Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [38]
‘His leg in plaster, you say?’ The doorman was a veteran from the Great War and a bit hard of hearing. ‘We’ll be seeing plenty of them before too long, and worse an’ all, if you was to ask me.’
Grace tried not to feel impatient. She looked up and down the busy street and then across the road, shading her eyes from the sun, and then felt her heart turn over as she saw Seb walking into a café further down Ranelegh Street.
Thanking the doorman, she ran across the road, dodging the traffic, just managing to catch up with him as he opened the café door.
The moment he heard her calling his name he turned towards her.
‘I was in the sewing room. Susan came in and told me what you’d done. Well, at least she told me what had happened and I knew it must be you and so … oh, Seb …’ Her voice broke and she started to tremble.
‘Come on, let’s go and have a cup of tea, or will that get you into trouble?’
‘No. Mrs James is off today. She’s the manageress and she’s a bit of a tartar. Rosemary is in charge and she won’t mind if I take my dinner hour.’
Five minutes later they were seated at a small table amongst the other shoppers, drinking the tea Seb had had to pour for them both because Grace’s hands had been shaking too much.
He had insisted on ordering her some welsh rarebit as well, saying that she looked as though she needed something to eat.
‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t deserve it. What I did was wrong and I should be punished for it.’
‘It was wrong,’ Seb agreed, ‘but you weren’t entirely to blame.’ Privately he felt that most of the blame lay with Grace’s snobbish aunt and uncle and her dreadful cousin. ‘I’d planned to have a word with your manageress and offer to cover the cost of the dress, thinking that you would have handed it over to her before I could get to speak with her.’
‘I would have done if she’d been in,’ Grace admitted. ‘Susan grabbed it off me before I could stop her and said she was going to put it back. I told her she mustn’t but she said if I owned up it would get her the sack as well as me. I couldn’t believe it when she came rushing into the sewing room and said that someone had bought it. It made me feel sick with guilt to think that she’d let someone buy it, knowing what had happened to it, but then she said about the man who had bought it having his leg in plaster and I just knew that it must be you.’ Her eyes were shining with gratitude and relief.
‘You still shouldn’t have done it, though. I don’t deserve so much kindness. I’ll pay you back of course, but …’
‘You will pay me back, Grace,’ Seb agreed, suddenly becoming serious, ‘but not with a few shillings a week that you can’t really spare. A lot of men like me are going to need a lot of young women like you before this war is over. Doing your nurse’s training is far more important than paying me back. This country needs girls like you.’
‘Oh, Seb.’
‘Now I want you to promise me that you won’t go and make a silly martyr of yourself by confessing to something that no one else needs to know about now. And I want you to promise me too that you’ll work hard to become the best nurse you can be.’
‘I promise,’ Grace told him fervently.
‘Good. Now eat your lunch before it goes cold.’
Obediently Grace did as he had told her although she wasn’t really hungry. However, whereas before she had been too miserable and upset to eat, now she was too excited and overjoyed. She gazed at Seb with something close to hero worship. How lucky she was to have met such a wonderful person. She would never forget him. Never. And she would do as he had told her and work as hard as she could at her training.
They parted on the pavement outside the café, turning in opposite directions. Grace was halfway across the road when she changed her mind and turned back, running down the street after Seb. He stopped and turned round when he