Elizabeth Elgin - The Linden Walk

‘No you didn’t. Can I borrow your hankie please,’ she whispered.

‘Be my guest.’ He pushed her a little way from him, dabbing her eyes, then giving her the handkerchief, telling her to blow her nose.

‘Good job it’s getting dark,’ she said sniffily. ‘I must look a mess.’

‘Yes, you must. Your mascara, I shouldn’t wonder, is all over your cheeks – and my shirt front, too – as well as your lipstick.’

‘It isn’t funny, Drew. I meant it. I did love you. It’s why I’m going away.’

‘But you can’t go away. What about Daisy? What about your house?’

‘I’d pack in my job for a couple of months – see if I liked it. Then if I did I’d come back and sell up.’

‘But you didn’t like Kenya, you said so; never wanted to go back, you once told me.’ He said it softly, coaxingly, as if reasoning with a child.

‘I didn’t – don’t. I’d stay here if just once you’d say you love me, even though you didn’t mean it. And if sometimes you would kiss me properly like that night outside Wrens’ Quarters, when Daisy wasn’t there …’

They began to walk, then, climbing the boundary fence to stand at the crossroads beside the signpost. Away from the trees, it was lighter.

‘You look just fine – your mascara, I mean,’ Drew said.

‘That’s okay, then. Daisy won’t be asking questions, will she, when I get back to Foxgloves.’

They walked slowly, reluctantly, as if both knew there were things to say before they got to Daisy’s house, though neither knew where those words would lead.

‘I’m sorry, Lyn, that you were hurt so much. Those brotherly pecks we’ve been having lately – I thought it was what you wanted. I didn’t realize that – well, that after Kitty you’d gone on carrying a torch for me, sort of. And that morning I rang Daisy to tell her I’d got engaged, you spoke to me, too, and sounded glad for me. You said you hoped we’d both be happy.’

‘Yes, and then I sat on the bottom stair and cried my eyes out. The entire Wrennery must have heard me. You thought I was a good-time girl, Drew? It was the impression I liked to give, till I met you.’

‘It would still have been Kitty,’ he said gently. ‘She knocked me sideways.’

‘I know. And I wasn’t glad about what happened to her. When she died, all I could think was that it could have been Daisy or me, in the Liverpool Blitz. It was damn awful luck. I tried not to think about you and how terrible it would be when you got to know.

‘But I was sad about Kitty. I had to bottle everything up because Daisy was in such a state, kept weeping and wanting Keth, but there was only my shoulder for her to cry on.’

‘There’s a seat a bit further down – I think we’ve got to talk, Lyn.’ He took her hand and they walked to the new wooden memorial bench. ‘When I came back from Australia and got my demob, I didn’t go straight home to Rowangarth.’

‘I know you didn’t. We ran into each other, in Liverpool. Remember? It was blowing, and raining icicles. You seemed lost, as if you were looking for something.’

‘I was. Or maybe I was convincing myself that Kitty really wasn’t there and never would be again. So I stayed the night, then caught the first train out next morning. But she wasn’t at Rowangarth either, nor in the conservatory nor the wild garden. All I could find of her was a wooden grave-marker with her name on it. It was like a last goodbye.’

‘It must have torn you apart, Drew. Are you ever going to forget her?’

‘No. She happened and I can’t begin to pretend she didn’t. But at least I’ve accepted the way it is. Mother told me she wasted too many years raging against the world after her husband Andrew died. She begged me to try not to do the same.

‘When finally she went to France to his grave, she had to accept he was dead, she told me. So I was luckier than she was. At least I was spared the bitterness. All I have to contend with now is the loneliness.’

‘And I’ve just made a right mess of it, haven’t I?’ Lyn whispered. ‘My performance in the wood must have shocked you. Sorry if I embarrassed you.’

‘You shocked me, yes, because I’d never really realized how you felt. Even after the war was over and you started visiting Daisy and Keth and we met up again and –’

‘And walked, and talked!’

‘And walked,’ he laughed, ‘and talked like old friends.’

‘All very nice and chummy, till I put the cat among the pigeons.’

‘Among the rooks ! But are you really thinking of going to Kenya?’

‘Thinking, yes, but I won’t go. And Drew – before the soul-searching stops, this is your chance to cut and run; give me a wide berth next time I come to Foxgloves. Because I won’t change.’

‘You must have loved me a lot,’ he said softly.

‘I did. I do. I always will. And if you can still bear to have me around after tonight – well, you don’t have to marry me. If sometimes we could be closer , sort of. It’s just that I’m sick to the back teeth of being a virgin, still.’

‘Lyndis Carmichael.’ He laid an arm across her shoulders and pulled her closer. ‘What on earth am I to do with you?’

‘Like I said, you don’t have to marry me …’

‘Oh, but I do! You can love twice, Mother said, but differently. So shall we give it a try, you and me? Knowing that Kitty will always be there and that sometimes people will talk about her just because she was Kitty and a part of how it used to be, at Rowangarth?

‘Knowing that every time you and I walk through the churchyard or down Holdenby main street, we shall see her there? And can you accept that every June, Catchpole will take white orchids to her grave and that she was my first love? Knowing all that, will you be my last love, Lyn?’

For a moment she said nothing, because all at once there were tears again, ready to spill over, and she wouldn’t weep; she wouldn’t !

‘That really was the most peculiar proposal I ever had.’ She blew her nose, noisily. ‘Come to think of it, it’s the only proposal I ever had! It – er – was a proposal?’

‘It was, but I think I’d better start again. I want you with me always, Lyn. Will you marry me?’

He still hadn’t said he loved her, she thought wonderingly, as a star began to shine low in the sky, and bright. But he would say it. She could wait, because now tomorrows were fashionable, and people could say the word without crossing their fingers.

Their lips touched; gently at first and then more urgently, and as she pulled away to catch her breath she looked over his shoulder at the star; first star – wishing star. So she closed her eyes, searching with her lips for his, wishing with all her heart for a child with clinging fingers that was little and warm and smelled of baby soap. Two children. Maybe three.

‘I think,’ she said shakily, ‘that if you were to kiss me again as in properly and passionately, I’d say, “Thanks, Drew. I will.”’

It seemed right, somehow, and very comforting that as they kissed again, a pale crescent moon should slip from behind a cloud to hang over Rowangarth’s old, enduring roof as new moons always had, and that from the top of the tallest oak in Brattocks Wood, a blackbird began to sing Sunset.

As it always would.

At the house called Foxgloves where Keth and Daisy lived off the Creesby road, all was quiet. Bemused, Lyndis gazed into the fire. It had really happened, Drew asking her to marry him and she saying yes. A very calm yes, considering she had been dry-mouthed and shaking all over. She still couldn’t quite believe it. The wayward little pulse behind her nose still did a pitty-pat whenever she thought about it and to bring herself down to earth, she would close her eyes and cross her fingers and pray with all her heart that nothing would happen to prevent it. Because it had happened before, though lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place – well, did it? Fate couldn’t do it again to Drew. Not when Kitty had been killed by a lousy flying bomb when everyone thought the war – in Europe at least – was all but over.