The Grafton Girls (34 page)

Myra stared at him. In the place of despair and misery suddenly there was the tiny beginning of hope.

‘You won’t want me now,’ she told him, ‘not after what I’ve gone and done. And if that weren’t bad enough I’m carrying the kid to prove it. It’s a pity it wasn’t my stomach he thumped; then I might have lost it.’

‘Aw, Myra, don’t say that. Poor little blighter, it isn’t its fault. ’Sides, who’s to know whose kid it is anyway if you and me stay together?’

Myra’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she told him. ‘Why should you take another man’s kid on?’

Jim said quietly, ‘It’s like this, see, Myra. I never told you ’cos you allus said that you didn’t like kiddies, but seemingly on account of me having mumps as a lad I can’t have no kids of me own, so me being a dad to this one you’re having – well, it will be like there’s summat good come out of this war for me. I’m not saying that it didn’t feel like someone had ripped my guts out when you told me that you wanted to leave me for this other chap, and I’m not saying neither that I didn’t want to punch his lights out and give you a piece of me mind, because I did. But you and me, Myra, well, I reckon we belong together, and when this kiddie comes along, it will be our kiddie, and I promise you this: I’ll love it like it were me own, Myra, because it will be me own…not a little bastard but a little Stone…’

Myra was laughing and crying at the same time, hiccuping in between her tears and laughter as she clung to Jim and tried to tell him what she felt.

For some reason fate had relented and given her a second chance. All these days she had been lying here, knowing what a fool she had been to give up a good man like Jim; a kind man who loved her and who made her feel safe, just for the sake of a bit of excitement with a man like Nick. Her longing for a glamorous life in America was gone, as though it had been some kind of dream she had now woken up from. And she had changed too,
grown a conscience that she found inconvenient at times – times such as now, for instance.

‘I can’t let you do this, Jim,’ she told him. ‘You’ll end up hating me. It’s not right, you deserve better.’

‘No, it’s
you
who deserves better, Myra – you and me and our baby, and I’m going to see that we get it, just as soon as this war’s over. I’ve got to thinking out there in the desert, and I’ve been making a few plans. I’ve saved up a fair bit and I’ve got a bit put by now. There’s a chap out there who told me that he’s planning to buy himself a little house now whilst the war’s still on and he can get one at a good price, and that’s what I’m going to do. A nice house with a bit of a garden for our lad – or lass – somewhere decent where we can have a fresh start…summat a bit posh, like, so that you can have your bit of a show-off…I know what you’re like. So what do you say? Shall we give it a go?’

‘Oh, Jim, I don’t deserve a good man like you, I really don’t,’ Myra sobbed as she wrapped her arms round her husband’s neck and kissed him with passionate gratitude.

Diane sniffed the crispness of the autumn air as she walked down Chestnut Close through the blackout. She had called at the hospital to see Myra on her way home from her shift and had been regaled with Myra’s almost giddily excited story of Jim’s visit and their plans for the future. Whilst she was relieved and happy for her, Diane admitted that deep down inside, the ache of her
own loneliness hurt very badly. She had a long furlough coming up soon and she planned to go home to see her parents. That should cheer her up a bit, she told herself firmly, as she stepped up to the front door.

She was just about to use her key when it opened inwards, to reveal Mrs Lawson, dressed in her hat and coat, ready for going out.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she told Diane importantly. ‘I’ve put him in the front parlour – and mind, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

Before Diane could say anything she had stepped past her and was hurrying down the pathway.

Light was streaming out from the hallway, reminding Diane that she was breaking the blackout regulations. Hurriedly she stepped inside and closed the door.

A visitor.
He
was in the parlour. A little uncertainly she turned the door handle and pushed open the door.

‘Di…’

‘Kit!’

‘Oh God, Di, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you…’

He had sprung up from the armchair when she opened the door and now she was in his arms and he was kissing her, fiercely, possessively, passionately, in all the ways she had so long remembered and longed for, just as though nothing had happened. No, not as though nothing had happened, Diane recognised dizzily as she tried to focus rationally
through the delirious pleasure of being back in his arms.

She had changed and so had he. He even felt different: harder, thinner, his face careworn.

‘My darling, darling girl, I have missed you so much. Please say that it is not too late for us. I’ve been badgering your poor parents for your address and it was only when your father let slip that you were coming home next weekend and I threatened to camp out on their doorstep that he finally relented and told me where you were.’

Her father was a sly old fox, Diane decided giddily, and that ‘slip’ had been no accident, she suspected.

‘Di, say something,’ he demanded emotionally.

‘How can I when you won’t stop kissing me?’ Diane protested.

‘You mean when I
can’t
stop kissing you,’ Kit corrected her. ‘You don’t know how much I’ve dreamed of your kisses, Di, how much I’ve longed for them and for you. Tell me it isn’t too late for us.’

He had released her now, and Diane stepped back from him.

‘I…I don’t know,’ she told him honestly.

The look on his face echoed the pain in her own heart.

‘I’ve got to be honest, Kit. It wouldn’t be right if I wasn’t.’

‘But you still love me,’ he insisted. ‘You wouldn’t have kissed me like that if you didn’t.’

‘Yes, but…but I’m not sure I believe any more
that love on its own is enough. There has to be…trust…and…’ She shook her head. ‘It hurt me so badly when you broke our engagement without any kind of explanation or…or anything, Kit. And now you’re here, telling me…saying…’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed with unfamiliar humility. ‘I’m rushing things and jumping out mid-flight without a parachute, and expecting you to jump with me. That’s because I’m so eager to get back down to earth and be with you, my darling. As for what I did, I can explain if you will listen.’

‘Of course I’ll listen.’ She was forcing herself to smile but inwardly Diane was steeling herself for what she felt sure was to come. Even after her own relationship with Lee it still hurt unbearably to think of Kit rejecting her for someone else, even if now he had decided that that person no longer mattered and he wanted her back. Was that wanting her back enough to build a life together on, or would she always be worrying that ultimately there might come another time when he wanted to break his vows to her and go AWOL for a while?

‘It was that last mission we flew before the prof bought it,’ Kit told her, referring to a member of the squadron who the others had nicknamed ‘the Prof because of his love for crossword puzzles. ‘You remember the one?’

‘Yes.’ Diane did remember it, but she didn’t know why Kit was asking her if she did with almost painful intensity.

‘Well, the thing is, that it wasn’t a Luftwaffe
plane that shot him down, it was one of our own, one of the squadron,’ he stressed.

Diane felt that she needed to sit down. ‘But that’s not possible,’ she protested. ‘That couldn’t happen.’

Kit grimaced. ‘That’s the official line but the reality is that we all know that it can happen all too bloody easily, even if we never talk about it. When you’re up there caught up in a dogfight, with the sun shining right down on you and planes everywhere, you see someone coming up behind you and your immediate reaction is to go into the attack. The truth is that it could have happened to any one of us, and in the confusion who’s to know? It just so happened that I was behind the Prof and I saw the whole thing.’ His voice had dropped and he wiped his hand over his eyes.

Diane’s heart ached for him and her immediate instinct was to go to him and hold him, but she sensed that he needed to cleanse what was obviously a festering wound within himself fully, no matter how painful that process, and that she would not be helping him if she rushed in with offers of comfort to hide away what needed to be removed.

‘None of the others in the squadron saw what happened, and…nothing was said when we got back.’

Diane bit her lip. She knew that Kit’s deliberate avoidance of naming the pilot responsible for shooting down his own comrade was to protect that pilot.

‘I couldn’t say anything myself, but…hell, Di, you know how it is. We were all filing our reports, and the report was that the Prof had been shot down in combat. I had to go along with that, but I also had to fly in the same squadron as the chap who had shot him down. I began to think that there’d be another accident but this time it would be me. I couldn’t think about anything else. Apart from the poor old Prof. He shouldn’t have died. He should still have been alive. I kept thinking that he might do it again and that I should say something if only to protect the rest of the squadron, but then I kept thinking about him and how it was a mistake anyone could make. I didn’t know what to do. It ate into me. I started thinking that the reason I’d seen it was because I was going to be next. Every time I went up I believed I wasn’t going to be coming back. I kept thinking about you and how it was unfair of me to keep you tied to me when I was a goner – a dead man – and so I did what I thought was best for you. I gave you your freedom. I couldn’t tell you the truth, you know that. I couldn’t.’

Yes, she knew that he could not have betrayed a fellow squadron member by revealing the truth, and she knew too that she did understand how he must have felt, how tortured and afraid and how very alone.

‘I knew you wouldn’t accept that I wanted to break our engagement without a reason so I…I started acting like the fool I would have had to
have been to have thought any other girl could come anywhere near rivalling you.’

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Diane told him. Of course she did. The loyalty between members of a squadron was intense and sacrosanct. It had to be because their lives depended on one another. So when one of them was responsible for the death of another, then the clash of loyalties had to be unendurable. ‘But what’s changed?’ she asked. ‘Why are you telling me now what you couldn’t tell me before?’

‘The pilot concerned came forward and spilled the beans. Told the Wing Co that he couldn’t go on any longer carrying the guilt,’ he told her simply. ‘He’s been discharged – full honours. There’s no point in muck-raking and, poor sod, he’s punished himself enough without anyone else doing it for him.

‘His going brought me to my senses and made me see what had happened for what it was – an accident, not a warning that I was going to be next. All I want now is to get back to where I was with you, Di. That and for us to get married as soon as it can be arranged. No more being sensible and waiting until the war is over. I’ve spent too many days and hours without you now not to want to cherish every single minute we can spend together and to want us to share them as man and wife. If you’ll have me back, that is?’

Diane took a deep breath. ‘There’s been someone else,’ she told him, striving to keep her voice light. ‘He…I…He is married and so, because of that and because…because I couldn’t bring myself to
share with him what somehow I still felt belonged only to you, we didn’t go through with it. But I planned to, Kit, and I wanted to,’ she told him with painful honesty. ‘And I’d be lying if I said anything else. Kit,’ she protested as he crossed the space between them and took hold of her, wrapping his arms around her.

‘Now I’ll tell you something,’ he said hoarsely. ‘All those other girls – it was all just a great big sham, Di, a lot of talk and noise in public but nothing in private, because, like you, I just couldn’t, not with anyone who wasn’t you. Please tell me you’ll take me back.’

For her answer Diane laced her hands either side of his face and held it tenderly whilst she raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him.

For a few seconds he let her, and then he took the control from her, holding her and kissing her with fiercely thrilling sweetness that melted her bones and dissolved all of her pain.

‘My landlady will be back in a few minutes,’ she warned him breathlessly, half an hour later.

‘Good. She can be the first to congratulate me on our re-engagement,’ he teased her. ‘Which reminds me. Your mother said to tell you that she’s had a word with the vicar and he’s said he’ll have a talk with us on Sunday about a date for the wedding.’

‘A date for the wedding. Is that all? I thought she’d have had the wedding dress, the cake and the whole thing sorted out by now,’ Diane laughed.

As he bent his head to kiss her, Kit told her softly, ‘She has.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Jess marvelled, easing off her shoes and wriggling her toes in front of Ruthie’s mother’s parlour fire. ‘Who’d have thought that first time me and Ruthie met up wi’ you at the Grafton, Diane, that we’d all be here now wi’ all three of us getting wed before Christmas?’

‘It just goes to prove that you never can know what’s round the corner,’ Diane agreed. ‘Especially in wartime. You’ll be the first of us to be married, Ruthie.’

With only a week to go before Ruthie and Glen’s marriage, the three girls had been busy all day checking all the arrangements, and now they were relaxing over the much-needed cup of tea and some toast, which Ruthie’s mother had made for them, before going round to spend the evening with her neighbour.

‘Your mam’s come on ever such a lot just recently, Ruthie,’ Jess commented. ‘You’d never know her for the same person now.’

‘No, I know. Our doctor says it’s a little miracle.
He reckons that having Glen around, and me and him getting married, has done her the world of good. Time was when I was that worried about her, I even got to thinking that she might try to do away wi’ herself or summat.’

‘Well, you don’t need to worry any more,’ Diane to her gently. ‘Not now you’ve got Glen.’

‘I still can’t believe my own good luck,’ Ruthie smiled happily, before adding, ‘It’s ever so nice of you to put off taking up your transfer back down to where your Kit’s stationed so that you can come to me and Glen’s wedding.’

‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ Diane assured her. ‘It was really kind of you and Glen to include Kit. He’s going to come up on Friday, and then we can travel back down to Cambridgeshire together afterwards. Don’t forget, will you, that Kit and I want you all to come down to our wedding?’

‘And then you’ll have to come back up here for mine,’ Jess reminded her, before turning to Ruthie to say, ‘I’m going to miss you when you go off to America.’

‘That won’t be until after the war is over, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to be any time soon. Glen says that I mustn’t worry about it, because his family will make me and Mum really welcome, and, of course, I’ll have him.’

‘Aye, and probably a baby bouncing on your knee as well by then,’ Jess laughed. ‘You should hear my Billy. You know what he’s like.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘He keeps on saying that he
reckons we should have a honeymoon baby. I can’t say as I’d mind. I haven’t got the stomach for working on munitions any more, and there’s no work conscription for mothers with young kiddies.’

Diane listened to them without making any comment. There were those who said that they couldn’t think of bringing a new life into the world in such perilous times; women who said practically that they did not want to face bringing up a fatherless child as a widow, but she suspected that Ruthie and Jess felt as she did herself – that with the coming of a new life there also came hope for the future. For her there was also the matter of her duty to the uniform she wore, and the work she was trained to do. She and Kit both had roles to play in the war and they had agreed that they would try to wait to start a family if they could.

‘Have you heard anything from that Myra?’ Jess was asking her. ‘That husband of hers is a fool for tekin’ her back, if you ask me.’

Diane could see the way Ruthie was looking away. She certainly didn’t blame her for not feeling sympathetic towards Myra after what she had done.

‘He loves her and I think that Myra recognises now how lucky she is to have him. What happened to her has changed her.’

‘Well, she certainly needed to do some changing,’ Jess broke in.

‘Yes, she did,’ Diane agreed. She couldn’t help feeling glad for Myra’s sake, and that of the child she was carrying, that Jim was prepared to stand
by her, even if she sensed that the other two thought she had been undeservedly lucky.

‘Come on, girls,’ Jess announced determinedly, refilling their teacups. ‘Let’s have a toast.’

‘What to?’ Diane asked her.

‘To the future, and the end of the war, and, of course, the Grafton,’ Jess grinned. ‘And to us, the Grafton Girls.’