The Stars We Share Page 6
One afternoon at the end of November, finally cleared for flight, the world outside full of sleet and an icy fog, Alec’s standing in the Ops Room with Sanjay, waiting for the CO to finish up a briefing so he can ask for a flight assignment, wondering if the old man’s going to make him beg, when the door bangs open and a half-familiar voice interrupts, “Beg pardon, gents, I’m looking for Squadron Leader Maxwell.”
Everyone in the room turns to look at the newcomer, wondering what kind of man makes a point of such an entrance. But Alec, trying to pin down the combination of tone and carriage echoing in his memory, already knows—he’d thought he’d never see any of the boys from the RMS Jaipur again, but here is Charlie, taking charge just as he always had.
By the end of the week, Flight Lieutenant Charlie Pascoe has made himself entirely at home with the squadron. He’s an ace already, and his Beaufighter, a faster, heavier plane that has already replaced the Blenheims of other squadrons, is scarred and battered. He and Alec pick up more or less where they left off. But Alec was eight then; the age difference between them is no longer a matter of awe for him. It’s not long before Alec knows that if he’s looking for Charlie, he’s probably standing out on the airfield running his hands along the fuselage of his plane, climbing up and down the wings like he used to climb the massive shipping crates in the cargo hold.
* * *
• • •
Wiltshire, spring. The squadron has moved to RAF Colerne, and Alec wants to be thinking about the new grasses on the Downs, the curl of moss and liverworts on coppice stools. He wants to have a picnic with June, someplace quiet where it’s just the two of them. He wants to kiss her until he’s dizzy. Until they both are. Sometimes, if he’s not careful, he can get lost in thinking of kissing her, of the way her mouth is so gentle it makes him want to cry. She is so capable and so strong, but her tenderness nests in the lining of his heart and won’t let go.
But the Germans take most of his attention, flying massive raids every night. From the Downs nearby they can see the bombing of Bristol, and the fluid silver-white trails the dogfights paint in the sky. The news from London, Coventry . . . anywhere, really. Buckingham Palace has been hit, St. Paul’s nearly destroyed again and again by fire, cities everywhere in ruins, uncountable dead.
The barracks at the base are worse even than Manston, but once a week a Bedford truck takes them into Bath. Alec looks forward to the brass railing under his palm, leading him smoothly into the sunken bath and the hot water. A brass rail means another week of staying whole. They have twenty-four-hour passes sometimes too, leave to go into Bath and have a drink, sit back with Sanjay or Tim and watch Charlie talk to girls, be something other than a man trying not to think of the odds.
Along with the base, the planes have changed. He hasn’t been in a Blenheim since the crash landing in Yorkshire. He’d been lucky not to kill them all; the loss of Cobber was a heavy enough weight on him. But a crate is a crate, and crashing one has not made him fear them. When he’s assigned one of the new Beaufighters and takes her up, he finds that flying, at least, has not changed. He loves the air, loves the sway and pull of thermals against the wings and rudder, and the chatter of the Beau’s engines.
* * *
• • •
In the tail end of spring, a letter comes from June—can he meet her in London? Alec’s heart actually leaps—he can feel it ricocheting off his ribs. It’s been too long since he’s seen her, too long since her voice has soothed him. She is a better correspondent than he is, her letters arriving relatively often, and the request for a rendezvous sends a frisson of delight through him—their leaves have not coincided, and so he has seen her only once in the nearly two years of war. But presumably June is as lonely as he is. He clears a day with the group captain and writes her back, his hand shaking almost too much to get the information down. Yes, of course, yes, a thousand times yes.
Two days later he’s sitting beneath the wing of his Beaufighter, turning his mother’s ring in his fingers, when Charlie finds him.
“Nice, that,” Charlie says, gesturing at the ring. “You making a plan for your girl?”
Alec nods, his nerves sparking like flints with anticipation and anxiety. But at least the tension of waiting for a courier to fetch the ring from Fenbourne, where Alec’s most prized belongings wait for him in his upstairs bedroom, has passed. “You think she’ll like it?”
Charlie chuckles. “May I?” He reaches down at Alec’s quiet yes and carefully takes the ring, holding it up to the soft morning light. The diamond flashes out pale yellow, and Alec blinks, taken back for a moment to watching his mother’s hands sparkle in the thick Indian sunlight a lifetime ago.
“Not as heavy as it looks,” Charlie says. “And I rather like that claw thing holding the stone. Reminds me of a lion, or a leopard.” He tilts the bright gold to look at the inside of the band. Alec watches the bounce of light. He’s memorized the jeweler’s marks long ago—the crown insignia, the 18, the tiny worn swirl of his mother’s initials.
“I’ve known June nearly my whole life,” Alec says, taking the ring back and slipping it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “I want her in the rest of it as well.”
Charlie tilts his head in acknowledgment; he’s heard more stories of June than anyone. “I daresay she’ll like it,” he says. “Lovely old piece like that.”
Alec smiles. He always has the dull ache of missing June juxtaposed against the bright shimmer of loving her, and today is no different. The ring and the aspirations it contains add a layer of feeling, but the foundation—the wanting, the shivery memory of her touch, the quiet knowledge of having a place—is no different at all.
He looks up at Charlie. “This time tomorrow she will have said one way or another.”
“You’ll do fine,” Charlie says. He puts out a hand and Alec takes it and Charlie hauls him to his feet. “You’ll do fine.”
* * *
• • •
The next day finds him on an early-morning train to Paddington. He can’t stop patting his pocket to check on the ring. He fidgets all the way to London, trying to read the paper and failing. All he can think about is June. Will it be different, being engaged as opposed to merely having an understanding? He knows they are meant for each other, that their union is inevitable, but the idea of her wearing his mother’s ring, of the way her hand will feel against his cheek with that ring on it, tolls like the bells of St. Anne’s for Christmas services in Fenbourne. The idea feels like home.
1941, Y Service
Like the rest of London, the greenery of St. James’s Park has not been spared by the war. Even in the height of spring some trees remain bare, but sparrows jostle in the branches, feathers puffed and plush against the chill of morning. It’s a sunny day in London, rare this year, and June waits for Alec on a bench not far from Whitehall. As far as he knows, that is where she still works. But keeping Alec away from Ainsley’s flat in Bloomsbury is necessary, now that June’s belongings are packed and ready to go, and Whitehall seems like the second most logical place for them to meet.
At least the worst of it has passed, although it’s not as though the Germans have stopped their raids altogether. The sky still darkens with Heinkels and Dormiers dropping their bombs across the city, and neighborhoods are still crumbling away into chasms. Every day is rife with the constant tension of waiting for the next raid and the determined way all of London just goes about its business. There is an excitement in being part of it, as grueling and awful as it can be. Still, though, June will be glad enough to leave London and move on to her new assignment.
She checks her watch. Ten o’clock—he should be here soon, if his train was on time. June shifts on the bench, smooths her skirt, watches the sparrows. It’s been an age since she’s seen Alec, and the realization that they are going to be reunited, even for a day, is exhilarating. If only her enthusiasm could be pure, not tinged by her gr
owing secrets. He will come to her here with his heart on his sleeve and have no idea that she is leaving London tomorrow, bound for Scarborough to break coded German messages for the wireless service outpost there.
And of course she hasn’t said a word—can’t say a word—to him about any of it. Her first day with Sir Reginald there had been a moment—a few seconds, perhaps, if that—when she had considered not signing the Official Secrets Act. When the idea of the secrets she might be asked to keep and the logistics of never telling anyone—and how could she not tell Alec, as close as they have always been?—had seemed too large.
It had seemed so weighted, but the whole of it had been blanketed in the idea of doing something useful. Something noble. And in the end, of course, she had taken the pen and signed her name. Until now, it has been a wondrous swirl of codes and ciphers, months of fitting text to idea and passing the notes to the other girls in whatever office she found herself. It was real work, just barely close enough to the clerical work she’d told her parents and Alec she was doing. Nothing to tell, no harm done. But all that changes tomorrow when she boards the train north.
She amends that when she sees Alec come around the corner. All of it changes now, when she says nothing.
“Alec!” Putting her misgivings about the secrets aside, she meets Alec on the path and puts her arms around him, warming into his hug.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he says. He steps back, regards her with an almost giddy smile, and squeezes her hand.
“It’s been far too long,” June says, basking in his happiness. “I’m so pleased you could get the day.”
“Feels a bit dodgy to be away from base, honestly, even with everything in order.” Alec laces his fingers through hers. “I wish it were longer, but a few hours with you is a damn sight better than none at all.”
“I’ve been dying to see you, too,” June says. Alec nods, still smiling down at her, and June goes on, faltering for a moment when he takes back his hand and slips it into his pocket distractedly. “I thought we might go over to the National Gallery. All the regular collections have been evacuated, but there are smaller exhibitions, and most days there’s a bit of a concert over lunch.”
“That sounds like just the thing.” He regards the sky, then turns that ridiculous happy grin to her again. “Lovely day for a stroll, too.”
They fall into step, chatting and catching up, and before long they emerge from the tree-lined path along the Mall and cross into Trafalgar Square. Alec pauses and regards their surroundings. “Bloody hell.”
June nods. “There have been several raids around here.” She gestures at the roadway just south of the square. “There was a dreadful direct hit on the tube station there last October.”
“I heard about that. Terrible,” Alec says, looking up at the buildings around the square. “Do they just keep fixing the windows again and again?”
“Sometimes,” June says. “But now and again people will just decide to cover over them and make do.”
“I always thought you’d be safe in London.” Alec shakes his head.
“I’ve been all right.” She smiles, hoping to reassure him, but inside she feels off-kilter. He might feel better if he knew today would be her last day in London, but she can’t tell him, and he gets neither the comfort nor the truth as a result.
He drifts over to one of the bronze lions and pats it. “Knew a chap at school who used to nick a bottle of gin and climb these during holidays.” He smiles nostalgically. “He’d come from India as well, so I always suspected he pretended they were tigers.”
“Perhaps they gave him an anchor.” June smiles a little, wondering if Alec had ever pretended that himself.
Alec’s eyes rove the square as if he’s looking for something, and then he turns his gaze back to June. “What helped me,” he says, “was knowing that eventually I would come home from school and you would be there.”
She reaches for his hand again. “It was like that for me at St. Swithun’s, as well.”
“The thing is . . .” He pauses, and June can see that he’s moving toward something. “The thing is, June, I love you, and I have for such a long time. Most of my life. And I can’t imagine a life without you in it.” He takes a deep breath. “There is nothing in the world that would make me happier than to have you with me forever.” He slides a hand into the breast pocket of his uniform jacket, and after a moment it emerges with a flash of yellow in the sun.
June’s heart speeds up—she had known this moment was coming for years, and yet it feels completely out of the blue. It’s as though time has split into two streams around them—one sped up and blurry, the afternoon full of the chaos of people and traffic in Trafalgar Square, and the other a pocket of perfect stillness in which she stands with Alec by the lion.
“I know you’ll be here when I come back after the war, but I want to know you’ll be there always. I want to share my life with you.” Alec goes to one knee, and June puts a hand to her mouth as he holds up a ring in the sunlight, a yellow diamond gleaming against gold. His voice rough with emotion, Alec says, “June, will you do me the great honor of being my wife?”
Her pulse thunders. “Yes, Alec. Yes.”
Alec’s whole face lights up, and he slips the ring onto her finger. June stares down at the dazzling warm glow of the gold and the blaze of the diamond. She can’t, won’t, think about Scarborough or the codes or anything but Alec. Everything else will come later, and she will have to work it out, but for now it is just the two of them in the center of the universe, the way it’s always been.
He gets to his feet and embraces her again, trembling slightly, and June smiles against the rough wool of his uniform jacket. Alec bends to kiss her, but the day is split by the shriek of an air raid siren. Alec looks up as if he’s checking for planes.
“Bugger,” Alec mutters. He glances around the square and takes her hand again. Together they hurry to the shelter at the square’s north end, along with a cluster of other men and women. It’s crowded and dark, with a dank, bricky smell, and June wishes they’d gone to the Underground station, although when she thinks about the calamity there last autumn, she’s not so sure.
Alec shifts so he’s got his back to a wall and pulls her closer to him. “So much for lunchtime concerts,” he whispers, and she chuckles. Some part of her listens for the all-clear alert to sound, but she has been in so many shelters, for so many air raids, that this is just a matter of routine now, but for the usual small throb of adrenaline.
“Don’t go having air raids with any other lads,” Alec says, his voice soft against her ear. He smiles and tightens his arms around her.
“I shan’t,” she whispers back. She leans close, relishing the clean, familiar smell of him.
In the back of the shelter, someone starts to sing an old army marching song, and here and there people join in. After a bit, Alec makes a cushion from his greatcoat, and they settle in close together against the wall. It’s not long before he’s talking airplanes with a pair of grocer’s assistants too young to enlist, and June smiles at him. She has always loved watching him enjoy the people around him, and even in this environment he is still himself, the gregarious, handsome boy she’s always loved. Someone else puts on a Noël Coward record, and one of the grocer’s boys opens a packet of sandwiches and offers them to his neighbors.
June strokes the curve of the ring, the glad golden weight of it, like the weight of Alec’s love, the solid fact of his attention. Of course she wants to marry him—she loves him with all her heart and cannot begin to imagine a life without him in it. She has known from the start that he might not survive the next crash, or the one after that. It was an unbearable idea, the loss of him, and of all she loves about him—the idea that she might never again see the knob of his wrist, or hear the sentimental, off-key songs he sings to himself when he thinks she isn’t listening. All the wonders she never would have n
oticed without him, down to the spark of color in a horse’s mane or the arc of constellations in the night. But all that stacks up awkwardly against the fact of her nascent career and the passion she feels for that, too. Later, she will have to make sure he understands how she feels about her work, about the need she has to be useful. And she will have to find a way to balance the reality of her life with Alec, which the war has left feeling sometimes so ephemeral, with the reality she inhabits with the codes.
* * *
• • •
By the time the all clear sounds much later, it seems as if Alec has made friends with half of London. The shelter’s occupants file back out into Trafalgar Square, everyone’s eyes scanning the horizon for errant bombers. One of the grocer’s boys points off to the northeast, where thin columns of smoke rise into the sky. Alec’s face tilts up, his eyes narrowing, and June can see in Alec’s face the desire to be in his plane, fighting the war. She wishes she could tell him how much she understands.
“I expect we’re clear until tomorrow,” June says.
Alec nods. With a wry smile he says, “An air raid wasn’t part of my plan.” He takes her hand and grins, rubbing the ring with his thumb. “It was my mother’s, you know. And now it’s yours.” He kisses her fingertips, his eyes gleaming. “I love you, June.”
She studies the way her hand fits into his. It’s reassuring, as if his touch will help her find her way through the confusion. “I love you, too.”
He beams at her and glances at his watch. “Oh, hell. I’m meant to be on a train not too long from now. Bloody Germans stole our time.”