The first time Grace met Greg was
at a dance for soldiers put on by Grace’s church. She had worn a red cape dress
which flowed around her slim frame, drawing the eyes of the soldiers. She’d borrowed
it from a friend, since a dress just for going out and dancing was a luxury she
hadn’t been able to afford even before the war, and now, such a fashionable dress
was hard to find for any amount of money. She’d also gone to the trouble of
drawing a black line down the back of her legs, since stockings were nowhere to
find these days.
Greg had been dragged against his will to
the dance by his fellow officers – to have a little fun and stop being so damn
stuffy. Grace was there to get away from the humdrum and grey of life since
this horrible war had started.
Grace was having a glass of punch and
walking around the room making sure everything was going fine when she bumped
into Greg. How she managed that, she couldn’t imagine; the man was well over
six feet, easily the tallest man in the hall.
“Excuse me,” Grace whispered
“Are you alright, miss?” Greg said, aghast to
see that his punch that was now splattered over her dress. “I’m sorry, your
dress is ruined.”
“Please don’t worry, it’s just a little
punch. It’ll come out with a little scrubbing,” she hoped.
“Do you come here often?” Greg said,
feeling the line was hopelessly gauche.
“Only when the cute officers attend,” she
said with a wink.
A sassy one, Greg thought and smiled.
They spent the next several hours talking
and laughing, forgetting that there was anyone else around. Soon the afternoon
turned to night and the announcement went out that curfew was only a half hour
away and everyone should be on their way home for the night. You didn’t want to
get caught out in the street with no cover if the air raid sirens went off.
Greg walked Grace back to her boarding
house under a clear star-filled sky. The night was cool so he offered her his
jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She pulled it around her and
smelled the scent of him and tried to imagine a future past this war. At her
door, she thanked him.
“Can
I see you again tomorrow?” he asked
“I guess that would be alright.”
“Then it’s a date!”
“You can meet me on Bridge Street in front
of a little place called Kingsland pub,” Grace said. “They have the very best
food you can get in London right now.”
They agreed to meet at two the next day,
and Grace felt quite daring, arranging to have a second date so quickly. But everything
moved faster in a time of war. You never knew if you would be around to see the
next day, and with the onset of the blitz, courting had gone from weeks, month
and years to days. Would Greg actually show up, though? He was terribly
handsome.
The next day
at precisely two p.m. Grace was waiting outside the pub, looking up and down
the street for Greg. But the street was wrapped in thick and soupy
fog that hung in the air like a curtain. She could
barely even tell whether passers-by were men or women until they were
practically upon her, and she didn’t know if Greg would be coming up the street
or down, so she had eyes on both directions. The streets bustled, with people going
about their days, doing errands or meeting up with friends, husbands, lovers. Many,
many people. But no Greg.
When the clock read two-thirty, disappointment
crept over her and she was giving up hope. Then she spotted him coming towards
her, his height and his full dress uniform making him stand out from the crowd and
rendering him a handsome silhouette against the intruding fog.
“You’re late,” Grace remarked, trying to
sound severe but with sheer joy bubbling up into her smile.
“I got lost navigating the streets in all
this fog. We never have fog like this back home.”
As he came closer, Grace noticed he looked
pale and unwell and walked as if in a daze.
“Greg, you seem sick, are you okay?”
“Just a bit of the flu – nothing to be
concerned about.”
“Nothing to be concerned about! You should
be in bed, not out here in the damp fog meeting me.”
“I wouldn’t miss this date if I was on my
death bed and they had to wheel me here on a stretcher.”
Grace blushed at his words. He was sweet
and kind and the best-looking man she had ever seen.
Greg refused to go home when she asked him
to. He insisted they go have a drink at the pub and talk awhile. She was
only half reluctant. They settled down in a corner table across from one
another. There was a vase with no flowers in it and nothing else on the table,
giving it a dull and sad look.
Being alone with someone of the opposite
sex was foreign to her. Grace had only just turned 18 and had never been allowed
to date when she lived at home.
As for Greg, he’d joined the army five
years ago when he turned 18, and since then, he’d seen the world slowly destroy
itself around him. He’d never had time to form relationships, let alone
romance. But Grace … she was a blooming flower among so much gloom. He wanted
to hold onto her beauty for as long as he could.
Neither of them knew what to expect
or even do in this situation. It had been easy at the dance; the words just
flowed between them. Now it was different, no music, no dancing, just the two
of them alone.
But soon their uncertainty faded away and
they started to talk about their lives growing up – her’s here in London; his, back
in Canada. And then of course, their present – the blitz, the rations and when
they thought it all might end.
Grace was surprised at the way Greg talked
to her. He didn’t leave anything out to protect her. He treated her like an
equal, not some delicate thing who would fall apart at a moment’s notice, the
way so many Englishmen treated women these days. He even seemed interested when
she went on and on about nothing at all.
He didn’t pull his hand away when she
reached hers across the table to him. She knew being so forward would have scandalized
everyone in the little town she came from. It might even scandalize Londoners.
But Grace didn’t give a damn what people around her might think of this display
of affection she was showing to a man.
He smiled at her but then began to look sad around the eyes.
“Whatever is the matter?”
“This is wonderful and I would like to meet
you again but I ship out in the morning and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.
I can’t ask you to sit here waiting for me until I return.”
“Of course, not,” Grace said. “They'd be pretty mad at me for staying in this spot for so long.”
Greg laughed and her smile grew.
“I
will wait for you to come back and we can meet at this same place and pick up
where we left off.”
He got up kissed her hand. “Well then,
Grace, until next time,” he said. Then he walked out the door, and he disappeared
into the fog.
~ ~ ~
Michelle Lee Rap is an aspiring writer who sees writing
as a way of expressing all the voices in her head. A wife and a mother to two
amazing kids, she lives in Mississauga, Ontario
See Brian
Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops
and creative writing courses in Algonquin Park, Bolton, Barrie,
Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Ingersoll,
Kingston, Kitchener, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough,
St. Catharines, St. John, NB, Sudbury, Thessalon, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock,
Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA,
Ontario and beyond.
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