The Grafton Girls (24 page)

‘Come on, Nick,’ Myra demanded, her earlier good mood vanishing. ‘We’ll miss the train,’ she warned him. She had no wish to have her trip to London brought to an end before it had started because Nick had got himself involved in a fight.

Nick, though, was ignoring her. ‘Get out of my way,’ he told Glen savagely, swinging a hard punch at him.

Glen staggered back, blood pouring from his nose and his lip cut. Ruthie gave a small cry of distress and left Walter to run to him.

‘Come
on,
Nick,’ Myra demanded impatiently.

A group of boys had appeared at the top of the street, kicking a football, and one of them called out, ‘Hey look, a fight.’

Frantically Ruthie tried to stem the blood pouring from Glen’s nose with her handkerchief. Walter was still crouching on the floor behind her,
and at first when she heard the sickening crunch she didn’t realise what it was. It was only when Walter gave a thin scream that she turned round and saw to her horrified disbelief that the other GI was kicking him whilst he kneeled there on the ground, unable to defend himself. The GI aimed another kick at him, sending Walter sprawling, his head banging against the kerb as he fell, whilst the GI followed him, still trying to kick him.

‘For pity’s sake, make him stop it,’ she screamed frantically to Myra, as Glen pushed past her, throwing himself between the other man and Walter’s now inert body, and received a heavy kick in the groin himself for doing so.

From further up the street Ruthie heard the sound of running feet and the sharp shrill noise of a whistle. White-faced, she saw with relief that several policemen were running towards them.

‘What’s going on here?’ a sergeant, Ruthie recognised, demanded as he reached them.

‘Oh, Officer, please…this man needs help,’ Ruthie wept, watching anxiously as two of the policemen hurried to Walter’s side.

Glen was sitting on the pavement beside him, having just been sick. Worriedly, Ruthie went to his side, trying to offer him what comfort she could.

The sergeant frowned and looked over to where Nick and Myra were standing together on the pavement.

‘Leave the cops to me,’ Nick mouthed warningly to Myra.

‘I’m sorry about this, sir,’ Nick announced
respectfully. ‘I did try to stop them. But I guess when two guys are determined to have a fight over a woman, especially when one of them has been insulting the other’s girl—’

‘Sarge, I reckon we’re going to need an ambulance,’ one of the policemen interrupted. ‘One of these guys is in a pretty bad way.’

‘So you and this young lady aren’t with the others then?’ the sergeant asked Nick.

‘No, we were just walking down the street minding our own business and talking about our trip to London, weren’t we, hon?’ he asked Myra. He had tucked her arm through his own and now when he smiled at her he gave it a hard squeeze.

‘Oh, yes…’

‘So what happened exactly? Were they fighting when you saw them?’

‘Not fighting, but it looked like they were exchanging some pretty strong words. The younger guy had his hand on the other guy’s girl’s arm and, well, I guess that was what sparked him off. Of course I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t get them to listen. Seems to me there was some kind of vendetta going on between the two of them from the way the older guy was going at it.’

He broke off to glance at his watch, then said to Myra, ‘Hey, honey, just look at the time. We’re gonna miss that train of ours if we don’t run. You know what, Sergeant? I reckon this is a job for the army’s MPs, if you don’t mind me saying so. They know how to deal with this kind of thing.’

‘Thank you, sir. Now if you’ll both just give me
your names and where you can be found, I can send you on your way.’

Ruthie hadn’t even realised that Myra and her partner had gone until the sergeant crouched down beside her where she was worriedly dabbing at the blood still pouring from Glen’s nose. His eye was half closed and his split lip was swelling up, whilst poor Walter looked even worse.

‘Harry’s run down to the ARP post to tell them to send a runner for an ambulance,’ one of two policemen standing with them told the sergeant.

‘Well, you’d better go after him and tell them to alert the American MPs as well,’ the sergeant told him grimly before squatting down beside Glen and saying curtly, ‘Now I appreciate that this young lady is your girl, but that’s no reason to go half killing some lad.’

Ruthie stared at him, her eyes rounding. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong,’ she protested. ‘It wasn’t my Glen who—’

‘Sarge,’ the policeman who was bending over Walter broke in urgently. ‘Come and take a look. I reckon this lad here’s condition is more serious than we thought.’

Normally she looked forward to her day off, Diane admitted, especially on a sunny Saturday like this, but on this occasion she would have given anything to be at work with the busyness and the other girls’ conversation to act as a deterrent against her thoughts. Even having Myra around would have been preferable to being on her own right now.

She hadn’t been able to sleep, lying awake instead, thinking about poor Eddie Baker Johnson and his family. Tell the truth, she admonished herself mentally, you weren’t just thinking about Eddie, were you? She looked down the row of vegetables she had offered to weed as a small repayment to Mrs Lawson’s widower neighbour for his kindness in keeping them supplied with freshly grown food, leaning on the hoe he had loaned her, her expression haunted by the events of the previous day.

It was almost lunchtime and the sun was hot. She lifted her hand to brush a stray lock of hair out of her eyes and to her chagrin felt them fill
abruptly with tears. Because a young man she had only met once had died? Because the major had kissed her? Or because she had kissed him back and that knowledge both angered and shamed her?

So what if, for a few seconds, she had let her guard slip, she told herself crossly as she dug the hoe into the weeds, slicing off their heads with a sense of great satisfaction, as she contemplated destroying her memories of her own unacceptable behaviour with the same thoroughness. But while the hoe might cut the heads off the weeds, their roots were still intact, unseen beneath the surface, waiting to spring into fresh life. What was she trying to tell herself? That a
kiss
had roots? That just trying to cut off her memory of it wouldn’t stop her from…This was ridiculous. There were no ‘roots’ to what had happened. No history of past longing or future desire. No
life
outside that single event. It had been a simple error of judgement; a reflex reaction to the dreadful sadness of Eddie’s death. It wasn’t, after all, as though she had never witnessed similar behaviour in others. War did strange things to people. It brought them together in situations they would never have experienced or shared in peacetime; it created an immediacy and an intimacy that led to…to the major kissing her and her kissing him back?

Forget about it, she told herself angrily.

If only it were that easy. Her inability to ‘forget about it’ was what had brought her out here so early in the morning, after a broken night’s sleep in the first place, desperate to force herself to do
something, anything, that would banish yesterday from her mind for ever.

It was gone eleven now and her muscles were beginning to ache. She had reached the end of the row, and Mrs Lawson had promised her the luxury of adding Myra’s allocation of hot water to her own, which meant that she could wash her hair
and
have a bath, and she was certainly ready for both, she thought, as she returned the hoe to the small wooden shed at the end of the allotment and started to make her way back to the house.

Mrs Lawson was very proud of the fact that her house had its own bathroom; one of their landlady’s biggest fears was that the Germans would bomb Chestnut Close and destroy her precious bathroom.

Mrs Lawson was just leaving when Diane walked up the front path, explaining that she was going to spend the rest of the day with a cousin.

‘Might as well enjoy the sunshine whilst we’ve got it,’ she told Diane, adding, ‘And our Sarah’s got some soft fruit she wants me to help her to pick for jam making.’

With the house to herself, Diane stripped off her allotment-grubby working trousers and old blouse, putting them on one side to take downstairs to the back scullery where the washing was done either in the stone sink or the old-fashioned copper, if it needed a really hot wash or was too big for the sink.

Pulling on her dressing gown, she gathered up her precious supply of toiletries. Her mother had
sent her some Pears soap for her hair, which Diane suspected was black market; she certainly felt guilty when she used it, but the alternative was to use boiled-down scraps of old soap bars, which, as everyone who used them knew, left the hair lank and slightly sticky, no matter how much one rinsed in cold water. With no lemons to bring a shine to her blonde hair she had taken to using a small amount of cider apple vinegar instead. One of the girls at her last posting had also been a natural blonde and had recommended it, and Diane had managed to buy several bottles from a country pub landlord.

She had her bath first, scrupulously making sure she didn’t use more than the allowed depth of water. Had Myra been here to witness this she would have laughed at her, Diane knew, having seen the clouds of steam billowing from the bathroom on those occasions when Myra had made use of Mrs L’s absence to sneak an extra bath.

A few drops of the carefully hoarded Essence of Roses scent that had been one of her pre-war twenty-first birthday presents made the water smell heavenly, and if she closed her eyes she could almost imagine she was twenty-one again, that there was no war, and that she was at home in her parents’ comfortable semi, the smell of her father’s favourite steak-and-kidney pie supper floating upstairs, along with the gentle hum of her parents’ voices. But there was a war, and somewhere across the Atlantic, Eddie’s parents would be going about their own lives, not knowing as
yet that their son was dead. Diane tried to imagine how she would feel in Eddie’s mother’s shoes but it was almost impossible.

She gave a small shiver. Her meagre allowance of water was going cold already, or was it yesterday’s memories that were chilling her skin and acting like a leaden weight on her spirits?

Climbing out of the bath, she wrapped herself in a towel and started to wash her hair, carefully rationing the hot water for two thorough washes, and then using cold for the rinses. Only when she was sure that she had removed all the soap did she fill the basin again with cold water and add some of the cider vinegar, wrinkling her nose against the pungent smell.

At least it was effective, she told herself five minutes later as she made her way to the bedroom, her squeaky-clean hair wrapped in the towel she had tied turban-style around her head, a faint dusting of talcum powder giving a soft pearlised sheen to her skin. Despite her fair hair, her skin tanned easily and the summer had given her legs a good colour, which was just as well because she certainly didn’t have the money for black-market stockings, even if she had been prepared to overcome her scruples in order to buy them.

Of course, there were other ways of obtaining them now that the ‘Yanks’ were here, and all the girls had heard tales of GIs waving one stocking in front of a girl and then telling her that she could have the other to go with it in return for a kiss or two. And then, of course, there were her uniform
stockings, dreadful thick lisle affairs that itched like mad in the summer heat.

Half an hour later, dressed in a pre-war sundress of white cotton overprinted with yellow buttercups, Diane went to sit in the garden to let her hair dry off in the sunshine, determined to lift her spirits.

Myra let out her breath in a private sigh of relief as the guard started to slam the train doors, in preparation for it leaving. They were on their way at last. Now, nothing could stop them from reaching London. She glanced at Nick, who had thrown himself into the window seat next to her. She had been furious with Nick for fighting with Walter, fearful when the police had arrived that it would mean an end to their trip, but he was a quick thinker, she admitted, and he had certainly managed to convince the police that the incident was nothing to do with them. She hadn’t been too pleased, mind, when she had discovered that she might not be allowed to travel on the train with him because it was reserved for the American forces, but again Nick had dealt quickly with the problem. He’d been angry at having to part with a five-pound note, from the thick bundle he had produced from his pocket, in order to get her on the train. And once they were on it he had complained loudly and angrily that he had already traded a favour to have a blind eye turned to her presence. His good humour had returned, though, when he had laughed at the sight of her wearing the soldier’s coat she had been told to put on to
get on board the train, and she had been quick to hand it back. Myra didn’t like being laughed at.

Now, through the carriage window she could see a British soldier running down the opposite platform where the train was ready to leave.

Reaching for the leather strap to let down their own window, Nick called out tauntingly, ‘Learned to run like that at Dunkirk, did you, buddy?’

The other GIs in the compartment with them got to their feet, jeering and making catcalls as the train pulled out with the British soldier, who had now turned to glare at them, red-faced and obviously furious. He looked so enraged that for a minute Myra thought he was actually going to try to board their train. He was, she noticed, wearing the insignia of the Desert Rats, Jim’s unit.

‘Quit riling the natives, why don’t you, guys?’ a lone GI in the opposite corner drawled wearily as their own train set off, distracting the men and causing them to switch from catcalling to whistling and cheering.

They were off. Myra looked down at the ring on her left hand, and smiled to herself.

‘Why don’t you get yourself off home, love?’ the police sergeant suggested to Ruthie. The MPs, who had arrived in their Jeep, screeching to a halt in front of them, the two men in the back jumping out before the vehicle had even stopped and coming to them at a run, had quite intimidated Ruthie. But they had gone now, taking both Walter and Glen with them.

‘I still don’t see why they had to take Walter all the way back to Burtonwood instead of taking him straight to Mill Road Hospital, when it would have been so much closer,’ Ruthie fretted worriedly.

‘Well, that’s regulations and the army for you, lass,’ the policeman told her calmly.

The MPs had been so brusque and rough in their handling of both Walter and Glen that Ruthie had been shocked, but Glen had managed to reassure her that there was no cause for alarm.

‘But they were acting as though
you
were the one who attacked Walter, and they wouldn’t listen when you tried to tell them about that other GI,’ Ruthie had whispered worriedly to him, clinging to his hand over the side of the Jeep whilst the MPs spoke with the police.

‘We can sort all that out when we get back to camp. The most important thing now is getting Walter back there so that he can get some treatment,’ Glen had reassured her.

‘You’ll let me know how he is, won’t you?’ she had begged him.

‘You’ll be hearing from me just as soon as there’s any news,’ he had promised her, giving her a tender loving look that made her ache to throw herself into his arms and refuse to let him go.

‘I wish the police hadn’t let that other man go,’ she had fretted.

‘I guess they didn’t have any choice. Mancini isn’t the kind of guy who lets others tell him what to do. But don’t worry about it: the MPs will catch up with him when he gets back to camp.’

‘But he was trying to say that it was your fault and that you attacked Walter,’ Ruthie insisted.

Glen had laughed then. ‘Not even Mancini can get away with that. Who’s going to believe him when Walter tells everyone what really happened?’ he had told her.

‘But why would anyone do such a thing?’

‘That’s the kind of guy Mancini is,’ he had answered with a small shrug. ‘He’s got a grudge against Walter because Walter caught him out running a rigged card game – that’s cheating to you, hon,’ he had explained with a tender smile. ‘And my guess is that it wasn’t the first time either. Mancini has a crowd of guys around him that like to play for high stakes and he seems to win more often than he loses.’

‘But he was the one who was in the wrong in the first place, not Walter, for cheating at cards.’

‘Men like Mancini don’t think like that, sweetheart. He’s a real bad lot, and that’s for sure. He saw his chance to pay Walter back and he took it. There’s more than one poor guy wishing now he had never met him, nor got involved in his poker games.’

‘Oh, Glen…’ Ruthie had sobbed, clinging to his hand at the side of the Jeep right up until the last moment.

She knew that he was right, of course, and once Walter had recovered he would be able to tell the authorities himself about the attack and who had instigated it.

‘Don’t you want to take a…a statement from
me or anything?’ Ruthie asked the sergeant forlornly, after she had watched the Jeep until it had finally disappeared.

He shook his head. ‘That’s not up to us, love. It’s out of our hands now. It’s American military business, you see. There’s this new law just been passed saying that all American citizens here in Britain are subject only to American law.’

‘I can’t believe such a terrible thing has happened,’ Ruthie told him shakily.

‘Aye, well, love, that’s the way it is sometimes wi’soldiers. Get a bit of drink inside them, they do, and then…’ the sergeant gave a tired shrug. ‘You get yourself off home,’ he repeated.

What a horrid way to have cut short what should have been such a happy day. Poor Walter had looked so dreadfully unwell, and no wonder after the way he had been attacked. Now, walking slowly home on her own instead of with Glen, shock set in and Ruthie discovered that she was shaking from head to foot, unable to blot out what had happened. Her life had been a sheltered one; she had never imagined that one man could attack another so viciously, never mind expected to witness such a thing. Had her Glen been the one to launch an attack like that on another unprotected man – which, of course, she knew he would never do, not in a million years – but just
supposing
that he had, she knew she could never have behaved in the way that Myra had done and she certainly couldn’t have walked casually away with him, not saying a word when she had heard him trying to
blame an innocent man. What Glen had said was true, though, she comforted herself. Walter would be able to put the record straight and tell the authorities exactly what had happened.