The Grafton Girls (15 page)

‘Well, I know that it’s none of our business, Ruthie,’ Mrs Brown was saying, ‘but I wouldn’t feel right in me mind if me and Mr Brown hadn’t acted like we know your dad would have acted himself if he’d been here. Stands to reason that your dad would have expected us to look out for you and your mam, us being close neighbours all these years. Yes, that’s it, Mrs Philpott dearie,’ she coaxed Ruthie’s mother sturdily. ‘Soon have you home now, love. My, but you give me a shock. Shivering, she is now, an’ all, Ruthie. I’ll mek up a couple of hot-water bottles for you to put in her bed. That’ll help tek the chill off of her a bit. So you had a good time at the Grafton, did you?’

‘It was very nice,’ Ruthie said quietly. She could
feel the pain burning its way right through her poor breaking heart. But she couldn’t really blame Glen, could she? Even if he had fallen for her like he had said, she couldn’t expect him to understand how it was with her mother. Perhaps what had happened was for the best. Now, more than ever, she realised she would never be able to leave her mother to live on her own without her.

Nick hadn’t spoken one word to Myra since they had left Blackpool, and now they were back home. What was Nick thinking? It was all very well for him to blame her for what had happened but it hadn’t been her fault, she assured herself virtuously.

A part of her quite liked knowing that he was so mad for her, and it was that that she intended to focus on and not that sickening feeling that had gripped her stomach, or the childhood memories that had gone with it. In fact, knowing that he was mad for her had done wonders for her confidence in her ability to get what she wanted from him. And she certainly wasn’t going to have him thinking that she intended to let him get away with speaking to her the way he had. No, not for a minute she wasn’t. Fighting was one thing but speaking to her like that…

Myra had perfected the art of the sulk long ago, and she used it to good effect now, matching Nick’s silence with her own, refusing to turn her head to look at him. The minute he turned into Lime Street
and brought the Jeep to a halt, without giving him the chance to say anything, she opened the door and jumped out. Although it was nearly two o’clock in the morning the station was still busy with people coming and going. Myra took a deep breath and then started to walk away from the Jeep – and Nick – without looking back. Let him drive off in a sulk, as she knew he would; he would soon come round once he realised what he was about to lose.

Confidently she set off to walk back to her digs.

She had got as far as the end of the street and had just turned the corner into unwelcome darkness when she heard the sound of the Jeep being driven slowly behind her. All at once her confidence deserted her. Fear filled its place. She desperately wanted to run but she refused to let herself, despite the images now flooding her mind: Nick hitting the defenceless young man; her father laying into her mother as she curled up in a corner trying to protect herself. The entrance to a narrow passageway loomed alongside her. Quickly she turned into it. It was too narrow for the Jeep, and darkly shadowed by its buildings, except for the gap midway down where a bomb had hit two of the houses.

She couldn’t hear the Jeep any more. She started to relax and then stiffened as she heard the sharp slam of its door and then the sound of footsteps following her.

Now she really did want to run but before she could do so, Nick had reached her, his hand on
her shoulder, spinning her round.

‘No dame ever walks out on me,’ he told her furiously, giving her a fierce shake. ‘And if you’re going to be my girl you’d better understand that.’ He pulled her into his arms and kissed her angrily, forcing her lips apart and grinding his mouth down on hers whilst she stood unresistingly in the darkness, feeling the heavy pounding of his heartbeat against her own body. It felt like a lifetime before he stopped kissing her.

‘I’ll pick you up at the station Tuesday evening. We’ll have dinner.’

It wasn’t a request, Myra recognised, it was a command.

‘No guy cuts me out with my girl and gets away with it,’ he told her, and then added, ‘and no girl of mine gives out to another guy if she knows what’s good for her –
capisci
?’

Myra nodded, too weakened by her own overwhelming relief to be able to speak. He wasn’t going to hurt her – hit her – after all. And in fact he was offering her what she had wanted.

‘I guess what happened back there in Blackpool kinda scared you, did it?’

His words caught Myra off guard. She hadn’t expected him to speak openly about what he had done. Her father certainly would not have done. He had liked to pretend that nothing had happened. There was a certain sense of extra relief in being able to tell herself that Nick wasn’t like her father.

‘Well, it was all down to you, sweet stuff.
Because, you see, I’m a jealous kinda guy, Myra, and I don’t like to see another guy looking at my girl and having her look back at him, especially when she’s just made me as mad as hell and as wrought up as an angry bull.’

Her relief made her smile up at Nick and then smile again when he squeezed her hand. A heady sense of power filled her.

‘See ya Tuesday, honey bun,’ he told her, after they had walked back to the Jeep. ‘And remember, keep away from those other guys, if you don’t want to make me mad again. You’re my girl now.’

Diane sat up in bed as Myra opened the bedroom door. She had woken up when she had heard the other girl come in.

‘You’re late,’ she told her tiredly.

Myra gave a dismissive shrug. ‘So what if I am? It’s no one’s business but mine.’

‘Yours and your husband’s,’ Diane corrected her. ‘He was round here earlier. He’s on a forty-eight-hour-leave pass and he came here looking for you.’

Jim was home? Myra sat down abruptly on her own bed. ‘What did you tell him?’ she demanded sharply.

‘I said that I thought you’d gone to Blackpool with some friends and that you might be staying over,’ Diane informed her evenly. It confirmed everything she already thought about Myra when she didn’t bother to thank her for covering up for her.

Instead she asked, ‘So where is he now?’ ‘Down the road at number forty-five.’ ‘What? What’s he doing there? Whose idea was that?’

‘Not mine,’ Diane replied. ‘Mrs L came in whilst he was here and she suggested it.’

Myra thought quickly. The last thing she needed right now was a husband, but at least he was only on a forty-eight-hour pass. It was a pity that their interfering busybody landlady had taken it upon herself to get him a bed so close by. That meant she had no excuse for pretending she couldn’t get to see him.

‘I don’t care what you say, Jim. I’ve made up my mind. I want a divorce.’

Myra and her husband faced one another across the small shabby parlour, with its smell of disuse and past sadnesses.

‘That’s crazy talk, Myra, and you know it.’

‘You’re the one who’s crazy if you can’t see that the pair of us should never have got married in the first place and that the sooner we go our separate ways the better.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t have got married but we did. And even if I
was
willing for us to be divorced, which I’m not, you can’t get divorced without proper grounds, you know that.’

‘As to that, if it’s grounds you want, then I’m willing…’ Myra began recklessly, and then stopped when she saw the way he was looking at her. Why couldn’t fate be kind to her for once? Any number of soldiers got themselves killed and left their wives widowed with a pension – why couldn’t that happen to her?

‘There’s no point in saying you won’t divorce me,’ she announced fiercely, ‘because there’s no way I plan to go on being your wife. At least that way you would be free to find someone else.’

‘Like you are? Is that what this is all about, Myra? You finding someone else? Or have you already found him?’

Myra’s heart started to thump uncomfortably fast. Jim was getting far too close to the truth.

‘What if I have?’ she challenged him. ‘You can’t do anything about it. I’ve told you, Jim, it’s over for you and me. If you want the truth it was never that much of a marriage anyway,’

‘And whose fault is that? It’s not as though I haven’t tried to please you.’

Another woman hearing the misery and the frustration in his voice might have been moved to compassion but Myra wasn’t like that. She wasn’t prepared to be compassionate about anything or anyone who stood in the way of her own ambitions.

‘There you are, you see,’ she answered triumphantly. ‘You’re more or less saying yourself that we aren’t suited.’

‘Suited or not, we
are
married,’ Jim retaliated, ‘and married is what we are going to stay. Myra,’ he called, when Myra pulled open the parlour door, ignoring him. ‘Myra.’ But it was too late. She was already halfway through the front door.

Jim watched her hurrying down the street, without giving him so much as a backward glance, and then thumped his closed fist on the arm of
the sofa. A cloud of dust rose up from the horsehair filling, making him sneeze. Myra was the very opposite of everything he longed for in a wife, but what could he do? He loved her so much. And he knew that he always would.

Diane could feel the tension the minute she walked into the Dungeon.

‘Any news?’ she asked Pauline quietly.

There was no need for her to specify what kind of news she meant. When she had gone off duty on Saturday the whole of the Dungeon had been seething with rumours and counter-rumours following the news that the long-awaited and dreaded German naval attack, codenamed ‘Rösselsprung’ or ‘Knight’s Move’, was finally about to take place, and that the Arctic Convoy PQ-17 was to be its target.

‘Plenty,’ Pauline confirmed grimly, ‘and none of it good.’ She nodded in the direction of the huge chart table surrounded by grim-faced naval personnel, whilst harassed Wrens were calling out positions and logging incoming information.

‘Just after twenty-one hundred hours thirty last night the First Sea Lord gave orders for the Arctic convoy to scatter following the discovery that the German support ships had moved into Altenfjord ready for Rösselsprung.’

‘And?’ Diane pressed her anxiously. Everyone working in the Dungeon knew about the threat from Operation Rösselsprung. It had been hanging over them ever since it had been discovered that
the German Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Raeder, was planning to destroy one of the Arctic convoys using his largest battleship, the
Tirpitz,
which was based at Trondheim, supported by numerous other warships, though it was not known which convoy would be the target. For that reason, the movements of convoys were always times of extreme tension in the Dungeon.

By the time Diane had finished her shift on Saturday, the ops room had been humming with the long-awaited and dreaded news that the German support vessels had joined the
Tirpitz
in Altenfjord, ready for their ‘knight’s move’, though at that stage the intelligence sources had not been able to confirm whether or not Convoy PQ-17 was to be the target.

‘It seems the
Tirpitz
and the others are still in Altenfjord.’

‘So the convoy is safe?’ Diane asked with relief.

‘No,’ Pauline told her shortly. ‘Like I said, the First Sea Lord gave the order for the convoy to scatter, and each ship to make for the nearest Russian port as best it could, thinking that Rösselsprung was underway, when it wasn’t. That left the whole convoy vulnerable to U-boat and air attack with no support vessels to protect it. So far we’ve lost nine ships, all sunk.’

‘And the men?’ Diane asked shakily, once she had absorbed this shocking news.

‘We don’t know, but the chances are…’ Pauline shook her head, unable to say the words.

‘Oh, no,’ Diane protested, well aware of how
slim the chances were of anyone surviving in such cold seas.

‘Oh, yes,’ Pauline confirmed wearily.

‘How’s Susan taking it? Her husband’s ship was with the convoy, wasn’t it?’

Pauline nodded. ‘She’s doing her best, of course, and she says she’d rather be here where at least she can first-hand info on what’s happening.’

Diane turned to look round the room. No wonder people were only speaking in terse whispers, their faces set and expressions withdrawn. A list of the ships sailing in the convoy had even been written on a new board, and Diane could now see the nine names that had been struck through.

The Commander and the rest of the top brass were leaning over the chart tables and the telephones, whilst messengers rushed in and out carrying transcripts of Morse code messages. As Diane watched, a new order was given and a young Wren crossed through another name, her hand shaking. She had barely finished doing so when someone called out again. It was impossible not to be aware of the mute, shocked horror gripping everyone in the room as more losses were chalked up.

The long day wore on without any respite, as vessel after vessel was sunk. It was pitiful and cruel. The merchant ships were defenceless targets and the U-boats and German planes were picking them off as easily as though they were targets at a fairground shooting range.

Shock had now given way to a low murmur of angry bitterness that such an ill-judged order should have been given, and at one point the Commander himself bowed his head, and they could all see the trickle of tears as he wept for the loss of so many brave and unprotected men.

Through the short dark hours of the July night the losses mounted relentlessly until the air inside the Dungeon was thick with unshed tears and heavy with a grief too terrible to voice.

Susan, white-faced and as stiff as though she were a puppet, held them all to the line with a professionalism Diane suspected she could never have emulated when the news came in that her husband’s ship had been torpedoed. Only the merest tremble of her hand betrayed what she had to be feeling.

As though she sensed Diane’s thoughts she told her jerkily, ‘At least with the almost constant daylight they have up there at this time of the year there’ll be more chance of any survivors being picked up.’

Diane couldn’t bear to say anything. Her throat closed up with compassion for Susan, knowing, as they all did, that the chance of there being any survivors was pitifully small.

When the new shift came on at 4.00 a.m. on Monday morning, Diane was barely aware of having worked a double shift. Over twenty ships had now been lost, the Germans free to torpedo and bomb the helpless vessels whilst the RAF looked on helplessly, knowing that the ships lay
beyond the range of their planes. Several of those working in the Dungeon had loved ones with the convoy – some on naval vessels and some on the merchant ships. One young Wren had fainted when the news had come in that the ship on which her new husband was sailing had been sunk, whilst one of the senior naval officers had had to bear the news that his only son had been on another of the lost vessels.

It was the worst kind of tragedy because it was one that those who had had to deal with it believed could have been avoided.

‘Not seeing Walter tonight then, Jess?’

‘No, I’m not. Not that it’s any of your business, Billy,’ Jess answered with a toss of her head.

‘I was telling your uncle this dinnertime that he seems like a decent sort – for a GI.’

‘You’ve no business talking about me and Walter to my uncle or anyone else.’

‘Going steady now, are you?’ Billy asked, ignoring her.

‘You mean like you and Doreen Green?’ Jess demanded stalwartly, determinedly ignoring the sharp pain that thinking about the two of them gave her.

Billy frowned. ‘Who says that I’m going steady with her?’

‘She does, for one,’ Jess informed him pithily, ‘and so does that cousin of hers. The one that does all the boxing,’ she added meaningfully.

To her chagrin Billy laughed. ‘You don’t want
to listen to everything that folk tell you, young Jess. That Doreen Green has had her eye on me since we was at school together,’ he told her smugly, ‘but that doesn’t mean she’s going to get me.’

‘No, I dare say it doesn’t,’ Jess agreed hardily. He took the biscuit for cheek, did Billy. ‘After all, she’s got to get all them other girls out of the way first, hasn’t she? But then, like I said, she has got their Malcolm to help her.’

‘I’m surprised at you, speaking like that,’ Billy told her sorrowfully. ‘I thought better of you than that you’d go round listening to silly gossip. There’s only one girl for me. Allus has been and allus will be.’

Did he really think she hadn’t heard that kind of line before?

‘Oh, yes,’ she challenged him, ‘and we all know who that is, don’t we? It’s the next girl you come across wot’s daft enough to believe you when you tell that line to her. Anyway, shouldn’t you be on duty, seeing as you’ve got such a responsible job an’ all, guarding them barrage balloons?’

‘It’s not them we’re guarding tonight, Jess. We’ve had reports of an unexploded bomb being found in one of them bombed-out houses down near Pickering Street. Seems some kids found it so we’ve been called in to take a butchers at it.’

‘Take a butchers at it? You? What do you mean? That’s a job for the bomb disposal lot and you aren’t one of them.’

‘You mean that I wasn’t,’ Billy agreed. ‘Seems like they’ve got short of men, so our sergeant asked
for volunteers to mek up their numbers. You and you and you, he yelled out, and just my luck I happened to be one of them he picked.’

Jess struggled for something to say but all she could think about was the danger he was going to be in. She had heard tales from her uncle of the bomb disposal teams and the terrible death toll of the men who worked on them.

‘Well, that’s just typical of you, isn’t it?’ she burst out as she tried to calm her thudding heartbeat. ‘Going and getting yourself involved wi’ summat daft and dangerous like that. It will serve you right if you get blown up straight off, it will.’

‘Thanks for that. I can tell that you won’t be shedding any tears for me if I do.’

Jess could hear the harshness in his voice and immediately she felt ashamed of herself. There had been no call for her to say what she had. She couldn’t explain to herself how her fear for him had made her say it, and she certainly wasn’t going to try to explain it to him, and have him laugh at her and guess…Guess what, exactly? Guess nothing, she told herself sternly. She looked up at him silhouetted against the blue sky, and her heart seemed to turn over inside her chest.

‘Billy…’

‘Yes?’

She hadn’t really been going to reach out and grab hold of his hand and beg him not to put himself at risk, had she?

‘Nothing. Just don’t you go talking to my uncle about me and Walter, that’s all.’ She began to walk
on and then stopped and turned back. ‘When are you going to be doing it?’ she asked him, unable to hold back the question. ‘When are you going to be looking for this unexploded bomb?’

‘I’m on me way now. What do you want to know for? Want to come along and watch me blow meself up, do you?’

Jess could feel the blood draining out of her face, and then storming back in again, the ferocity of it making her feel sick and dizzy.

‘That’s a wicked thing to say,’ she told him shakily, turning away from him again before he could see how close she was to tears, and hurrying down the street, ignoring him when he called out to her to wait.