His Diamond Bride

CHAPTER NINE

IT WASN’T easy to set up the meeting but Dee managed it, choosing another café near the airfield, not the one where they had met before and where Mrs Gorton’s presence would be all too evident.

While she waited, she took a few long breaths to calm herself. What she had to do now must be done carefully, with just the perfect air of amused calm. At the last moment she felt she’d got it just right, and when Mark appeared she was able to regard him with her head on one side and a faint smile touching her lips.

‘I’m glad you could find the time for me,’ she teased.

‘Yes, well, my commanding officer-’

‘Actually, I meant Maisie.’

Only now did she understand how much she’d longed for him to deny it, but his appalled face made any such fantasy impossible.

‘How the hell did you hear about that?’ he demanded violently.

‘Oh, you’re famous for your exploits, in and out of battle.’

‘Look, it meant nothing. Don’t get it out of proportion. It started with just a few drinks and-’

‘And Maisie came, too,’ she supplied. ‘These things happen, I know. It’s not important.’

He regarded her curiously. ‘Not important?’ he echoed, as if unable to believe his ears. ‘You really mean that?’

She made a wry face. ‘It’s not important because it brings us to a point we’ve been approaching for some time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, let’s face it, this never was a real engagement, was it? You only proposed in order to shut my mother up, and I suppose I said yes for the same reason. What else could we do, caught like that? Since then we’ve seen so little of each other that it’s just drifted, but maybe the time has come to be realistic.’

‘Meaning what?’ he asked in a strange voice.

‘You never really wanted to marry me any more than I…well…’

‘Any more than you wanted to marry me,’ he supplied.

‘It was an act of desperation,’ she said merrily. ‘You proposed marriage to get yourself out of a hole, I’ve always known that.’

He was very pale. ‘Meaning that you think I wouldn’t have gone through with it?’

‘Gone through with it,’ she echoed. ‘That says it all, doesn’t it? You only have to go through with something if it’s an effort, and I think you would have done. You’d have made the effort and done your best to be a good husband. But you wouldn’t have been a good husband because your heart wouldn’t be in it, and I don’t want a man who has to force himself.’

She paused. He was staring at her. Slowly, she lifted her left hand and slid the ring off her finger.

‘I’ve always known you didn’t love me,’ she said. ‘Not enough to marry. It’s better to end it now.’

She held out the ring but he seemed too dazed to move.

‘You’re dumping me?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘That’s all you really care about, isn’t it?’ she asked with a touch of anger. ‘You’re afraid people will know that I broke it off. Don’t worry, everything’s different now. You’re a hero, one of “the few” and girls are queuing up for the honour of your attention. When they know you’re free, they’ll throw a party. You won’t remember that I exist.’

She said it lightly but he stared at her in shock. ‘That’s the first time I’ve known you to say anything cruel.’

‘I’m not being cruel, Mark, I’m being realistic. You’ll find another girl, like you did last time. Our marriage would have been a disaster. Here.’ She held the ring closer to him. ‘Take it.’

Glaring, he did so. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘What I want,’ she murmured. ‘I could never tell you what I wanted. We didn’t have the chance.’

‘And now we never will,’ he said, looking at the ring in his palm.

‘Mark, when you think about it, you’ll see I’ve done the right thing for you. You’re free, as you need to be.’

‘Free,’ he murmured. ‘Free.’

She gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, my dear. Take care of yourself.’

As she slipped out of the door his eyes were still fixed on the ring in his hand. She couldn’t even be sure that he knew she’d gone.

That night her dreams were haunted by a little boy running through an empty house, opening door after door, calling, ‘Where are you?’ with mounting despair.

She awoke, shivering. After that she couldn’t get back to sleep, but lay weeping in the darkness.

The Blitz lasted for eight months, officially ending in May 1941, although attacks on London continued sporadically for long after.

Somehow Dee kept going. With Mark’s departure, all hope seemed to have fled from her life, but there was too much work for her to brood. The hospital was overflowing with the wounded.

Even so, there were moments when she couldn’t escape her thoughts, when she would lie awake longing, with every fibre of her being, for the man she’d lost. It was useless to tell herself that he’d never really loved her, that they would have had no chance and she was better off without him. Somewhere in the depths of her misery a voice whispered that she’d been too hasty, that she could have managed things better, bound him to her and won his love.

Instead, she’d done the common sense thing because that was her way. She was wise, realistic and sensible. And her heart was breaking.

She knew that a really sensible woman would discard Mad Bruin rather than keep a constant reminder of an unrequited love, but she couldn’t bring herself to go quite that far.

She knew when the planes took off for a sortie because their route lay over the city. Londoners would come out and stand looking up at the sky, not always able to see the aircraft through the clouds or the darkness, but listening until the sound faded. Hours later, they would come out again to hear the return, wondering how many planes and men had been lost.

She had no news of Mark. He never wrote. He’d accepted her rejection as final.

‘How’s that fiancé of yours?’ Mr Royce asked one day.

‘I don’t know. He’s not my fiancé any more.’

She described their breakup briefly and without visible emotion. He listened sympathetically and never mentioned it again, except that he always seemed well informed about the activities of that particular squadron and was able to assure her that Mark was still alive and unhurt. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known.

At work her life was filled with satisfaction, yet there was no joy. In the evenings she would travel home on a bus that crawled along at a snail’s pace because the whole country was under ‘the blackout’. When she got off, she felt her way carefully home in the near darkness. Curtains and blinds kept the house almost invisible from the outside. Once inside, there was the relief of a small lamp.

Joe had joined the Home Guard, a civilian ‘army’ consisting of men who were too old to join the regular forces, or in reserved occupations such as doctors, miners, teachers and train drivers. Their job would be to fight off an invasion, and they were equipped with uniforms and weapons. Joe was proud to bursting point and regular visits to the local church hall for training sessions helped keep his spirits up.

Helen fared less well. At first Dee had been able to bring home the letters Sylvia sent to the hospital, and in this way they learned that Sylvia had given birth to a son.

‘I want to go and see her,’ Helen insisted.

‘You can’t, Mum. She’s never left a return address and she didn’t have the baby in hospital.’

They kept hoping but, as time passed, Helen realised that her daughter had truly rejected her and she couldn’t see her grandson. Her hair rapidly became white and her eyes grew faded.

‘Things will get better,’ Dee tried to tell her. ‘They have to. The war will end, we’ll find Sylvia and the baby and we’ll all be happy again.’

Helen would smile faintly but without conviction. Her health was visibly failing and she began to have dizzy spells. She always passed these off as ‘nothing’ and brushed aside Dee’s attempts to care for her. These days, she seemed indifferent to everything and everyone.

When the blow fell, it came with shocking suddenness.

One morning, as Dee was arriving for work, the ward sister looked up urgently.

‘Ah, good, there you are. Go and see the new patient in bed five. She came in two hours ago, and she keeps saying your name.’

The woman who lay there was thin and weary, with heavy bandages on her head. All her previous beauty had fled, yet Dee knew her at once.

‘Sylvia-oh, Sylvia, wake up, please.’

Sylvia opened her eyes and a faint smile touched her mouth. ‘Is that really you?’ she murmured.

‘Yes, I’m here. I can’t believe it-after all this time! Whatever happened to you?’

Her sister was in a bad way, her face bruised, her lips swollen.

‘A bomb hit the house,’ Sylvia murmured. ‘A wall fell in on me before I could escape. They got me out in the end but-’ Her voice faded.

Dee drew up a chair and leaned forward, clasping Sylvia’s hand. ‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you let us come to see you? Mum’s been worried sick.’

‘I didn’t want to shame her. How would she explain me to the neighbours?’

‘They don’t matter. It’s you that matters. What about Phil? Are you still with him?’

‘He died at Dunkirk. It’s just me and the baby now, but-I don’t know where he is. When they rescued me they must have found him as well. But where is he-where’s my baby?’ Her voice rose in anguish.

‘They’ll have taken him to another ward,’ Dee said reassuringly. ‘I’ll go and ask.’

She hurried out, seizing a phone to call an ambulance official, who promised to contact her in a few minutes. Then she called her mother, who gave a little shriek on hearing the news. ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Tell her.’

Dee returned to the ward. Sylvia’s eyes had closed again and it would be best to let her sleep, at least until there was some news. A quick glance at the notes told her the worst. Sylvia had been badly injured. Her chances were poor.

‘No,’ Dee said to herself. ‘It can’t happen.’

But it could and she knew it.

She had other patients who needed her care, but while she was tending them her eyes constantly turned to the end of the ward, watching for Sylvia to wake. Part of her didn’t believe this was happening. And part of her knew that the worst was going to befall her despite her resolutions.

Hurry, she whispered inwardly to her mother, while there’s still time.

The ward sister approached and Dee explained briefly. ‘My mother will be here soon and-there she is, just coming in.’

‘Take care of her,’ the sister said kindly. ‘The others can do your work for a while.’

‘Where is she?’ Helen asked, running towards her in tears.

‘Mum, be ready for a shock. She’s badly hurt.’

Sylvia opened her eyes as her mother approached and Dee had the satisfaction of seeing them reach out to each other.

But then she saw the sister beckoning. Her face was grave. ‘I’m afraid it’s bad news,’ she said. ‘The baby was dead when they found him. They couldn’t tell her because she was unconscious.’

‘Oh, no,’ Dee whispered. ‘How can I tell her?’

Approaching the bed, she found Helen talking feverishly. ‘Just as soon as you can be moved, I’m taking you home, you and the baby, and you’ll live with us and we won’t care what the neighbours say. Everything’s going to be all right.’

‘Oh, yes, please, Mum…please…you’re going to love Joey. I named him after Dad.’

‘He’ll like that,’ Helen choked. ‘We’re all going to be so happy.’

Dee wondered if her mother really believed this. How much did she understand? Could she see that her daughter was dying, or was she spared that for the moment?

Sylvia’s eyes were closed and she was talking wildly, her breath coming in shaky gasps that were getting worse. ‘Mum…Mum…’

‘Yes, darling, I’m here. Hold on.’

But Sylvia was no longer capable of holding on. Her breath faded, her hands fell away.

‘No!’ The cry broke from Helen as she gathered her lifeless daughter in her arms. ‘No, you’ve got to stay with me. We’re going home together and I’m going to look after you… Sylvia…Sylvia!’

She burst into violent sobs, clutching her daughter’s body and shaking it, as though trying to infuse it with life, and crying her name over and over.

Dee felt for a pulse, although she knew it was useless. Her sister was dead.

Helen had recognised the truth and gently lay her child back on the bed.

‘We haven’t lost her,’ she choked. ‘Not really. We’ll look after the baby, and it’ll be like she’s still with us.’

‘Mum-’

Helen’s voice and her eyes became desperate. ‘We’ll do that, won’t we? We must find the baby and take him home. Yes, that’s what we’ll do…that’s what…what we…’ Her breath began to come in long gasps. She clutched her throat, then her heart while her eyes widened.

‘Help me,’ Dee cried, supporting Helen in her arms.

Helping hands appeared. An oxygen mask was fitted over Helen’s face but it was too late. The heart attack was massive and she was dead in minutes.

‘Go with them,’ the ward sister said as the two women were taken away to the hospital mortuary. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.’

‘It was bound to happen,’ Dee whispered. ‘When Sylvia went away she suffered badly, but she always nursed the hope they’d be reunited. Sylvia’s death destroyed her.’ Tears began to run down her face. ‘Oh, heavens! How am I going to tell my father? His wife, his daughter, his grandson, all on the same day.’

Now the shock was getting to her and she began to shiver uncontrollably. She was still shivering when Joe arrived at the hospital and joined her in the mortuary. His face was so pale and grey that for a dreadful moment she feared she was about to lose him, too.

She told him what had happened, adding, ‘Sylvia died in her arms.’

‘Then they found each other again,’ he said. ‘Thank God! Sylvia was always her favourite.’ Then he added gently, ‘Just like you were always mine.’

Until then, she’d never appreciated her father’s strength, but it was a new, tougher man who told her to leave the funeral arrangements to him because, ‘You’ve been through enough.’

And it was true-she was reaching the end of her tether. She almost gave way entirely when she and Joe stood in the mortuary regarding Sylvia with her baby in her arms, ready to be buried together. Joe’s arm was strong about her, but even he nearly yielded to terrible grief at the sight of the child.

‘My grandson,’ he whispered as tears streamed down his face. ‘My first ever grandchild, and we meet like this. Poor Sylvia. Poor Helen.’

They supported each other through the three-way funeral, and afterwards Joe put his arms around her. ‘We’ve both lost everyone else,’ he said huskily. ‘There’s just us now, love.’

Like others who had suffered devastating losses, Dee and her father survived as day passed into day, week into week and month into month. He’d said they had just each other, and for now neither of them wanted anyone else. Christmas 1942 was their first alone, and they were thankful to pass it quietly, refusing all invitations.

These days she relied totally on Mr Royce for news of Mark, so that when she went in one morning in the new year to find him looking grave, she knew what had happened.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said bleakly.

For a moment the world went dark. She clutched the back of a chair, then felt him supporting her until she sat down.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He isn’t dead.’

‘Not dead? Do you mean that?’

‘I swear to you that he’s alive, but he’s very badly hurt. His Spitfire was hit during a battle. He just managed to limp home but, as he landed, the plane burst into flames. They brought him here. He’s lucky to be alive.’

‘But he is alive-and he’s going to stay alive, isn’t he? Isn’t he?’

‘I think so.’ The words were cautious.

‘But it’s not certain?’

‘He’s been very badly burned and he needs help. It’s lucky you’re here. The sight of you will help him.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Come this way.’

As they went along the corridor he said, ‘I’ve had him put in a separate ward. I’d better warn you that he looks pretty alarming. He was engulfed in flames. It was a miracle that his face escaped. His helmet saved him, but he has burns all over his torso, and an injury to the head where he hit it.’

She paused as they reached a door, Mr Royce pushing it open quietly and standing aside.

Dee approached slowly, and gradually the bed came into view. Then she stopped, appalled, shaking at the sight. In her worst nightmares she hadn’t imagined this.

The man on the bed could have been anybody, so totally was he covered in bandages. They extended over his torso, his arms, up over his neck and around his head.

Where was the daredevil young hero who laughed in the face of danger? Gone-and in his place lay this helpless baby. She wanted to cry aloud to the heavens that it wasn’t fair of life to do this to him. Why was there nobody to defend him?

But there was, she thought with sudden resolution. She was here now. She would defend him.

‘Has he been unconscious all the time?’ she asked softly.

‘No, he’s come round and muttered something, but of course most of the time we keep him heavily sedated against the pain.’ Mr Royce examined a chart. ‘Going by the time of his last injection, he should come round quite soon.’

‘You can leave me alone with him,’ Dee said. ‘He’ll be safe with me.’

‘I’m sure he will.’

When the door had closed, Dee came closer to the bed. As a nurse, she was used to horrific sights, but nothing in her experience helped her now. This was the man she loved, lying alone and in agony.

His eyes were closed and his breathing came with a soft rasping sound that was almost like a groan. Now she could see just enough of his face to recognise him. The mouth was the one she knew, wide and made for laughter, but tense now, as though the pain reached him, even in sleep.

Dee drew a chair forward and sat down, leaning as close to him as she could get. ‘Hello, darling,’ she whispered.

Nothing. He didn’t move or open his eyes, but lay almost like a dead man.

‘It’s me-Dee,’ she persisted. ‘I heard you’d been injured, and I had to come and see you. Even after what happened, we’re still friends, aren’t we? You still matter to me, and I want to see you well and strong again.’

Silence but for his soft breathing. No sign of life. Refusing to be put off, she continued, ‘You really will be all right in the end, although it may take some time. They say you’re pretty badly hurt, but I’ve nursed men with worse injuries and they come through it because they can’t wait to get up there in the sky again.’

She was stretching the truth here. She knew how unlikely it was that Mark would ever return to being an airman, and how long it would be before he could live any kind of normal life, but she couldn’t afford to think of that. Only one thing mattered and that was bringing him back into the land of the living. If she could do that, and even one day see him smile again, she cared for nothing else.

She went on, forcing herself to sound cheerful. ‘I wish we were still engaged. Oh, don’t think I’m trying to trap you. You were always too clever to be caught by any woman. But you don’t seem to have anyone of your own.’

The truth of that struck her with force. The star of the squadron, the man every girl wanted to flirt with, and more. But he had nobody; no family, nobody had been allowed to get close to him. Except herself. She had crept closer than anyone, yet even she hadn’t suspected his essential aloneness before now. He’d always worked so hard to conceal it.

Had he done so knowingly? she wondered. Had he really understood himself that well? Somehow she doubted it. Whatever Mark’s qualities, insight wasn’t one of them. That was why he had needed her. But she hadn’t seen it either, and had rejected him.

‘Are you glad I came to see you?’ she asked him. ‘I hope you are. I know you’re asleep but maybe you can hear me, somewhere deep inside you, and perhaps…perhaps your heart is open to what I want to say. Oh, I do hope so because there’s so much I want you to understand.

‘I was clumsy before. I loved you so much that I was afraid to let you know, in case it embarrassed you. You see, I knew you didn’t love me-well, maybe a little, but not as I love you. I was so happy when you asked me to marry you that I didn’t let myself worry about how it happened. All I saw was that I could be your wife.

‘I was fooling myself, but I wouldn’t face it because you were everything to me. And when I did face it-I went a bit crazy. I blamed you for not loving me, but you can’t love to order. Nobody can. You have to accept people as they are, or back off. I backed off. I thought I was doing what you wanted. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps I still have something to give you-something that you need.’

A soft rumble came from between his lips, almost as though he was signalling agreement. Of course, that was fanciful, which she never allowed herself to be. But perhaps, just this once-

‘Oh, darling, if only I could believe that you hear me and know what I’m trying to say. I came here as soon as I knew you were hurt because if there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Do you understand that? Anything at all.’

She looked down at his hands lying on the blanket; one bandaged, the other uncovered. How fine and well shaped it was. How well she remembered it touching her, teasing softly through her thin clothes, making her want him in ways that she knew she shouldn’t.

Inching her way forward cautiously, she took his free hand in hers, caressing it softly with her fingers. He neither moved nor showed any sign of a response, and her heart ached to see his power reduced to this helplessness. She would have given everything she possessed to see him restored to his old self-mischievous, disrespectful, outrageous, infuriating, magical. Even if it meant that she would lose him again, if her heart broke a thousand times over, she would accept it if, in return, she could see him happy.

‘You’re going to get better,’ she told him, more confidently than she felt. ‘You can count on that because I won’t settle for anything else. I can be a bully when I set my mind to it, and that’s what I’m going to do. You told me once you weren’t good at taking orders, but you’ll take mine. Get well! There! That’s an order, do you hear?’

She struggled to keep the jokey note in her voice, but at last it was more than she could bear. Her words trembled into silence and she laid her face against his hand while the tears flowed.

‘Come back to me,’ she whispered. ‘Come back to me. I love you with all my heart. I’ll never love anyone else. You don’t have to love me. Just let me care for you.’

After a while she raised her head again and looked closely at the man who lay without moving, barely breathing.

‘I have to believe that somewhere, deep inside your heart, you can hear me,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you’re even conscious of it now, and soon you’ll wake and remember. Or perhaps my words will come back to you without you even knowing how or when you heard them. Oh, my love, my love, can I creep into your heart without you even noticing, and then just stay there?’

A long sigh came from him. Summoning all her courage, she laid her lips gently against his. ‘I thought I’d never kiss you again,’ she murmured. ‘Can you feel me? Can you feel my love reaching out to you? It’s yours if you want it.’

Another sigh. She looked down on him tenderly. ‘Yes, oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘You’re coming back to me. You are.’

Her joy soared as Mark opened his eyes. For a long moment they looked at each other.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.