Free Lovers Meeting by Irene Carr Page B

slowly, eddying as the stream ran through it. ‘I could do with a swim now but I haven’t got a costume.’
    ‘That didn’t stop you before,’ Josie challenged. ‘You’re scared.’
    ‘So are you,’ countered Bob.
    They laughed as they remembered that time when as children they had bathed naked. Then they were suddenly shy and Josie remembered that this was not just her childhood friend but a virile young man. She looked away and said, ‘Yes, I am.’
    They laughed again then, and settled for paddling.
    Lunch was eaten in the shade by the pool and both dozed for a while in the heat of the day. When Josie woke she found Bob watching her. She smiled at him and he came to her and kissed her. He whispered, ‘My ship’s bound for the Med in October. Will you marry me, Josie? Please?’
    ‘Oh, Bob.’ Josie clung to him. ‘Yes.’ She knew how she was going to miss him. ‘Yes.’ And she responded to his caresses on that warm summer evening, because she loved him and they were as good as married, riding with him on a tide of passion.
    Bob bought Josie a ring that took most of his small savings. They planned a wedding in September but he came to the back door of the Urquhart house one evening in early August. Josie hurried him away into another doorway, out of sight of the house or prying eyes. ‘I told you not to come here, Bob. We’re not allowed “followers” hanging about.’
    ‘I’m not hanging about. I just had to see you. The ship’s sailing early. Not for the Med, this is just a shake-down cruise after coming out of the dockyard. I’ll only be away a few weeks, but I don’t know exactly when I’ll be back for the wedding.’
    Josie peered at his gloomy face. ‘Well, we’ll just have to postpone it.’ She was miserable but saw he needed cheering, and he was the one going to sea. So she tucked her arm through his and told him, ‘I’ve got a half-hour or so. I’ll see you on your way.’ She saw him on to his train to Chatham, where his ship was lying, kissed him and told him, ‘I love you.’
    It was two weeks later when his mother came to tell her that Bob had been lost at sea. They learnt later that he had been employed on boat-work in bad weather, had dived in to rescue a mate in difficulties and both had drowned. Josie recalled the boy who was Bob saying proudly when he was ten years old, ‘’Course I can swim! I’m going to be a sailor!’ Now she took Dorothy Miller to her room and they wept together. And Josie told her, ‘I’m expecting.’
    Bob’s mother held Josie in her arms and said, ‘You call yourself Mrs Miller now. That’s what he wanted. You’ve got your mother’s ring what she left you. Put that on. And you come and live wi’ me. We’ll manage, the pair of us.’ And then hopefully, ‘And maybe later on you’ll be able to get some work to help out.’ Because her small pension would not keep both of them, let alone a baby, and their savings would not last long.
    Josie would have to leave the Urquharts’ service but she had known that when she accepted Bob’s proposal. She had intended to leave on her marriage, not this way, but the result was the same. The Urquharts were sympathetic but there was no question of an unmarried, pregnant girl caring for their children. However, they gave her a good reference: ‘Mrs Josie Miller has given excellent service as kitchen- and housemaid, children’s nurse and governess and assisting the housekeeper.’
    So Josie went to live in the little house in Lambeth, with its kitchen and scullery on the ground floor and two small bedrooms above, reached by a steep, narrow staircase. It was damp and cold because they had to be sparing with the coal they put on the fire, but Josie began to look forward and to sing again as she went about the house, awkwardly now with the child she was carrying. She knew the grim future that lay ahead of her as an unmarried mother but she faced it with courage. Then one day the singing was cut