The Grafton Girls. Annie Groves
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her.
Beryl had written that she was missing her, but that she understood why she had felt she had to go.
‘To be honest, I think you’ve done the right thing. I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but you might as well know the truth.’ Diane gripped the letter tightly. Her stomach had started to churn in anticipation of a blow to come.
Kit isn’t the man I thought he was, Di, dropping you to go chasing after one girl after another, and getting them and himself talked about by keeping them out late, driving them all over the countryside. You’re better off without him and that’s a fact. I’ve heard that he never dates the same girl twice and it’s been all over the camp that, last weekend, he was found rip-roaring drunk in a country pub with a girl he’d picked up from somewhere. The landlord threw them out and threatened to call the police, and it was only because of his pals that Kit managed to get back to camp safely. Seems that someone asked him about you and where you were and he said he neither knew nor cared, and that he wanted to have some fun with the kind of girls who knew what fun was. He’s getting himself a reputation for being a real party man, if you know what I mean. You were right to give yourself a fresh start.
Diane closed her fist over the letter, crumpling it up, willing herself not to give way to her emotions in front of Myra. So Kit didn’t care about her, did he? Well, she already knew that and she certainly didn’t care about him. And when it came to having fun, they would see which of them could do the most of that, she decided fiercely, as she headed for the stairs.
SEVEN
‘Do you think I’ll be all right going dancing like this, Mrs Brown, only I haven’t got anything else?’ Ruthie asked uncertainly as she stood in the kitchen waiting for her next-door neighbour’s verdict. Her mother was in the parlour listening to the wireless, lost in the world to which she had retreated. Ruthie did not know which she dreaded the most: her mother’s blank silences when she hardly seemed to know her, or her tearful clinging pleas not to leave her.
‘I don’t look right, do I?’ she guessed as she saw the uncertainty in the older woman’s face as she studied her heavy shoes and ankle socks teamed with the only pretty dress she had, a school-girlish pink gingham cotton with white collar and cuffs.
‘Well, you look very nice, love, but p’raps more like you was going to Sunday school than a dance. But there,’ she continued hastily when she saw Ruthie’s face fall, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you wear. They go in all sorts these days, so I’ve heard – uniforms an’ all. You just go and enjoy yourself.’
Ruthie was the last to reach the Grafton, anxiously hurrying down the queue waiting for the doors to open, when a hand suddenly came out and grabbed hold of her.
‘Oh!’ she exhaled in relief when she realised it belonged to Jess.
‘Where’ve you bin?’ Jess scolded her good-naturedly. ‘We was just beginning to think you wasn’t coming.’
‘Well, whatever she was doing, it wasn’t worrying about what to wear,’ one of the other girls quipped quietly, causing a ripple of laughter to run through those near enough in the queue to hear her. ‘Did you tell her it was fancy dress or summat, Jess?’
‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ Jess comforted Ruthie. ‘They don’t mean any harm. You’re frock’s a pretty colour. Suits you, it does.’
‘I didn’t know what to wear. I haven’t got…’ Tears filled Ruthie’s eyes.
‘There now, don’t go getting yourself all upset. Your frock isn’t that bad, and if you had a different pair of shoes and took off them ankle socks and put a bit of rouge and lipstick on…’
‘And took them slides out of her hair and undid that plait and tried to look like she were eighteen and not fourteen. They’ll never let her in looking like that, Jess,’ Mel warned sharply.
‘Of course they will. If she’s old enough to be working on munitions then I’m bloody sure she’s old enough to go dancing,’ Jess defended Ruthie stoutly, adding, ‘Here, Polly, you always bring a spare pair of shoes wi’ you. Hand ’em over here, and let’s see if they fit Ruthie.’
‘I’m not giving her me best heels,’ a pretty blonde girl with large blue eyes protested sulkily.
‘Well, give me them you’re wearing now and you put the heels on,’ was Jess’s response, and somehow or other, Ruthie found herself persuaded out of her lace-ups and ankle socks and into a pair of scuffed white sandals.
‘Now for your hair. Lucy, you’re a dab hand with a comb. Come and see what you can do,’ Jess commanded.
There was no use her objecting, Ruthie could see that; a crowd of young women had gathered round her giggling as they enthusiastically offered their advice.
‘Anyone got any scissors?’ Lucy called out. ‘Only if I’m to do a decent job, I’m going to have to cut her hair.’
‘I’ve got a pair,’ someone called up. ‘Allus tek ’em wi’ me when I go out just in case some chap tries to get too fresh.’
‘Go on with yer,’ another girl laughed. ‘What yer going to do wi’ ’em – cut it off?’
Ruthie could feel her face getting redder and redder from a combination of trepidation and embarrassment.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jess assured her, giving her hand a small squeeze. ‘My, but I bet you never thought this’d be happening to you when you decided to go working on munitions,’ she laughed. ‘You’d have run a mile if you had, wouldn’t you? How come you’re still going out dressed like a Sunday school kid, anyway, Ruthie?’
It was impossible to resist her questions or to be offended by them, and somehow or other Ruthie discovered that she was telling her what she had thought she would never be able to tell anyone.
‘My dad was killed in the May bombing and…well, my mother…’ She paused, feeling guilty about discussing her mother to someone who was still relatively a stranger, no matter how easy she was to talk to.
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.’
‘Hold still, will yer?’ Lucy was complaining. ‘How am I expected to give her a decent style if she keeps moving her head around, Jess? See, that fringe I just give her has gone all lopsided.’
‘You’d better get a move on, Lucy; they’re opening the doors,’ someone further down the queue warned.
Ruthie looked so apprehensive that Jess couldn’t help but laugh. She was such an oddity, so obviously not the sort to be working on munitions, that Jess’s tender heart had gone out to her the minute she had seen her.
Jess might be an only child but she had grown up surrounded by the busyness of a large extended family. Her mother was one of ten and her dad one of thirteen. The whole family lived close to one another on the same narrow streets off the Edge Hill Road, but nearer to the city centre than Chestnut Close, where Ruthie lived and which was considered to be a ‘better’ working-class area, because of its proximity to Wavertree. But although there may not have been much money around whilst Jess had been growing up, there had been plenty of love. Her father had been a jolly, good-natured man, always ready for a joke and a laugh. He and his brothers were rag-and-bone men, and he’d been proud of the fact that his patter had housewives favouring him rather than anyone else.
‘Got to ’ave the right touch, our Jess,’ he had often told her, giving her a saucy wink. ‘That’s how I managed to steal your mam away from under your Uncle Colin’s nose. Mad for her, he was, but it were me she married.’
‘Give over, do, Samuel Hunt,’ her mother had always chided him. ‘Don’t you go filling her head with all that nonsense. And as for your Colin -all he ever did was ask me out the once.’
There had always been a lot of banter between her parents, both of them