The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [104]
‘For pity’s sake, make him stop it,’ she screamed frantically to Myra, as Glen pushed past her, throwing himself between the other man and Walter’s now inert body, and received a heavy kick in the groin himself for doing so.
From further up the street Ruthie heard the sound of running feet and the sharp shrill noise of a whistle. White-faced, she saw with relief that several policemen were running towards them.
‘What’s going on here?’ a sergeant, Ruthie recognised, demanded as he reached them.
‘Oh, Officer, please…this man needs help,’ Ruthie wept, watching anxiously as two of the policemen hurried to Walter’s side.
Glen was sitting on the pavement beside him, having just been sick. Worriedly, Ruthie went to his side, trying to offer him what comfort she could.
The sergeant frowned and looked over to where Nick and Myra were standing together on the pavement.
‘Leave the cops to me,’ Nick mouthed warningly to Myra.
‘I’m sorry about this, sir,’ Nick announced respectfully. ‘I did try to stop them. But I guess when two guys are determined to have a fight over a woman, especially when one of them has been insulting the other’s girl—’
‘Sarge, I reckon we’re going to need an ambulance,’ one of the policemen interrupted. ‘One of these guys is in a pretty bad way.’
‘So you and this young lady aren’t with the others then?’ the sergeant asked Nick.
‘No, we were just walking down the street minding our own business and talking about our trip to London, weren’t we, hon?’ he asked Myra. He had tucked her arm through his own and now when he smiled at her he gave it a hard squeeze.
‘Oh, yes…’
‘So what happened exactly? Were they fighting when you saw them?’
‘Not fighting, but it looked like they were exchanging some pretty strong words. The younger guy had his hand on the other guy’s girl’s arm and, well, I guess that was what sparked him off. Of course I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t get them to listen. Seems to me there was some kind of vendetta going on between the two of them from the way the older guy was going at it.’
He broke off to glance at his watch, then said to Myra, ‘Hey, honey, just look at the time. We’re gonna miss that train of ours if we don’t run. You know what, Sergeant? I reckon this is a job for the army’s MPs, if you don’t mind me saying so. They know how to deal with this kind of thing.’
‘Thank you, sir. Now if you’ll both just give me your names and where you can be found, I can send you on your way.’
Ruthie hadn’t even realised that Myra and her partner had gone until the sergeant crouched down beside her where she was worriedly dabbing at the blood still pouring from Glen’s nose. His eye was half closed and his split lip was swelling up, whilst poor Walter looked even worse.
‘Harry’s run down to the ARP post to tell them to send a runner for an ambulance,’ one of two policemen standing with them told the sergeant.
‘Well, you’d better go after him and tell them to alert the American MPs as well,’ the sergeant told him grimly before squatting down beside Glen and saying curtly, ‘Now I appreciate that this young lady is your girl, but that’s no reason to go half killing some lad.’
Ruthie stared at him, her eyes rounding. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong,’ she protested. ‘It wasn’t my Glen who—’
‘Sarge,’ the policeman who was bending over Walter broke in urgently. ‘Come and take a look. I reckon this lad here’s condition is more serious than we thought.’
PART THREE
August 1942
TWENTY-ONE
Normally she looked forward to her day off, Diane admitted, especially on a sunny Saturday like this, but on this occasion she would have given anything to be at work with the