You'll Be Mine Forever

Maddie

When I woke up that morning, I wasn’t sure whether it had all happened, or whether it was just a wonderful, blissful dream. Had Julie really said that she loved me? Had Julie really kissed me? Had we really kissed and touched each other, shy at first but growing less timid the more we went along? Had we really fallen asleep holding each other? It seemed so like the dreams that I had been having, but the wonderful truth was that it was REAL.

I looked at Julie, who was still fast asleep in my arms. I loved watching Julie sleep- she seemed purer somehow, more innocent, without the force of her personality to fall back on. She confessed to me once, during one of the bombing raids at Maidsend when we huddled together in our men’s pajamas and shared a cigarette to calm my nerves and pass the time, that most of it was an act. The foul language and the flirtatiousness and the fearlessness and the steely resolve- she had developed it as a sort of armor when she was a child, having to fend for herself with five big brothers. The older she got, the better she perfected it, until it became a part of her, made her seem bigger than she was, a true force to be reckoned with, despite her small size. Julie was truly TINY- she scarcely stood an inch over five feet tall, four inches shorter than I was and at least twenty pounds lighter. That’s QUITE tiny, really, since I’m just a “slip of a lass” myself!
She looked so delicate in my arms. She was so pale that I could make out the blue of the veins in her forehead and behind her eyelids. I bent over and placed light kisses to both of her eyelids. Her eyes fluttered open at that, and she gave me a sleepy smile. I leaned forward and kissed her again, this time on her lips. It was a soft, gentle kiss, and I felt her smile grow beneath my own lips. I felt a little like I was melting.

“What a way to be woken up” Julie murmured when we broke apart, nestling into the soft hollow between my neck and shoulder. She breathed in and out slowly. “I love the way you smell. If I could bottle it up and wear it as a perfume, I would.”

“Really?” I didn’t smell BAD (Gran would rather die than let me out of the house smelling like body odor) but I wasn’t like Julie. I didn’t wear Chanel No. 5 on a daily basis, and I was always self-conscious that I had a bit of a whiff of motor oil about me. I was always tinkering with something – bicycles, motorbikes, cars, or planes, whatever I could get my hands on. I smelled more like an automechanic than anything- it wasn’t very feminine at all.

“Mmmhmm,” Julie answered, her lips tickling my neck. “You smell like you- and that’s why I love it so much. Because I love YOU so much.” She started kissing my neck, and I felt myself melting all over again, inside and outside and all over.

After a few glorious minutes of kissing my neck, collarbone, and ears (THAT was a new experience that sent shudders down my spine in the best way possible), she paused briefly- “What time is it?”

“Five,” I answered, breathless and wishing she would hurry up and continue with the kissing.

“Good. That gives us plenty of time.” And with that, Julie sat up, peeled off her bulky flannel nightgown in one fell swoop, and bent down to kiss me deeply. And then… nothing but bliss, pure bliss.

After, I lay in Julie’s arms, my head nestled against her bare chest. There was no place that I would rather have been then right there, at that instant, lying skin to skin with the dearest person in the world to me.

“I wish you weren’t going away,” I whispered. “It’s awful, not knowing when I’ll see you next.”

Julie brought my hand to her mouth and kissed my fingers one by one. “I know. Breaks my heart just to think about it.” She paused. “If this was one of my awful romance novels, we would just run away together, elope. Make our way to Gretna Green, our families be damned.”
“But we’re not in one of your awful romance novels” I replied, my voice thick. “If we ran off together, you’d be thrown into prison for desertion. I’d be thrown out of the ATA and stripped of my pilot’s license, and maybe thrown into prison, too, just for good measure. We can’t. We can’t, we can’t, we can’t.”

I didn’t say it, but we couldn’t get married, either. Not at Gretna Green or anywhere else. Two women couldn’t get married, as much as we may want to. But oh, God, at that moment, I wanted to marry her and be with her forever, so badly that I wanted to burst. We couldn’t even write love letters to one another- I’d heard of others, men and women, who had been caught that way. Had to be dead discreet, even though I wanted nothing more than to climb on the roof and shout of my love for her for the whole world to hear.

“Let’s pretend that we can, though- just for a moment,” Julie whispered into my ear. Her hand idly stroked my hair. “We would steal out of here, right now, while the rest of the world is just waking up. Naught but a suitcase to our name, and the clothes on our backs. We’d go away, far away, where the war couldn’t touch us, to the most remote area of Scotland that we could find. We’d find a house, a house big enough for just the two of us, with some chickens in the yard and sheep in the fields. We’d make the house a home. And in our home, our very own home, I’d give you a ring, and say ‘Margaret Brodatt, will you be mine forever and ever?’ And you’d say, ‘Yes, I will.’ And you’d give me a ring, and say ‘Julia Beaufort-Stuart, my Julie, will you be mine forever and ever?’ And I’d say ‘Forever and ever and a day beyond that.’ And then you would kiss me, and I would grab your arm and lead you to our big wonderful bed, and we would make love until we were too exhausted to make love anymore, and then we would sleep for a while and wake up and do it again.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“And then we would live happily ever after.” I could feel Julie’s face pull into a smile against my forehead. “Whatever that means.”

“I would like that,” I whispered. “I would like that more than anything.”

We lay together quietly for a few more moments, breathing at the same time, feeling as if we were one.

It couldn’t last though- at some point, the spell had to be broken. Julie was the one who broke it. She leaned forward and snapped on the light, then placed a gentle kiss on my forehead. “I’ve got to get up, love. I want to have a bath before going back- nothing but cold showers for me for the next long while.”

Julie got up and put on the bathrobe that I had leant her before making her way to the bathroom. I lay in bed for a moment, before I set my eyes on Julie’s makeup case. I rarely wore makeup- I was too heavy-handed, in that as in in all things, and I just ended up turning myself into a clown. But I needed the makeup now- I had an idea, a way that Julie could keep a token of my love with her, no matter where she was.

I grabbed a tube of her lipstick and ran it round my lips, as careful as I dared. Then, grabbing a piece of my stationary, I pressed my lips against the paper, leaving a perfect imprint of them on the paper. I quickly wrote a message on it- nothing that would get her in too much trouble (I hoped) if she was caught with it (I did hope she would keep it well-hidden, though- it was for her eyes only).

“With all of the love in my being, and then some. Yours forever- M.”

I set the note on her small travel case, re-applied the lipstick (I wasn’t too bad at it, really), put some of Julie’s powder makeup on my face, quickly dressed, and attempted to tame my hair. When Julie came in from the bathroom, she took one look at me before exclaiming, “Maddie Brodatt, are you wearing lipstick?” She moved closer to me, to examine further. “I TOLD you that color looked wonderful on you. And you powdered you face, too. You have no idea how impressed I am.”

I laughed. “You’ve started to rub off on me, after all this time.”

Julie snorted. “I don’t want to rub off on you too much- one of me is plenty, I assure you!”

She dressed and did up her hair in her usual chignon. She was nearly finished packing when she noticed my note. She picked it up, read it quickly, and then stood still, staring at it, for what felt like an eternity. She looked over at me, eyes full of tears.

“For when you want to kiss me but can’t,” I said. “For when you want to know that I love you, but I’m not there to say it. For when you need me.” My voice cracked at “need me.”

Julie let out a quiet sob, and then pounced on me, pushing me onto the bed and pressing desperate kisses to my face.

“I love you- love you so much” she breathed against my mouth.

“I love you too,” I said, my voice filled with longing. “I love you more than anything and anyone. Always will.”

I pulled her as tightly to me as I could, and we lay together on my bed, crying quietly and pressing hot kisses to each other’s mouths. How were we going to make ourselves presentable? We couldn’t go five minutes without crying or kissing.

We had to go soon, to eat breakfast and get to the train station, or Julie wouldn’t be back to… wherever she had to go… in time. I sat up suddenly. “We’re running out of time. I wish we had more time, but we don’t. I’ll go first, I’ll get up and wash my face.”

Julie sniffed. “Don’t look back at me. If you look back at me you won’t go.”

“I know.”

I made my way to the bathroom. I furiously scrubbed my face clean, until all traces of lipstick- mine and hers- were gone. I looked like myself again, but I knew I was different, so different inside. Where it mattered.

When I came back into the room, Julie was sitting up on my bed, looking away from me. She had wiped off her own face and reapplied her makeup, done up her hair again in its neat two-inches-above-the-collar regulation chignon.

When she saw me enter, she got up and walked toward me with a pinched smile on her face, then took my hand in hers and slipped something onto the ring finger of my left hand. I looked at my hand, and saw a beautiful ring. I knew immediately what it was- it was Julie’s grandmother’s wedding ring, a small French square cut ruby. It had been in her family for ages, and I knew it meant the world to her. I pressed a gentle kiss to her lips- nothing desperate, nothing that would get us carried away.

“I want you to have this,” she said, and then kissed the ring, still on my finger. “It’s a part of me that you’ll have with you all the time. Know that I’ve worn it, that I’ve kissed it, and that it’s my promise to you that I’ll come back to you. That you’ll be mine forever.”

“This means… so much” I choked. “So, so much.” I looked at it on my finger, shining in the light. It was the closest thing to a wedding ring I’d ever have with her. I couldn’t wear it on my finger all the time- too many questions would be asked- but I wanted to have it with me wherever I went. I turned to my desk and rummaged around in my jewelry box, until I found what I was looking for. It was a small gold chain- nothing fancy, but it had belonged to my mother. It had once held a small charm that had broken off when I was thirteen, and I hadn’t found another use for the necklace, but couldn’t bear to part with it. I took the ring off my finger and slid the chain through the ring. Julie came over and helped me fasten it around my neck.

“Now I can have it by my heart always.” I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her palm. “I love you. I love you to the moon and back and back again. Every time you look at my note you’ll remember it. Every time I feel this ring around my neck I’ll remember it.”

Julie smiled, but before she could respond, I heard Gran’s door shut down the hall.
“Come girls, we must get our Julie to the train station!” My heart squeezed when Gran referred to her as “our Julie.” She’d imprinted on more hearts than mine.

Julie mouthed, “I love you,” then grabbed her suitcase and left my room. I prayed that it wasn’t for the last time.

Julie

The train ride back to base was so lonely that I can scarcely write about it.

We couldn’t even properly say goodbye at the train station- far too public. I gave her a kiss on the cheek- just two chums having a friendly goodbye- then lingered by her ear for just a moment to whisper “I’ll love you forever, Maddie Brodatt.” She nodded, tears rolling down her face, trying not to sob.

“You come back to me,” she said, voice thick with emotion.

“I will. I promise.”

And then I left her. As the train pulled away from the station, I stared as her figure got smaller and smaller in the distance, one arm up in a wave. I stared until she disappeared. And then I put my face in my hands and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.