The Grafton Girls (32 page)

‘Two days,’ Lee groaned. ‘Hell, right now two hours is one hour fifty too long.’

‘Now, I
know
that you’re exaggerating,’ Diane told him, trying to sound stern, but laughing instead, as she instructed him, ‘Tell me about Glen.’

Lee groaned again. ‘You Brits sure are hardhearted women. Here I am, trying to make love to you, and all you want to do is talk about some other guy. OK, OK,’ he gave in when she looked at him.

‘Hal, his colonel, has personally interviewed the two guys who claimed to have witnessed his quarrel with the dead man.’ Lee paused. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this. Technically, it’s against regulations but he promised them that he’d make sure, if they told him the truth, it wouldn’t come out how he’d gotten hold of it, and off the back of that they opened up and admitted that they were so deep in debt to Mancini that they were forced to agree to lie for him. They’re now on immediate transfers, to protect them as much as anything else, and Mancini is going to be facing a court martial, but at the moment it’s all under wraps and Mancini has no idea what’s going on. The colonel wants to get all his ammo together before he confronts him.’

‘But he does believe Glen?’ Diane asked anxiously.

‘Yeah. There’s no doubt about who’s the guilty one.’

‘So what will happen to Glen now?’

‘Once Mancini has been charged and put under guard, Glen will be given a full discharge, and a clean bill of health, and by way of compensation for what he’s been put through his colonel is going to give his permission for him to go ahead and get married.’

‘Oh, Lee! Can I tell Ruthie? She’s here tonight. Poor girl, she’s been through such a dreadful time these last few days, what with all this business and Walter’s death and then – well, you won’t know about this – but she worked in a munitions factory workshop where there was a terrible explosion earlier this week. Everyone working there was killed in the blast. Ruthie would have died too if she hadn’t gone home from work not feeling well.’

‘Jeez…’ Lee swore under his breath. ‘Poor kid. Well, I guess you can tell her, but you’ll have to tell her as well that she’s to keep it under her hat for now, bearing in mind what I just told you about Mancini.’

Diane gave him a tender smile and said lovingly, ‘I’ve just had a better idea. Why don’t I bring her over so that you can tell her? She’s only over there on the other side of the dance floor. I should warn you that she’s a bit on the shy side, but something tells me that she’s far more likely to believe you than she is me.’

‘Well…’ Lee looked dubious, but then when Diane squeezed his hand he laughed and said, ‘OK…I guess I’d agree to anything to have you smile at me like that, Di.’

‘Wait here.’ She released his hand and stood up. ‘I’ll go across and fetch her.’

‘Ruthie?’

Both Jess and Ruthie looked up from their silent contemplation of the dancers when Diane touched Ruthie lightly on the shoulder.

‘I was sorry to hear about…about what happened,’ she told them both quietly.

‘I keep feeling that it’s wrong for me and Jess to be alive,’ Ruthie said miserably. ‘It’s as though somehow we’ve cheated, and…’

‘Major Saunders has had a word with your Glen’s colonel,’ Diane told her calmly, overriding her despair. ‘And he wants to talk to you about it, if you can spare a minute.’

The immediate change in Ruthie’s expression was heart-wrenching. Diane watched the hope flare briefly in the girl’s eyes, only to die away again as she looked across the dance floor.

‘It’s no use, is it?’ she asked Diane. ‘He can’t do anything.’

‘You need to talk to him yourself,’ Diane told her.

Ruthie looked uncertainly at Jess. ‘I don’t like to leave you on your own.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Jess told her robustly. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Dance?’

Jess looked up, Billy’s voice bringing her out of her dark thoughts.

‘I…I’ve promised Ruthie I’d wait here for her.’

‘She doesn’t look like she’s about to come rushing back any time soon,’ Billy told her drily, glancing over to where Ruthie was talking animatedly to the dark-haired American major sitting next to Diane.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Billy added, ‘about Walter.’

Jess discovered that her mouth had suddenly gone very dry whilst her hands had gone very clammy.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ she demanded warily.

‘Oh, I’m just so happy. I can’t thank you enough.’ Ruthie put her hands to her burning cheeks, her voice breaking with emotion. ‘I almost feel as though I can’t let myself believe it, just in case.’

‘Of course you can believe it,’ Diane assured her gently. ‘Lee wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.’

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed.

Ruthie smiled beatifically and then stopped, her eyes filing with tears. ‘Oh, but I shouldn’t be feeling like this, not when…’ she gave a small shudder. ‘It seems so wrong to be happy with all those poor women and girls gone and poor Walter too.’

Diane exchanged looks with the major. He was beginning to appear slightly impatient and very much as though he wanted to have her to himself.

Touching Ruthie lightly on the shoulder she told her in a kind voice, ‘You must try to look on you
not being there as something that was meant to be, Ruthie.’

‘Meant to be?’

‘Yes. You see, if Glen hadn’t been accused of being responsible for Walter’s death, you wouldn’t have been so upset that you had to go home from the factory, would you?’

Ruthie shook her head.

‘And then you and Jess would have perished with the others,’ Diane persisted. ‘So you see, you surviving must have been meant, and that means that you owe it to those who didn’t survive to make the most of what you’ve been given.’

‘You mean that because of them I have to be happy?’ Ruthie asked her uncertainly.

‘Absolutely,’ Diane confirmed. She’d never felt surer that life needed to be seized with both hands. And she would do just that this weekend.

‘Why do you think I want to talk to you about him?’ Billy asked Jess.

She heaved a sigh. They could go on and on round the houses like this for the rest of the night without getting anywhere.

‘I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘So why don’t you tell me?’

‘All right then, I will.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Why did you let on to me like you and Walter was together?’

‘I did no such thing,’ Jess denied immediately.

‘Yes you did.’

‘No I didn’t.’

They had stopped dancing now and were facing one another. Jess had her hands on her hips and Billy was glaring at her in exasperation.

‘Give over,’ Billy demanded. ‘You made out like you was sweet on Walter, clinging to his arm and looking up at him all daft-eyed and that.’

‘I never.’

‘Yes you did.’

‘I’m surprised you had time to notice how I was looking at Walter wi’ all them girls of yours fawning all over you all the time,’ Jess challenged him, changing tack.

‘What girls?’

Billy looked and sounded genuinely perplexed but Jess wasn’t going to give in.

‘Them girls wot you’re always flirting with, and don’t say that you aren’t, because you are.’

‘Well, don’t you tell me that you weren’t flirting with Walter neither.’

‘I never! Me and Walter were just friends. He was lonely and he wanted someone to talk to about his girl on account of having to leave her back at home without having a chance to say goodbye to her properly like.’

There was silence for a few seconds as they glared at one another, and then Billy said gruffly, ‘Well, you should have said summat to me then, shouldn’t you? You know, like telling me that he was just a friend, and you knowing he had a girl at home.’

‘What? You’ve got your nerve, Billy Spencer! Why should I go telling you anything of the kind?
Huh! We all know now what would have happened if I had. The next thing, I’d have known, you’d have bin telling everyone that I was sweet on you and acting like I had to make sure you knew I was free for if you wanted to ask me out.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

Another silence. But a different one this time. Billy shuffled slightly towards Jess and when she didn’t move back he reached out and took told of her hand.

‘If
you
was to say that you were sweet on
me
, Jess…’

Jess looked back at him. She felt as though she was trembling on the edge of something that was both exciting and dangerous, something she longed for and yet at the same time feared.

Billy was pulling her gently closer to him and she wasn’t resisting. She looked into his face and her heart did a cartwheel.

‘Jess…I know this might not be the time but—’

‘Billy! There you are. I’ve bin looking everywhere for you. You owe me a dance, remember?’

Jess stiffened as the other girl came up to them, deliberately turning her back on her whilst she leaned towards Billy, acting as though Jess just wasn’t there, never mind having her hand held by him. Abruptly she pulled her hand from Billy’s and turned on her heel, ignoring him when he called out to her to stay. Stay here and wait in line for him behind someone like that? He’d got a nerve, and she’d got more respect for herself!

She could see Ruthie making her way back to their table. Determinedly, she hurried over to her and said, ‘I don’t know about you, Ruthie, but I’m ready for me bed. I reckon I’ve had enough here, what with all that’s happened this week, an’ all.’

‘I’m ready to leave as well,’ Ruthie confirmed. She couldn’t wait to get home and give her mother and their neighbours the good news about Glen.

‘Ready?’

Diane nodded without being able to look at Lee as he took her small case from her and put it into the back of the Jeep.

They had both agreed that it made sense to meet up away from Derby House and its prying eyes, but that didn’t stop her from feeling somehow uncomfortably shabby about the manner in which she had deliberately let the others think she was going home to see her parents for the weekend before making her way to her prearranged rendezvous with Lee on Wavertree Road. There was no reason for her to feel like this, she reassured herself. It wasn’t as though she had had to hang around on a street corner, advertising her intentions by putting her case at her feet, after all. Lee had been waiting for her.

No reason? What about
Mrs
Saunders, Lee’s
wife?
Wasn’t she any kind of a reason for her to feel guilty about what she was doing?

* * *

Lee was opening the passenger door to the Jeep for her.

‘Have you any idea how damn much I want to kiss you?’ he told her thickly.

Immediately her pulse quickened, whilst a now-familiar heat flooded her body. This was so different from what she had felt for Kit. Then her sexuality had been unknown, and untested. She had been inexperienced, knowing only that her desire for Kit, her love for him, were driving her on to make that leap into the unknown that was womanhood, in Kit’s arms. Afterwards, as a woman – Kit’s woman – she had grown used to the hot ache of her desire for him and her yearning for those stolen nights – sometimes merely stolen hours they had shared together as lovers.

Now she was already a woman, experienced, knowing the desires of her body and what fed them. The hunger she felt for Lee’s touch wasn’t the excited urgency spiked with uncertainty that belonged to a virgin, but the awareness of her own deepest self that belonged to a woman who had known physical love.

She and Lee would be meeting physically as equals. Her need for him was a woman’s need for a man, not a virgin’s need for the experience of sexual intimacy, or to ‘give herself to the man she loved’ that she had felt with Kit. How naïve that girl seemed to be to her now, how naïve, and impossibly morally pure, because that Diane, that girl, would never even have contemplated experiencing, never mind satisfying, her physical desire
for a married man. She would not even have accepted that it was possible for a woman to feel that kind of hunger in its own right. For her, the sexual act had only been acceptable when it was the result of a woman having fallen in love and being loved back by a man who was free to give and take that love. She would never have accepted that physical sexual desire could be something a woman could feel simply because she was a woman and because she was missing what she had once had, because she was afraid that this war might take from her the right to be fully that woman.

‘My guess is that we’ll be there in about an hour and a half – can you wait that long to eat?’

Ridiculously after what she had just been thinking, Diane could feel herself suddenly blushing because she knew that her appetite wasn’t for food.

‘God, I’m so hungry for you, Di,’ he told her in a low groan, his words mirroring her thoughts. ‘You’re all I’ve been able to think about since Wednesday night.’

Myra grimaced in distaste as she made her way along the down-at-heel street in the fading daylight. With its boarded-up houses and general air of neglect and abandonment, the whole area had an atmosphere of sullen brooding resentment spiced with danger. It reminded her in many ways of the atmosphere at home whilst she had been growing up. Angrily she shrugged aside that thought. Just as soon as this war was over she would be leaving all of this behind her. There wouldn’t be streets
like this one in New York: streets where houses had been bombed and left empty, where hostile dark shapes, human and animal, slunk along in the twilight, anxious to keep out of sight but still ready to turn and fight their corner if they had to. Myra’s grip on her handbag tightened. Nick had no right to expect her to come to places like this, she decided, conveniently ignoring the fact that Nick had not summoned her to the bar and that it was her own decision to come there and look for him, because he had not, as she had expected, been in touch with her since their return from London. Apart from anything else, she needed to see him to tell him about what Diane had had to say to her. Once they were married there would be some changes made and no mistake. It was all very well him claiming that it was business that brought him to this dank sunless street, with its fetid smell of corruption and fear; there must be other ‘business’ he could make money from, surely. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she started to walk down the worn stone steps that led to the bar.

In the well at the bottom of the steps a woman with brassy dyed hair was leaning against the brick wall, smoking.

‘’Ere,’ she called out to Myra as Myra made to pull open the door. ‘This is my pitch. Tek yourself off and go and find your own.’

Ignoring her, Myra stepped into the bar.

Unlike on the other occasions she had been here, this evening it was busy, the air thick with smoke, men crowding round the bar, whilst a couple of
women of the same type and profession as the one she had seen outside were sitting at one of the rickety tables. As Myra surveyed the room, a man standing at the bar turned to spit on the floor, catching sight of her as he did and nudging the man standing next to him. Within seconds every man at the bar, or so it seemed to Myra, had stopped talking to turn and look at her, except for the man she had come here to find. He was continuing with his conversation as he kept his back to her. Because he didn’t want to acknowledge her? Myra smothered the anxiety she could feel uncurling deep inside her, and walked quickly over to him. He was wearing civvies instead of his uniform, and the man he was talking to was the same American he had met here once before. He gave her a hard unwelcoming look before nudging Nick and muttering something to him as he slipped him a package.

‘What…?’ Nick began tersely as he turned round and saw her, but Myra was determined to have her own way.

She shook her head, stopping him, then told him, determinedly, ‘I need to talk to you, Nick -but not here.’

‘Hey, look, can’t you see that I’m in the middle of a business meeting here?’ was his response.

Myra had no intention of giving in, though.

‘This is important, Nick. It’s about what happened the other Saturday before we went to London…remember?’ she warned him.

The two men exchanged looks.

‘We can’t talk in here,’ Myra told Nick.

‘Go ahead, Nick,’ the other man said, still ignoring her. ‘I’ll be in touch – usual place.’

How quickly he melted into the shadows, Myra noticed. One minute he was there, the next he had gone, or so it seemed.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t been in touch with me before now,’ she said to Nick as he hurried her out of the club, and up the stone steps, ‘especially seeing as we’re engaged now. I’ve been thinking about that, Nick,’ she added, ‘about me and you being engaged.’

‘Well, don’t think about it,’ Nick snarled at her, ‘because there ain’t no point.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Myra demanded, put out. ‘And why are you out of uniform?’

To her shock he turned on her, winding his fingers tightly into her hair.

‘Ouch,’ she protested. ‘You’re hurting me, Nick.’

‘Am I? Good. Maybe that will teach you not to come poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted.’

Myra was outraged. ‘Not wanted! You weren’t saying anything about me not being wanted when you gave me this.’ She waggled her ring finger.

‘Did you tell anyone you were coming here?’ he demanded, ignoring her comment.

‘No. I would have told Diane, but she was acting all uppity about that Walter going and dying that I didn’t bother,’ Myra sniffed disparagingly. ‘Look, Nick, when you and me are married—’

‘Back off, will you?’ he told her.

Back off? Myra stared at him. ‘You can’t tell
me to back off,’ she started to bluster, ‘not with us getting married.’

Nick started to laugh. ‘Me marry you? Are you crazy?’ he taunted her, looking contemptuously at her. ‘There’s no way I’d tie myself to a dumb broad like you. Broads like you come a dime a dozen in New York, and no way does anyone marry them.’

Myra’s heartbeat slowed ominously and then started to beat far too fast at what she recognised in his look. Suddenly and very clearly she could see her chance of fulfilling her dream slipping away from her. Nick was her passport to that dream and to the future; without him…She forgot that she was already married and that she wasn’t in a position to marry him; in fact she forgot everything other than the agonising pain she could feel bursting into life inside her as destructively as ignited TNT. ‘But you said—’ she began.

‘Said, schpred,’ Nick shrugged dismissively, as he let go of her hair. ‘I ain’t the first guy to spin you a line to get you into bed and don’t try telling me I am. There’s no way a dame, who gives it out like you do, doesn’t know what it’s all about.’

‘You don’t mean that…You’ve…you’ve got to marry me,’ she burst out in her panic, ‘otherwise…’

Nick stopped chewing his gum, his body suddenly completely motionless and emanating such an aura of menace that Myra started to shiver.

‘Otherwise what?’ he demanded without taking his gaze off her.

She wasn’t going to be frightened by Nick, Myra
told herself staunchly. If anyone was going to be afraid then it was him.

‘Diane’s already been asking me questions about what happened on Saturday. If you want me to keep on lying for you, Nick, then you are going to have to marry me. After all, it’s the only way you can be sure I won’t say anything, isn’t it? It’s against the law for a wife to testify against her husband.’

Myra was still smiling when Nick closed his hand round her throat and started to squeeze it.

‘You stupid broad,’ he snarled savagely, ignoring her attempts to claw his hand away. ‘Do you really think I’d let you do that? And as for me marrying you,’ he turned his head to one side and spat out his gum, releasing his hold on her throat just enough for her to be able to breath properly. ‘There ain’t no way I could marry you, sugar. You see, I’ve already got a wife. Yeah, and she knows her place and how to keep her mouth shut when she’s told, which is a hell of a lot more than you do.’

Nick
was married! Myra didn’t want to believe it but she could see that he was telling the truth. The bitterness of her disappointment boiled up inside her like raw acid eating into her pride and her self-control.

‘So I guess that leaves only one way for me to shut you up now, doesn’t it, sweetness?’

Nick’s voice had become as softly caressing as the fingers he was stroking down her bare throat, but Myra wasn’t deceived. She started to shiver
violently with sick fear, trying to push him away, but he was far too strong for her.

‘It’s no good,’ he told her silkily. ‘I ain’t letting go.’

‘If you hurt me then that will get you into even more trouble,’ Myra warned him desperately.

Nick laughed. ‘No way! I’ll be out of the country before they find you, sugar. It’s all arranged. In fact, Carlo is waiting for me a couple of streets away right now.’

Myra looked at him, only now realising the significance of his being in civvies, and then remembering the man he had been with when she had walked into the bar, and the package she had seen exchanging hands.

‘No, Nick, please,’ she begged him. She could hear the sound of people leaving the bar and she prayed that they would look up the alleyway and see them.

‘You’ll be just another dame who got too friendly with the wrong guy,’ he told her, smiling. ‘A good dame gone bad who gets what she deserves…’

He was squeezing her neck so tightly that she couldn’t breath. She tried desperately to claw at his hands but he kept on squeezing, and then suddenly he banged her head back against the wall so hard that the last of her breath escaped from her lungs in a tiny sigh like a punctured tyre. He let her go, watching as she slid down the wall, leaving a thin smear of sticky blood behind her as she did so, before he turned and walked away.

* * *

‘Well, it isn’t exactly the Ritz.’

Diane looked at Lee across the small room with its sloping eaves.

Down below them was the taproom of the pub and the conversation from it drifted upwards through the floorboards in a muted hum of male voices. Just off the bedroom was an even smaller room containing a wash basin, whilst the lavatory was along the corridor and down a flight of stairs. The bed itself looked comfortable enough, though: high, and so wide it almost filled the room, its patchwork quilt faded and soft to the touch.

‘We’ve got everything we need here,’ she answered him quietly, and was rewarded with a fierce glow of passion illuminating his gaze at her.

‘A room, a bed and thou,’ he misquoted ruefully. ‘Have you any idea just how special you are, Di?’

‘I’m no more special than any other girl,’ she denied.

He shook his head. ‘You do not begin to know just
how
different you are. For a start, you haven’t complained yet about the room not having a closet, or a bathroom, you haven’t told me that you need to go visit a beauty parlour before you can do anything else, nor have you suggested that it would have been better if I’d booked two rooms, so that you’d be spared the discomfort of having to share a room, never mind a bed, with a sweaty, uncouth soldier. And that’s just for starters.’

‘Oh, Lee.’ Instinctively she went to him, leaning her head against his chest and putting her hand on his arm, wanting to comfort him.

‘Are you really sure you don’t mind about this place?’ he pressed her. ‘It seemed kinda romantic when I planned it, but I guess I might as well have offered you a night in a hayrick,’ he grimaced, as he looked up at the thatched roof.

‘This
is
romantic,’ Diane assured him. ‘You’re here and so am I. We’re alone, with a bed. What could be more romantic than that?’

‘The kind of hotel that can provide a large steak, a bottle of good red, a sprung dance floor and a decent dance band?’ he suggested.