The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [33]
Immediately Ruthie rushed to join her.
‘You get under that arm, Ruthie, and I’ll take this one…’
‘Why don’t you leave her? Why should we help her?’ Emily demanded.
‘Well, it doesn’t look as though anyone else is going to, poor soul. Come on, Em, and you too, Lucy. She’s in a bad way.’
‘Well, it’s her own fault.’
Somehow between them they managed to get her into the ladies’ – and only just in time.
‘Gawd, if she don’t stop heaving soon, I’m going to be doing the same meself,’ Lucy complained.
‘Go and tell them at the bar that we need some water, Lucy,’ Jess commanded.
‘It’s all right, you’ve just had a bit too much to drink, that’s all,’ she tried to comfort Diane, who was now moaning weakly.
‘A bit too much!’ Emily muttered firmly. ‘More like a bloody hell of a lot too much.’
Diane shivered. Her stomach and her throat ached from being sick, but her head was starting to clear. She heard what Emily said and she shook her head. ‘All I had was a shandy,’ she told her.
‘A shandy? Give over, a shandy never got anyone in the state you’re in, staggering all over the dance floor and then trying it on with that RAF chap. No wonder that GI was giving you a right dirty look.’
Diane stared at her. She had no memory of any of that. ‘I can’t…are you sure it was me?’ she protested.
Emily laughed. ‘Hark at her. Of course it was bloody you. Why the hell do you think Miss Save the World here,’ she nodded in Jess’s direction, ‘forced us to bring you in here?’
‘You and your friend was sitting with a table of GIs and they was passing a bottle around,’ Jess offered, seeing how distressed Diane was becoming. ‘Maybe they slipped summat into your shandy.’
‘I…I don’t know. My friend brought me the drink…’
‘Here, I’ve got her some water,’ Lucy announced breathlessly, bursting into the cloakroom. ‘There’s a real to-do going on out there, wi’ some folk saying as how she ought to be told to leave, and others saying it were them GIs fault for giving her the drink in the first place.’
Diane looked apprehensively towards the door. How could she show her face out there? She was so ashamed.
‘How are you feeling now?’ Jess asked her as she handed her the glass of water.
‘A lot better.’
‘We came here to have a good time, not stand around in the cloakroom playing at nurses,’ Elsie complained.
‘If you’re feeling a bit better, then why don’t you come and sit wi’ us for a while? Your friend must be wondering where you are.’
The last thing Diane wanted was to go back into the dance hall, but she didn’t have the energy to protest.
Five minutes later she was being urged into a chair, with Jess standing protectively at one side of her and Ruthie uncertainly at the other.
‘Mind you drink plenty of water to flush your insides out. That’s what my dad always used to do when he’d had a skinful,’ Jess told her firmly. ‘And no dancing neither.’
Diane shuddered and closed her eyes. She never wanted to see a dance floor again, never mind take to one, not after what she had been told she had been doing. Vague flashes of memory were starting to seep back: an RAF uniform, an angry male face, an angry American male voice. The major…
Jess reached across and gave Ruthie’s hand a shake. ‘There’s a GI on that table over there bin watching you for the last five minutes, Ruthie. Bet you he comes over and asks you to dance.’
‘No,’ Ruthie protested in a panic. ‘No, he mustn’t. I can’t dance.’
‘Don’t be daft, of course you can. He looks a nice lad, an’ all.’
The girls turned to look at the table in question, where upwards of a couple of dozen GIs were crowded together, either seated or standing.
‘Give him a bit of a smile, Ruthie,’ Jess urged her.
Tongue-tied and blushing, Ruthie could only shake her head.
‘Well, he’s coming over anyway,’ Jess laughed.
‘And he’s not on his own. He’s bringing another chap with him as well,’ Lucy announced.
Ruthie could only make a small breathless sound when she realised that Jess