Dora was speechless. Not only was it not what she’d expected, she’d expected the opposite – for Sam to say that meeting Kathy again had made him realise that he’d been a fool to turn her down in the first place. Or now that Sam had turned up again, she’d realised he was her one true love … How absurd that seemed now, like the plot of some tear-jerking film! But it didn’t make what he’d said seem any more real. That too seemed like something she might only know as someone else’s story – things like this didn’t happen to her, Dora Collins!
But maybe they did … maybe it was real? Sam was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands and looking up at her, expectant and hopeful. Dora’s throat was dry. It was real: he was waiting for a reply. Her heart was thumping so hard and so fast she was surprised the ducks on the pond hadn’t heard it and taken flight; she went hot and then cold. Sam spoke again.
‘I’m sorry, is that such a surprise to you?’
Dora still couldn’t speak, but she managed to nod.
‘I guess it’s too soon for you to give me an answer, then.’
She looked at him wonderingly, then shook her head.
‘Is that a no?’ Sam sounded worried, no, more than worried, alarmed. ‘It’s no to the question?’
‘No,’ she stammered. ‘No, it’s not, but …’
‘Oh Dora!’ His face lit up. ‘You mean you’d consider it? Really? Oh, I – may I?’
Without waiting for an answer, he moved to sit beside her, put his arm around her shoulders and turned her towards him. When she didn’t resist or pull away, just looked at him dumbstruck, he bent his head and kissed her gently on the lips, then pulled back as if he’d gone too far. Dora put out a hand and laid it against his cheek. When she found her voice again, there’d be a lot of talking to do, but for now, she simply wanted to savour the overwhelming sense of relief. More than that – of peace.
As they talked, they walked and walked, Sam gripping her hand tightly and occasionally bringing it to his lips. Round the duck pond, past the allotments, back to the pond. Past the trenches that had been dug against bombing raids and were being filled in again for flowerbeds and the netted stretch of grass that the council were reseeding, finally trying to bring the park back to what it had been before the war. A new start, a new life – and Dora couldn’t believe that she was being offered one as well. She’d given Sam her answer – it was yes, in principle, but there were big questions – huge questions – that she had to ask. She wanted – oh, how she wanted – to give herself up entirely to this new Dora, the heroine of her own romance, but his answers could change everything – again.
‘The thing is, Sam,’ she faltered, ‘I have to ask … are you expecting me to move to Canada? Because—’
Sam burst out laughing.
‘Are you serious? Come on, Dora, I know you better than that! You told me when we went to Birmingham it was the furthest you’d been for twenty years!’
‘So …’
‘I’ll come here, of course!’
He made it sound so easy, as if Canada was a bus ride away. Dora stopped in her tracks.
‘What? You’d do that for me?’
‘In a heartbeat! I have to go back for a while, I need to arrange the sale of the shop, and pack up the house … but then that’s it for me. There’s nothing and no one in Alberta, Canada, to keep me, whereas here, you have your job, your friends and your family – Lily and Jim, anyway.’
Even if he said it was no sacrifice, Dora could hardly take in the enormity of what Sam was intending – and for her.
‘But … if – when you come over here, what are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘For work, I mean? Will you be able to work here?’
‘Oh, Dora.’ Sam stopped walking and Dora stopped too. ‘This is what I’ve been looking into, this is what took the time! The immigration side in itself is no big deal, I knew that. We Canadians don’t even have separate citizenship from Britain.’
Of course, Dora realised, all the people of the Commonwealth counted as British citizens, though she’d never really thought about it before – there’d been no need!
‘But I didn’t want to ask you to marry me and then find out that I couldn’t keep us,’ Sam continued. ‘As if I was going to live off you! That’s why I couldn’t say anything before – I had to go for an interview with your Ministries of This, That and the Other, and the Canadian High Commission. I had to go to London.’
‘London!’
To Dora, it might as well have been Mars. No wonder Sam had needed time to fix things up! She couldn’t believe she’d got things so wrong.
They started walking again, Sam still explaining himself.
‘Then, when I was sure I could get a work permit, I still wasn’t quite sure how I could support us.’ Sam looked triumphant. ‘And that’s where Dennis came in.’
Dora almost stumbled – and almost burst out laughing. Again, how wrong could she have been! The meal at Dennis and Kathy’s she’d ducked out of … when she’d been imagining a tryst between Sam and Kathy over the washing up, Sam had remained at the table, fixing up some work, somehow, with Dennis. But—
‘What work’s he got to offer?’ she asked. ‘I thought he was about to be demobbed and was looking for work himself?’
‘You don’t have to look for work if you set up your own business,’ said Sam, smugly.
‘So you’re going to work for him?’
‘Not for him, with him.’ Sam glanced at his watch. ‘Look, there’s a lot more to tell you yet. Shall we go and get something to drink?’
‘I think that might be a very good idea,’ said Dora.
Dora wouldn’t usually be seen in a pub, and certainly not in the daytime, but this wasn’t a usual kind of day; in fact it was turning into the most unusual day of Dora’s life. Fifteen minutes later, she found herself sitting in a pub garden, nursing a ginger beer. Sam raised his half pint glass to her with a wry look.
‘It should be champagne, I know, but there’ll be time for that when we tell Lily and Jim.’
‘I don’t know what we’re telling them yet!’ Dora was recovering her usual forthrightness. ‘My answer’s still conditional, you know!’
Sam roared with laughter.
‘My, now we see the real you! Is it too late for me to change my mind?’ He took a sip of his drink, both of them knowing he didn’t mean a word of it. ‘OK. So here’s the thing. Apart from getting myself the right papers, this is what I’ve been sorting out. How Dennis and I are going to become partners.’
‘Go on.’ Dora was intrigued.
‘Like I say, the last thing I wanted was to land over here with no means of support. I had to find some way to support myself’ – he reached for her hand again – ‘to support us.’
He’d seen how Dora had lived during the war, but on this visit Sam had been shocked to see her still scrimping and saving, hoarding string, making soup from vegetable peelings, and – he noticed these things – having to wear a lot of the same clothes he remembered from 1943. He didn’t intend them to live off the black market, but even within the restrictions, he was determined she should have a more comfortable life than the one she was living at the moment – a life without worry about money, a life with more leisure and less hard work. He wanted to look after her: she deserved it.
Dora was smiling at him, waiting. He carried on.
‘You know the work Dennis has been doing, overseeing the disposal of all this ex-Canadian gear? Well, he’s got to know some of your guys from the Ministry of Defence. The amount of stuff we left behind is nothing compared with what your guys have got to get rid of, or what the Yanks left here, for that matter. There’s all sorts of things being sold off, re-used, taken down or taken apart.’
So far, that much made sense.
‘The smart thing is working out what to do with it all. Well, through his contacts, Dennis knows what’s going spare. And our plan is to buy up a lot of timber – invasion barges, Nissen huts, what you will, and re-purpose them into things that people want.’
‘And what do people want?’
‘Sheds.’
‘Sheds?’ Dora stared in disbelief.
‘And not just garden sheds. You know during the war a lot of people started keeping chickens, like you? Making a henhouse out of bits of scrap the way Jim did? Well, now people want better housing for the birds they keep at home – and there’s farmers looking to raise them on a bigger scale too.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes.’ Sam took a swig of his drink. ‘You’re going to see a lot more chickens on British dinner tables in future. And all those chickens are going to need housing.’
‘I suppose so …’
‘There’s more. You remember the panic at the start of the war when you Brits were sure you were going to be invaded? All the dogs and cats that were put down? Well, people want to be dog owners again. And dogs need—’
‘Kennels!’ exclaimed Dora.
‘Clever girl!’
It sounded feasible enough. But, her practical side fully reasserting itself now, Dora needed to feel sure.
‘So has Dennis got experience of this kind of thing?’
Sam put down his glass.
‘Of course, you don’t know! His folks have a timber yard back in Canada. He knows all there is to know about wood. And with my hardware background, I know all there is to know about nuts and bolts and netting and hinges and nails and screws.’
‘Right …’
‘I sense a reservation here.’
He could read her like a book, one with very tiny print.
‘Only a small one.’ And it wasn’t that working with Dennis might bring Sam into contact with Kathy – that fear had long gone. Dora had only met Dennis once, but Sam had said himself that he was a bit of a big mouth. She hoped Dennis hadn’t lured Sam into this scheme with a lot of blather.
‘You do trust Dennis, do you? I mean he’s a bit—’
‘Flash? Cocky? I knew deep down you hadn’t taken to him!’
‘No, no,’ Dora backtracked. ‘It’s not fair of me to judge, I hardly know him. I just want to know, is he reliable? He’s not going to let you down? Run out on you?’
‘Dora,’ Sam reassured her, ‘it’s all an act. Underneath the chat, he’s an honest-to-God good guy. When you get to know him better, you’ll see. And he’s been working his socks off for us already. He’s picked up a contract from your Ministry of Defence – big old wooden ammo crates, 50,000 of them! We’ve got to break them down and use what we can to make smaller ones – for the army of occupation in Europe. And any timber that’s split, or not up to par, or not the right size, we get to use, or sell on!’
The idea that someone at the Ministry of Defence thought Dennis was reliable enough to make goods for the British Army was all the reassurance Dora needed.
‘Well. If the Ministry of Defence trust him, who am I to say different?’ she smiled.
Sam seized her hand across the table.
‘Me and Dennis are the perfect partnership. He’ll go out and cut the deals, bring in the business, talk the talk, walk the walk. That’s not me, you know that! I know what I’m good at: I can run things day-to-day – steady the ship, if you like. And before you ask, I’ll be doing the accounts.’
For someone who’d always had to worry about money, that in itself was very reassuring to Dora.
‘And if you – or Lily and Jim – want to see it,’ Sam continued, ‘we’ve got a business plan. While I’ve been on long-distance calls and trips to London, Dennis has been talking to the bank and found us some premises on the road between here and Nettleford, so it’s halfway for each of us to travel. So – any more questions?’
‘Just one,’ said Dora. ‘The long-distance calls home? Were they about your shop?’
‘Ah! That’s the other thing! My Uncle Chad has loved every minute. He was bored out of his tiny mind, retired, and dreading me coming back. He wants to take it over and run it with his son, who’s going to live in my apartment above. So I’ll be free of the place without having to put it on the open market!’
‘You have had a lot to arrange!’
Sam gripped her hand and Dora didn’t take it away. Drinking in a pub in the daytime! A man holding her hand across the table! Whatever next!
‘I wish I could have told you. Maybe I should have – I didn’t realise it would take so long or be so complicated. Do you forgive me?’
A shaft of sunlight fell across them, illuminating the sticky tabletop, the curling beer mats, the chip on Sam’s glass. With Sam across the table from her, his eyes shining brightly, his face so honest and hopeful, it looked to Dora like paradise.
‘Would I be here if I didn’t?’
‘True.’ Sam squeezed her hand. ‘Shall I ask you again? Do you think you might be able to give an unconditional answer now?’
Dora smiled. She wasn’t sure her answer had ever been conditional – in truth, she might even have considered going to Canada if that had been the only way not to lose him.
‘It’s yes. Yes, Sam, I would love to be your wife.’
Sam leaned across the table and kissed her, the same gentle pressure as before. So that was what came next, thought Dora, being kissed in public as well! At her age! If Jean Crosbie could see her now …!
Sam sat back and raised his glass.
‘You’ve made me the happiest man alive. To the future, Dora. To us.’
Dora asked Sam to leave her to walk home alone, saying she needed some time to get her head straight. He understood at once. But before they parted, he drew her into a quiet alleyway and took her in his arms, properly, for the first time. Then he kissed her gently once more. Only then did he let her go.
Dora wasn’t sure how she got home: she didn’t register a single thing she passed, not the shops, the houses, the roads or the pavements. As she turned into Brook Street, a neighbour crossing the road raised his hat and said, ‘Good afternoon’. Dora looked at him as if he’d materialised out of a manhole.
So much had happened to her in the space of a few hours that she couldn’t process it – and how she’d begin to tell Lily and Jim she had no idea. Down the entry, touching the cold bricks as she went, hoping to bring herself back to earth … Through the back gate, the latch warm from the sun … Into the yard, past the bobbing heads of the hens …
Dora glanced up at Lily and Jim’s window at the back of the house. The curtains were drawn. It could be simply to stop the sun fading the eiderdown and the rug, but in the kitchen, there was a basket of gooseberries on the table, and Jim’s old gardening shoes kicked off by the back door. Dora smiled to herself. They were doing what any sensible young couple would do on their afternoon off – they’d gone to bed. She felt a shiver run through her and had to grip the table. One day, possibly quite soon, she and Sam would be a couple too, not a young couple, but a couple all the same, with all that entailed. The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating. But didn’t they say ‘you’re as young as you feel’? And Dora felt seventeen again.