The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!

At the top of the ladder, he hauls himself upright, careful not to bang his head on the beams, lights a lantern. Old toys. Worn-out carpets. Leather suitcases and trunks. Tea tins filled with rusty nails. Cardboard boxes full of back numbers of The Cornhill Magazine.

He moves further into the attic, stepping carefully from beam to beam, as only the middle portion is covered with boards. Uncle Charles’ stuff should be at the end of the attic, on the right, under a groundsheet. He holds up the lantern. A sideboard draped in a white sheet drifts like an iceberg in the dark. Two discarded tennis racquets, with frayed and broken strings, lean against a copper fireguard. A jumble of old picture frames lies on the floor. A groundsheet.

Everything has been left exactly as it was when Uncle Charles came home from Flanders thirty years ago. A battered shaving bowl. A camp bed. A collapsible lantern. The last time the lantern was lit was in the trenches on the Western Front. Martin’s generation vowed that the horrors of the trenches would never happen again. But, in a few weeks, or months, he will be lighting this same lantern. Same battalion. New war.

He dismantles the lantern and puts it back in its case, picks up the camp bed and puts it and the other things in the groundsheet, carries them across to the trapdoor and goes back down the ladder.

‘You found it!’ Uncle Charles is sitting in the kitchen polishing his shoes: a row of black and brown brogues laid out in a neat row next to a shoebox.

Martin takes out the canvas pouch with the collapsible lantern.

‘Goodness! I didn’t know I still had it!’ The older man takes the pouch, opens it and puts the lantern together. ‘These hinges are the tricky part.’

Like Aunt D., Martin thinks of Charles as a surrogate parent. Ever since he was a boy, Martin has spent his holidays here and in that time he has come to feel far closer to his uncle than he ever felt to his own father. The idea that Martin may carry the same lantern into battle only makes this connection stronger.

‘There!’ Uncle Charles clicks the glass sides into place, places a candle inside and lights it. He looks over at Martin with an expression both of love and sorrow. ‘Good company on a cold night. I hope it serves you well, too, dear boy.’

5 AUGUST 1939 (#ulink_aed2a730-bcaa-5b2c-8636-4b6d678d2a57)

Whichert House (#ulink_aed2a730-bcaa-5b2c-8636-4b6d678d2a57)

The sun is high over the Chilterns as Martin speeds through the lanes in the Bomb. It’s his last day before training camp. There’s a fluttering feeling in his stomach, the same he used to get when he was driven back to start the new term at Marlborough when he was a boy. But he is determined to enjoy these last few hours of freedom. Nancy has arrived back from Devon and Hugh Saunders has asked them both over for a game of tennis. On the back seat lie his trusty Dunlop racquet and a bottle of chilled white wine.

Nancy is already waiting outside Blythe Cottage, dressed in a pleated white skirt, white top, white socks and white plimsolls on her feet. In her arms is a Ladies Slazenger racquet.

‘Ready for battle?’ He kisses her and they speed off.

‘Not so sure my tennis will live up to the outfit,’ Nancy shouts, holding her hair in the wind.

The light dances off the bonnet of the Bomb. A field of golden corn stretches away to the right. The hedgerows are choked with wild flowers: cow parsley, vetch, water avens. In Bulstrode Park, a herd of cattle stand chewing the cud, flicking their tails. The branches form a canopy of green above their heads.

‘England, in August!’ he cries. ‘Is there anywhere so beautiful in the world?’

Hugh Saunders is waiting for them in the driveway of a large, Queen Anne, brick house in Gerrards Cross. Since meeting him in the spring, Nancy has come to like this tall, fresh-faced young man, with his inquiring eyes, broad shoulders and athlete’s body. Like Martin, he has been commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. One rank higher, though: as a captain.

‘Come and say hallo to everyone.’ Saunders leads them down a path to a grass tennis court. He motions towards a svelte, grey-haired woman sitting under a blue umbrella, in a white tennis skirt and shirt.

‘Martin!’ The woman starts to get up. ‘Lovely to see you again.’

‘You, too, Connie.’ He gestures to Nancy. ‘And this is Nancy Whelan.’

‘Delighted to meet you at last!’ They shake hands. ‘We’ve heard so much about you.’

‘Some of it good, I hope,’ Nancy jokes.

‘Nearly all of it.’ Hugh’s mother grins affectionately, then indicates a tanned, young girl sitting next to her, reading Vogue and brooding fashionably behind dark glasses. ‘My daughter, Helen.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Nancy leans forward and shakes the girl’s hand.

‘Marvellous!’ says the girl to no one in particular, extending a pale, limp hand.

Saunders points at a jug and glasses laid out on a folding table covered in a floral tablecloth. ‘Lemonade, Nancy?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

Sitting in the sun, they drink lemonade and talk about the latest news of the battalion, who has got what commission, whose family is trying to protect their son from joining, then Hugh picks up his racquet and a net of balls. ‘Anyone for tennis?’

As a child, Martin dreamed of playing at Wimbledon. He was good for his age, with a wicked sliced backhand and a serve-volley game ideally suited to grass. He played on his school team and, in the holidays, in Junior tournaments, winning the Under 14s at Great Missenden two years in a row. And he now plays on the Teddy Hall team. The thock of ball on strings. The sunshine on his bare arms and legs. The white outfits. The feel of the grass underfoot. If he ever goes to heaven, he hopes there will be a tennis court there.

‘Martin, you team up with Helen, all right?’ Hugh opens the net and drops the balls onto the grass.

‘At your service,’ Martin says with a theatrical bow.

Hugh and Nancy easily win the first set, 6–2. Helen is a left-hander, and not very mobile. But in the second set, Martin begins to find his range and volleys.

‘You’re poaching at the net too much, Martin!’ Nancy pretends to glower at him, as they change ends. ‘It’s very unsporting of you.’

‘Just because we are winning . . . ’ Martin kisses her on the cheek.

At the changeover, they return to the shade of the umbrella for more lemonade. Everyone is in a jovial mood, but beneath the good humour there is an undercurrent of anxiety. Tomorrow, none of this will exist. Tennis parties and dances, punting on the River Isis or rambling through the fields of Buckinghamshire will all be a thing of the past. In twenty-four hours, Martin’s life as a student and a civilian will come to an end and his new career, as a soldier, will begin. He will sleep in a camp bed and wear only khaki. Tennis racquets will give way to guns. He will be separated from Nancy and his family for weeks, if not months. Will he rise to the challenge? Will he be man enough to fight for his country – and for her?

‘Hugh tells me you are getting your uniforms today,’ Connie says.

‘Yes.’ Martin sips from his glass, says, excitedly: ‘Right after this. At the drill hall.’

‘Well, that’s a start.’ Mrs Saunders frowns. ‘Have they also got some ammunition for you? Apparently, we are months, if not years, behind the Germans.’ She tut-tuts. ‘And now they have all those munitions factories in Czechoslovakia to draw on, too.’

Martin looks across at Nancy, then says, gravely: ‘We’ll be ready when the time comes.’ He tips back his lemonade, then turns to Hugh. ‘See you at the drill hall?’

They drive back to Blythe Cottage in silence, each wondering what the next weeks and months will bring. In a few hours, Martin will be in uniform. Another chapter in their lives is beginning.

‘I wonder what we’ll be doing next summer?’ says Nancy, wistfully, as they pull up outside Blythe Cottage.

‘Same as this, I hope.’ Martin leans over and kisses her, then watches as she slides out of the car, her tennis skirt high up her thigh. ‘See you tomorrow? At the station?’

He waves then drives away, watching her grow more distant in the side mirror. Half an hour later, he pulls up at the drill hall in Aylesbury, the battalion’s base. A line of Bren Carriers is parked outside. Probably be driving one of those soon, Martin thinks.

James Ritchie, another of the battalion’s captains, greets Martin as he pulls up. He’s a banker, married to the daughter of the Wethered brewing family in Marlow, and a descendant of the writer, William Thackeray. He’s also ten years older than Martin, and senior to him.

‘Captain Viney and the rest of the officers are already inside.’ Ritchie points to a tent in the middle of the parade ground. ‘You can collect your uniform there.’

The tent is full of men stripped down to their underpants and smells of sweat and beer. Bawdy jokes about the respective size of the officers’ ‘packages’ fly back and forth. Boxes of battledress uniforms, just arrived from London, stand open: a woollen blouse and a pair of trousers that look rather like something you would wear in the Alps.

‘Hugh!’ Martin calls over to Saunders.

‘You made it.’ Saunders stares down in dismay at the trousers he is trying on and pulls a face: they are up around his ankles.

‘Is this the longest you’ve got?’ he says to an orderly.