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ROBIN WINIFRED WASN'T PRESENT IN ALDBOURNE FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS, and Jim Alley was beginning to believe that she was avoiding him completely on the basis of what had happened between the two of them and her grandfather. Now that Sobel had been dropped, weekend passes were tossed around in surplus, and the men were left to laze around in their billeted houses and fatten up on Tab's specially served Christmas dinner.
Robin Winifred decided that Hermia's Christmas dinner was the cream of the crop l, though. The poor servicemen would never get to taste such a spectacle as this; goose, game, wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, luscious pears, and seething bowls of mulled wine that made Robin drunk just by the scent. It was something she couldn't even conjure up in her dizziest daydreams — and Hermia had even gone so far as to gift her a pair of pretty saddle shoes on Christmas morning.
Yet somehow, through all this delight, she still longed for her life back at home. She had her dream job awaiting her, a new friend in Kitty Grogan, and a newfound spirit that Christmas had thrust into her. What more could a girl want? ... well, someone keen on them, perhaps. She thought about Jim and the hell that awaited him on the other side of the Channel.
They hadn't spoken since the disastrous date back in November. It saddened Robin to think of her shot at romance discarded in such a way, but she had different things to look forward towards once she returned home in the New Year. Finally, her evening courses in nursing would begin, and she'd received a cheque in the mail from the Hamiltons just before stowing away from her grandfather for a week.
Actually though, the Cotswolds weren't so different to Aldbourne, except for being about an hour's tram ride away: it was the same kind of overcast region of the country, with cookie-cutter terrace houses that had greyish undertones. Hermia's house was built from flaking Cotswold stone and was far too desolate for Robin's liking. Unlike what she had described, it was detached, and her closest neighbour was a fair distance away. In fact, it took the sisters a rather strenuous walk in matching plum-coloured berets to the nearest ounce of civilisation and back to collect the goose that Hermia had been anticipating for weeks. The isolation wasn't so bad, in retrospect. The quietness of the area was all made up for by the liveliness and goodwill of the family that lived there.
It was quite comedic really, how Hermia and Robin used to despise one another so much in their youth. Hermia, the way Robin remembered her as a young girl, was aggressive and hair-splitting, and used to fight with Robin and scratch her with her long and nicely filed nails. However, she matured rather quickly — of the two of them, she took leadership once their mother kicked the bucket, and despite being as bossy as anything, Robin was thankful that she had someone sturdy to lean on; and Hermia had someone herself to lean on, too.
