The Grafton Girls (14 page)

‘You’re going to love Iowa, Ruthie, and my folks are going to love you. I can’t wait for them to meet you.’

They had left the others now to continue their walk back to Ruthie’s alone. It was a clear balmy night, the ack-ack guns silent, and the sky filled only with stars and a soft moon.

‘You know, I think I could get to like this blackout of yours,’ Glen chuckled as he drew Ruthie into the shadows.

She was so nervous. She had never done anything like this before nor even imagined that she ever might. What if they bumped noses or she did something wrong? She felt Glen’s lips touch her own and she drew in a sharp breath.

The kiss they shared was slightly clumsy but totally satisfying, filling Ruthie’s heart so brimful of joy that she could feel it spilling over inside her. When Glen took her back in his arms, she lifted her face to his this second time with shy eagerness. It was quite amazing how quickly a person
could get used to this kissing business, Ruthie decided happily as she hugged Glen back as tightly as he was holding her.

‘Come on, I’d better get you home before I take you back to camp with me and ask the padre to marry us straight away.’

Ruthie was still laughing as they turned the corner into the Close, but her laughter stopped when she saw the figure standing desolately in the middle of the road, wearing a dressing gown, her feet bare. She was looking vacantly around herself.

‘Say, what’s this?’ Glen queried in concern. ‘She looks—’

‘It’s my mother,’ Ruthie interrupted him quickly not wanting to hear him say what she knew he was going to say. Shame and guilt brought an ache of misery to the back of her throat. Why had this had to happen tonight of all nights?

‘Your mom?’ She could hear the shock in Glen’s voice but what else was there with it? Disgust? Horror? Was he regretting saying what he had said to her now?

‘She does this sometimes,’ she told him with quiet dignity. ‘She hasn’t been herself since my father died. And…and sometimes she…she forgets what happened and she goes out looking for him.’ Tears were pricking the backs of her eyes. ‘I must go to her,’ she said, stepping back from him and hurrying into the Close without looking to see if he was standing watching her or if he had turned his back on her and was walking away.

* * *

Myra looked at Nick without saying anything. She wasn’t naïve. She knew exactly what he was suggesting. She also knew that the answer she gave could change her whole life.

‘We can’t do that,’ she told him. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’ She could see the angry impatience in his eyes and added coyly, ‘It would be different if we were going steady, and you’d said that you wanted me to be your girl.’

‘I’ve brought you here to Blackpool, haven’t I?’ Nick challenged her.

‘For all I know you could have a steady girl back home,’ Myra pointed out, ignoring his irritable challenge.

‘If I had then I wouldn’t be here with you, would I?’

‘Some men like to act like they’re free to make up to a girl when they aren’t. And, like I said, if you’d asked me to be your girl before you’d suggested we stay over then it might be different. After all, no girl wants to think of her chap going off to war without her having shown him how much he means to her, does she? Just like no chap who really cares about a girl would ask her to show him how much she cares if he wasn’t serious about them being together for always. I’m not saying that I agree with those couples who fall in love one night and rush out to get a special licence the next, but when there’s a war on, no one wants to wait for their happiness, just in case of what might happen.’

They had stopped dancing and it was obvious
to Myra that Nick wasn’t very pleased about what she was saying but she was not going to give in. No way was she going to allow Nick to use her and then leave her. He needed to understand that she wanted to have a future with him; the future he could provide for her – in America. And if he refused to understand and accept that? A fierce surge of determination spiked through her. He
must
accept it. She could feel Nick watching her, waiting for her to succumb to his silent pressure and change her mind. She refused to look back at him whilst the tension between them stretched as tightly as her nerves. How much did Nick really want her? Enough to pursue her and go on pursuing her, giving her time to work on him to give her what she wanted, or was his desire for her not strong enough for that? If he did want her as much as she hoped then holding him off and making him wait could only work in her favour, she reasoned.

‘Listen, babe.’

The coaxing note in Nick’s voice told her all she needed to know. Very slowly Myra exhaled an unsteady breath.

‘You
are
my girl,’ Nick continued. ‘I was kinda taking that for granted, otherwise I would never have suggested what I did.’ He reached for her hand, sliding his fingers between her own, his voice soft and husky as he added, ‘I’ve been thinking about you and me being together all week, thinking about it…All I’m asking is that you let me show you how good we would be. Who knows how
much time we’ll have together? I don’t want to waste a minute of it. We could be seeing action any time now. You don’t want to think of me dying without knowing the sweetness of being with you, do you, babe?’

Even if she hadn’t already experienced sex and known that for her it was simply a means to an end, nothing he was saying to her would have persuaded her to drop her guard, Myra decided. Instinctively she sensed that Nick was the kind of man who would use every ounce of charm and power of persuasion he had to get what he wanted but that, once he had it, it would lose its value. He would have to give her far more tangible evidence of his commitment to her before she gave in to him. He might have picked up her cue and said that she was his girl but she wanted more than easily retracted words.

‘We can’t stay over, Nick,’ she told him. ‘For one thing I’m on duty tomorrow, and for an other…well, I want to believe what you’re saying about me being your girl, but how do I know that you mean it? I’m not saying that I don’t believe you. But if I am going to be your girl, then we don’t need to rush, do we?’ Myra darted a quick look at him, wondering how far she dare go. There were plenty of other GIs around, she reminded herself practically, but since there was no saying when the war might end, it made no sense wasting time on one who wasn’t going to give her what she wanted so much. Her mind made up, she gave Nick a soulful look, reaching out to touch his arm
as she said softly, ‘After all, when you take me back with you to America to meet your family, I don’t want them thinking that I’m not a respectable sort of girl.’

She could feel the tension gripping him. What was he thinking? Was she scaring him off by letting him see what she had in mind? It would be a pity if she had. Although she was reluctant to admit it, there was something about him that appealed to her, though she disliked the thought of being vulnerable to him through that feeling.

They had stopped dancing whilst they talked, too engrossed in what they were saying to leave the floor, and now the dance floor was filling up again with eager couples.

A group of young men and women, the boys in RAF uniform, were hurrying onto the floor, in a colourful surge of airforce-blue uniforms and party frocks. Engrossed in their own fun, they didn’t see Myra and Nick standing in the shadows with their backs to them until it was too late and one of the boys had bumped into Myra.

As she turned round he gave her an admiring look and invited, ‘Dance with me, lovely lady?’

‘Hey, buster, butt out. She’s with me,’ Nick told him furiously.

The young man laughed and turned his back on Nick, saying to Myra with a wink, ‘Ignore him and come and dance with me instead.’

Nick’s reaction was immediate. He swung round, grabbing the lapels of the young man’s uniform jacket and then lifted him clear off the
ground before smashing him back against the pillar he himself had been leaning against while he and Myra talked.

‘That’s my girl you’re coming on to, buddy,’ Nick warned the young airman. Triumph surged through Myra. But then, as she saw the young man’s friends rushing towards Nick, the reality of what he was doing came home to her.

‘Nick, don’t. Leave him alone. Let’s go,’ she protested, but it was too late. The RAF men rushed at Nick, who immediately swung round, throwing a couple of ferocious low stomach punches, which caused the two men they connected with to double over.

Some of the girls that were with the airmen had started to scream, whilst others burst into noisy tears. Nearby dancers stopped to see what was going on. Three GIs came running over to join in the affray and within seconds a full-blown and sickeningly violent fight had broken out.

Myra had grown up witnessing physical violence. She had seen her father return home drunk from the pub and then lay into her mother; she had learned young to keep her distance from him when he was in a bad mood. Now, watching Nick, she did what she had always done as a child, which was to shut herself away from what was happening in a safe place deep inside herself, so that whilst physically she was present, emotionally and mentally she was not. Then someone blew a whistle, a shrill warning sound that jerked her out of her self-imposed trance.

‘Nick, stop it,’ she screamed, alerted to the potential danger to the future she wanted for herself. ‘The police will be coming…’

Like snow on a summer’s day those on the periphery of the fight melted away, leaving Nick and a couple of the RAF men. Nick’s fellow GIs were pulling him off the young man he had first attacked, and who was now on his knees beneath the blows Nick was raining down on him.

‘Are you with this guy?’ one of the GIs asked Myra tersely.

She nodded.

‘Well, you’d better get him back where he came from, because if the MPs get here and find out that he’s half killed that kid, he’s going to be in the slammer for the rest of the war.’

The other GIs finally succeeded in restraining Nick and dragging him away from the boy, whose face was now a pulped mess of bloody flesh.

‘Get the hell out of here whilst you still can, buddy,’ the biggest of them warned Nick, giving him a push in Myra’s direction.

Grabbing hold of his arm, Myra tugged him in the direction of the exit, only too glad to have the silent watchful escort of the pair of GIs alongside them as they made their way towards it.

‘Think he’ll be OK, Tex?’ one of the GIs asked when they had finally reached the parked Jeep.

‘Sure,’ Tex responded laconically, ‘but I ain’t so sure about the poor bastard he was beating up.’

Nick wasn’t saying anything, and he wasn’t looking at any of them either. He swung himself
into the driving seat of the Jeep, leaving Myra to struggle into the passenger seat as best she could.

The GI named Tex was huge – tall and broad-shouldered, with close-cropped fair hair and a slow drawl of an accent she could hardly understand because of the cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.

‘Where you from, buster?’ he asked Nick.

‘New York – not that it’s any of your business.’

‘When I see a GI beating up some kid still wet behind the ears, I kinda make it my business, buddy. Where I come from we don’t do that to kids.’

Myra tensed as she saw the feral glint in Nick’s eyes.

‘He was coming on to my girl, and where I come from we don’t forget an insult – not ever,’ Nick told him through gritted teeth. ‘And we repay it with a bullet and a block of concrete.’

Through the open window of the Jeep Myra could hear one of the other waiting GIs saying under his breath, ‘Let’s get out of here. This guy’s connected. Mafiosa,’ he explained to his companion meaningfully, whilst Myra frowned, not understanding what was going on.

The tall fair-haired GI stepped back from the driver’s window as Nick started the engine and put the Jeep in gear.

The protective bubble Myra had created around herself earlier had gone, leaving feelings of nausea and fear she would once have connected with her own father. But her father was dead, and she was
with Nick. Nick, who was going to make her his girl, his wife, and take her to America.

She made to snuggle closer to him, but he shook her off, telling her curtly, ‘Stupid bitch, that was your fault, winding me up and then dropping me flat. And as for that Texan asshole…’ Nick spat out of the window of the Jeep.

Myra shrank down in her seat, her stomach churning with a mix of dread and angry resentment. But she couldn’t afford to be angry with Nick, she reminded herself, comforting herself with the assurance that things would be different once they were married and the war was over and they were living in America.

‘Ruthie, love, I’m that sorry,’ Mrs Brown apologised as she puffed her way up to where Ruthie was trying gently to coax her mother home. ‘I dunno how she managed to slip away wi’out me seeing her. One minute she was there and then the next minute she’d gone! Given me ever such a bad turn, she has.’ Their neighbour’s kind face was flushed and anxious, and despite her own misery and embarrassment Ruthie hurried to reassure her.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Brown. It isn’t your fault. There’s no way of stopping her when she gets her mind fixed on going looking for my dad.’

‘Well, that’s true enough. Like I said, though, I dunno what sparked her off. Nodding off in her chair, she was, and so I thought I’d just nip to the lavvy and then when I got back—’ She broke off and stared down the dark street.

‘Where’s that handsome young fella I saw you with when I come out of the door?’

‘He had to get back to his camp.’ Ruthie was astonished at how easily the lie slipped from her lips.

‘Well, at least he saw yer home first,’ Mrs Brown commented comfortingly. ‘Pity he couldn’t come in and mek himself known to me and Mr Brown, though, proper, like.’

‘There’s no reason for him to have to do that,’ Ruthie told her with forced dignity. How it hurt her to say those words after the joy she had known so intensely and so very briefly earlier. Tears pricked at her eyes. Had it been seeing her mother that had scared him off or had he just been heartlessly flirting with her without meaning a word of what he was saying all along?