Читать книгу We Were Young and at War: The first-hand story of young lives lived and lost in World War Two - Sarah Wallis - Страница 66

The weather is wonderful! It makes me miss Verneuil.

I so miss Verneuil and all the English soldiers, I miss our mad parties, the clean air, the trees, the river. I miss my first love, my freedom, bunking off school, the countryside.

Could it be that the first year of the war was the best year of my life? It was the case for too many French people, but we are paying for it now. Despite all my arguments with Mummy, I was happy and I didn’t realize it. I just wanted to be twenty, or a few years older anyway.

A fourteen-year-old’s soul is very complicated. I am depressed because I got a four in English, I didn’t do well in the German test and my class made fun of the portrait I did today. No one really understands me, except maybe Yvette. People treat me like a big baby! But I have a woman’s soul. I know I am pretty, I have big eyes and a beautiful mouth. I love looking at the curve of my eyebrows, I find it soothing. And I know that there are days when I am particularly attractive; on those days I can sense a magnetic attraction. I hate feeling ugly or badly dressed. Are these the thoughts of a ‘big baby’? A baby who knows when someone has looked at her and knows the words, ‘You are pretty, mademoiselle,’ are meant for her.

It’s ten-thirty and I have to turn the light out, goodbye.

Though Britain was still fighting alone, Lend-Lease signalled the end of US neutrality. As if to reflect the shift in relations between their two countries, Brian had decided that ‘yours’ was too formal a way of closing his letters to Trudie and in his last letter he had asked her to come up with an alternative ending.