At last he felt sleep coming on, retreating, drawing closer, teasing and tormenting, finally invading him, but only to torment him further. Now he was back in the damaged plane…heading back to the airfield…wondering if he’d make it…seeing the ground coming closer…almost there…then the explosion and the flames!
He fought to slide back the roof of the cockpit, but it was stuck. He couldn’t get out. He was trapped there while the fire consumed him-trapped in hell. He screamed and screamed but no sound came out. Nobody could hear him-he was abandoned.
‘Where are you-where are you-?’
‘I’m here, I’m here. Wake up-wake up!’
Hands were shaking him, touching his face, offering a way out of the nightmare. He reached for her eagerly, blindly.
‘Help me-help me. Where are you?’
Dee saw his eyes open, but vaguely, as though he couldn’t see her. He was shivering.
‘Mark-Mark, talk to me.’ She shook him. ‘Are you awake?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘The fire-the fire-’
‘There’s no fire. That was a long time ago.’
‘No, it wasn’t. It’s here; I can feel it-’
‘No,’ she cried. ‘The fire is in the past. It can’t hurt you now. I’m going to keep you safe. You’re safe with me.’
At last, recognition seemed to creep into his eyes. ‘Is it you?’
‘Yes, it’s me. I’m here and I’ll always be here.’
She felt him sag in her arms as though the life had gone out of him, replaced by black despair. She tightened her embrace, full of fierce protectiveness.
She’d gone to bed, sad at his rejection of the comfort she had to offer, but, just as she was fading into sleep, the air had been rent by terrifying sounds from the next room. She’d dashed next door to find him sitting up in bed, screaming violently into the darkness. She’d sat beside him, taking him in her arms, but that didn’t help. He’d seemed unaware of her, screaming on and on, caught in some terrifying other world where there was only fear and darkness.
She had switched on the bedside lamp, hoping that its light might bring him back to reality, but even when he looked at her she could tell he was still reliving his most ghastly moments, and she was torn by pity and frustration that she couldn’t help him except, perhaps, by being there, letting him feel her presence and draw from it what solace he could. If any.
‘I’m all right now,’ he said bleakly.
Gently, she laid him back on the bed and came closer, propping herself up on one elbow to look down on him.
‘Did I wake you?’ he asked.
‘I heard you being a bit disturbed. It’s not the first time but you sounded more troubled tonight than ever before. Were you dreaming about the fire?’
‘Not dreaming. Living. It was there all around me and I couldn’t escape. I was so scared, I screamed. Isn’t that funny?’
‘I don’t think it’s funny at all,’ she said tenderly.
‘But it is. It’s the biggest laugh of all time. I used to think I was so strong. I was a cocky, conceited so-and-so, but I know better now. Just a coward, screaming with fear.’
‘You’re not a coward,’ she said fiercely. ‘Any man would have nightmares after what you’ve been through.’
‘I told myself that at first, but they go on and on and I don’t know what to do. I’ll tell you something that will really make you despise me-’ He checked himself.
‘Don’t say anything you don’t want to,’ she told him.
‘No, you’re entitled to know the worst of me. When they said I couldn’t go back to the Air Force…I was…I was glad. Do you hear that? I was glad. Oh, I said all the right things about being sorry I couldn’t serve my country, but part of me was full of relief.’
‘So I should hope,’ she said crisply. ‘That merely shows you have common sense.’
He stared. ‘You’re not ashamed of me.’
‘No,’ she said, almost in tears. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Oh, please, Mark, forget all this. You did your bit. You served your country and it nearly killed you. You should be proud, not ashamed. You have a life ahead of you and when you’re fully recovered you’ll find a way to live it.’
He glanced down at his disfigured chest. ‘That will be hard when women can’t bear to look at me,’ he said.
‘That silly girl this afternoon doesn’t count. A woman who cared about you wouldn’t be troubled by this.’
Suddenly she became aware of a new tension in his manner, and the way his eyes flickered away from her. Looking down, she saw why. She was wearing pyjamas, and in her agitation she’d forgotten to check that the front was properly buttoned up. It had fallen open, revealing her naked breasts.
He was still averting his gaze. She took a quick decision.
‘Perhaps it’s you that can’t bear to look at me,’ she said. ‘Am I so ugly?’
‘You know better than that.’
‘But I don’t,’ she said softly. ‘How could I know?’
Slowly, he turned his gaze back to linger over her breasts, shadowed by the soft lamplight. Then he lay without moving and for a horrible moment she wondered if he was shocked by her forwardness, but at last he reached up to her.
At the soft touch of his fingertips on her breast she felt a blazing excitement go through her, unlike anything she had ever known before. It was the merest whispering caress, but it brought her to life in a way she’d never dreamed of. She heard a long gasp and only dimly realised that it came from herself.
She didn’t know how or where the pyjama jacket went, but suddenly he was touching her with both hands, taking her to another world where all the virtuous precepts of her rearing vanished without trace, and there was only this man and her desire for him.
Now all the textbooks were useless. Only her instincts could guide her, and they told her that he was coming to life, pulling away the rest of her pyjamas, then his own, infused with some feeling that made him forget caution, reticence, fear-forget everything except that he wanted and needed her.
For just one second reality seemed to pierce his dream, making him tense as he became conscious again of his scarred chest. Her answer was to lay her lips tenderly against it. She doubted if he could feel the gesture as his burns would have destroyed the nerves, but he would see it, and know that she was glad to reach out to him. When she looked up at his face again, she saw in it a look of wonder.
Then he was pressing her gently back on the bed, moving over her, parting her legs. She gasped at the moment of his entry, clutching him to her, silently saying that the infusion of new life was for him and only him. The moment when they became one was staggering, alarming, like being carried in a roller coaster, higher and higher, up to the heavens, until the devastating peak, and then the giddying descent, holding on to him for safety.
But there was no safety in this new world. There would never be safety again as long as she lived. And with all her soul she rejoiced at it.
She looked up at him, her chest heaving with pleasure, but, to her surprise and disappointment, he seemed troubled.
‘I’m sorry,’ he groaned.
‘But why? Why should you be sorry?’
‘It was your first time, wasn’t it? Oh, Lord, what have I done? I didn’t mean to…I never thought…’
‘Neither did I,’ she said. ‘And I’m glad I never thought. Thought has no place here. Mark, I’m happy. I wanted this. Don’t spoil it.’
‘Do you mean that?’ he asked cautiously.
She gave a smile full of delicious memory. ‘Yes, I mean it. Oh, yes, I mean it.’
‘Dee, I-’ He stopped, choking. Words had always come easily to him, but that was for trivialities, jokes, chatter. Now he longed to tell her of his fear that his skills as a lover had died in the fire and his passionate gratitude to her for helping him rediscover them, and he was suddenly dumbfounded.