Jack cycled along the deserted streets, the few delivery vans materialising through an early morning mist, creating a surreal landscape. He had half a mind to sketch it if he hadn’t been in such a hurry to get home. He had talked to his mother about Eleanor many times since they had been together and in all that time they hadn’t met, but he was excited at the thought they would today. Making an arm signal right, he moved into the centre of the road, pedalling faster, adrenaline and excitement surging through his body at the thought of how they would get along.
When he turned into Queenstown Road and neared his house, he noticed the ambulance outside and was overtaken by a terrible sense of dread, and of deja vu. An ambulance had been at their door on two occasions over the past few years: the first was when his father had a heart attack, and the second when his mother had begun deteriorating and fallen down the stairs. The sight of it now made Jack sick with panic and he rode as fast as he could, demounting quickly at the gate.
He saw two ambulance-women walk out of the neighbour’s front door carrying a stretcher, then lifting their neighbour, Mr Walsh, into the back of the waiting vehicle.
Jack reached up to support himself on the doorframe, eyes cast down as he caught his breath. Then he watched as the ambulance doors closed, the driver took her seat and they drove away. Only when they were out of sight did he feel recovered enough to go inside.
It was too early for his mother to be awake, so he washed and changed before heading to the kitchen to make a start on her breakfast, but she was already there in her wheelchair, measuring oats into a saucepan at the kitchen table.
‘Morning, luv,’ Anne said.
‘Morning, Mum,’ he said, bending to kiss her forehead. ‘How are you?’
‘Better—I treated myself and took a sleeping pill,’ she said sheepishly.
‘That is allowed, isn’t it?’ he asked, a little worried.
‘Once in a while is okay—it just sets me up if I have a good night’s sleep. Talking of which, where did you get to last night?’
He frowned, feeling even more worried. ‘Didn’t Beth come?’ he said.
‘Yes, Beth came. She brought round a lovely rabbit stew. Oh, and before I forget, this came for you…’ She picked an envelope off the kitchen table and handed it to him.
It was on War Office stationery, and so he quickly put it in his pocket.
‘Well, aren’t you going to open it?’ she said, after letting a moment pass.
‘It’s okay. Let’s have breakfast first. There’s no rush.’ Except that whatever the letter was, his new orders or posting, he hadn’t expected to hear so soon.
‘Do you want some porridge?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please,’ he said and watched as she measured another cupful of oats into the saucepan, her unsteady hand spilling some cereal across the table.
The letter had come before he’d had the chance to look for a care facility for Anne, or for him and Beth to talk to her about the idea of leaving her home. And before she had met Eleanor.
‘I’m really glad you had a good night, Mum, because I’m going to bring Eleanor back to meet you later…if that’s alright with you?’
His mother smiled. ‘Of course it is, dear. It will be lovely. You know how much I’ve wanted to meet her.’
‘I know,’ he said, smiling. ‘She’s looking forward to it too.’
‘I haven’t got anything in. Can you pop down the shop and get something?’
‘Like what?’
‘Something we can offer her with a cup of tea. I don’t like not having anything for visitors. It’s not very welcoming.’
‘Mum, Eleanor isn’t going to mind. She’s coming to meet you. Look, I’ll try and pick something up on our walk. I’ve got to go to the studio first…there’s something I need to finish off.’ His fingers brushed the envelope in his pocket.
‘Sure. You go and get yourself sorted. I’ll have this ready in a tick.’
Jack went upstairs to his room and sat on the end of his bed, looking around at the place where he had spent most of his life. His football trophies were still on top of the dresser, his graduation certificate from Central Saint Martins School of Art and some art prizes on the walls. His Chelsea football scarves and paraphernalia hung from the back of his door, the locked cabinet holding cameras and binoculars, shelves of art equipment too valuable to be left at his studio. This room had taken him from boyhood to manhood, from civilian to war artist, and hopefully from bachelor to husband—but first he needed to know what the SOE had planned for him next.
He took the envelope out of his pocket and slid his finger under one corner. The instructions were brief, only three lines in thick Courier font. He re-read them and then tore them up as he’d been instructed to, placing the paper in the grate and setting it alight, pausing to light a cigarette as he watched it burn. He inhaled as he glanced around again and then crossed the landing to his parents’ old bedroom.
His mother had moved downstairs the day their father died; she hadn’t wanted to sleep in the same bed they had shared for thirty years. Her condition had made the decision absolute. The curtains were partly drawn and the room held the spell of life suspended—thick dust, little air circulating. He went straight to the dresser where she kept her jewellery and, opening the drawer, took out the small black leather box. Inside was the engagement ring she had promised him: a thin gold band with a diamond solitaire. It had cost his father three months of wages at the brewery, but it had also earned him a dressing-down when his mother had discovered the cost.
Jack put the ring inside his jacket. The war had shown him how almost nothing was certain anymore, but there was one thing he could be sure of, and that was his love for Eleanor. His mother had always intended him to have the ring but he wanted to surprise her, so he would let her know that he had taken it once she had met his darling girl—and once Eleanor had said yes.
He and Eleanor had arranged to meet beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park at two o’clock and take a bus to Putney. They would walk the rest of the way along the river to Kew Gardens, if the weather held. An artists group—botanical illustrators, mostly—met there regularly and Jack knew quite a number of them from before the war, when most of his time was spent on book illustrations and lithographs.
After the visit with his mother he’d once again worked longer at his studio than he’d intended, struggling to complete the portrait that a colonel had commissioned. The fee would only be enough for eight weeks of medicine, and he needed more, since there was no knowing how long he would be gone.
Then he had double-checked all the equipment he was given at his last SOE briefing: the radio transmitter, the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, the US pistol, the materials to make invisible ink, and the measures of silk, which he had discovered were more effective than paper for printing ciphers and not nearly as noisy as paper when hidden beneath clothing. He had carefully concealed all of this in his artist’s chest alongside the traditional art materials.
He was a few minutes late, and Eleanor was already on the bench alongside the lake waiting for him. Her face lit up. She was wearing an outfit he hadn’t seen before: a floral dress with red velvet ribbons at the neckline and around the end of its long sleeves, and a red felt hat slouched to one side.
There was a warm breeze. Summer was just loosening its grip, even though some of the trees already looked sparse and the birds had started their migration south. The lake was dotted with dainty white boats, and Eleanor and Jack walked arm in arm along the path, watching boaters churn the surface with their oars, meandering across the grey lumpy surface.
Jack still hadn’t worked out how on earth he was going to do this. Should he start by popping the question or by telling her about the War Office letter? Both seemed of equal importance, albeit in different ways. Before coming here he had tried to figure it out while finishing the colonel’s oil portrait, but he had become too distracted and made a mistake; in fact, most of his work had involved toning down the yellow with green.
A small troupe of actors was performing A Midsummer’s Night Dream to an audience in a semicircle of red-and-white striped deckchairs, and Jack and Eleanor watched for a few minutes. The hand-drawn posters declared the performers to be the Bayswater Amateur Dramatic Society, and one of them was a fairy who shook a tambourine vigorously at dramatic intervals, alongside a young man on a French windpipe that gave an ethereal air to the proceedings.
Jack had to prise Eleanor away. She was still recounting Shakespeare’s verse and describing her childhood attempts to put on the play with Cecily—without great success—when they reached the bandstand. Jack had made his decision about how to proceed. He stopped and turned to her. ‘Will you please just stop talking for one minute and come with me?’
He knew her well enough to know that she was torn between keeping quiet and being cross, but she kept her lips closed as she followed him up the steps.
The bandstand was empty but the pipe music followed them and they could hear brief snatches of the actors’ dialogue as the wind rose and fell. A honeyed light from the low autumn sun reached through the ironwork, creating patterns across the timber floor and speckling their clothes.
Eleanor looked more beautiful to him today than ever. He drank in the delicate golden weave of her hair, her Botticelli lips, and the high arch of her brow that made it difficult for him to read her. He would never tire of her face.
‘Do you remember the day we first met, when we came here?’ he asked, gazing down at her.
‘It wasn’t the first time we met! You were actually quite rude and walked out on me the day we met.’
‘Well, it was after the committee meeting, when we walked through Hyde Park.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘And do you remember standing over there?’ he said, pointing to the isthmus on Duck Island.
Eleanor looked eastwards to where the trees had created a grotto of shade and light, and the water created striations of colour where it met the fauna on the bank of the lake.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we stood and looked over here at the party, wondering who they were.’
‘And we watched them dance,’ he said, reaching towards her.
She glowered at him and then took hold of his left hand, letting him place his right hand around her waist.
Then they began to move, her footsteps following his: first just one step to the right, then forward, then to the left and forward again, until they were waltzing around the bandstand in time with the French windpipe.
At first Eleanor laughed, but when she saw how serious he was, how fixed his gaze on her was, she grew serious too.
After a few minutes the music stopped, and their dancing slowed until they were standing motionless together. He knew that this was his moment—that it was now or never—but the words wouldn’t form and his mouth was completely dry.
‘What is it, Jack?’ she asked. ‘Whatever is the matter?’
‘Do you remember why the couples were here?’
‘Yes, it was a wedding party.’
He was still holding her as he felt inside his pocket for the leather box.
‘Eleanor, I know we’ve not known each other for very long,’ he said, ‘and that I’m probably not the first chap who has asked and you’ve turned down, but you are the only girl I have asked—’ he smiled ‘—and the only girl I have ever loved…could ever love.’
He brought out the box.
She still hadn’t spoken, so he carried on, nervously filling the silence. ‘This was my mother’s ring. I would have bought you one, but it means a great deal for me to give you this…’ He waited for Eleanor’s reaction. Her eyes were focused on the box, so he opened it. ‘Will you please answer me?’
‘But you haven’t asked me anything,’ she said with a smile.
‘Eleanor, will you—?’
‘And you need to be kneeling,’ she said.
He went down on one knee, taking her hand with his free one.
The path had grown busy with workers on lunchbreaks, nannies pushing prams and walkers enjoying the scenery, and he noticed how people were looking in their direction. He needed to hurry up before his nerves gave out; he hadn’t even stopped to think that the answer might be no and what he would do then.
He took a deep breath, noticing the pink flush that had appeared on her face. ‘Eleanor, will you marry me?’
Her cheeks dimpled as her face broke into a huge smile and she squeezed his hands. ‘Yes, Jack. Yes, of course I will.’
He was on his feet again and lifting her off the ground, twirling her around as they kissed. He let out a whoop of delight, and she threw back her head and laughed. Once they had stopped spinning and laughing and had caught their breath, he took the ring from the box. She held out her hand and he slipped the ring easily onto her finger.
A couple on the grass clapped and some passers-by stopped to see what all the excitement was about, an amateur photographer among them. He caught Eleanor and Jack in the flash of his bulb.
Then Jack noticed something about the ring. ‘Oh, dear, it’s too big,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, a jeweller can fix it.’
He found it amusing to watch her admire the ring on her finger, looking at it from different angles. Then she took it off and gave it back to him.
‘I had better not wear it until we get it fixed—I would hate to lose it.’
‘Well, yes…but no, we can’t…’ he began, feeling very awkward.
He hadn’t wanted to tell her yet. He’d wanted to enjoy the moment and talk about their plans, but now he felt that it was wrong to make her wait.
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’ve got my posting, Eleanor. I leave in three days.’
‘Where to?’ she said, her glow fading, a pale hue taking its place.
‘I’m not sure yet, but I suspect North Africa,’ he lied, wishing he could tell her the truth.
‘But, but…you can’t go now.’ She averted her gaze.
‘I have to, Eleanor.’
Her mouth was slightly open in what looked like disbelief. She fell quiet and he supposed she was considering the news reports that had been coming in about the heavy casualties in Malta.
‘Is it what you want?’ she asked, lips quivering as she struggled to stay composed.
‘I don’t have any choice, my love. None of us do—it’s our duty. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?’
Her whole demeanour had changed and he wished he could have taken it back, that they could have shared their moment just a little longer, extending the memory of being together—and of planning a life.