Chocolate Girls (31 page)

‘I love you, Wally.’

He laughed. ‘And I love you too, babe.’

‘But I
do
love you,’ she insisted.

He drew back and looked at her quizzically. ‘I know you do. Why so serious tonight?’

‘I don’t know.’ She pulled him close again, not wanting him to look into her eyes. ‘Sometimes I think about the future, that’s all. With the war on we never know from day to day. Wouldn’t you like to settle down and have a family one day, Wally?’

‘Sure, course I would. Some day, when all this is over.’

When she hesitated he drew back to look at her again.

‘You’re not trying to tell me something are you, babe? I mean you’re not . . .?’

‘No!’ she laughed, pulling him close again. ‘Don’t be daft. I was just thinking, that’s all. I wanted to know how you felt.’

‘Right now –’ He pulled her to the side of the dance floor. ‘I feel like a drink. How ’bout you?’

She looked at his broad back as she followed him to the bar. No, she mustn’t tell him. Not now. It would spoil everything.

She confided in Edie, who tried hard to persuade her she should tell Frances and Janet.

‘I don’t like keeping anything from them,’ she said. ‘And they’re going to have to know sooner or later.’

‘No! Not yet. I need time to think what I’m going to do,’ Ruby kept saying.

‘Well, you should tell Wally,’ Edie said. She’d only met him once but she had liked him. He seemed honest and kind. ‘He’s a nice man. You could get married. He might be pleased, you never know.’

But Ruby was not to be persuaded. ‘’E is nice. I think ’e’s a faithful sort, but I’m frightened to death of telling him. I just can’t at the moment, Ede. And what about Cadbury’s? What on earth am I going to tell them?’

As the spring wore on, Ruby started wearing a ring to work and calling herself Ruby Sorenson. Lightning romances and hurried weddings were nothing all that unusual these days and apart from receiving congratulations and accusations of being a dark horse, this raised very little comment.

The days became warmer. Trees blossomed. Ruby continued to see Wally whenever he could get away. Several times she came close to telling him, but the pregnancy was barely showing yet and she put it off every time, frightened he would reject her, even though he kept telling her she was his girl and he loved her.

Men are full of flannel, she thought. He’s all lovey-dovey now, but that could soon turn on its head when he knows there’s a babby coming. Some of the time she was full of fear and anxiety, and at others, when she was with him, she tried to forget and enjoy herself. She wanted everything to be normal.

But she was soon in for a shock. She met Wally for a night out at the end of May. They walked up Bradford Street to Highgate Park, where the air felt a little cleaner among the trees. Strolling along the path with his arm round her shoulders, Wally said, ‘Look, sugar, you aren’t going to like this, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to see you – least not for a while.’

Ruby felt his words sink through her like a heavy stone. Her chest tightened. He had guessed, that was what it was! This was his way of getting rid of her. Oh, why did this always happen?

‘And why’s that?’ Hurt, her voice came out full of aggression.

‘Hey – hey, babe.’ He stopped and took her in his arms as she fought back tears. ‘What’s all this? This isn’t my idea, I can tell you – it’s all beyond my control. You know us Yanks’re here for a reason, don’t you? Well, things are hotting up – we’re confined to barracks after today. Orders – nothing I can do about it.’

‘Oh, Wally!’ Ruby wailed. She hid her face in his chest, against the tough serge of his uniform. ‘I can’t stand it. What am I going to do without you?’

‘Ruby . . . look at me, Ruby.’ His voice was tender and the seriousness in it made her look up at him.

‘Wally,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘I love you. I do. I’m not just out for a good time.’

‘And I love you too, babe. You know that. You’re my gal. But I’ll be back – when it’s all over. You’ll love the States – wide open spaces, the big cars, everyone neighbourly. My family’ll love you!’

Ruby stared at him, unable to speak for a moment.

‘D’you mean . . . We could . . .? What – you’d marry me?’

Wally released her and suddenly she was looking down at him as he dropped on to one knee in the middle of the park. ‘Ruby, my lovely Ruby – will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘I’ve been so worried,’ she cried. ‘I didn’t know if you really wanted me and I’m expecting our babby and I didn’t know what to do!’

He was on his feet immediately, hands on her shoulders. She saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. ‘Oh, my golly.’ But his tone was awed, not angry. ‘Are you sure?’ He looked down at her. ‘There’s nothing – I can’t see anything.’

‘I’m only three months gone – a bit more. You can see if you know. Feel.’

She took his hand and laid it on her belly. There was a tiny bulge, hard to detect in her already rounded stomach.

A smile, full of wonder, spread across Wally’s face. ‘Is there really a Sorenson Junior in there? Well I’ll be! Why didn’t you tell me, for heaven’s sakes, Ruby? I mean how does it look if you’re having another baby without a husband? Jeez—’ He stepped back, exasperated, and paced up and down. ‘If you’d said before we could’ve gotten married. I mean I won’t be free after tonight. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I was frightened you’d leave me.’

‘Oh, Ruby.’ Once more she was in his arms. ‘Whatever happens, even if we aren’t married yet, we will be, OK? I want you to be Mrs Sorenson of Fairmont, Minnesota, and we’ll settle down in a house close to my folks and raise a family. We’ll have, let’s see, not too many – three children? How d’you like that?’

Laughing and crying together, Ruby flung her arms round his neck. ‘Oh I like it! I love it – and I love you, Wally Sorenson!’

Within a very few days the GIs who had not already been moved south left the Midlands. On 6 June airborne troops preceded the infantry in invading the coast of Normandy. Many of the troops were American, as well as British and Canadians.

Ruby, Edie and Janet went out to the pictures together one evening. Ruby was more at ease with Edie and Janet now that she’d come clean about her pregnancy and told them she and Wally were as good as married. They tried to be positive and hopeful for her. Frances did point out dryly that as good as married wasn’t the same thing as
actually
married at all, but she promised Ruby she’d give her any help she could.

There was a long queue outside the cinema. Ever since the news of the Normandy landings the newspapers had sold out in minutes and everyone listened with total attention to the radio news bulletins. The three of them sat in the smoky picture house, watching the newsreels about the invasion, thousands of men running off the landing ships and on to the French beaches. Edie and Janet sat either side of Ruby and tried to comfort her when she started to cry at the sight of it, and they heard other people sobbing.

‘D’you think Wally was there?’ Edie said as they walked to the bus stop afterwards. The light had not yet died. They all wore cotton frocks, cardigans draped loosely over their shoulders, it was so warm. Janet wore her sunflower-yellow dress, Edie’s was mauve with a white collar and Ruby’s pale blue, and dotted with big pink roses.

‘I don’t know.’ Ruby had been awed by the Pathé film, really frightened at seeing where Wally might have gone, running from that grey, heaving sea into the gunfire. ‘Oh God, I hope he’s all right.’ It came home to her with great force how much more worried she was for Wally than she ever had been for Frank. She hadn’t ever really loved Frank, not like this, with the tender ache she felt inside for Wally. ‘I understand more what you’ve been going through, Janet. You’ve done nothing but wait, have yer?’

‘Sometimes it wells up,’ Janet said. ‘Especially if there’s something in the news. A lot of the time I just feel numb. It’s been so long.’

‘Had any news lately?’ Ruby asked.

Janet shook her head. ‘Not since March. Two and a half months. That’s normal, I know, but you can’t help worrying.’

‘Oh,’ Ruby said bleakly. March seemed aeons away to her.

Edie listened to the two of them. If anything good was coming out of all this anxiety it was that Janet and Ruby were growing closer through all these struggling days of war, going through some of the same things. Edie squeezed Janet’s arm, knowing how she watched the war in the East, the desperate fighting there had been against the Japanese in India and Burma, wondering if that was where Martin was. The towns of Kohima and Imphal had been cut off by the Japanese, and although they had broken through at Kohima, Imphal was still under seige. Janet could hardly bear to think about it. Was he trapped in there? Had he been captured by the Japanese? Or had he been lying dead for weeks without anyone to let her know? In desperation she had written to his parents asking for news, but she had had a worried letter in reply saying they had not heard from Martin either. Of course he might not be in any of these places. He might be safe somewhere in South India. But if so, why had no one heard from him?

‘Never mind.’ Despite her pain and anxiety, Janet heard herself sounding like her mother. ‘All we can do is wait and help each other through whatever happens, isn’t it?’

‘Us wenches stick together through thick and thin!’ Ruby cried, and slipped her arms through Janet’s and Edie’s. On impulse, she started on a verse of ‘Let’s swing out, to Victory!’ and the others joined in. Singing and laughing, the three of them made their way home, arm in arm.

September 1944

‘Hello my beautiful boy!’ She took Davey’s face in between her hands and kissed him as he sat at the kitchen table, dunking arrowroot biscuits into warm milk. He had a thin, milky moustache. ‘So how did you get on?’ He looked blankly at her.

Edie smiled. ‘First day at school – remember?’

‘It was all right,’ he said contentedly, biting into a second biscuit.

‘Here,’ Frances handed Edie a cup of tea and sank down wearily at the table. She was already wearing her slippers for comfort. ‘Come and join us for a minute. He’s got along very well, haven’t you, Davey? We went along to the school and there were other children on the way of course. And I asked him if he wanted me to come in, but everyone else was saying their goodbyes outside – a few tears from some of course. He said no, he’d go in by himself and off he went. Didn’t turn a hair.’

Edie had expected Davey to be nervous and tearful on his first morning, but instead he’d been so excited he couldn’t wait to get there. He’d had his uniform on even before she left for work. It was Edie, not Davey, who was churned up inside and had a lump in her throat at the thought of letting him go.

Letting Davey out of the cocoon of safety and privacy of home after all these years had disturbed her ghosts. All this time she had kept him close to her, living their quiet life, hoping no one would come looking for him. Her few close friends knew how he had come to her in the Blitz of course, but Edie didn’t want to attract attention to it. Frances had suggested a number of times that she adopt him properly to put her mind at rest, but she wouldn’t do it. She had even dreaded taking him to the doctor when he had earache, and went to a surgery in Selly Oak where they didn’t know her. She was frightened of anyone asking questions. When she went to Davey’s school and stood under the headmaster’s gaze, she had felt flustered, panic-stricken. She’d have to tell him lies! Supposing he asks for Davey’s birth certificate! I’ll have to say we’ve lost it, she thought. I don’t even know what day he was really born on. I don’t know the first thing about him! But for all that, Davey was
her
boy. She’d looked after him all this time, felt the emotions of a mother. And now she had to send him out into the world with nothing but a satchel and fourpence for his dinner!

‘So did you like it?’ Edie pressed him. ‘Are there some other nice children?’

‘Oh yes,’ Davey said airily. There was a pause, then he added, ‘They don’t know much, though.’

Edie and Frances looked at each other and both started laughing.

There had not been a lot to laugh about as the summer months went by. Though the news started to be better, the defeats of the Japanese out east, the Allies marching into the August heat of Paris, still neither Janet nor Ruby had heard from their loved ones. There was every reason to fear the worst. The three women had grown even closer over the past months. Janet, who had parted with Martin so long ago, was the least able to feel hopeful. What they had heard about the fighting in south-east Asia was appalling. How could Martin have survived? And if he had, then why had she heard nothing? The same desperate thoughts went round and round inside her head. Sometimes she was very low, and Frances, Edie and Ruby did their best to comfort her.

Ruby was convinced that Wally was alive. ‘They can’t have time for writing letters with all that going on. But I’ll hear from him any day – I just feel it. Big strong bloke like him!’ She scanned the newsreels, the units of Americans marching into Paris in August, hoping that by lucky chance she might see his face, but so far if he was there, he was at the back of the crowd.

She was blooming now, heavily pregnant with a couple of months left to go, and she seemed incapable of worrying too much about anything.