by Annie Groves
‘Do you reckon they’ll ever catch up with that GI wot beat her up and killed that poor Walter?’
‘I doubt it now,’ Diane told her landlady.
Diane knew from Ruthie, who was now blissfully counting off the last few weeks to her November wedding to Glen, that it was believed that Nick had either managed to leave the country or was living somewhere in England under an assumed name with the help of his connections with the American Mafia, although Ruthie had also stressed that Glen had been warned that the US Army did not want to have public attention drawn to this connection, and that officially Nick was simply recorded as AWOL – absent without leave.
It had been raining on and off all morning, a thin drizzle, which, combined with the mist that had rolled in over the Liverpool bar, was giving the whole city an air of closed-in grey, dank misery. It was Diane’s day off but she did not feel in a holiday mood as she huddled up inside her uniform greatcoat, worn to protect her from the weather despite the fact that she was not on duty.
She had become such a regular visitor at the hospital that the porter on duty recognised her, giving her a cheery smile.
During her early days in Mill Road, Myra had been put in a small side room on her own, such had been the severity of her injuries and the doctors’ belief that she could not survive them.
Now, though, she was in a bed in a large ward surrounded by other female patients, several of whom called out chirpy ‘hellos’ to Diane when she walked in.
Because they were both in uniform and because Myra had no family to come and visit her, the normal rules about visiting hours had been stretched to allow for Diane’s on-duty hours, but she tried, apart from a few exceptions, to keep to them. Today, though, was one of those exceptions.
From her bed halfway down the ward, Myra raised her hand in welcome. Poor Myra, Diane reflected sombrely as she reached her bed and pulled out a chair to sit down next to it. She had paid a dreadful price for her foolish infatuation with Nick Mancini. Her hair had started to grow back now after the doctors had had to shave her head to deal with her wound, but she was not the girl she had been, and had lost that sharp self-confidence that had so marked her out before.
She looked anxious and upset, and Diane could see that she’d been crying.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked her sympathetically. ‘You haven’t been having those bad nightmares again, have you? Only if you have you should tell Sister, because she said—’
‘No,’ Myra said. ‘Well, at least, it feels like a nightmare, and I wish that was all it was and that I could wake up from it.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she bit down hard on her bottom lip to prevent them from overflowing. ‘I’m having that bastard’s kid,’ she told Diane starkly. ‘I’ve been sick for a while, and they’ve thought it was something to do with…with what happened, but then they asked me if there was any chance I could be carrying, and I had to say yes, so they did some tests and I am. I can’t believe it. It was only the once without a French letter, and even then…’
Diane didn’t know what to say. She was astonished after what Myra had gone through that she had not lost the baby she was carrying, and privately couldn’t help thinking that it might have been for the best if she had. What was more, she suspected from Myra’s reaction that she felt the same way. Not that either of them could ever say so, of course.
‘And as if that weren’t bad enough I got a letter from Jim this morning – the first I’ve had from him since they wrote to tell him what happened to me. He’s due back on leave any day now and he says he’s ready to talk about us having a divorce.’ Myra gave a bitter laugh. ‘He’ll be the one wanting to divorce me when he sees the state I’m in and he finds out what’s going to happen. That means that me and Nick’s little bastard are going to be managing on our own.’
‘But you’ve got your mother,’ Diane protested. ‘I know she hasn’t been able to come and see you but—’
Myra shook her head. ‘She won’t want to know. Settled now, she is, with her cousin, living in some boarding house down Brighton way. The last thing she’s going to want is me turning up on her doorstep with a bastard grandchild.’
Diane didn’t know what to say. She reached for Myra’s hand, patting it awkwardly, whilst reflecting inwardly on how easily the situation Myra was now facing – being a young woman carrying the child of a man who had deserted her – was one that was becoming increasingly common. And one she could potentially have been facing herself if she had gone ahead and had an affair with Lee.
But she had not done, had she, and if sometimes at night she lay in her bed and ached with loneliness and need, well, at least she could comfort herself with the knowledge that she had done the right thing.
‘Have they said yet when you’ll be able to come out of hospital?’ Diane asked.
‘Another couple of weeks,’ Myra said, looking off into the distance, obviously fearing what the future held.
‘There’s Billy waiting for you,’ Ruthie told Jess unnecessarily, giving her a nudge as they walked out of the church hall where they had been to check up on the final arrangements for Ruthie and Glen’s wedding.
‘I don’t know why,’ Jess responded grumpily.
Ruthie laughed.
‘What’s that for?’ Jess challenged her.
‘Well, if you can’t see that Billy’s mad for you, Jess, then you want to go and get those eyes of yours tested,’ Ruthie told her with the forthright-ness that had come with the new confidence Glen’s love for her had given her.
‘Huh. He might make out that he is, but then that doesn’t mean owt, not with a lad like Billy.’
‘Maybe it’s up to you to make it mean something, if that’s what you want,’ Ruthie suggested.
Jess stared at her. ‘What, me go chasing after him, you mean? Not on your nelly.’
Ignoring her grumpiness, Ruthie replied cheerfully, ‘What I was meaning was that if that was what you wanted, you could perhaps give him a chance to come chasing after you instead of pushing him off all the time. If that’s what you was wanting…’
‘Well, it isn’t,’ Jess snapped, but Ruthie was well aware of the yearning look in her eyes that she couldn’t quite conceal as she looked towards where Billy was standing waiting.
Ruthie knew that she would never ever forget how close she had come to losing Glen. He had brought so much happiness to her life that it was only natural, surely, that she should want her friend to have the same happiness. Even when that friend kept on claiming that it wasn’t what she wanted.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she told Jess. ‘Glen will be waiting for me at home.’
‘Hang on,’ Jess began, but it was already too late: Ruthie was hurrying away from the hall, leaving her standing on her own with Billy between her and the gate.
She watched as he came towards her.
‘Bin sorting out the wedding, have you?’ he asked her.
‘No, I was looking for the Majestic Picture House and I took a wrong turning,’ Jess told him witheringly.
‘Vicar still in there, is he?’ Billy nodded toward the church hall. ‘’Cos if he is, how about you and me going and having a word wi’him and asking how he fancies doing us as well?’
Jess’s face was difficult for him to read.
‘Doing us as well? One day, Billy Spencer, them jokes of yours are going to get you into big trouble,’ she warned him angrily, making to walk past him. But as she did, Billy reached out and caught hold of her arm, stopping her.
‘Who said anything about a joke?’ he asked her abruptly.
Jess could feel her heart pounding like one of those bomb fuses Billy was always talking about to her stepfather. She felt a bit like a bomb inside, as well, she admitted – a bomb that was about to go off!
‘I mean it, Jess,’ he continued seriously. ‘I’m fed up wi’us messing about.’
‘Us messing about…’ Jess began and then was forced to stop as suddenly Billy took hold of her. ‘Stop it, Billy,’ she protested. ‘You’
re nearly squeezing the breath out of me, holding me so tightly like that.’
‘Well, I’m going to go on holding you tightly, and I’m going to kiss you as well,’ Billy told her ruthlessly. ‘And I’m going to keep on kissing you until you tell me that you and me are going to get married.’
‘You can’t—’ Jess began.
‘Oh, yes I can,’ Billy told her softly, and then proceeded to kiss her so thoroughly that she felt as though she could no longer think, never mind try to speak.
Ten minutes later, as they stood wrapped in one another’s arms, Jess looked up into Billy’s eyes, her own bright with love and happiness.
‘You’ll have to marry me now,’ Billy said with great satisfaction, ‘’cos Mrs Harris, three doors down from your ma, has just walked past and seen us. By the time you get home the whole street will know.’
Jess assumed a serious expression. ‘You’re right there, Billy, there’s no help for it now. We’ve got to get wed. Not that I want to wed you, of course. Not if you’re going to keep on kissing me like that.’
‘Like what? Like this, do you mean?’ Billy queried.
‘Mmmm…yes…just like that,’ Jess sighed happily as she snuggled closer to him.
The evening’s visitors were filing into the ward. Myra looked towards the door, her heart thumping heavily as it had done every visiting time for the last few nights since she had received Jim’s letter.
Knowing that he was due home and planning to visit her, Diane had told her that she and Mrs Lawson, her only two other visitors, would time their visits so as not to come during proper visiting hours until after she had seen Jim.
‘Not that seeing him is going to do me much good,’ Myra had told Diane. How could it do, she reflected miserably now. Jim had already as good as told her he was going to agree to a divorce, and that was the last thing she wanted or needed now, with no lover to turn to and an unwanted baby on the way. Agree to it – he’d be the one forcing a divorce on her once he found out what had happened, and no mistake, Myra admitted.
Her stomach, already tied in knots was even more so as she saw Jim’s familiar figure coming through the doorway, his cap under his arm, his greatcoat hanging off his too-thin, desert-worn frame. His sunburned face was creased into an expression of self-conscious embarrassment as he clutched some flowers and tried not to look at the women in their beds as he made his way along the ward.
‘Jim,’ Myra called out to attract his attention.
‘My, your ’usband looks a fine chap,’ the elderly woman in the bed next to her own leaned across to whisper. ‘One of them desert rats, is he – Monty’s boys?’
Myra had just finished confirming that Jim was indeed, when Jim himself reached her bedside.
‘Sit down, Jim,’ she told him after a nurse had bustled up to remove his flowers. ‘I…I got your letter.’
‘Aye, and I got the one the ’ospital sent me, saying as you had been in a right bad way,’ he told her. ‘Got a bone to pick wi’ them, I have. They should have let me know the minute you was brought in here, instead of waiting until you was on the mend. I’d have put in for compassionate leave and been home long before now if they had.’
‘I said not to,’ Myra told him, avoiding looking at him.
‘Well, they had no business paying any attention. It’s not right, me not being here, me being your husband, and all. Give me a right old shock, it did, when the letter came and I read it.’ He had reached for her hand and somehow or other, without meaning to, Myra had let him take it. Now suddenly, with her hand held firmly within the warm safe clasp of his, her throat had started to ache with pent-up tears. She could feel them pressing against the backs on her eyes, and despite all her attempts to prevent it doing so, she could feel one of them escaping and running down her face.
Surreptitiously she tried to brush it away, but Jim saw her.
‘Aw, come on,’ he chivvied her. ‘I haven’t come here to start upsetting you and reading the riot act, Myra. If it’s a divorce you want then—’ he broke off as Myra started to sob, her whole body shaking convulsively.
‘Gawd, woman, what the hell have I said now,’ he protested. ‘I’m giving you what you was wanting and you start bawling your eyes out.’
‘I’m pregnant.’
Myra expected Jim to let go of her hand immediately but he didn’t. Instead he gripped it a bit harder.
‘This chap, is it?’ he asked her valiantly. ‘This GI you’ve taken up with that wants to marry you?’
Myra shuddered. ‘He never wanted to marry me. It was a pack of lies, all of it. Even the ring he gave me turned out to be a fake, and besides…’ her voice dropped to an agonised whisper, ‘he was the one that put me in here, Jimmy. He beat me up real bad,’ she confessed, ‘worse than Dad ever did Mum.’
Jim had clenched the hand that wasn’t holding hers into a tight fist and there was a hard fiery look in his eyes.
‘By God, when I get hold of him…’
‘He’s gone, scarpered, no one knows where. I’ve been such a fool,’ Myra wept. ‘Such a ruddy, ruddy fool.’ She shook her head. ‘Even if he were to come crawling back here now I wouldn’t have him back. No, sir, I wouldn’t,’ she announced vehemently.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Jim asked her gruffly. ‘You’ve got the kiddie to think of now, after all,’ he pointed out, nodding in the direction of her bedding-covered body.
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Myra demanded with a return to her old sharp self. ‘I’m the one that’s going to have the ruddy thing. A proper disgrace that’s going to be and no mistake. Me with no husband and a kid about to be born.’
‘No husband, my left foot. Of course you’ve got a ruddy husband,’ said Jim indignantly ‘Still married to me, aren’t you?’
Myra stared at him. In the place of despair and misery suddenly there was the tiny beginning of hope.
‘You won’t want me now,’ she told him, ‘not after what I’ve gone and done. And if that weren’t bad enough I’m carrying the kid to prove it. It’s a pity it wasn’t my stomach he thumped; then I might have lost it.’
‘Aw, Myra, don’t say that. Poor little blighter, it isn’t its fault. ’Sides, who’s to know whose kid it is anyway if you and me stay together?’
Myra’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she told him. ‘Why should you take another man’s kid on?’
Jim said quietly, ‘It’s like this, see, Myra. I never told you ’cos you allus said that you didn’t like kiddies, but seemingly on account of me having mumps as a lad I can’t have no kids of me own, so me being a dad to this one you’re having – well, it will be like there’s summat good come out of this war for me. I’m not saying that it didn’t feel like someone had ripped my guts out when you told me that you wanted to leave me for this other chap, and I’m not saying neither that I didn’t want to punch his lights out and give you a piece of me mind, because I did. But you and me, Myra, well, I reckon we belong together, and when this kiddie comes along, it will be our kiddie, and I promise you this: I’ll love it like it were me own, Myra, because it will be me own…not a little bastard but a little Stone…’
Myra was laughing and crying at the same time, hiccuping in between her tears and laughter as she clung to Jim and tried to tell him what she felt.
For some reason fate had relented and given her a second chance. All these days she had been lying here, knowing what a fool she had been to give up a good man like Jim; a kind man who loved her and who made her feel safe, just for the sake of a bit of excitement with a man like Nick. Her longing for a glamorous life in America was gone, as though it had been some kind of dream she had now woken up from. And she had changed too, grown a conscience that she found inconvenient at times – times such as now, for instance.
‘I can’t let you do this, Jim,’ she told him. ‘You’ll end up hating me. It’s not right, you deserve better.’
‘No, it’s you who deserves better, Myra – you and me and our ba
by, and I’m going to see that we get it, just as soon as this war’s over. I’ve got to thinking out there in the desert, and I’ve been making a few plans. I’ve saved up a fair bit and I’ve got a bit put by now. There’s a chap out there who told me that he’s planning to buy himself a little house now whilst the war’s still on and he can get one at a good price, and that’s what I’m going to do. A nice house with a bit of a garden for our lad – or lass – somewhere decent where we can have a fresh start…summat a bit posh, like, so that you can have your bit of a show-off…I know what you’re like. So what do you say? Shall we give it a go?’
‘Oh, Jim, I don’t deserve a good man like you, I really don’t,’ Myra sobbed as she wrapped her arms round her husband’s neck and kissed him with passionate gratitude.
Diane sniffed the crispness of the autumn air as she walked down Chestnut Close through the blackout. She had called at the hospital to see Myra on her way home from her shift and had been regaled with Myra’s almost giddily excited story of Jim’s visit and their plans for the future. Whilst she was relieved and happy for her, Diane admitted that deep down inside, the ache of her own loneliness hurt very badly. She had a long furlough coming up soon and she planned to go home to see her parents. That should cheer her up a bit, she told herself firmly, as she stepped up to the front door.
She was just about to use her key when it opened inwards, to reveal Mrs Lawson, dressed in her hat and coat, ready for going out.
‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she told Diane importantly. ‘I’ve put him in the front parlour – and mind, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’
Before Diane could say anything she had stepped past her and was hurrying down the pathway.
Light was streaming out from the hallway, reminding Diane that she was breaking the blackout regulations. Hurriedly she stepped inside and closed the door.
A visitor. He was in the parlour. A little uncertainly she turned the door handle and pushed open the door.
‘Di…’
