The Grafton Girls (29 page)

‘What…what do you mean?’ Ruthie stammered. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I understand that you were a witness at the fight that took place between Privates Johnson and Stewart this last Saturday.’

‘No. I mean, yes, I was there, but it wasn’t Glen and Walter who were fighting, but Walter must have told you that. Glen said that he would as soon as he was well enough.’

The commanding officer looked at her with a very grave expression. ‘Regrettably Private Stewart never recovered consciousness and died of his injuries shortly after his return to Burtonwood.’

Ruthie couldn’t believe it. Her shock was so great that she felt it reverberating through her like a physical blow.

‘Walter is dead? But he can’t be,’ she stammered in protest, unable to accept that someone as kind and gentle as Walter could possibly die in such a cruel and pointless way. ‘He’s going to be Glen’s best man. He can’t be dead.’ She
was shaking, she realised, tears springing to her eyes.

Colonel Forbes frowned down at the leather blotter on his desk. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad shock, but I’m afraid it
is
the truth.’

Ruthie shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it…poor Walter. He was so kind and so…’ She had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself from crying. ‘It seems so unfair. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Does Glen know?’ she asked, her heart suddenly giving a trip beat as she registered the colonel’s silence. ‘Where is he?’ she asked more anxiously. ‘When can I see him?’

The commanding officer’s mouth compressed. ‘Private Johnson is in solitary confinement and under armed guard.’

‘What! No…you can’t…But why?’ Ruthie demanded piteously.

‘Private Johnson stands accused of the manslaughter of Private Stewart and that is why—’

‘No, no, that isn’t true. Glen would never have hurt Walter. He was his friend. He tried to protect him.’

‘I have a report here from the British police officers who were first on the scene, stating that both Private Johnson and Private Stewart had obviously been drinking. Is that correct? You were with them the morning before the fight, I understand. Is that true?’

‘Yes. We’d gone to the church to see the vicar about…about the wedding, and the vicar offered
Glen and Walter a glass of elderberry wine, as a bit of a toast, like. Please, let me explain what really happened,’ Ruthie begged the colonel, telling him before he could refuse, ‘It wasn’t Glen who hurt Walter, it was…that other American who was there. Glen said he did it because Walter had caught him out cheating at cards.’ Tears spilled from Ruthie’s eyes whilst the commanding officer looked on impassively.

‘If by “the other American” you mean Private Mancini,’ the colonel said impassively, ‘he came forward as soon as he heard about Private Stewart’s death, to explain what he had witnessed. According to both him and the statements he and his girl gave to the police at the time, they happened upon the fight purely by chance.’

‘That’s not true,’ Ruthie protested. ‘He started it. He came round the corner and he saw poor Walter and then he just hit him.’

‘Private Mancini just hit him. Just like that? For no reason? Come now, miss, I appreciate the fact that you want to protect Private Johnson, but you can’t really expect me to believe any of this,’ the colonel told her sternly. ‘And I should warn you that even though you are not an American citizen, when Private Johnson is called before his court martial, it is more than likely that you will be obliged to appear as a witness, under American law. You will then be under oath and any lies—’

‘I am not lying!’ Ruthie interrupted him, her normal timidity overwhelmed by her anxiety for Glen. ‘What I said is the truth. He…Nick was the
one to attack Walter. Why would Glen want to do such a thing anyway? He and Walter were friends.’ If Walter wasn’t alive any more to speak up for her Glen, then she would have to do so for him.

‘This is the United States Army, miss, and here we take any accusations against our soldiers very seriously,’ the colonel explained patiently. ‘The whole of the platoon has been questioned about the relationship between these two privates, and I have to tell you that quite independently two men have come to me and told me that there had already been an argument between the two men over a poker game debt. Gambling is, of course, forbidden but that doesn’t stop some of the men doing it. The reason it’s forbidden is that it leads to exactly the kind of situation we have had here – men drinking and fighting, and ending up getting themselves in one hell of a lot of trouble. Now I’d like to take a statement from you, if you please, stating in your own words, exactly what happened, from the minute you first saw Privates Johnson and Stewart on Saturday.’

‘Very well, but you won’t make me say that it was Glen’s fault and I won’t be lying either,’ Ruthie told him fiercely. ‘Glen doesn’t play cards for money. He told me that his parents don’t approve of that kind of thing, and neither does he.’

Slowly and carefully, her voice trembling as she fought for the right words, she started to tell Glen’s commanding officer what had happened. It wasn’t easy. Several times she had to stop because she was too overcome by her emotions to continue.

‘What…what’s going to happen to Glen? Those other soldiers didn’t tell the truth, and it’s because of them—’

The colonel was standing up. ‘Thank you for your co-operation, Miss Philpott. My sergeant will see to it that you get a ride back home.’

As though by some sleight of hand, the office door opened and the sergeant was standing there waiting to escort her out.

Diane took a deep lungful of air. Walking past Chestnut Close’s allotment might not have had the same soothing effect as her favourite childhood walk through the Hertfordshire fields and then along the river bank, but at this time in the evening, when the air was still warm from the sun, there was just enough scent of the countryside in it to make her feel that if she closed her eyes she could almost be in the safe comfort of her childhood home. And she needed that comfort very badly at the moment. Apart from anything else, she doubted that she could have stood another minute of Myra’s boastful description of her weekend in London. But was it wise to give herself the opportunity to dwell on her own feelings? She paused to lean on the gate that led into the allotments. Beyond them a goods train, heavily laden, chuffed slowly towards the railing siding in Edge Hill, known locally as ‘the Grid Iron’, sending thick white clouds of steam up into the clear evening sky. They were well into August now, but thankfully it would be the end of October before the clocks went
‘back’, losing them extra hours of daylight saving light. The deprivations of living in a country at war were somehow all the more hard to bear in the winter months, with the darkness of the blackout at night and the shortage of fuel with which to keep warm. But maybe she should think forward to the winter. Maybe by then she would have found a way to deal with the heartache that was causing her so much misery now. She was doing the right thing, she knew that, but those who believed that ‘doing the right thing’ automatically outweighed the pain of not being with the ‘wrong’ person had no idea at all of how it really felt. Her whole body ached with the most desperate longing for Lee. Even her skin yearned rebelliously for his touch, whilst her heart did a series of victory rolls at the mere thought of seeing him.

Why should she consider his wife, when the future was so very uncertain? Would she really miss those few, to Diane, precious days that might be all they could have together? Would her life be any the worse for Diane having had a small handful of moments to call her own? She need never know, and so could hardly miss them, whereas Diane would have them to cherish for as long as she lived, a precious gift, wrapped away like fading rose-scented love letters and locked in the most secret compartment of her heart. The Group Captain might have given her a direct warning that her and Major Saunders’ relationship was already under scrutiny but everyone knew that there were ways and means by which a determined couple
could be together without their intimacy being betrayed.

She opened the gate and walked into the allotments, unwilling to return to the house and Myra’s unwanted company.

She was halfway along the narrow path that skirted round the allotments and then divided them between that part traditionally used for growing food and that smaller part on which, before the war, the allotment holders had created small gardens around the huts they used to store their tools. Slowly these gardens were now being converted into new vegetable beds, mainly planted with potatoes to break up the soil, but a handful still had their pretty gardens.

Out of the corner of her eye Diane noticed that someone was sitting huddled up in the corner of a bench in one of them. She was about to walk away, not wanting either to disturb them or to have them intrude on her own unhappy thoughts, when she realised that the other person was Ruthie and that she was obviously in great distress.

Not giving herself time to change her mind, she picked her way over to her, more shocked to see the look of bleak despair in her eyes than by the sight of her tear-blotched face.

‘Ruthie, what’s wrong?’

Ruthie started up guiltily, and then subsided back into her seat when she recognised Diane. She had come here to try to compose herself before she went home, but instead, she had ended up becoming totally overwhelmed by her distress.

‘It’s Glen,’ Ruthie told her brokenly. ‘He…Walter’s dead and Glen’s going to be court-martialled but it wasn’t his fault.’ She started to sob uncontrollably.

Worried, Diane sat down next to her, taking hold of her hand. ‘Stop crying, take a deep breath and tell me properly what’s happened,’ she instructed her calmly, using the manner she would have used to a raw new recruit.

To her relief Ruthie did as she had told her, although it took many stops and starts before Diane was able to get the full story from her and make sense of it.

What Ruthie told her filled her not just with shocked disgust for Nick and Myra, but also with a deep sense of unease. She knew how things worked in the tightly controlled environment of rules and regulations that was the armed services, and just how difficult it would be to convince Glen’s superiors that he was the victim of an injustice when his platoon mates were lying to protect Nick. It was obvious to Diane that Ruthie was telling the truth, and she suspected that initially, when they had lied to the police, Nick had assumed he would find some way of wriggling out of any charge brought for fighting with a comrade. Walter’s death, though had altered things. Whoever was convicted would be facing the death penalty. Poor, poor Ruthie – no wonder she was distraught.

‘Look, dry your eyes,’ Diane told her.

‘I can’t tell Mum what’s happened. She’s really taken to Glen and she’s been so much better since
him and me got engaged. It’s been like a bit of a miracle, and even our doctor has said how much she’s improved. She hasn’t gone out once looking for Dad, like she used to. I don’t know what it’s going to do to her if I have to tell her about Glen. It will be bad enough telling her about Walter.’ Fresh tears filled her eyes. She turned to Diane, twisting her damp handkerchief between her fingers as she sobbed, ‘Why did this have to happen? And that Myra – how could she lie like that?’ Hope suddenly flared in her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t have a word with her, would you…tell her what’s happened to my Glen? Oh, please say that you’ll help us?’ she begged desperately.

Diane hated to disappoint her but knowing Myra as she did she doubted that Myra would agree to do anything that would damage her chances of getting to America. She couldn’t bring herself to destroy Ruthie’s hopes, though.

‘I will speak to her,’ she agreed, ‘but only if you promise me that you’ll stop crying and go home.’

‘You mean it. You really will try to help us?’ Ruthie breathed.

‘I mean it,’ Diane assured her.

‘Promise?’ Ruthie begged, suddenly more a little girl than a young woman. Her vulnerability tugged at Diane’s own heart.

‘I promise,’ she agreed.

‘I’ve just seen Ruthie,’ Diane announced without preamble as she entered the shared bedroom. ‘Ruthie, who?’ Myra asked her. She was lying
on her bed, smoking, her eyes narrowed in contemplation of the smoke ring she had just blown, but Diane wasn’t deceived.

‘You know perfectly well who I mean, Myra. That GI Nick beat up has died.’

Myra sat up, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘You’re lying!’

‘I wish it wasn’t true but it is. He died at Burtonwood – after you and Nick had left for London, having told the police that it was Glen who had been fighting with him.’ She paused deliberately. ‘But that wasn’t true.’

‘Is that what she told you?
Ruthie?
Because if it was—’

‘Yes, Ruthie did tell me and I believe her.’ Diane stopped her firmly. ‘I saw the way Nick was behaving towards Walter at the Grafton, just in case you’ve forgotten. He’s got a dreadful temper, Myra, and you can see just from looking at him that he’s the kind who’d carry a grudge. Glen and Walter were friends, everyone knew that, and by lying about what happened you could end up in an awful lot of trouble.’

What she was doing was rather underhand, Diane knew, but she soothed her conscience by telling herself that her not letting Myra know that Nick had somehow persuaded others to lie for him as well was in a good cause.

‘If you ask me, him dying had nothing to do with Nick hitting him. I reckon that it was hitting his head on the pavement that must have done it, not him having a bit of a scrap with Nick.’ Myra
gave a small shrug. ‘And that makes it just a bit of an accident. It could have happened to anyone.’

Diane breathed out slowly. ‘Well, if that’s the case then you need to tell the police about it, don’t you?’ she told her firmly. ‘There’s no sense in someone being blamed – wrongly – for Walter’s death if it was an accident.’

‘I’m not saying that was wot killed him, I’m just saying that it could have been,’ Myra backtracked immediately. ‘And besides, I’ve already given the police a statement. I can’t go telling them that I want to change my mind now.’