yeah? Then you can’t blame them for thinking you were waiting for business, can you?’
It took several seconds for his meaning to sink in through her anger, but once it had she drew herself up to her full height and told him icily, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked in view of the behaviour of your men, but somehow I am. You see, in this country, Major, we expect our officers to know better. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to return to my billet. I’m on duty at eight, and by on duty,’ she told him pointedly, ‘I mean that I shall be serving my country – in uniform, just so there isn’t any misunderstanding.’
Diane had the satisfaction of seeing the slow burn of colour creeping up under his skin.
‘OK, my boys may have made a mistake—’ he began grudgingly.
‘There was no “may” about it, Major. Perhaps you should invite them to tell you about the group of girls they were pursuing and lost when they charged down here in their Jeep – or maybe that’s acceptable behaviour for American servicemen?’
Without giving him the opportunity to respond, Diane stepped past him, keeping her head held high as she virtually marched up the street, away from him. Outwardly she might look fully in control but inwardly she was quaking in her shoes, she admitted, as she refused to give in to the temptation to turn round and see if he was watching her. It made her feel physically sick to think of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t turned up when he had, and it made her feel even more nauseous to recognise what he had thought of her and how he had condemned her without bothering to check his facts. She knew that there was already a lot of antagonism in some quarters towards the American soldiers who had arrived in the country, but until now she had felt that they were being treated a bit unfairly. Feeling superior because they had better uniforms and equipment was one thing, but behaving as they had towards her was something else again, Diane decided angrily. Did they really think they were so important that they could get away with treating decent British women like that? By the time she had reached Edge Hill Road, she had walked off some of her temper and was feeling calmer, but it wasn’t until she had closed the door of her bedroom behind her and dropped down onto her narrow bed that she realised how shaky the incident had left her feeling.
‘Oh, Kit,’ she whispered, wishing he could take her in his arms and comfort her. But it was no use crying for her ex-fiancé. He had made it plain that she meant nothing to him any more.
THREE
‘Come on, girls, we’d better get back to work. We’ve overrun our break by five minutes as it is.’
‘Another few minutes won’t do anyone any harm, Janet,’ Myra protested. ‘I haven’t finished my ciggy yet.’
‘Huh, you’re lucky to have any ciggies to finish,’ sniffed the third Waaf gathered round the canteen table in the Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute – or the Naafi as all the canteen facilities provided for the armed forces were affectionately nicknamed. ‘I suppose you’ve been cadging some off them Yanks again, have you? I saw you talking to that handsome corporal earlier on.’
‘He’s only a bit of a kid and he looked half scared to death,’ Janet Warner, the most senior member of their small group, said drily, adding under her breath, ‘Watch out – here comes Sergeant Riley.’
‘What’s this then, a mothers’ meeting? Haven’t you lot got any work to do?’
There was a sudden clatter and the scrape of chairs being pushed back as all the girls apart from Myra reacted to the sharp voice and hurried to the exit.
‘We’re just on our way, Sarge,’ Janet assured the thickset, sharp-eyed RAF sergeant who was surveying them before turning away to head for the counter.
‘Come on, Myra,’ Janet urged in a hissed whisper from the doorway as Myra took her time crushing out her cigarette before starting to stroll insolently towards her friends. ‘Sometimes I think you go out of your way to wind up Sergeant Riley I really do,’ Janet muttered crossly.
‘It gets on my nerves the way he throws his weight around and thinks he can tell us what to do.’
‘He’s a sergeant, Myra; he doesn’t “think” he can tell us what to do, he knows he can.’
‘Stone, over here.’
Myra hesitated just long enough to make the anxiety sharpen further in Janet’s eyes and to have the satisfaction of seeing the red tide of anger starting to burn up the sergeant’s face, before obeying his summons.
‘It’s your kind that give women in the services a bad name,’ he told her when she eventually reached him. ‘And if I had my way—’
‘But you don’t, do you, Sarge?’ Myra taunted him. ‘Have your way, I mean. We all heard about that little Wren turning you down. Shame. She’s dating an American now, I hear. And who can blame her? Good-looking lot, they are, and generous.’
‘You’ve got a husband who’s away fighting for his country.’
‘So I have.’
‘It hasn’t gone unnoticed that you’ve been carrying on like you are single.’
‘Hasn’t it?’ Myra gave a shrug. ‘So what?’
‘You ought to be ruddy well ashamed of yourself.’
‘Jealous, are you, Sarge, ’cos other people are having a good time and you aren’t? Well, I’ll tell you something, shall I? I don’t blame your little Wren for turning you down in favour of her Yank, not one little bit. In her shoes, I’d have done the same.’
‘Sarge, your tea’s going cold,’ the Naafi manageress called out.
The sergeant turned his head, giving Myra the opportunity to escape.
She and the sergeant had clashed from the moment they had set eyes on one another. He reminded her in many ways of her father. A small shadow darkened Myra’s eyes. How her mother had stuck him for so many years Myra didn’t know. Part of the reason she had married so quickly had been to escape her home. She hadn’t known then, of course, that her father would have a seizure in the middle of one of his furious outbursts of temper and die three months after the wedding.
Men! Once you let them get the upper hand they thought they could treat you how they liked. That was why she was determined that no man would ever control her life the way her father had controlled her mother’s and had tried to control hers. She wished passionately now that she had not been stupid enough to get married and land herself with a husband hanging around her neck and thinking he could tell her what to do. Well, he could write as many letters as he liked telling her he did not want her going out whilst he was away. They weren’t going to stop her doing a single thing that she wanted to do.
FOUR
Ruthie tensed as she opened the front door, her shoes gripped tightly in her free hand as she glanced fearfully over her shoulder into the blackout-shrouded darkness of the silent house, terrified of making the slightest sound that might wake her sleeping mother. If that happened…but no, she mustn’t think about that.
Once she was safely outside in the cold dawn air she slipped on her pair of Mary Jane shoes, polished over and over again to
