Free A Daughter's Duty by Maggie Hope Page B

off her tongue. She didn’t even know why she was lying, or why Charlie wanted their meetings kept quiet. In any case, she wasn’t going to meet him, she decided. To heck with him! She wasn’t at any lad’s beck and call.
    It was 7.05 p.m. on a cold and frosty Boxing Night when Marina walked up Silver Street from the bus station to the market place in Durham City. There were very few folk in the street; she had to stand to the side of the narrow thoroughfare only once as a bus lumbered down, bumping over the cobbles. In the market place there were more, a fair number of people making their way to St Nicholas’s in the corner opposite. And under the statue of Lord Londonderry on his horse, their own special place, stood Charlie, his college scarf wound round and round his neck and chin, his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets. Her pulse quickened at the sight of him.
    ‘There you are,’ he said, and cupped her chin in his hand and kissed her lightly on the cheek. His lips were warm in contrast to the frosty air. ‘I was beginning to think you hadn’t got my note, that you weren’t coming.’
    ‘I nearly didn’t.’
    But Charlie hadn’t heard, he was drawing her along to the church, eager to join the queue. ‘Did you say something?’
    She shook her head. He put an arm around her and bent his head closer. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you before I went home. It was difficult. You know what families are like.’ He laughed deprecatingly. ‘Did you have a nice Christmas?’
    ‘Yes, thank you,’ Marina replied like a polite little girl. It had been the usual family Christmas in the miner’s cottage in Jordan; the government had allowed everyone extra rations and so Kate had made a fruit cake, even securing a covering of almond paste from the Co-op. There had been a duck, courtesy of Farmer Brown, a cock chicken and mounds of vegetables and gravy. Even a fruit-laden pudding and sauce, flavoured with a quarter-bottle of rum Dad brought up from the Club. And afterwards, tangerines and hazelnuts and presents from the family. ‘You didn’t send a card,’ she said now and was immediately sorry, for it sounded like an accusation.
    Charlie laughed softly. ‘Neither did you. It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s a silly custom, I always think. I thought we would rather see each other, enjoy the concert together.’
    Marina thought he could have sent a card anyway but her resentment was melting in the warmth of his presence. She didn’t say that she didn’t even know his address, so how could she have written to him or sent a card? They had reached the door of the church now and went in and found their seats, hard wooden chairs brought in from the Sunday School to augment the pews. There was an air of magic about the place today, the people talking in hushed tones, the vaulted ceiling darkly mysterious, a lighted tree in the entrance, a crib and gold-painted cardboard angels above it. The choir and orchestra were taking their places, the audience rustled as they settled down in their seats and looked expectantly towards them, talk trailing into silence. Charlie took her hand in a warm, firm clasp and the orchestra tuned up and finally launched into Handel’s
Messiah.
    It was magical all right. Charlie leaned over to her in a pause and whispered, ‘You look rapt. You see, I told you you’d love it.’
    She did. ‘Oh, yes, it’s grand, it is,’ she assured him. ‘Thank you, Charlie.’ The evening passed in a haze of music and singing, low and reverent or sometimes unbearably sweet then swelling to a triumphant chorus which soared to the roof and beyond. And Marina’s heart swelled with it, her hand still held in Charlie’s firm grasp and her shoulder close against his and that was as sweet as the music. Too soon it was over.
    Outside, balancing on cobblestones in the black strappy sandals she had got for Christmas from Kate, her toes curling up against the cold, Marina looked around the square at the