He reached for her hand as they ambled towards the shrub-covered hillside, a rising gradient of amber and bracken. He frowned with concern at her slight limp: “Does your foot still hurt, love?”
“It aches across the top.”
“We wain’t walk far, then,” he promised, squeezing her hand tighter, hoping her foot would stop hurting if they ceased to think about it. He fastened the polished buttons of his overcoat, smiled at her long brown hair tied by a piece of ribbon, and noticed the strength in her calm smooth face, her pouting lips, shining forehead — a face resting for the moment from make-up because she had said: “You don’t mind me letting my hair down now and again, do you?” Not that she had ever been much addicted to the alchemy of powders and lipsticks. The fresh smell of mown corn sharpened his regret that this would be their last night together for a few months, and he smiled to hide his anguish: “I suppose we should make the best of this evening.”
She pressed his hand: “It worn’t a very long leave, wor it?”
“Long enough to get married in.”
It was an’ all.
“You don’t regret it, do you?” A tractor passed slowly, pulling a dray loaded with the systematic droppings of the combine-harvester. The young driver had a sleeve of his shirt torn, and a farmhand on top of the sacks smiled as they passed.
“We’re young, so everybody told me at work. But I think it best to get married young.”
“So do I,” he laughed. “More time for being in bed together.” They’d been married two weeks ago, both families (and the friends of both) crowding the vestibule of the down-town registrar, and packing into the Trafalgar later for a noisy reception.
“Have you enjoyed this fortnight?”
She detected in his voice a sickness at heart simply because he was trying to hide it, at a time when they could hide nothing from each other. “It’s been marvellous,” she answered. Her stomach was beginning to show, a slight pushing from under her voluminous coat.
“I’ll be in Birmingham this time tomorrow, on my way back.”
“I wish I was going with you. It’s not very nice being left behind.”
“I know. I shan’t enjoy it either.” She asked why not, knowing the answer, yet still wanting to hear it. “Because you won’t be with me,” he told her. “I often think of packing the air force in. Walking out. They’d never find me. We could live in another town.”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “You’ve only got two years to do. It’ll be all over then.”
“I might have to go abroad.”
“But you’ll soon be back.” He wondered how she could say these things with such an expression of surety, see two years as being but a feminine small wisdom-tooth of time, a nothing that to him looked like a vast ocean with no opposite shore visible. Her love must be deeper than mine, calm and everlasting, if this seems such a normal hurdle to get over before our proper lives start.
But she’ll have something to keep her company while I’m away. “Shall we go along here?”—pointing to where the footpath forked, through a meadow and up a hill.
“To the left,” he said, not knowing why. Walking before him, she hummed a tune. There was a low, grass-covered bank on one side and blackberry bushes on the other. The sound of birds and the combine-harvester working below was hardly noticed now, and the sun, soon to fall behind the hill, lay a pale yellow light over the fields. A breeze carried white fluff from seedpods of rose-bay, some settling on to his grey uniform.
“You’ll be a snowman in a bit,” she said, finding it easy to laugh this evening.
“You’ll be a snowmaiden as well,” he cried, her coat spotted white.
“Tell me another. I’m a married woman now!” She stopped by a bush: “What are these blue flowers called?”
“I don’t know,” he teased.
“Yes, you do. You should, anyway. You’re the one who’s allus telling me about living all that time in the country at your grandma’s when you was a kid.”
He knelt to look: “Harebells, I think.”
“I thought they came in April?” she said.
“Bluebells do, but these don’t. Where did you go to school?” Three blue heads hung half-concealed under the low leaves of a bush before some ferns. “Faith, Hope, and Charity’s what they look like,” she pronounced, brushing her fingers across them.
“And Hope stays still,” he said, when one didn’t move.
She touched it, made it sway with the others: “Easy, you see.” They sat on the bank and she emptied soil from her shoes. “I don’t want to go home tonight, do you?”
“It’d be nippy,” he said, “kipping out in the fields. It’s nearly October. You’ll be better off in bed wi’ me, duck.”
“You’re allus on about that,” she cried. “We shouldn’t do it so much now I’m pregnant.”
“Hark at who’s talking!” He laughed, walked to a bush and picked a cluster of blackberries, then went to another until he had gathered a handful. “What are you doing?” she called out, unable to see. He came back: “Open your mouth.”
“What for?” She picked the juiciest to eat, until a pang of conscience showed in her eyes, and made her feed him some. “I had a few already, when I was collecting ’em.” Hands empty, they looked at the vulnerable tenderness behind each other’s eyes: “Why have I got to go off tomorrow? It’s useless and crazy.” She couldn’t reply, but held him and took his kisses.
They walked on, becoming more and more white from rose-bay. It even settled on the blackberries, had to blown off before they could eat them. They found raspberries also, and pink juice ran like blood to his hands: when they kissed he joked about tasting raspberry flavour: “I thought it was your lipstick,” he said, taking her arm so that she faced him. He saw the tremor of her mouth and they kissed passionately. “I love you,” she said. “Darling Brian, I I love you”—almost inaudibly. “I love you, sweetheart”—such committing words no longer unreal or out of place, not scoffed at as they might have been, had either used them a while back. He supposed such words were only embarrassing when the meaning of them had been forgotten or wasn’t known; when spoken with reason, their sounds were as intense and sexual as the kisses that flowered at the same time.
Voices along the path made them stand apart. “Let’s walk on up the hill,” he said, nodding to show the direction. “There’s plenty of bushes where we wain’t be seen.” She hesitated. “It’ll be all right.”
They threaded a way up through brambles, Brian in front when the path narrowed. Pauline seemed happier now, humming softly, dignified in her walk, as if heavier than she yet was. The fortnight since getting married had been spent at Pauline’s: he lived there as one of the family, and their room overlooked the back garden. Their names were down on the council housing list, but nothing would be ready, they realized, until years after he’d come out of the air force. So on his demob they planned to get rooms down town so as to be on their own.
“We’ll sit here.” He spread his overcoat and took off his tunic.
“Don’t get a cold, duck, will you?”
“It ain’t winter yet,” he said, embarrassed that she should show concern that he would hardly have noticed before they were married.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t want you to catch cold.”
He put his hand on her stomach: “You want to worry about that little bogger in there, not me.”
“He’s warm enough,” she said. They lay with arms around each other. He raised his head, saw a man walking along the footpath below, and wondered whether he could see them. “What’s up, duck?”