The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [4]
‘Now I’m very fussy about the state of me bathroom – I won’t have no makeup nor any of that fake leg stuff all over everything. Baths are once a week, unless you want to pay for extra. You’ll get your breakfast, and a meal before you go out when you do your night shift. But there’s to be no food taken upstairs to your room. And no followers neither,’ she added firmly. ‘I won’t have no truck with any of that kind of goings-on.’
They had reached the landing and Diane reflected ruefully that beneath Mrs Lawson’s soft outer plumpness lay a core of pure steel.
‘The lady wot you’ll be sharing with is married. Only bin here a couple of weeks herself, she has.’
‘This is the room.’ She gave a small knock on the door and called out, ‘It’s only me, Mrs Stone, duck, bringing up the new lady.’
Diane heard the sound of the door lock being pulled back, and then the door opened.
‘I’ll leave you two to get to know one another whilst I make you both a cuppa,’ Mrs Lawson announced.
‘Not for me, thanks, Mrs L. I’ve got to go soon,’ said the room’s occupant.
‘Right you are, duck,’ said the landlady, leaving Diane and the girl now seated on one of the room’s two narrow single beds to study one another surreptitiously in the slightly awkward silence that followed her exit.
‘I’m Diane – Di,’ Diane introduced herself.
‘Myra Stone,’ the other girl responded.
Diane had never seen a more stunningly beautiful nor sensuously voluptuous-looking young woman. She had the kind of looks that would have turned men’s heads in the street. She had glossy brown curls, and brown eyes that should have looked warm but which instead held an expression of cynical brittleness that both shocked Diane and made her feel wary. Somehow that voluptuous body and those cold eyes just did not match up with one another.
‘You’d better come in and shut the door. I’ve already bagsied this bed,’ Myra told her, indicating the better positioned of the two beds. ‘And I’d better warn you now that there’s next to no wardrobe or drawer space left.’
‘I dare say I’ll be able to manage,’ Diane responded lightly. ‘It can’t be worse than we had at camp. I haven’t lived out before.’
‘Well, you won’t have to bother about curfews or anything like that,’ Myra told her, ‘and the social life’s pretty good up here, especially now that the Yanks have arrived. Have you dated any Yanks yet?’
Diane stiffened. Already a certain amount of competitive hostility had developed between the RAF flyers and the newly arrived Americans. The readiness of some girls to accept ‘dates’, as the Americans called them, from the newcomers had resulted in them being branded as ‘disloyal’, and there had even been incidents of outright hostility, with them being accused of favouring the Americans because of the luxuries they could provide.
‘You’ll be working at Derby House, I expect?’
‘Yes,’ Diane agreed, as she removed her gloves and her jacket, and then lifted her hand to make sure that her blonde hair was still smoothed neatly into its chignon. Her fingers were slender and fine-boned, her wrist blue-veined under creamy skin. Her colouring was more Nordic than English rose, and her father had always teased her that her blonde hair and blue