The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [63]
‘Nick, don’t. Leave him alone. Let’s go,’ she protested, but it was too late. The RAF men rushed at Nick, who immediately swung round, throwing a couple of ferocious low stomach punches, which caused the two men they connected with to double over.
Some of the girls that were with the airmen had started to scream, whilst others burst into noisy tears. Nearby dancers stopped to see what was going on. Three GIs came running over to join in the affray and within seconds a full-blown and sickeningly violent fight had broken out.
Myra had grown up witnessing physical violence. She had seen her father return home drunk from the pub and then lay into her mother; she had learned young to keep her distance from him when he was in a bad mood. Now, watching Nick, she did what she had always done as a child, which was to shut herself away from what was happening in a safe place deep inside herself, so that whilst physically she was present, emotionally and mentally she was not. Then someone blew a whistle, a shrill warning sound that jerked her out of her self-imposed trance.
‘Nick, stop it,’ she screamed, alerted to the potential danger to the future she wanted for herself. ‘The police will be coming…’
Like snow on a summer’s day those on the periphery of the fight melted away, leaving Nick and a couple of the RAF men. Nick’s fellow GIs were pulling him off the young man he had first attacked, and who was now on his knees beneath the blows Nick was raining down on him.
‘Are you with this guy?’ one of the GIs asked Myra tersely.
She nodded.
‘Well, you’d better get him back where he came from, because if the MPs get here and find out that he’s half killed that kid, he’s going to be in the slammer for the rest of the war.’
The other GIs finally succeeded in restraining Nick and dragging him away from the boy, whose face was now a pulped mess of bloody flesh.
‘Get the hell out of here whilst you still can, buddy,’ the biggest of them warned Nick, giving him a push in Myra’s direction.
Grabbing hold of his arm, Myra tugged him in the direction of the exit, only too glad to have the silent watchful escort of the pair of GIs alongside them as they made their way towards it.
‘Think he’ll be OK, Tex?’ one of the GIs asked when they had finally reached the parked Jeep.
‘Sure,’ Tex responded laconically, ‘but I ain’t so sure about the poor bastard he was beating up.’
Nick wasn’t saying anything, and he wasn’t looking at any of them either. He swung himself into the driving seat of the Jeep, leaving Myra to struggle into the passenger seat as best she could.
The GI named Tex was huge – tall and broad-shouldered, with close-cropped fair hair and a slow drawl of an accent she could hardly understand because of the cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.
‘Where you from, buster?’ he asked Nick.
‘New York – not that it’s any of your business.’
‘When I see a GI beating up some kid still wet behind the ears, I kinda make it my business, buddy. Where I come from we don’t do that to kids.’
Myra tensed as she saw the feral glint in Nick’s eyes.
‘He was coming on to my girl, and where I come from we don’t forget an insult – not ever,’ Nick told him through gritted teeth. ‘And we repay it with a bullet and a block of concrete.’
Through the open window of the Jeep Myra could hear one of the other waiting GIs saying under his breath, ‘Let’s get out of here. This guy’s connected. Mafiosa,’ he explained to his companion meaningfully, whilst Myra frowned, not understanding what was going on.
The tall fair-haired GI stepped back from the driver’s window as Nick started the engine and put the Jeep in gear.
The protective bubble Myra had created around herself earlier had gone, leaving feelings of nausea and fear she would once have connected with her own father. But her father was dead, and she was with Nick. Nick, who was going to make her his girl, his wife, and take her to America.
She made to snuggle closer to him, but he shook her off, telling her curtly,