Five minutes from the sawmill, I hid my bike in the hedge and crept nearer on foot, making my way around the perimeter wire to the back of the mill, away from the road, where we normally met. I cupped my hands around my mouth and made the owl hoot that was to be our signal. I waited, my stomach churning in anticipation, but nothing happened. What if the guard had noticed the unlocked window? What if Bill hadn’t managed to sneak away? What if his spare boots had been discovered?
I hooted again, and this time there was an answering movement inside the wire. At first I thought it wasn’t Bill at all, perhaps a guard come to denounce me, to tell me Bill was under arrest for attempted escape. But then I realized it was Bill with a dark woolly hat over his blond hair. He crept forward to me over the thin strip of ground between the building and the wire, waved his boots to me and threw them over. I caught them easily and laid them on the ground. One bare foot at a time, he began to climb the fence, up in four steps and over the top, dropping down on my side with a soft thud. We both stood and waited, listening, looking at each other. I was so nervous, I began to giggle, clapping a hand over my mouth to stifle the sound.
“Shh,” he whispered. “Where are my boots?”
I handed them to him, and he yanked them on roughly over his bare feet.
“You must tie laces,” I said, imagining him tripping up before we could make it into the trees. He bent and stuffed the laces down into his boots,
“There,” he said. “Satisfied? Come on now.” And taking my hand, he pulled me beside him across the strip of grass into the woods.
Under the canopy of trees, it was darker and hard to see our way forward. We felt our way with our feet and hands, touching the tree trunks as we passed them, kicking through the bracken underfoot.
Eventually we reached a small clearing, and he stopped, looking back toward the black shape of the sawmill, just visible through the trees.
“That should do,” he said. “Come here.”
I almost ran into his arms, turning up my face to be kissed.
After a moment he pulled back. “Are you cold? You’re trembling like a rabbit.”
“Not cold,” I said. “Just…”
I didn’t have the words for the shivers that passed through me. This was the adventure I’d longed for. It felt as if my life was starting at last.
“Are you afraid?” he asked, gazing at me in the moonlight. “I’ll never do anything to hurt you. Nothing you don’t want to do. I love you.”
“Not afraid,” I said. And I wasn’t. “I love you. I want…”
The novelty of hearing myself say the words was still an arrow of joy in me. He drew me into the clearing, where we could see a little better.
“Here, let’s sit down. It’s just so wonderful to have you to myself for a little while without any guards.…”
“Or mothers.”
He sat with his back to a broad oak tree and patted the earth beside him. I took off my coat and laid it beside him on the ground, which I knew would be damp, then sat close, cuddling into him. He wrapped his arms around me, and we sat watching the small movements of leaves against the sky, listening to tiny rustlings in the undergrowth. We must have looked peaceful, but my heart was banging against my ribs, and I wanted him to start making love to me. I wanted to be a woman.
I turned in his arms and kissed his throat, his carefully shaved chin, his lips, which opened for me. I ran my tongue over the chipped edge of his front tooth, claiming every imperfection as my own. As we kissed, he gently laid me down on my coat. He had one arm under my neck, but the other hand was free, and it went to the small buttons on my blouse. He fumbled unsuccessfully with one button and then moved his hand to cup my breast and then back again to the infuriatingly tiny buttons. I wished I’d worn something else and broke away from the kiss, pushed myself up onto my elbows, twisting toward him as I sat up. His eyes were steadily on me as I undid the buttons one by one and removed my blouse. It was chilly in the September air, and the hair stood up on my arms, but I didn’t care. I lifted my camisole over my head and reached behind me for the fastening of my bra. As I took it off, I automatically covered my breasts with my arms, but as he watched me and made no move, I slowly dropped my arms to my sides so he could see me properly in the moonlight.
He let out a very long, low sigh and then reached forward to trace the curve of my right breast to the tight nipple. I shivered with cold and delight as he cupped my left breast in his warm hand and bent with his mouth to the right until I thought I might die with joy.
Kissing me again, he guided my hand to the hard lump in his trousers and pressed it there. The thing inside jumped of its own accord, and my hand jerked away in surprise. He drew back to consider me. “Have you ever? No, you ain’t, ’ave you?”
“I am a good Catholic girl,” I said indignantly.
“Of course you are.”
His head was bowed, and I couldn’t tell from the way he said it whether he thought this was bad or good. In peacetime most girls were married long before they reached twenty. Many had children. But in war, nothing is the same. Now was the right time for me, married or not. A cold breeze ran over my bare torso, making me shiver and wrap my arms around myself.
He raised his head at the movement, and I could see the struggle on his face. He gazed at me for a long moment as if making up his mind. “Then we won’t do it till we’re married,” he said. “There’s no way of knowing what’ll happen, and I don’t want to leave you with a kid.”
This proved more than anything that he loved me, and now I wanted him to do it even more.
He said, “You know I’ll come back after the war and marry you? You do believe that, don’t you?”
I ran the tips of my nails along the bare patch between his sweater and trousers, hoping this would encourage him to resume.
“Why not marry now?” I asked, meaning the consummation as much as the sacrament.
He shook his head. “You’re crazy! There’s a war. I’m a prisoner.”
“But we love each other. Perhaps there is way.”
“Even you couldn’t make that happen!”
“Do you want I try?”
“Yes, yes, I’d marry you tonight, right here if this tree was a priest.”
He struggled up onto his knees and turned toward the tree. “Yes, I do!” he said, and I knelt beside him and exclaimed, “I do too!” and he pulled me into his arms again, running his hands over the goose-pimpled skin of my bare back. I thought now we might do it, and I wanted him to so much, but soon he told me to put my clothes back on because it was too cold.
I was filled with a cocktail of frustration and disappointment, love and pride in him, but he was right; it was becoming really cold. So I began to dress myself.
“When we’re married, I’m going to make love to you all night,” he said.
We sat huddled up to each other for a long time, not speaking. I wondered whether a time would come when it would be so normal to be together like this that we would take it completely for granted.
• • •
As I approached the house, I knew that something was wrong. I leaned my bike against the wall and turned the handle of the back door. Nothing. It wouldn’t open. I pushed harder. Nothing. Then I heard movement inside. For a terrible moment, I thought it might be the Russians, but then the bolts were thrown back, and I faced instead the fury of my mother.