The Child Left Behind by Anne Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

suggested we meet today and if you hadn’t agreed then I would probably never have plucked up the courage to ask you myself. I would consider it too presumptuous.’
    ‘What is this word, presumptuous?’
    ‘It means not my place to do that sort of thing,’ Finn said. ‘For one thing, your father owns a shop and I am a common foot soldier, and then you are French and I am Irish, and you are still very young.’
    ‘And how old are you, Finn?’
    ‘Nineteen,’ said Finn
    Gabrielle laughed, but gently. ‘Such a great age,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘And prepared to lay down your life for France and Great Britain. That you have not done this yet is not the point. You will when the time comes and in my mind that makes you a great man.’
    ‘There really is nothing great about me,’ Finn said. ‘I am very ordinary.’
    ‘In my eyes you are great and so you must indulge me in this,’ Gabrielle said. ‘This town has been flooded with soldiers for over a year now, and of all nationalities, helping to fight in this terrible war, and never have I had the slightest desire to get to know any of those soldiers better, though I had plenty to choose from. What I am trying to say is that the way I behaved towards you is not the way that I would normally behave. I would hate you to think that I have approached other soldiers, because you are the only one. That first day I saw you standing there with your friend, I don’t know what happened to me. It was just as if you had reached across the road and laid your hand upon me.’
    ‘Oh, Gabrielle…’ Finn breathed. He had the urge to clasp her to him and kiss her long and hard, but their relationship was too new and tenuous for such intimacy yet. So he dampened down his ardour sufficiently to be able to say, ‘I too felt that certain pull between us, but any day I may be forced to leave this place. Maybe after today it would be better if we do not meet again.’
    Gabrielle stopped walking. ‘If you hadn’t been in the British Army and sent to this town then we might never have met anyway. I know that we are on borrowed time. When you are gone, the memories of what we shared, even for a short time, will warm me and I will never regret a minute of it, I promise you.’
    Finn was not convinced. ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘I have never been surer of anything in my life.’
    ‘All right,’ Finn said. ‘We will do it your way. Now let’s walk on because I can see you shivering with cold.’
    Gabrielle hid her smile. It would be far too bold to say that it wasn’t the cold that had made her limbs shake, but the nearness of Finn beside her, but she did walk on quicker and they caught up with Yvette and Christy.
    Then Gabrielle said, ‘We must leave you here till we meet again.’
    ‘So soon?’
    Gabrielle nodded. ‘I am afraid so. My mother could not see the attraction of coming out today at all. Last week, although the rain was only drizzling after you left us, Yvette and I were soaked by the time we reached home. All week our mother waited for us to go down with colds, or worse, and she didn’t want us to venture out at all today.’
    ‘She didn’t forbid you?’
    ‘Maman never forbids,’ Gabrielle said. ‘She says we have enough of that from our father.’
    ‘And we do,’ Yvette put in grimly.
    ‘She’s right,’ Gabrielle said with a smile. ‘Our father is a very hard man and so Maman is more gentle with us, but she did ask me not to stay out too long and so I really must go now,’
    ‘So, when will I see you again?’
    ‘As I said, Sunday afternoon is the only time that I’m free.’
    ‘They will be the longest seven days of my life,’Finn said. ‘And yet my time isn’t my own either, though at the moment at least most of my evenings are free.’
    ‘Till we meet again then,’ Gabrielle said, and she stood on tiptoe and kissed Finn on both cheeks in the French way, and laughed at the look on his face.
    Later, as he and Christy made their way into the