The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [152]
Ten minutes later, as they stood wrapped in one another’s arms, Jess looked up into Billy’s eyes, her own bright with love and happiness.
‘You’ll have to marry me now,’ Billy said with great satisfaction, ‘’cos Mrs Harris, three doors down from your ma, has just walked past and seen us. By the time you get home the whole street will know.’
Jess assumed a serious expression. ‘You’re right there, Billy, there’s no help for it now. We’ve got to get wed. Not that I want to wed you, of course. Not if you’re going to keep on kissing me like that.’
‘Like what? Like this, do you mean?’ Billy queried.
‘Mmmm…yes…just like that,’ Jess sighed happily as she snuggled closer to him.
The evening’s visitors were filing into the ward. Myra looked towards the door, her heart thumping heavily as it had done every visiting time for the last few nights since she had received Jim’s letter.
Knowing that he was due home and planning to visit her, Diane had told her that she and Mrs Lawson, her only two other visitors, would time their visits so as not to come during proper visiting hours until after she had seen Jim.
‘Not that seeing him is going to do me much good,’ Myra had told Diane. How could it do, she reflected miserably now. Jim had already as good as told her he was going to agree to a divorce, and that was the last thing she wanted or needed now, with no lover to turn to and an unwanted baby on the way. Agree to it – he’d be the one forcing a divorce on her once he found out what had happened, and no mistake, Myra admitted.
Her stomach, already tied in knots was even more so as she saw Jim’s familiar figure coming through the doorway, his cap under his arm, his greatcoat hanging off his too-thin, desert-worn frame. His sunburned face was creased into an expression of self-conscious embarrassment as he clutched some flowers and tried not to look at the women in their beds as he made his way along the ward.
‘Jim,’ Myra called out to attract his attention.
‘My, your ’usband looks a fine chap,’ the elderly woman in the bed next to her own leaned across to whisper. ‘One of them desert rats, is he – Monty’s boys?’
Myra had just finished confirming that Jim was indeed, when Jim himself reached her bedside.
‘Sit down, Jim,’ she told him after a nurse had bustled up to remove his flowers. ‘I…I got your letter.’
‘Aye, and I got the one the ’ospital sent me, saying as you had been in a right bad way,’ he told her. ‘Got a bone to pick wi’ them, I have. They should have let me know the minute you was brought in here, instead of waiting until you was on the mend. I’d have put in for compassionate leave and been home long before now if they had.’
‘I said not to,’ Myra told him, avoiding looking at him.
‘Well, they had no business paying any attention. It’s not right, me not being here, me being your husband, and all. Give me a right old shock, it did, when the letter came and I read it.’ He had reached for her hand and somehow or other, without meaning to, Myra had let him take it. Now suddenly, with her hand held firmly within the warm safe clasp of his, her throat had started to ache with pent-up tears. She could feel them pressing against the backs on her eyes, and despite all her attempts to prevent it doing so, she could feel one of them escaping and running down her face.
Surreptitiously she tried to brush it away, but Jim saw her.
‘Aw, come on,’ he chivvied her. ‘I haven’t come here to start upsetting you and reading the riot act, Myra. If it’s a divorce you want then—’ he broke off as Myra started to sob, her whole body shaking convulsively.
‘Gawd, woman, what the hell have I said now,’ he protested. ‘I’m giving you what you was wanting and you start bawling your eyes out.’
‘I’m pregnant.’
Myra expected Jim to let go of her hand immediately but he didn’t. Instead he gripped it a bit harder.
‘This chap, is it?’ he asked her valiantly. ‘This GI you’ve taken up with that wants to marry you?