Free Lovers Meeting by Irene Carr Page A

sunlight.
    ‘That’s right,’ Bob agreed. ‘I was ten when my old man moved up to Yorkshire to work with his brother, my uncle.’
    ‘And you said you were going to be a sailor.’ She thought he looked fine in his uniform. The cap hid most of the shock of yellow hair but there was no concealing the bright, blue eyes.
    ‘Joined when I was seventeen,’ Bob replied absently, still amazed at how his childhood friend had grown into this pretty girl, neat and attractive in her nursemaid’s grey dress and white apron. ‘What about you?’
    ‘I work in the Urquhart house. My mam wanted me with her when I left school – and I wanted to be with her. So I started working for the Urquharts and I’ve been there ever since.’
    ‘How is your mother?’ asked Bob, and commiserated when Josie told him of Peggy’s death. He said, ‘My father died three years back and his brother went the year before. My mum didn’t have any relatives left but me so she moved down here and found a little house in Lambeth.’
    They examined each other shyly as they talked. They made a handsome couple, the tall, tanned, good-looking young man and the slender, smiling girl. But the children, Hugh in his sailor suit and Louise in her cotton dress, had become restless. So they all walked, Bob and Josie talking until they paused to listen to the oompah-oompah of a little German band, then went on. When it was time for Josie to go home Bob lifted a finger to his cap in salute – and they agreed to meet again.
    Over the next weeks they met whenever Josie had a half-day, or a few hours off – and Bob could get shore leave from his cruiser, which was being refitted in Chatham dockyard. They visited the zoo, and the museums when it rained, but mostly they walked, talked and laughed. Until one Sunday he took Josie home to meet his mother and to have tea. Dorothy Miller was obviously delighted with the girl. Then a week or so later Josie chanced to mention that she had given up her half-day one week, to cover for a girl who was not well, and so would have a full day off the following week.
    Bob said, ‘Here, tell you what, how about a run down to the Hall? It would be a day out and we could see how the old place looks now.’
    Josie knew how it looked because she went there every year when the Urquhart family visited. But she could see how eager Bob was and so she only laughed and protested, ‘All that way?’
    ‘It will only take an hour on the train – or less.’ And Bob pressed her, ‘My treat.’
    ‘Have you come into a fortune, then?’ Josie teased him, but wondering, because sailors were only paid a few shillings a week.
    Bob shrugged that off: ‘I’ve done some long cruises and I’ve got some money saved. Don’t you worry. Well?’
    Josie would never have considered going unchaperoned into the country with a young man but this was Bob, the friend of her childhood, and she gave no thought to propriety.
    So they left Waterloo on a blazing June day. After a fast journey by train, and a slow one on a country bus, they walked the last miles to the Hall. They did not enter by the main gates where the keeper lived in his lodge. Instead they passed into the grounds through a farmer’s field, where black-and-white cows followed them, curious. They also took care to keep out of sight of the house and they did not see another soul.
    It was noon when they arrived at the pool. Bob had removed his woollen jumper after leaving the bus to walk in his ‘flannel’, the short-sleeved sailor’s shirt. Josie, in a crisp, white blouse and wide straw hat, was still too hot. She had brought a light lunch of sandwiches for both of them, with a bottle of beer for Bob and ginger beer for herself. She laid the bottles in the pool to cool.
    ‘It’s just like that last summer.’ She took off her hat and set it aside.
    ‘It’s all o’ that.’ Bob wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and gazed yearningly at the pool, its surface moving