“And what do you think to our country?” Carol asked. “Although I fear it is sadly diminished in these difficult times.”
Tom and Matthew exchanged looks, but neither spoke.
Sophie let out another pealing laugh. “Oh, go on and say what you really think, Lieutenant, Sergeant,” she said as her eyes danced and she looked at each of them in turn. “It’s all rather dreadful, isn’t it? Dark and rainy and so horribly shabby nowadays.”
“Sophie.” This time there was no smile in Richard’s voice. “We are a country at war.”
“Indeed you are, sir,” Tom said earnestly as he leaned over his plate. He’d eaten everything. “And we don’t forget it. We know we’re not seeing your country at its best, and that the houses aren’t painted bright as a new penny because your factories aren’t making paint—they’re making planes. Your gardens and parks aren’t as pretty because they’re needed for vegetables, and your cars look old because the British are building tanks. We know all that, sir.”
A resounding silence fell like a thunderclap over the table, and Carol and Richard exchanged inscrutable looks. Sophie pressed her fingers to her lips, her eyes alight.
“Well,” Richard finally said. “Indeed.”
“We were warned that the beer would be warm,” Tom continued with the same earnest look that made Lily’s parents glance at one another again. “But, to tell you the truth, I don’t find it so bad.”
“Heavens, Lieutenant, if all you have to worry about is warm beer, I shouldn’t be too concerned,” Sophie teased. “Really, we’ll start to think you Americans are all a bunch of complainers.”
“Not at all,” Tom replied with a gallant smile. Carol and Richard watched on, bemused, while Matthew continued to eat, his gaze lowered. “I love this country, or at least what I’ve seen of it so far. Although, I admit, there’s a bit more rain than we get back in Minnesota, but I don’t mind.”
“And it hasn’t even been that rainy,” Sophie answered as she took a sip of wine; Richard had opened a bottle for the occasion.
“Hasn’t it?” Tom’s smile was aimed just at her as he reached for his own glass. “Then I guess I’ll be in for it when it does start to pour.”
“Won’t you just?” Sophie replied, keeping his gaze, and Lily wondered how her sister managed to flirt so outrageously whilst talking about the weather.
Richard cleared his throat.
“Sergeant, you’ve only had one slice of meat,” he remarked. “Would you care for another?”
“No thank you, sir. This is sufficient.” Matthew spoke crisply, each word spoken with careful precision, as if formed and then cut off, and a look of curiosity rippled across Richard’s face as he observed the younger man.
“Where did you say you were from?”
There was the slightest of pauses, like a drawn breath. “New York.”
“I see.” Richard sounded nonplussed, and Lily wondered at it. What did her father know about New York, or any part of America? Yet she knew there was something about Matthew Lawson that seemed the tiniest bit odd, something just slightly off.
Was it his careful, clipped voice, or his intentionally restrained manner? The way his dark eyes gave nothing away, while watching everything? He seemed a man determined to keep himself in check, utterly opposite to his garrulous companion. They were certainly an unlikely pair.
“So how did you two meet up?” Sophie asked, nodding at both the soldiers, seeming to have the same thought as Lily. “Was it on the ship?”
Tom glanced at Matthew, who, as usual, remained silent. “Yes, we were bunkmates. And then I promised my mother I’d go to church while I was here, and the pastor of your church asked me along, and Matthew said he’d come as well, so here we are.”
“That’s very good of you, Lieutenant,” Carol said with a thawed approval. “It’s important to keep up good habits, even in the midst of a war.”
“So it is, ma’am.”
They retired to the sitting room after the meal, and Lily and Sophie cleared the table while Carol made coffee.
“Thank you for the dinner,” Tom said as she came into the sitting room with a tray of cups and saucers. “It’s mighty kind of you, especially when we’re so far from home, and, as we say in the army, it was some real good chow.”
Carol laughed a little at this; she seemed to have warmed slightly to Tom, despite his rather forward manner. “It is the least we can do,” she said as she handed him a cup of coffee.
They sat in the sitting room, with cups and saucers balanced on their knees, talking about the weather and the war and then the various sights of London the GIs might wish to see.
Tom and Sophie kept the conversation going, but, despite their bright e
fforts, it trickled out after a while and eventually Richard turned the wireless on.