Dobbie grinned. “Thank God for that.”
“Why?”
“There’d have been the father and mother of a row if you hadn’t,” said the Wing Commander. “Yes, you can go off. I’ll see Mrs. Stevens. You’d better try and make your peace with her before you go, but for God’s sake don’t upset her any more.”
Marshall said seriously: “That was Proctor’s doing, sir. It was his idea that she should bring me up a cup of tea.”
“I know,” said Dobbie. “The whole tea-party was most unpleasant for you both, and must have caused you a great deal of embarrassment. All I say is, don’t do it again. Are you going to stand me a glass of sherry in the mess to-night?”
“We’d like that, sir.”
“All right. I’ll see if I can get Mrs. Stevens to come too.”
He strode off up the road; in the calm evening sunlight Marshall and Gervase turned and walked slowly to the mess. In the porch they met Flight Lieutenant Johnson, returning from the links.
“How’s Nightingale?” he asked.
Marshall grinned weakly. “Not so bad.” He hesitated; it was as well to get it over. “Got a bit of news,” he said. “Give you three guesses.”
Mr. Johnson cocked an eye at them. “They’re sending you back to F.T.S. to learn to land an aircraft?” he said.
“No,” said Gervase. “That’s one.”
“You’ve pulled another of those things out of the main drain?”
“No,” said Gervase. “Now just try, Pat. Think very, very hard.”
He turned to her and said innocently: “Somebody’s caught up with him with an affiliation order?”
The meeting became confused. “We’ll have to tell him,” Gervase said at last. “We’re going to be married, Pat.”
Mr. Johnson said: “I am surprised.” He glanced at them. “It all started with that fish. I always said no good would come of that fish.”
Gervase said: “Well, anyway, you get a glass of sherry out of it.”
That night the name Nightingale descended upon Marshall and adhered; he was known for the remainder of his service in the R.A.F. as Nightingale Marshall. Gervase before long was to grow accustomed to being addressed by young men and women as Mrs. Nightingale, who had never heard her real married name. That first night it was all a great joke for an hour or two, terminating when Proctor sent Marshall up to bed and Gervase went over to her own mess in the W.A.A.F. officers’ quarters. In the sitting-room she found Mrs. Stevens alone, smoking and reading.
She hesitated at the door. “I asked Wing Commander Dobbie if I might go off on a week’s leave,” she said. “Did he mention it to you?”
The older woman looked up. “That’s all right. Come in and sit down a bit.”
Gervase went and sat down rather awkwardly. “I’m sorry I was rude this afternoon,” she said. “I was a bit excited, I suppose.”
The Flight Officer said dryly: “I imagine so.” And then she smiled. “Are you very happy?”
“Frightfully,” said Gervase soberly.
“Well, you’d better get off the station before we have another row. W.A.A.F. rules aren’t made to cope with people like you and Peter Marshall, in your state.”
The girl looked up in wonder. “I suppose they’re not. One seems to look at things so differently.”
They stayed talking together for a quarter of an hour. Then Gervase went to bed at nine o’clock and slept the whole night through.
She was early in her office next morning, cleaning up her work and handing over to Section Officer Millington, in readiness for going off on leave. In the middle of the morning Marshall came into her office. “It’s all right to go and see Phillips this afternoon,” he said. “Proctor says we can take his truck. Will you be able to drive me?”
“I think so, Peter. There’s nothing much to stay for.” She thought for a minute. “You won’t be very long with him, will you?”
He shook his head. “They won’t let me stay more than a few minutes, I should think.”
She said: “Do you think it would be nice to take some stuff for tea and have it somewhere? I mean, if Proctor’s lending us his truck …”
He grinned. “I think that’s a wizard idea.” They settled that she should get some tea put up into a thermos-flask, and sandwiches, and they would try and get some cakes and fruit in Oxford. “If we get enough,” said Gervase, “we can cut supper and stay out till quite late.”
“Okay. I’ll tell Proctor he can kiss his truck good-bye for the rest of the day.”
“Get somebody to fill it up, Peter.”
He nodded. “I’m just going in to see Winco about Phillips. I think he ought to get a D.F.M., even if he did shoot the thing down on top of us.”
“It’s the second one he’s shot down, isn’t it?”
The pilot nodded. “The point is, he was wounded before he got this one. He got shot up in the first attack.”
“I didn’t know that, Peter.” She had not asked for any details of the night’s work, fearing to revive memories that would upset him.
“Sorry, Gervase—I thought you knew. I’ll tell you about it this afternoon.”
He went off to the Wing Commander’s office and Gervase sat down at her desk to write a letter to her mother in Thirsk, breaking the news that she was going to be married. She did not write very logically. Having described her young man, she went on: “We’ll try and get up to Thirsk in a few days before I have to come back here as soon as they will let Peter travel, but I’ll let you know again as soon as we know. We want to be married quite soon because Peter’s going to be shifted probably to Scotland, so I want to leave the W.A.A.F.s so that we can be together, so we’ll have to get busy.” She ended up by saying: “I’m terribly happy, darling mother, and I hope you and Daddy will be too.”
She posted this before lunch, and lunched with Peter in the mess, cutting up his roast lamb for him so that he could eat it with a spoon, to the accompaniment of a running commentary from Mr. Johnson. They got off afterwards in the small Austin truck with the canvas canopy over the rear body and drove out of the station in good spirits, Gervase at the wheel.
They got to Oxford in about half an hour and drove straight to the hospital. They came out twenty minutes later considerably sobered; there had been nothing funny in the pathetic gratitude of a very sick young man lying stretched upon a complicated rack of weights and pulleys made up into a bed. The incongruity of life in England struck Gervase very forcibly as they went out into the crowded streets of Oxford to buy buns and fruit if they could find any. The streets were cheerful and busy, remote from any element of war except the uniforms. But they had come straight from the bedside of a young man who had been shot up over Hamburg only thirty-six hours before, and Peter walking with her could not use his hands.
They bought some gooseberries in a bag and a few tired-looking rock-cakes and four doubtful sausage-rolls, all the food that they could find in Oxford in the middle of the afternoon. Then they walked around and looked at engagement-rings in shop windows, and came to the conclusion that they would do better in London. And then, because they were tired of being in the company of other people, they went back to the truck and got out on the road again.
They discussed where they should go to have their tea as they drove out of Oxford. Kingslake was ruled out because Marshall could not use his hands enough for fishing, and because Gunnar Franck and Cobbett were most likely to be there, and they wanted to be alone.
“What about Coldstone Mill?” asked Gervase. “It’s nice there.”
“I caught a pike there once,” said Marshall. “Did I ever tell you?”
“Not properly,” said Gervase. “We’ll go there and have tea and you shall tell me all about it. It’s not much out of our way.”
It was very pleasant out at Coldstone Mill that afternoon in May. Chestnut and hawthorn were in bloom; in the millpool the water slipped translucent over the gravelly shallows and the new pale green weed, brilliant in the sunlight
. They drove the truck a few yards off the road down to the grass beside the water and went on for fifty yards carrying their thermos and their paper bags till they found a place that suited them beside the running stream. There they sat down very close together and began to talk, but not about fishing.
Presently Gervase said: “You’d like us to get married pretty soon, Peter, wouldn’t you?”
He drew her a little more comfortably close to him. “I would,” he said. “I don’t want to hurry you, Gervase.”
She smiled up at him. “I’d like to. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right away. I don’t see that we’ve got anything to wait for.” She felt, although she would not put it into words, that it would be better for him to be married, that if she wanted to keep Peter Marshall safe she must reduce the nervous strain upon him to the utmost that she could. “I’d like to be married before you go on ops again,” she said.
“I believe we could do that,” said Marshall thoughtfully, “if we went at it right away. I don’t see myself going again for the thick end of a month.”
She caressed his hand gently. “Nor do I.”
Presently he said: “There’s one thing, though. I’ve only got two more ops to do. Then I’ll be transferred away from here, Gervase.” He looked down at her, worried. “That means that I get buzzed off somewhere else just after we’ve got married, leaving you here. Have you thought of that?”
She nodded. “I’ve thought of that one, Peter. I think I’d like to leave the W.A.A.F.s.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly, if we’re going to get married.”
There was silence for a little. Gervase, resting against his shoulder, thought how quickly she had changed her views about her work. Only a few months before she had thought that her work in the R.A.F. mattered more than anything else. Work in the R.A.F. still mattered in her life, but it was Peter’s work.
He was troubled. “I don’t want you to give up too much,” he said. “It seems a bit one-sided.”
She sat up a little. “I’ve loved being in the W.A.A.F.s,” she said. “I don’t think specially because I like the Service. I’ve been very unhappy in it at times. I was miserable when first I came to Hartley. But I’ve loved learning to do an important job really well—that’s been the real fun. And you can get that in other ways.”
“What sort of ways?”
“Being a wife,” said Gervase simply. “I don’t know the first thing about it, Peter. But if I’m going to do it, then I want to do it well. And that’s not staying on at Hartley as a married W.A.A.F. while you’re in Scotland flying Liberators.” She paused. “I’d like to leave the W.A.A.F.s now, honestly.”
They sat quiet together for a while, watching the water running past over the weir. And presently he said: “I’ve always understood that there were one or two minor formalities before you can get out of the W.A.A.F.s.”
She glanced up at him; his face was solemn but his eyes were dancing. “I know,” she said. “You have to get chucked out for misbehaviour, or else you have to start a family.”
Their eyes met, laughing. “I’ll help you misbehave at any time,” he said obligingly. “Just say the word and I’ll bring out my rude suggestion.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much difference, does there?” she said thoughtfully. “But if I’m going to leave the W.A.A.F.s I don’t want to finish up like that. I’d rather start the family and go out gracefully.”
They sat for some time quietly together, planning their progeny; four seemed to them to be a good round number as a first objective. “Four kids ought to be able to support us in our declining years,” said Marshall. “I mean after all, one of the four ought to make some money.”
“You might make some yourself,” she pointed out. “That makes five chances.”
He stared out across the millpool soberly. “I was only making four pounds ten a week in the insurance racket,” he said quietly. “If the war ends, I may have to go back to that, and you’ll have a baby, Gervase. If it goes on long enough you might have two. Have you thought of that side of it?”
She turned and faced him, as serious as he was. “I’ve thought of that, Peter. I suppose we’re being foolish and improvident to talk of starting up a family in times like this. But it’s a risk I think we ought to take, and if we’re bold enough I think we’ll get away with it. I’m ready to chance it, anyway.”
“Supposing I got killed?”
“I’d have to go to work,” she said. “I’d want to, anyway, if that should happen. We’re safe enough, Peter, to do what we want. We’re healthy and we’re young. You can’t be safer than that.”
In the sound of the wood-pigeons calling in the trees behind them, and in the sound of running water at their feet, they unpacked their tea. “It’s not much of a tea,” said Gervase ruefully. “Do you think it’ll keep you going till breakfast, Peter?”
He grinned. “We’ll look in at the ‘Horse’ and get a can of beer and a snack on the way back to the station.”
She said: “Oh, let’s do that, Peter. I’ve never been to the ‘Horse’.” She filled the plastic cup with tea from the thermos. “Want a drink?”
He did not answer. She looked up at him, and he was staring over her shoulder towards the road and the truck behind her back. “What are you looking at?” she asked, and turned to see.
There was a large, camouflaged R.A.F. saloon car stopped upon the road. The W.A.A.F. driver was still in her seat. The door of the rear seat was open, and an officer in Air Force blue was walking down across the meadow to their truck parked by the water-side. He was a tall, thick-set man about fifty years of age. He wore two rows of medal ribbons beneath the wings upon his chest. He wore one broad band of light blue braid upon each cuff, with a black band each side of it. Gervase stared at him aghast.
Marshall said very quietly: “Christ, it’s the Air Commodore!” and scrambled to his feet. His tunic was unbuttoned and he could not work his hands sufficiently to button it, but he went forward to the truck, leaving Gervase sitting on the ground holding the thermos-flask. He had picked up his cap and managed to put that upon his head, and he achieved a parody of a salute.
Air Commodore Baxter was not generally a fussy man, but he had little use for insolence; an officer who saluted awkwardly with his cap on crooked and his coat unbuttoned was not the sort of officer he liked to have about him. “Is this your truck?” he demanded.
Marshall flushed. “Yes, sir.”
“What’s it doing here?”
The pilot said: “I’ve been to Oxford on a Service trip, sir. I’m on my way back to the station.” It was no good, he thought; it was a fair cop, if ever there was one.
“Where are you stationed?”
“At Hartley Magna.”
The Air Commodore said: “This isn’t the road from Oxford to Hartley.”
Marshall was silent. He knew that he was six or seven miles out of his course, and it was clear the Air Commodore knew too.
“Who is that young woman? Is she stationed at Hartley?”
“Yes, sir. She’s my fiancée.”
Air Commodore Baxter fixed him with a cold, grey eye. “If you think you can use Service transport for this sort of thing you’re very much mistaken.” He looked the pilot up and down. “Button up your jacket.”
Marshall began to fumble with the buttons impotently. In the background Gervase scrambled to her feet, straightening out her skirt.
“Do you know who I am?” the Air Commodore demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“Report to me at Group Headquarters, Charwick, tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. What’s your name?”
“Flight Lieutenant Marshall, sir.”
There was a momentary pause.
“Nightingale Marshall?” the Air Commodore demanded.
The pilot hesitated. “Yes, sir.” Gervase slipped up behind him, reached round, and did his buttons up one by one from the top. Marshall said: “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t button t
hings yet.”
“I see.” The Air Commodore thought for a moment, and then turned to Gervase. “What’s your name?”
She said in a small voice: “Section Officer Robertson, sir.”
Baxter stood looking out over the millpool at the chestnut trees in bloom, at the thermos and the paper bags upon the grass. They had picked a pleasant place, he thought. He turned to them again. “Finish your tea and then take that truck back to Hartley,” he said. “You ought to know better. I think you’re a couple of damn fools. If you’d run it in behind those bushes there I’d never have seen it.”
The pilot grinned faintly.
“Come and see me at Group, ten o’clock to-morrow morning, Marshall.”
“Very good, sir.”
The Air Commodore turned and walked back to his car, and got in, and drove off. Gervase and Peter stood and watched it go, the pilot white and shaken. “First time I’ve ever had a thing like that happen to me,” he said.
Gervase said, “He won’t do anything, Peter. It made a difference when you told him who you were.”
“I’m not so sure,” the pilot said gloomily. They turned and walked back over the short grass to their tea. “Conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman, and conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentlewoman,” he said.
“It was pretty unbecoming,” said Gervase. “I had to stop behind and do my tie, or I’d have come with you. I never knew that people did such silly things when they were in love.”
He laughed and took her arm. She glanced up at him. “Anyway, Peter,” she said, “your hands are much better …”
They sat on for an hour beside the stream and finished all their food, and then, still hungry, they took the truck and Gervase drove it back on to the road. They were only three miles from the station by the lanes, but the direct road from Oxford to the aerodrome passed by the “Black Horse” in Hartley Magna, so a halt at the “Black Horse” was clearly permissible upon a Service journey from Oxford to the station. It only made a detour of ten miles or so to get back on the Oxford Road, and they drew up in the market-place at about half-past seven.