The Grafton Girls

SIX

‘Shift’s over, girls, thank goodness. My Bill’s back -walked in this morning just as I was walking out.’ Susan stifled a yawn. ‘Said they’d been waiting out over the other side of Liverpool bar for the pilot boats to bring the convoy in for unloading for nearly five hours, on account of them not letting them into the docks until the early hours just in case the ruddy Luftwaffe takes it in their heads to come over and bomb them.’

‘Has he got a decent leave this time, Susan?’ Jean asked.

‘No such luck. Forty-eight hours, that’s all. He should have had more but he’s got “new orders”.’ She paused significantly. All the girls knew better than to ask what those orders might be. All round Derby House notices were pinned up, as they were everywhere throughout the whole country, warning people ‘Walls Have Ears’ and the like. It was strictly forbidden for there to be talk about troop movements, even between close friends and family. ‘But at least he’s home and we can have some time together. Have you got any plans for the rest of the weekend, Diane?’

Diane was grateful to Susan for going out of her way to be friendly towards her, and encouraging the others girls to do the same.

‘Not really,’ she answered her. ‘I’ve promised to go dancing at the Grafton tonight with my fellow billetee.’

‘Who’s that then?’ Jean asked.

‘Myra Stone, one of the teleprinters. You may not know her.’

‘Everyone knows Myra,’ Jean told her drily. ‘She’s got a bit of a reputation for having a sharp tongue and an even sharper eye for the chaps. You want to be careful about how friendly you get with her, Diane. I don’t want to be a gossip but she isn’t very well thought of around here. Has she told you that she’s married?’

Diane took this as a warning and suppressed a small sigh. She really wished that she hadn’t agreed to go out with Myra. She could only spell bad news.

Thank heavens the summer nights, with their extra daylight-saving hours of light, meant that she could walk to and from work every day without having to worry about the blackout, Diane reflected, as she stepped out of the shadow of Derby House and into the warmth of the early evening sunshine. The natural light and fresh air felt wonderful after being underground for so long. Sometimes some of the girls scared one another by coming up with ghoulish stories of what it would be like if the citadel, as it was sometimes nicknamed, was ever bombed and they were trapped inside. Diane didn’t join in these conversations. She had her own nighttime horrors to haunt her.

She looked up at the clear sky, remembering how, in the late summer of 1940, the September skies over the south of England had been speckled with squadrons of RAF fighters, the sound of racing engines all too quickly interspersed with the stomach-churning rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire as the RAF pilots engaged in fierce battles with the Luftwaffe. It was then, shortly after she had first met Kit, that she had started to have terrible nightmares of a blue sky raining blood and destroyed aircraft. She had witnessed at firsthand the devastation caused by the fierce battle fought overhead in the British skies. Twenty-nine British planes had been lost – a terrible toll of young lives, but nowhere near so terrible as the sixty-one planes lost by the Germans. Diane had seen things then she never wanted to see again: the shattered bodies and white lifeless faces of the young men who only hours before she had seen alive and well, familiar to her and yet horribly unfamiliar in their death. When she had confided her bad dreams to a friend, her friend had told her that nearly every woman who worked at the airfield in a supporting role had her own version of the same kind of nightmare.

In the end the RAF had won the battle for England’s skies. Diane knew that the reason that Susan’s young brother had been made up to flight lieutenant was probably because of the number of men that had been lost. Kit had been made up to squadron leader in the space of a few short months that summer. She had been so proud of him, but he had told her bitterly that his promotion had come at the cost of the lives of his friends and comrades.

‘Diane, do you mind if I have a word with you?’

Diane swung round at the sound of Susan’s voice, glad to be brought out of her sombre reverie.

‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but if I were you I really wouldn’t get too involved with Myra Stone. It’s bad enough that she behaves as though she isn’t married, but there was a bit of an incident a while back; a silly young newly married chap who fell for her hook, line and sinker. She’d encouraged him, of course, but his poor little wife was heartbroken. The chap was transferred, and Myra got a ticking-off, but these things leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and as a result the other girls have tended to give her a bit of a cold shoulder. I appreciate you’re in a bit of a difficult position with the two of you sharing a billet, but I thought I ought to let you know the way things are. For your own sake you might want to consider not getting too pally with her.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Diane hesitated. ‘I appreciate you telling me. The problem is that I’ve already agreed to go dancing with her tonight, but if she were to suggest it again…’

‘There’s nothing you can do about tonight now, I agree, but it’s something to bear in mind next time. We’re a close-knit bunch in the Dungeon, working as closely as we do, and I don’t want members of my team being at odds with one another. You see the thing is, that silly young fool I was telling you about, well, he was Jean’s cousin and his wife was her best friend. Jean asked Myra to back off, but she just laughed at her. Anyway, I’d better get on. Bill will be wondering where I am.’

She could now understand why Myra wasn’t popular with the other girls, Diane acknowledged as she walked up Edge Hill Road. After tonight she would have to put as much distance between them as she could, otherwise the other girls were going to think she and Myra were two of a kind.

Mrs Lawson was just coming out of the front door as Diane walked up the front path.

‘I’m off to my WVS meeting so I’ve left you a bit of summat keeping warm on top of the oven. Oh, a couple of letters came for you. I’ve left them on the hall stand.’

‘Did Myra mention to you that we’re going out tonight?’ Diane asked after she had thanked her.

‘Yes.’ Mrs Lawson’s mouth pursed disapprovingly. ‘Going dancing, she said you was. It don’t seem right to me, not with her married, but she said as how she felt she ought on account of you asking her and you being on your own.’

The sly cat! Diane reflected grimly as she stepped into the hall, picking up her letters from the oak hall stand as she did so. One was from her parents. She recognised her mother’s handwriting immediately. The other was from Beryl, a girl who had been one of her closest friends at her previous posting. She had written her name on the back of her envelope.

Pushing wide the kitchen door, Diane started to open her mother’s letter, wrinkling her nose at the smell of boiled cabbage emanating from the stove.

‘There you are. We’ve got to be ready to go out at seven, you know, otherwise we won’t get a table. I reckon you won’t get much of a hot bath. Mrs L must have turned off the geyser, mean old bat.’

Diane didn’t bother looking up from her letter. If she did have to have a cold bath it would probably be because Myra had used all the hot water, she suspected. Her mother’s letter was cheery and loving, wanting to know how she was settling in and when she thought she would have enough leave to come home for a visit. The notepaper was scented with her mother’s favourite rosewater scent, and Diane felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over her. How much simpler and safer her life had seemed when she had been a young girl still living at home.

‘Gawd, I’m not staying down here. What’s that stink?’ Myra complained.

‘My tea, I expect,’ Diane answered, refolding her mother’s letter and putting it in her bag before she opened her friend’s.

‘Can’t you leave that until tomorrow?’ Myra said irritably. ‘You’re going to have to rush as it is, unless you’re planning on going out in uniform.’

‘No…I’m not…I’m on my way,’ Diane assured her.

Beryl had written that she was missing her, but that she understood why she had felt she had to go.

‘To be honest, I think you’ve done the right thing. I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but you might as well know the truth.’ Diane gripped the letter tightly. Her stomach had started to churn in anticipation of a blow to come.

Kit isn’t the man I thought he was, Di, dropping you to go chasing after one girl after another, and getting them and himself talked about by keeping them out late, driving them all over the countryside. You’re better off without him and that’s a fact. I’ve heard that he never dates the same girl twice and it’s been all over the camp that, last weekend, he was found rip-roaring drunk in a country pub with a girl he’d picked up from somewhere. The landlord threw them out and threatened to call the police, and it was only because of his pals that Kit managed to get back to camp safely. Seems that someone asked him about you and where you were and he said he neither knew nor cared, and that he wanted to have some fun with the kind of girls who knew what fun was. He’s getting himself a reputation for being a real party man, if you know what I mean. You were right to give yourself a fresh start.

Diane closed her fist over the letter, crumpling it up, willing herself not to give way to her emotions in front of Myra. So Kit didn’t care about her, did he? Well, she already knew that and she certainly didn’t care about him. And when it came to having fun, they would see which of them could do the most of that, she decided fiercely, as she headed for the stairs.

SEVEN

‘Do you think I’ll be all right going dancing like this, Mrs Brown, only I haven’t got anything else?’ Ruthie asked uncertainly as she stood in the kitchen waiting for her next-door neighbour’s verdict. Her mother was in the parlour listening to the wireless, lost in the world to which she had retreated. Ruthie did not know which she dreaded the most: her mother’s blank silences when she hardly seemed to know her, or her tearful clinging pleas not to leave her.

‘I don’t look right, do I?’ she guessed as she saw the uncertainty in the older woman’s face as she studied her heavy shoes and ankle socks teamed with the only pretty dress she had, a school-girlish pink gingham cotton with white collar and cuffs.

‘Well, you look very nice, love, but p’raps more like you was going to Sunday school than a dance. But there,’ she continued hastily when she saw Ruthie’s face fall, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you wear. They go in all sorts these days, so I’ve heard – uniforms an’ all. You just go and enjoy yourself.’

Ruthie was the last to reach the Grafton, anxiously hurrying down the queue waiting for the doors to open, when a hand suddenly came out and grabbed hold of her.

‘Oh!’ she exhaled in relief when she realised it belonged to Jess.

‘Where’ve you bin?’ Jess scolded her good-naturedly. ‘We was just beginning to think you wasn’t coming.’

‘Well, whatever she was doing, it wasn’t worrying about what to wear,’ one of the other girls quipped quietly, causing a ripple of laughter to run through those near enough in the queue to hear her. ‘Did you tell her it was fancy dress or summat, Jess?’

‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ Jess comforted Ruthie. ‘They don’t mean any harm. You’re frock’s a pretty colour. Suits you, it does.’

‘I didn’t know what to wear. I haven’t got…’ Tears filled Ruthie’s eyes.

‘There now, don’t go getting yourself all upset. Your frock isn’t that bad, and if you had a different pair of shoes and took off them ankle socks and put a bit of rouge and lipstick on…’

‘And took them slides out of her hair and undid that plait and tried to look like she were eighteen and not fourteen. They’ll never let her in looking like that, Jess,’ Mel warned sharply.

‘Of course they will. If she’s old enough to be working on munitions then I’m bloody sure she’s old enough to go dancing,’ Jess defended Ruthie stoutly, adding, ‘Here, Polly, you always bring a spare pair of shoes wi’ you. Hand ’em over here, and let’s see if they fit Ruthie.’

‘I’m not giving her me best heels,’ a pretty blonde girl with large blue eyes protested sulkily.

‘Well, give me them you’re wearing now and you put the heels on,’ was Jess’s response, and somehow or other, Ruthie found herself persuaded out of her lace-ups and ankle socks and into a pair of scuffed white sandals.

‘Now for your hair. Lucy, you’re a dab hand with a comb. Come and see what you can do,’ Jess commanded.

There was no use her objecting, Ruthie could see that; a crowd of young women had gathered round her giggling as they enthusiastically offered their advice.

‘Anyone got any scissors?’ Lucy called out. ‘Only if I’m to do a decent job, I’m going to have to cut her hair.’

‘I’ve got a pair,’ someone called up. ‘Allus tek ’em wi’ me when I go out just in case some chap tries to get too fresh.’

‘Go on with yer,’ another girl laughed. ‘What yer going to do wi’ ’em – cut it off?’

Ruthie could feel her face getting redder and redder from a combination of trepidation and embarrassment.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jess assured her, giving her hand a small squeeze. ‘My, but I bet you never thought this’d be happening to you when you decided to go working on munitions,’ she laughed. ‘You’d have run a mile if you had, wouldn’t you? How come you’re still going out dressed like a Sunday school kid, anyway, Ruthie?’

It was impossible to resist her questions or to be offended by them, and somehow or other Ruthie discovered that she was telling her what she had thought she would never be able to tell anyone.

‘My dad was killed in the May bombing and…well, my mother…’ She paused, feeling guilty about discussing her mother to someone who was still relatively a stranger, no matter how easy she was to talk to.

‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.’

‘Hold still, will yer?’ Lucy was complaining. ‘How am I expected to give her a decent style if she keeps moving her head around, Jess? See, that fringe I just give her has gone all lopsided.’

‘You’d better get a move on, Lucy; they’re opening the doors,’ someone further down the queue warned.

Ruthie looked so apprehensive that Jess couldn’t help but laugh. She was such an oddity, so obviously not the sort to be working on munitions, that Jess’s tender heart had gone out to her the minute she had seen her.

Jess might be an only child but she had grown up surrounded by the busyness of a large extended family. Her mother was one of ten and her dad one of thirteen. The whole family lived close to one another on the same narrow streets off the Edge Hill Road, but nearer to the city centre than Chestnut Close, where Ruthie lived and which was considered to be a ‘better’ working-class area, because of its proximity to Wavertree. But although there may not have been much money around whilst Jess had been growing up, there had been plenty of love. Her father had been a jolly, good-natured man, always ready for a joke and a laugh. He and his brothers were rag-and-bone men, and he’d been proud of the fact that his patter had housewives favouring him rather than anyone else.

‘Got to ’ave the right touch, our Jess,’ he had often told her, giving her a saucy wink. ‘That’s how I managed to steal your mam away from under your Uncle Colin’s nose. Mad for her, he was, but it were me she married.’

‘Give over, do, Samuel Hunt,’ her mother had always chided him. ‘Don’t you go filling her head with all that nonsense. And as for your Colin -all he ever did was ask me out the once.’

There had always been a lot of banter between her parents, both of them able to give as good as they got, but it had been good-natured, and when her father had fallen ill after he had slipped on an icy street and broken his leg, her mother had become as thin and sick-looking as he.

Jess had been taken away to stay with one of her aunties when the doctor had said that her father was going to die.

‘Got poison in that broken leg of his, he has, lass,’ her Uncle Tom had told her. ‘Can’t do nowt about it.’

She had been taken to see him one last time, but he hadn’t looked like the dad she remembered, lying there in bed, his face oddly swollen and his breathing harsh.

She had been ten then, and could well remember walking behind the coffin when they went to bury him, and she could remember the wake afterwards as well, when his brothers, her uncles, had got drunk and started telling tales about when they had been lads together.

Her Uncle Colin had never married, and a year and a day after they had buried her dad, Jess’s mother had told her that she was going to marry him and that they would be going to live in his house. That was the way things were done in their community, and both sides of their extended family had looked approvingly on the marriage because of the security it gave a widow and her child. But, conscious of the child’s feelings both Jess’s mother and her new stepfather to be had been at pains to explain that her dad would never be forgotten and that the love all three of them had for him would never die, but would always keep him alive in their hearts.

Her uncle had provided her with as loving a home as her father had done and, as a child, just as her father and his brothers had brought home the flotsam and jetsam of their trade, sifting through it to rescue and nurture the ‘treasures’ they found, so Jess had learned to rescue her own flotsam and jetsam, normally in the form of some living thing. A singing bird that someone was throwing out because it wouldn’t sing, a stray kitten with a piece of string round its neck tied to a brick, a dog with three legs and cross-eyes -whatever it was, it only had to present itself to Jess as unloved and in need for her to take it to her heart and embrace it. There was nothing Jess liked more than bringing a smile to people’s faces, and happiness to those who didn’t possess it. She had an unerring instinct for those in need of her special touch, and she had recognised Ruthie as one of them the minute she had set eyes on her. Not that Jess analysed things as practically as that. She just knew that something made her feel sorry for Ruthie.

When the other girls took her to task for inviting Ruthie to go out dancing with them, Jess had told them firmly that Ruthie needed bringing out of herself a bit.

‘Have you done yet, Lucy, ’cos if you haven’t we’re going in without you? Otherwise we’ll lose our place in the queue and we won’t get a decent table,’ Elsie Wiggins, one of the older girls, who hadn’t wanted Jess inviting Ruthie along, shouted up.

‘We’re coming now,’ Jess responded, turning to smile at Ruthie. ‘Quick, have a look at yourself.’ She dived into her bag and produced a small mirror. ‘Proper smashing, you look. All you need now is a bit of lipstick. I’ll lend you mine when we get inside, and you’ll be turning all the lads’ heads and no mistake.’

Ruthie wasn’t listening to her. She was staring instead at her reflection in the mirror. She lifted her hand to touch the short fringe curling onto her face, her eyes widening. She looked so different, so grown-up.

‘Come on…Jess.’

Grabbing hold of Ruthie’s hand, Jess put the mirror away and hurried her along the street. Ruthie could feel the prickle of bits of hair sticking to her skin inside her frock. How much had Lucy cut off at the back? She had been snipping away for a very long time. Ruthie had never had her hair cut, always wearing it scraped back off her face in its neat plait. She reached behind her head and froze when her fingers encountered a soft mass of loose hair. Short loose hair.

‘Got a real nice wave to it now,’ Lucy was saying. ‘Though I say it meself, I’ve done it really nice. Mind you, them scissors I was using was that blunt it was like cutting it wi’ a knife and fork.’

‘All right, girls, how many of you are there then?’ one of the men on the door asked jovially

‘Eight,’ Jess answered him. ‘Eight of the best-looking girls in Liverpool. In fact, we’re that good-looking you should be letting us in for free,’ she told him, winking at Ruthie. ‘’Cos once the fellas see us they’ll be paying double just to get a closer look.’

‘Oh aye, well, you can tell that to the boss, if you like.’

‘I don’t know why you bother. It’s the same every week,’ a chubby ginger-haired girl protested.

‘Well, you never know, Andrea, one week he might let us in for nowt. It’s always worth a try. Him wot don’t ask don’t get – that’s what my dad allus used to say,’ Jess responded cheerfully, still holding Ruthie’s hand she led the way up the stairs to the ballroom.

Ruthie’s eyes widened as she followed Jess inside.

‘It’s Ivy Benson’s lot playing tonight,’ Lucy commented, glancing up at the gallery from which people could look down on the dance floor, and where the band played. ‘Ever so good, they are. They’ve got a good dance floor here too. Properly sprung, it is, not like some. Modelled it on some Russian dancing place.’

‘I think I remember reading that the building was designed after the Kirov Ballet Theatre,’ Ruthie supplied timidly, causing them all to stare at her.

‘Coo, proper schoolbook learning you’ve got, Ruthie, and no mistake,’ Lucy exclaimed admiringly.

‘Hmm.’ Carmen, another of the girls, with smouldering dark eyes and equally dark hair, pouted, unimpressed. ‘I like a proper band with a proper male singer.’

‘That’s only ’cos you want to give him the eye whilst you’re dancing,’ Elsie chirped up.

‘Look at them GIs over there,’ Lucy breathed. ‘You have to hand it to them, they look really well turned out. Ever so tall and handsome, they are…’

‘Aye, and ever so keen to get into a girl’s knickers, from what I’ve heard,’ a girl whose name Ruthie thought was Cathy sniffed.

‘Well, that good-looking one over there can try getting into mine any time he likes,’ Lucy answered her back.

‘Oooh, Lucy…’

‘I only said he could try,’ Lucy pointed out. ‘Come on, let’s go and grab that table over there, right by the dance floor, before anyone else does.’

‘I knew we should have got down here earlier,’ Myra complained as she and Diane joined the end of the queue. ‘Pity you haven’t got something a bit more dressy to wear,’ she added critically, before glancing down smugly at her own red sateen halter-neck top, obviously comparing it to the plain dark blue taffeta dress that Diane had on. Diane didn’t say anything. She was still brooding on the content of Beryl’s letter. She might not have dolled herself up like Myra, with her tight-fitting top and her red lipstick, but tonight she was going to show the world that she could have as good a time as anyone – especially Kit.

‘I knew it,’ Myra grimaced as soon as they were inside the ballroom. ‘There’s not a free table to be seen.’

‘We can share with some other girls, can’t we?’ Diane responded.

Myra gave her a withering look. For all her good looks it was plain to her that Diane knew very little about the art of attracting men. If they went and sat at a table with plain girls they’d be overlooked along with them, and if they went and sat at one with pretty ones, then they’d be vying with them for the best-looking men, which was why…She searched the room with an expert eye, and then dug Diane in the ribs.

‘Come on, over there, three from the band, and be quick about it in case someone beats us to it.’

She was pushing her way through the crowded ballroom before Diane could say anything, leaving her no option than to follow her. But when Diane saw the table she was heading towards, she stopped and made a grab for Myra’s arm.

‘What is it?’ Myra demanded impatiently.