by Annie Groves
They might be at war but they were young and alive, and here tonight they could let their hair down and have fun, even if it was only for tonight.
‘Psst. Ruthie – over there,’ Jess whispered. ‘Isn’t that your Glen?’
‘Where? Oh…’ As she swung round and saw him, Ruthie ducked her head, not wanting the young GI to think she was trying to attract his attention.
‘Walter’s with him as well.’ Jess had no such inhibitions. She stood up and waved, calling out enthusiastically, ‘Walter, Glen, over here…’
‘Jess, you shouldn’t have done that,’ Ruthie hissed, pulling on her arm to make her sit down.
‘Why not?’
‘What if they didn’t want to come over?’
‘Then they won’t do, will they?’ Jess told her practically. ‘But they do, because look, here they are.’
It had been a long busy shift, and it was hard for Diane to switch her mind away from the grim battle going on in the Arctic that was more of a massacre than a true battle, with the helpless merchant ships being picked off with ease by the Germans at a rate that had brought a tense silence to the Dungeon and an edge of bleak despair to the voices of those calling out the names and positions of the damaged ships.
She might be walking up the Edge Hill Road in the evening sunshine that was an advantage of double summer time, her body warmed by the sun, but her mind was still numbed by the thought of the icy chill of the Arctic seas in which a man could only survive for a maximum of fifteen minutes without freezing to death. So many ships lost and so many men, and all for what? some of the girls were asking bitterly. So that the Russians could have their tanks? What about the needs of those seamen and their families? What about the needs of the British people, living with constant dread and constant hunger, not knowing what their future would be or if they even had one?
Diane had overheard a couple of the RAF men talking about the recent bombing raids on Germany and her heart had lodged in her mouth when she had heard the name of Kit’s squadron.
‘Good show, by all accounts, although they lost a couple of planes and their crews had to bale out over France,’ one of the men had told the other.
Diane had to stop herself from rushing over to beg for more details. Kit wasn’t part of her life any more. Easy words to say, but much harder to obey. How was she ever going to mend her broken heart if she reacted like this every time anything remotely connected with him was mentioned? Perhaps she should have gone to Blackpool with Myra. Perhaps only by plunging into the kind of life Myra led could she drown out the past. Maybe tonight if she had gone to the Grafton she might have been the one ordering herself a strong drink. She had seen that happen to other young women although it was seldom talked about. Young men might drink to excess to drown out the reality of war, but it was not acceptable for young women to do the same. Nevertheless they did. Diane shuddered inwardly. What was happening to her? She should be getting over Kit by now, but instead she seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into her own misery.
For once she would have welcomed even Mrs Lawson’s voluble company and her never-ending questions. The small house was pin neat but empty, her cold supper left for her in the pantry with a meat safe cover protecting it.
Spam salad. Diane looked at it without interest. The Spam, pink and marbled with fat, looked flabby and unappetising, even if the salad was fresh from the allotments. The smell of the tomatoes reminded her of her father’s greenhouse. Suddenly a wave of homesickness washed over her. Tears burned the backs of her eyes. She was just about to wipe them away when she heard someone knocking on the front door.
She looked at her watch. It was nine thirty, and Mrs Lawson wasn’t due back from her WVS meeting until well gone ten. It was too early, surely, for Myra to be returning unless she had had a fallout with her GI, but anyway, they both had their own keys. Uncertainly, Diane went into the hall, and looked warily through the stained-glass panel in the front door.
A man in army uniform was standing outside. Bare-headed and dark-haired, he had his back to the door and was moving impatiently from one foot to the other.
A little hesitantly, Diane opened the door and asked cautiously, ‘Yes?’
‘Is this where Myra Stone is billeted?’ the soldier asked tiredly. ‘Only I’m her husband, Jim.’
PART TWO
Summer 1942
ELEVEN
‘Well…’ Uncertainly, Diane looked back over her shoulder into the hallway.
‘Look, this is the right address, isn’t it?’
‘Er, yes,’ Diane was forced to admit. ‘But I’m afraid that Myra isn’t here at the moment.’
‘On duty, is she? Just my luck.’ He gave Diane a tired smile. ‘Only got a forty-eight-hour pass at the last minute. Didn’t even know I was coming back to Blighty until we got on the transport plane.’
Diane could see the Eighth Army insignia on his battledress and her heart ached for him.
‘You’d better come in,’ she told him, holding open the door. ‘You see, the fact is that Myra’s gone out tonight…with…with some friends.’
Diane was glad that she had her back to him when she told him this edited version of the truth.
‘What time will she be back?’
‘I’m not sure. You see, the thing is, I think they may have gone over to Blackpool.’
‘Bloody hell. Oh, sorry. It’s just—’
‘It’s all right. I understand,’ Diane assured him as she led the way into the kitchen. ‘I’m Diane, by the way,’ she added, turning and holding out her hand to shake his. ‘Myra’s co-billetee.’ She was praying he wouldn’t ask her exactly where Myra had gone in Blackpool and who with, and she was praying too that he wouldn’t take it into his head to follow her there.
‘So she’s gone out enjoying herself, has she? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s Myra all over. Never has liked missing out on a good time. I suppose it’s understandable in the circumstances. Told you much about her mam and dad, has she?’
Diane shook her head. ‘Like I said, I don’t know when she’s going to be back,’ she told him, adding, ‘She did say something earlier in the week about them maybe staying over and making a bit of a holiday of it, if they could find somewhere.’ What on earth was she doing, lying like this for Myra? It wasn’t her job to safeguard Myra’s marriage, but then she wasn’t doing it for Myra, was she? She was doing it for the exhausted battle-weary-looking man standing in Mrs Lawson’s kitchen, who was so plainly desperate to see his wife. She couldn’t let him know the truth.
‘I’ve got meself a bed for the night with a mate who flew back with me. Comes from Liverpool, he does. He even reckoned a sister of his would let me and Myra have her spare room for the weekend.’
He pulled out a packet of Woodbines and lit one, taking a fierce drag on it. ‘Sorry…Do you…?’ he offered.
Diane declined. ‘Look, why don’t you sit down for a few minutes and let me make you a cup of tea?’ she offered.
The gratitude she could see in his eyes touched her deeply. Myra ought to have been here to do this for him – this and so much more. Diane could actually see the grains of sand sticking to his battle-dress, along with the lines burned into his skin by the heat of the desert sun.
‘There’s a bit of salad here as well, if you’re hungry,’ she offered him.
‘I’m not taking your supper,’ he told her.
‘No, I ate at the canteen before I came in,’ she fibbed, going to get the salad and putting it on the table for him.
From the way he wolfed it down, it looked as though he hadn’t stopped to eat before catching his transport home, Diane thought, as she went to make a pot of tea.
‘I’m really sorry Myra isn’t here. You must be so disappointed.’
‘Just a bit,’ he agreed. He looked more relaxed now he had eaten, and Diane could see that behind the grimness of the soldier there was a solid kindness about him. ‘It’s my own fault, though. I should have got in touch
with her first.’ He removed a hip flask from his pocket and unscrewed it, offering it to Diane. ‘Want some?’
When she said no thanks, he poured a measure of brandy into his own tea.
‘Mind you, if I had told Myra I was getting leave she’d have probably decided to take herself off so that she couldn’t see me anyway. Told you much about me, has she?’
‘She said that she was married,’ Diane assured him tactfully, ‘but we tend not to talk about personal things.’
‘No? I’ll bet she told you that she was fed up with me, though, didn’t she? She’s allus telling me that. Keeps on saying she wishes she’d never married me, although she was glad enough to at the time. Of course, her dad was alive then and she reckons the only reason she wed me was to get away from him. Treated her ma real bad, her dad did. Allus knocking her about – and Myra too if he got the chance, I reckon, although she won’t admit it.’
Jim’s revelations shocked Diane. Her own parents were so happily married, and her father so devoted to her mother that Diane had begun to think of their relationship as a handicap to her own future happiness, because she could never hope to match it. It certainly gave more of an insight into Myra being the way she was.
Not that Myra’s past excused her current behaviour. Diane felt desperately sorry for her poor husband who, despite his attempt to be cheerful, had looked so cast down when he had learned that she wasn’t here. Poor man. Diane hoped that he would never discover the truth about the way Myra was carrying on in his absence.
‘Course, Myra always did have big ideas about what she wanted. Allus going to the flicks and banging on about film stars and wanting to live in America, she was. Even tried to persuade me to go and live over there. I’d never heard of anything so daft. What would I want to be going to America for? But when the war broke out it brought her to her senses…a bit.’
Had it, Diane wondered uneasily, or had Myra simply stopped telling her husband what she wanted and decided to look for another man to supply it instead; a man who understood her longing to live in America, because he was American?
They both turned towards the kitchen door as they heard the sound of a key in the front door lock, but it was Mrs Lawson returning, not Myra.
‘And what’s this, if you please?’ she demanded sharply as Jim got clumsily to his feet when she came into the kitchen. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she turned to Diane. ‘No male visitors, that’s what I said and that’s what I mean. I won’t have no carrying-on here in my own kitchen, giving the Close a bad name, never mind using the rations to feed him with,’ she told them, looking pointedly at the table with the now empty supper plate and the tea cups.
‘Mrs Lawson, this is Myra’s husband,’ Diane explained calmly. ‘He’s got a forty-eight-hour leave and he called round hoping to see Myra.’
‘Oh, well. Husband, is it?’ Mrs Lawson studied him frowningly.
‘I’m sorry if I was breaking the rules,’ he apologised immediately.
‘It’s my fault, Mrs Lawson,’ Diane broke in. ‘I offered him the supper you’d left for me because I’d already eaten at Derby House, which reminds me…Cook said she had some spare tins of fruit, so I’ve brought back a couple for you.’ Talk about being ingratiating, Diane recognised, but she felt obliged to placate her landlady, who wasn’t as bad as some she had heard about, even if Cook had not so much offered the tins as had her arm twisted by one of the girls who had savvily remarked that she suspected that food intended for those working at Derby House was finding its way into the pantries of those who were in charge of it. As a result, Cook had let it be known that there were some damaged tins in the storeroom that those who wanted them could have if they wished. ‘Damaged tins’ was the standard codename for those tinned food stuffs that were on ration but somehow miraculously available.
‘Tins of fruit?’ Mrs Lawson allowed herself to be distracted.
‘Only a couple, I’m afraid,’ Diane warned her. ‘I got the fruit salad because I remembered you saying you liked it for your Christmas trifle.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time,’ Myra’s husband continued to apologise. ‘If you’ll just tell Myra that I’ll call back in the morning…’
‘Do you want to leave the address of the friend you’re going to be staying with?’ Diane asked him.
Jim rubbed the side of his face wearily. ‘Yes. Thanks for reminding me about that. I must say that I’m looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed. You’d be surprised where that ruddy sand can get and how cold it can be in the desert at night.’
Mrs Lawson made a small clucking noise. ‘Never let it be said that I turned one of our fighting boys away. Jack Williams down at number forty-five has a spare room. I dare say he’ll be willing to give you a bed for the night. Lives on his own now, he does, since he lost his wife, and his daughter took her kiddies off to the country. I’ll walk down with you and introduce you to him.’
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ Jim was saying but Mrs Lawson shook her head. Along with most of the country, she wanted to do whatever she could to help the brave men who were fighting for them all.
Most of the country, Diane reflected. Myra, for instance, didn’t seem too troubled by the thought of how her behaviour might affect her husband, and it was impossible to be in one of the women’s services for very long without hearing the whispers about women who sent Dear John letters to their men because they had found someone else.
‘I’ve been thinking about you all week.’
Ruthie’s face flooded with pink as Glen bent his head to whisper the words in her ear. The tips of his ears had gone bright red and the hand that was holding her own so tightly as they danced together felt slightly damp. He was almost as nervous as she was, Ruthie recognised with a small surge of compassion and joy.
‘I wanted the ground to swallow me up when Jess called you over like that,’ she told him shyly.
‘And I want to sing Hallelujah,’ he told her. ‘But I should have asked. Have you…is there…is there someone else?’
‘No, no, there isn’t.’
‘You know what? Those are just about the best words I have ever heard in the whole of my life,’ Glen responded, as he squeezed her tightly.
Things were moving so fast it was no wonder she was feeling giddy, breathless, and most lightheaded with joy and disbelief, Ruthie admitted. From the moment he had come over to their table, Glen had stuck to her side like glue. Not that she was complaining. She looked across to where Jess was dancing with Walter. Jess was laughing at something Walter had said to her.
‘You haven’t come with those other men you were here with last time,’ Ruthie commented.
‘No, we’re all in the same platoon but some of the guys…well, I guess we just see things differently. I’m just a farm boy from Iowa.’
‘Iowa? Where’s that?’ Ruthie asked him dreamily. She could stay here like this in his arms, where she felt so safe and happy, for ever, she decided.
‘It’s in the Midwest. Farming country. Mostly crops. The granary of America, they call it,’ he told her proudly. ‘Not that you’d think so now after the Depression in the thirties, and the winds that blew. You don’t know how glad I am that you’re here tonight, Ruthie. I’ve been racking my brains wondering how I could see you again.’
His fingers entwined with hers and a small rush of fierce happiness suffused her.
‘You see…well, I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’re a very special girl and I’m head over heels in love with you.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t say that,’ Ruthie protested, secretly thrilled.
‘Why not when it’s the truth? And my mom and dad brought us kids up to always speak the truth. I’ve already written to them to tell them about you.’
‘Oh, you haven’t!’
‘Yes I have. I’ve told them I’ve met the girl I want to take home to them as my wife.’
‘But they’ll think I’m drea
dful, stealing you from some American girl.’
‘There is no American girl for you to steal me from. Not that they haven’t tried to match me up with someone, but I guess I kinda knew all along that you were somewhere waiting for me. I’ve got some photographs of my folks in my pocketbook. I’ll show you them later.’
‘They’ll think that I’m a…a money-grubber,’ Ruthie told him, looking uncertainly at him when Glen threw back his head and laughed.
‘My parents are poor farming folks, Ruthie. The Depression hit the Midwest hard, and that’s why my mom wanted me and my kid sister to get good grades in school and go on to college. My mom teaches Sunday school back home and plays the piano in church, and my kid sis is in college right now training to be a teacher. Me – I guess I’m more like my dad, and when this war is over I’ll be going back to the farm, and when I do, what I want more than anything else is to take you with me.’
‘You mustn’t say things like that,’ Ruthie repeated breathlessly.
‘Why not?’
‘We’ve only just met. You may think that…that you…you like me now…’
‘Nope, I do not think I like you at all,’ Glen stopped her, mimicking her accent. ‘I know that I love you.’
‘How are you feeling now, Walter?’ Jess asked sympathetically as he steered her hesitantly around the dance floor. ‘Have you written to your girl yet, like I told you?’ she demanded in a semi-scolding motherly tone.
‘Yes. And I’ve told her that I love her and that I want her to wait for me,’ he admitted, bashfully.
Unlike the other GIs who were dancing, Walter didn’t look as though he was exactly enjoying the experience. In fact, he looked so uncomfortable that Jess’s sympathy for him increased. He hadn’t had very much to do with girls prior to coming to England, she guessed. Well, she might as well take him under her wing and make sure that by the time he rejoined his girl ‘back home’, he could at least dance without falling over his feet, and talk to a girl without sounding as though he was about to choke on his own words, Jess decided firmly.