He suspected that the well-appointed drawer had indeed provided a better night’s sleep than the rear admiral’s mattress, a lumpy horsehair thing that was almost as hard as the RAF “biscuits.” When he woke Teddy felt as stiff and cramped as if he’d just spent nine hours in a Halifax. Nancy had been right again—she generally was—he would not have been up to the attentions of the naval officer’s wife last night. He was far too exhausted to have survived her arachnoid charms.
Before Lucky could wake Nancy by jumping up on the bed, something he was allowed to do in Teddy’s quarters, he extricated himself from the sheets and slid his feet noiselessly to the floor. The windows had been left wide open all night and he slipped between the curtains and out on to the balcony, stretching his arms above his head and filling his lungs with the clean air. There was a salty smack to it that felt like a relief. The dog joined him and he wondered what it made of the view. “Sea,” he reminded it. Two nights ago his new aircraft, Q-Queenie, had made an emergency landing at Carnaby. Carnaby was on the coast and equipped with an extra-large runway to catch the poor crippled strays limping home across the North Sea, as well as those, like Q-Queenie, who were simply lost in the murk. Carnaby was equipped with “FIDO,” an acronym whose meaning Teddy had forgotten, only that it was something to do with fog. The runway was limned with fuel pipes containing thousands of gallons of petrol that could be ignited in case of fog to guide the lost and wounded home.
When he was safely returned to his own airfield Teddy had found himself telling the dog, his own Fido, about Carnaby, thinking it would be interested because of the name. That was the moment at which he realized that he had possibly become unhinged. He laughed at the memory now and scratched the top of the dog’s head. What did it matter? The whole world was unhinged.
The balcony had suffered in the sea air, large spots of rust showed through the white paint. The whole country was in a state of disrepair. How long, Teddy wondered, before it became irreversible, before Britain crumbled away in rust and dust?
He didn’t hear the discreet knock on the door that signalled the tray of morning tea they had ordered the night before and was surprised when Nancy stepped on to the balcony next to him and handed him a cup and saucer. She was wearing serviceable cotton pyjamas, “not really honeymoon wear,” she said.
“Is this a honeymoon?” Teddy asked, sipping the tea, already cooling in the morning air.
“No, but we should have one, don’t you think? First we would have to get married, of course. Shall we? Get married?”
“Now?” Teddy said, rather thrown. For a moment he thought perhaps she had arranged it as a surprise, a special licence in a local church, and he half expected a crowd of Todds and Shawcrosses to burst into the room, spouting congratulations. He thought of Vic Bennett who had never got to his wedding and what a knees-up it would have been, despite Lillian’s condition. He felt guilty about the fact that he had not stayed in touch and knew nothing of Vic’s child. Edward. Or a girl, perhaps. Lillian and the child would go on, but Vic was being slowly erased day by day until the time would come when no one would remember him. He said you were the best man he’d ever known. Vic should have lived longer, Teddy thought, he would have come to know many who were better.
“No. Not now. After the war.”
Ah, the afterward, Teddy thought. The great lie. “Yes,” he said. “We should, of course. Is that it? Are we engaged? Do you want me to get down on bended knee?” He laid the cup and saucer down on the balcony and dropped on to one knee, the dog a curious witness to this behaviour, and said, “Nancy Roberta Shawcross, may I have your hand in marriage?” (Is that what one said?)
“I should be delighted,” she said.
“Do we need to buy a ring?”
She held up her ring finger and said, “This one will do for now. One day you can buy me a diamond.” They married with the Woolworth’s ring. “Sentimental value,” she said when he placed it on her finger in the Chelsea Register Office after the war.
It had been a small wedding and later Teddy wondered if they shouldn’t have made more of a fuss. Ursula and Bea took on the roles of guests, bridesmaids and witnesses. Ursula brought Lucky with her, a red ribbon bow tied on his collar, and said, “Here’s your best man, Teddy.”
They never replaced the Woolworth’s ring with a more expensive one, even though the cheap alloy sometimes left an unattractive circle of black on Nancy’s finger. Teddy did buy her a diamond though, a small one, when Viola was born.
Betrothed,” she said as they walked arm in arm along the beach after breakfast. They had negotiated the shingle and the anti-tank traps to reach the coarse brown sand near the water’s edge, exposed by the low tide. The dog was running in and out of the waves. Occasionally Teddy tossed a pebble for it, but it was too in thrall to the novelty of the sea to be interested in the mundane canine tasks of fetching and carrying. “Plighting our troth,” Nancy persisted merrily. “How archaic. Where does the word ‘troth’ come from, do you suppose?”