The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [109]
Diane had known, of course, that there would be something like this to endure; had known it from the minute the major released her after that kiss. What was more, she had been preparing herself for this conversation, but what she had not been preparing herself for was that the major would come here to see her. But then she was not really familiar with the behaviour of guilty married men anxious to make sure that their misdemeanour wasn’t going to have unwanted repercussions, was she?
‘Our landlady doesn’t allow us to have male visitors,’ she began primly, but Major Saunders refused to be put off, shaking his head in rejection of her words and placing one foot in the open doorway and one hand on the open door itself. With those shoulders he probably wouldn’t have any problem at all in bursting open the door, if necessary, Diane decided as she added with what she hoped sounded like cool self-possession, ‘There really wasn’t any need for you to go to the trouble of coming to see me, Major. I’m not a green young girl, you know.’ Just to underline her point, she lifted her chin and told him determinedly, ‘Let’s not beat about the bush, shall we? I expect you’ve come here to warn me against reading anything foolish into what happened between us yesterday, but I can assure you that a warning isn’t necessary—’
‘The hell it isn’t,’ the major interrupted her savagely, causing a hint of betraying pink colour to flush her face, but other than that Diane managed to hold on to her control. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be intimidated or silenced by his anger.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she continued. ‘I know exactly why you’ve come here and what you want to say to me.’
‘Is that a fact!’
Diane took a deep breath, ignoring the grim look she could see darkening his eyes. Avoiding looking at his eyes altogether would be a good idea, she told herself since, as she had just discovered, it was impossible for her to look at them now without remembering the shocking surge of emotion that had gripped her when she had looked up into them and seen how different they could look.
‘You’ve come here to remind me that you have a wife and that you are a married man. Furthermore, no doubt, you want me to understand that you intend to remain married. You want to tell me that the simple act of kissing me means nothing to you and that I would be wise to make sure that it means nothing to me. You don’t want to hurt me, of course, but you feel you have a duty to make the situation absolutely plain to me. Since we may on occasion have to see one another through the course of our service to our countries, it makes sense to clear the air now so that there won’t be any misunderstandings. We are both professionals, both old enough to realise that sometimes things happen in wartime that cannot be related to our lives or our real feelings outside the war arena. These “things” are best forgotten by both parties since they mean nothing. A brief kiss shared in a moment of tension is not something you feel proud being a party to, but it did happen, and therefore you feel obliged to make sure that I am not harbouring any foolish ideas…’
She was running out of breath, and out of courage, Diane admitted, and the major’s silence was unnerving her so much that she was starting to feel slightly shaky. But she wasn’t going to stop until she had made it totally clear to him that he had no need to worry that she might have been silly enough to think that his kiss ‘meant something’. She took another deep breath and then concluded hurriedly, ‘In short, Major, you want us both to behave towards one another as though that k—as though what happened between us did not happen. Well, that’s fine by me. In fact, you could have saved yourself the trouble of coming round here because the truth is that since it didn’t mean anything whatsoever to me I had as good as forgotten the whole incident anyway.’
There, she had done it. Diane was so engrossed in her own relief that she was totally unprepared for what happened next.