When the Lights Go On Again. Annie Groves
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from the tube station close to Harrods. Gathering up her handbag and the warm woollen silk-lined stole on permanent loan to her from her mother, Katie made her way downstairs to join her friend.
The American Embassy was situated in Grosvenor Square and within easy walking distance of Cadogan Place, as Gina had already said.
‘I had a wonderful surprise when I got back to my aunt’s this afternoon,’ Gina told Katie as they set out. ‘Leonard telephoned from Devonport. They’re under sailing orders, and of course he couldn’t say where they were going, although my guess is that it has to be Italy, now that we’ve got a toehold in Sicily. It was lovely to hear his voice. Hearing that he’d got some leave coming up would have been even better, of course. I mustn’t be greedy, though. Not after him getting two weeks’ leave when we got married, and a forty-eight-hour pass the other weekend. He couldn’t say outright, but he did hint that he might be home for Christmas. I do hope so. Leonard’s parents living so close to my own means that we could see both families, and, of course, the children. Once the war is over we want them to come and live with us full time, but of course it’s best that they stay where they are for now.’
A pair of smartly dressed American marines were on duty outside the American Embassy, faces fixed in stern expressions, eyes forward. An equally smartly uniformed young woman checked their names off her guest list, in the imposing hallway with its marble busts and highly polished floor, the American flag very much on display.
‘I rang and told them I’d be bringing you with me,’ Gina murmured to Katie, who nodded in response. It was well known that with so many good-time girls on the fringe of London society eager to strike up friendships with the Americans, especially those who were officers, only unattached women who had been vetted were on the official invitation lists.
The American Embassy was very much the hub of the American Military Command in London. Military uniforms outnumbered the diplomatic uniform of city suit and Brooks Brothers shirt almost ten to one, from what Katie could see, as she and Gina stood together just outside the double doors leading into a large reception room, its crimson-papered walls hung with portraits of past presidents, the elegant plastered ceiling and cornices painted white with the detail picked out in gold. Beyond this room a further set of double doors on the opposite wall were open to reveal another room, this one painted a rich royal blue, its windows framed by royal-blue velvet curtains trimmed with gold braid. All very rich and expensive-looking, Katie thought, and not a bit shabby as so many British buildings had become.
A group of what looked like newspapermen were all clustered together on one side of the room, drinks in hand, cameras slung from their shoulders, as they studied the other occupants of the room, a group of military men standing in front of the imposing marble fireplace.
It was easy to see which women were Americans, Katie reflected. All the British women there might have done their best, but their clothes, no matter how smart, did not have the up-to-the-minute freshness and fashion of those sported by the Americans.
‘Ah, Gina, there you are. Dreadful crush, what?’
‘Uncle Rupert, I’m surprised you managed to spot me in this crush,’ Gina laughed as she was enveloped in a bear hug by her relative. ‘Uncle Rupert, I’ve brought Katie with me. She was my bridesmaid.’
‘Of course, remember her well. Delighted to meet you again, m’dear. Dashed pretty girls, both of you. We’ll show these Americans a thing or two, what? What are you drinking? Champagne, I expect. Best drink for pretty girls.’
With that skill possessed by upper-class men of a certain age and confidence, out of nowhere, or so it seemed to Katie, a waiter was summoned to produce two glasses of freshly poured champagne.
‘And where’s that husband of yours, Gina?’
‘I really couldn’t say,’ Gina informed him.
‘That’s right, good girl. Careless talk costs lives and all that. Still enjoying your job? Not getting too many saucy letters to read, I hope?’
Behind her uncle’s back Gina gave Katie a rueful look, which made Katie both want to laugh and at the same time made her feel sad. So many of the letters they had to check did contain the most intimate of messages, sent, though, from the heart, in most cases, from men desperately missing the one they loved and equally desperate to assure them of their love and be reassured in turn that they were loved.
It wasn’t long before Gina’s uncle Rupert had introduced them both to an American colonel of his own generation, who announced immediately that he must introduce two such charming girls to his junior officers, adding with a smile, ‘Because if I don’t, they will think that I’m keeping you to myself, and then I reckon I could be in danger of having to subdue a mutiny.’
Two minutes later Gina and Katie were almost surrounded by half a dozen young Americans in army uniform,
‘Definitely Ivy League,’ Gina murmured in a swift aside to Katie. ‘That’s the equivalent of our Eton and Sandhurst cadets.’
Katie nodded. Her father’s pre-war career as the conductor of some of London’s most famous bands, and the fact that she had always accompanied him when he played, to help him with all the practical aspects of his work, meant that she had had enough contact with the upper classes and the well-to-do not to feel awkward or intimidated in the company of people from a social class above her own.
The young Americans might be inclined to be a little boastful and a little thoughtless about how a British girl might feel hearing them talking about how they were going to win the war, but Katie was wise enough to put their comments down to excitement and inexperience, although she noticed that Gina looked rather nettled, and so wasn’t surprised when her friend excused them both with the fib that they had to ‘catch up with some friends’.
‘I know they are our allies, but I hate it when they are so beastly about our boys,’ she told Katie crossly once they had escaped. ‘Talking like that about showing Hitler what real fighting men are and showing us a good time.’
‘I don’t think they meant any real harm,’ Katie tried to pacify her. ‘They’re only young and, unlike our boys, they don’t really know what war is all about yet.’ Unlike Luke. He knew what war was all about. Luke! Hadn’t she made herself a promise that she would not allow him into her thoughts?
‘I do wish you could fall in love with Eddie, Katie.’
Gina’s plaintive words made Katie smile.
‘Eddie doesn’t really want any girl to fall in love with him. He just wants to have a good time with lots of different girls.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Gina told her. ‘Eddie is a flirt, but he’s really keen on you, and I mean really keen. If you were to give him the least bit of encouragement, I suspect he’d have an engagement ring on your finger as fast as anything. He might be a flirt but you can be sure that he knows that he has a duty to provide an heir for the title.’
‘That’s nonsense and you know it. Eddie’s parents will expect him to marry a very different sort of girl from me, and someone from a similar background to his own.’
Katie said this without any feeling of resentment. In her opinion it was only natural, with Eddie’s father having a title, Eddie’s family should want him to marry someone who understood that sort of thing.
‘Once I dare say they would have done,’ Gina agreed, ‘but right now I think they’d just be glad to see him married. As I’ve just said, if anything were to happen to him, there’s no one to succeed him to the title, and there won’t be until he marries and has a son. Not that anyone can get Eddie to talk seriously about that. He maintains that nothing’s going to happen to him because he’s got Leonard to keep an eye on him.’
‘I like Eddie, Gina,’ Katie answered, ‘but that’s all. However, even if I loved him I don’t think we’d be right for one another. Our backgrounds are so very different. Now, whilst the war’s on, that kind of thing might not matter but once the war is over it will be different.’