The Hidden Years

Lizzie hesitated as she stared at the fabric, its white background rather dingy from too many washings of a poor-quality cloth. The fabric was overprinted with a too-busy design of bright red and yellow flowers that made her feel slightly dizzy, but everyone was waiting and if she refused she would offend Rosie and probably everyone else as well. They were, after all, trying to be helpful.

As she put the dress on and fastened the buttons down the front she realised how much plumper Rosie must be. The dress, which on Rosie hugged the waist, hung loosely on her, and the V-neckline was surely much more revealing on her than it was when it strained across Rosie’s plump breasts.

She tried not to feel relieved as she reached for the buttons. ‘It’s kind of you, Rosie, but it doesn’t look anywhere near as good on me as it does on you,’ she said tactfully.

Although she was loath to admit it she was actually longing to get back to Lady Jeveson’s cast-offs. At least in them she felt she was decently dressed. She had been horror stricken to realise that through the thin fabric of Rosie’s dress it was actually possible to see not only the outline of her nipples, but also the dark shadowing of their surrounding areola.

‘No, keep it on,’ Rosie protested, ‘all it needs is a belt. You’ve got a red one, haven’t you, Jean…? Bring it here and let’s see how it looks…’

Jean Adams was a tall thin girl, with dark hair and dense brown eyes. The belt in question was made of bright red shiny plastic and had been a present from an admiring GI.

Lizzie felt her fingers recoil from contact with the sharp shiny stuff in distaste. The only belts she was familiar with were soft leather, often worn, with the stitching gone in places, and always in dull browns and greys.

‘Give it ’ere, Jean,’ Rosie instructed, obviously enjoying her role as transformer-in-chief. ‘Now breathe in, Lizzie, while I get it fastened… My goodness, you are thin, aren’t you? Even Jean can’t get it fastened on that first notch, can you, Jean? No, you can’t look at yourself yet,’ Rosie told her firmly as she tried to step to one side so that she could see her reflection in the dormitory’s one spotted mirror.

‘What you need now is a bit of colour in your face. Some nice bright red lipstick and a bit of rouge…’

‘And some blacking on her lashes,’ someone suggested. ‘What size shoes does she take?’

‘Threes,’ Lizzie said weakly.

‘So small…well, it will have to be Mary’s white courts, then… You take a four, don’t you, Mary? We’ll have to stuff the toes. Where’s he meeting you, love, outside?’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘On the back lane to the hospital.’

‘She’s not walking all down there, not in my white courts,’ Mary objected indignantly.

‘No, well, she’ll have to wear her own shoes and then change just before she meets him. Leave her own hidden—she can pick them up in the morning.’

Lizzie wanted to object that it wasn’t necessary for Mary to make such a sacrifice. Aunt Vi had always told her that a lady never wore white shoes, but it was difficult to speak with Rosie determinedly outlining her mouth with what felt like sticky paste, and someone else spitting on a cake of mascara ready to attend to her eyelashes.

It was a good half-hour before they were satisfied with their efforts and ready to let her look in the mirror.

When she did, the image confronting her was so totally unfamiliar that she could only stare at it in confused disbelief. She looked so much older, so much more worldly, so…so common, a sharp inner voice derided, but with the circle of expectant faces watching her she could only swallow down her dismay and weakly thank them.

‘Just you remember,’ Rosie warned her, all motherly concern, ‘if he tries it on, you make him wait. Show him that you expect to be treated with a bit of respect. They’re all the same… All after one thing…and they’ll tell you anything to get it…’

She wanted to protest that they were wrong, that Kit was different…but her feelings were too new…too precious to be shared with anyone else.

Someone, she rather thought it was Mary, provided her with a white cardigan to wear over the dress, which mercifully buttoned up to the throat, and then she was being escorted downstairs and outside, so that it was impossible for her to plead that she couldn’t accept their generosity and change back into her own things.

Lizzie couldn’t cycle to meet Kit, not wearing her borrowed finery, and at first she found it disconcerting to feel the freer movements of her breasts as she walked.

That the sensation of her flesh pressing against this cotton was not entirely unpleasant shocked her, as did the sudden illuminating knowledge that when Kit took her in his arms she would be able to feel his body against her own separated only by such a flimsy barrier.

Such thoughts were forbidden, disgusting, Aunt Vi would have said, but it wasn’t disgust that welled up inside her. Far from it. It was the same fizzing, exciting sensation she had experienced when Kit had pressed his lips against hers, the same curling tautness deep down inside her, which made her stop walking and instinctively press the palm of her hand low down against her body, until she realised what she was doing and went scarlet with shock and guilt.

She knew all about what happened between men and women—it would have been hard not to, when the other girls gave such graphic and detailed descriptions of their boyfriends’ prowess or lack of it—but she had never realised until now that the physical intimacies they had described, and which she had found rather nauseating, could be responsible for the kind of delicious ache that was tormenting her body and making her hurry eagerly to meet Kit.

She had set off in plenty of time and, when she reached the arranged rendezvous, she was able to slip out of her own brogues and replace them with Mary’s white shoes, which looked very large and ungainly on her own slender feet.

The only thing she had not been provided with was a pair of the much prized stockings, and she had firmly refused to allow her helpers to draw lines down the backs of her legs in imitation of stocking seams. Her ankles looked very fragile and pale, she decided, eyeing them uncertainly, but her woollen stockings would have looked ridiculous with Rosie’s dress.

Time passed. She seemed to have been waiting for hours. Her stomach tensed and she began to wonder if Kit wasn’t coming after all. She had no watch and no way of telling what time it was. She couldn’t stay standing here for ever, she told herself, thankful that the lane was seldom used so that there was no one about to witness her humiliation.

She could just imagine the other girls’ reactions when she went back and told them that Kit hadn’t turned up. Her eyes stung with tears. It had never occurred to her that this might happen. She had been so certain, so sure that Kit felt as she did…

She was just about to retrieve her shoes when she heard the sound of a car engine. Her heart bounded, her pulses thudding frantically as she froze and waited.

When she saw the familiar bonnet of Kit’s car coming round the corner she almost cried with relief, unaware of how very easily he was interpreting her reaction as he brought the car to a standstill beside her and smiled warmly at her.

Old Edward wouldn’t think her such an innocent now, Kit reflected cynically as he studied her. Quite a transformation.

He looked at her dark red mouth and felt a kick of sensation burst inside him. Sex was like a drug to Kit—the more he had, the more he wanted—and since he had been grounded five days ago for disobeying orders and breaking formation to chase off an enemy plane in a dogfight over the Channel, sex had been the only outlet he had had for the compulsive energy that drove him.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised, jumping out of the car and coming towards her.

Relief shone in her eyes, making them glitter with the tears which had been about to fall.

‘You look wonderful,’ he lied, making her wonder if perhaps after all the other girls had been right and that it was she who had been wrong to have had doubts about her appearance.

‘So wonderful, in fact, that I’ve simply got to do this…’

Kit was no fool. No matter how willing the woman, they still liked all the trappings. And this one was more nervous than willing. He felt her tremble as he took her in his arms and felt his body tense with elation. It gave him an extra thrill to know that he would be the first, that no one else had ever touched her or kissed her. Her mouth beneath his betrayed her inexperience. ‘No one’s ever kissed you before, have they?’ he said, crushing her body against his own, revelling in his power over her, her innocence, her gullibility. He placed his hand on her heart and felt its frantic beat. His fingertips were just brushing the underside of her breast, causing her both to tense and to tremble. His tongue snaked over her glossy red lips, making Lizzie shiver frantically again as his touch caressed her already sensitised flesh. She was so responsive to him, so dizzyingly aware of him. They had looked at one another and immediately she had known without words…without explanation—she had known.

Kit was biting at her mouth now, almost too roughly, but she guessed that it was because he, like her, had been overwhelmed by their love. She felt his tongue press against the closed line of her mouth and obediently parted her lips. She had heard the other girls talking about this kind of kissing, but had never thought that she herself could experience it without intense revulsion. Instead she discovered, as Kit’s tongue penetrated the moist intimacy of her mouth, that the slow caressing thrusts he was making were sending her dizzy with the waves of pleasure which seemed to be rolling over her in ever increasing ferocity.

‘I can’t make love to you here,’ Kit told her thickly. ‘My God, you’re dynamite, do you know that…? You and I are going to be so good together…so very good.’

To Lizzie it was a statement of commitment for their future, an avowal of love. Cynically Kit watched the effect his words were having on her, loving her vulnerability to him, his power over her. Fleetingly he wished he had more time to spend with her. There were things he could show her—teach her. His body grew hot and hard, the intensity of his desire for her catching him by surprise.

‘Come on…let’s go somewhere more private,’ he commanded, picking her up and carrying her over to the car.

As he held her against his body, Lizzie felt the hardness of his physical arousal, and her senses thrilled to the knowledge that she had done this to him. She knew from the other girls’ conversation what that hardness meant; what she hadn’t known before was how exciting it would be to know that she could have that effect on the man she loved, nor how much she would want to press her body against his, to take that hardness deep within her own flesh so that she could prolong and intensify the fierce, aching pleasure being close to it brought.

As he lifted her into the car, either by accident or design, his hands slid up over her body, fleetingly caressing her breasts.

‘Where can we go?’ he demanded. ‘You know this area better than I do… I’d take you back to where I’m staying but the landlady…’

Take her back to his room, he meant… She wasn’t ready for that yet, Lizzie acknowledged. It smacked too much of what she had always considered to be the rather sordid intimacies of the other girls. She wanted this to be different… It was different, of course. She and Kit were in love with one another, and after the war… She took a deep breath, her heart pounding with the heady excitement of anticipating the future…their future, and then hard on its heels came the sharp new fear experienced by every woman whose man risked his life in the defence of his country. What if Kit should die—what if all they had was here and now? What if there was no future, only these few precious hours? It was a thought she could not bear to contemplate—not now—not ever.

‘There is a place,’ she told him huskily. ‘It’s just inside the hospital grounds, but no one ever goes there. We’ll have to walk, though.’

The place she had in mind was a small, neglected summer-house in an overgrown glade, hidden deep in the tangled undergrowth of the neglected grounds. Even the path to it was overgrown with saplings and brambles. She had discovered it by accident and often went there when she wanted privacy. She had half contemplated taking Edward there, knowing he would enjoy it as she had… She had seen the first primroses flower there on the banks of its quiet pool, followed by wild bluebells, but the difficulties of pushing Edward’s chair down the overgrown and soft earth path had made her decide against suggesting such an outing. Now she was fiercely glad, because now it would be their secret place, known to them alone…a sacred temple to their love.

Kit parked his car at the end of the lane. When he lifted her out of her seat Lizzie clung shyly to him, blushing as he looked down at her mouth. The red lipstick was gone now, but her lips glowed with their own colour, softened and swollen from his earlier kiss.

‘Mm…innocent little thing, aren’t you…? Not that I mind.’ His hands slid down her back, past her waist and over her buttocks, squeezing them as he lifted her into his own body and moved urgently against her.