The Married Girls Page 3

Felix and Daphne travelled down from London by train. Daphne had wanted Felix to drive them in his open-topped car. She was proud of landing such an eligible fiancé and wanted to make a splash arriving in the village, but he’d been adamant.

  ‘No can do, darling. Can’t get the petrol for a trip like that.’

  ‘You could get extra coupons from the office if you wanted to,’ pouted Daphne. ‘What’s the point of working in a place like the Air Ministry if you can’t get the odd bonus from time to time?’

  ‘I’m sorry, dearest,’ Felix replied, ‘but no one’s going to hand out petrol coupons for a visit to the country. The train’s easy enough and we can get a taxi from the station. I’ll get my father to arrange for Fred Jones to be waiting when we arrive.’

  The journey was easy. They travelled first class, had lunch in the restaurant car and Felix ordered some wine with the meal.

  ‘It’s to celebrate our visit to meet my parents,’ he said cheerfully as he filled her glass. He looked across at her rather pale face and said, ‘You aren’t worried about meeting them, are you, darling?’

  Daphne took a sip of her wine. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. But she was. She knew that she wasn’t going to be top-drawer enough for Felix’s parents. If they knew where her family came from and where she’d been brought up, they’d be horrified. Felix knew and said he didn’t care, but then even Felix didn’t know the whole story.

  *

  They had first met during an air raid when Daphne had sprained her ankle in the rush to get underground as the sirens blared. Felix had come to her aid, and when the all-clear sounded and it was obvious that she couldn’t put any weight on her ankle, he had hailed a taxi.

  As the cab took them to her home, they chatted. Felix told her that he flew with Fighter Command and was on a forty-eight-hour leave. Daphne told him she worked in a factory making parts for aero engines.

  ‘Just think,’ she marvelled, ‘you could be flying a plane I helped to make! That would be something, wouldn’t it.’

  ‘It certainly would,’ Felix agreed, thinking privately that it would also be highly unlikely. It was awkward sitting in the taxi with her. She was even younger than she’d seemed at first sight, probably only about sixteen or seventeen. Her thick fair hair had escaped from its combs and tumbled about her face. She was pretty enough, he supposed, with a small pointed nose and a Cupid’s bow of a mouth, scarlet with lipstick, but it was her eyes that were her most arresting feature: large, speedwell blue, fringed with almost impossibly long lashes; not more than a child really, an over-made-up child, and Felix couldn’t wait to deliver her home and go back up to town.

  Home was a tiny house up an alleyway behind a run-down backstreet garage in Hackney. She’d been ashamed of it then and she was even more ashamed of it now.

  After Felix left that night, Daphne had sat down in the kitchen and while her mother Ethel bandaged her sprained ankle, she told her parents how the young flight lieutenant had come to her rescue.

  ‘If he hadn’t been there, Ma,’ she said, ‘I’d have been stuck in the street with the Jerry bombers over my head.’

  ‘Well, you just watch yourself, my girl,’ said her mother darkly. ‘We don’t want no more trouble caused by officers.’

  ‘Leave it, Mother,’ Daphne’s dad, Norman, said. ‘It was good of him to bring our girl home.’

  ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t,’ snapped his wife, ‘but our sort don’t mix with officers.’

  No more was said, but Daphne thought about Felix all the time, building a romance around him, so that when the other girls at the factory were talking about their boyfriends, she would mention Felix by name as if he were hers. She could weave about him whatever stories she liked. Fantasies that soon became as real to her as the stories the other girls told.

  It was safer that way. She hadn’t had a boyfriend recently, not since the young officer who’d got her pregnant and disappeared. Her baby, Janet, was just over eighteen months now, being brought up by her mother as her own. Janet was Daphne’s ‘little sister’.

  When Daphne turned eighteen, tired of the daily grind in the factory, she left and joined the WAAFs. She had long ago learned to drive and working alongside her father in his garage, she’d learned the inner workings of the combustion engine. At weekends she often helped him get an overworked car up and running again, and she could coax the most recalcitrant engine back into life. The WAAFs welcomed her with open arms.

  Once she’d done her basic training she was employed as a driver and spent much of her time behind the wheel, taking officers to and from meetings, driving them to various air bases all over the country.

  It was at RAF Northolt that she saw Felix again. His face imprinted on her memory, she recognised him at once as he emerged from a hangar with another officer and they paused outside to light their cigarettes. The other officer glanced across at her waiting by the parked car and made some comment to Felix, who looked up. The two men wandered across to where she stood.

  ‘Hello there.’ It was the other man who spoke. He held out his cigarette case. ‘Want a smoke?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Daphne replied, ‘don’t mind if I do.’ She took a cigarette and ducked her head to accept a light.

  ‘Haven’t seen you before, have we? My name’s Toby, Toby Squires.’

  ‘No, I just brought Group Captain Hayes up for some meeting.’ She was answering Toby, but her eyes were on Felix. Would he recognise her now they were standing together?

  Fixed by her blue eyes, Felix frowned thoughtfully, saying, ‘Do I know you? Have we met somewhere before?’ He was racking his brains. She did look vaguely familiar but where did he know her from? Perhaps one of the air base hops, or at a party? She was only a WAAF driver, but he might have come across her before.

  ‘In an air raid,’ Daphne told him. ‘I sprained my ankle.’

  ‘Good God,’ exclaimed Felix, remembering. ‘Was that you?’

  Daphne nodded. ‘Yes, you took me home in a taxi.’

  ‘Did you, by George?’ interrupted Toby. ‘That was quick work, old boy.’

  Felix ignored him and said, ‘But you weren’t a WAAF then, were you? You were making planes!’

  Daphne laughed. ‘Yeah, and pretty boring it was, too. Soon as I was old enough, I joined up.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Felix. ‘Where’re you based?’

  ‘In London, but I drive all over the country.’

  At that moment Group Captain Hayes appeared from one of the buildings. He carried a briefcase and strode across to the waiting car. Daphne hastily threw her cigarette to the ground, stepping forward to open the rear door. Felix and Toby Squires moved away and walked back to the hangar. Hayes tossed his briefcase on to the back seat and then slid in beside it, saying as he did so, ‘Back to the Air Ministry, Higgins, and don’t hang about.’

  Some of the officers she drove preferred to ride beside her in the front, sometimes chatting to her on the journey; others, like Group Captain Hayes, always chose to travel in the back and spoke not a word.

  Daphne hurried round to the driver’s side and started the car; the last she saw of Felix and his friend, Toby, was through the rear-view mirror, as they finished their cigarettes before going back inside.

  On the way back to London, the engine began to splutter and cough. Daphne felt the car lose power and pulled over to the side of the road.

  ‘What’s the problem, Higgins?’ snapped the group captain.

  ‘Not sure, sir, I’ll have a look.’ Daphne got out of the car and lifted the bonnet. It was not the car she usually drove, the one that she kept serviced and running sweetly. That had been commandeered for the day by some top brass. She’d had to make do with a car from the pool and she saw at once that little maintenance had been carried out on this engine for some time.

  She went round to the boot and pulled out the tool kit that always travelled with any of the staff cars, then returning to the engine, she set about removing and cleaning the plugs.


  ‘Is this going to take long, Higgins?’ demanded Hayes. ‘I’m due at the Air Ministry this evening.’ He sat fuming in the back of the car. All very well to employ women as drivers, he thought angrily, but when the car breaks down they’re useless.

  Higgins drove well enough, he’d had her before, but it was unlikely she’d be able to repair the car without a trained mechanic.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can, sir,’ Daphne replied from under the bonnet.

  Moments later he was glad that he had not expressed his thoughts aloud, for when she came back into the car and pressed the self-starter, the engine gave one further cough, one further splutter and then started purring as if it had never stopped.

  ‘Should be all right now, sir,’ Daphne said, and let in the clutch.

  ‘So,’ Hayes said, addressing her for the first time as if she were a person and not simply his driver, ‘where did you learn to do that?’

  Daphne laughed. ‘My dad has a garage, he does motor repairs. I learned it off him.’

  Back in London, Group Captain Hayes passed the message on. Aircraftswoman Higgins was wasted as a driver. She understood engines and should be retrained as an aircraft mechanic.

  Someone listened to him and Daphne found herself posted to RAF Halton, where she was trained in aircraft maintenance, and for the rest of the war she checked and maintained the aircraft that finally defeated the Luftwaffe and inflicted retaliatory bombing on the cities of Germany.

  She was a sergeant when the war ended and she could have left the air force and returned to Civvy Street with her head held high, having done her bit for England, but she was enjoying life. She had matured from being a very pretty girl into a beautiful woman, the sort that turned heads whenever she entered a room. She now moved in circles entirely different from those she had inhabited before the war. Officers took her dancing or out to dinner. Life was good and Daphne was determined that she would never go back to her pre-war life in Hackney. Janet didn’t need her. She was six now and entirely Ethel’s child. Her father’s business was beginning to pick up again as people took their cars off blocks, dusted them down and despite petrol still being rationed, put them back on the road. No, Daphne decided, no one in Hackney needed her any more and she moved on with scarcely a backward glance. She had listened to how the officers and their lady friends spoke and with careful attention to accent and grammar she could now pass muster among his friends if an officer asked her out for an evening. She was seldom short of an escort, several of them keen to entice her into bed, but none of them mentioning anything that seemed to offer more than a quick roll in the hay before they were posted elsewhere, definitely not what Daphne had in mind. And then she met Felix again.

  He flew into Biggin Hill, where she was overseeing a complete service and overhaul of an elderly Spitfire which, having seen valiant service during the war, was about to be sold off to a private buyer. Alerted by the tower that a plane was coming in, she went out on to the tarmac to greet the pilot, and there he was, Wing Commander Felix Bellinger. As before, she recognised him at once as he clambered out of the cockpit and took off his flying helmet. The same dark good looks, the usually smooth dark hair slightly ruffled by the helmet, the same dark eyes, the same neat moustache above a generous mouth; the same Felix about whom she’d fantasised as a young girl.

  Felix, dropping lightly to the ground and removing his helmet, saw a WAAF sergeant coming towards him. She wore regulation overalls, her hair turban-tied out of the way for work. There was a smudge of oil on her face, and she was regarding him with huge, speedwell-blue eyes. It was the eyes that captured him; wide, with laughter lurking in their depths. He’d seen them before, but surely belonging to some girl, not this beautiful woman, standing smiling at him. But where?

  She stepped forward and saluted. ‘Welcome to Biggin Hill, sir,’ she said. ‘We’ll get you checked over and refuelled directly.’ All efficiency, Daphne made no allusion to either of their previous meetings.

  Felix nodded and said, ‘No hurry, Sergeant, I’m not leaving until tomorrow.’ But even as he spoke he was racking his brain to remember where he’d seen those blue eyes before.

  ‘Squadron Leader Peterson is expecting you, sir. He’s in the mess.’

  It wasn’t until he and his old mate, Gerry Harper, wandered down to the local village pub that evening for a change of scene, that memory came back to him.

  Daphne was in the lounge bar, sitting with a young flight lieutenant, whose eyes seemed to devour her. Felix wasn’t surprised at the young man’s admiration. The woman sitting at the table with him was stunning, her hair, no longer confined to her working turban, was smooth and shining, coiled into luxuriant rolls about her ears and neck. Her mouth, a neat Cupid’s bow, was lightly touched with red. Wearing a bright blue dress that drew out the colour of her eyes, its wide skirt cinched with a broad black belt at her narrow waist, her perfect figure, previously concealed by her overalls, was displayed for general admiration, for her escort and for Felix.

  ‘Who’s the girl in the blue dress?’ Felix asked Gerry as they waited at the bar for their beer to be drawn.

  Harper glanced over his shoulder and gave a grin. ‘That’s Daphne Higgins... and it’s no good looking at her, Felix, because you’ll have to join the queue.’

  Felix hadn’t joined the queue, he had given Gerry a grin and picking up his pint, had crossed to where the couple were sitting.

  ‘Daphne!’ he said. ‘How lovely to see you again. How’ve you been keeping? Can I get you a drink?’ He glanced at the young officer and added, ‘You don’t mind, do you? Daphne and I go back a long way.’

  ‘N-no, of course not, sir,’ stammered the young man.

  ‘Good,’ beamed Felix, and knowing he was shamelessly pulling rank to interpose himself into another man’s evening, and not caring in the least, he bought drinks and drew up another chair.

  From there, there was no turning back. Felix had staked his claim. He couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t see Daphne properly before. How could he have been so blind? Now he had rediscovered her, there was no way he was going to lose her. His whole body ached for her and Daphne could read his desire in his face and in the way he touched her. He was now working at the Air Ministry, and his hours were pretty regular. He drove down to see her every weekend that she wasn’t working, and they had long and passionate kisses in the back of his little sports car, but that was all. Daphne never let him take advantage. It had happened to her once and she was determined that this time if an officer got her into his bed, it would be a marriage bed. She remembered the teenage fantasies she’d woven round Felix and the remembrance of them made her laugh.

  Felix was an attractive man and Daphne liked him. She had no intention of letting him go. He was her escape from Hackney, saving her from sliding back into a repeat of her mother’s life. She was astute enough and worldly wise, now, to know that to have any chance of Felix marrying her, she had to keep him waiting, waiting until there was a wedding ring on her finger. She had been caught once by a lusty and infatuated young officer who’d promised her the world. She’d thought then, in her innocence, that the way to keep him was to share all that she was with him. Now she knew better. She would give Felix absolutely no chance to disappear, leaving her alone and pregnant as her earlier lover had. Felix was her ticket to respectability, to a manor house in the country, to a life of luxury she could never even have imagined in those days before the war.

  She didn’t love Felix, but she was fond of him. He was thoughtful and attentive and very often made her laugh; she could picture herself married to him, lady of the manor with servants to run the house. Whenever they met she was gentle and loving, her eyes and her lips promising more. She enjoyed kissing him and being kissed by him, she gave herself into the strength of his arms, feeling her body respond, despite her determination not to carry that response to its natural conclusion. Always she held back, and Felix had been brought up to respect his girlfriends. Despite several forays into exciting
sex with good-time girls met during the hectic wartime days when each such encounter could well be his last, Felix never forced himself on Daphne. She was shy, he decided, afraid of her own emotions. She was no good-time girl to be used and left aside. He knew she came from a working-class background, but that didn’t mean she had no morals. He’d become intoxicated by her, and he’d set aside the knowledge of the garage in Hackney with its alleyway cottage. He didn’t plan to marry Daphne, but he did want to sleep with her, to do things to her and with her that made his imagination run wild.

  Surely, he thought, with careful wooing, she would eventually relent and allow him into her bed.

  But Daphne held fast to her plan and eventually, after several months, it was Felix who finally gave in.

  It was a warm August evening and they’d had dinner at the Silver Swan, one of their favourite restaurants. Afterwards they walked along the Thames Embankment, holding hands. A full moon silvered the river and the night air was balmy. They paused for a moment near Westminster Bridge and leaning on the wall, watched the leisurely flow of the Thames as it slipped by, gleaming in the moonlight.

  Felix saw the water passing steadily along its course; its smooth surface ruffled eddies of wind into ripples which flashed silver and were gone. His life was passing like that, he thought, flowing steadily, tediously, from day to day and the only flashes of silver were the hours he spent with Daphne. When he held her in his arms, he ached for her with every fibre of his being. Holding her close, as close as she allowed, ceased to be a pleasure and became a torment. He tried to imagine not seeing her, a life of which she was not a part, and found it almost impossible.

  The memory of the evening they had first met, so easily forgotten at the time, was etched on his mind. He could remember the tears spilling from her wide, blue eyes at the pain from her ankle; the way she’d clung to him for support, the feel of her body against him as he carried her down into the Tube station. Now it was Felix who fantasised.

  ‘Daphne,’ he said, still gazing at the river. ‘Will you marry me?’