The Girl on the Train
by Thomas Weaver
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Thomas Weaver
Published by Strict Publishing International
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Prologue
Tommy sat looking out of the train window as it sped north, not that he noticed anything of the tracks, telegraph poles, or towns that sped past.
Having been wounded in France some days after D-Day and then more seriously wounded a few weeks later, Tommy had spent the last eighteen days in hospital, lost a lung and then spent this last week at London’s Woolwich army barracks where he finally received his discharge papers at eight-o-clock on this bright and sunny Monday morning.
He was now a civilian, having been deemed unfit for any further military service in any capacity in any of the armed forces.
Tommy’s military service had lasted just seven months. He was drafted into the Royal Artillery at Oswestry in Wales in January and it was now July, not that he noticed it much. It had been a miserable summer up to now, but suddenly the sun shone and it felt very hot. Even with the carriage window half open and the blind down to fend off the sun’s glare, it was still very warm and stuffy.
Tommy dozed as he thought of the rush he had had that morning, of the waiting anxiously outside the dispatch office for his travel warrant, and the delay as a second Lieutenant was at great pains to explain that all the relevant discharge papers would be sent on later.
It was a last minute dash to get to Euston station and then spend the grand sum of seven shillings and six-pence to telephone his mother and let her know that he was at last on his way home.
“Is this it now?” his mother had asked hopefully. “Are you out of the army for good?”
“You are talking to plain Mr. Tommy Kearns now,” he told her. “And, Mum, can you get word to Mary for me?”
“I’ll ’phone Brian right away. He should be able to get a message to her,” his mother answered, sounding excited and only too pleased and eager to pass on the message.
“Ok. Thanks, Mum. I’ll have to go or I’ll miss the train. I’ll see you about two-o-clock.” Tommy ran for the train, and, much out of breath, got a seat by the window not so much for the view but because he would suffer fewer disturbances from people moving about.
* * * * *
Mary was Tommy’s fiancée and partner, and they had spent much of the time before his call up living together. Tommy had known Mary since their school days, but it was only when she was coming up to her eighteenth birthday that he realised this was the woman for him, and it was at another girl’s birthday party some three doors down from Mary’s house that Tommy made his move shortly after the air raid siren sounded.
Tommy had deliberately held Mary back for some moments as everyone dashed for the nearest shelter, and by the time they left the house the shelter was full. Before Mary could protest, Tommy had hold of her hand and they were running for the next nearest shelter, in the opposite direction from where some of her other friends were still running.
Mary was not protesting too much; just a token resistance, and then some moments after entering an almost deserted shelter, they were cuddled up together on a rather damp bench. Mary having known Tommy for as many years as she could remember had loved him almost from the first day see saw him and naturally excepted and wanted his fussing as he tried to keep her warm.
Tommy, with his arms around her snugly holding her close, kissed her on the lips. With a loudly beating heart and a quaky stomach, Mary returned his much longed-for kiss that quickly became warm and passionate.
Much to Tommy’s surprise, gladdening his heart, Mary was responding with no protests at all. As he finally broke off, Mary still continued kissing him. Although Tommy was a little surprised at the way he had impulsively kissed Mary, wondering if he was trying to go too fast, he was even more surprised at the way Mary held him and kissed with kisses that were long, soft, and very loving.
* * * * *
Tommy had watched Mary throughout his and her adolescent days, from their days at school to their casual meetings in their teens, which included a number of times when he had been to her house. She was always special to him, and yet before now he has never realised how fond of her he had become. Certainly, he had appreciated the way that she had become steadily more beautiful as she grew, and he particularly loved her long hair, which she had kept at waist length every since she was a little girl.
That night in the air raid shelter, Mary wore her hair in a ponytail, revealing her so naturally beautiful face. The only make-up of any kind she wore was a slight touch of lipstick. She was about five-foot six-inches in height, and weighed a well proportioned eight stone seven pounds, and as far as Tommy was concerned she was body-perfect. The light blue flowered dress she wore had a fold over bodice making it V-necked, and it seemed to flow into every contour of Mary’s body, accentuating each curve and in particular the shape of her bottom that Tommy particularly admired.
‘She is beautiful with beautiful parts,’ he thought and became quite annoyed earlier that evening when he had seen one of the other guests looking at her with the same admiration.
Mary had been employed in a food factory all her working life of six years so far, and had rapidly worked her way up until she became part of the management staff. Tommy’s mother still always rang Brian, once Tommy’s and Mary’s manager, when she or Tommy wanted to get a message to Mary, but Tommy doubted that Brian had anything to do with the work Mary did now. It was Brian who had originally offered Tommy his job as motor mechanic for their fleet of lorries delivering supplies to army depots all over the country, and it was Brian who has offered Tommy his job back as soon as he heard Tommy was getting discharged from the forces.
“Good mechanics are hard to come by,” Brian had said more than once.
Tommy would take the job, but not before he had had a week off at least, and he was hoping that Mary could take a week off to spend the time with him. Mary and I have seven months of abstinence to make up for, Tommy thought, and he reckoned that a week would just about cover it. When it came to going to bed with his beautiful Mary, he decided, anything and everything was going to happen, and after that it would have to be back to normal: seven times a week and twice on Sunday. He paused his thoughts. ‘I doubt things will ever be quite the same as they were.’
Chapter One
The Girl on The Train
The rhythm of the train and the warmth, despite the slight breeze blowing through the open window, made Tommy feel sleepy. He drifted into a doze as he thought of Mary and how she looked the last time he saw her. Five-foot six inches of beauty, with blond hair flowing down to her waist, she was a perfect thirty- two, twenty-four, thirty-two, and he almost worshipped the ground she walked upon. He never tired of admiring her shape, and adored her legs, her bottom…
The train had not been going more than half an hour when it started to slow.
‘Hold ups already?’ Tommy thought, but the train had stopped at a station. He was on the wrong side to see the station name, but it probably would have meant nothing to him anyway. He felt irrationally annoyed that the train had stopped before it really got going, but then his mouth fell open and his eyes widened in surprise as he was sure he saw Charlie come into the compartment and sit opposite him. All he could do was sit and stare at the young, dark haired, beautiful woman who wafted Charlie’s perfume over him and arranged herself comfortably as she sat next to the window opposite him and looked out.
“Charlie?” Tommy said, still feeling shocked and surprised. She looked at him.
“Do I know you?” she asked, and Tommy realised that he was mistaken. Her voice was different.
“No, I’m sorry, but you look so much like my fiancée’s friend. You could be her, right down to the perfume.”
“Well, I don’t have a twin so it must be a coincidence. Women are not spoilt for choice when it comes to perfume these days,” she told Tommy. “My name is Jenny.”
“And by the sounds of it from Yorkshire. My name is Tommy. I’m from The Links,” Tommy told her. “Have you heard of it?”
“As a matter of fact, I have, and I’ve been there. It’s about an hour or so before we get to Manchester. Are you going home on leave?” she asked. “I bet you can’t wait.”
“Yes permanent leave. I’ve been discharged,” Tommy told her. “I got caught up in a fight in France and ended up in hospital. I know it doesn’t show, but it’s permanent enough to put me out of the war for good.”
“Are you and your fiancée happy with what has happened? I mean, will you and she be able to cope with your wounds, or what comes after?”
“Err, yes I reckon so,” Tommy told her. “I was fortunate that it’s not disabling. The fact is, I should be able to live a normal life.”
“I’ve just had word that my boyfriend has been hurt. He was in Egypt and he’s coming home for good. He is not my fiancé, but I am frightened of what might be wrong with him because no one has told me any details. I don’t think I want to see him any more. It’s not like he has asked me to marry him or that I have even thought of marrying him, but we have been writing to each other a lot and well… I just don’t know.” Her voice tailed off, her mind on what she had been saying as though she had forgotten Tommy was there, and she added, “I think our parents expect us to marry, but I’ve never said I would and my boyfriend has never asked me.”
Tommy leaned back in his seat. ‘Hmm, I never thought of that.’ He suddenly wondered how Mary would feel when she saw his scars. For a moment, be panicked, but he quickly calmed. ‘I’m not disfigured too much. Nothing shows, and I’m sure Mary will accept me as I am because I’ve not changed either physically or mentally, I hope. I’m sure she would not desert me.’
He looked at the girl again. ‘Pity about the bloke, though. She is very beautiful, and so much like Charlie I could easily fall in love with her right here and now.’
Tommy thought about Mary, of how they had struggled with their consciences for so long and of how Mary had resisted his attempts to ‘try it on.’ When she had finally consented to a limited amount of ‘trifling’, it was only on her bum and the back of her thighs, on the outside her clothes.
This was as far as he was allowed to go, and for a long time it was only those parts of Mary that he massaged and fondled. He was not obsessed with any one part of Mary, but he had thought it was a particular part of her to admire. Of course, the whole of Mary was up there on a pedestal, from her beautiful fair face with its pert little nose, to the tips of her toes. Since their engagement, there was not an inch of Mary that Tommy has not seen and explored with hands, lips, tongue, and much of it with his member – but perhaps not every inch.
He wondered if Mary had changed over the last seven months, and then he wondered if he had changed. Apart from his wound, which had healed completely and he had been told he could expect to lead a normal life even with a lung missing, he did not feel as though he had changed. It would be no good to plan the few hours after he did meet Mary, because it was likely that his Mum and Dad would also be at the station to meet him, or even Mary’s friend Charlie. Mary had written a lot about Charlotte in her letters, and he gathered they had renewed their casual friendship to become really good friends.
Tommy and Mary had come to know Charlie when she first started working at Dunnings, and they became friendlier when on the supplies convoys in the early years of the war.
Dunnings made packed boxes of emergency food for the troops on the front line. These boxes were graded and known as ‘A’ ‘B’ or ‘C’ rations. The main differences were that ‘A’ had cigarettes and boiled sweets or chocolatel ‘B’ had just sweets extra and fewer cigarettes; ‘C’ had just the bare essentials for survival. ‘Just where these graded boxes end up,’ Tommy had thought, ‘Is anyone’s guess.’ When he ended up on the front line, however, he knew all about it: he was eating them himself! He knew most of the girls that packed the boxes and put letters of good luck inside some of them, and he had kept some of those letters, carried them in his backpack throughout his time in the army, and they were now in his kitbag on the luggage rack
At the beginning of the war when the organisation of supplies was in its early stages, someone had come up with the idea of relieving the hard-pressed military of the job of delivering food and other goods. In Dunnings’ case, the food for the troops was delivered directly by convoys of Dunnings’ own lorries, driven by some of the girls from the factory and with Tommy following behind in a smaller van stocked with tools and spares in case one of the lorries broke down. The deliveries were made as far afield as Cornwall and Scotland.
Charlie was a fairly constant companion to Mary on the convoys. She liked Mary, of that there was no doubt, and wanted her as a workmate and friend.
Mary always drove the last lorry, because Tommy in his breakdown van followed behind the last in any convoy, and the pair of them made the most of any short time they were able to have together. Charlie more than once caught the sight of a quick movement through the cab window that could only give the impression of ‘Hanky-Panky’, and Mary often said, “I like the idea of nearly being caught.’ Later, she admitted to liking the idea of being watched, and she liked to watch Tommy and his reactions to what she did to him during any kind of sex or play.
While on the convoys there was many a time when Tommy sat in his van and watched Mary and Charlie doing the necessary jobs on their lorries at every stop, like checking the load and canvasses. Watching them, Tommy thought ‘Except for Charlie having shoulder length dark hair and slightly bigger breasts than Mary, there is not a lot of difference between them.’ In Tommy’s eyes they were both really beautiful women. ‘And to think I turned Charlie down once,’ Tommy thought. He used to kid Mary that Charlie fancied her, but after the offer she made him he was not so sure, but then again he doubted that anything she said was supposed to be taken.
Before Tommy went into the army he and Mary had led a sheltered life. Finding out about ‘things’ came through experiment, trial and error, and the only thing they knew for sure was that they were not supposed to “do it”; so they “did it”, eventually, and from what Mary heard from the girls in work, Mary and Tommy were most definitely still novices at “doing it”.
The army took away much of Tommy’s innocence. He heard a lot about sex, although some of the tales, rich in detail as they were, made Tommy feel sure that they were, to use the army expression, absolute bullshit.
Some things stuck though. Some of it sounded plausible; like, for example, if two men walked down the street holding hands or linked arm in arm the conclusion should be that they were homosexuals, but if two women did the same or danced together in a dance hall or ballroom, it did not necessarily mean anything and no one gave them a second glance.
“So,” said the man who was airing his views in the barrack room, “Did you know that two women can do it facing each other? No? Ever heard of the Isle of Lesbos?”
Well, no, Tommy had not, and he stopped listening to much of what was being told by storytellers and barrack room lawyers alike. When one of them, telling of his exploits, said, “Did you know that most women like it up the arse for added excitement?” Tommy ignored him. These storytellers only messed with your head, he decided, and this bloke probably had it in for women anyway. Sometimes, however, what was said did ring a bell with Tommy, and they told of things that were at least close to his experiences with Mary. Then, for some reason he could not quite fathom, he pictured Mary and Charlie dancing together at the town hall dance, and doing it while they danced.
* * * * *
Tommy watched the girl, Jenny, when she was not watching him and she was looking out of the window. He felt his loins start to stir and his member begin to stiffen. She brought back memories of Mary and Charlie, and had to admit to himself now he would have liked to take Charlie to bed. He watched the girl, his eyes half closed, and he tried to shake off the image of Mary and Charlie doing it together.
His imagination was getting the better of him as he wondered what Jenny would be like in bed, and as he thought about it, he fidgeted, trying to make his stiff member more comfortable. When he felt like this, he usually lay it up against his belly, partly for comfort and partly because it was very visible inside his trouser leg. At this moment, however, it was too late to do that, and it became uncomfortable as it tried to push down his trouser leg. He fidgeted a little more, and the more he tried to get comfortable the more uncomfortable it became.
Jenny looked from the window to him with a hint of a smile, and it embarrassed Tommy to think she might know realise the source of his discomfort.
“Not too comfortable? This hot weather, I mean. It’s so hot on these trains, it has you panting for breath,” Jenny said.
“Most uncomfortable,” Tommy agreed. “I feel so tired after this last week; if this seat was a bed, I would sleep the rest of the way home.”
“Well, you can sleep if you want, and if you are still asleep when we get to your stop, I’ll give you a shake.”
“I might just close my eyes for a few minutes. Thanks,” Tommy answered her as he made himself more comfortable in the corner. Closing his eyes, he was asleep in seconds.
* * * * *
Tommy was faintly aware that the train had stopped, and as he came out of his doze he wondered why he was still thinking about Charlie and Mary ‘doing it’ together. He had no idea what had brought on these thoughts. They were not memories, but they were something to do with the “Lesbos” thing. ‘I don’t usually fantasize,” he thought to himself. ‘It must be that the nearer I get to home the more I’m thinking about what I’ve missed.’
He tried to pause his thoughts, musing on what had gone through his head. ‘If somehow I’ve been fantasizing about sex with Charlie, it will be gone once I’m back with Mary’ he assured himself. He looked about him, and saw that the train had stopped at another station. Jenny had her eyes closed and her head lying back against the headrest.
The train was bustling with people getting on and off, and it was as well there was nothing fragile in Tommy’s half-full kitbag, because the way people banged, pulled and pushed their suitcases about it was not doing Tommy’s property any good at all. His kitbag ended up half its size, and it was forced into a very tight corner.
Among the people coming into the compartment there were a couple of guys who, by the look on their faces, were heading straight for the seats either side of Jenny. Jenny opened her eyes at all the commotion on the train and saw them. Quickly, she left her seat and sat next to Tommy, linking his arm. The disappointment of the young men was obvious in their faces, and then a couple of elderly women shuffled along and sat in Jenny’s vacant seat.
Tommy was pleasantly surprised at Jenny’s move and felt close to her, but then he looked at the two blokes and thought, ‘I’m just the lesser of two evils. I have not bothered Jenny by trying to pick her up, whereas those two look to be on the prowl.’
“Going on leave?” a new passenger asked Tommy as he banged his suitcase the last possible inch against Tommy’s kitbag.
“Erm, yes,” Tommy said, his eyes turned up watching the passenger and his ever shrinking kitbag.
“Been in the thick of it, have you?”
“France, but not on the sixth. It was a few days later,” Tommy told him. Tommy guessed this guy had not been in the forces.
Jenny, with her arm linked through Tommy’s, lay her head on his shoulders and closed her eyes.
“Have you been in the services?” Tommy asked the man.
“No. Reserved occupation. Lucky, I suppose,” he admitted.
“Yes, there was a time when I thought I could get away with it, but it did not come off.”
Tommy remembered how first he lost his reserve status on the convoys and then his ear, always a problem to him, was deemed good enough to let him in. Later, there had been some doubt over whether his ear problem was too serious for him to be on active duty, but he had been wounded before anything was done. “Where are you from?”
“Crewe, originally, but I’m just finished a job in Watford and now I’ve got to go to Birmingham. It’s all to do with my work,” he volunteered in answer to Tommy’s question.
“I used to do convoy runs to Crewe station when his lot first started,” Tommy told him, glad to be off the subject of the army. “We sometimes visited the place two or three times a week, but the WRAC took over the last year and I ended up in the army.”
“Sometimes I wish that I could join up, but my nerves always got the better of me. Was it very rough in France?”
“If someone got killed, that was rough, especially if they were your crew, or more so if one was your pal,” Tommy said.
“You must be very glad to have him home safe,” the passenger said to Jenny.
“Yes, I am,” Jenny said looking at Tommy with adoring eyes. “For a while I thought I’d never see him again, didn’t I, darling?” She finished with a kiss on his cheek.
Tommy was amused, and smiled at Jenny as he stood up.
“I’ve got to go. I won’t be long, darling,” he said, and leaned forwards to kiss her full on the mouth with a long, lingering kiss.
Jenny’s face was very flushed when Tommy broke off the kiss. She looked down at her hands on her lap as if not knowing where else to look. She said nothing, but somehow Tommy knew that is was something she had wanted to happen ever since the first five minutes of her conversation with him.
Tommy headed for the toilet, and it occurred to him he had not been since he boarded the train at Euston. Later, he stood by the train door with the window down, only to close it again after a few moments. There was no sun on this side of the train and the wind whistled in, not actually cold but still going straight to his shoulder, which, although it was well healed, soon went numb and ached. This part of his shoulder still made him jump if it was touched or accidentally knocked the slightest. It seemed that end of the scar was a hive of nerve ends, and Tommy could not make up his mind whether it did really hurt or whether it was just the nerves’ reaction. It would seem that if the cold struck it, the scar would ach and the shoulder feel as though it hung heavily.
Tommy did not have a watch and wondered what time it was and how much further it was to the main station at Birmingham. Once there, it would be two and a half hours to The Links station. ‘We must be somewhere near,’ he thought to himself and suddenly felt very tired. He had not had much sleep recently. He had landed back in England in the early hours of Sunday morning, and for the rest of the week there had been little chance to catch up.
* * * * *
The train slowed to a crawl across a mass of rail tracks as Tommy made his way back to his seat along the passageway now crowded, as people were getting ready to leave at the station. He smiled at Jenny as he sat down in his seat by the window. She was still in the seat next to him, even though the men and the two women had left the compartment and her original seat was empty.
“There are always big queues for the toilets?” his travelling companion asked him as he sat down.
“Not that big. I met a bloke who was in training camp with me,” Tommy lied. “It would appear he has been discharged also.” Tommy had stood by the door of the train because he wanted to think about what Jenny had just done. He had found her attractive from the moment he saw her, but not doubt once they had left the train that would be the end of it. He had been trying to decide whether to press for the opportunity to see her again, or whether it would be bettr simply to leave it.
Tommy shook hands with the man who had so unceremoniously crushed his kitbag to the size of an oxo cube and told him goodbye and it had been nice talking to him. Then he settled down for the rest of the journey, he and the girl now being the sole occupants of the compartment. Even though they had just kissed, he was hesitant to push her into conversation, so he remained quiet and happy to have such pleasant company beside him. In any case, sleep was what he wanted most. ‘I’ll just doze,’ he told himself, but he was asleep in no time at all.
* * * * *
“Tommy! Tommy! Tommy!” The voice echoed into Tommy’s vivid dreams, becoming clearer as he slowly returned to wakefulness. Was it Charlie’s voice?
The light outside his closed eyelids became brighter and brighter, and with his eyes still closed Tommy could feel a rocking sensation. He put his hand on the hand that held his face, and, opening his eyes looked at the girl who was the image of Charlie bending over him.
“Oh, you’re back with us at last. I was getting worried about you.”
Tommy looked around, still a little confused and exclaimed to no one in particular. “It was all a dream! Nightmare more like, and in such detail,” he muttered to himself.
Jenny nodded to her hand, which Tommy still held to his cheek. “Can I have my hand back now, please?”
“Oh, yes, sorry,” Tommy said, sitting up straight and letting her hand go.
“I had to wake you up by patting your face. You said your shoulder had been hurt.”
“Yes, thank you,” Tommy said as he tried to straighten himself up. He had been slumped down onto the seat and felt very stiff all over. He looked out of the window again to see the sun was very low in the sky.
“It seems very late. Did we stop for a while?”
“A while,” Jenny repeated. “You slept for hours and we stopped three or four times. It’s gone eight-o-clock, I think, and you did say your stop was The Links, didn’t you?”
“Yes, thank you very much. I could have missed my stop.” Tommy looked around him, still slightly confused.
“Blimey! I must have dreamt it all.”
“All what?” Jenny asked him.
“I don’t think you’d want to know, and thanks again for waking me up. I must have really needed that sleep, but I don’t know about the dream.”
Tommy’s voice trailed off as he thought about it. Jenny sat looking at him, but she was not thinking, ‘The war, I suppose.’
“Why, was it that bad, your dream?” she asked him.
“I don’t really know. I’ll have to think about it. The last bit was horrible though,” Tommy replied, and after a little more thought, “We should have been at The Links at two-o-clock. Where were you going? Yorkshire, was it?” Tommy reached up for his kitbag, which Jenny unnecessarily held for him.
“Yes, I’ve still a bit of a way to go yet, but, you never know, we might bump into each other some day when I visit the town again.”
“Yes, we might, and I hope we do. It’s a small world in many ways. You should have woken me. I haven’t been much company, especially after that kiss.”
“Oh, you remember it then? I thought you forgotten it, or dismissed it,” she said with a smile.
“Never. You kissing me back was lovely, and on a par to the best I’ve had,” he told her.
“Flatterer. We could do it again before you go, as we might never meet again.”
Tommy took his kitbag from this beautiful girl and took her in his arms to kiss, with long, loving, full on the lips, lingering kiss. He could not help himself, and felt his member rising hard against the material of his trousers. He was sure the girl could feel it too, as they held each other close. Reluctantly, they broke off the kiss with a long sigh, but still held each other for a few moments longer.
“Now we will definitely have to meet again,” Jenny told him. “You definitely fancy me.” To be sure, she added, “Don’t you?”
“I do, yes, and wish we had more time, but I am committed to someone and have been for a long time,” Tommy told her, almost with a sigh. “But if you lived next door to me, my life would be in a permanent turmoil.” Tommy picked up his kitbag. “I feel awful now, having slept nearly all the way home, but it’s been a real pleasure meeting you and I do hope we will meet again.”
He gave Jenny another peck on the cheek and left the compartment to make his way down the corridor to the end of the carriage. The corridor, being narrow, forced Tommy to hold his kitbag in front of him, and while doing so he spotted a piece of white notepaper stuffed into the neck. He dropped the kitbag as he stood by the door and took the paper to read:
Call me. Jenny from Yorkshire
A telephone number was also included
Tommy looked back along the corridor to see Jenny watching him from the compartment door. He waved to her with the piece of paper in his hand, and made a show of putting it into the top pocket of his army jacket. Seeing this, Jenny almost ran down to corridor to stand beside him.
“I don’t ever do things like this, believe me, but I would like to see you again even if it’s just for a drink. Would you really want to meet me as well?”
“Why yes, most certainly,” Tommy told her.
“Then I’m glad I took the chance, and if, when you get home, you find things are not working out for you, call me. I would rather it was sooner than later. We both might need a shoulder to cry on.”
“What makes you think things won’t be all right for me?” Tommy asked, a little alarmed.
“Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Mary and Charlie are what you want.” Tommy’s eyes opened wide.
“But that was just a dream, and nothing like the real Mary and Charlie,” Tommy told her. “By the sounds of it, you’ve been listening to the ravings of a stressed-out man.”
“Well, you have my number and I still dare to hope,” Jenny said as she started to walk back to the compartment.
“I will ring you anyway. You are a very beautiful lady, Jenny, and if things have changed that much, then you will be the first one I’ll call.”
He put his arm around her waist and kissed her again and again on the lips, finding her responding willingly, and they remained like that until The Links station came into view. Jenny, who had her arms around Tommy’s neck as they kissed, let him go with a reluctant sigh and made her way back to her compartment where she stood at the door to look back at Tommy.
Tommy took the piece of paper out of his pocket and kissed it, waved, and put it back in his pocket. Seeing this, Jenny smiled and waved back to him.
Tommy now leaned out of the window and waved excitedly to those who were waiting for him.
* * * * *
It was a very lonely Jenny who ran back down the corridor to the carriage door and leaned out of the window to see who waited for Tommy, mostly in the hope of seeing Tommy’s fiancée, Mary. Her heart sank a little when she did see her.
‘I might have known she would be beautiful,’ Jenny admitted to herself as she saw Mary fling her arms around Tommy’s neck. ‘Now that he is back with her, in all probability I will be forgotten.’
Jenny’s instincts told her to stop living in a dream world and to go back to her seat, but Tommy fascinated her even as she saw his parents and the girl he was engaged to. ‘It’s hard to believe a girl who looks like that could possibly be ‘that way’ with the girl he said was called Charlie, but that was certainly what Tommy’s ramblings suggested.’
She wondered whether dreams were part of a subconscious truth, or whether perhaps they were unfulfilled desires. She had had a few of her own, like those of sleeping with her boyfriend, and those had been hot with passion and desire, but when she had met up with him the next day, she only felt disgusted at herself.
She looked at Tommy again as the train started to move and thought, ‘I don’t think I’d be disgusted if I had a dream about him.’ As the moving train took her past Tommy, he waved, and with a happy heart she waved back. ‘Well, seeing his fiancée again did not wipe me from his mind,’ Jenny thought as she made her way back to her seat.
She sat down thoughtfully, remembering their kisses and the effect she had had on him. There was no mistaking the feeling of his reaction against her leg during the long lingering kisses.
“I hope I have lots of dreams about him,” she told herself aloud and looked about her and to the door to see if anyone had heard her.
* * * * *
Tommy had watched as the station curved into view on the winding tracks. As soon as he could see the platform, he recognised Mary in the distance and behind her were his Mum and Dad.
Mary, seeing Tommy hanging half out of the window and waving franticly, waved back with equal enthusiasm until Tommy jumped down from the train and ran the few steps towards her.
Mary jumped onto him, flinging her arms around his neck to smother him with kisses.
“Tommy, Tommy, I’ve missed you so much. Are you really home for good?” Mary asked after the first rush of kisses.
“Never to leave your side again; not if I can help it, anyway,” Tommy told her. “Hello, Mum. Hi, Dad. Did you know I was going to be this late?” Tommy asked as he went to shake hands with his Dad and give his Mum a great big hug and a kiss.
“Yes, they kept us informed about the train delays, but even then the train is later than they said it would be,” his Dad told him. “You’re home now, and that’s all that matters.”
“Yes, that’s all that matters,” Mary agreed. “I can hardly believe you’re back, but you must be very tired after that long journey,” Mary said, hugging Tommy again and kissing his cheek.
“So we are going to stay with Mum and Dad tonight and go home tomorrow. Is that all right, darling?”
“Yes of course, lovely, but I’m not as tired as I am hungry. Would you believe I slept most of time on journey home? What’s for tea, Mum?”
“Hotpot with dumplings, and a double serving for you. I know it’s your favourite, and I cooked it special.”
“Home cooking; you don’t know how much I’ve missed it, and my tummy is rumbling. Can we go now and get it, and after that I’ll tell you anything you want to know. You must be curious about it all, so as an appetiser I’ll tell you that our friend Jimmy the Spiv is up for a bravery award.”
“Is he!” Tommy’s mum asked, very surprised in deed. “Who’d have thought it?”
Tommy looked at the train as it started pulling out of the station, and seeing Jenny he gave her a wave of his hand, to which she smiled and waved back.
“Who was that?” Mary asked as the carriage went past them.
“One of my nurses going on leave,” Tommy told them, wondering why he had said that. He blamed his dream, which was still with him and fresh in his mind.
“By the way,” Tommy asked Mary as they left the station, “Did you keep a diary or write a journal of what you’ve been doing while I was away?”
“No, why? Should I have?” Mary asked.
“No, darling, I just wondered. Some people do, sometimes.”
Tommy walked out of the station with Mary clinging to his arm and his Mum and Dad following as they went through the doors and onto The Links. Tommy looked around, taking in the familiar scene, and commented, “Good old Links. Not a thing has changed and never will, I hope.” They all started to walk home. Tommy felt he needed this after being cooped up on the train all day and took deep breaths as they walked.
“You’ve mentioned Charlie so often in your letters that I half expected her to be here with you,” Tommy told Mary.
“She would have been, but she had a date she could not break with her new fiancé. They got engaged two weeks ago and she is off meeting his parents for the first time today.”
Tommy was mildly shocked but recovered quickly.
“Oh, good for Charlie. Real thing this time, is it?” Tommy asked, and wondering why he was so surprised and still felt a little confused. ‘Well, maybe that dreams was so real that I’m confusing it with real life,’ he thought as he heard Mary say, “Yes, I really believe it is.”
“You know something else?” said Mary, “You mentioned Jimmy, and actually he’s on his way home too. He got wounded as well, but not anything near as bad as you. Alice thinks he is only going to be home for a short while, and he’ll hate it if he has to go back.”
“He will, and of that I have no doubt. I can’t blame him, really. For the short time I saw him, he seemed to be enjoying the army, but I really doubt he enjoys what’s happening now.”
“It must have been really bad for you,” his Dad said. “Sounds as though you were in the thick of it.”
“To tell you the truth, I was in action only three times. The first time it lasted about twenty minutes and we all got out of that ok, but on the other two occasions that I was hurt I don’t believe either action lasted more than fifteen minutes the first time and half an hour the second. I heard later that we achieved what we set out to do on all occasions, but… well, it cost.”
* * * * *
Tommy pushed the plate away from the edge of the table and leaned back in his chair.
“Blimey, Mum, you’ve no idea how much I’ve looked forward to something like that again. I’m well full and satisfied. Thank you.”
“Well, thank you, and thank goodness you won’t have to go through the last seven months again. You are home for good and you both can start planning for the future.”
Tommy looked at Mary. “Do you think Mum is dropping hints at a certain event?” he asked her.
“I’m sure she is,” Mary told him, “and I’ll be dropping a few myself from tomorrow onwards.”
“Any time you’re ready then, but I’m still coming home with you tomorrow,” Tommy told her. “We can talk about dates then.” Mary smiled at Tommy, leaning across from her chair and kissing him on the cheek.
“You can leave all that to me, if you want,” Mary told him. “The wedding, that is, but we still have a few other things to talk about.”
“Well, right now I can’t think what” Tommy told Mary, “but I suppose you have had lots of time to think and make plans, which I will go along with anyway.”
“Yes, but only if you agree,” Mary told him. “I insist on that. No letting me get away with anything you don’t agree with.”
“I like what you decide on,” Tommy told Mary. “You always seem to do whatever is right. We’ll discuss anything there is to be discussed, and then we’ll do it the way you’ve suggested. I like it that way.”
“He’s just like his dad,” Tommy’s Mum told Mary. “Come day, go day, and leave it to the ladies.”
“Life is much easier that way, isn’t it, Dad?”
Tommy’s Dad made a noise that sounded something like, “Heh-hum” and shifted in his seat.
“The meal was impeccable as usual, dear. Delicious,” he told Tommy’s Mum as he stood up.
“I’ll just take my usual walk down the garden. Won’t be long.” Tommy saw his Dad do something he had never done before. He took a pipe and tobacco from the mantelshelf and went out to sit on the porch.
“Dad has taken up smoking? Smoking a pipe?” Tommy asked his Mum.
“Yes, and only recently. At first he used to just hold it between his teeth, empty. Then one day, a few weeks ago, he filled it and has been smoking it ever since.”
“A few weeks ago? Was that when he found out I had been hurt?”
“Well, we knew you were wounded, but not how bad or even if you had survived it or not. It was a very nervous time for all of us, and your dad took to smoking.”
Tommy followed his dad out to the porch; it was dark outside now, but not pitch black. There was also the reflected light from the occasional searchlight sweeping the sky. Tommy could see part of the garden and where his dad had still been ‘Digging for Victory.’
“Garden looks full. I’m surprised you’ve still any time to do it all,” Tommy said. “It must be pretty hectic down at the docks right now.”
“It is. More stuff coming in than ever before, and all heading down south,” his dad replied. “But I’m working no more hours than I did before, unless someone is off or there is an emergency.”
He puffed on his pipe, and the smoke caught Tommy in the throat and chest. Tommy, not wanting to make his dad feel awful, did his best not to cough. “An hour a day weeding and hoeing and you keep on top of it,” his dad told him between puffs on his pipe.
They were both silent for a few moments.
“You all must have been worried over the last month,” Tommy said. “How has Mum and Mary been? On pins, I’ve no doubt.”
“I have to admit they’ve both coped better than I did. I’ve been through it myself in the first lot, remember, and if it was anything like that, it must have been bad for you and all the troops. It was with a lot of reassuring and a number of enquiries through the Red Cross that helped not put years on the both of them, but you can never really tell how they felt deep down.”
He puffed again on his pipe. and Tommy managed to dodge the cloud of tobacco smoke. “The excitement of you coming home was nearly as bad for them as the worry of not knowing what had happened to you, but it’s all done with and your future is in yours and Mary’s hands now.”
Tommy tried to get a better look at his dad, but it seemed darker now.
“I have not given much thought to the future,” Tommy mused. “Getting home was the only thing on my mind. I will go back to work at Dunnings, of course. It’s my kind of job, but that is about as far as I’ve thought about anything.”
“What about Mary? You are still engaged. Do you still feel the same about her?” his dad asked. “I know war does change people. Is that part of your life with Mary still the same? Nothing has changed there, has it?”
“No, no, of course not, but Mary she has a mind of her own and I’ve not thought or planned anything. Getting home and the offer of my old job back was enough to start with.”
Tommy paused to consider. The dream he had had on the train was still very much in his mind, and somehow, deep down, he could not help but wonder whether this dream was part of what he had been thinking when Mary had started telling him all about Charlie in her letters.
The fact was that he fancied Charlie like mad, and the mere thought of her was enough to make him excited and hard. ‘I should have done it with her a least once,’ he thought, but he had only thought that way since he had been in the hospital. It was all the waiting and wondering if he was ever going to make it out of there, and if not, everything he had missed in his life.
So if it was true that he would have happily had an affair with Charlie, then could there be some basis in the whole dream of Mary and Charlie doing what they did. The dream, he decided, was based on suspicions he had had from the very first day he had met Charlie.
Charlie, he was sure, wanted Mary in bed with her, and Mary played along at first, knowing it too but probably having no intention to do anything. Then Mary took Charlie as her best friend, and laughed it off when Tommy teased her jokingly about Charlie. Somehow, that laugh did not always ring true.
Also, it did not ring true for Tommy that Mary and Charlie had practically lived together for the last six months as ‘just good friends’. There was a good basis for such a vivid and detailed dream, especially, Tommy thought, when it was very rare for him to dream at all.
Tommy came out of his reverie, conscious of his member getting semi hard, and he wondered if it was the thought of Mary and Charlie doing it together or simply that he was just ready for it anyway.
“I was going to ask Mary,” Tommy said to his dad, “How she had managed while I was away, but I would probably only get half the truth. I told her not to stop enjoying herself, you know, not to get down in the dumps about everything and I would be back, but she did not sound that good in her first letters.”
“She wasn’t. She was not very good at all for weeks. Your mum and I could only do so much and she was very down until her friend Charlie came back on the scene. She was just what Mary needed; someone her own age to keep her company. They did go out to the cinema and the odd dance, but not very often. They just did everyday things and that seemed to be enough for them both. I believe, though, that over the last month Charlie has met a bloke and they are engaged now, so it has worked out perfectly for Mary as you have come home just when Charlie is spending more time with her new boyfriend.”
“Good, thanks for telling me, Dad. That has taken a great weight off my mind. I’d hate the thought of her being upset all the time I was away,” Tommy told him. “If I had not been injured and she was down in the dumps, it could have gone on for years like that.”
“Well, her life will be a very happy one now that you’re back, son. The both of you can just take everything in your stride from now on, and you’ll both get where you want to be in no time.” Tommy’s dad knocked out his pipe on the porch railings. “We best get in or they’ll be wondering where we are.”
* * * * *
Tommy and Mary slept in separate rooms. Even after all Tommy had been through, there would be no lack of morals under his mother’s roof. Tommy knew it and accepted it without giving it a second thought. Much as he would have preferred to be with Mary after being without her for so long, he was prepared to wait until the following night. He did have a cuddle with her as they said goodnight to each other, but he made no attempt to touch her imtimately, even though he wanted to very badly. Parts of him, his ‘bits and pieces’ as Mary called them, ached and pained for the want of it, and he dragged himself away and into his old room.
Sleep did not come easy for Tommy as he lay in his familiar old bed. He put his hands on his sac to hold his aching privates, and he could not settle until he had made several trips to the bathroom. Determined to push his wants to the back of his mind, he tried to think of something else but the best he could come up with was of the girl on the train Jenny. He had tucked her telephone number into a stamp compartment in his wallet, and he wondered whether she had managed to get home all right and whether her wounded boyfriend had been waiting for her as she arrived home.
‘Poor sod,’ Tommy thought. ‘That Jenny is a real beauty. It would break me up if I was her boyfriend and she did not want to know after years… at least, I think she said years of courting together. I wonder if he has shagged her yet? Tommy went on thinking, ‘That would make her breaking off with him really hard, but if he had not even asked her to marry him then perhaps it will not be so bad for him. Well, I fancied her on the train and I still do. If she was here right now…! I wonder, will I still fancy her after I have had a night with Mary again?’
He stopped thinking, his mind blank for a few moments. ‘Why am I thinking like this? I would never have dreamed of cheating on Mary seven months ago? Dreamed of? That’s what it is, I suppose. It’s that bloody dream again. I just can’t get it out of my head. It was so real I think I believe it. Jenny mentioned Mary and Charlie’s name. I wonder what I said, or if she saw that my member was ramrod stiff when I woke up. I think I’ll get up early tomorrow and ring her, just for the hell of it.’
* * * * *
Tommy was up at seven, and having sorted some of his clothes that he always kept at his mum’s, he dumped his uniform on the chair and put on a pair of thin grey trousers a sports shirt, jacket and shoes.
He arrived downstairs just as his dad was leaving for work.
“One never knows what shift or even what days your dad’s working. They’ve been varying so much,” Tommy’s mum told him. “I don’t know whether I am coming or going, and neither does he.”
Tommy asked his mum to hold his breakfast while he took a brisk walk in the morning air.
“Give myself a bit of an appetite,” he told her, although actually he felt starving. ‘That,’ he thought, ‘Was because I ate such a big meal last night and my stomach is not used to it. Now, I suppose, the meal stretched my insides and I just want more. Is that daft thinking? Probably, but then my head is all over the place at the moment.’
Tommy made his way to the telephone at the end of the road, and after hesitating only a minute he dialled the number Jenny had given him. A woman’s voice answered, but it was definitely not Jenny’s. This voice sounded at least as old as his mother’s.
“Hello, I would like to talk Jenny, if she is there, please,” Tommy asked.
“Jenny, it’s for you.” He heard the woman’s voice become more distant. “Who would be calling you at this hour of the morning?”
“I won’t know until you give me the telephone,” he heard Jenny’s voice say. Something lurched in his chest as though his heart had stopped for a moment when he heard her voice, and he had only had a split second to compose himself.
“Hello? Jenny speaking.”
“Hi, Jenny. It’s Tommy, from yesterday’s train. I was just ringing to ask if you got home all right.”
“Oh…. Oh!” Jenny’s voice went up a few octaves. “I never really thought you would ring me. Is everything all right?”
“Yes fine, but I could not stop thinking about you last night, so I thought I would ring you before you went to work or out somewhere. You might think I’m being a bit forward, but I would like to see you sometime soon, if that is ok?”
Jenny dropped her voice down to a whisper. “I could not stop thinking about you either. I’m shaking like a leaf here. When do you think we can meet?”
“I’ll have to get back to you about that, but I wanted to make contact with you first to see if you still wanted to keep in touch.”
“Of course I do, otherwise I would not have given you this number.”
Someone in the background interrupted Jenny.
“I have to go now,” Jenny said. “I’ll be in all this evening, if you can call me then?”
“Ok. I don’t know what time, but I’ll try to call you. Things are a bit hectic here at the moment. If I don’t call tonight, I will as soon as I can. I’m really over the moon that you were not just leading me on,” Tommy told her.
“You have just made this my happiest of days, Tommy. I’ll wait for you to call, and make it soon that we can meet.”
“I’ll try. Bye for now.”
“Bye, Tommy.”
Tommy heard the telephone click and the line went dead.
‘Sounds like I’m well in there,’ he thought, and then wondered why he had called her. He could not really explain it, even to himself. ‘I will call her tonight, if I can. Am I really planning on having an affair with her? I don’t know. I’ll see what’s on the cards and take it from there., I suppose.’
* * * * *
Tommy went back into his mother’s house to find Mary up and waiting for him to join her at breakfast.
“You’re a bit of an early bird, aren’t you?” Mary asked.
“Hello, darling,” Tommy said, kissing Mary on the cheek. “Not so much an early bird as I wanted to see where I lived bright and early in the morning again. While I was away I often thought we would be going to work now, jumping on the bus, listening to the early morning chatter of the mostly women passengers. It’s surprising, but it’s the simple things like that one misses.”