Annie Groves - The Grafton Girls

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Diane hesitated. ‘I appreciate you telling me. The problem is that I’ve already agreed to go dancing with her tonight, but if she were to suggest it again…’

‘There’s nothing you can do about tonight now, I agree, but it’s something to bear in mind next time. We’re a close-knit bunch in the Dungeon, working as closely as we do, and I don’t want members of my team being at odds with one another. You see the thing is, that silly young fool I was telling you about, well, he was Jean’s cousin and his wife was her best friend. Jean asked Myra to back off, but she just laughed at her. Anyway, I’d better get on. Bill will be wondering where I am.’

She could now understand why Myra wasn’t popular with the other girls, Diane acknowledged as she walked up Edge Hill Road. After tonight she would have to put as much distance between them as she could, otherwise the other girls were going to think she and Myra were two of a kind.

Mrs Lawson was just coming out of the front door as Diane walked up the front path.

‘I’m off to my WVS meeting so I’ve left you a bit of summat keeping warm on top of the oven. Oh, a couple of letters came for you. I’ve left them on the hall stand.’

‘Did Myra mention to you that we’re going out tonight?’ Diane asked after she had thanked her.

‘Yes.’ Mrs Lawson’s mouth pursed disapprovingly. ‘Going dancing, she said you was. It don’t seem right to me, not with her married, but she said as how she felt she ought on account of you asking her and you being on your own.’

The sly cat! Diane reflected grimly as she stepped into the hall, picking up her letters from the oak hall stand as she did so. One was from her parents. She recognised her mother’s handwriting immediately. The other was from Beryl, a girl who had been one of her closest friends at her previous posting. She had written her name on the back of her envelope.

Pushing wide the kitchen door, Diane started to open her mother’s letter, wrinkling her nose at the smell of boiled cabbage emanating from the stove.

‘ There you are. We’ve got to be ready to go out at seven, you know, otherwise we won’t get a table. I reckon you won’t get much of a hot bath. Mrs L must have turned off the geyser, mean old bat.’

Diane didn’t bother looking up from her letter. If she did have to have a cold bath it would probably be because Myra had used all the hot water, she suspected. Her mother’s letter was cheery and loving, wanting to know how she was settling in and when she thought she would have enough leave to come home for a visit. The notepaper was scented with her mother’s favourite rosewater scent, and Diane felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over her. How much simpler and safer her life had seemed when she had been a young girl still living at home.

‘Gawd, I’m not staying down here. What’s that stink?’ Myra complained.

‘My tea, I expect,’ Diane answered, refolding her mother’s letter and putting it in her bag before she opened her friend’s.

‘Can’t you leave that until tomorrow?’ Myra said irritably. ‘You’re going to have to rush as it is, unless you’re planning on going out in uniform.’

‘No…I’m not…I’m on my way,’ Diane assured her.

Beryl had written that she was missing her, but that she understood why she had felt she had to go.

‘To be honest, I think you’ve done the right thing. I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but you might as well know the truth.’ Diane gripped the letter tightly. Her stomach had started to churn in anticipation of a blow to come.

Kit isn’t the man I thought he was, Di, dropping you to go chasing after one girl after another, and getting them and himself talked about by keeping them out late, driving them all over the countryside. You’re better off without him and that’s a fact. I’ve heard that he never dates the same girl twice and it’s been all over the camp that, last weekend, he was found rip-roaring drunk in a country pub with a girl he’d picked up from somewhere. The landlord threw them out and threatened to call the police, and it was only because of his pals that Kit managed to get back to camp safely. Seems that someone asked him about you and where you were and he said he neither knew nor cared, and that he wanted to have some fun with the kind of girls who knew what fun was. He’s getting himself a reputation for being a real party man, if you know what I mean. You were right to give yourself a fresh start.

Diane closed her fist over the letter, crumpling it up, willing herself not to give way to her emotions in front of Myra. So Kit didn’t care about her, did he? Well, she already knew that and she certainly didn’t care about him. And when it came to having fun, they would see which of them could do the most of that, she decided fiercely, as she headed for the stairs.

‘Do you think I’ll be all right going dancing like this, Mrs Brown, only I haven’t got anything else?’ Ruthie asked uncertainly as she stood in the kitchen waiting for her next-door neighbour’s verdict. Her mother was in the parlour listening to the wireless, lost in the world to which she had retreated. Ruthie did not know which she dreaded the most: her mother’s blank silences when she hardly seemed to know her, or her tearful clinging pleas not to leave her.

‘I don’t look right, do I?’ she guessed as she saw the uncertainty in the older woman’s face as she studied her heavy shoes and ankle socks teamed with the only pretty dress she had, a school-girlish pink gingham cotton with white collar and cuffs.

‘Well, you look very nice, love, but p’raps more like you was going to Sunday school than a dance. But there,’ she continued hastily when she saw Ruthie’s face fall, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you wear. They go in all sorts these days, so I’ve heard – uniforms an’ all. You just go and enjoy yourself.’

Ruthie was the last to reach the Grafton, anxiously hurrying down the queue waiting for the doors to open, when a hand suddenly came out and grabbed hold of her.

‘Oh!’ she exhaled in relief when she realised it belonged to Jess.

‘Where’ve you bin?’ Jess scolded her good-naturedly. ‘We was just beginning to think you wasn’t coming.’

‘Well, whatever she was doing, it wasn’t worrying about what to wear,’ one of the other girls quipped quietly, causing a ripple of laughter to run through those near enough in the queue to hear her. ‘Did you tell her it was fancy dress or summat, Jess?’

‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ Jess comforted Ruthie. ‘They don’t mean any harm. You’re frock’s a pretty colour. Suits you, it does.’

‘I didn’t know what to wear. I haven’t got…’ Tears filled Ruthie’s eyes.

‘There now, don’t go getting yourself all upset. Your frock isn’t that bad, and if you had a different pair of shoes and took off them ankle socks and put a bit of rouge and lipstick on…’

‘And took them slides out of her hair and undid that plait and tried to look like she were eighteen and not fourteen. They’ll never let her in looking like that, Jess,’ Mel warned sharply.

‘Of course they will. If she’s old enough to be working on munitions then I’m bloody sure she’s old enough to go dancing,’ Jess defended Ruthie stoutly, adding, ‘Here, Polly, you always bring a spare pair of shoes wi’ you. Hand ’em over here, and let’s see if they fit Ruthie.’

‘I’m not giving her me best heels,’ a pretty blonde girl with large blue eyes protested sulkily.

‘Well, give me them you’re wearing now and you put the heels on,’ was Jess’s response, and somehow or other, Ruthie found herself persuaded out of her lace-ups and ankle socks and into a pair of scuffed white sandals.