Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [143]
‘I admit I never really thought I’d be here and that you’d be nursing me when I made you promise to do your training.’
‘I owe you such a lot over what you did for me,’ said Grace.
‘It all seems such a long time ago now, and in another life.’
‘Yes,’ Grace agreed. For no reason at all she was remembering how she had felt when he had kissed her and she suppressed another blush.
‘Sister said I was rambling away in French. I just hope I didn’t say anything too ripe that I shouldn’t have said in a woman’s presence.’
Grace shook her head. ‘The only word I could make out properly was “Marie”. You kept saying it over and over again, and I thought that maybe she was a girl you’d fallen in love with.’ She had said far too much but it was too late now to wish that she hadn’t.
‘She’s a French girl. We were billeted in the village where she lived, and … and working together. I wasn’t in love with her, but I felt guilty about leaving her behind, knowing what she and her family were likely to be facing, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She’s a patriot, you see, and France means everything to her.’
It surprised Sebastion to discover how easy it was to talk openly and honestly to Grace about Marie and his feelings.
‘I think I can understand that. I know I’d hate to think of this country having to surrender to Hitler.’
‘We’ve got to win this war otherwise there is no hope for any of us,’ said Sebastion.
‘Everyone’s afraid that Hitler will invade us like he has done those other countries.’
‘Everyone? Does that include you, Grace?’ Sebastion asked her.
‘Yes,’ she told him honestly, ‘but I try not to think about it and to get on with my work. My family have been so lucky. My brother, Luke, came back from Dunkirk uninjured, and so apparently did Charlie. Luke’s been posted to Home Duties now at Seacombe barracks.’
‘Churchill will want to concentrate all his manpower at home to defend the country if Hitler does invade,’ said Seb, thinking privately about the role he would be playing in that defence as soon as he was fit enough to leave hospital. His gift for languages made him an important part of the team being assembled at Derby House, the Headquarters for Joint Strategic Planning, involving both the navy and the RAF coast defence units, as well liaising with Fighter Command Group 12. His job as a special operator and a member of the ‘Y’ Section would be to spend his days incarcerated in a silent set room, listening for designated enemy coded messages, mainly in German.
It would be someone else, sitting in a similar room in a different part of the country, who would listen in for Marie’s coded messages. Perhaps it was just as well that it would not be him, Seb admitted, but he knew too that she had made a lasting impression on him and that he could never forget her even if, as he had truthfully told Grace, he was not in love with her.
Being at war acted like a pressure cooker on the emotions when people worked closely together, forcing them into something they might otherwise not have been.
There had been nights when his own desire to give in to temptation and take the physical pleasure Marie had suggested they should share had come perilously close to overwhelming him. The only thing that had stopped him had been knowing that if he did he would have been breaking the rules he had been warned explicitly against breaking. A soldier away from home might with moral impunity visit a brothel, but he should not and must not become sexually involved with another member of a close-knit team. Marie’s attitude towards sex had been very different from his own, and he suspected that he would not have been her first lover, and certainly not her last. It was, though, France that held her heart, no matter what she chose to do with her body. Grace was very different, softer and warmer, a gentler, sweeter-natured girl, and far more dangerously easy to fall in love with.
Jean couldn’t believe it. She had only left the house half an