I noticed my girl looking at the Air Force chap, sort of thoughtful-like, as though she might have seen him before, and he looked at her too. I couldn't blame him for that. I didn't mind either; when you're out with a girl it gives you a kind of pride if other chaps notice her. And you couldn't miss this one. Not my girl.
Then she turned her back on him, deliberate, and leant with her elbows on the stall, sipping her hot coffee, and I stood beside her doing the same. We weren't stuck up or anything, we were pleasant and polite enough, saying good evening all round, but anyone could tell that we were together, the girl and I, we were on our own. I liked that. Funny, it did something to me inside, gave me a protective feeling. For all they knew we might have been a married couple on our way home.
They were chaffing a bit, the other three and the chap serving the sandwiches and tea, but we didn't join in.
"You want to watch out, in that uniform," said the conductor to the Air Force fellow, "or you'll end up like those others. It's late too, to be out on your own."
They all started laughing. I didn't quite see the point, but I supposed it was a joke.
"I've been awake a long time," said the Air Force fellow. "I know a bad lot when I see one."
"That's what the others said, I shouldn't wonder," remarked the driver, "and we know what happened to them. Makes you shudder. But why pick on the Air Force, that's what I want to know?",
"It's the colour of our uniform," said the fellow. "You can spot it in the dark."
They went on laughing in that way. I lighted up a cigarette, but my girl wouldn't have one.
"I blame the war for all that's gone wrong with the women," said the coffee-stall bloke, wiping a cup and hanging it up behind. "Turned a lot of them balmy, in my opinion. They don't know the difference between right or wrong."
"'Tisn't that, it's sport that's the trouble," said the conductor. "Develops their muscles and that, what weren't never meant to be developed. Take my two youngsters, f'r instance. The girl can knock the boy down any time, she's a proper little bully. Makes you think."
"That's right," agreed the driver, "equality of the sexes, they call it, don't they? It's the vote that did it. We ought never to have given them the vote."
"Garn," said the Air Force chap, "giving them the vote didn't turn the women balmy. They've always been the same, under the skin. The people out East know how to treat 'em. They keep 'em shut up, out there. That's the answer. Then you don't get any trouble."
"I don't know what my old woman would say if I tried to shut her up," said the driver. And they all started laughing again.
My girl plucked at my sleeve and I saw she had finished her coffee. She motioned with her head towards the street.
"Want to go home?" I said.
Silly. I somehow wanted the others to believe we were going home. She didn't answer. She just went striding off, her hands in the pockets of her mac. I said good-night and followed her, but not before I noticed the Air Force fellow staring after her over his cup of tea.
She walked off along the street, and it was still raining, dreary somehow, made you want to be sitting over a fire somewhere snug, and when she had crossed the street, and had come to the railings outside the cemetery she stopped, and looked up at me, and smiled.
"What now?" I said.
"Tomb-stones are flat," she said, "sometimes."
"What if they are?" I asked, bewildered-like.
"You can lie down on them," she said.
She turned and strolled along, looking at the railings, and then she came to one that was bent wide, and the next beside it broken, and she glanced up at me and smiled again.
"It's always the same," she said. "You're bound to find a gap if you look long enough."
She was through that gap in the railings as quick as a knife through butter. You could have knocked me flat.
"Here, hold on," I said, "I'm not as small as you."
But she was off and away, wandering among the graves. I got through the gap, puffing and blowing a bit, and then I looked around, and bless me if she wasn't lying on a long flat grave — stone, with her arms under her head and her eyes closed.
Well, I wasn't expecting anything. I mean, it had been in my mind to see her home and that. Date her up for the next evening. Of course, seeing as it was late, we could have stopped a bit when we came to the doorway of her place. She needn't have gone in right away. But lying there on the gravestone wasn't hardly natural.
I sat down, and took her hand.
"You'll get wet lying there," I said. Feeble, but I didn't know what else to say.
"I'm used to that," she said.
She opened her eyes and looked at me. There was a street light not far away, outside the railings, so it wasn't all that dark, and anyway in spite of the rain the night wasn't pitch black, more murky somehow. I wish I knew how to tell about her eyes, but I'm not one for fancy talk. You know how a luminous watch shines in the dark. I've got one myself. When you wake up in the night, there it is on your wrist, like a friend. Somehow my girl's eyes shone like that, but they were lovely too. And they weren't lazy cat's eyes any more. They were loving and gentle, and they were sad, too, all at the same time.
"Used to lying in the rain?" I said.
"Brought up to it," she answered. "They gave us a name in the shelters. The dead—end kids, they used to call us, in the war days."
"Weren't you never evacuated? " I asked.
"Not me," she said. "I never could stop any place. I always came back."
"Parents living?"
"No. Both of them killed by the bomb that smashed my home." She didn't speak tragic-like. Just ordinary.
"Bad luck," I said.
She didn't answer that one. And I sat there, holding her hand, wanting to take her home.
"You been on your job some time, at the picture-house?" I asked.
"About three weeks," she said. "I don't stop anywhere long. I'll be moving on again soon."
"Why's that?"
"Restless," she said.
She put up her hands suddenly and took my face and held it. It was gentle the way she did it, not as you'd think.
"You've got a good kind face. I like it," she said to me.
It was queer. The way she said it made me feel daft and soft, not sort of excited like I had been in the 'bus, and I thought to myself, well, maybe this is it, I've found a girl at last I really want. But not for an evening, casual. For going steady.
"Got a bloke?" I asked.
"No," she said.
"I mean, regular."
"No, never."
It was a funny line of talk to be having in a cemetery, and she lying there like some figure carved on the old tombstone.
"I haven't got a girl either," I said. "Never think about it, the way other chaps do. Faddy, I guess. And then I'm keen on my job. Work in a garage, mechanic you know, repairs, anything that's going. Good pay. I've saved a bit, besides what I send my old Mum. I live in digs. Nice people, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, and my boss at the garage is a nice chap too. I've never been lonely, and I'm not lonely now. But since I've seen you, it's made me think. You know, it's not going to be the same any more."
She never interrupted once, and somehow it was like speaking my thoughts aloud.
"Going home to the Thompsons is all very pleasant and nice," I said, "and you couldn't wish for kinder people. Good grub too, and we chat a bit after supper, and listen to the wireless. But d'you know, what I want now is different. I want to come along and fetch you from the cinema, when the programme's over, and you'd be standing there by the curtains, seeing the people out, and you'd give me a bit of a wink to show me you'd be going through to change your clothes and I could wait for you. And then you'd come out into the street, like you did to-night, but you wouldn't go off on your own, you'd take my arm, and if you didn't want to wear your coat I'd carry it for you, or a parcel maybe, or whatever you had. Then we'd go off to the Corner House or some place for supper, handy. We'd have a table reserved — they'd know us, the waitresses and them; they'd keep back something special, just for us."