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

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      She got up and dressed too, and then Taylor offered to walk her to the Tube. All the way there, she did her best to keep up a stream of light-hearted conversation to cover her embarrassment.

      When they reached the station, Taylor turned to her. ‘Margaret, you’re a great girl, and we’ve had a good time together,’ he said, ‘but I’m not looking for something serious. Maybe it’s best we don’t see each other any more.’

      Struggling to fight back the tears, Margaret hurried away from him to the platform and jumped onto a train just as it was about to leave the station. Once the doors were shut, she started crying desperately into the same handkerchief she had used to get Taylor’s attention in the first place.

      An older lady a few seats over looked at her in sympathy. ‘Your boyfriend gone off to fight has he, dear?’ she said.

      ‘No,’ replied Margaret. ‘He’s absolutely fine.’

      Over the next few weeks at work, Margaret was determined not to look as if Taylor’s rejection had crushed her, and she put more effort into her appearance than ever. She found she both dreaded and at the same time longed to bump into him in the corridor, and when she occasionally did, she said hello brightly. She hoped that her cheery disposition would convince him she had been unfazed by his rejection and he would ask her to go out with him again. Perhaps if she had more time with him, she could make him fall in love with her.

      But in her heart she knew her plan was doomed to failure. ‘A man that beautiful can’t be tied down,’ sighed her workmate Grace.

      For the first time since she had left Ireland, Margaret felt lonely. The life that had seemed so exciting to her a few weeks before now seemed empty, and as she came back alone to her rented room each night, she started to wonder if she wasn’t just as isolated here, surrounded by millions of people in London, as she had been living in the middle of nowhere in Ireland. Who did she really have in her life? A mad mother who had abused her, a father whom she adored but who had often been absent thanks to his military career, and a widowed grandmother in Canterbury who couldn’t possibly understand what she was going through.

      On Christmas day, 1942, having no one to celebrate with, Margaret volunteered to stay on at work. At lunchtime, she headed to the Maison Lyons restaurant at Marble Arch. Normally, she loved to sit amid its ornate decor and potted palms, listening to the little orchestra play. But that day, as she sat having Christmas dinner surrounded by empty tables, she had never felt so alone. She wondered what Taylor was doing, and the thought of him made her eyes prick with tears.

      After lunch Margaret hurried back to work, and as she came in she found a dark, wavy-haired American captain waiting outside the sergeant’s office.

      ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’ She felt his eyes go over her figure. She was wearing her tightest skirt and jacket that day, and she knew they showed it off to perfection.

      ‘I have an appointment at one,’ he told her, in the sing-song accent of the American South, ‘but I see your boss has found something more interesting to do. Can’t say I blame him.’

      ‘Can I get you a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?’ she asked.

      ‘Would it be troubling you too much to ask for a cup of tea?’ he replied. Seeing her surprise, he added, ‘I got used to drinking it when I was in the Canadian Army.’

      ‘What were you doing with the Canadians?’ Margaret asked.

      The man told her how, frustrated by America’s neutrality at the outbreak of war, he, along with other men from his native Georgia, had gone up to Ottawa to join the Canadian Active Service Force. ‘They’re more British than the British,’ he said. ‘Tea five times a day, and every house and car has the words “There’ll always be an England” in the window!’

      Margaret laughed, for a moment forgetting her misery over Taylor Drysdale. Her boss soon came back from lunch, and the captain disappeared into his office. But on his way out, he stopped at Margaret’s desk again.

      ‘Would you do me the honour of accompanying me to dinner Wednesday night?’ he asked.

      Margaret was about to say no. Since Taylor, she had lost all interest in other men, and while the captain was perfectly pleasant-looking, he was no tall, chiselled Adonis. He was of medium height, and although he had very dark, striking brown eyes, they were set in quite a large face, and there was a scar across his nose.

      But she liked his manners, which were those of a Southern gentleman and made him seem rather old-fashioned, even though he couldn’t have been more than thirty. Then she had a thought that made up her mind: if she went out with the captain and Taylor got to hear of it, he might feel jealous and try to get her back.

      ‘Certainly,’ she said, with a winning smile.

      The following week she accompanied Captain Lawrence McCaskill Rambo to Kettner’s restaurant in Soho. It was a glamorous place, with mirrored, panelled walls and a pianist tinkling away in the corner, and Margaret felt a stab of longing as she thought how good she and Taylor would have looked there together.

      Lawrence was the perfect gentleman, however, pulling out her chair and ordering for them both. As they ate he regaled her with stories about his time in the Canadian forces. ‘They told us you can’t get seasick in a hammock, because it rolls with the ship,’ he said. ‘Well, I can tell you, it’s an outrageous lie! Three of the men were hanging so far over the rails being sick that their false teeth are now sitting on the Atlantic seabed!’

      Margaret learned how, after arriving in Britain, Lawrence had been sent to the Scottish highlands with the Forestry Corps. ‘Now, this is a Georgia boy who thought thirty degrees was a cold day,’ he said, shivering at the memory.

      ‘So, how did you end up in the American Army?’ she asked him.

      ‘Well, when Uncle Sam finally decided to join the war, I was shipped back to America,’ he told her. ‘I was so darn angry I threw my papers overboard before we got into New York, hoping they’d send me back to England. Sure enough they did, but when I arrived they wouldn’t let me off here either. I went back and forth across that ocean six times!’

      Margaret was soon in tears of laughter. The captain was clearly quite a storyteller, and he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself, laughing loudly at the end of each tale, even though he hadn’t had a drop of wine. What he lacked in looks he made up for in confidence and charisma, and she felt she could listen to him talk all night. Afterwards, she went back with him to his flat in Kensington and did her best to lose herself in his embrace, trying to block out thoughts of her previous boyfriend.

      The next day at the office, however, she made sure to tell Grace all about her date with Captain Rambo, counting on her to spread the news around the office. Margaret hoped it wouldn’t be long until it reached Taylor’s ears.

      In the meantime, Lawrence proved to be a welcome distraction from her broken heart. His job was in purchasing and contracting, and he was constantly going back and forth between ETOUSA HQ and Whitehall to liaise about equipment that would eventually be needed for the invasion of Europe. As a result he came into her office all the time, asking her out on many more dates over the following weeks.

      She soon learned that he came from an old land-owning family in Blakely, Georgia, where his late father had been the judge of the city court. She couldn’t help being impressed by this, and by the fact that he was university educated. He also turned СКАЧАТЬ