The Grafton Girls

by Annie Groves

  ‘You can write to her, though,’ Jess tried to comfort him.

  ‘Yeah, I know that, but it ain’t exactly the same. A guy can’t tell a girl he loves her nearly so well when she ain’t there for him to hold. Would you like to see her photo?’ he asked Jess eagerly.

  Nodding, Jess peered dutifully at the photograph of the pretty but very young-looking brunette.

  ‘Her folks kinda hinted to me that they thought we was too young to get serious.’ Walter was telling her, when Jess saw Ruthie hurrying over with her partner.

  ‘Jerry said to tell you it’s time to go,’ Ruthie’s partner told Walter.

  ‘Poor boy,’ Jess commented to Ruthie as they watched the two men go to join their comrades. ‘He misses his girl at home.’

  Diane glanced at her watch. Her head was throbbing dreadfully.

  ‘Isn’t that your friend over there?’ Jess suddenly asked her, nudging her and pointing to the other side of the dance floor. ‘Wi’ that GI who looks like he thinks he’s God’s gift.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Diane confirmed.

  Myra was laughing at something her companion had said and looked in no hurry to leave, Diane noted. Nor did she seem at all concerned about her whereabouts. Somehow Diane wasn’t surprised. Her instincts had told her right from the word go that Myra was only striking up a friendship with her for her own benefit.

  ‘I’d better go over and join her,’ she told Jess, adding warmly, ‘I really am grateful to you all for helping me the way you did. Heaven knows what would have happened to me if you hadn’t. Something tells me that I certainly wouldn’t have made it back up Edge Hill Lane in one piece.’

  ‘Up Edge Hill Lane? Is that where your billet is?’ Jess asked. ‘Only Ruthie lives up there, don’t you? That’s good, then. You can walk back together.’

  ‘I don’t know how far up you live, but we’re on Chestnut Close,’ Diane told Ruthie.

  ‘Yes, that’s where I live as well.’

  ‘There you are then. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?’ Jess beamed, looking as pleased as though she personally had arranged for them to live so conveniently close to one another.

  ‘There you are. Now you’ll have someone to walk home with,’ she told Ruthie happily before telling Diane breezily, ‘Ruthie here’s not so used to looking out of herself as me and the others. Looked like she was scared to death, she did, when she got on the bus for the munitions factory for the first time.’

  Diane gave Ruthie a sympathetic smile. Her head still hurt but she was beginning to feel much better than she had done.

  ‘We don’t stay on until the end,’ Jess continued informatively, ‘on account of the way some of the lads hang around looking for a girl. It gives them the wrong idea, if you know what I mean.’

  Diane knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘I’d better go over and tell my friend that I’m ready to leave then,’ she told Jess.

  ‘Oh, I thought you must have left,’ Myra greeted her unenthusiastically, immediately turning her back on Diane to move closer to the GI standing next to her. Myra said something to him and when he turned round to look at her, Diane recognised immediately what sort he was. He might be tall and good-looking but he was also a thoroughly unpleasant type, she decided as he subjected her to open appraisal, whilst draping one arm casually around Myra. It wasn’t just Myra who was hanging on his every word, Diane noticed. He also seemed to be the ringleader of a group of noisy GIs.

  ‘We must go, Myra,’ Diane told her crisply. ‘I’ve arranged to walk home with another girl, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.’

  ‘Well, don’t then,’ Myra told her sharply. ‘You go ahead and leave. Nick here will walk me home, won’t you, Nick?’

  ‘I sure wish I could, doll, but the MPs will have me by the balls if I did. Uncle Sam doesn’t want us getting ourselves into trouble with you Brits.’

  ‘You get into trouble?’ Myra pouted.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it, guys?’ he demanded.

  Diane winced as she heard the loud chorus of assent.

  ‘Sarge says to tell you the transport is about to leave.’

  There was something about the coldly venomous look that the man with Myra gave to the young GI who had approached them that shocked Diane back to full sobriety. Poor boy, what on earth had he done to provoke a look of such openly vicious dislike? She watched in silence as Myra’s companion turned on his heel without saying a word and strode off in the direction of the other GIs, leaving the now red-faced younger man to trail behind him.

  What on earth, Diane wondered, could Myra possibly see in a man like that?

  EIGHT

  ‘So you walked home with young Ruthie Philpott last night, did you?’ Mrs Lawson commented as she poured Diane a cup of tea, and then continued without waiting for Diane to answer her. ‘Feel sorry for her, I do. Well, you can’t not do really, not after what happened to her dad, and then her ma taking it so badly, like. Tell you about that, did she?’

  ‘She said that her mother was a widow,’ Diane answered, ‘but she didn’t go into any details.’

  ‘No, well, she wouldn’t. She’s not that sort of girl. Her dad was in the ARP; got killed in a bomb blast, he did. A real shame it was ’cos they was a nice little family. Kept themselves to themselves, mind you. You’d see them walking to church together every Sunday. But Ruthie’s ma, she took her husband’s death real bad. Not bin the same person since she lost him, she hasn’t. One minute she’s out looking for him and won’t have it that he’s gone, and then the next she’s crying her eyes out and refusing to let young Ruthie leave her side. Dr Barnes has had to come out to her a fair few times, to give her something to calm her nerves. I’m surprised young Ruthie went out and left her. Not like her, that isn’t.’

  ‘I think, from what Ruthie said, that a neighbour was with her mother.’ Diane felt obliged to defend the other girl.

  ‘Oh, yes, that’d be Mary Brown. Her hubby, Joe’s, in the ARP as well. You was in later that I was expecting.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ Diane apologised automatically.

  Mrs Lawson gave a small sniff. ‘Well, as to that, I’m a martyr to not being able to sleep, I am, and that’s no mistake. Still, at least you’re up at a decent hour this morning. Unlike some people,’ she added, giving a significant look towards the ceiling.

  ‘Myra should be down soon.’

  ‘I should hope so. In my day a married woman didn’t go out dancing for all the world like she didn’t have a husband. I suppose there was a lot of them Americans there, was there?’

  ‘The dance hall was very busy,’ Diane responded obliquely.

  ‘Causing a lot of trouble, them GIs are, from what I’ve heard. Turning girls’ heads with their fancy uniforms. Mind you, it’s the girls I blame. They ought ter have a bit more respect for themselves. I don’t approve of girls who get themselves involved with Americans, and that’s a fact.’

  Mrs Lawson would certainly not have approved of the way Myra had been behaving last night, Diane acknowledged as she forced herself to eat a small slice of toast with a scraping of margarine on it. Neither her stomach nor her head were fully recovered yet, and she was thankful that it was her day off.

  It was another half an hour before Myra finally appeared in the kitchen.

  ‘I thought I’d wait until the coast was clear and Mrs L had gone to church,’ she told Diane as she lit up a cigarette.

  ‘I rather think she was expecting us both to go with her,’ Diane told her.

  Myra gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Tough. I’m not wasting my day off going to church. I’ve got better things to do with my time. You could have gone, though. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because I wanted to have a word with you about last night. Somebody must have put something into my drink and I was wondering if you happened to see anything.’

  ‘No, nothing,’ Myra lied, adding quickly, ‘Look, if I were you, I’d forget about it. OK, so you made a bit
of a fool of yourself, and Nick said—’ She broke off as she saw Diane’s expression, demanding suspiciously, ‘What are you looking like that for?’

  ‘I know it isn’t any business of mine,’ Diane told her steadily, ‘but—’

  ‘But what?’ Myra drew heavily on her cigarette and then exhaled angrily.

  ‘He’s arrogant and he’s a bully, Myra, the way he behaved to that young man.’

  ‘That’s their business, isn’t it? You really messed up the evening for me. You know that, don’t you?’ she burst out angrily, stubbing out her cigarette.

  The last thing she wanted was to be lectured. She had decided that Nick was perfect, the kind of man who, if he was hers, could transform her life. Already she was fantasising about how different her life would had been if she had been lucky enough to be born an American. And surely the next best thing to being born an American was to marry one. Especially one like Nick. He had talked to her last night about New York where he lived.

  ‘You want to see Times Square,’ he had told her. ‘And the shows on Broadway. You Brits don’t know what life is all about.’ He had laughed then. ‘Jeez, you’d never catch a New Yorker putting up with your blackout, rationing and wearing hand-me-downs.’

  ‘New York must be wonderful,’ Myra had sighed enviously

  ‘It sure is,’ he had agreed. ‘The best place on earth, and I can’t wait to get back there.’

  Myra’s sharp comment had made Diane’s face burn a little, but before she could defend herself Myra continued critically, ‘I thought you were someone who knows what life’s all about, Diane, not some stupid kid like the one we walked home with last night, all stars in her eyes and still believing in Father Christmas. You and me could have been well in with those GIs if you’d played along with them instead of acting the way you did. What’s the point in going to a dance if you’re going to behave like you don’t want to be there, and you don’t want to have any fun?’

  ‘Getting picked up by GIs might be your idea of fun but it certainly isn’t mine,’ Diane responded firmly.

  ‘Then more fool you. This bloody war makes me feel like I deserve every bit of fun that comes my way. We could all be dead tomorrow,’ Myra reminded her.

  ‘Oh, come on, that’s the argument every man in uniform who wants to get into a girl’s knickers comes up with,’ Diane protested. ‘You must know what’s said about girls who chase after GIs, Myra. The Americans themselves are calling them little better than prostitutes. In my last post, some of the GIs were saying some pretty unpleasant things about our girls.’

  ‘Save the moralising for someone who needs it,’ Myra stopped her rudely. ‘After all, the state you were in last night you aren’t in any position to go telling others how to behave, are you?’ Myra conveniently forgot the part she had played in Diane’s downfall.

  ‘The fact that I was in that state, and through no fault of my own, should tell you all you need to know about your precious GIs,’ Diane shot back, as angry now as Myra. ‘Is that really what you want, Myra? A man who thinks it’s acceptable to tamper with a girl’s drink?’

  ‘What I want is a man who’s got something to offer me. I’m sick of everything about this war, and I’m sick of everything about this country as well. It’s all make do and mend, pull together, put others first, make sacrifices. They don’t have to do that in America. God, I’d give anything to get away from this wretched country and live there.’

  Diane was too taken aback to know what to say. ‘Well, perhaps when the war is over you and your husband could think about emigrating,’ she began, but Myra cut her off with a bitter laugh. ‘Jim? Go and live in America? There’s no way he’d do that, and even if there was…No, I’ve got other ideas,’ she finished smugly.

  ‘I’ve got some letters to write,’ Diane told Myra when it became obvious that she didn’t intend to tell her what her ‘ideas’ were, ‘but if you feel like going out for a walk later…?’ she suggested, trying to restore peace and anxious not to be cooped up in the house on such a glorious day.

  ‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ Myra said carelessly. ‘I’ve got plans.’

  Myra was anxiously aware that Nick hadn’t asked her for a date last night. He would have asked her, of course, if Diane hadn’t come over when she had, Myra was sure of that. He’d been keen enough, after all, when they’d gone outside. A shiver of excitement gripped her body. No one had ever made her feel like this before. It was strangely exhilarating, dangerously so. She had lain in bed last night, unable to sleep, recalling how she had felt when she had let him take her outside, knowing what he wanted. There had been a hunger in him for her then, just like there was hunger in her to escape from the greyness that war had brought to the country and to make a new life for herself. If she played her cards right, he could be her ticket to that new life.

  Diane looked at the two letters she had just written. The first, to her parents, had been the easier to write. She had simply told them what she knew her mother in particular wanted to hear: that she was comfortable in her billet and happy in her work. She had mentioned last night’s dance very casually, knowing that her mother would be searching her letter for telltale signs that she was ‘getting over Kit’ and, equally, telltale signs that she wasn’t.

  The second letter had been more difficult to write. She had thanked Beryl for what she had told her, and assured her that she knew she was acting in her best interests in disclosing to her that Kit was seeing other girls. She had also told her, though, that she wanted to put Kit and the past behind her and that she no longer considered him important enough to want to hear about him. How could she ever forget him if she was constantly being reminded of him and the love she had lost? She couldn’t tell her friend that, though. Not without either making her feel guilty or running the risk of her telling others that she was pining for him. It had been hard to strike what she hoped was the right note, and she had read the finished letter through half a dozen times, anxiously checking that she hadn’t said anything she would regret nor omitted to say everything that needed to be said. She had finished her letter with a cheerful few lines about the Grafton and going dancing there and the fun she expected to have in her new life in Liverpool.

  Now all she had to do was go to post the letter before she could have second thoughts.

  ‘Just going to post my letters Mrs L,’ she called out to her landlady as she opened the front door.

  The afternoon sunshine revealed the dust dimming the green of Chestnut Close’s front garden hedges. A legacy of the heavy bombing the city had endured, the dust was everywhere, coating everything in a thin fine film that Liverpool’s inhabitants no longer seemed to notice. No doubt when you had come through a bombing blitz as heavy as that endured by the city, a bit of dust was easy to ignore, Diane decided as she strolled towards the postbox.

  She was not looking forward to going in to work in the morning. She suspected that by now everyone would, in the way of such things, know about last night. She could explain what had happened, of course, but it would still be embarrassing. She had seen the disapproving looks she and Myra had been attracting before she had been given that wretched drink. It made her writhe in horrified embarrassment to think about the way she had behaved to that poor RAF man, mistaking him for Kit. So much for her determination to prove that she could have a good time without him. Buck up, she chided herself sternly. You’ve just got to get on with it.

  She had just posted her letters when she saw Ruthie crossing the road several yards away.

  ‘Hello, there,’ she called. ‘Was your mother all right when you got in? I know you were worrying about her.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She was fine, thank you,’ Ruthie confirmed, looking shy. ‘Mrs Brown, our neighbour, said that she hadn’t asked for me once. In fact, she said she could see no reason why I shouldn’t go out dancing more often, because she could see that it had done me good. She wanted to know all about it and if I had danced with anyone.’ A soft pink tinge had crept up under Ruthie’
s skin and her eyes were shining. ‘I told her all about dancing with Glen and she said that he sounded really nice. I never thought when Jess persuaded me to go with them that I’d be asked to dance by a real American GI.’

  Had she ever been that young, Diane wondered ruefully.

  ‘Jess said that she knew he was going to ask me to dance, but I never thought…I mean, why should he want to dance with me? Didn’t the Americans look handsome in their uniforms? And he had such lovely manners, calling me “ma’am” and asking for permission to call me Ruthie,’ Ruthie rushed on breathlessly, so plainly aglow with delight that her naïvety made Diane feel a hundred years her senior, rather than a mere half-dozen.

  What could she say to her, Diane wondered wryly. She ought to warn her not to take her GI or his compliments seriously in case she got hurt, but the shining look of delight on Ruthie’s face made it impossible for her to do so.

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again,’ Ruthie told her, betraying an unexpectedly practical streak. ‘But I’ll know that I’ll remember last night for the rest of my life,’ she breathed, before asking sympathetically, ‘Are you feeling all right now?’

  ‘Yes, apart from an aching head, and my bruised pride,’ Diane told her. ‘I can’t believe I was silly enough to let something like that happen. Just let it be a warning to you, Ruthie. Young men about to go to war and risk their lives don’t always remember to be gentlemen.’

  ‘No, I know. Jess told me that you have to be careful and that when a man asks you to prove how much you love him, you have to tell him to prove that he loves you.’

  Diane laughed. Jess certainly had her head screwed on the right way, and Ruthie was unlikely to come to much harm if she heeded Jess’s words of wisdom.