‘What’s up?’
Tom nodded towards the wire. ‘There’s no one in the goon-tower,’ he said.
‘Where? What?’
All of them were staring now. There were no guards in either of the towers they could see from their hut. Then there was a frantic banging on their door.
‘Come on! Come out! They’ve gone!’
‘What? What’s that bleeding lunatic on about?’
‘They’ve gone. The Krauts. Left. Scarpered. We’re free, mate, free!’
From across the compound, they could hear a new noise—that of men yelling and cheering. Then there was a crowd of them round their hut, all shouting the same thing. Their captors had stolen away in the night. They were prisoners no longer.
‘Stand clear.’
The largest and strongest man in the hut strode up to the door, paused, then crashed his shoulder into it. The screws round the lock creaked but held. The man tried again. This time something splintered. Two others joined the task. With a crash, the door flew open and the men fell out to rousing cheers.
Tom and the others in the hut crowded out, dazed at the turn of events. It was true, Tom found. All the guards had gone. Everything was still locked up, but there was no one to keep them in. They could just swarm under the wire and go.
Some did just that, packing up their belongings and disappearing into the forest. Others, Tom amongst them, argued that this must mean that the Germans were losing the war and they should march out of the main gate in good order, like a proper fighting force. Others still were for staying right where they were and awaiting further events.
A search of the guards’ quarters found a hacksaw that had not been packed up and taken away. They were almost through the second chain holding the gates when above the sound of excited shouting there could be heard the sound of heavy vehicles approaching. The men fell silent.
‘It’s a fresh lot of bleeding Krauts,’ someone said, voicing the fears of all.
The chain fell away, but they kept the bar across the gate and stared through the chainlink at the rutted road leading out into the forest. A small convoy came bouncing round the bend—just an armoured car and two trucks.
They didn’t look like German ones to Tom. Then he saw the red stars.
‘It’s the Russians!’ he shouted. ‘The Russians! The Russians have come to set us free!’
His cry was taken up and repeated. The bar was pulled back and the gates thrown open. Cheering and waving, the men lined the way as the Red Army swept into the compound.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘HERE, honey, I got your favourites—’
Bobby Joe passed a paper bag over to Annie. She peeked inside.
‘Ooh—doughnuts! Yummee—’
Annie dived into the bag and took out a glorious sweet confection. Chewing gum she had never really seen the point of, but doughnuts were another thing. Doughnuts were heavenly. She bit into the soft ball, savouring each mouthful, carefully licking every scrap of sugar off her lips.
‘Mmm, delicious.’
Bobby Joe watched her as he drove the Jeep, one arm draped negligently over the steering wheel. He smiled as her pink tongue washed her cheek.
‘You sure do like your food, honey.’
‘You don’t know what it’s been like with rationing for all this time. All this sugar—it’s just wonderful.’
‘You missed a bit.’
He wrapped his spare arm round her shoulders and pulled her to him, licking the corner of her mouth. Annie turned her head so that her lips met his. They kissed until the Jeep ran off the road and Bobby Joe had to wrench the wheel round and get them back on course. They both yelled with excitement as the vehicle bumped and bounced along the verge before hitting the tarmac again.
‘Hey, honey, you get me so hot I don’t know what I’m doing,’ Bobby Joe said.
Annie laughed. She felt wild and abandoned. She was a new person now—a girl who rode around in a Jeep with a GI, a girl who wore nylons and went out three times a week. She even let Bobby Joe pick her up at the end of the track, so they could steal an hour or so together.
‘You don’t sound too unhappy about it,’ she said.
‘Unhappy? Not as long as I can do something about it. Say, where can we go to—you know—be on our own a little? Seeing as I gotta get you back home again so soon.’
They were approaching the unmade road that led down to the holiday chalets. Fleetingly, Annie considered Silver Sands, and almost instantly dismissed it. Silver Sands belonged to her and Tom. It was special—too special even to share with Bobby Joe. But he was ahead of her.
‘Did I see some old shacks down that track there?’ he asked.
‘Those—oh no, that’s no good. They’ve got squatters in them—people who’ve been bombed out,’ she said. It was true enough, most of them did have families in them, but the ones in Silver Sands had disappeared only last week.
‘Pity. They looked just the job. Kinda private.’
Bobby Joe put a hand on her knee.
Annie squealed. ‘Stop it!’ she cried, smacking his fingers.
‘Why? Don’t you like it?’
She did. It sent quivers of excitement running up the insides of her thigh.
‘Just stop it.’
‘You do like it.’
He slid his hand a little further up, massaging with his fingers. Annie suppressed a moan of pleasure and used both her hands to remove his. She liked it too much. That was the trouble.
‘Tease,’ Bobby Joe said. ‘C’mon, where shall we go?’
‘I must be back by nine.’
‘I know, I know, you told me. Because your poppa’s only out for a while. Look, what about this?’
He swung the Jeep off the road by a church and into a side turning that ran along the back of the graveyard. It was dim in the last grey of twilight and a high hedge hid them from the road. Bobby Joe cut the motor. The silence rang loud in Annie’s ears. Her whole body was pounding with fear and excitement.
‘Here, have one of these with me,’ she said, thrusting the bag of doughnuts at Bobby Joe.
He took it from her and dropped it on the floor.
‘I can have them any day. What I want is you.’
He reached across and wrapped his arms round her, his mouth fastening greedily on hers. Annie opened up in the way he had taught her, letting him invade her with lips and tongue, kissing him back until they finally broke apart, gasping for breath.
‘Jeez, but you’re a bombshell,’ Bobby Joe breathed, kissing her throat, working down to the base of her neck. ‘Feel what you do to me.’
He took her hand and pulled it towards him, pressing it over his crotch. Annie felt something like a rod beneath the fabric of his trousers. She gasped and snatched her hand back.
‘‘S all for you, honey. C’mon—’
Bobby Joe tried to grasp her hand again but she resisted.
‘Aw, c’mon, there’s nothing wrong in it, it’s only natural. You like French kissing now, don’t you? And you like this—’ He cupped a breast in his hand and began fondling and squeezing. ‘That’s nice, ain’t it? You like that?’
‘Yes—’ Annie gasped.
It was painful and pleasurable, exciting and frightening all at the same time, and when he kissed her as well, it was almost too much to bear. She wanted it to go on and on. She hardly noticed the way angular bits of the Jeep were pressing into her when the rest of her body was aching to be touched. Bobby Joe’s fingers were scrabbling with the buttons of her blouse. She knew she ought to protest, but when his hand found its way inside her bra the effect of his thumb against her nipple was so electric it was all she could do to bite back a groan.
The small part of her brain that remained detached was ringing alarm bells. She shouldn’t be doing this. It was getting late. Her father would be back soon—
‘No, no—’ she pleaded. ‘I’ve got to go—’
She struggled out of Bobby Joe’s arms and back on to the passen
ger seat.
‘I must be back home before my dad.’
‘You make him sound like a damned ogre,’ Bobby Joe complained. ‘Hell, honey, you can’t leave me like this. I don’t believe all this about your pop. You’re just making it up to play hard to get.’
He thumped the dashboard. She could feel anger emanating from him.
‘I’m not, I’m not,’ she protested. ‘You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’d do to me if he knew—’
Something in her voice must have convinced him.
‘All right, all right. Shut up, will you? I’ll take you home if that’s what you want.’
Bobby Joe started up the Jeep and crashed it into gear. Revving it up, he shot backwards down the track, swung it round in the road and roared back towards the farm without saying a further word. He jammed on the brakes as they reached the turn-off into Marsh Edge land.
‘Are we still going to the Palais on Friday?’ Annie asked in a small voice.
She knew she ought to jump out and run all the way back home, but she couldn’t leave things like this, with Bobby Joe not talking to her.
A long moment stretched her nerves to breaking point. Then Bobby Joe made a resigned noise in his throat.
‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll go to the Palais on Friday. I’ll see you there, right?’
Relief surged through her.
‘Right,’ she agreed.
She hurried back to the farm, the cold air cooling her flaming cheeks. Her lips felt bruised, her body was throbbing and aching, but it was all right. Bobby Joe still wanted to see her, even though she hadn’t done all the things he wanted. It was so hard, but the girls from Sutton’s were very clear about the rules. Boys were only after One Thing, and nice girls didn’t let them do it. Not if they had any sense, that was. You didn’t let a boy touch anything below the waist until there was an engagement ring on your finger, and you didn’t let him go all the way until you were married. Although, when it came to that, everyone seemed to know someone who’d had an eight-month baby, but that was just about all right as long as it didn’t show before the wedding. But the worst thing that could happen to a girl was being left pregnant and unmarried. She was despised by everyone.
The Friday night dance was safe. It was romantic and exciting and wonderful and very public. The GIs arrived and left en masse in transports and Annie and the rest of the girls made their own way home afterwards, so there were no problems with being alone with Bobby Joe in a Jeep.
As a bonus, she had a bit of a set-to with Beryl and came out very decidedly on top. It happened as she and a couple of the girls from Sutton’s Plastics, as it was now called, were going into the cloakroom, all three of them shrieking and giggling. When they saw Beryl they fell silent for half a beat, then all burst out laughing together.
Beryl put on her most repressive expression. ‘Good evening, girls,’ she said.
As one, the three of them put on high, little girl voices.
‘Good evening, Miss Sutton.’
If it upset her, Beryl was not going to let them see that.
‘Chasing Americans, are you? I’d be careful if I were you,’ she told them.
‘Why? Want one for yourself?’ one of the girls taunted.
‘Fat chance!’ said the other.
‘Oh, leave her alone, poor thing,’ said Annie.
Now that did annoy Beryl. Annie Cross sticking up for her, Annie Cross feeling sorry for her, was unbearable.
‘Poor?’ she retorted. ‘I’m not poor. My father’s richer than all yours put together.’
The friend she had with her caught hold of her arm.
‘Come on,’ she hissed. ‘Leave them. They’re not worth it.’
Annie and the other two just laughed.
‘So what?’ one of the works girls said. ‘Bet you haven’t got nylons like Annie. Here, give us a feel, Annie. Ooh! Ain’t they lovely? All silky and smooth.’
The two of them concentrated on Annie’s legs, stroking the nylons and asking about how well they wore and completely ignoring Beryl. Beryl’s friend pulled at her arm.
‘Come on,’ she insisted.
But Beryl just could not leave it.
‘I suppose they came from a Yank,’ she said, loud enough to be heard over the high-pitched chatter of the pack of young women in the room. ‘What did you have to do to get those, then?’
A hush fell over the crowded cloakroom as the insult registered. Heads turned to look from Beryl to Annie, greedily anticipating trouble.
Annie smiled sweetly back at Beryl.
‘I didn’t have to do anything, Beryl Sutton. Anything I want, my Bobby Joe will get for me, because he thinks I’m the cutest thing he’s ever seen.’
She turned to her two friends. ‘Come on, leave her be. The poor thing can’t help it. She’s never had a boy look twice at her.’
And she walked out with the others in tow, leaving Beryl staring after her, speechless.
The rest of the evening was sheer pleasure. She and Bobby Joe danced almost every dance together and slipped out in the interval for a bit of necking in the alleyway alongside the dance hall. She did have to control his hands a bit then, but it was easy enough to stop it by saying it was time to go back and dance again. She met Beryl as they emerged from the alleyway and was treated to another of her disapproving stares, but she was far too happy to care what Beryl or anyone else thought.
Saturday night was another matter. To start with, Annie’s mother seemed even more anxious than usual when she was getting ready. She even made an excuse to go upstairs and sit on the edge of Annie’s bed while she was dressing.
‘What d’you think, Mum—this or this?’ Annie asked, holding up her two blouses. ‘I can’t decide. I wore this one last week, but it is very pretty—’
‘I don’t know, dear. You look nice in either of them,’ her mother said.
‘I think that one. But then I did wear that the week before—’
Annie gazed at her choice with a misty smile. She had been wearing that when she’d met Bobby Joe. She slipped it on and did the buttons up.
Her mother picked at the corner of the faded eiderdown.
‘Annie, pet, you’re not going round to your friend’s, are you?’
Guilt and anger lurched in Annie’s stomach.
‘‘Course I am,’ she lied.
But, even as she did so, she knew it was no use. She might have known she wouldn’t get away with it for ever. How had—? And then she realised what had happened. Too late it occurred to her that it might have been a good idea to be nicer to Beryl.
‘You’ve been talking to that Mrs Sutton, haven’t you?’ she said.
Her mother’s voice rose in a defensive squeak. ‘She only means to warn you, dear. She’s got your best interests at heart. She said so. But, sweetheart, is it true? Are you seeing—’ she dropped to a conspiratorial whisper ‘—an American boy?’
Should she keep lying, to stop her mother from worrying? Annie looked at her anxious face. She wouldn’t believe her, not if Mrs flaming Sutton had told her. What Mrs Sutton said was like the Word of God.
She did up the last button. They were pretty pre-war ones, little discs of mother-of-pearl.
‘It’s all right, Mum. He’s very nice. He’s called Bobby Joe and he’s from Illinois.’
‘Illinois—’ Her mother repeated it, as if it were the moon. Her eyes locked with hers, pleading. They were still bright blue, the only thing about her that hadn’t faded. ‘Oh, darling, do be careful, won’t you? Only Mrs Sutton said you were—’
‘Were what?’ Annie demanded, more sharply than she meant to.
‘Well, you know what they say about these Americans—’
Annie knew.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told her mother. ‘I’ll be all right. I promise.’
After all, a girl only had to keep saying no.
Later on that evening, it didn’t seem quite so straightforward. Bobby Joe and a small bunch of his buddies had come int
o town in a Jeep and met up with their girlfriends in various places.
‘Our luck’s in, honey. We drew straws and I got to keep the Jeep,’ Bobby Joe told her, grinning all over his face. ‘Where’d you like to go?’
‘There’s Noel Coward on at the Roxy,’ Annie said.
Bobby Joe snorted. He didn’t think much of English actors.
‘We can go to the movies when we haven’t got transport. C’mon, honey, jump in. We’ll go to one of your British pubs and then we’ll see what comes up.’
He laughed as if at a joke and opened the door. Annie climbed in and squealed with alarm and excitement as he accelerated up the High Street and swerved between a pair of cyclists and a bus. Bobby Joe laughed again, showing his strong white teeth.
‘Hold on tight! You like a bit of fun, don’t you?’
They bounced out of town and stopped at a pub in the first village they came to. Annie asked for a shandy, since she knew Bobby Joe wouldn’t listen to her request for a lemonade.
‘ Shandy! What kinda drink is that? The beer’s got hardly any guts in it even without mixing it.’ Bobby Joe enlisted the landlord’s help. ‘What kinda drinks have you got for a lady?’
The man suggested port and lemon. Annie found she rather liked it. She drank one, and stopped worrying about her mother. She drank another and stopped worrying about anything, and giggled at everything Bobby Joe said. Bobby Joe downed his second pint, made a face and stood up.
‘Shall we try somewhere else?’
Annie could feel the disapproving eyes of the locals on her as she left, but didn’t care.
‘Somewhere else’ turned out not to be another pub, but a lay-by under trees in a quiet lane. Bobby Joe turned off the engine and produced a flat bottle from his pocket. He undid it and passed it to Annie.
‘Here, try this, honey.’
‘What is it?’ Annie asked. She could smell the strength of it.
‘Southern Comfort. It’s nectar, honey. Try it—you’ll love it.’
Annie took a little sip. The fumes made her nose prickle, but the liquor slid down her throat, warming and golden.
‘Nice,’ she said.
‘Go on—have some more.’
Obediently, she took a larger sip. She could feel it glowing in her stomach, making her whole body limp and fuzzy. She handed it back to Bobby Joe, who took a swig and gave it to her again. Annie shook her head.
We'll Meet Again Page 19
