Annie Groves - The Grafton Girls

Out of the corner of her eye Diane caught the resigned looks exchanged by the other four girls making up the team of which she was now to be part. Instantly she pulled herself up to her full height and said firmly, ‘I’m willing to learn, though.’

‘You’re going to need a keen eye and be quick off the mark. Men’s lives will depend on you. We can’t afford any mistakes, not with so much at stake,’ Corporal Bennett warned her. ‘You’d better partner me so that I can show you what we do and keep an eye on you. I’m Susan, by the way.’

‘Diane.’

Diane carefully memorised the names of the other girls on the team as they were introduced to her. Liz, Jean, Pauline and another Susan, this one to be addressed as Sue, she reminded herself as she mentally catalogued them all. Liz was the one with the serious, almost mournful expression and the short dark straight hair. Jean was tall and thin, and rather earnest-looking, with prominent blue eyes, and she was wearing an engagement ring. Pauline was small with brown curls. Sue was also engaged. Diane promised herself that she would remember them all. She sensed that these young women took their work very seriously and that they would be quick to consider her less than able if she couldn’t manage to do something as simple as remember their names.

Three hours later, despite her initial reservations, when Susan gave an approving nod of her head and told her crisply, ‘You’ll do,’ Diane felt a real glow of pride. Kit would laugh when she told him…Just in time she caught herself up, the small thrill of her success obliterated. Just for a few minutes she had been so engrossed in what she was doing she had forgotten that her engagement was over, her heart was broken. She instinctively reached for the place on her left hand where she had worn Kit’s ring.

‘Ooh, look who’s just walked in,’ she heard Pauline announcing happily in a soft whisper, ‘and he’s coming over here.’

‘Stow it, Pauline,’ Susan advised firmly. ‘We all know you think a certain American major is the best thing since Clark Gable, but there’s a war on, remember.’

‘No, I don’t. Major Saunders is ten times better-looking than Clark Gable,’ Pauline replied, unabashed. The others laughed. Diane joined in, willing to be a part of the little group, and then turned her head to get a better look at the subject of the conversation. A tall, dark-haired man in the distinctive uniform of the United States Army was striding determinedly towards them, accompanied by a rather youthful-looking RAF flight lieutenant. An unpleasantly familiar tall, dark-haired man, Diane acknowledged, her heart sinking as she recognised that the major was the man she had crossed verbal swords with the previous evening. Instinctively she shrank back into the shadows, trying to conceal herself behind the other girls. It was unlikely, surely, that the major would recognise her. She had the advantage over him of having seen him last night in uniform whereas he had only seen her in mufti. However, although she tried to make herself as unnoticeable as possible, Diane could feel the major’s sharp-eyed gaze falling and resting on her. Her face started to burn.

It was the flight lieutenant who broke the tension, saying cheerily, ‘Thought I’d bring the major across so he can take a look at how we keep tabs on things. Major, you’ll—’ He broke off as he saw Diane and exclaimed admiringly, ‘You’ve got a new recruit to your team, I see, Susan. Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

The major had recognised her, Diane realised, as she was subjected to a second and very chilling visual assessment, which, unlike that of the young flight lieutenant, did not contain any scrap of male approval.

‘I’m sorry, Flight Lieutenant,’ Susan began formally, but to Diane’s astonishment the young officer burst out laughing and then said cheerfully, ‘Oh, I say, sis, give a chap a chance, won’t you, and introduce me to this lovely girl?’

‘Wilson, I apologise for my brother,’ Susan told Diane ruefully. ‘Teddy, I am sure that Diane does not want to have some barely-out-of-short-pants and still-wet-behind-the-ears, just-made-up flight lieutenant pestering her.’

‘Oh, I say, that’s not fair, is it, Diane? I’m sure you’re just the kind of girl who is kind enough to take pity of a poor young officer.’

Blond-haired, with laughing blue eyes and an engaging smile, he was very amusing, Diane acknowledged, and a type she knew very well from Cambridgeshire. Helplessly young and brave, hopelessly full of high spirits and idealism, he couldn’t be a day over twenty-one, Diane guessed. She had seen so many of them, and seen them too after the reality of war had driven the youth from their eyes and replaced it with desperate bleakness. Her own Kit had been one – once.

Susan rolled her eyes. ‘Diane, once again, I do apologise for my ridiculous little brother.’

Diane laughed and shook her head, exchanging an understanding look with Susan. ‘I know all about younger brothers from my time in my previous posting,’ she assured her, deliberately not naming her previous post, in accordance with wartime regulations. As the posters had it, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives.’ Not, she suspected, that there were likely to be any German spies here.

‘You promised the folks you’d take care of me and here you are refusing to introduce me to the most stunning girl I’ve ever seen.’

‘What happened to that redheaded Wren you were raving about last week?’ Susan teased him, relaxing when she saw that Diane was neither going to take offence nor read anything into his flattery.

‘What Wren?’ he demanded, looking injured.

‘I don’t want to break up the party, Flight Lieutenant, but if you don’t mind .. .’ The major’s voice had a hard edge to it for all the softness of his American accent. Susan looked uncomfortable and her brother crestfallen, whilst Diane was conscious of the condemning look the major was giving her. Well, let him think what he liked. She didn’t care. She knew the truth about herself. Diane lifted her chin and returned his look with one of her own – the kind she used to make it plain to overeager young men that she was not interested.

To her satisfaction she could see first disbelief, then incredulity followed by anger in the major’s eyes. That would teach him to look down on an Englishwoman, she decided sturdily.

‘Thanks for letting my wretched brother down lightly, Diane.’ They were in the canteen, having their break. Susan offered Diane a cigarette, which she refused. Diane had been horridly sick the first time she had smoked a cigarette – illicitly, of course, behind the church after Sunday school – and she hadn’t really smoked very much since apart from the odd social cigarette.

‘Bill, my husband, swears that Teddy is a danger to himself. None of us can believe he’s actually been made up to flight lieutenant. His CO must see something in him that we can’t.’

‘Is your husband in the RAF as well?’ Diane asked her.

‘No, Senior Service. But Dad’s an ex-RAF man – that’s why Teddy and I joined up. Bill’s posted to convoy duty. It doesn’t always do to be working so closely. I’m always on edge when his convoy is due back. The two girls we’re missing at the moment both had husbands in the navy. They were on the same ship – we were all here when we got the news that she’d been torpedoed. The girls kept on going until the end of their shift, even though they knew what had happened. It broke them, though. One asked for a transfer, the other…’ Susan sighed. ‘She was expecting their first baby. She lost it three days after we heard the news that he’d been killed. I hate this war so much sometimes.’