The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [55]
Jim’s revelations shocked Diane. Her own parents were so happily married, and her father so devoted to her mother that Diane had begun to think of their relationship as a handicap to her own future happiness, because she could never hope to match it. It certainly gave more of an insight into Myra being the way she was.
Not that Myra’s past excused her current behaviour. Diane felt desperately sorry for her poor husband who, despite his attempt to be cheerful, had looked so cast down when he had learned that she wasn’t here. Poor man. Diane hoped that he would never discover the truth about the way Myra was carrying on in his absence.
‘Course, Myra always did have big ideas about what she wanted. Allus going to the flicks and banging on about film stars and wanting to live in America, she was. Even tried to persuade me to go and live over there. I’d never heard of anything so daft. What would I want to be going to America for? But when the war broke out it brought her to her senses…a bit.’
Had it, Diane wondered uneasily, or had Myra simply stopped telling her husband what she wanted and decided to look for another man to supply it instead; a man who understood her longing to live in America, because he was American?
They both turned towards the kitchen door as they heard the sound of a key in the front door lock, but it was Mrs Lawson returning, not Myra.
‘And what’s this, if you please?’ she demanded sharply as Jim got clumsily to his feet when she came into the kitchen. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she turned to Diane. ‘No male visitors, that’s what I said and that’s what I mean. I won’t have no carrying-on here in my own kitchen, giving the Close a bad name, never mind using the rations to feed him with,’ she told them, looking pointedly at the table with the now empty supper plate and the tea cups.
‘Mrs Lawson, this is Myra’s husband,’ Diane explained calmly. ‘He’s got a forty-eight-hour leave and he called round hoping to see Myra.’
‘Oh, well. Husband, is it?’ Mrs Lawson studied him frowningly.
‘I’m sorry if I was breaking the rules,’ he apologised immediately.
‘It’s my fault, Mrs Lawson,’ Diane broke in. ‘I offered him the supper you’d left for me because I’d already eaten at Derby House, which reminds me…Cook said she had some spare tins of fruit, so I’ve brought back a couple for you.’ Talk about being ingratiating, Diane recognised, but she felt obliged to placate her landlady, who wasn’t as bad as some she had heard about, even if Cook had not so much offered the tins as had her arm twisted by one of the girls who had savvily remarked that she suspected that food intended for those working at Derby House was finding its way into the pantries of those who were in charge of it. As a result, Cook had let it be known that there were some damaged tins in the storeroom that those who wanted them could have if they wished. ‘Damaged tins’ was the standard codename for those tinned food stuffs that were on ration but somehow miraculously available.
‘Tins of fruit?’ Mrs Lawson allowed herself to be distracted.
‘Only a couple, I’m afraid,’ Diane warned her. ‘I got the fruit salad because I remembered you saying you liked it for your Christmas trifle.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time,’ Myra’s husband continued to apologise. ‘If you’ll just tell Myra that I’ll call back in the morning…’
‘Do you want to leave the address of the friend you’re going to be staying with?’ Diane asked him.
Jim rubbed the side of his face wearily. ‘Yes. Thanks for reminding me about that. I must say that I’m looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed. You’d be surprised where that