The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [52]
‘Aw, Ruthie…’
The touch of Jess’s hand on her arm and the sympathy in her voice made Ruthie’s eyes fill with tears.
‘You mustn’t feel like that. I’m sure it’s the last thing your mam would want. And my guess is too that your mam would want you to go out and ’ave a bit of fun.’
When Ruthie continued to look uncertain, Jess reminded her firmly, ‘Anyway, I thought you said that a neighbour had offered to sit in with your mam?’
‘Yes, yes, she has.’
‘There you are, then. There’s nothing for you to worry about, is there?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Ruthie agreed doubtfully.
‘Come on, you two,’ Polly urged them. ‘I’m gagging for a drink, me throat is that dry.’
‘That’s because you never stop talking,’ Mel teased her.
Laughing and ribbing one another, they made their way to one of the tables, quickly settling themselves down around it and then divvying up one and sixpence each for their drinks ‘kitty’.
‘No, Ruthie, you only need to put half of that in.’ Jess stopped Ruthie before she dropped her one and six into the empty tobacco tin Lucy had produced. ‘You only drink lemonade, after all.’
‘Perhaps we should teach her to drink summat a bit stronger,’ Mel suggested. ‘That way she’ll practise and so not get herself into the state that Diane got into last week.’
‘No, it’s all right. I’d rather have lemonade,’ Ruthie assured her hastily.
She could well imagine how horrified her father would have been to have her coming home smelling of drink. He had been so old-fashioned that he hadn’t even approved of women smoking. Now, with her tummy cramping with nervous flutters of anxiety both in case Glen appeared and asked her to dance and in case he didn’t, Ruthie admitted that she would have welcomed the soothing action of lighting up a cigarette. She had watched enviously the previous week as the other girls lit theirs. They had looked so sophisticated, drawing on the cigarettes and then exhaling.
She watched as Mel removed one from her packet now and put it to her lips, quickly winking at them all before leaning across to the table behind them, which was rapidly filling up with a group of young men in Royal Navy uniforms, to say in an exaggerated drawl, ‘Sorry to bother you, but could one of you give me a light?’
The speed with which the whole of the table immediately leaped to offer assistance was almost comical.
Mel certainly thought so, because she was grinning when she turned back to the girls, exhaling in triumph as she told them, ‘Like taking sweeties from a kid. They’ll all be over here when the band starts up again, asking us to dance, you watch.’
‘You’d better watch it, Mel,’ Leah warned her. ‘If your Pete gets wind of you behaving like that you’ll be in big trouble.’
‘Huh, Pete Skinner doesn’t have any rights over me, and nor will he do until he puts a ring on me finger,’ Mel announced sharply. ‘It’s all right him saying that him and me are going steady and then disappearing off with the Eighth Army to bloody Egypt.’
‘Look, here comes the band.’ Jess, along with everyone else packed into the dance hall, started to clap enthusiastically.
The girls’ drinks of port and lemon had arrived, and the volume of the conversation rose from all the tables, not just their own, mingling with male and female laughter.
They might be at war but they were young and alive, and here tonight they could let their hair down and have fun, even if it was only for tonight.
‘Psst. Ruthie – over there,’ Jess whispered. ‘Isn’t that your Glen?’
‘Where?