The sentence trotted around his head for the rest of the afternoon, causing him to break out in ridiculous smiles that other people must have thought him mad.
"Underneath this raincoat I am practically naked"
Even trawling through the docks in the pouring down rain was not going to wipe the smile off his face at her unexpected appearance early that morning.
He had been desperately hurt by her dismissal and repeatedly punished himself for the clumsy, nay rash, way he had proposed. There had been better plans for that moment and for two weeks he had taken any spare shift going so he would not have to sit alone in his lodgings for hours on end, not sleeping, barely eating and not confessing to a soul that he had lost her. There had been hours of thoughts and so many plans as to how he would propose yet in a panic the words had tumbled out and only made it worse.
Sister Bernadette had said 'hello' when he had seen her by the banana sheds and they passed the time of day in the vaguest way possible, not daring to address the issue of Nurse Browne.
As he perused the previous night's custody record, he heard feet walking across the tiled floor. Looking up he saw her. He'd tried to be standoffish, tried to be short with her, tried to sound uninterested but it was in vain. Trouble was he knew her enough now to know she would feel guilty enough without him compounding it. When it came to the bare bones of it, he loved her and regardless of how or why he had come to lose her, if she said the word he would welcome her back to his side with open arms. Pride didn't matter; the only thing that did matter was that he could not bear his life without her. So here she was, his brain at first refusing to engage with the fact that she seemed only to be wearing her raincoat until those words, what could only be described as a near on proposition, fell from her mouth.
She saw his face crack in response and relief flooded through her. He leant forward and kissed her and told her that he loved her because that was all that mattered.
"Shall we go out for supper tonight?"
She nodded, suddenly wanting to burst with joy. She needed to just sit and talk with him like they used to, for hours on end. How odd that they stuttering start that they had had their relationship was now (had been) filled with conversation, no floundering over words or discomfort, just ease.
"I could walk up to you? It will save you rushing," she suggested feeling just his fingertips touching hers as both hands lay on the desk.
He nodded again. "If it's not going to put you out".
"It won't" she replied, particularly as she would have tramped half way across London if he so required it of her.
After her night and early morning trip to the Police Station, she did not feel tired until she returned to Nonnatus, exhaustion suddenly hitting her as walked from the bike shed; those stairs up to the front door suddenly seeming endless. Thankfully, with nobody in sight she was able to run upstairs and change before anybody could ask any questions regarding the location of her uniform, even though she had a perfectly legitimate excuse for it. A spot of breakfast and then sleep was called for.
On her way up the stairs she glanced at the rota, noting that some kind soul had put her in the clinic that afternoon and not on call that night.
As she dressed there was an odd lightness in her heart. It could have been relief; it could have been confidence; it could have been foolishness at the decision she was to make about her future. She would marry him, have no hesitation in saying 'yes' when he asked again. She paused. Was it a question of 'when' or a question of 'if'? He had told her that he loved her but after all that she had done would he now hesitate? There was an ocean of difference between loving somebody and taking the decision to marry them, especially if they have already refused you. You may just think twice.
She slipped her dress over her head and pulled a cardigan from the drawer, spying the two photographs of her that bedecked the chest of drawers. She wondered for a moment what that little girl would think of her living in Poplar in amongst fallen buildings and poverty. That little girl only knew of lace dresses, horse-riding and boarding school not the grinding poverty of slums or having to deliver babies by fading candlelight. That little girl probably didn't think those things existed.
It seemed only now that she was slowly finding herself. All that education she had but how odd it was though, that the one thing she was completely uneducated in was men and this fictitious husband that society had told her she ought to acquire. She had been taught to cook and keep house to please this man, taught to sew to please him, but she had never been taught about providing her husband's other pleasures. Until she had studied nursing, she had learnt through whispers that she must tolerate her husband's behaviour, however unspeakable it may be, to provide him with spotless children and a regimented household. Society had told her repeatedly that this was her role and route to fulfilment as a woman and that was all she should expect.
She could cook this person's meals until he was fit to burst and sew button after button on his shirts, but as for what he would expect from her if they married she couldn't hazard a guess.
That was when it hit her; the thing that had been unconciously in the back of her mind from when she stepped out of that tenement. She sat on her bed suddenly forgetting breakfast. There was one barrier that was separating them and it certainly was not the 'done thing' but who would know? He loved her; she loved him. Could it really be that simple? It was not like marriage had never been mentioned. All her life she had craved being held, craved affection and here were both if she wanted to take them.
He had been so patient with her and now, reflecting on the past fortnight, she had been so cruel to him. She had to apologise; had to make it up to him and by giving the whole of herself to him she hoped he would realise just how much she wanted to be part of his life.
The difficulty was however it all made her feel inexplicably stupid. Unmarried women were not meant to know the intimacies and intricacies of a marital bed but she surmised that at least she had the advantage of her medical books and that tattered copy of Married Love that had been passed secretly around her boarding house avoiding the gaze of the Matron.
She had been quite horrified too some years ago, shortly after she had qualified as a nurse, when one of her prospective sisters in law took her to one side and asked her if she could explain something medical to her. Chummy had assumed it might be to explain an illness or symptoms but she was quite alarmed when in quiet tones she was asked how she might come to have a baby after she was married. She also remembered her sister in law's mystified and alarmed face when she explained as delicately as she could. The ordeal of explanation, albeit using medical terminology and not mentioning perplexing concepts as 'love' or 'desire' that she did not truly understand herself, was thankfully less shocking that her finding out that a 25 year old woman had not known how a child was conceived.
She had been wearing her metophorical nurses uniform when she had been asked that question, but it had not been her time. She had said the word "brave" to him in the Police Station and that time had come.
Later that day….
From where they were tucked in the booth, with their backs to the rest of the diners, they were out of sight. Camilla preferred it that way, to sink into the background; to not stand out. They sat side by side taking up as little space between them as possible, stealing kisses when they thought nobody could see. As they drank coffee, his hand crept onto her knee and her first reaction was to leave it where it lay.
"Shall we take a very slow walk back?" he asked, draining the last of the cup in front of him.
"Yes, but.." she hesitated. "Not straight back to Nonnatus".
"That's okay. We can take a diversion along the canal and walk very, very slowly".
"No", she said, pausing before lowering her voice, half wondering what on earth he would think of her saying this. "I want to go back with you".
"I've every intention of walking you right back to the door, don't worry about that". The penny still had not dropped. She knew they were at cross purposes but how on earth do you say it?
She took a calming breath. "I know you will, but… I want to stay with you".
He daren't think what he hoped that meant and for a moment he did not know quite what to say to her. Despite the fact she had turned up at the Police Station dressed in very little, he thought it could possibly have just been a joke to grab his attention. It certainly had done, but there were no chickens being counted by any means.
He took her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.
"I don't want you to do or say anything just for the sake of pleasing me".
"I'm not" she replied, suddenly feeling the oddest sense of confidence in herself. Now she had said the words to him all the nervous anticipation she had built up in her head washed away. This was one of her faults, one thing she always did – imagined the very worst to be found to find reality was not so frightening.
They walked from the dining rooms the mile and a half back to his lodgings, hand in hand, passing no more than a trickle of people. The air was not particularly tense although Camilla certainly had that familiar feeling of dissociation creeping up on her as she got closer to 16 Empson Street. She felt like she was walking on clouds, tethered by his hand, but floating high above herself feeling oddly detached her head swimming even though not a drop of alcohol had crossed her lips.
She watched him open the front door to let them in, passing his sleeping landlady who had fallen into slumber in her front parlour.
"Will she mind me being here?" Camilla whispered as they crept up the stairs, her following his sign language not to stand on a certain step that he nearly put his foot through the night before.
"Judging by the beer bottles on that table, she'll be out for the count for hours" he said, quite used to finding his landlady in various states in the middle of the day and the arguments with her husband that he could hear through several floors.
They crept the 3 flights of stairs to the attic rooms he inhabited and she stood behind him as he unlocked the door. It was not as though she had not been there before but that had been for moments.
"Sit down" he said, as he took her coat from her and went to hang it up. She noted the armchair by the un-stoked fire and the settee. She chose the latter and he came and sat beside her, taking the hand that was somewhat awkwardly laid on her lap.
How on earth does one say what one is thinking in these types of situations? Not that she had ever been in this situation before. She had promised herself she would be brave; she was resolute. Jenny was right – she could have him and it was only her that was stopping it.
She turned to him.
"I am sorry"
"No apologies necessary".
"No, let me say it. I've spent my life doing what other people want of me and I pushed you away because that was what Mater wanted because my choices did not, do not, suit her. If you hadn't smiled at me in the Station this morning..."
He stopped her.
"I don't want to know what you might have done as it will never happen. You know I would like you to make here a home with me".
She nodded. "I do".
"I had plans to propose to you properly".
"No, Peter" she responded quickly.
He was about to object, hearing those words from the steps of Nonnatus again, when he felt her hand squeeze his to cause him to quieten.
"Propose to me another day, just not now".
He was confused and still refused to let the penny drop just in case he had misread the reason she was seated on his settee. Her logic, to her was simple. Having little clue as to men's habits, she could easily have been a disappointing wife and this was his chance to walk away without feeling any form of obligation. She saw a flicker on his face, desperately trying to read her expression.
"I was angry with you" he said, "but then I realised that for the past 2 weeks I've not been able to bear my life"
"I know we're not married and I should not even be considering this, but I don't want to wait for you to ask me to marry you"
A small, but unsure, smile greeted her feeling his hands snake around her throat, pulling her towards him with just the gentlest of kisses. The hand that had been cradling her head had moved to her neck and she was more than sure he could feel the anxious pulse. How she wished it more than anxiety; or at least something that she could say could recognise as some other emotion.
She could feel herself becoming lightheaded at what she was about to do; the enormous step she was about to take for herself as she drifted away feeling her shoulders touch the settee. She heard him say that he loved her. She was coming round to believing it could be true especially as he was littering her face with kisses. Regardless of love however, she was tired of being rational and doing the right thing to please other people and it was time to do the right thing for her and this included giving herself to him.
How would she have looked though? Her hand having pulled his shirt from his belt, dress twisted almost to her waist, being kissed in a deliciously immoral way on a settee in the attics of a rundown house in the middle of the East End.
She could imagine the kind of gossip that would flit around her parents circle at what her mother would only describe as her daughter's 'downfall'. Was this as wrong, though, as had been drummed into her in the past? Now it came to it, feeling his weight on her and his mouth on her skin did not feel wrong; in fact it all felt rather lovely. Was feeling safe, cared for and wanted so wrong that it was a sin?
He brushed away the crucifix around her neck. How she was so vividly aware of the symbolism of the small piece of gold falling away over her shoulder was anyone's guess. That was every promise she had ever made in Church and to God thrown away with the single brush of a finger against skin.
All of a sudden however, he broke away from her and his eyes rested on hers.
"What?" she asked suddenly panicked he had changed his mind.
"This shouldn't be here".
"What?"
"You deserve better than a settee. You are better than a scruffy settee".
"I don't care Peter"
"But I do" he replied, as she felt his weight lift from her.
He stood up, and she suppressed a smile at the slightly dishevelled Policeman standing in front of her, shirt pulled out of trousers. A hand was extended to her and she allowed herself to be walked to his bedroom at the back of the house.
She shut the door behind them both, feeling the door handle dig into her spine as she found herself rooted to the spot. He turned back to her, still holding her hand as the brief touch of his breath on her cheek though well and truly dismissed any thoughts of going home.
Sleep refused to take me for hours that night. We reluctantly walked back from his lodgings, his scarf wrapped around my neck as I shivered, albeit not from cold. I have never forgotten that day; never forgotten being pinned against the door of Nonnatus House and that kiss before he left me. I had changed for bed quickly trying to shake away the cold feeling that I was not sure was entirely down to the night air, and my hand fell on the grey wool around my neck. It was too late to run after him, and it was selfish indulgence entirely that found me sinking into bed with it wrapped still around my neck, breathing his presence in. I knew I couldn't sleep with his scarf on my person – what if I was needed in the night and one of the Sisters walked in to wake me up? As I started to drift into sleep I pulled the scarf from my neck and it found itself underneath my pillow.
This had to be a secret. I had always been taught keeping secrets was wrong but then again I had been taught that most things that made you happy were wrong.
For the first time in my life I felt strong, alive and loved.
Mater, quite frankly, could swing.