Andrew’s point of view on the first meeting in Eagle Day
Sam’s point of view here.
“Well, um, went in as a private, got sent to France; came out as what they called a ‘temporary officer and gentleman’ only because there was nobody else left.”
Andrew ran his fingers around the rim of his teacup. That was Dad all over: making a face like he was opening a vein and then saying nothing. Well, not quite nothing - the tenor of that ‘nobody else left’ spoke of shadows - but there weren’t even the facts a service record would give, not even what Andrew had pieced together himself from what he could remember of conversations between Dad and Mum, or Dad and Uncle Charles. Not that those were the facts Andrew needed. He braced himself, as if for barrelling into a scrum in rugger, and asked it fast.
Dad’s eyebrows went up and his head cocked, but his gaze stayed on the flowers in the window sill. “What…” It was little more than a puff of air. “Are you…” He sat down and turned his sharp, unrevealing eyes on Andrew. “Worried about. Maybe having to…?”
Worried seemed a mild word for the nasty cold knot in his stomach. He twitched a shoulder in attempted casualness. “I suppose I have begun to think about it.” At the most inconvenient moments. He’d had to be very carefully cheerful with Bruce, very determined to talk about the Crown Film Unit and the relative merits of the uniforms of the different women’s services, to keep from brooding about it all the way down from London in the car. Andrew looked hard at Dad. “Well. Did you?”
Dad didn’t blink but his gaze went far away. Andrew wondered if it was to a place like his own fears, or to someplace worse. A knock on the door broke the moment. They both started. Dad let out a sharp little sigh, and Andrew dug his elbow into the table.
“Yes.” Dad pinched the s at the end of the word. He lifted his head slightly and his eyes met Andrew’s again. “Yes, I did, and all I can say is, you get through it.”
Andrew sat back. “Hell or high water,” he said, because it seemed the proper British response to the proper British line.
Dad’s mouth softened at the corners, but then another knock sounded, and he pushed back his chair. “Get that, would you?” he said roughly, reaching for his waistcoat where he’d hung it on the empty third chair. “It’s my driver.”
“‘Course.” Andrew took a few deep breaths as he went to the front door, and rolled his shoulders which had gone as tight as if he’d been making a night landing. He hoped it wouldn’t be Sergeant Rivers this morning; Rivers was always so tiresomely surprised that Andrew wasn’t still fourteen or even four.
It wasn’t Rivers. It wasn’t a sergeant. It wasn’t a man. It was a pre-Raphaelite painting come to life and packed into an olive-drab uniform.
“Hello,” Andrew answered. “Are you…?” She might not be there for Dad. She might be canvassing for something - not the WVS, not in that rig, but civil defense, perhaps. She had her hair ruthlessly pinned up but it shone red-gold in the sunlight, and her skin was like rich eggnog with freckles for the sprinkle of nutmeg.
“You must be Andrew,’ she went on. “I’m Samantha Stewart. I’m your father’s driver.”
Andrew gawped like a fool for a long moment, then managed to push the words “Come in!” out of his mouth. “He, he never told me he had a…”
“What?” Her dark eyes flashed and she stood poker-stiff between the coat rack and the stairs.
“Well, a, a girl,” Andrew managed. He tried the smile that had gone over so well with introductions to university friends’ sisters. “Especially such a pretty one.”
She all but grew spikes like a porcupine. “I see you don’t hold back. Obviously been well trained by the R.A.F.”
This was not the way these things went. Andrew tried again, crossing his arms and taking up a casual attitude leaning against the sitting-room doorjamb. “Have you met many pilots?” He kept his voice light and teasing.
Hers stayed cool. “No. I tend to mix more with policemen. Just as well, really,” she added, as if he were something unpleasant that had stuck to the sole of her shoe.
Charming contrition was all he had left. “Look, I didn’t mean to offend you. We’ve got plenty of W.A.A.F. drivers. I just didn’t expect to meet one driving my dad.”
“Well, I was hoping to cook or knit balaclavas for His Majesty’s forces, but here I am.” The set of her perfect jaw suggested that being tied to a stake might be preferable.
Dad appeared between them, still straightening his tie. Impossible to be sure how much he’d heard; safest to assume he knew everything. Andrew wished he could drop through the floor, or turn the house upside down to dump them all free, as if ditching from a damaged plane.
“You two met, then?” Dad said.
“Yes,” Samantha Stewart answered.
Andrew wondered if he could melt into the wall, but Dad turned to him as he reached for his hat. “You here this evening?”
“They haven’t told me yet where I’m being billeted, but I expect so.”
“Right.” Dad straightened the lapels of his overcoat. “We’ll eat out, yeah?”
“Good.” Dad nodded, then glanced to his driver and tilted his head towards the door. “Sam.”
She followed him without a flicker of a look at Andrew. He shut the door behind them and leaned on it. Sam, Dad had called her Sam, not Stewart or even Samantha. What a perfect, dashing nickname for a beautiful, dashing woman who’d be at his doorstep every morning of the week... and couldn’t bear the sight of him.
