“Mrs. Campbell’s already made up your bed!” Nan loved that English robin of a WAAF officer almost as much as she loved the lads. And Nan must have heard the Tilly straining up the hill, because the door was open and she was waiting when we pulled up out front.

She wasn’t the only one waiting for us. Jane was in the big chair by the fire, leaning forward to spy as we came in. Louisa was at the piano and spun around on the stool to get a keek.

We came in belting “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” I was arm in arm with Jamie-lad, and behind us came Phyllis with two lads, Ignacy on one side and Derfel on the other. She was pinker-cheeked even than Nancy Campbell. Pimms Section, 648 Squadron, stamped muck off their boots in the vestibule and threw their greatcoats over chairs. They tossed caps onto tabletops and scraped furniture out of the way, warbling like a flock of off-pitch nightingales.

They wore air-force blue woolen trousers and fleece-lined leather jackets, and a few of them were still in their coverall flight suits with isinglass map holders strapped to their thighs. They made the low ceiling seem lower, the whole wide room a mite more tight. They brought with them the whiff of salt wind and oil and sweat, a reek of men and machinery.

Louisa spun back to the piano and found the right notes on its ivory keys, and she started playing along to “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” Now that the lads had a tune to follow, they pulled their voices together. Then Jane joined in singing too, and it was—well—that woman’s voice!

It was astonishing.

For one whole chorus we all just stood as we were, still, to listen to her sing.

Then the lads joined in, shouting their goodnights, though none of us was anyone’s sweetheart, and it was broad daylight.

There was no holy pause at the end. They started jawing at once, carrying on for drink, and thumping on the bar.

“Mrs. Campbell, that fire’s not nearly hot enough! I told these new kids you always have a fire going!”

That was Chip Wingate, the American, the one they called Tex.

Derfel Cledwyn, the Welsh navigator who used to be in another flight section, snatched peat logs from the stack. He pushed them into the grate below the wishing-tree mantel. Flames roared and sparks soared, and the lads joined their voices into one big bawl of a chant.

“Nan-cy! Nan-cy!”

“Come on, Nan Campbell, get behind that bar, we’ve missed you—”

“Nan-cy!”

Our Nan was a new woman! She shone like the morning star, twenty years falling off her face in a moment. She glowed as if every one of these loud, foul, jaggy, bristly lads were her true love come home from a year at sea.

“My darlins, you know it’s not permitted hours yet. Opening time is half eleven.”