The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [150]
‘Hmm.’ Ed turns and gazes at the retreating taillights. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that. Though if everything was so sweet and innocent, why are they doing it in the dark?’ He leans in and rubs my thigh absent-mindedly. ‘And the Man In Black was remarkably easily pacified, wasn’t he? Shouted a bit, but pissed off exceeding quick. Threw everything in the back of the Transit and fled. They were twitchy at Yatesbury too.’
‘You think they’re the ones responsible for Frannie’s lights on Windmill Hill, after all?’
‘No, no. The aviation-archaeology line had the ring of truth. Only…no airfield up here on Easton Down that I’ve ever heard of. And I know all the Wiltshire airfields. Even the ones that closed down years ago. So what were they looking for?’ He pokes me in the ribs. ‘If you’ve warmed up a bit, you going to move out of that seat and let me drive?’
‘We’d be far safer with me driving.’
‘Bollocks. Get out.’
Obediently, I step down to walk round the bonnet, where insects dance in the headlight beams.
Ed stands in my way. ‘I’ve had a better thought.’ His fingers wander down the side of my face, across my lips, under my chin, hook themselves into the V-neck of my T-shirt and tug gently. ‘How about rough sex in the open air?’
Funny, the same thought was going through my mind.
CHAPTER 39
1941–2
Although, as the airman at the dinner predicted, Donald Cromley had been posted back to his squadron in early November, all that autumn and winter I couldn’t rid myself of the notion he was following me. I knew the squadron was still in Kent, because Davey was with them now, his letters frequent as ever, full of his hopes for the eventual move to Colerne, which kept being postponed. But sometimes when I walked on the Ridgeway, I’d be sure I’d heard another step. I’d whip round to see the track empty behind me, a long white tongue licking the darkening Downs. The beech leaves reddened, crisped, fell, and turned to a brown sludge. Frost hardened the ruts. The journey home to Avebury each night seemed longer and longer. This year, if there was an air-raid warning and I missed the bus, or if I was fire-watching, there was no Davey along the road at Wroughton to run me home in his steel-roofed Baby Austin. More than once, I made a nest of blankets borrowed from the nurses and slept on the floor at the hospital.
If Mr Cromley hadn’t forced me out of Avebury, that winter would. January ‘42 was a black, icy month. So was the beginning of February. One of the nurses was getting married, and giving up her room in Swindon Old Town to go and live with her fianc’s parents. I had a couple of hours to spare between the end of work and the start of my fire watch, and I agreed to meet Nell when her shift finished, to walk back to her lodgings and be introduced to the landlady. I was still reluctant to move into town, but I knew it was the sensible thing to do.
Everyone else in the almoner’s office had left for the evening. I’d already put on my coat and turned out the light when I realized I’d forgotten to deliver some discharge papers to the sister on Orthopaedics. It was bright enough by the moonlight pouring through the sash windows to see them on the desk; I picked them up with a little shiver, thinking I’d been lucky so far on fire watch but that tonight was what they used to call a bomber’s moon. Bombers were flying all weathers by then, no reason to think they’d be more likely tonight than any other, but that moon filled me with superstitious dread.
My shoes squeaked on the polished lino as I walked down the empty corridor. The hospital was never asleep, but some nights, like tonight, it seemed to be holding its breath. Swindon, with its railway yards and the Vickers aircraft works at South Marston, was bound to get it bad eventual, and maybe this would be the time. Not long ago there’d been a raid on Kembrey Street, where the Plessey factory was, only Jerry had missed that and blown a row of houses to bits instead.
Ahead of me, the thump of double doors