GI Brides: The wartime girls who crossed the Atlantic for love. Duncan Barrett

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СКАЧАТЬ her, smiling. Rae sighed. She couldn’t be bothered to go through the whole rigmarole again. Nor did she want to miss the film. Maybe Helen was right and she should just put him out of his misery – then he would see he wasn’t going to get anywhere with her and he wouldn’t bother asking again.

      ‘Well, I’m going anyway, so you might as well come along,’ she said.

      Raymond didn’t need to hear any more. He was already by her side, his grin bigger than ever.

3

       Margaret

      Margaret Boyle finished typing the letter the American army sergeant had dictated to her, and proudly pulled it out of the brand-new Royal typewriter. She went into his office, laid it on his desk with a smile and returned to her seat. She was confident of her typing skills and felt sure she was doing well in her new job at the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA) headquarters in Mayfair.

      But the sergeant, a plump man in his thirties with oily, slicked-back hair, was finding his English secretary rather frustrating. A few minutes later, he emerged holding the letter. ‘Who is this?’ he asked, pointing to the top of the letter, where Margaret had faithfully typed, ‘Dear Bird.’

      ‘Well, that’s the man you’re writing to, isn’t it?’ Margaret replied. ‘Bird.’

      ‘I said Bud!’ he exclaimed. ‘B.U.D.’

      ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ responded Margaret, ‘but I simply can’t understand your accent.’

      The sergeant went away grumbling, but she didn’t care – her eyes were on the other officers who milled around the headquarters. All the best, most ambitious young men the Americans had were here, and none had failed to notice the pretty new secretary, with her tall, slim figure and blonde hair pinned up in luscious curls on top of her head.

      Margaret was making the most of it, having been starved of male company for years. Since her teens she had been living in the depths of the Irish countryside, where her mother had dragged her and her three sisters after running away from their father, a major in the Royal Artillery.

      For as long as Margaret could remember, her parents had endured a tempestuous relationship. She had witnessed the terrible rows that Mrs Boyle provoked with her husband, always for the most spurious of reasons. Sometimes she would vent her frustration by hitting her daughter, or stabbing her with knitting needles. Margaret had learned to obey when told to pull down her sleeves, to hide the telltale marks left by these attacks.

      Her parents’ final showdown had come when Major Boyle was posted in India, where Mrs Boyle had invented an affair between her husband and their nineteen-year-old nanny Elfreda. Using all her theatrical talents, she had played the part of the spurned wife to perfection, dramatically sailing off from Bombay vowing that he would never see his children again.

      She had chosen rural Ireland as her new home, since it had the advantage of putting the sea between herself and her relations in England, enabling her to reign over her daughters without any outside interference. There, she subjected them to a primitive life in a crumbling old mansion, where they had no electricity and had to cook on an open fire in the hallway.

      With her children a captive audience, Mrs Boyle – a creative if unbalanced woman – invented strange plays, which she performed to them in the evenings. She continued to fly into irrational tempers, and took to beating Margaret with a broom as well as her fists.

      When Margaret turned eighteen, Major Boyle had arrived unexpectedly, offering to take her back to England with him. She was overjoyed to be rescued from her mad mother, and left before she had a chance to stop her.

      Once she was safely in England, Margaret wrote to her mother, asking for her clothes to be forwarded. There was no reply, but a trunk soon arrived. Inside it were Margaret’s clothes – all cut to shreds.

      Major Boyle was stationed near his hometown of Canterbury, in charge of the Boche Buster – a large railway gun capable of firing across the Channel. But having pulled a few strings among his army contacts, he had managed to get his daughter her coveted job at the ETOUSA headquarters, arranging for her to stay with some family friends called the Steadhams in Holland Park.

      In London, Margaret had quickly discovered the effect she had on men, and had been using it to its full advantage, enjoying dates with a string of Americans. But it was one young second lieutenant that she particularly looked out for. Taylor Drysdale was a tall, athletic man in his late twenties with the chiselled looks of a movie star, and all the girls in the office swooned whenever he walked by. ‘They say he was an Olympic swimmer before the war,’ a young secretary called Grace whispered to Margaret as he passed by in the corridor one day. ‘Isn’t he an Adonis?’

      Margaret had to admit he was quite possibly the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life, and she secretly determined to make him hers.

      The next time Taylor swaggered towards her, she absent-mindedly dropped her handkerchief on the floor, causing him to stop and retrieve it for her. ‘Oh, thank you so much,’ she said. ‘How silly of me.’

      She looked up at him through her lashes and he smiled knowingly. Soon Margaret was the envy of all the girls in the office, having secured a date with the adored Taylor.

      That Saturday they dined at the Savoy, which had become a regular hangout for American officers. The hotel had to comply with the blackout like everywhere else, so its revolving doors had been painted dark blue, and it was protected with sandbags. Restaurant meals, which were off-ration, had recently been capped by the government at five shillings, but luxury foods served in the top hotels were not subject to regulation.

      Sitting opposite the gorgeous Taylor, enjoying a plate of caviar, Margaret was aware of the admiring glances that the two of them drew from around the room. He really was astonishingly good-looking – and, as she soon realised, intelligent as well. He had Master’s degrees in mathematics and nuclear physics and had been chosen for a special electronics training group in the signal corps, where he was currently developing radio navigation charts to increase the safety of long-distance aircraft shipments. He was also an accomplished athlete, and had competed in the controversial 1936 Olympics in Germany, coming fourth in the 100-metre backstroke and narrowly missing out on a medal. Margaret was convinced she would never meet a more perfect man, and by the end of the meal she was utterly in love with him.

      Soon Margaret was spending several nights a week at Taylor’s flat in Chelsea. In order for her comings and goings not to be reported back to her father, she moved out of the Steadhams’ house and rented a room of her own.

      Up until now she had been a social butterfly, enjoying the attention of various beaus. But suddenly she found herself totally obsessed with one man and one man alone. She thought about Taylor all the time, and was in a constant state of agitation at work, worrying about when her next date with him would be. There was only one way to rid herself of her malady, she decided – to make sure that Taylor stayed hers forever. She had to get him to marry her.

      First, Margaret started making little jokes about wartime weddings and how everyone was rushing to the altar, but Taylor merely laughed good-naturedly. Then one morning, when they were lying in each other’s arms, she felt so overcome with passion that she could contain her feelings no longer. ‘Oh, Taylor, I love you so much,’ she gushed, looking up at his perfect face. ‘I do hope we’ll be married soon.’

      To her horror, Taylor only laughed, СКАЧАТЬ