The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [97]
Diane squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. She was spending far too much time thinking about the major and what he might think about her. Far, far too much time.
‘OK, we’re just about finished here.’
Here was an Edwardian house just outside Knutsford, set in a couple of acres of grounds. It had originally been requisitioned by the British Government, who were now offering it to the Americans. That it had once been a family home was still evident in the small beds and the cot they had found in the attic bedrooms.
‘What is it with you Brits that you shut your kids away in the attics?’ the major muttered under his breath in between calling out the measurements he was taking to Diane.
‘We don’t shut them away, and anyway, it’s only the rich who can afford staff and have proper nurseries,’ Diane told him shortly. There was a battered teddy bear on the floor underneath the cot. Automatically Diane bent down to retrieve it, unaware of the way the major was watching her, as she straightened its legs and smoothed the place where the fur had been rubbed away. Poor bear. He looked so neglected and unloved, so forlorn and forgotten somehow. She could well imagine what would happen to him once the military moved in here. Once he must have been some child’s much-loved toy.
A rush of emotion seized her, a combination of her own childhood memories and the knowledge that she would never now hold in her own arms the children she had hoped to have with Kit. They had talked about them together, laughing and teasing one another. ‘A boy for you and a girl for me,’ Kit had whispered lovingly to her, that first time they had been intimate together, as she lay in his arms beneath the low ceiling of the small hotel where they had been able to get a room, selfconsciously registering as ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’, whilst Diane had toyed guiltily with the ‘wedding ring’ she had been wearing. ‘No, a boy for you and a girl for me,’ she had corrected Kit before he had taken her back in his arms.
The bear emitted a soft growl under the pressure of her tight grip on him, making her jump.
The major had his back to her. Diane looked at the bear. By rights she ought to leave the bear here…But those bright button eyes were looking so reproachfully at her. Half ashamed of her own sentimentality, she stuffed the bear inside her bag.
‘Ready?’ The major was holding open the door.
Nodding, Diane turned to follow him.
The next house, strictly speaking, was too far out of the way, since it was situated close to the market town of Nantwich, but the major told Diane that they might as well take a look at it since it was close to a small RAF airfield, which some of the smaller American planes could use in an emergency.
They were on the outskirts of the town, just driving past a school playing field where children were playing in their summer holiday; when a light plane, its engine stuttering and whining as it plunged into a steep dive, dropped down to earth so fast that it was easy to see the American insignia on the fuselage, and easy to see too the two young men in its cockpit. Diane felt her stomach roil with foreknowledge and sickness. She had spent too much time around airfields and airmen not to know that the plane was out of control and that it would be impossible for the pilot to pull out of the dive, even if by some miracle the engine restarted.
The major pulled the Jeep to an immediate halt, yelling to Diane ‘Keep down’ as the plane skimmed the top of some trees on the other side of the playing field.
‘Christ, he’s going to hit the field,’ Major Saunders swore. Diane could hear the children screaming and scattering in every direction whilst someone blew shrilly on a whistle.
‘He’s trying to clear the field,’ she whispered without taking her eyes off the small plane.
‘Down, get down,’ the major yelled at her as, by some miracle, the plane missed the playing field, only to lose speed and drop several feet, crashing through the trees, snapping off branches with a raw tearing sound that