SEPTEMBER 1918

45

WHEN SHE’D KISSED him, he’d smelt perfect. There was no other way to describe it, because he did not smell like anything other than him. Skin, his. Warmth, his. Which was perfect. A hint of sex and promise. The promise of kindness, a better path. His lips were always warm and pliable. Her tongue slipped between his teeth, a slight scrape. Another as she felt his bristles brush against her face. Every time she’d kissed him, she’d felt a growing lump in her chest, like a snowball or a wave, gathering momentum, threatening to overpower her. She’d sometimes wonder how she’d manage to get through the kiss. Would she explode with the joy of it? With longing and exhilaration mashed up in one unfathomable chaos?

This, she was almost sure, was what it had been like to kiss Howard Henderson, but it was becoming harder and harder to be sure.

His kisses were fading. As was his voice, his face. She didn’t have a photograph. Why hadn’t they thought to have one done in London? Because she thought she’d had longer. Forever. People talked about remembering the tone of their loved one’s laugh, the exact hue of their eyes, their smile, the spaces between their freckles. She couldn’t, not honestly. All she could remember was how he had made her feel. Safe. Better. They’d had a matter of days together, and now it was two years apart. It wasn’t reasonable. Pinned to the wall there was a calendar. Basic, bought from Walker’s store; no pictures, just dates, numbers. Pictures of idyllic scenes or kittens would infuriate her. Insult him. Next to it, a stub of pencil held in place with a tack and a piece of string. She crossed off another day. Women up and down the country, across Europe, throughout the world, were doing the same thing, she was sure, but her loneliness was not sated by the thought, nor aggravated. Her loneliness was too big to be affected by outside circumstances, even the knowledge that her position was a common one.

She just missed him.

She missed how she was his focus, how he was hers. How he concentrated on what she thought, felt. She grew when she was with him. She missed seeing the bulk of him out in the fields, bending and toiling, nurturing crops, mending roofs and fences, feeding and cleaning animals. The earthy vitality of him. She was so sure that was what men ought to do – grow, build, create. He’d been right: mankind could do more than spoil. Better. She missed seeing his gentle kindness towards Timmy Durham and his loving playfulness with Mabel. She longed for the joy of him.

Vivian thought back to when Nathaniel Thorpe had disappeared, abruptly and troublesomely, from her life. Then, she had been astounded to see how transitory desire could be. She’d been full of need and want for him, but almost overnight that had all vanished. With Howard, the opposite was true. The craving and wanting intensified. She had no room for small emotions such as humiliation, anger or shock. On the most clear, basic and understandable level his leaving was all that mattered. Would he stay safe? Would he come back? Him not being with her was the biggest disaster she could comprehend. On another, more complex plain, it didn’t matter at all. It didn’t change anything. She still loved him just as much as if he was standing right by her side. The air was saturated with longing. It was all she breathed in.