Truly, Madly, Deeply. Romantic Novelist's Association

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      ‘I hadn’t forgotten, no. I thought we could sit the dances out. You can take me in my wheelchair.’

      She looked serious for a change. Perhaps she felt the same as he did; that something remarkable and truly wonderful had occurred.

      ‘Oh, all right, so we’ll sit the dances out.’

      The dance was being held in the canteen, the tables folded in a corner, piled on top of one another. He could limp a bit, his wheelchair was outside, and they were holding hands and sitting on one of the benches tucked against the walls. He was keeping his leg well out of the way, not so much bothered that someone would fall over it but that they would stand on his unprotected toes. The big room was crowded and the band played ear splittingly loudly.

      ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.

      ‘My plane crashed on landing,’ he said simply. ‘I was the rear gunner and thrown forward. Broke half a dozen bones. We’d taken a few hits over Berlin. It had needed a wing and a prayer to get us home.’

      She shuddered and squeezed his hand. ‘Poor Robert,’ she whispered. ‘It must have been terribly painful.’

      Robert shook his head. ‘I was knocked unconscious straightaway. I woke up in hospital, pleased to find I was alive and all in one piece. They sent me here to recuperate. Apparently, the hospital has a great reputation –it’s bound to improve with you there.’

      ‘I only recently passed my final exams. This is my first week as a nurse.’ She laid her head on his shoulder and began to croon ‘There’s A Boy Coming Home On Leave’ along with the band’s singer, a blonde in a tight red sequin dress.

      Couples shuffled past locked in each other’s arms, even though they may have only met that night. There was a war on: Dunkirk was still painfully fresh in their memories, bombs were dropping all over Britain, Germany occupied several European countries, ships were being sunk. Life was cheap and thousands had already died. It meant that people lived for today and to hell with tomorrow.

      It was hot in the canteen and his leg was itching madly. He wriggled uncomfortably.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

      ‘I’d pay five quid to be able to scratch my leg,’ he groaned.

      ‘When’s the plaster due to come off?’

      ‘Another three weeks.’

      She stiffened. ‘Will you be sent somewhere else?’

      He shrugged, unsure. ‘I’m supposed to spend three months convalescing. Whether they’ll leave me here, I’ve no idea.’ He still suffered excruciating headaches.

      His hand was squeezed again. ‘Let’s hope that they will.’

      He’d been born in Kent when his mother was in her late forties and her other children had grown up and left. He’d been an unpleasant surprise and she had no love left for him. his father, a farmer, spent little time at home. Robert had sometimes wondered what life was for.

      And now he knew. It was to meet Moira. She was meant for him and he for her. Both realised that after just a few magical, dreamlike days.

      What good luck it had been that his plane had crashed when it had and with him as the only one seriously injured. He wouldn’t have wanted his good fortune to come as a result of a tragedy for others. He was in love, they were in love, and every day was a miracle.

      ‘Will you marry me?’ he asked when they’d known each other a fortnight.

      ‘Of course,’ she smiled back. ‘But do we really need a piece of paper to prove we love each other? We’re already married in spirit, if not in law.’

      She was so familiar to him it was as if they’d known each other all their lives.

      The day after the plaster was removed from his leg, they made love. For both it was the first time. Moira laughed a lot and cried a bit at their initial fumbling attempts to do it properly.

      They chose the private ward of the hospital, the one with only two beds reserved for officers, empty now. The door was locked but they still worried. There were only three patients in the main ward: the other two were asleep. But Moira had been left in charge and if someone came and there was no sign of her, there’d be hell to pay. And if someone came and discovered what they were up to…!

      ‘We’d be shot at dawn,’ she said soberly.

      ‘Not before they’d pulled our fingernails out.’

      ‘Don’t joke, it’s not funny. We’ll have to find somewhere else.’

      Night after night more bombs fell on more British cities. Sixty miles away London was being pounded ceaselessly. The war was spreading as the weather became colder and winter drew in.

      As if in defiance of the misery being wrought upon them, the atmosphere in the camp became quite joyful. It was impossible to walk far without hearing a song being sung, a mouth organ being played, someone whistling. The dances got quite wild, but they finished with couples clinging to each other as if they never wanted to part. Groups of people would suddenly burst into song but likely end in tears as the lyrics touched hearts in a way the composer had never imagined. ‘Kiss the Boys Goodbye’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’: it was the language of love and loss, of words easier to say in song than spoken.

      Robert was transferred from the hospital to a single room befitting his rank of Flight Sergeant. He needed a stick to get about so, for now, there was no mention of him being sent elsewhere. He was given a part-time job in the stores filling out order forms. Otherwise nobody bothered him.

      When advised he could go home on leave, he replied he’d sooner stay on the premises.

      ‘Strange chap,’ commented the clerk who’d made the offer, eyeing him suspiciously.

      Robert shrugged and said nothing. He just wanted to be with Moira. Nothing else mattered.

      Three times a week, when Moira wasn’t working nights, they stayed in an old pub in Mersea, a watery village five miles from the camp. It was reached by a rambling bus usually full of RAF and Army personnel. Their attic room had a sloping ceiling, and was clean, comfortable and cheap. They were committed to sign in at the camp before eight o’clock next morning.

      ‘I don’t want us making love in a doorway,’ Moira said wrinkling her nose.

      ‘Or behind the canteen,’ said Robert. Some nights there’d be a whole row of couples.

      Moira giggled. ‘Or in a lavatory!’

      ‘Oh, God, no.’

      Other nights they sat in pubs or walked arm in arm on the flat sands where the moon was reflected over and over in the little pools that shimmered like diamonds, pausing to kiss and say, ‘I love you,’ for perhaps the hundredth or the thousandth time.

      Sometimes, a German plane would fly over on its way back from London, occasionally dropping the odd bomb there hadn’t been time to release on its intended target.

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