As Time Goes By by Annie Groves Read Free Book Online Page B

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    ‘It was such a pity that my corsets got lost in the laundry at my last posting,’ she grinned, her eyes dancing with devilment as she told them mock innocently, ‘I was ever so upset about it, but what can you do? They’d just disappeared.’
    ‘Come on,’ the sturdily built girl keeping watch by the door hissed down the dorm. ‘Toadie’s on her way up.’
    All around her Sam could see girls moving like lightning, fastening ties, doing up blouses, reaching for shoes and jackets, and at the same time straightening up their beds, the girls who were already dressed quickly leaving their own made-up beds to deal with those of the girls who weren’t, so that by the time the warrant officer had reached the doorway, every young woman in the room was fully dressed, and every bed was neatly made.
    Sam could have sworn that her glance lingered longer on her than it did on anyone else as they filed past her and headed for the stairs, but she refused to give in to the temptation to look directly at her in order to check.
       
    ‘Thanks for making up my bed,’ she told the pretty fair-haired girl whose bed was next to her own, as she caught up with her on the stairs, five minutes later when they had been dismissed.
    ‘We all help one another out in this unit,’ came the smiling response. ‘I dare say you’ll be repaying the favour.’
    ‘Yeah, by keeping a window open so that you can get back in when you haven’t got a late-nightpass, Lynsey,’ Hazel commented, overhearing their conversation. ‘Lynsey here has a raft of men queuing up to take her out and she believes in doing her bit for our boys, don’t you, Lynsey?’ she teased.
    Sam held her breath, half expecting the blonde girl to take offence, but instead she laughed and winked at Sam. ‘I certainly do.’
    ‘You want to get her to show you her collection of engagement rings, Sam,’ Hazel grinned. ‘How many was it at the last count, Lynsey?’
    ‘Eight. It would have been nine, but Pat, that Canadian I was seeing, changed his mind and said that he thought we should just be unofficially engaged. Huh, as if I hadn’t worked out what his game was. You could see as plain as anything the white mark on his finger where he’d taken off his wedding ring. The cheek of it, thinking that I wouldn’t guess what he was up to.’ She gave a disapproving sniff. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a married man pretending that he isn’t. You’ll get a lot of that here in Liverpool, Sam,’ she warned. ‘There’s troop ships arriving every week filled with men who haven’t seen a girl in months. Have you got a steady?’
    Sam gave a brief shake of her head. Her lack of a young man had recently become a bit of a sore subject, mainly because her elder brother had given her a bit of a lecture on his last leave, warning her that she should start behaving in a more feminine manner and that she frightened off his friends with her tomboy ways. She had shrugged off hiscriticism, affecting not to care when the following evening, at the dance he had taken her to, she had been left to sit on her own whilst other girls – girls with curls and soft curves and giggling voices – were surrounded by uniformed young men eager to dance with them. That night, lying in bed unable to sleep, she had been forced to recognise that her youthful daydreams in which she had outshot and outdared Robin Hood, outrode and outrobbed Dick Turpin, to win their admiration and the friendship – daydreams that as she had matured had grown into an unacknowledged belief that one day she would fall in love with a real-life hero whose heart she would win with her prowess and her ability to compete with him – were never going to be recognised and that heroes did not fall in love with girls who matched them skill for skill but instead preferred girls dressed in pretty clothes who stood on the sidelines, watching them admiringly.
    Sam had told herself that she didn’t care, and she