The Grafton Girls

by Annie Groves

  Diane swallowed back her longing to defend herself.

  ‘You realise, of course, that this kind of behaviour cannot be tolerated?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Diane agreed woodenly.

  Was she going to be dismissed, drummed out of the WAAF and sent home in disgrace? She could hardly bear to think of the shame that would cause her parents. With every word of criticism she was having to endure, her angry resentment against the GIs was growing.

  ‘You say you believe that spirits were added to your drink by the American soldiers you were with?’ Group Captain Barker queried.

  ‘Yes,’ Diane confirmed.

  ‘You are ready to swear to this on oath?’

  ‘Yes. There can’t be any other explanation.’

  ‘Well, I have to say that I was extremely surprised to learn about what had happened. You hadn’t struck me as the sort of young woman who would behave so foolishly and irresponsibly – quite the opposite. And…’ Group Captain Barker paused and then stood up, ‘unhappily this isn’t the first time we have had reports of American soldiers behaving in a less than chivalrous way towards British women both in and out of uniform, although I must say I would have expected one of my own girls to have recognised the danger of getting too friendly with soldiers so far away from their own homes and families. Having said that, since you have given me your word that you believe your drink was interfered with, I am prepared to overlook what happened – on this occasion. Should something of this sort happen again—’

  ‘It won’t, ma’am,’ Diane stammered as the lieutenant gave her a look of angry incredulity for forgetting herself and interrupting the captain.

  ‘I also intend to have a word with the C-in-C here and ask him to speak to his opposite number at Burtonwood with regard to the behaviour of his men.

  ‘Now whilst you are here there is something else I wish to discuss with you.’ Although the captain’s voice had warmed slightly, the lieutenant was still looking at Diane as though she wanted to put her on a charge.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Group Captain Barker instructed.

  Diane was glad to obey. Her legs were now trembling so much she wasn’t sure she could continue to stand stiffly to attention for very much longer.

  ‘Our C-in-C considers it important that we establish good working relationships here at Derby House with our American allies. Men’s lives depend on the success of our convoys, and monitoring and protecting them from our base here is work that we all know demands the utmost dedication and concentration. The smallest error in detecting enemy activity can result in convoys being torpedoed, and ships and men’s lives lost. We are all aware that some of the American airmen coming over feel very much on their mettle and determined to prove themselves. They are arriving in a country whose airmen have proved themselves as saviours, and naturally some of these young American airmen may feel that they are being looked down on and might, therefore, be inclined to behave recklessly in an attempt to match this bravery. The C-in-C feels that by welcoming them we can impress on them the necessity for calm, controlled behaviour from those who fly the planes that protect our convoys. With a view to fostering such good relations, he has decided to invite some of our American allies to welcome parties at Derby House and he has asked me to put forward the names of those of my girls whom I consider to be suitable for such an important and delicate assignment. What the C-in-C wants is for our American allies to feel they are welcome, but he is aware that they will be missing the female company of their own wives and families, and what he does not want is to encourage the wrong kind of behaviour. Prior to hearing about the events of Saturday night I had put your name forward.’

  Diane gave a small start and was frowned back into place by a withering look from the warrant officer.

  ‘Since you have given me your word that you were in no way responsible for what happened, I am prepared to let my recommendation stand. I was in two minds about giving you this second chance, but in view of your previously unblemished record and the excellent report from your previous posting I have decided to err on the side of generosity, on this occasion. However, let me make it plain to you that there must be no repeat of Saturday night’s behaviour.’

  Somehow or other Diane managed to scramble to her feet, salute, thank the Group Captain for giving her a second chance and get herself outside and into the corridor without making a total fool of herself. She was in no fit state to go back to the ops room, though. Instead she hurried down to the ablutions block, where she locked herself in one of the lavatories and gave her nose a good blow to stem her tears, whilst making a vehement and silent vow to show the captain just how worthy of her second chance she truly was.

  Back in the ops room she was conscious of her slightly pink nose and overbright eyes, and equally conscious of the cool hostility of the other girls as she took her place at the chart desk.

  When it was time for them to go for their lunch break she hung back, not wanting to force her company on them or run the risk of being deliberately ignored.

  ‘Buck up,’ Susan told her briskly, adding not unsympathetically, ‘Hiding away in here won’t help. You’re going to have to face everyone at some stage and it might as well be sooner rather than later.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ Diane told her. ‘I just wasn’t sure you’d all want me with you now.’

  ‘We’re all in this war together, and we owe it to one another to stick together. I dare say the captain gave you a pretty rough time?’ Susan enquired with pity.

  ‘It was only what I deserved,’ Diane admitted honestly, ‘and at least she accepts that my drink was tampered with.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. There’ve been rumours about some of the Americans from Burtonwood and the way they behave towards the girls who are foolish enough to get involved with them. Like I said earlier, I wouldn’t have thought you were the type. It didn’t go unnoticed, though, that you were with Myra, and it’s well known amongst the girls what she’s like.’

  ‘You know I’d agreed to go to the Grafton with her and I didn’t feel I could let her down. I did let her know that I wasn’t happy about…certain things…’

  Diane gave a small unhappy sigh. Perhaps she wasn’t as cut out to be the kind of woman who threw herself into flirtation and loving men and then leaving them as she had thought. Saturday night had left her feeling grubby and shamed, and it hurt that others obviously thought the same thing and were now blaming her for bringing shame on them all.

  ‘The best thing to do is to put the whole thing behind you,’ Susan told her. ‘You won’t be the first girl in uniform to make a bit of a fool of herself and you certainly won’t be the last. One word of warning, though. The girls here tend to think of themselves above the kind of vulgar hanging around outside dance halls and fish-and-chip queues, hoping to get picked up by GIs, that some of the local girls go in for. In fact, they tend to give the Americans a bit of a wide berth and only go out with our own chaps. That way we don’t get branded as cheap. You’d be wise to follow suit.’

  ‘Enemy sighted at…’

  As the staccato voice, tense with deliberately controlled urgency, called out the grid references coming in from a naval corvette on convoy duty in code, the Wrens moved swiftly to check the convoy’s position whilst Diane and the other Waafs double-checked the position of the nearest aircraft.

  It had already been an eventful day in a personal sense, Diane acknowledged, what with her interview with Group Captain Barker this morning, and now it looked as though the rest of her shift was going to be even more eventful, albeit in a far more important way.

  ‘Surely they’re too far north for Canada,’ Diane whispered worriedly to Susan, who was standing motionless whilst she watched the U-boat sightings being chalked up on the blackboard.

  The atmosphere in the Dungeon had suddenly become very tense; even the air they were breathing tasted different somehow, Diane recognised, whilst the temperature had risen with the tension. There seemed to be a
collective holding of breath whilst everyone waited for the next staccato burst of radio communication.

  ‘They aren’t going to Canada,’ Susan told her without moving her gaze from the blackboard. ‘They’re heading for Iceland and then from there, they’re going on to Murmansk.’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, it’s bad enough asking a man to risk his life to bring essential supplies into this country, never mind having him take even more of a risk with it to get tanks to them Ruskies,’ a small dark-haired young woman burst out angrily.

  Diane’s heart lurched against her ribs whilst her stomach churned sickly on behalf of the convoy and the families they had left behind.

  ‘It’s all been hush-hush. Poor sods, if they get torpedoed in those seas they won’t stand a chance; they’ll freeze to death in minutes. Normally my hubby’s all in favour of everything Winnie wants to do, but you should have heard him when he learned about this. Talk about the air turning blue! We aren’t supposed to know,’ one of the Wrens told Diane, ‘but how can we not know when we can see the ships leaving Loch Ewe, where they assembled, and then heading out to Iceland? The convoy will sail from there to Murmansk. My hubby said he’d been talking to a sailor who told them about the kit they’d all been fitted out with: lambswool blankets, and lambswool waistcoats and even extra Calor oil heaters for the cabins, and of course they’ve been told to communicate with one another using flags instead of radio so that their messages can’t be picked up by the Luftwaffe or the U-boats. I’m just thankful that my John isn’t sailing with them, that’s all.’

  The teleprinters had fallen silent. A naval officer, pale and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and fresh air, was studying the new information, whilst Wrens moved swiftly to translate it onto maps and the chart, the whole room exhaling a sigh of relief when it became clear that the U-boat threat had been a false alarm and that, for the moment, the convoy was still safe.

  ‘We lost a plane up there a couple of months back,’ one of the girls chipped in starkly. ‘One survivor, but he’d got frostbite so badly they had to amputate his hands and feet. He died in the end. He was engaged to a girl I know. She didn’t recognise him when she went to see him in hospital. His face had turned black.’

  ‘That’s enough of that.’ Susan stopped the conversation quietly, and Diane remembered that Susan’s husband was on escort duty with the Arctic convoys.

  ‘Yes, Pat?’ Susan greeted the uniformed Wren hurrying towards her.

  ‘Can you lend us one of your girls, only we’re a couple short,’ she begged.

  ‘It depends how long you want her for.’

  ‘Only for the rest of the shift. We need someone to go up the ladder and write down information as it’s called out.’

  ‘You go, Diane,’ Susan instructed. ‘But I’ll need her back tomorrow,’ she warned.

  ‘Don’t worry if you haven’t done this before,’ the Wren reassured Diane as she hurried her to the huge information blackboards filling one wall. ‘All you have to do is write down what’s called out to you. You’ll need a quick hand and a decent head for heights, that’s all. You can take that ladder over there.’ She gave a brisk nod in the direction of the ladder, over twenty foot, closest to the door.

  Obediently Diane did as she had been instructed, climbing up the ladder very cautiously, and listening out for the commands shouted up to her as she and the other girls worked to keep the blackboard information up to date. It wasn’t so very different from what she had been doing with her own team, except that they didn’t have to climb such high ladders, and of course she was dealing with the convoy itself rather than its air cover.

  You certainly needed a good head for heights, Diane admitted, responding ruefully to the girl on the next ladder as she mouthed across, ‘It seems strange at first, but you soon get used to it. Just don’t look down too much.’

  Although with a constant stream of personnel coming in and out of the ops room, and the work she had to do, she should have been far too busy to be aware of one unwontedly familiar voice amongst so many, somehow Diane recognised the major’s voice the moment he stepped into the room. The shock of hearing it had her forgetting not to look down, and determinedly she put the fit of dizziness that swamped her down to vertigo than it having anything to do with the major himself. He was standing with his British counterpart, discussing the deployment of the reconnaissance craft, and surely far too involved in that to be aware of her, Diane acknowledged in relief. And yet whether because she was looking at him and he sensed it, or for some other reason, he suddenly looked up at her, catching her off guard so that their gazes locked. The contempt in his made Diane’s face burn. She was glad of a new instruction shouted to her for the opportunity it gave to turn away. And yet even with her back to him she was still somehow conscious of his every movement. Because of the humiliation she felt at knowing he had witnessed her drunken behaviour on Saturday night, that was all, Diane reassured herself. Behaviour that had been caused by his men.

  Her ladder was positioned so close to one of the doors that the door itself had been pinned back to prevent anyone coming in banging it into the ladder. With so much going on no one had noticed that someone had inadvertently let the door close. The first Diane knew of the danger she was in was when she felt the door thud into her ladder, causing it to start to slip sideways.

  ‘Christ! Lookout!’ she heard someone yell, and then everything was happening so quickly that it all became a blur. Instinctively she knew she had to escape from the falling ladder.

  ‘Jump,’ a harshly familiar voice demanded. ‘Jump.’

  Automatically she obeyed, gasping with shock as a pair of strong arms caught hold of her and the air whooshed out of her lungs, whilst the stiffness of gold braid on a uniform jacket scratched at her face.

  The major.

  She could feel the fierce, fast thud of his heartbeat against her own. She could feel too the hard grip of his hands on her body as he held her and then slowly lowered her until her feet could touch the floor. She looked up at him and then forgot what it was she had been about to say – forgot everything, in fact, as her heartbeat picked up and matched his frantic race with a swift fierce pulse. The second turned into a full minute and still neither of them moved. Was this what happened when your body missed its physical contact with a man? Was this why it was so forbidden for young women to know the intimacies of sex before they were married; because of the need it might awaken within them? How could she even think about need and this man together?

  A violent shudder went through her just at the same moment as the major released her, saying harshly, ‘Next time I suggest you try taking more water with it before you go climbing ladders.’

  His comment made her gasp in outrage but it was too late for her to defend herself: he was already walking away whilst the other girls were crowding anxiously around her, demanding to know if she was all right, and the white-faced Wren who had been the cause of the accident apologised over and over again.

  TEN

  ‘I thought you and me was going to be best friends, Ruthie, but it seems to me that you’ve got more time for that lot you’re going to the Grafton with,’ Maureen grumbled that morning at the factory.

  ‘Me going out with them doesn’t stop us being friends,’ Ruthie tried to reassure her.

  ‘But you’ll be going to the Grafton again wi’ ’em tonight I’ll bet,’ Maureen challenged her.

  Guiltily Ruthie nodded. She hadn’t stopped thinking about last Saturday all week and she had been thrilled to bits when Jess had asked her if she fancied going to the Grafton again this week. Mrs Brown had been almost as excited for her as she was herself, proclaiming archly that she wouldn’t be at all surprised if a certain GI wasn’t going to make a beeline for Ruthie the minute he saw her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Ruthie had felt bound to protest. ‘He may not even be there.’ But of course she was hoping desperately that he would be.

  She did feel bad about Maureen, though. She
had told Ruthie earlier in the week that there was no chance of her ever going out dancing because she was needed at home to help look after ‘the little ’uns’.

  ‘Well, seein’ as you keep on sayin’ that you and me are friends, will you do us a favour then?’ Maureen asked.

  All too relieved at the thought of being able to do something to alleviate her guilt, Ruthie agreed.

  ‘I’m trying to get some bits and pieces together for the little ’uns – a surprise, like, for Christmas – and I was wondering if you would keep hold of it for me, tek it home wi’ you, like, until I ask you for it.’

  ‘For Christmas?’ Ruthie asked surprised. ‘But that’s months away yet.’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’ Maureen sounded impatient. ‘But like I said, it’s to be a surprise and I don’t want the little ’uns cottoning on. It’s not much, just a few tins I’ve managed to save up to get on the black market and some bits and pieces.’

  ‘The black market! Oh…’

  ‘There! I knew it! You say you’re my friend but when I ask you for a bit of help you go all hoity-toity on me. It’s all right for the likes of you wot can manage on the ration, but my mam’s got her own kids and we’ve got our Fanny and our Mabel’s kids living wi’ us as well. Poor little mites are starving, crying half the night for their mams, their little bellies half empty on account of this bloody war. All I want to do is give them a bit of a treat for Christmas, but if you don’t want to help me…’

  ‘No. I mean yes, of course I’ll help you,’ Ruthie assured her sympathetically.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then. I’ll tell you wot: if you give me your locker key then I can put the stuff in your locker without anyone else seeing. Then you can tek it home wi’ you.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Well what? What skin is it off your nose?’ Maureen demanded almost aggressively.