The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [8]
Ten minutes later, freshly dressed in ‘mufti’, as those in the forces referred to their non-uniform clothes, she let herself out of the house.
She might as well walk back into the city and find out the best way to reach Derby House, she decided when she had walked as far as Edge Hill Road. It was a light evening with a pleasant breeze, and she set off briskly in the direction she had come earlier.
The bombed buildings looked no less shocking this time than they had done earlier. Instinctively she wanted to look away. People had lived in those houses and worked in those buildings. Where were they now? Rehoused safely somewhere else, or had their lives been destroyed along with their homes, Diane wondered sadly, standing uncertainly at the crossroads she had come to and wondering which way she should take.
‘Summat up, is there, lass?’ a woman with a chirpy Liverpudlian accent asked her.
‘I’m just trying to get my bearings,’ Diane told her. ‘I’ve only just arrived…’
‘Aye, well, with that blonde hair of yours you’d better take care no one mistakes you for a German spy,’ the woman told her forthrightly. ‘I don’t hold wi’ bleaching, I don’t…’
Diane forced herself to smile, rather than correct her.
‘So what is it yer looking for then? If it’s them Yanks, yer won’t have to go far; they’ll find you soon enough. Not that I’d let any daughters of mine tek up wi’ one, not for all the fags and nylons in the world,’ the woman avowed firmly.
‘Actually, I was trying to make my way to Derby House,’ Diane told her.
‘Derby House, is it? Got business there, have yer?’
Diane had had enough. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a policeman walking towards her. Excusing herself, she hurried over to him, asking him determinedly, ‘I wonder if you could point me in the right direction for Derby House. I’m in the WAAF and I’m on duty there tomorrow.’
‘Got your papers with you, have you?’ he asked her.
Diane dutifully produced her identity documents for him to see.
‘Come with me. I’ll show you the way,’ he told her once he had studied them and handed them back to her.
Derby House turned out to be a disappointingly dull-looking new office block behind the town hall, but as Diane had learned from her briefing before leaving Cambridgeshire, the government knew that Hitler would seek to target the place that was the headquarters of the Western Approaches Command, so they had protected the real heart of the operation by building it underground.
The policeman had returned to his duties, leaving Diane to study the building on her own. Liverpool was so very different from the airfield where she had worked before, but then her whole life was going to be different from now on, without Kit and their plans for the future. A huge lump formed in her throat as desolation swept over her. She forced herself to swallow back the threatening emotions. There was no point feeling sorry for herself. She had to meet this head on and stiffen her spine against her own weakness. After all, she had asked for her transfer so that she could have a fresh start away from people who had known her and Kit, away from the whispered conversations and sidelong looks to which she had become so sensitive.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. On the other side of the road she could see and hear a group of girls giggling as they linked arms. Diane watched them, envying their happiness as they strolled out of sight.
And then, just as she was about to cross the road and make her way back to her billet, out of nowhere – or so it seemed – an army Jeep filled with American soldiers came roaring down the road.
‘Hey, guys,’ Diane heard one of them, who was hanging out of the window, yell, ‘I see dames…’
The girls Diane had been watching made their escape, breaking ranks to run off up an alleyway, laughing and squealing, whilst the Jeep skidded to a halt, then did an abrupt U-turn. Immediately Diane