The Girls They Left Behind (13 page)

‘Can’t you pull ‘em down, Bet?’ he muttered, and groaned. ‘I don’t think I can wait much longer.’

She gave him an agonised look. Wouldn’t it be better just to do as he wanted, and get it over with? It seemed as if that was the only way of stopping him now. Let him do it and do it quick, before Mum thumped on the door or Dad came in.

But Mum would know, she thought, the minute she looked at them she’d know. And suppose there was a baby?

Olive had told her it didn’t always happen the first time. But Betty knew one or two girls who’d got caught, and they’d sworn it had only happened once.

She gave Graham’s shoulders a hard push.

‘No. Stop it, Graham. I don’t want to — and you’re hurting my leg. Get off me.’

He stared at her. He had been fumbling with his own trousers and she saw the paleness of his flesh against the dark blue serge. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard.

His ginger brows came together in a frown. ‘Take ‘em off, Bet. This is my last night—’

‘Graham, I can’t. You know I can’t.’ To her relief, she heard footsteps on the pavement outside and the click of the front gate. ‘There’s Dad! He’ll be in any minute.’ Panic lent her strength and she wriggled clear of Graham’s arms and started frantically to do up her clothes. ‘Make yourself decent, Graham, for goodness’ sake!’

‘He doesn’t come in this way, does he? He goes round the side, to the back door.’

‘I know, but sometimes he comes in the front.’ In fact, he hardly ever did, but Betty wasn’t going to tell Graham that. ‘Anyway, if he’s home supper’ll be on the table and Mum’ll be knocking on the door for us to go back.’ She sat up and straightened her jersey, then looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, Gray. But I can’t do it, not like that. And I’m scared of what might happen.’

‘I told you, I wouldn’t let anything happen.’ He finished tidying himself and looked away from her, still breathing quickly. ‘You ought to trust me, Bet. You would, if you really loved me.’

‘I do love you.’

‘Well, prove it, then,’ he challenged her. ‘Show me you love me. After supper— we’ll come in here again. No one’)) disturb us, they know it’s my last night. And you can take those daft breeches off and put on a skirt.’

Betty said nothing. She felt miserable and heavy inside. Graham was going away tomorrow, she didn’t know when she would see him again, and she felt that he was right, that if she really loved him she’d let him have what he wanted, she wouldn’t deny him. So did she love him? She thought she did — and she wanted it too, she couldn’t deny that. But not like this, she cried out inside, not struggling on a settee in her mother’s front room, trying not to be heard and then having to pretend afterwards. And spending the next two or three weeks waiting in terror, and maybe the next nine months in despair.

‘Please, Graham,’ she said in a low voice, ‘don’t keep on.’

He gave her a steady look. His blue eyes were hard, the skin taut around them, and his lips were tight. The flush had died from his face, leaving the freckles standing out against the pale skin.

He said, ‘All right, Bet. It’s all off, then. You can give me back my ring and I’ll go. Say goodbye to your mum and dad for me, and tell’em I’m sorry I won’t be seeing them again.’ He stood up.

Betty caught at his white summer shirt. The cotton was cool under her fingers. She remembered the day when he had first come here in the matelot’s uniform, how proud she had been.

‘No, Graham, don’t go! Not like that. I do love you, I do, it’s just that—’ The tears came to her eyes and her voice broke — I’m scared, that’s all. I’ve never — it’s my first time, I — I don’t know what it’s like — I’m scared.’ She looked up at him appealingly. ‘Graham?’ And then she took a deep breath and said shakily, ‘All right. I’ll do it. After supper.’ And felt almost as if she’d signed her life away.

Graham’s face cleared and broke into a huge grin. ‘You will? You’ll let me love you properly? Oh, Bet—’ He pulled her up against him and held her tightly. ‘Bet, I promise I’ll look after you. I won’t let anything happen.’ He kissed her and squeezed her breast, and she stiffened, terrified that his passion would overtake him again. But at that moment there was a thump on the door and they heard Annie’s voice calling that supper was ready. Reluctantly, Graham let Betty go, and she stepped away, conscious of a huge wave of relief.

‘Later,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I’ll be looking forward to it, all through supper.’

Betty gave him a wavering smile. But the feeling of

waviness still persisted inside her, and she knew that she would be unable to eat a thing.

Graham sat at the Chapmans’ supper table, conscious of a simmering excitement. He was slightly ashamed of the way he’d behaved in the front room earlier. He hadn’t meant to be rough with Betty, but his feelings had overwhelmed him. And he’d been upset by the sight of her in those cowboy breeches and hat. They seemed to take her away, as if she was going to have a new life that he couldn’t share.

Graham didn’t want Betty going away or having a life he

didn’t know about. He wanted her at home, where he could picture her when he was away at sea. He wanted to be able to wake up in the morning knowing exactly what she was doing — having her breakfast, walking up March Street to work in the dairy, going down town to do a bit of shopping or helping her mum around the house on Saturday afternoon. Going to church and maybe for a walk with her sister on Sunday. He’d been pleased when Olive got married, that meant there’d be no more chaps coming to the house, less chance of Betty getting off with someone else. And he was glad Bob Shaw was away in Devon, with Derek. He knew Bob was sweet on Betty and he had an idea she’d got a soft spot for him too.

But if Betty went off to the country, to some farm, there was no knowing who she might meet. Not all these country chaps would get called up. And some of them were big, beefy blokes, the sort who might easily sweep a girl off her feet and make her forget she’d got a boy in the Navy.

Still, he’d got her to promise to give herself to him tonight, and that would keep her true, he was sure of that. What’s more, and perhaps even more important, he’d find out at last just what this sex business was all about.

At twenty, Graham had never experienced sex with a girl. He’d been thinking about it since he was seventeen or eighteen — before that, really — but although he’d had two or three girlfriends before Betty, he’d never got much further than kissing and the occasional more daring fumble, with his hands quickly slapped away. There had been one girl who’d let him feel her body more intimately, and who had done her own exploring too, through a hole in his trouser pocket, but he’d only been fifteen or sixteen then and a bit scared of the peculiar excitement it had caused. Usually, it had ended with tickling and giggles and, now he came to think of it, they hadn’t even kissed very much.

But for the last year or so he’d been feeling increasingly

restless. He wanted to know what it was all about. He wanted to know what this feeling was that other blokes talked about, usually with sniggers and dirty jokes, but still as if it was somehow the whole purpose of living, of being a man. And since he’d joined the Navy, it had been worse. You weren’t a man until you’d ‘done it’, yet who were you to ‘do it’ with?

‘You’ve got a girl, haven’t you?’ one of his shipmates asked him. ‘Well, what’s she for?’

But girls like Betty didn’t ‘do it’. They’d been brought up to

save themselves for marriage, and they were pretty sharp when a boy tried to go too far. And the other option, the tarts who stood at the Dockyard gate and walked up and down Queen Street, carried their own risks. During his training on Whale Island, in Portsmouth Harbour, Graham had been subjected to several lectures on venereal disease, with horrific pictures to accompany them, and already on the ship he’d seen a couple of men who were getting regular, and not very sympathetic, treatment from the ship’s doctor, and whose eating utensils were marked with red paint and kept separate from everyone else’s.

So how was a bloke to find out? And now that he knew that the ship would be sailing, to stay at sea perhaps for weeks or months, and almost sure to be involved in action, perhaps even sunk, he was desperate to experience it, if only once. I can’t die without knowing, he thought. I can’t. It’s not fair.

Betty had to let him. She had to. She was his girl, she’d got him to give her a ring which she wore on her left hand whenever they were out on their own, she’d said she loved him. All he was asking was to do it once, just once, just so that he knew what it was like. It was all right for her, it didn’t mean so much to girls, she wouldn’t sit at home wondering about it, wishing she could get the chance. And if she did, she could find a bloke easily enough — though she’d better not. But for

him, away at sea, there would be no more chances. Perhaps never.

Just now, in the front room, he’d been overwhelmed by the desperation of his need. He looked at Ted Chapman, sitting at the head of the table, and silently cursed him. If he hadn’t come in when he did … But maybe it’d be better later anyway. Betty had changed those horrible breeches for a skirt and she’d promised she wouldn’t stop him, and her mum always let them go in the front room to say goodnight. And this being his last night, she’d be sure to let them have a bit longer, she wouldn’t come bursting in. They’d be as safe there as if they were out in the country, with the stars overhead and nobody else around for miles.

‘I had a few words with the new people in October Street, where the old lady lived with all the cats,’ Annie was saying. ‘A mother and two girls about eight or nine. Expecting too — it put me in mind of our Jess, moving into number 14 with Rose and Tim just little ones and Keith on the way.’

‘Rose and Tim were only two or three,’ Ted objected. ‘You said these two were eight or nine.’

‘Well, I know. I didn’t say they were identical, just that they put me in mind.’ Annie spoke with some impatience. Ted always had to be so literal. And couldn’t he see she was just talking for something to say? Couldn’t he see what was going on right in front of his eyes?

Annie had no illusions about young Graham Philpotts. She had a pretty good idea what was in his mind now, as he sat beside Betty at the supper table. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her and was having a job keeping his hands off her too, if she was any judge. She’d given them both a sharp look when they came in from the front room, and seen Betty’s over-bright eyes and flushed face, and Graham’s smirk. She didn’t think they’d actually done anything they shouldn’t — well, not too much, and not yet — but Graham looked too much like the cat who’d got the cream for her peace of mind, and there was only one reason for a chap to look like that, the night before he went away to war.

If he hadn’t already had the cream, he was expecting to get it. Well, it was up to her to see that he didn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Betty, but any girl could get carried away at times like this. That was why Ted was so against her leaving home. But Annie knew that a girl didn’t have to leave home to get into trouble. It could happen in her own front room. And even a good girl could be forced into it, if the boy was persistent.

Graham had that persistent look tonight. And Betty was looking upset, as if she was half excited, half scared. She’s ripe to fall, Annie thought, and she needs help to see she doesn’t.

‘Simmons, their name is, the people who are in number 16,’ she went on. ‘Jess told me she stopped and had a word. The husband’s in the Merchant Navy and hasn’t been home since March.’

‘Where do they come from?’ Olive asked. She seemed to have heard all this before, and wasn’t particularly interested anyway, but there was something up with Mum, she looked anxious, and Betty and Graham had looked almost as if they’d had a row when they came in. She caught her sister’s eye and was startled by the expression, almost of appeal, in her face.

‘They were bombed out in that air-raid-last month, down in Portchester Road. Their house is wrecked, so they’ve come to October Street.’

‘Where’ve they been living till now?’ Betty was trying desperately to control her juddering feelings, but her voice came out shrilly, as if she’d been crying. She could feel Graham beside her. Why did I promise? she thought. What am I going to do?

‘Oh, she’s been moved in a couple of weeks — took her a while to get the place fit to live in.’ Annie sniffed. Jess had told her about the state the place was in. She wondered what it was like now. Annie cleaned her kitchen — and indeed her whole house — thoroughly each morning. Just as if the King and Queen were coming to visit, Ted sometimes remarked. And suppose they did? Annie would retort. Wouldn’t you be thankful that someone cared enough about the place to keep it fit for visitors? And when he observed, as he had been increasingly wont to do just lately, that it was more likely to be Hitler who came walking in the door, she spoke even more sharply.

‘I’ll not have any German making remarks about my front step, nor how clean my net curtains are. And take those dirty boots off before you come in here, Ted Chapman. War or no

war, I’ve still got my floors to keep clean, and I didn’t spend

half the winter making those rag rugs for you to leave muddy

footprints all over them.’

She felt sorry for young Mrs Simmons, being bombed out

of a home that was like a little palace and having to start again

in something that was no better than a slum.

It had been a good enough start to the conversation, after

all. Ted started to talk about other people who had been

bombed out in that raid. He knew a couple from the ferry,

men who’d gone over to Gosport to work. You got to know

the regulars, they always went to the same places on the

boat, some favouring the warmth of the funnel, some standing

up in the bow with the piles of bikes. There were a couple

of others who had never appeared again after that raid, he

thought.

‘Didn’t one of your friends come from Portchester Road?’

Betty asked Graham, grateful to be able to ask him something