Michelle Rawlins - The Steel Girls

William had already hinted at the idea of joining the RAF if war did break out, leaving his job as a trainee manager for an electrical company, and inevitably being separated from Betty. ‘I’ve always wanted to fly,’ he’d told her the last time she’d brought up the subject. ‘Imagine how amazing it would be to see everything from above, speeding through the clouds.’ She’d immediately regretted bringing it up as William was a dreamer who saw everything through rose-tinted glasses. To Betty, though, it sounded like a pipe dream; a naive schoolboy adventure, which hadn’t been thought through at all, and the dire consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

As the newsreel came to a welcome end, Betty was brought back to the present, snapped out of her daydream. ‘Are you okay?’ William whispered, genuine concern still etched across his kind face. Betty forced a smile and nodded weakly, but the reality was she simply couldn’t face the thought of losing someone else she loved. She and William had been going steady for two years now. He’d been the knight in shining armour she hadn’t even realized she’d needed, so hell-bent on being completely independent and determined never to become reliant on anyone – especially after what she’d been through. After losing her mum, Elsie, at the tender age of ten, she had been left with no choice but to grow up fast. She’d helped her sister, Margaret, two years her senior, take care of their little brother, Edward – who, at eight, had been equally bewildered as to why their mother had been so cruelly taken away from them.

At nineteen, two years after securing her job as a secretary at Dawson & Sons Solicitors, Betty Clark had moved out of the neat three-bedroom terraced family home where she had grown up, and taken a small but perfectly adequate room in a smart boarding house in Walkley, the posh end of town, determined to be independent. Of course, she still went home as often as she could on a Sunday and helped her dad and Edward, now a handsome young man, prepare a traditional roast, always willing to get stuck in peeling a bag of tatties and top and tailing a saucepan of carrots.

Every few months, Betty’s elder sister, Margaret, arrived from Nottingham with her husband, Derek, and their two-year-old dream of a little girl, June. The couple had moved seventy miles to the Midlands city after Derek was offered a lucrative job working on the railways. It meant the family only got together three or four times a year but, if nothing else, it made the afternoon even more special. After a modest feast of roast chicken and vegetables, followed by a jam sponge pudding with lashings of home-made custard, bought from the nearby bakery, the family usually marvelled at June as she toddled around the front room, showing off her much-loved dolly she’d received for her birthday. Betty missed Margaret; they had been so close growing up and Margaret had taken on the mother role she and Edward had desperately needed.

She recalled how, on one of her sister’s visits to the family home, Margaret had looked over at Betty as she played dollies with June. ‘I hope that one day you will meet a lovely man like Derek and have a little family of your own,’ she’d mused, hopeful her younger sister would find someone special to share her life with.

It seemed fate had played a helping hand when Betty met William at a local church hall dance. Betty’s best friend, Florence, had persuaded her she needed a night out to let her hair down after spending evening after evening with her head deep in law textbooks, secretly hoping one day to train as a solicitor. So, after Florence had somehow convinced Betty to don her best pink and cream floral knee-length dress and set her brown hair with sugar and water, they’d headed to St Michael’s church hall to enjoy a night of dancing along to Fred Astaire’s ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’, washed down with a couple of glasses of sweet cloudy lemonade. It was while the girls were taking a break from the dance floor that Florence had spotted a keen and fresh-faced William glancing over at Betty. ‘I think that lad has taken a bit of a shine to you,’ she’d said with a wink, teasing her naturally shy and far more reserved best friend.

‘Oh, give over,’ Betty had sighed, shaking her head. It was just like Florence to read more into a situation and try to play cupid. ‘I’m serious,’ Florence had protested. ‘If you don’t believe me, look for yourself.’ Against her better judgement, more to prove Florence wrong, Betty had glanced across the dance floor to where her friend had indicated. To her surprise, a handsome young man with slicked-back brown hair, dressed in a crisp white polo shirt and a pair of light-grey flannels, had caught her eye. As quick as she’d looked up, Betty had turned on her heels, colour rushing to her already flushing cheeks. ‘He’s probably eyeing up all the single-looking girls,’ Betty had said, feeling unnaturally flustered. There was something about the young man’s dashing appearance that had made her come over all of a flutter.

‘Aha, so the attraction is obviously mutual,’ Florence had grinned, amused by her friend’s unexpected reaction. Before she had chance to tease Betty any further, a quiet, half-hearted, cough, coming from just behind them, had broken the moment.

As Betty had turned around, she’d come face to face with the handsome stranger.

‘Would you like to dance?’ he’d asked, his voice shaking with nerves.

‘Erm, okay. Yes, I suppose one dance would be fine,’ Betty had replied, and it wasn’t just out of sympathy – there was something about this lad which had caught her off guard, causing her usual prim façade to ever so slightly falter.

As William had led Betty to the wooden dance floor, she’d barely heard the lyrics of ‘September in the Rain’ echo through the hall. Instead, she’d allowed this dish of a young man to gently take her by the arm as they’d swayed to the music.

And there began a romance that had not only taken Betty completely by surprise but also left her a little shocked to say the least – it really was the last thing she had been expecting. After their first date, William had taken the liberty of asking Betty if he could call on her. ‘I think I would like that very much.’ She’d smiled, once again taken aback by her own willingness to let her guard down for the first time in years.

What followed were months of romantic rendezvous. Twice a week, William would appear at the boarding house, where Betty would be waiting, any creases pressed out of her skirts and a smudge of light pink rouge rubbed into her porcelain white cheeks. For so long, Betty had been fiercely independent, looking after others and politely refusing help in return, but even she couldn’t resist being shown some long-awaited attention.

The lovesick pair spent Saturday afternoons strolling around the local park, and every couple of weeks they would join dozens of other cinema-goers at the Empire to catch the latest black-and-white movie. William never objected when the film showing was a romance, nor did he take any offence when he saw her eyes light up when James Stewart appeared on the screen.

As the overhead lights once again filled the theatre, William naturally turned to Betty. ‘Did James Stewart live up to your expectations?’ He grinned his boyish smile, hoping the film had lifted her spirits a little.

Giggling, Betty gently nudged William in the ribs, but the truth was she was still feeling rather unnerved. As William escorted her home to her room at 74 Collinson Street, Betty linked her arm with his tighter than normal.

‘What is it?’ he asked, concerned.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said, sighing, yet again forcing her lips to create a forced smile.

William might have been naive but he wasn’t daft; his sensitive side was one of the qualities Betty had fallen head over heels for.