The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [114]
‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to be with me,’ she told him as they went inside. ‘Ignoring me like that in the taxi. If that’s some kind of New York custom…’
However, as they stepped into the ornate foyer to the hotel, her annoyance was forgotten, overwhelmed by the elegance of her surroundings. From somewhere she could hear the faint sound of piano music and the even fainter chink of china, coming from the large room she could just glimpse at the end of the corridor. From where she was standing she could just about see some of the ornate plasterwork and one of the mirrors reflecting the group of women seated on a velvet-covered banquette beneath it, talking and sipping their tea. One of the women – about her own age – was wearing the uniform of a Wren officer, whilst the others were wearing elegant afternoon frocks and costumes. They were all wearing smart hats, and they all had refined cut-glass accents. As Myra watched, one of them removed a cigarette holder from her handbag and fixed a dark-coloured cigarette into it, which Myra guessed must be a black Russian cigarette. One of the other women said archly, ‘Sobranies, my dear. Aren’t you the lucky one? I smoked my last pack for ever ago.’
Laughing, the woman smoking put down her cigarette to drawl, ‘My dear, all one needs is to know the right people. Do let me introduce you to our little man.’
The Wren officer frowned and told them both coolly, ‘Personally, I’d never knowingly buy anything black market.’
An approaching waiter cut off Myra’s view of them but what she had seen had been enough to have her spinning round, her eyes bright with excited pleasure.
‘Oh, Nick, this is wonderful,’ she told him impulsively.
‘It sure is, hon,’ he agreed.
Naturally, given the fact that they weren’t actually married, she left it to Nick to go to announce their arrival and check them in, seating herself demurely on one of the elegant sofas to wait for him.
He wasn’t gone very long, returning grinning and holding up a set of keys.
‘Suite one-o-one. Com’ on, babe, let’s go and hit that mattress.’
‘It’s tea time,’ Myra protested, pouting, ‘and I’m hungry.’
‘Yeah, I’m hungry too, sugar, but it ain’t for “tea”.’
There was a warning note in his voice, and a look in his eyes that Myra knew it would not be wise to ignore. She wasn’t looking forward to what she knew lay ahead. The physical act of sex was just that, so far as she was concerned: a physical act, and one that, if the truth were known, she did not really care for and certainly did not enjoy. It was simply a part of what she had to offer a man in exchange for what she wanted from him. She had never experienced the urges she had heard other women describing, and she didn’t want to. She couldn’t imagine why any woman would want to. After all, controlling a man meant controlling oneself as well, and not being swept away by ‘passion’ and letting him get the upper hand. Right now she would far rather have been sitting down to afternoon tea, wearing a pretty frock and showing off her new ring, knowing that other women were looking at her with envy and their men with a desire that would make the women even more resentful of her. Myra liked knowing that other women thought of her as a threat. It meant that she had a power over them, and she liked that. Right now, though, she felt more sulky than powerful. She might have wanted Nick to herself, but that wasn’t because she wanted to spend the weekend alone with him in a hotel suite.
‘You said we were going to have fun,’ she reminded him with a little girl pout. ‘I thought you meant you’d be taking me to the theatre and out dancing…so that we could celebrate our engagement.’
‘Yeah, yeah, and so we will, but right now the kind of fun I want is the kind that comes with a double bed and a beautiful broad.’
Diane sat on the tartan rug, within view of the pretty small lake at Ellesmere, the little town almost on the borders of Cheshire and Wales. Lee had driven her through it when he had been looking for billets, although in reality it was too far out