The Grafton Girls (18 page)

‘How can you say that? The only reason they’re recruiting men is because they’ve lost that many. Liverpool is chock-full of Hitler’s bombs that haven’t exploded. Every time you open the paper there’s talk of someone finding another one. There was those kiddies wot found one down by the railway sidings last week, and the week before that…’ Jess couldn’t go on.

‘Seeing that chap of yours tonight, are you?’ her uncle asked her, trying to lighten the mood.

Irritably Jess shook her head. ‘He’s a soldier, come to fight a war. He’s not been sent here to take me out.’

‘All right, keep your hair on, girl. I was only asking.’

Again her mother and uncle exchanged looks, this time more anxious ones. It was so unlike Jess to be so irritable.

‘Well, if you aren’t seeing him, and seeing as how you’re worrying about young Billy, why don’t you slip down the street and have a word wi’ him?’ her uncle suggested.

‘I’m not worrying about Billy Spencer – why should I be? He means nowt to me.’ Jess stood up, pushing back her chair, her face hot with temper and misery. ‘I’m going upstairs,’ she told them. ‘One of the girls fell and slipped this afternoon, and dropped TNT all over the place. Stank to high heaven, it did, and it’s given me a rotten headache.’

‘All right, love, you go up and I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea later,’ her mother offered her comfortingly.

Did they really think that Billy would listen to her? Angrily Jess climbed the stairs. Of course he wouldn’t. No! He’d rather kill himself trying to show off to some girl he wanted to impress. And to think that there were folk living in Liverpool who said that the GIs were show-offs.

Tiredly Ruthie turned into Chestnut Close. After her shift had finished she had gone up to Wavertree to collect their meat rations – not that there had been much left at the butcher’s when she had finally got there. Only a bit of neck end of lamb and some heart. She had been hoping she might be able to get a bit of chicken to tempt her mother’s meagre appetite. She had heard the girls at work talking about the things they had got on the black market, and even though a part of her had been shocked by this, another part of her had envied them, especially when she had heard one of them talking about the meat her brother had got from a friend of a friend who worked down on the docks.

‘Come from one of them American ships, it did. I’ve heard as how the men up at Burtonwood leave enough food on their plates to feed a whole family for a week.’

Ruthie knew that that must be an exaggeration, but she had heard and understood the resentment
in the other woman’s voice. Sometimes, like now when she was tired and feeling low, it felt like she had been hungry for ever. And it was no good trying to kid herself that a thin stew made up out of a bit of stringy meat and some vegetables was just as good to eat as a proper roast because it wasn’t. Her father had always enjoyed his Sunday roast. She could see him now, beaming with pride as he sat in his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up as he prepared to carve the joint. There were delicate slices for her and her mother, and thicker ones for himself, over which he would pour the thick gravy her mother had made to go with the roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. Ruthie could feel her mouth starting to water. But it was no good longing for what she knew they couldn’t have. Every extra scrap of food she could get had to go to her mother, who was so frail and in need of nourishment. She herself could always get a meal at the factory, she reminded herself.

One of the girls there had commented only that morning that it made no difference the government bringing in sweet rationing since there were no sweets to be had the length or breadth of the country.

‘Not unless you’re walking out with a Yank,’ another woman had pointed out curtly. ‘They’ve bin handing out chocolate along with nylons and the like to them as doesn’t mind betraying our own brave lads and going out with them.’

‘Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?’ another woman had spoken up angrily. ‘Some of us have no choice
who we go out with, because the Yanks are here and our lads aren’t.’

‘All the more reason not to have anything to do wi’ ’em, if you ask me. Come over here, they ’ave, bragging and showing off – aye, and earning five times wot our boys are getting for digging up a few fields to make runways for their ruddy planes whilst our boys are getting killed in ruddy Africa.’

‘Well, it stands to reason that they’re gonna need runways, otherwise how are they going to fight? I’ve heard they’re doing that much work up at Burtonwood you’d think the whole of the ruddy American Air Force was going to be there.’

‘I expect it is,’ another girl had joined in. ‘Leastways from what I’ve heard. Seems like they’re going to be bringing in their men and equipment through Liverpool and that they’ll be based at Burtonwood first off before they get sent to their proper bases.’

‘I’ve heard that they’ve already got some of them big bombers of theirs there,’ someone else had chipped in. ‘Huge ruddy great things, they are, about ten times the size of our Lancasters.’

Glen had told Ruthie all about the huge American bombers they had been preparing the new runways for. She shivered now, thinking about them, admitting how relieved she was that Glen would not be flying in them but would instead be based at Burtonwood as a member of one of the support teams. Not that she should be thinking about Glen. Not now. Her steps slowed as she drew closer to home…

Her mother was over her funny spell now, but there would be others – Ruthie knew that, and she also knew that her mum was having them more frequently. The doctor had told her to try not to worry because there was nothing he could do, but how could she not worry? She loved her mother, of course, but sometime she felt so afraid; so worried about what was happening. And so very, very alone now that she had lost Glen. She may not have known him for very long, but her love for him was as strong as though she had known him all her life. She would never love anyone else. She knew that. And even though he had hurt her so badly she would not have wanted to change things so that she would never have known him. There was such a bitter sweetness in her memories of what they had shared. She would cherish those memories in her heart for ever.

She put her key in the front door and unlocked it, stepping into the hall, and then stopping as she heard the sound of voices coming from the kitchen. Her mother’s, and Mrs Brown’s, and…and Glen’s voice: the voice she had been hearing in her dreams at night and her longings during the day as she clung to every tender word he had said to her. Now she was hearing it here; but she couldn’t be!

Feeling dizzy with disbelief, her legs trembling as though they were about to give way, she hurried down the narrow hallway – where her father’s coat still hung on its peg under the stuffed deer’s head, with its branching antlers – and pushed open the
door to the back parlour, her eyes widening at the scene in front of her.

Her mother, her face flushed with happiness, was seated at one side of the small, square table, whilst Glen was seated opposite her with Mrs Brown at the other side. There were tea cups on the table and what looked like a large slab of fruit cake with proper icing on it.

It was Glen who saw her first, breaking off from something he had been saying to her mother to get up clumsily, the tips of his ears betraying his nerves as he looked at her.

‘There you are, Glen! Here she is. I told you she wouldn’t be long,’ Ruthie could hear their neighbour saying chirpily before she turned to Ruthie and told her, with an arch look, ‘Just look who has come looking for you, Ruthie. Been here over an hour, he has, waiting impatiently to see you. Entertained your mum and me a treat, he has, telling us all about his family in America.’

‘Oh, Ruthie, why didn’t you tell me about you and Glen?’ her mother chimed in reproachfully. ‘I apologise for my daughter, Glen. I dare say she wanted to keep you to herself for a little while before she brought you home to meet us, although her dad would have had something to say about that. He wouldn’t have liked at all her seeing you without him knowing. I wish you could have met him, Glen…’ Tears had started to fill her mother’s eyes.

‘There, Mrs Philpott, don’t you go taking on now,’ Mrs Brown was comforting Ruthie’s
mother whilst Glen was also insisting, ‘It isn’t Ruthie’s fault. You mustn’t blame her. Like I was telling you, I would have come in and introduced myself to you after the dance on Saturday, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to end up getting put on a charge and being confined to camp.’

Ruthie couldn’t stop looking at him. She wanted to fill her hungry gaze with the sight of him and go on filling it.

When he came towards her, all she could do was offer him a tremulous half-smile as he took hold of both her hands, squeezing them emotionally.

There was so much she wanted to say to him and so much too she needed to know. Like why he was here after the way he had turned his back on her and walked away.

‘I’ll tell you what, Mrs Philpott,’ Mrs Brown was saying warmly to her mother, ‘why don’t we let these two young ones go for a bit of a walk together whilst you and me get on with clearing up?’

‘But Ruthie hasn’t had her tea yet,’ her mother objected in that little-girl voice that Ruthie had learned to recognise and dread.

‘It’s all right, Mum. I had something to eat before I came home,’ Ruthie fibbed quickly, hating herself for the small deceit but knowing that it was necessary if she was to have the opportunity she desperately needed to talk privately with Glen.

Mrs Brown gave her an approving look, and urged, ‘Off you go then, you two, whilst me and your mam clear up and have a bit of a natter.’

‘Oh, but I want Glen to stay,’ Ruthie’s mother was protesting.

‘He’ll be coming back once he and your Ruthie have had a bit of a chat,’ Mrs Brown soothed her firmly. ‘It’s nearly time for that wireless programme you like, and I reckon that since Glen has bin so generous and bought you such a lovely slab of fruit cake that we might put the kettle on and have another slice.’

‘Oh, yes. I like fruit cake. It was always Mr Philpott’s favourite – did I tell you that?’

It seemed an age before Ruthie and Glen were finally outside, and she was able to release the anxious breath she had been holding. She had determinedly put at least a foot between herself and Glen as they stepped into the Close, but when he reached for her hand, clasping it in his own, she didn’t resist. His hand was so large compared with hers – so very large, in fact, that her hand was lost in it. Lost and yet at the same time somehow so very, very safe.

‘It wasn’t true what you said to my mother, was it?’ she asked him quietly, unable to look at him, and instead studying the tired dullness of the shabby pavement. ‘About not coming in with me, I mean.’

‘No.’

Relieved tears stung her eyes. She would have hated it if he had lied to her.

‘It was because of Mum, wasn’t it?’ she continued in a low voice.

Immediately his hand tightened on hers.

‘I…I can understand what you must have thought when…when you saw her like that. It’s Dad’s death that did it. She was never like this before. They were so close, you see,’ she explained earnestly, ‘and she depended on him so much. The doctor says that she’s gone this way because she just can’t bear him not being here any more. She knows that he’s gone really but sometimes she has to…to pretend that he hasn’t.’ She felt another squeeze on her hand.

‘I…I would have told you.’ Somehow it was important that she made him understand that, and that he didn’t think that she was the kind of girl who would have kept something so important from him. ‘I don’t blame you for walking away like you did, but—’

‘I wanted to stay,’ Glen interrupted her gruffly, ‘but I kinda thought that you didn’t want me there, and then there was your mom. I guess I was afraid that having a stranger around might upset her even more. My dad had this cousin – she’s dead now, God rest her soul – well, she was more of a second cousin really. When she was little she and her kid brother used to play a game of dare, running across the lines down at the railyard where her pa worked, only one day little Joey got his foot caught, and they couldn’t get him out in time. She was fine most of the time, but every now and again she’d get it into her head to go down to the railyard to look for him. Some folks round our town used to reckon she was off her head.’

Ruthie winced.

‘But my mom always used to say that it was God’s way of shielding her from her own pain, and that you never knew what something like that would do to you unless you had to go through it. I guess, in a kinda way, your mom feels the same about your dad as Cousin Laura did about Joey.’

Ruthie made a small choking sound of agreement through the tears that were streaming down her face.

‘Aw…sweetheart, don’t…’ Glen begged her rawly. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’

‘I can’t help it,’ Ruthie sobbed. ‘Your poor cousin. What a truly dreadful thing to have happened, Glen. At least my mother had all those years with my dad. Some days, though, she’s worse than others. The doctor says that he doesn’t know whether or not she’ll ever get properly well,’ she admitted.

Glen squeezed her hand again, and gave her an understanding look before saying, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch before now, but I was waiting for this to arrive.’ As he spoke he released her hand to reach into his jacket pocket for an envelope, which he handed to her.

‘What is it?’ Ruthie asked uncertainly without taking it.

‘It’s a letter from my folks, welcoming you to the family,’ he told her quietly. ‘You know I said that I wrote to them telling them that I’d found the girl I wanted to marry?’

Ruthie nodded disbelievingly.

‘Well, I knew they’d write back, and Mom put
this letter for you in with mine. She said to tell you that you’re to write back and send her some photographs so that she can get to know you ready for when the war is over and I take you home with me.’

‘Oh, Glen.’ Fresh tears filled her eyes and flooded down her cheeks. She had felt so lost and broken-hearted these last few days. They had showed her how deep her feelings for him were, but they had also showed her something else. Something that hadn’t really mattered when she had thought he had walked away from her, but which mattered very much now. All the more so in the light of what he had just been saying to her about his mother.

‘Aren’t you going to open Mom’s letter?’ he urged her.

‘I can’t marry you, Glen,’ Ruthie told him miserably. ‘I just can’t.’

‘You can’t say that,’ he protested. ‘You don’t mean it. You love me. I can see it in your eyes.’

She shook her head. ‘That doesn’t matter. At least it does, because I know I will never ever love anyone else. Oh, Glen, don’t,’ she protested breathlessly, but without any real conviction or denial in her voice when he took hold of her and tugged her into the protective shadow of an overhanging tree and kissed her fiercely.

‘You love me. You’ve just said so,’ he told her thickly when he had stopped. ‘And I sure as hell love you.’

‘I know,’ Ruthie agreed wretchedly, ‘but can’t
you see? I can’t marry you and go back with you to America when the war’s over, Glen. What would happen to my mum?’

They had walked as far as the allotments and although she tried to object when Glen pushed open the gate that led to them she still let him walk her through it and down to a small wooden bench he had spied from the road.

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ she protested. ‘It’s Mr Taylor’s allotment and—’

‘There’s no one here, and if this Mr Taylor should come and ask us to leave, then I’ll explain to him that I needed somewhere to talk to my girl. The only girl for me, Ruthie, because that is what you are.’

She could feel herself trembling as he wound his fingers between her own and then clasped his in her palm.