Rose didn’t return my telephone call. I eventually went down to the Post Office and sent her a telegram, but she didn’t reply to that either. By now, all the men in the camp and the small number of locals who worked here too – the clerk who’d replaced Archie Thomson after he, Isabel and their son had left for Edinburgh, and the two women who came up to the camp to do the laundry – had been interviewed, but no spy had been uncovered and no one was any closer to working out how the shipping information might be reaching the Germans. Despite that, all leave was still cancelled for the time being. Rumour had it the higher-ups wanted to start widening their net and interviewing locals with the help of the island’s police officer. Meanwhile, almost every time I was on the night watch, I’d see the hostile contacts appear on my console screen in a pattern that now felt inevitable.
At last, my two rest days arrived. After spending the morning of the first one trying and mostly failing to catch up on some sleep, I decided to head over to the NAAFI.
‘Looking forward to the show?’ Lewis greeted me when I joined him and Len in the queue for the tea urn.
I looked at him blankly, still half asleep. ‘Show?’
‘ENSA. It’s tonight.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Sure.’ I’d been so miserable about losing my leave that I’d forgotten all about it. I contemplated giving it a miss, then remembered I’d invited Hedda.
‘We’re taking bets on how bad it’s gonna be,’ Len said. ‘Gotta be better than staring at the four walls of our huts all evening, though.’
Is it? I thought, a little drearily.
Behind us, I heard the doors to the NAAFI open, and whistles and cat calls. Len glanced round and raised his eyebrows, one side of his mouth quirking up in a smile. ‘Huh, looks like the entertainment might have turned up early, fellas.’
I started to turn round too, but before I could see who everyone was whistling at, someone put their hands over my eyes and a familiar voice said, ‘So there you are!’
I whirled round. Rose, looking very modern in smart slacks and a brown woollen jumper, was behind me, smiling.
I blinked, wondering if I was hallucinating. ‘What – what are you doing here?’ I said.
‘Why, I’m here with ENSA, of course!’ she said, and then I noticed the man standing behind her: her manager, Clive. He gave me a weak smile. He looked tired and a little green around the gills.
‘It’s your unit giving the concert? Why didn’t you tell me? No wonder I couldn’t get hold of you!’
She caught my hands in hers. ‘We weren’t sure it was even going to happen until a couple of days ago – the weather, you know. After that I decided it might as well be a surprise!’
‘It sure is,’ I stammered, still not quite able to believe that it was really her – that she was really here. Everyone in the NAAFI was looking at us.
‘Well, are you going to kiss me or not?’ Rose demanded, a dimple appearing in one cheek. I bent my head to press my lips to hers, and the whole NAAFI erupted into whistles and cheers again. I drew back self-consciously.
‘We’re staying in the hotel in Talafirth, if you can call it a hotel – there’s hardly room to swing a cat! – but I convinced Clive we should come up and have a look at the camp before the show tonight.’
Clive gave me another of those weak smiles.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.
‘Fine, fine. I was a little seasick on the way over here, that’s all.’
‘Oh, Clive, you should have told me you were still feeling ill!’ Rose said, turning towards him with an oddly tender expression. ‘I would never have dragged you all the way up here if I’d known!’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right as rain in an hour or two. I wouldn’t mind a sit down, though.’
‘You do that. I’ll bring you a cup of tea,’ Rose said.
I watched him walk across to a table in the far corner of the NAAFI.
‘Well, aren’t you going to introduce us?’ Len said.
‘Oh. Of course. Len, Lewis, this is Rose, my fiancée,’ I said. ‘Rose, this is Len Kane and Lewis Harper.’
‘Very pleased to meet you both,’ Rose said, that dimple appearing again as she shook their hands.
Len grinned, a devilish gleam in his eye.
‘Hands off, Kane, she’s Bill’s,’ Lewis said good-naturedly.
Rose made a face. ‘Gosh, I’m not a pair of boots, you know.’ But there was laughter in her eyes.
‘Sorry. I’m only joking.’
She raised an eyebrow at Lewis, then turned back to me and pressed her lips to my cheek.
When we’d got our mugs of tea, Rose took one to Clive, and I watched them talk for a moment, Rose touching his arm, before she headed back over to me. We sat down with Len and Lewis. ‘I can’t stay long,’ Rose told me. ‘Your Commanding Officer – Flight Lieutenant Jackson, I think he said his name was – is driving us back to the hotel so we can all get ready.’
True to her word, once she’d drunk her tea, she pushed her chair back, saying to Len and Lewis, ‘Thank you, boys. I’ll see you tonight.’ Then she looped her arm through mine – I’d stood up too – and said, ‘Walk me out, Bill?’ and held up a hand in Clive’s direction. 'I won’t be long!’ she called to him.
He nodded; he still looked tired, but there was colour in his face again now.
Outside, Rose and I kissed again, properly this time, now no one was watching. As she pressed against me I felt all my old desire for her rushing back. ‘Oh, Bill, I’ve missed you!’ she said when we came up for air. ‘I was worried you might forget me.’
‘Forget you?’ I said. ‘How could I forget you? You were the only damn thing keeping me going when I was in that hospital, and as for when I was sent here…’
I trailed off. I didn’t want to think about how I’d felt when I first arrived in Shetland; how completely alone I’d been, with only the terrible memories of what had happened to keep me company.
‘Did you get my telegram?’ I said instead.
She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been home for a few weeks – when I’ve not been travelling with the unit, I’ve been staying with Mummy. London was getting to be such a bore what with all the air raids, and there wasn’t a decent afternoon tea to be found anywhere! Although I expect it’s even worse here!’ she added, looking round with a little shiver. ‘It’s terribly bleak, isn’t it? Even worse than you described in your letters after you first arrived! It feels like the ends of the earth!’
I tried to remember exactly what I’d said to her back then, but I couldn’t. All I remembered was the black, dragging misery that had now completely faded away. In its place was something that couldn’t quite be called contentment – I still had those nightmares about Robert in the plane almost every night – but wasn’t far off. I had friends here now, and most of the time, I felt OK. Just yesterday I’d gone for a walk, and even in the midst of my gloom over my cancelled leave, I’d been able to appreciate the vastness of the blue skies that stretched over the island from horizon to horizon; the way the sun glittered a dazzling silver on the sea. There’d even been a hint of spring in the air. It was nothing tangible – the daffodils that several locals had promised me would soon be blooming all over the island in spring proper were only just poking their heads above the ground – but even now, with clouds covering the sky once again, the air felt different, softer somehow, with the promise of warmer, longer days just around the corner. Bleak? No. Quiet, perhaps, but not bleak.
As for being able to get a decent afternoon tea, well, it was a pity there wouldn’t be time to introduce Rose to Elizabeth Sinclair’s scones. If there had been, she might have changed her mind about that too.
‘Anyway, why did you wire me? Is something wrong?’ Rose said, breaking into my thoughts; I’d become lost in them without even realising.
‘I can’t get leave next week – it’s been cancelled.’
Her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, Bill, really?’
‘Really. I’m sorry, sweetheart.’
‘Why?’
‘They need all hands on deck here at the station. That’s all I can say, I’m afraid.’
She gazed at the ground, digging the toe of her shoe into the grass, her mouth twisted unhappily.
‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ I said gently.
She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. And it’s probably all worked out for the best, really. You’d have to come and see me at Mummy and Daddy’s, and Daddy’s being an absolute beast at the moment.’
I was yet to meet her father, but she had opened up to me in her letters about him and I always remembered her telling me about him the first time we met. He still treats me like a child, she’d said. It’s infuriating!
‘He’s putting pressure on you about the wedding again, eh?’
‘Not half. He thinks I should have been married off years ago. As if being twenty-four makes me an ancient crone or something!’
I drew her close again and kissed the top of her head, breathing in the slightly herby scent of her shampoo and marvelling at the solid warmth of her slim body against mine, still not quite believing that she was here; that I was actually holding her in my arms after we’d been apart for so long. ‘Forget him,’ I said. ‘He’s there, and you’re here. We’ll just have to make the most of it.’
Briefly – just briefly – a memory of those moments with Hedda at Christmas and on the beach drifted into my mind.
I shoved them resolutely away.