Tuesday 11th October

And that was how easy it was to catch Phil.  June saw that though he was lovely in his own sweet way, he was totally useless as far as girls were concerned, a bit too much of a bookworm for most she suspected, but she liked him from the off.  He was safe, was Phil, dependable, reassuring, solid, and quite a catch too, though her mother never really approved.  “But he is only a solicitor’s clerk.” had been her instant judgement, pulling such a face of disapproval – but then she always had ideas well above her station.  She saw herself as ‘county’, almost ‘gentry’ and certainly a ‘lady’, she could never quite get used to the idea that after June’s father died apart from the house they were practically penniless.  He had left a pitiful insurance policy paying out a measly sum every month which June and her sister had to supplement out of their own meagre wages; Julie was a typist and June worked in Dormans, the department store on the High Street.  But this was just after the war and everything had changed, all the old certainties were gone, nothing was going to be the same now and everyone would just have to adapt to changing times.  Besides ‘only a solicitor’ or not June really liked Phil, and she was going to make sure he liked her too.

*  * *

But actually Phil fell for her straightaway too, from the moment she came over to him in that pub.  She was so beautiful in an entirely fresh and unaffected way.  Stunning, Phil might have even have described her as.  And yet he could talk to her, gone was all that nervous and embarrassed mumbling he resorted to whenever he was introduced to College girls, and the way they met, just by accident, ‘God, how fortunate was that’ he thought.  He had just had that important second meeting with old Jameson in Stowmarket and the whole day seemed unreal.  He had caught the bus into Ipswich where he had arranged to meet his father at Ipswich General.  He was quite elated on that little bus journey, Jameson gave him every indication that the job was his if he wanted it, and looking out of the window even the perpetual drizzle seemed not to matter.  He was quite looking forward to working at last and earning his own wages, small as they might be to start with, no more making do with that tiny allowance from his father.  They had over an hour to wait for their train back to Norwich and had only popped into the pub to kill time really. His father was with another Consultant and a Junior Doctor, who were also training it back to Norwich, so they all, for want of something better to do, and to get out of the driving rain, had sought shelter in the pub.

And she was so easy to talk to, this quite amazingly attractive June, it felt like he had known her forever.  No embarrassing pauses while you wait for the other person to speak and then both end up talking at the same time, they just seemed to hit it off from the word go.  Phil felt she was far more beautiful than all the college girls he felt overawed by, and he couldn’t stop looking at her, he hardly noticed her friend Jenny.  Suddenly his father was coughing behind his chair and telling him to ‘Drink up Phillip, or we’ll miss the 5.40.’  In a moment of desperate inspiration he scribbled down his address on a beer mat and thrust it at her.  She smiled a wonderful smile of surprise and thanks as she slid it into her handbag.

Phil walked out of the pub into bright sunshine and warmth, the streets were already drying up; it was the first sun he had seen in weeks.  It felt so wonderful; this rare glimpse of a possible spring and Phil was walking on air.  He stood there looking skyward and basking for a moment in that warm glow, before running to catch his father up.  What a day, he had finally sealed it with Jameson, persuaded him that he really was serious about a career in Law, and now he had met the most beautiful girl he could ever have imagined.  His hand reached desperately into his pocket and found the beer mat.  Her name was June, she had scribbled her address on it and that was all he knew about her, but only a couple of months later and in the month of June too, he would know June very well indeed.