‘She’s a smart girl. It’s the same with writing. You and I both know that it’s got to be authentic, and from the heart, otherwise it’s a load of horse—’ he hastily checked himself, ‘a load of baloney.’
‘Horse shit will do just fine,’ she said, ‘no need to stand on ceremony with me.’
‘Strangely that’s exactly what I thought I had to do.’
She looked at him more intently in the flickering firelight, her eyes shining, her pale skin radiant with a roseate tint, a few strands of grey in her dark hair resembling threads of silver. ‘Is your leg troubling you?’ she asked.
Too late he realised that unconsciously he had been rubbing at the painful area where his stump and new artificial limb met. ‘It’s taking some getting used to,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It generally does.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have imposed on you tonight.’
‘I could have said no.’
The corners of her mouth lifted. ‘I would hazard a guess that’s something you rarely do.’
He smiled. ‘Like I said at lunch, if in doubt, do it.’ He rummaged in the duffle bag next to him. ‘I brought you a sweater in case you got cold.’ He held it out for her and she took it.
‘Thank you,’ she said, draping it around her shoulders, ‘that was kind of you.’
He rummaged some more in the bag and pulled out a plastic tub and a bunch of wooden skewers. ‘Now here’s the most important question of the night – how do you like toasted marshmallows?’
She smiled. ‘I like them a lot.’
He went to move nearer the fire, but she held out a hand. ‘Why don’t you let me do it?’
He was smart enough to know that allowing Romily to be more than a bystander would go a long way to improving relations between them.
‘Tell me about yourself, Red,’ she said, when she had the marshmallows placed on the end of the sharp pointed wooden sticks and held them a short distance from the glowing embers of the fire.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘When did you develop an affinity with the desert here?’
He retrieved a bottle of bourbon from the duffle bag, along with two billy-cans.
‘During the war. The El Mirador Hotel was turned into a hospital – the Torrey Army Hospital – and that was where I was sent to recuperate after I’d had my leg amputated. Drink?’
She nodded. ‘That must have been a difficult time for you.’
He shook his head. ‘There were men worse off than me. I was one of the lucky ones, I was soon able to hobble around on crutches and used to get one of the orderlies to take me out in his time off. He was a local guy, a Native American who knew everything there was to know about the wildlife and local traditions that were so important to his people. He’d drive me here, and I’d go as far as I could on my crutches. Each day I came he’d teach me something new and I’d push myself that little bit further.’
‘You’re a determined fellow, then?’ She took one of the mugs from him and in exchange passed him one of the marshmallow sticks.
‘I’m as stubborn as hell,’ he said, ‘and some. As you’ve already found.’
‘You should know that I’m also as stubborn as hell.’
‘I already figured that.’
In the quiet that followed, and worried that the cooling air temperature might not agree with Romily, he added some tinder-dry twigs on the fire, together with some larger pieces of tree branches that he’d gathered and hoarded during previous visits.
‘I’m just a caveman at heart,’ he said when she commented how organised he was. ‘Or maybe I’m instinctively preparing for my own funeral pyre.’
‘What a strange thing to say.’
‘We’re all nothing but a heartbeat away from death. I have no problem accepting my life is finite. Who knows, it might be tomorrow for us all if Kennedy can’t stop the Soviets from plunging the world into a nuclear war.’
‘Some deaths you just never see coming,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Like Marilyn Monroe’s. When she died back in August, you’d have thought the world would stop turning such was the shock.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
‘Sure, a few times.’
‘Was she as beautiful in real life as she was on the screen?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess.’
Romily raised an eyebrow. ‘You must be one of the few men in the world not to rave about her exceptional beauty.’
‘I am that rare man who prizes brains above beauty,’ he said with a smile. ‘Not that she was stupid. She wasn’t.’
‘The gossip columns would have us believe otherwise, that you prize beauty above all else.’
He laughed. ‘Have you been doing your homework on me?’
‘I found a pile of old magazines in the guest cottage in a cupboard. You’re quite the ladies’ man, aren’t you?’
‘You should know better than to believe a word of that trash. But enough about me, I’m much more interested in hearing something of your wartime escapades flying with the ATA.’
‘How do you know about that?’
He tapped his nose. ‘I’ve been doing my homework.’
‘In that case you know all you need to know.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Why would you want to know any more?’
‘Because I’m genuinely interested. Because we’re two friends sitting in the desert getting to know each other over a mug of bourbon.’
And because I could sit here all night chatting with you, he thought. Or did he mean sparring?
Chapter Thirteen
Hamble, Hampshire
April 1944
Romily
The day had started off just as any normal day did; that is to say, I had no idea what to expect. Ever since I’d joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, no two days were ever the same; we took whatever was thrown at us.
It had been a busy period for me. According to my logbook, in the last six weeks I’d delivered a total of sixty-one military aircraft from British factories and maintenance units to RAF airfields. I’d flown Mustangs, Mosquitos, Spitfires, Hurricanes, a couple of Grumman Avengers and a Corsair, and my most hated of machines, the Walrus. I had also notched up ten taxi-days, ferrying pilots about the country.