Myra refused. ‘It’s too soon. I don’t give my kisses out so freely.’ She could see a look in his eyes that was a mix of resentment and grudging respect.
‘Tell that to all the guys, do you?’ he demanded.
‘Yes I do,’ Myra agreed tartly. She knew that she wanted to see him again. A quick glance at his companions had told her what she had already guessed – that he was very much their leader -and Myra had already decided that the rightful place in the new life she dreamed of for herself was as the wife of just such a man, rather than as the wife of one of those he led. But she knew too much about men to go openly chasing after him, no matter how tempted she was to do so, to make sure that no other girl got her hooks into him.
Ruthie could hardly believe what was happening and that she was here dancing with an American. An American, what was more, who had lost no time in telling her earnestly that he had been watching her all evening and that he thought she was ‘real cute’.
‘I’d like to walk you home,’ he began awkwardly, ‘but, see, we’ve been told not to do that.’
‘Oh, no, you couldn’t anyway,’ Ruthie told him, both horrified and excited by the suggestion.
‘Well, will you let me see you again then? I mean here, perhaps…or I could come and call on your folks…introduce myself to them…’
Ruthie stared at him whilst her heart turned over inside her chest.
‘What I mean is that, well, I can see you’re not the sort of girl…that is…’
‘Hey, buddy,’ another GI called out in a loud voice. ‘Quit whispering sweet nothings in her ear and get your ass over here. Sarge says we’ve got to leave in five. And you can go and tell Walter over there,’ he jerked his head in the direction of Jess and her partner, ‘the same.’
‘Oh, poor you,’ Jess was saying sympathetically to the young GI who had asked her to dance. ‘You must miss her so very much.’ He had spent virtually the whole time they had been dancing together telling her about his ‘girl back home’ and how miserable he was about the fact that he hadn’t had the courage to propose to her before ‘shipping out’.
‘You can write to her, though,’ Jess tried to comfort him.
‘Yeah, I know that, but it ain’t exactly the same. A guy can’t tell a girl he loves her nearly so well when she ain’t there for him to hold. Would you like to see her photo?’ he asked Jess eagerly.
Nodding, Jess peered dutifully at the photograph of the pretty but very young-looking brunette.
‘Her folks kinda hinted to me that they thought we was too young to get serious.’ Walter was telling her, when Jess saw Ruthie hurrying over with her partner.
‘Jerry said to tell you it’s time to go,’ Ruthie’s partner told Walter.
‘Poor boy,’ Jess commented to Ruthie as they watched the two men go to join their comrades. ‘He misses his girl at home.’
Diane glanced at her watch. Her head was throbbing dreadfully.
‘Isn’t that your friend over there?’ Jess suddenly asked her, nudging her and pointing to the other side of the dance floor. ‘Wi’ that GI who looks like he thinks he’s God’s gift.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Diane confirmed.
Myra was laughing at something her companion had said and looked in no hurry to leave, Diane noted. Nor did she seem at all concerned about her whereabouts. Somehow Diane wasn’t surprised. Her instincts had told her right from the word go that Myra was only striking up a friendship with her for her own benefit.
‘I’d better go over and join her,’ she told Jess, adding warmly, ‘I really am grateful to you all for helping me the way you did. Heaven knows what would have happened to me if you hadn’t. Something tells me that I certainly wouldn’t have made it back up Edge Hill Lane in one piece.’
‘Up Edge Hill Lane? Is that where your billet is?’ Jess asked. ‘Only Ruthie lives up there, don’t you? That’s good, then. You can walk back together.’
‘I don’t know how far up you live, but we’re on Chestnut Close,’ Diane told Ruthie.
‘Yes, that’s where I live as well.’
‘There you are then. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?’ Jess beamed, looking as pleased as though she personally had arranged for them to live so conveniently close to one another.
‘There you are. Now you’ll have someone to walk home with,’ she told Ruthie happily before telling Diane breezily, ‘Ruthie here’s not so used to looking out of herself as me and the others. Looked like she was scared to death, she did, when she got on the bus for the munitions factory for the first time.’
Diane gave Ruthie a sympathetic smile. Her head still hurt but she was beginning to feel much better than she had done.
‘We don’t stay on until the end,’ Jess continued informatively, ‘on account of the way some of the lads hang around looking for a girl. It gives them the wrong idea, if you know what I mean.’
Diane knew exactly what she meant.
‘I’d better go over and tell my friend that I’m ready to leave then,’ she told Jess.
‘Oh, I thought you must have left,’ Myra greeted her unenthusiastically, immediately turning her back on Diane to move closer to the GI standing next to her. Myra said something to him and when he turned round to look at her, Diane recognised immediately what sort he was. He might be tall and good-looking but he was also a thoroughly unpleasant type, she decided as he subjected her to open appraisal, whilst draping one arm casually around Myra. It wasn’t just Myra who was hanging on his every word, Diane noticed. He also seemed to be the ringleader of a group of noisy GIs.
‘We must go, Myra,’ Diane told her crisply. ‘I’ve arranged to walk home with another girl, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.’
‘Well, don’t then,’ Myra told her sharply. ‘You go ahead and leave. Nick here will walk me home, won’t you, Nick?’
‘I sure wish I could, doll, but the MPs will have me by the balls if I did. Uncle Sam doesn’t want us getting ourselves into trouble with you Brits.’
‘You get into trouble?’ Myra pouted.
‘Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it, guys?’ he demanded.
Diane winced as she heard the loud chorus of assent.
‘Sarge says to tell you the transport is about to leave.’
There was something about the coldly venomous look that the man with Myra gave to the young GI who had approached them that shocked Diane back to full sobriety. Poor boy, what on earth had he done to provoke a look of such openly vicious dislike? She watched in silence as Myra’s companion turned on his heel without saying a word and strode off in the direction of the other GIs, leaving the now red-faced younger man to trail behind him.
What on earth, Diane wondered, could Myra possibly see in a man like that?
EIGHT
‘So you walked home with young Ruthie Philpott last night, did you?’ Mrs Lawson commented as she poured Diane a cup of tea, and then continued without waiting for Diane to answer her. ‘Feel sorry for her, I do. Well, you can’t not do really, not after what happened to her dad, and then her ma taking it so badly, like. Tell you about that, did she?’
‘She said that her mother was a widow,’ Diane answered, ‘but she didn’t go into any details.’
‘No, well, she wouldn’t. She’s not that sort of girl. Her dad was in the ARP; got killed in a bomb blast, he did. A real shame it was ’cos they was a nice little family. Kept themselves to themselves, mind you. You’d