Free Alice's Girls by Julia Stoneham Page A

light-hearted fraternisation between Alice’s girls and a group of infantrymen training at a nearby army base – Hester had met Reuben Westerfeldt, an American GI who was as young and inexperienced as she. It had been love at first sight for both of them and had possessed all the overwhelming passion of a first infatuation, heightened by the war and the threat of looming separation. Rose’s Dave, who, during a brief leave, had encountered Hester, carried the image of her back to his barracks and found himself unable to think of anyone else, had stood little chance against Reuben Westerfeldt who proposed to Hester, was accepted and, despite her father’s refusal to approve the engagement or attend the wedding ceremony, married her.
    Rose, observing her son, had from the beginning been aware of the intensity of his feelings for Hester Tucker and had warned him that she was already spoken for. Nevertheless she felt then, as she was increasingly to feel,that fate had somehow failed not only her boy but the girl he wanted so much. The two of them were, Rose felt, suited. More than suited. They were destined. Both were Devonian born and bred. Both spoke with the same soft accent and, before the advent of Reuben, there had been, Rose was certain, an attraction between the two of them at their first, brief meeting.
    ‘But you can’t ’ave ’er, son!’ she told Dave, when, on leave shortly after the wedding, he slouched aimlessly about her cottage and refused to socialise with his village friends. ‘She’m a married lady now and that’s that!’ Dave sat, looking, his mother noticed, and despite his low spirits, a picture of health and strength. His robust frame, the shock of thick, chestnut hair and lustrous, dark eyes still reminded her of the chubby baby she had suckled. But sometime between his sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays, and following the unexpected death of his father, Dave had become a man, and now, at almost twenty and despite his flat feet, was approaching his prime. ‘’Tis no good you sulkin’ like a spoilt brat, Dave! I know’s you spotted ’er afore Reuben come on the scene but ’twas Reuben she wanted and Reuben she got and there’s an end to it!’ Her words, she knew, were falling on deaf ears, yet she persisted. ‘Eileen says as ’er niece Albertine were askin’ after you las’ week. ’Er works as barmaid over to The Anchor at Lower Bowden these days. Ever such a nice girl she be. Alus liked you, Albertine did. You should go see her, Dave. Better nor broodin’ aboutthe place sighin’ after some girl you can’t ’ave!’
    But Dave was remembering Boxing Day when, Reuben having returned to his barracks, he had taken Hester tobogganing. He had settled her between his thighs and kept her safe while they flew downhill and she shrieked with the thrill of it, the cold air making her cheeks glow, snow crystals catching in her pale lashes, and he had loved her so much it seemed impossible that she couldn’t feel it. And perhaps she did feel it. And perhaps it had disturbed her. But Reuben had slipped his grandma’s ruby ring onto her finger only twelve hours previously and there it was, like a drop of blood, the tiny diamonds surrounding the central stone, glittering in the winter sunlight, reminding her of Reuben’s whispered promises. And the next day Dave too was gone, back to his unit with the catering corps.
    By May, Hester, three months married, was pregnant. With Reuben soon to be deployed in the Allied invasion of northern France, the American military authorities decided to ship Hester, along with a few hundred other GI brides, out to the States as soon as was feasible. Her pregnancy meant that she could no longer be employed as a land girl and her parents had disowned her, so light domestic work had been found for her at the two farmhouses while she awaited embarkation.
    Three weeks after the D-Day landings, news of Reuben’s death reached Hester and she had withdrawn into a