Georgia's English Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

cider and I felt
incredibly pleased about it.
    Georgia popped the Yorkshire pudding between
her pretty lips and chewed. Her eyes widened comically.
    “Doesn’t taste like pancake either,” she
said.
    I looked around, caught everyone’s eye and
we all said together, “It’s not, Georgia, it’s Yorkshire
pudding!”
    Georgia laughed. “I like it. Honestly, I
like it.” She cut some beef, some roast potato and more Yorkshire
pudding and ate it. She looked up. “Honestly,” she said again.
    Afterward we ate bread and butter pudding,
with another long discourse explaining it to Georgia, who had never
heard of such a thing, and then we offered to help with the dishes
but Mummy sent us out of the kitchen with Michael and Daddy.
    We sat in the big living room where two old
Chesterfield sofas faced each other, the unlit fire at one end.
French windows stood open onto the lawn and a warm breeze carried
the smell of newly mown grass. Daddy lit his pipe and Michael a
cigarette. He offered the pack of Player’s around but both Georgia
and I declined. I had never taken to smoking, and I suppose Georgia
hadn’t either because I had never seen her with a cigarette,
although almost everyone back at camp smoked like mad.
    “So tell me, Michael,” Daddy said, “Have you
shot any Nazis down yet?”
    “I haven’t finished training yet, Dad. Give
me a chance.”
    “How much longer?” Daddy’s voice was more
serious, and I knew what he was thinking, the same as me. While
Michael was training he was safe.
    “Next week, I expect. I think that’s what my
leave is for. Everyone gets a long weekend before they go up on
their own.” He shrugged. “You know.”
    “Hmph,” Daddy said, blowing clouds of pipe
smoke into the air.
    I looked across at Michael and knew, even
though he had driven me mad all my life, that I loved him, and was
scared for him. His long weekend was because the first weeks were
the most dangerous for a new pilot. Someone told me, stressing I
wasn’t to pass it on, that the casualty rate for newly qualified
pilots was awful. One in four, one in five, were shot down within
days. If you lasted a week your chances went up remarkably. If you
lasted a month you might make it all the way. It was all down to
experience. The newly qualified needed to be blooded, literally.
Needed to learn what it was like, high up in the air, diving and
ducking and jinking from the bullets.
    “I’ll be fine,” Michael said. “I’m a damn
good pilot.”
    “I know you will be,” Daddy said. “Just make
sure you keep those eyes in the back of your head peeled too, my
lad.”
    Michael laughed. “Will do, sir,” and snapped
off a salute. He had changed out of uniform and wore a pressed blue
shirt and dark blue slacks. He kept glancing at Georgia, and I knew
he was looking at her cleavage. Georgia didn’t seem to mind, and a
few times I saw her lean forward as though shifting position. Each
time she did her dress opened and Michael’s eyes devoured the view
presented especially for him.
    “And what about you, Lil?” Daddy asked.
“Where are you posted now?”
    “I can’t tell you, Daddy,” I said.
    “Oh. Hush hush, is it?”
    “We’re not allowed to say, Mr Delamere,”
Georgia said. “If we told you we’d have to kill you.” She smiled
sweetly and Daddy laughed. Georgia was flirting outrageously with
all the male members of my family, and doing it very well
indeed.
    We talked about other things: how the war
was going, whether Hitler was going to invade this year, whether
Churchill was going to make peace. We all thought that was a rotten
idea, but knew some people who were happy to surrender Europe to
the Nazis if it meant leaving England safe.
    We talked about what life had been like
before the war, and what it would be like afterward. None of us
dreamed, as we talked in that living room, that we would still be
fighting five years later, and how many more would die in the years
between.
    “And do you think your