from an admiring GI.

Lizzie felt her fingers recoil from contact with the sharp shiny stuff in distaste. The only belts she was familiar with were soft leather, often worn, with the stitching gone in places, and always in dull browns and greys.

‘Give it ’ere, Jean,’ Rosie instructed, obviously enjoying her role as transformer-in-chief. ‘Now breathe in, Lizzie, while I get it fastened… My goodness, you are thin, aren’t you? Even Jean can’t get it fastened on that first notch, can you, Jean? No, you can’t look at yourself yet,’ Rosie told her firmly as she tried to step to one side so that she could see her reflection in the dormitory’s one spotted mirror.

‘What you need now is a bit of colour in your face. Some nice bright red lipstick and a bit of rouge…’

‘And some blacking on her lashes,’ someone suggested. ‘What size shoes does she take?’

‘Threes,’ Lizzie said weakly.

‘So small…well, it will have to be Mary’s white courts, then… You take a four, don’t you, Mary? We’ll have to stuff the toes. Where’s he meeting you, love, outside?’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘On the back lane to the hospital.’

‘She’s not walking all down there, not in my white courts,’ Mary objected indignantly.

‘No, well, she’ll have to wear her own shoes and then change just before she meets him. Leave her own hidden—she can pick them up in the morning.’

Lizzie wanted to object that it wasn’t necessary for Mary to make such a sacrifice. Aunt Vi had always told her that a lady never wore white shoes, but it was difficult to speak with Rosie determinedly outlining her mouth with what felt like sticky paste, and someone else spitting on a cake of mascara ready to attend to her eyelashes.

It was a good half-hour before they were satisfied with their efforts and ready to let her look in the mirror.

When she did, the image confronting her was so totally unfamiliar that she could only stare at it in confused disbelief. She looked so much older, so much more worldly, so…so common, a sharp inner voice derided, but with the circle of expectant faces watching her she could only swallow down her dismay and weakly thank them.

‘Just you remember,’ Rosie warned her, all motherly concern, ‘if he tries it on, you make him wait. Show him that you expect to be treated with a bit of respect. They’re all the same… All after one thing…and they’ll tell you anything to get it…’

She wanted to protest that they were wrong, that Kit was different…but her feelings were too new…too precious to be shared with anyone else.

Someone, she rather thought it was Mary, provided her with a white cardigan to wear over the dress, which mercifully buttoned up to the throat, and then she was being escorted downstairs and outside, so that it was impossible for her to plead that she couldn’t accept their generosity and change back into her own things.

Lizzie couldn’t cycle to meet Kit, not wearing her borrowed finery, and at first she found it disconcerting to feel the freer movements of her breasts as she walked.

That the sensation of her flesh pressing against this cotton was not entirely unpleasant shocked her, as did the sudden illuminating knowledge that when Kit took her in his arms she would be able to feel his body against her own separated only by such a flimsy barrier.

Such thoughts were forbidden, disgusting, Aunt Vi would have said, but it wasn’t disgust that welled up inside her. Far from it. It was the same fizzing, exciting sensation she had experienced when Kit had pressed his lips against hers, the same curling tautness deep down inside her, which made her stop walking and instinctively press the palm of her hand low down against her body, until she realised what she was doing and went scarlet with shock and guilt.

She knew all about what happened between men and women—it would have been hard not to, when the other girls gave such graphic and detailed descriptions of their boyfriends’ prowess or lack of it—but she had never realised until now that the physical intimacies they had described, and which she had found rather nauseating, could be responsible for the kind of delicious ache that was tormenting her body and making her hurry eagerly to meet Kit.

She had set off in plenty of time and, when she reached the arranged rendezvous, she was able to slip out of her own brogues and replace them with Mary’s white shoes, which looked very large and ungainly on her own slender feet.

The only thing she had not been provided with was a pair of the much prized stockings, and she had firmly refused to allow her helpers to draw lines down the backs of her legs in imitation of stocking seams. Her ankles looked very fragile and pale, she decided, eyeing them uncertainly, but her woollen stockings would have looked ridiculous with Rosie’s dress.

Time passed. She seemed to have been waiting for hours. Her stomach tensed and she began to wonder if Kit wasn’t coming after all. She had no watch and no way of telling what time it was. She couldn’t stay standing here for ever, she told herself, thankful that the lane was seldom used so that there was no one about to witness her humiliation.

She could just imagine the other girls’ reactions when she went back and told them that Kit hadn’t turned up. Her eyes stung with tears. It had never occurred to her that this might happen. She had been so certain, so sure that Kit felt as she did…

She was just about to retrieve her shoes when she heard the sound of a car engine. Her heart bounded, her pulses thudding frantically as she froze and waited.

When she saw the familiar bonnet of Kit’s car coming round the corner she almost cried with relief, unaware of how very easily he was interpreting her reaction as he brought the car to a standstill beside her and smiled warmly at her.

Old Edward wouldn’t think her such an innocent now, Kit reflected cynically as he studied her. Quite a transformation.

He looked at her dark red mouth and felt a kick of sensation burst inside him. Sex was like a drug to Kit—the more he had, the more he wanted—and since he had been grounded five days ago for disobeying orders and breaking formation to chase off an enemy plane in a dogfight over the Channel, sex had been the only outlet he had had for the compulsive energy that drove him.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised, jumping out of the car and coming towards her.

Relief shone in her eyes, making them glitter with the tears which had been about to fall.

‘You look wonderful,’ he lied, making her wonder if perhaps after all the other girls had been right and that it was she who had been wrong to have had doubts about her appearance.

‘So wonderful, in fact, that I’ve simply got to do this…’

Kit was no fool. No matter how willing the woman, they still liked all the trappings. And this one was more nervous than willing. He felt her tremble as he took her in his arms and felt his body tense with elation. It gave him an extra thrill to know that he would be the first, that no one else had ever touched her or kissed her. Her mouth beneath his betrayed her inexperience. ‘No one’s ever kissed you before, have they?’ he said, crushing her body against his own, revelling in his power over her, her innocence, her gullibility. He placed his hand on her heart and felt its frantic beat. His fingertips were just brushing the underside of her breast, causing her both to tense and to tremble. His tongue snaked over her glossy red lips, making Lizzie shiver frantically again as his touch caressed her already sensitised flesh. She was so responsive to him, so dizzyingly aware of him. They had looked at one another and immediately she had known without words…without explanation—she had known.