Romantic Association - Loves Me, Loves Me Not

The King, in his Christmas broadcast, spoke of the dark days we had lived through and of the joys of being together at last to share the things we found most precious. But also of those who would never return and how we would remember them with pride; how we must pray that these brave men and women had found everlasting peace. I found myself wondering what kind of peace Raymond had found.

It was spooky, really, how it happened. One night in January the band at the Roxy was playing the Dick Haymes hit Laura, a slow and smoochy number. My partner was Ron, the gangling lad from the bacon counter. The glitter ball was spilling its usual magic that softened faces and hinted at unspoken dreams.

Carried away, I found myself thinking of Laura, my beautiful friend, who had waltzed off with my beau, and yet she still had a place in my heart. For a moment I forgot my partner’s two left feet and his nervous grin. I was back in the days when Laura and Raymond had held us all spellbound with their dancing.

Then I became aware that some of the dancers had stopped and that they were all looking in the same direction, shocked.

Forgetting that I was supposed to let my partner lead, I steered him through the crowd until I could see. And then I gripped the poor lad’s arms so fiercely that he yelped with pain. Raymond was there.

Perfectly still, he stared into the crowd. As his gaze roamed over the couples he grew more and more agitated. The band had become aware that no one was dancing and had stopped playing. I pushed poor Ron rudely aside.

In the silence Raymond noticed me. ‘Where is she?’

I took his hand and I led him away from the dance floor and into the foyer.

When I collected my coat from Hilda, the cloakroom attendant I saw a battered suitcase resting on the counter.

‘It’s his,’ Hilda said, nodding towards Raymond, her eyes round with wonder. ‘Still a smashing-looking lad, isn’t he? Even in that awful-looking demob suit.’

I put on my coat, picked up Raymond’s suitcase and took his arm. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say and he must have sensed my confusion.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I knew she wasn’t here. I suppose I just didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I thought maybe Ted and Thelma would put me up at the Seacrest but they couldn’t show me the door quick enough.’ He smiled dejectedly. ‘I expect I’d better find somewhere for the night.’

‘That’s all right,’ I told him. ‘You’re coming home with me.’

My mother was in the kitchen, concentrating on the pan of milk heating for cocoa. She didn’t lift her eyes when she heard the back door open. ‘My, you’re home early.’

The silence must have alerted her for at last she turned. ‘Good God. Raymond.’

In that split second of inattention the milk rose in the pan and would have boiled over if I hadn’t rushed forward and lifted it from the heat.

‘Well, shut the door, then,’ my mother said. ‘You’ll want some supper.’

Raymond looked bemused but he sat at the kitchen table while my mother warmed up what was left of the soup we’d had earlier. Her eye fell on his suitcase.

‘You’d best go and make up the bed in the spare room,’ she told me. ‘Although I’d better warn you, lad,’ she said to Raymond, ‘it’s cold in there.’

This brought the first smile to Raymond’s face. ‘I think I can cope with that.’

I hurried upstairs to get clean sheets from the airing cupboard, all the while thinking of everything other than a cold bedroom that Raymond might have had to endure since I’d last seen him.

Down again, I found my father in the kitchen drinking his cocoa. We sat together, a comfortable gathering, although Raymond was quiet.

‘Well, then,’ my mother said when we had finished. ‘I’ll leave you to wash the dishes, our Jeannie. Don’t stay up too long, will you?’

Despite my mother’s instruction, we talked well into the early hours.

I think it was something to do with my mother’s matter-of-fact way of greeting him, but by now Raymond had thawed a little. ‘No one else survived the crash. By some fantastic fluke I was flung clear with hardly a scratch on me. I felt so guilty.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I was the pilot, wasn’t I? And they couldn’t even trust me to get them home safely.’ He stared down at the table. ‘A Dutch family found me. By then the plane was burning. They dragged me away. Took me in. I couldn’t speak, not even to thank them.’

‘Shock?’

‘Maybe. They hid me until the war ended, then they handed me over to the British army. I was sent to a military hospital near Cologne. I still couldn’t speak. They thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. I had difficulty in remembering my own name. I think I was trying to escape from who I was.’

He looked up suddenly. ‘Do you think that’s crazy?’

‘No.’

‘Then the nurses arranged a dance. They dragged along anyone who could walk and some who couldn’t. The band began to play. And I remembered Laura.’

Now it seemed as if he couldn’t stop talking. All his memories of that time rushed out. I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep.

The next day, Sunday, my mother said we should let Raymond have a lie-in. I helped Mum prepare the vegetables and then I went down to the Seacrest.

Thelma was serving breakfasts but the only guests were a middle-aged couple and their airman son who had just been demobbed. So I sat at one of the empty tables with a cup of coffee. Every now and then Laura’s mother gave me a nervous glance. When the guests left the dining room she joined me. ‘I can guess why you’re here.’

‘What did you do with his letters?’

She wasn’t prepared for that. ‘Letters?’ She tried to sound surprised.

‘Raymond wrote to Laura, he never got an answer.’ I stared at her and she couldn’t meet my gaze.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I mean, some letters did come but it was too late. We didn’t want to upset her.’

I leaned back and studied her, obviously wanting to escape but not knowing how to do it with any semblance of dignity.

The night before, Raymond had told me that as soon as his troubled mind had gained some equilibrium he had written both to his mother and Laura. Very soon he’d had an answer from his family solicitor regretting to inform him that his mother had passed away not long after receiving the news of his plane being shot down.

‘My mother was all alone,’ Raymond said. ‘My father died some years ago.’

‘How dreadful.’ I reached across the table and took his hands.

‘But Laura never replied to my letters. I was frantic. I thought she might have died in an air raid. I tried to persuade the powers that be to release me—compassionate grounds and all that—but they said I was mentally unstable. In the end a wise nursing sister pointed out to them that it was not knowing what had happened to my fiancée that was making me unstable. Grudgingly they agreed. So I came here and they told me that she had gone—had married someone else. She hadn’t waited.’

‘But you were—’

‘Posted missing, presumed dead. Presumed dead. She didn’t wait very long to find out if I’d really kicked the bucket, did she?’

There was a silence as we stared at each other. ‘Did Thelma tell you who Laura married?’

He returned the pressure of my hands and smiled at me sadly. ‘She married Bill. I’m sorry, Jeannie.’

I couldn’t speak; I just held on to his hands. He seemed equally reluctant to let mine go.

‘Thelma told me that my letters had never arrived but I’m not sure whether I believe her.’

And that was why I was sitting in the dining room of the Seacrest the next morning. My silence must have prompted Thelma to try and justify herself.