English Rain

There must be a lot of histories of love everywhere make us feel very uncomfortable or maybe sad, this should not be even one history…

Lynne was 19. She was born in Northern Deutschland and she was Jewish. Her family was running out from Nazism until arrives in England. Before got there, she dreamt about being one good ballerina but these are stuffs she had to realize later: the war was declared and the German soldiers were coming to London.

John was Irish, 22. He lives in London since he was 15. From a Catholic family, he must go to war in some days… He is from Royal English Navy… His mother still lives in Northern Ireland. His father is in France, fighting against deutsche army, one of his friends had passed away one year early, in a battle in the Northern Sea – he was Lynne’s boyfriend.

Lynne and John were not so linked each other but they got a closed friendship last weeks because she was one nurse at the QG he serves. Almost every day, they spend some hours talking, especially when they are backing home. They live at the same boulevard. Their families had never felt they could be… they either… but the next day is always one surprise and a new way for a walk…

It was one Friday when John was called to go away to war… Lynne had known the notice before him, at the QG, and felt her heart small inside herself about it… For the first time she admitted she was in love for him… “But he was Duncan’s friend, Catholic…”, thought about him when she got the news… She decided to have one a meeting with him at night, near the Greenwich Park…

John knew the calling at midday. He was not surprised but he was sad about leave his land so far. In two days he was to be in a ship in English Channel. Coming back, as they had been doing all this time, they had gone to the Park…

He was closed at her eyesight, anxious waiting for what she had to tell him… Then she started to say about her feelings and he was very happy inside because he was fallen in love for her there was a little time and he had never admitted for his friend’s remembering and his family. But the enemies arrived too early… The bombing at London begins…

They ran away to a building and hidden themselves there… For some minutes the bombing stopped. They had no time for thinking of or to measure their words… All they did was look each other deep into their eyes and kissed each other… and loved each other, as they couldn’t do it nevermore…

But the bombing is back again… destroying all around where they were so unkindly hidden, so sincerely linked, so undoubtedly happy, so happily dead… That same sky from where had fallen to the ground so many bombs, destroying their recent love, now cries one typical and sad English rain for these lovers that will never love each other again.

In: "Words for Britain" – original. Resende, 2002.