Chapter 1

She had another hour before she was on duty. They had only ever released the balloons when the wind was off-shore and likely to remain so. Today was likely to be quiet. There had been plenty of favourable conditions in which they had been told to halt releases; it wouldn't do for allied aircraft to become entangled in the balloons so enthusiastically released, and armed with trailing wires or incendiary devices, by the 140 Wrens stationed at Felixstowe.

Most of those 140 had still been young enough to enjoy writing rude messages to Hitler on the balloons before they were released. The messages had been quite mild, although Nancy had to admit that at 18 she might have thought them quite daring. Now, at 27, she had heard much worse. Once, she had calmly taken the brush and the tin of black paint from a nineteen year-old who clearly considered herself the live-wire of the group, painted something much more forceful on the side of the balloon, handed the brush and bucket back again and walked off to oversee the filling of the balloons with hydrogen.

Now the operation had been scaled down considerably, and the live-wire (who had afterwards treated Nancy with increased respect) and many others of that group had been posted elsewhere. Since the landings in June there was a definite feeling that peace could not be that far off. The Wrens had been disbanded after the last war. Nancy wondered if the same would happen after this one. She had been married for nearly five years; for all but a week of that time the country had been at war. She hadn't really had a chance to find out what sort of person a peacetime Mrs John Walker would be. She already had a pretty good idea she would be doing – at least in the immediate future.

Perhaps she hadn't needed to get up an hour earlier in order to appear at breakfast without obvious queasiness. Still, it was no hardship on a fine July morning.

Thinking about breakfast had been a mistake.

The experience of the last couple of days suggested to Nancy that she had better stay where she was for a little while. They were billeted in a convalescent home, which meant that the bathrooms were fairly good. She perched on the edge of the bath, smiling, and remembered.

Her train had got into Liverpool Street well before his train from Liverpool was due in, but she had hurried across to Euston anyway, not minding the long wait on the platform when she got there. She had seen him first as the overcrowded train disgorged its passengers. They had stood there, not speaking, just holding each other while the flood of humanity parted, flowed around them, and joined up again like a river flowing around the pier of a bridge. When they were sufficiently convinced that they were both really here and had said the most important things, they had gathered up their bags and, showing their travel warrants to the ticket inspector, gone to Aunt Helen's house.

When Aunt Helen had written to Nancy, she had made a point of saying that she would not be off-duty until the next morning and had made up her bed for them, moving herself into the little spare room. Nancy suspected that losing her friend Lillian had made it painful for Aunt Helen to see John and her together. That made her hospitality even more generous.

John had taken their bags upstairs while Nancy had made a pot of tea, and they had sat, both still in uniform, talking and holding hands in the late afternoon sunlight at the kitchen table.

Nancy wished she had not thought about drinking tea. She gave in to the nausea, glad she had stayed put.

John had asked the same question twice, and then laughed and admitted that he had only asked it for the pleasure of hearing her voice, when Nancy heard the air-raid siren. John had looked at her, questioning.

"They've only recently started." she had said, "since the landings. Aunt Helen's got a Morrison shelter in the other room."

As they settled themselves in the shelter with the wire sides in place, John had remarked that it was like being in a cage at the zoo.

"Now, I know how Gibber must have felt."

"Aunt Helen said it's the best thing she ever bought. She likes using it as a big table and for weeks, in the Blitz, this was where they slept."

Those would have been weeks with precious little sleep for either Lillian or Aunt Helen, and the memories of horrors seen when they did close their eyes.

"So," John had said, nodding towards the window with curtains and black-out curtains already drawn across, "tell me about this."

She had explained about the "pilotless planes". "Only they aren't really. More sort of self-propelled bombs. Some people call them buzz bombs or doodle-bugs. They make a distinctive sound – and they travel quite fast. When they stop, that's when they start coming down. So if the noise just fades out in the distance ….."

He had been taking her hair down from its tidy bun, lining up the precious pre-war hairpins in a precise row at the edge of the Morrison shelter. His fingers were gentle on her neck and his breath was fast and soft against her cheek.

"If they fade into the distance …" he had prompted in a very low murmur, deliciously close to her ear. She had known he was enjoying her inability to concentrate on what she was saying.

"Then it isn't you – this time. It's when you can still hear them and they cut out suddenly they say you should start to worry."

"And if you can't hear them at all?"

"Then you've got time for other things." she had said.

She had still been wearing a few clothes when she had started to wriggle free from his arms. They had heard some of the bombs pass over and fade out in the distance. His arm around her waist stopped her.

"In my suitcase, which is upstairs …." she had begun.

He had nodded understanding, but not agreement.

"It's not worth the risk." he had said, pulling her back down into a close, fierce embrace. "I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you." And then, in a lighter tone, he had said, "I'm sure we can find other ways to amuse each other."

And they had, but….. It would only have taken the slightest of words from her, the smallest of reminders, but she had simply not wanted to remember, had not said anything. Afterwards, lying with her head on his shoulder in the sticky June evening, with the closed windows making the room too hot for clothes or covers, he had apologised and she had said,

"Probably once doesn't really matter. Anyway, it was just as much both of us."

They had slept then, although she had tried to stay awake for a little while to watch him sleep. It had been dark when they woke, and they had been cold where they were not touching each other. They had not been able hear any more of the buzz bombs, so they had gathered together the various piece of clothing and slipped upstairs, giggling.

He had unfastened her bag for her, found and handed her the little round box.

She had laughed. "It doesn't work afterwards. The nice lady doctor at the clinic made that quite clear!"

"I know."

And she had seen the look in his eyes and wondered how it had ever taken her so long to work out what it had meant in that long ago and far off time called "before the war". When she came back from the bathroom, they had not gone to back to sleep straight away.

That wonderful week together was a fortnight ago. He was back on his destroyer, somewhere in the Atlantic. Her stomach seemed a bit calmer now. She began to clean her teeth.

She had spent far too much of her life living with other young women to draw any definite conclusions from being a few days, or even a week late, but she had been sick three days in a row. Things tasted strange; smelt strange. She would delay filling in a POR for as long as possible. Since the landings, it had been obvious that Operation Outwards would soon come to an end. Maybe they had another month. She could delay for that long.

"Besides," she said softly but aloud to the otherwise empty room, still smiling. "No-one but your Daddy's going to hear about you first. I'll write to him today."

My darling Nancy,

If you could see me writing this with a big grin on my face, you wouldn't need to ask how I felt. We always did say "someday" and "after the war". It seems to me there is a fair chance that the end of the war will arrive before our son or daughter. After all, we were both wartime babies and so were Susan and Peggy, and we've all turned out OK. Of course I mind not being with you, and of course I mind that things will be more difficult for you because of the war and of course I'll worry about you. But none of those are anything for you to worry about. And I was worrying about whatever-it-is that caused the singed eyebrows and the wire cuts anyway. I'm sure you are right about Beckfoot being the best and safest place for you in a few months time….