The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [58]
‘She loves me really,’ Billy told Walter genially, going on to ask, ‘Walking her home, are you, only if you are we might as well walk back together?’
‘Well, I—’ Walter began uncomfortably but Jess’s blood was up now.
No way was she going to have Billy thinking she didn’t have a chap to walk her home when he was with someone, so standing in front of him with her hands on her hips she announced fiercely, ‘Yes, he is walking me home and we won’t be walking along with you.’
‘It’s your choice but don’t forget what happened to you the Christmas you were fourteen and you refused to let me see you home safely.’
Jess stared at him blankly. ‘Nothing happened the Christmas I was fourteen.’
‘You see,’ Billy appealed to Walter. He reached up and patted Jess on the head. ‘I’m sorry I brought it up. I should have realised that you wouldn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Talk about what? There is not anything to talk about.’ Jess was almost yelling, she was so furious. What on earth did Billy think he was doing? Couldn’t he see that he was scaring Walter half to death? The poor boy now looked as though the last thing he wanted to do was walk her home, and who could blame him?
‘Where are you sitting?’ Billy asked casually. ‘Only we might as well come and join you.’
‘No!’ Jess burst out, thinking angrily, over my dead body, but it was no use, Billy was already sweeping them all off the dance floor and heading for the table where Ruthie and Glen were sitting holding hands, looking like a pair of wide-eyed kittens and oblivious to everything and everyone else.
‘Jeez, I thought this tower was supposed to be high?’
‘It is,’ Myra confirmed
She and Nick were standing on the pavement looking up at Blackpool Tower. A crowd of RAF men hurried past them, causing Nick to reach out and put a possessive arm around Myra’s shoulder. She smiled secretly to herself. It wouldn’t do him any harm to recognise that other men found her attractive.
‘Well, the Empire State Building sure ain’t got anything to worry about if this is what you call high,’ Nick boasted.
‘Tell me more about New York,’ Myra begged him. ‘I’d love to go there.’
‘Everyone wants to go there, sugar.’ Nick was eyeing a gang of young men pushing their way through the crowd gathering outside the Tower. Heads down, and their hands in their pockets, their swarthy complexions marked them out as being different.
‘They’ll be from the gypsy families who run the fairgrounds,’ Myra told him, sensing his interest.
‘They look like hoods,’ Nick told her as he chewed on his gum.
‘Hoods?’
‘Yeah, hoods, gangsters, the men who run the real show behind the men who like to think they’re running the show.’
Myra looked uncertainly at the group slouching down the road. She would never have thought of them in that light, seeing them instead as outsiders, which in turn led to her feeling angered by them and her own feelings of reluctant pity for them.
‘Come on, let’s go inside,’ she urged him.
They had arrived just over an hour ago and had walked along the front, arm in arm, buffeted by the wind before queuing to eat a fish-and-chip supper.
‘Where’s the steak?’ Nick had demanded irritably when the waiter had shown him the menu. Whilst the waiter had been explaining that there was no steak, the RAF men at the next table had looked over at them a bit grimly but Myra had affected not to notice.
‘What the hell is this?’ Nick had demanded in a loud voice when their fish and chips had eventually arrived, adding, ‘Jeez, I wouldn’t give this to my worst enemy.’
‘It’s because of the shortages,’ Myra had had to explain, although personally she had thought that their fish and chips were tasty and had felt that they were a bit of a treat. Perhaps they didn’t eat fish and chips in New York, she had thought, acknowledging that she certainly couldn’t remember ever seeing any