The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [35]
‘I’d like to walk you home,’ he began awkwardly, ‘but, see, we’ve been told not to do that.’
‘Oh, no, you couldn’t anyway,’ Ruthie told him, both horrified and excited by the suggestion.
‘Well, will you let me see you again then? I mean here, perhaps…or I could come and call on your folks…introduce myself to them…’
Ruthie stared at him whilst her heart turned over inside her chest.
‘What I mean is that, well, I can see you’re not the sort of girl…that is…’
‘Hey, buddy,’ another GI called out in a loud voice. ‘Quit whispering sweet nothings in her ear and get your ass over here. Sarge says we’ve got to leave in five. And you can go and tell Walter over there,’ he jerked his head in the direction of Jess and her partner, ‘the same.’
‘Oh, poor you,’ Jess was saying sympathetically to the young GI who had asked her to dance. ‘You must miss her so very much.’ He had spent virtually the whole time they had been dancing together telling her about his ‘girl back home’ and how miserable he was about the fact that he hadn’t had the courage to propose to her before ‘shipping out’.
‘You can write to her, though,’ Jess tried to comfort him.
‘Yeah, I know that, but it ain’t exactly the same. A guy can’t tell a girl he loves her nearly so well when she ain’t there for him to hold. Would you like to see her photo?’ he asked Jess eagerly.
Nodding, Jess peered dutifully at the photograph of the pretty but very young-looking brunette.
‘Her folks kinda hinted to me that they thought we was too young to get serious.’ Walter was telling her, when Jess saw Ruthie hurrying over with her partner.
‘Jerry said to tell you it’s time to go,’ Ruthie’s partner told Walter.
‘Poor boy,’ Jess commented to Ruthie as they watched the two men go to join their comrades. ‘He misses his girl at home.’
Diane glanced at her watch. Her head was throbbing dreadfully.
‘Isn’t that your friend over there?’ Jess suddenly asked her, nudging her and pointing to the other side of the dance floor. ‘Wi’ that GI who looks like he thinks he’s God’s gift.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Diane confirmed.
Myra was laughing at something her companion had said and looked in no hurry to leave, Diane noted. Nor did she seem at all concerned about her whereabouts. Somehow Diane wasn’t surprised. Her instincts had told her right from the word go that Myra was only striking up a friendship with her for her own benefit.
‘I’d better go over and join her,’ she told Jess, adding warmly, ‘I really am grateful to you all for helping me the way you did. Heaven knows what would have happened to me if you hadn’t. Something tells me that I certainly wouldn’t have made it back up Edge Hill Lane in one piece.’
‘Up Edge Hill Lane? Is that where your billet is?’ Jess asked. ‘Only Ruthie lives up there, don’t you? That’s good, then. You can walk back together.’
‘I don’t know how far up you live, but we’re on Chestnut Close,’ Diane told Ruthie.
‘Yes, that’s where I live as well.’
‘There you are then. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?’ Jess beamed, looking as pleased as though she personally had arranged for them to live so conveniently close to one another.
‘There you are. Now you’ll have someone to walk home with,’ she told Ruthie happily before telling Diane breezily, ‘Ruthie here’s not so used to looking out of herself as me and the others. Looked like she was scared to death, she did, when she got on the bus for the munitions factory for the first time.’
Diane gave Ruthie a sympathetic smile. Her head still hurt but she was beginning to feel much better than she had done.
‘We don’t stay on until the end,’ Jess continued informatively, ‘on account of the way some of the lads hang around looking for a girl. It gives them the wrong idea, if you know what I mean.’
Diane knew exactly what she meant.
‘I’d better go over and tell my friend that I’m ready to leave