I watched him walk away, ducking his head under tree branches, until I could see him no longer.
Sitting here, writing these words, I know I should be happy. A good, honorable man will marry me. I will not be forced to have a child alone. For the first time in my life, someone will walk with me, side by side. But for all of that, I cannot help the sinking feeling that we are naive to think that we can outrun a ticking clock and the inevitable ruin that will follow.
? BETH ?
Saturday, 12 August 1944
Southampton
My darling Beth,
Every time I receive one of your letters, the sun shines again. They are what sustains me and makes me know that this brutal campaign will be worth it if I can come home to you.
You asked how I feel about working behind the line. I cannot tell you much, as you know, for fear that this letter will become entirely black strikethroughs, but I will say it’s not the sort of visceral existence that I felt when I was fighting. Nothing can replace that, but I can see the good that we’re doing. Whenever a lorry full of petrol rolls onto the road, I know that that is going to move us forward. Whenever supplies for the bakeries or butcheries arrive, I know that the men will eat.
How is the farm? How are Mr. and Mrs. Penworthy? Has Ruth finally found herself a flyer? These little details are what holds me close to you and Highbury.
One thing you can do for me is call on Lord Walford at Braembreidge Manor. I know you’ll not want to bother the man who owns such a grand place, but he’s a lonely sort and I worry about him. Only promise me you won’t let him charm you into marrying him instead. He may be seventy-three, but he is an earl.
I love you.
Yours forever,
Graeme
Beth eyed Ruth, who sat on the edge of her bed, squinting in the fading light of the late-summer sunset. Ruth was attempting to apply a recipe for homemade nail varnish to her toes, but the paint was too clumpy to make a clean line.
“Do you think that one is better?” Ruth asked, sticking her foot up for Beth to examine.
“I don’t want to look at your feet, Ruth,” she said, raising her book in front of her nose. “Could you please go back to your own bed?”
“Yours is closer to the window. Besides, I need your opinion,” her roommate whined. “I’m half-blind as it is.”
“You wouldn’t be if you would wear your glasses,” she pointed out.
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re nearly a married woman. I can’t be out and about in glasses.”
“Nearly married is not the same thing as married,” she reminded Ruth.
In the weeks following D-Day, she’d been able to settle. A little bit. Graeme’s letters had been few and far between in the three weeks directly after the invasion while the supply lines were being established, but when he began to escort goods between Normandy and Southampton, she’d begun to receive letters nearly every other day. He couldn’t tell her much of what he was doing, but it seemed as though he was as safe as a soldier could be.
Each time he wrote, he told her he loved her. Each time she read those words, she knew that she’d chosen the right man. But constantly running in the back of her head were Mrs. Symonds’s words: Love can make women do ridiculous things. Intelligent women become silly. They give things up they never intended…
Day after day, Beth turned those words over in her head. She wasn’t naive. She knew that things would be different between her and Graeme after the war. For starters, she wouldn’t be a land girl any longer. All of her friends—Petunia, Alice, Christine, even Ruth—would go off to their respective homes. If not for Bobby, Beth would have counted on Stella leaving Highbury House as soon as possible.
Despite all of that, she wanted to stay. There were plenty of people who had made her feel welcome. The Penworthys, Mrs. Yarley, the Langs who kept sheep down the road. The sour Mr. Jones could be a welcome sight on days he grunted to her in greeting. Even Mrs. Symonds said hello in the village, although friendship seemed a laughable aspiration.
She could be happy in Highbury—she was convinced of it—and she wasn’t going to let that go on the vague promise of a life uprooting and resettling at army bases across the country. She refused to feel orphaned again.
“Come on.” Ruth shook her foot in front of Beth’s face.
She sighed and gave a cursory glance at the other woman’s toes. “Congratulations, it looks like you’ve painted them with red currant jelly.”
Ruth made an exasperated sound. “I don’t know why it’s not working.”