The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!. S Worrall C

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      Which is why he is standing on tiptoe with a hooked pole in his hand, trying to open the trapdoor of the attic at Whichert House. Ever since Aunt Dorothy’s son, Michael, broke his leg trying to get up into the attic it has been strictly out of bounds. But Martin has to retrieve some kit.

      The metal hook slides across the face of the trapdoor, but doesn’t find its mark. Martin lets his weight back onto the soles of his bare feet, wipes his brow, then gets up on tiptoe once more, and starts to guide the stick towards the bracket. He looks around him for something to stand on. Then tries again. This time he manages to get the hook into the bracket. He grips the pole with both hands, pulls until the accordion ladder is fully unfurled, tests it for stability, then places his right foot on the first rung.

      At the top of the ladder, he hauls himself upright, careful not to bang his head on the beams, lights a lantern. Old toys. Worn-out carpets. Leather suitcases and trunks. Tea tins filled with rusty nails. Cardboard boxes full of back numbers of The Cornhill Magazine.

      He moves further into the attic, stepping carefully from beam to beam, as only the middle portion is covered with boards. Uncle Charles’ stuff should be at the end of the attic, on the right, under a groundsheet. He holds up the lantern. A sideboard draped in a white sheet drifts like an iceberg in the dark. Two discarded tennis racquets, with frayed and broken strings, lean against a copper fireguard. A jumble of old picture frames lies on the floor. A groundsheet.

      Everything has been left exactly as it was when Uncle Charles came home from Flanders thirty years ago. A battered shaving bowl. A camp bed. A collapsible lantern. The last time the lantern was lit was in the trenches on the Western Front. Martin’s generation vowed that the horrors of the trenches would never happen again. But, in a few weeks, or months, he will be lighting this same lantern. Same battalion. New war.

      He dismantles the lantern and puts it back in its case, picks up the camp bed and puts it and the other things in the groundsheet, carries them across to the trapdoor and goes back down the ladder.

      ‘You found it!’ Uncle Charles is sitting in the kitchen polishing his shoes: a row of black and brown brogues laid out in a neat row next to a shoebox.

      Martin takes out the canvas pouch with the collapsible lantern.

      ‘Goodness! I didn’t know I still had it!’ The older man takes the pouch, opens it and puts the lantern together. ‘These hinges are the tricky part.’

      Like Aunt D., Martin thinks of Charles as a surrogate parent. Ever since he was a boy, Martin has spent his holidays here and in that time he has come to feel far closer to his uncle than he ever felt to his own father. The idea that Martin may carry the same lantern into battle only makes this connection stronger.

      ‘There!’ Uncle Charles clicks the glass sides into place, places a candle inside and lights it. He looks over at Martin with an expression both of love and sorrow. ‘Good company on a cold night. I hope it serves you well, too, dear boy.’

5 AUGUST 1939

       Whichert House

      The sun is high over the Chilterns as Martin speeds through the lanes in the Bomb. It’s his last day before training camp. There’s a fluttering feeling in his stomach, the same he used to get when he was driven back to start the new term at Marlborough when he was a boy. But he is determined to enjoy these last few hours of freedom. Nancy has arrived back from Devon and Hugh Saunders has asked them both over for a game of tennis. On the back seat lie his trusty Dunlop racquet and a bottle of chilled white wine.

      Nancy is already waiting outside Blythe Cottage, dressed in a pleated white skirt, white top, white socks and white plimsolls on her feet. In her arms is a Ladies Slazenger racquet.

      ‘Ready for battle?’ He kisses her and they speed off.

      ‘Not so sure my tennis will live up to the outfit,’ Nancy shouts, holding her hair in the wind.

      The light dances off the bonnet of the Bomb. A field of golden corn stretches away to the right. The hedgerows are choked with wild flowers: cow parsley, vetch, water avens. In Bulstrode Park, a herd of cattle stand chewing the cud, flicking their tails. The branches form a canopy of green above their heads.

      ‘England, in August!’ he cries. ‘Is there anywhere so beautiful in the world?’

      Hugh Saunders is waiting for them in the driveway of a large, Queen Anne, brick house in Gerrards Cross. Since meeting him in the spring, Nancy has come to like this tall, fresh-faced young man, with his inquiring eyes, broad shoulders and athlete’s body. Like Martin, he has been commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. One rank higher, though: as a captain.

      ‘Come and say hallo to everyone.’ Saunders leads them down a path to a grass tennis court. He motions towards a svelte, grey-haired woman sitting under a blue umbrella, in a white tennis skirt and shirt.

      ‘Martin!’ The woman starts to get up. ‘Lovely to see you again.’

      ‘You, too, Connie.’ He gestures to Nancy. ‘And this is Nancy Whelan.’

      ‘Delighted to meet you at last!’ They shake hands. ‘We’ve heard so much about you.’

      ‘Some of it good, I hope,’ Nancy jokes.

      ‘Nearly all of it.’ Hugh’s mother grins affectionately, then indicates a tanned, young girl sitting next to her, reading Vogue and brooding fashionably behind dark glasses. ‘My daughter, Helen.’

      ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Nancy leans forward and shakes the girl’s hand.

      ‘Marvellous!’ says the girl to no one in particular, extending a pale, limp hand.

      Saunders points at a jug and glasses laid out on a folding table covered in a floral tablecloth. ‘Lemonade, Nancy?’

      ‘Thank you, yes.’

      Sitting in the sun, they drink lemonade and talk about the latest news of the battalion, who has got what commission, whose family is trying to protect their son from joining, then Hugh picks up his racquet and a net of balls. ‘Anyone for tennis?’

      As a child, Martin dreamed of playing at Wimbledon. He was good for his age, with a wicked sliced backhand and a serve-volley game ideally suited to grass. He played on his school team and, in the holidays, in Junior tournaments, winning the Under 14s at Great Missenden two years in a row. And he now plays on the Teddy Hall team. The thock of ball on strings. The sunshine on his bare arms and legs. The white outfits. The feel of the grass underfoot. If he ever goes to heaven, he hopes there will be a tennis court there.

      ‘Martin, you team up with Helen, all right?’ Hugh opens the net and drops the balls onto the grass.

      ‘At your service,’ Martin says with a theatrical bow.

      Hugh and Nancy easily win the first СКАЧАТЬ