The Grafton Girls (25 page)

She felt a bit guilty about not joining up with the others and going to see the vicar about Ruthie and Glen’s wedding, Jess admitted, but she hadn’t had any choice, really, not having been invited to her mother’s second cousin’s eldest’s wedding. That had been a surprise invitation and no mistake. Officially the reason for the hastily arranged wedding was supposed to be the fact that the groom was about to be posted abroad, but the reality, at least according to her mother, was that the bride had confessed to
her
mother that she had missed her monthlies twice in a row.

Since the groom was a friend of Billy’s it was more than likely that he would be there, and that alone would have been a good enough reason for her not to want to go, but family was family, Jess reminded herself, and she couldn’t let her parents down by not turning up. She had thought about inviting Walter to go with her, but her own sense of what was right and fair had told her that if
she
had been the girl Walter had back home she wouldn’t have liked to think of him going out with someone else, even if it was entirely innocent. Having a few dances with him at the Grafton was one thing, but asking him to partner her to a family event was very different.

* * *

It was lovely sitting out in the garden in the sunshine, but her hair was dry now, and her weekly letter to her parents written, and Diane was guiltily aware that instead of reading her landlady’s copy of
Picture Post
she ought to be washing her uniform blouses ready for the new week. Getting up, she closed the deck chair and carried it down to the shed at the bottom of the small garden, returning to where she had been sitting to pick up
Picture Post
and take it back inside with her.

She had just put her foot on the first step of the stairs when she heard knocking on the front door.

Expecting the caller to be someone wanting to see her landlady, she went to open the door. But standing on the doorstep, his Jeep parked outside the gate, was the very last person she had expected to see.

‘I got your billet address from your captain,’ the major told her brusquely. ‘After yesterday I felt there were things we needed to discuss, in private, and that couldn’t wait until you were back on duty.’

Diane had known, of course, that there would be something like this to endure; had known it from the minute the major released her after that kiss. What was more, she had been preparing herself for this conversation, but what she had not been preparing herself for was that the major would come here to see her. But then she was not really familiar with the behaviour of guilty married men anxious to make sure that their misdemeanour
wasn’t going to have unwanted repercussions, was she?

‘Our landlady doesn’t allow us to have male visitors,’ she began primly, but Major Saunders refused to be put off, shaking his head in rejection of her words and placing one foot in the open doorway and one hand on the open door itself. With those shoulders he probably wouldn’t have any problem at all in bursting open the door, if necessary, Diane decided as she added with what she hoped sounded like cool self-possession, ‘There really wasn’t any need for you to go to the trouble of coming to see me, Major. I’m not a green young girl, you know.’ Just to underline her point, she lifted her chin and told him determinedly, ‘Let’s not beat about the bush, shall we? I expect you’ve come here to warn me against reading anything foolish into what happened between us yesterday, but I can assure you that a warning isn’t necessary—’

‘The hell it isn’t,’ the major interrupted her savagely, causing a hint of betraying pink colour to flush her face, but other than that Diane managed to hold on to her control. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be intimidated or silenced by his anger.

‘No, it isn’t,’ she continued. ‘I know exactly why you’ve come here and what you want to say to me.’

‘Is that a fact!’

Diane took a deep breath, ignoring the grim look she could see darkening his eyes. Avoiding
looking at his eyes altogether would be a good idea, she told herself since, as she had just discovered, it was impossible for her to look at them now without remembering the shocking surge of emotion that had gripped her when she had looked up into them and seen how different they
could
look.

‘You’ve come here to remind me that you have a wife and that you are a married man. Furthermore, no doubt, you want me to understand that you intend to remain married. You want to tell me that the simple act of kissing me means nothing to you and that I would be wise to make sure that it means nothing to me. You don’t want to hurt me, of course, but you feel you have a duty to make the situation absolutely plain to me. Since we may on occasion have to see one another through the course of our service to our countries, it makes sense to clear the air now so that there won’t be any misunderstandings. We are both professionals, both old enough to realise that sometimes things happen in wartime that cannot be related to our lives or our real feelings outside the war arena. These “things” are best forgotten by both parties since they mean nothing. A brief kiss shared in a moment of tension is not something you feel proud being a party to, but it did happen, and therefore you feel obliged to make sure that I am not harbouring any foolish ideas…’

She was running out of breath, and out of courage, Diane admitted, and the major’s silence was unnerving her so much that she was starting
to feel slightly shaky. But she wasn’t going to stop until she had made it totally clear to him that he had no need to worry that she might have been silly enough to think that his kiss ‘meant something’. She took another deep breath and then concluded hurriedly, ‘In short, Major, you want us both to behave towards one another as though that k—as though what happened between us did not happen. Well, that’s fine by me. In fact, you could have saved yourself the trouble of coming round here because the truth is that since it didn’t mean anything whatsoever to me I had as good as forgotten the whole incident anyway.’

There, she had done it. Diane was so engrossed in her own relief that she was totally unprepared for what happened next. At some stage the major must have stepped over the doorstep and into the hallway, and certainly he must have removed his arm from the door as well since he could hardly have kicked it closed behind him, enclosing them both in the hallway, if he had not done so. However, she had not registered either of those acts but she was certainly registering his current one. Indeed, it would have been impossible for her not to do so since he was wrapping her in his arms, and holding her so tightly that the medals on his jacket were pressing into her skin.

‘It’s a good theory,’ he told her grimly, ‘but it’s the wrong fit. Try this for size instead.’

Diane tried to protest, but it was too late. The slight discomfort of his embrace was forgotten as he started to kiss her. And not just a little ‘let’s be
friends’ kiss either; not even an ‘I’m an angry man, and I’ll kiss you if I want to’ kiss, Diane acknowledged dizzily. This was a real man-to-woman, ‘I want you badly’ kiss, the kind of kiss that couldn’t be faked, the kind of kiss that her lips must have been sorely missing, to judge from the way they were responding…

Somehow the major had swung her round so that she was leaning up against the door, his body a hard weight against her own. She ought to put a stop to this, and right now. Her brain was demanding that she do so, but her body seemed to have developed a will of its own. It had been so long since she had been kissed like this…held like this…wanted like this, Diane acknowledged. So long since…

She gave a small gasp that could have been a protest when the major lifted his mouth from hers. His hands were cupping her face, forcing her to look up at him. The heat she could see in his gaze was transferring itself to her own skin, making her face burn.

‘I’ve been wondering what you’d look like with your hair down,’ the major told her softly. And then before she could say anything he kissed her again, slowly and tenderly this time, so that her heart bounced crazily against her chest wall, sending her a message as potentially damaging to her future safety as any German bomb.

‘Now,’ he told her when he finally released her, ‘don’t tell me again that any kiss we share means nothing.’

Diane could feel the backs of her eyes burning with emotion. What was wrong with her? This was crazy. Hadn’t she learned
anything
from what had happened with Kit? And this was worse – a hundred, no, a thousand times worse – because Lee…the major, was
married.

‘I don’t want this,’ she heard herself telling him emotionally. ‘We can’t…you’re married…’

‘Do you think I don’t know all that?’ He was still holding her, pulling her into his body now, and cradling her as tenderly as though he did understand what all of this was doing to her. ‘Do you think I didn’t tell myself the first time I set eyes on you that what I was feeling wasn’t something I had any right to be feeling?’

‘The first time you saw me?’ Diane protested. ‘But you were so hateful to me.’

‘Believe me, that was nothing to the way I behaved towards myself. I swore I’d be all kinds of a fool to get the hots for a pair of blue eyes and a mouth so perfect that just looking at it made me want.’ His voice had dropped and become soft and slurred with a need her body immediately recognised. ‘And then I saw you at that dance hall, drunk as a skunk, and coming on to another guy—’

‘I was not coming on to him. I thought…I thought he was Kit.’

‘I didn’t care who you thought he was, all I cared about was that it wasn’t me you were looking at like that with those big blue eyes. I told myself to get a grip; I reminded myself of all the reasons
why what was going through my head was unthinkable, and then I found out that the two of us were going to be working together on our own.’

‘You could have asked for someone else.’

‘Yeah, I could. Doesn’t it tell you anything that I didn’t?’

Diane closed her eyes helplessly, caught up in the undertow of her own emotions and desires. You know that you wanted this, an inner voice was telling her, you know you’ve looked at him and wondered…imagined…Yes, yes, she had done those things but not because she had ever envisaged anything like this.

‘You’re married,’ she reminded him tersely. ‘I can’t…Even if I wanted to…to…I
couldn’t;
not knowing that you’d be cheating on your wife.’

‘Let me tell you something about my marriage and my wife. Six months ago I found out that she’d been cheating on me with the guy her folks had wanted her to marry all along. We would have been divorced by now if she hadn’t decided that it wouldn’t look good for her to “divorce a man about to go to war”. And making sure she looks good in every single way matters one hell of a lot to Carrie. In fact, you could say it is
all
that matters to her.’

‘You sound as though you hate her,’ Diane told him unsteadily.

‘Sometimes I think I do. I know she certainly hates me. She’s told me so often enough. That’s what happens in a relationship when you both realise you’re tied to a person who has turned out
to be not the person you originally thought they were. Speaking as a man, I guess it’s easier to blame the woman than to accept the fact your balls got in the way of your brain.’

His frank speaking should have shocked her, Diane knew, but instead it seemed to create a shared sense of intimacy between them, as though they had both already accepted that they had a relationship that allowed that kind of frankness.

‘I didn’t just come round here because I wanted to kiss you again,’ Lee continued.

Diane looked at him.

‘I was worried about you after yesterday. What you did yesterday for that kid was one of the bravest things I have ever seen.’ He drew her closer and somehow it felt natural and right to let him.

‘You had me shit scared, I can tell you. Just thinking of what would have happened to you if that plane had gone up kept me awake half the night, whilst thinking about how it felt to kiss you kept me awake the other half,’ he told her with a small smile.

‘I…I’d wondered about writing to Eddie’s mother,’ Diane told him in a valiant attempt to switch their conversation over to a less personal topic. ‘I’ve been trying to put myself in her place but of course I can’t. I don’t know if it will help her to know that someone was with him, or whether knowing that his last words were for her will be too much for her to bear.’ She bent her head, turning her face into the major’s shoulder to muffle the emotion seizing her by the throat. He smelled
of cologne and sweat, and that earthy combination sent a charge of longing surging through her. It had been so long since she had known the intimacy of a man’s hold.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she told him, to punish herself for her forbidden longing. ‘My landlady will probably throw me out when she gets back and hears how long your Jeep has been parked outside.’

‘We don’t have to stay here. I’d planned to take you out so that we could talk properly. I’ve got a picnic and a blanket.’

Diane’s heart missed a beat. ‘No…we can’t,’ she protested.

But the major was ignoring her, smiling down at her as he told her firmly, ‘Yes, we can. Come on.’

‘Not brought Walter with you, then?’

Jess almost choked on her lemonade. She hadn’t heard Billy coming up behind her and now, as he obligingly thumped her on the back, he said jovially, ‘I know you, remember. You’ll be hiccuping in a minute if I don’t do this.’

‘I haven’t hiccuped since I was six years old,’ Jess fibbed. ‘And no, I haven’t brought Walter with me. This is a family occasion, after all,’ she added, pointedly looking over to where the curvaceous blonde Billy had arrived at the church with was standing talking to one of Billy’s friends.

‘Quite right,’ Billy told her approvingly, irritatingly oblivious to the meaning of her comment. ‘Have you asked Walter yet about that photograph I saw in his wallet?’

You had no right to go spying on him like that.’ ‘I wasn’t spying. I just happened to see it when I picked his wallet up off of the Grafton dance floor.’

So that was how he knew about Walter’s girl.

‘No, I haven’t, and what’s more I’m not going to,’ Jess informed him, answering his original question. She could see no reason for letting him know that she wasn’t going to ask Walter anything, because she didn’t need to, because Walter had already told her all about Marianne and how much he love her and hoped that she would wait for him.

Billy’s reaction to her stubbornness wasn’t what she had been expecting, though. Immediately the laughter died out of his eyes. He gave her a sharp look, his voice filled with an unfamiliar mix of disapproval and severity. ‘I’d never have put you down as the kind of girl who goes out with a lad whose got another girl somewhere else, Jess.’

The cheek of it! For a minute she was tempted to tell him how wrong he was about her and Walter, but why should she tell him anything? He could think what he liked. She knew the truth, she decided stubbornly, and that was all that mattered.

‘What I do is no business of yours,’ she snapped back at him instead. ‘I don’t go telling you who you should see and who you shouldn’t, but if I was to…’ she paused deliberately.

‘If you was to what?’ Bill encouraged her.

Jess’s mouth compressed. ‘I’m not saying, ’cos it isn’t any of my business, but if you was to ask me then I might just have to tell you that when a girl shows off her chest like that Yvonne you’ve brought here with you is showing off hers, then there’s bound to be trouble.’

‘Got a lovely figure, Yvonne has,’ Billy responded
appreciatively, with a happy sigh that made Jess want to throw a bucket of water over him.

‘Lucky thing your Denise’s ma noticed how much weight she was putting on before it was too late,’ Billy added, changing the subject.

Jess gave him a suspicious look, but she still couldn’t resist demanding, ‘And what does that mean, when it’s at home?’

‘Nowt, only that if she’d have got much bigger she’d never have got into that frock she’s wearing,’ Billy answered innocently.

Jess wasn’t deceived, but decency made it impossible for her to say to him that she knew perfectly well that he was referring to the fact that Denise was very obviously pregnant, and that if her mother hadn’t realised that fact, her new son-in-law could have been out of the country and unable to do the decent thing and marry her.

‘There you are, Billy lad. So what’s all this about you joining the bomb disposal lot?’

This was her chance to slip away before Billy asked her any more awkward questions about Walter, Jess acknowledged, and the only reason she wasn’t doing just that was because her feet in her new pair of second-hand shoes were killing her. She’d told her mother that the silver dance shoes she’d bought her from a Red Cross sale would be too tight, but her mother had said that they were so pretty that it had seemed a shame not to get them and that Jess could rub a bit of Vaseline into her feet to make them more comfortable. It hadn’t worked.

‘I didn’t join so much as get meself ordered into the bomb disposal lot,’ she could hear Billy saying affably.

Very deliberately she waited until they were on their own again before telling him sharply, ‘And that was a big fib you went and told your Uncle Fred, ’cos my dad told me that you hadn’t been told to go joining the bomb disposal lot at all, and that you’d volunteered, because he’d heard it from your sergeant. I dunno why you had to go and do summat as daft as that, I really don’t.’

‘Perhaps I did it because I wanted to show you that it isn’t just them ruddy GIs who can be heroes.’

Jess stared at him. Suddenly with one sentence Billy had changed the landscape of their relationship for ever.

‘Show
me
?’ she half stammered. ‘Why would you want to go doing summat like that?’

‘Why do you think?’ Billy challenged her grimly.

‘’Ere, Billy, you said you was going to tek me out somewhere special. You never said nowt about bringing me to a ruddy wedding.’

Billy was looking at Yvonne as though he could hardly remember who she was, Jess recognised with a sudden surge of satisfaction. Not that she believed any of that fancy talk of his for one minute. She knew better than to fall for Billy’s flattery.

‘Hey, cabbie…’

Myra winced as Nick let out a piercing whistle but it certainly caught the taxi driver’s attention.

‘Savoy Hotel, buddy,’ Nick told him as he threw both his own and Myra’s overnight bags into the back of the taxi.

Already the taxi rank was a seething mass of uniformed Americans, all in search of a taxi. Their driver was about to set off when another GI called out, ‘Hey there, any room in that cab for another passenger?’

‘Only if you’re going to the Savoy, mate,’ the taxi driver called back.

‘Then my luck’s in. That’s where I’m going too – at least it is now,’ he grinned, adding, ‘Mind if I join you?’ as he opened the door and climbed in without waiting for a reply.

He wasn’t army, Myra could tell that. He had a bit of a look of an Italian about him, what with his dark hair and his olive-toned skin. She glanced uneasily at Nick, not sure how he would take this intrusion. Along with the other men in their carriage he had been drinking for most of the train journey to London, and had even disappeared at one point, telling her he had some business to attend to, returning grinning from ear to ear after an absence of over an hour to show her his winnings from a poker game in another carriage.

He didn’t seem too bothered about the presence of the other man, though, even offering him a cigarette.

‘Up for the weekend, are you?’ the man asked Nick as he accepted it.

‘Yeah. And you?’

‘Yeah. I’m ready for a bit of R and R. Name’s
Joe, by the way,’ he told Nick, extending his hand. ‘Joe Cavelli.’

‘Nick,’ Nick introduced himself, shaking this hand. ‘Nick Mancini.’

‘Stayed at the Savoy before, have you?’ Joe asked.

To Myra’s pique, he had glanced at her once and then looked away, totally ignoring her, and Nick was just as bad, she fumed. He wasn’t making any attempt to include her in the conversation and hadn’t even bothered to introduce her.

‘Nope, but I’ve heard it’s an OK place.’

‘Sure, it’s a real home from home, but without the steaks and the malt.’

Myra had had enough. She wasn’t used to being ignored and she didn’t intend to get used to it. ‘We’ve heard that the Savoy’s band, the Orpheans, are just wonderful to dance to. We’re looking forward to having a really romantic couple of days, aren’t we, Nick?’

Very deliberately she played with her new ring, and gave Nick a slow smile. There! That should do the trick and let Joe know the situation and that three was a crowd. He had certainly registered the ring, because he was frowning as he looked at it. If he was in London by himself he had probably been hoping to pal up with Nick and he was frowning because now he realised that all Nick’s time would be taken up with her, his fiancée.

Myra hadn’t been to London before, but after Nick’s comments to her about New York when
they had first met she was very much on her mettle not to look as though she wasn’t used to city living. The truth was, though, that London was much bigger than she had imagined and much busier as well, with people hurrying this way and that, and with Americans in uniform looking so at home that the city might just as well have been theirs.

Their driver turned into the Strand, and then suddenly there was the hotel. Myra caught her breath, her eyes rounding with excitement and awe as she saw the doormen in their uniforms, decorated lavishly with gold braid.

‘I’ll get the fare,’ she heard Nick saying to Joe as one of the doormen stepped forward to open the door for her.

It was seldom if ever that Myra allowed herself to feel at a disadvantage, but as she saw the guests hurrying in and out of the revolving doors, the women dressed in the kind of clothes that set them far above someone like her, even if those clothes were war worn and no longer new, and wearing jewellery, Myra drew in her breath. If only the girls she worked with could be here to see her now.

Nick and Joe, still talking, had caught up with her.

‘See ya around, bud.’ Joe was shaking Nick’s hand. ‘And if I do we can have a few beers together.’

Not if I have anything to say about it you won’t, Myra thought to herself, as she slipped her hand possessively through Nick’s arm, refusing to let him pull away.

‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to be with me,’ she told him as they went inside. ‘Ignoring me like that in the taxi. If that’s some kind of New York custom…’

However, as they stepped into the ornate foyer to the hotel, her annoyance was forgotten, overwhelmed by the elegance of her surroundings. From somewhere she could hear the faint sound of piano music and the even fainter chink of china, coming from the large room she could just glimpse at the end of the corridor. From where she was standing she could just about see some of the ornate plasterwork and one of the mirrors reflecting the group of women seated on a velvet-covered banquette beneath it, talking and sipping their tea. One of the women – about her own age – was wearing the uniform of a Wren officer, whilst the others were wearing elegant afternoon frocks and costumes. They were all wearing smart hats, and they all had refined cut-glass accents. As Myra watched, one of them removed a cigarette holder from her handbag and fixed a dark-coloured cigarette into it, which Myra guessed must be a black Russian cigarette. One of the other women said archly, ‘Sobranies, my dear. Aren’t you the lucky one? I smoked my last pack for ever ago.’

Laughing, the woman smoking put down her cigarette to drawl, ‘My dear, all one needs is to know the right people. Do let me introduce you to our little man.’

The Wren officer frowned and told them both
coolly, ‘Personally, I’d never knowingly buy anything black market.’

An approaching waiter cut off Myra’s view of them but what she had seen had been enough to have her spinning round, her eyes bright with excited pleasure.

‘Oh, Nick, this is wonderful,’ she told him impulsively.

‘It sure is, hon,’ he agreed.

Naturally, given the fact that they weren’t actually married, she left it to Nick to go to announce their arrival and check them in, seating herself demurely on one of the elegant sofas to wait for him.

He wasn’t gone very long, returning grinning and holding up a set of keys.

‘Suite one-o-one. Com’ on, babe, let’s go and hit that mattress.’

‘It’s tea time,’ Myra protested, pouting, ‘and I’m hungry.’

‘Yeah, I’m hungry too, sugar, but it ain’t for “tea”.’

There was a warning note in his voice, and a look in his eyes that Myra knew it would not be wise to ignore. She wasn’t looking forward to what she knew lay ahead. The physical act of sex was just that, so far as she was concerned: a physical act, and one that, if the truth were known, she did not really care for and certainly did not enjoy. It was simply a part of what she had to offer a man in exchange for what she wanted from him. She had never experienced the urges she had
heard other women describing, and she didn’t want to. She couldn’t imagine why any woman
would
want to. After all, controlling a man meant controlling oneself as well, and not being swept away by ‘passion’ and letting him get the upper hand. Right now she would far rather have been sitting down to afternoon tea, wearing a pretty frock and showing off her new ring, knowing that other women were looking at her with envy and their men with a desire that would make the women even more resentful of her. Myra liked knowing that other women thought of her as a threat. It meant that she had a power over them, and she liked that. Right now, though, she felt more sulky than powerful. She might have wanted Nick to herself, but that wasn’t because she wanted to spend the weekend alone with him in a hotel suite.

‘You said we were going to have fun,’ she reminded him with a little girl pout. ‘I thought you meant you’d be taking me to the theatre and out dancing…so that we could celebrate our engagement.’

‘Yeah, yeah, and so we will, but right now the kind of fun I want is the kind that comes with a double bed and a beautiful broad.’

Diane sat on the tartan rug, within view of the pretty small lake at Ellesmere, the little town almost on the borders of Cheshire and Wales. Lee had driven her through it when he had been looking for billets, although in reality it was too
far out and she had said at the time how lovely she had thought it was, with its black and white buildings and its sense of being a world away from the war. Although they were too far away to see the faces of the occupants clearly, she could hear the laughter coming from the rowing boats on the lake and the splash of the oars of the amateur oarsmen, most of them young men rowing their girls. This was an English summer at its best, surely, with the smell of grass, and the lazy hum of worker bees filling the air around them. Ellesmere was undoubtedly a place for lovers, just as summer was a time for lovers, but she must not think about that, no matter how ironic and painful it was that Lee had brought her here. If only she were free simply to relax and enjoy everything that Ellesmere and its lake had to offer, but sadly she was not. Her arms wrapped tightly round her knees, she was looking straight ahead, but she wasn’t really seeing the view. Instead her thoughts were focused on what she knew she had to do.