Georgia's English Rose Read online

  Georgia’s English Rose

  JT Harding

  Published by JT Harding at Smashwords

  Copyright 2011 JT Harding

  Discover other titles by JT Harding at Smashwords.com

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  This version of Georgia’s English Rose is a modification of the original release of April 2011

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  My name is Lillian Delamere, and three days after my eighteenth birthday I found myself assigned to a posting on the south coast of England. The year was 1940, the war ten months old and my posting so secret no one told me where I was going, what I would be doing, or how I would be doing it. The war had changed my plans, as it had changed the plans of everyone in the country, everyone in the world.

  I had started at Cambridge the previous September, the first female in my family to attend university. If not for the intervention of Hitler I would have remained there. The period we later called the phony war had ended, our troops thrashed in Belgium and France and sent packing from Dunkirk, but even so as I travelled in the back of an army truck through narrow lanes I had every expectation by next year, at worst the year after, I would be picking up my life again and re-starting my studies in Mathematics.

  I arrived at the start of May with trees coming into full leaf. The weather had been fine for weeks and I had high hopes of a good summer. With luck I might be near enough to the coast to fit in some swimming, even a little sunbathing if the beaches did not hold too many troops.

  I grew used to the constant wolf whistles, the shouts asking for a kiss—or worse. I had no delusions of my being a great beauty. The soldiers were tired and afraid, most of them barely out of school and they would have whistled at my granny, and she had been dead five years.

  I spent two weeks training in Cornwall before being driven in a covered truck to a collection of wooden huts, recently built on a flat plain with hills to the north and a clear view south to the distant sea. No one told us the name of the camp. We lined up in two rows on the parade ground. An NCO, too old to fight but plenty tough enough to bully a group of young women, told us to turn around and place our hand on the shoulder of the person in front. That person would be our room-mate. So it was I met Georgia.

  Georgia filled her blue WAAF uniform far better than the rest of us. Although matching me almost exactly in height, the resemblance went no further. If Georgia and I walked past a troop of soldiers I knew where all their eyes, and all their whistles, would be directed.

  We walked together across the wide parade ground and dropped our sparse kit in the hut assigned to us, sat on narrow beds facing each other, our knees almost touching.

  I put my hand out. “I’m Lillian Delamere. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Georgia Payne.” She shook my hand. “I love the accent.”

  “What accent?” I asked innocently. I noticed how soft her hand felt within mine, released her fingers with reluctance.

  “You Brits.” She laughed. “I guess we’d better learn to get along together.”

  I had never met anyone as exotic as Georgia, and I think the moment she laughed, dark curls tumbling around her face, was the moment I started falling in love.

  “You’re American,” I said, stating the obvious. “If it’s not too rude to ask, what are you doing here? This isn’t your war. Not yet, anyway.”

  Georgia stared long enough for me to become uneasy, her eyes tracking over my face and briefly down across my chest before she finally made a decision and I saw with relief we were going to be friends.

  “My Pop’s a Brit. He came back over when war broke out and brought us all with him. I’m not going to sit on the sidelines while that shit Hitler kicks sand in everyone’s face so I joined up too.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Just my luck, huh? I was due to start at CalTech this fall. I guess that’s on the back burner now.”

  “What’s CalTech?” I asked.

  “College. University.”

  “Ah, of course. Me too. At Cambridge though, not CalTech. And I started last year.”

  “Yeah? What do you major in?”

  “Sorry?” It dawned on me this was going to be harder than I thought. Naively I assumed we spoke the same language.

  “Study. What do you guys say, what are you gonna read?”

  “Mathematics,” I said.

  “Yeah? Me too. Small world, hey?”

  I laughed. “I think that’s why we’re here, Georgia. We’ve both had the training. I expect they want people who understand numbers and can see patterns.”

  “Yeah,” she said, laughing back. “I guess you’re right, Lil.” It was the first time anyone had ever called me Lil, and I liked the way it sounded on Georgia’s lips as her accent drew the word out.

  We started work the following morning as six, sitting in darkened huts watching a single trace run across an oscilloscope screen. Our training had taught us what we needed to do, but not how the equipment worked. We had been assigned to one of the first RDF stations. Soon many more would be erected, the tall towers and strung cable forming an invisible barrier between Britain and Hitler’s aircraft.

  RDF was the forerunner of RADAR. I read many years later that German Radar was far superior to ours but more difficult to build and operate. Someone had said: “RDF was second, if not third best. But second best was better than no best, and that’s what we worked with.”

  Georgia and I operated as a team, spending most of our time in the equipment room together. In those early days our scanning lines only moved when a training plane came in. We would tune our receiver and call out distance and elevation. Before long the signals we picked up came from German bombers and fighters. As spring gave way to early summer the planes became more frequent, flying at night as well as during the day and we worked longer shifts, twelve hours on, twelve hours off. Sometimes we slept in the dark. Other times we pulled the blackout curtains over our window to block the sun. Trying to sleep in the day was difficult, the huts heating up until we lay on our narrow beds with sweat pouring from our bodies.

  Our hut had been erected in haste and as long as we lived there the smell of fresh pine stayed with us, rough planks oozing sap where knots had been cut. A long central corridor gave access to three rooms on each side. Each room housed two girls, held two single beds made of grey metal covered in hard horsehair mattresses, and a sink which ran only cold water. Two toilets, one at each end of the corridor, served twelve girls. This was our home. There was no bath or shower in the huts. Twice a week we used communal showers in the wash block, where the residents of each hut stripped to be allowed five minutes standing under tepid water. I had always been shy. Even during my years in a girls school I had not been comfortable displaying my body. Now any inhibitions I had were soon knocked from me.

  The first time we went to the shower block I tried hard not to stare at Georgia as the twelve of us stripped from our uniforms and stepped into the long concrete-walled room studded with shower heads. Tried and failed. I noticed some of the other girls looking too. It was difficult not to. Georgia was magnificent. As tall as me, but where I had short red-brown hair Georgia’s was black and full, falling in curls to her shoulders. Her lar
ge and shapely breasts quivered, trembling as she soaped herself without any hint of shame. I gazed in awe, believing her breasts ought to sag a little under their own weight, but instead they stood firm and proud, their deep undersides never once touching her body. When Georgia dropped the soap and bent to pick it up I turned away so no-one would catch me staring at the flared globes of her rear. She was perfection, waist nipped in above her hips, legs long and shapely. I knew I didn’t like boys, but until that moment I hadn’t realized quite how much I liked girls.

  As time passed it became impossible to hide from myself how quickly, how deeply, I was falling in love with Georgia. I did everything I could to avoid showing any indication of my true feelings, even sometimes being deliberately rude, but whatever I did her smile and laugh remained, twisting my heart into knots.

  A troop of soldiers were stationed on the base for security and many of the girls made clear their availability, although I never once saw any indication from Georgia.

  I still clearly recall one particular evening when I first set eyes on an erect penis. We were walking back from the NAAFI at dusk, light still holding in the sky but little reaching the shadowed ground between the huts. We had stepped around a corner, using a short cut on the way to our hut, when Georgia grabbed my arm and pulled me back. Her teeth showed white in the gloom.

  “Hey, look, Lil. Can you see what Gilly Bates is doing?”

  “I didn’t see her,” I said.

  Georgia pulled me so I could look around the corner. “There,” she said. “You see now?”

  I peered into the gloom, seeing nothing at first, then a shape formed in the shadows. Or rather two shapes. Gilly Bates knelt on the grass in front of a soldier. His uniform trousers hung loose around his knees, his hard penis jutting out. Gilly had the end in her mouth as her hand rubbed the base.

  “What on earth is she doing!” I said, shocked.

  “Giving him the time of his life, honey,” Georgia said.

  “Is she… is that his… oh my God, Georgia, she’s got his dick in her mouth!”

  “Yeah,” Georgia nodded. “She’s going for it too, I’ll give her that.”

  “But… why would she want to do that?”

  “Why do you think, Lil? I guess some girls like the taste.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I could never…”

  Georgia laughed softly, bumping against my shoulder. “I guess you couldn’t, could you, Lil? That doesn’t surprise me, honey.”

  “You’ve never… have you…” I stared at her open mouthed, my head spinning at the idea Georgia’s beautiful mouth might do something like that.

  “Me? Hell no, Lil. You won’t catch me anywhere near one of those things.”

  My heart pattered in my breast. “I should think not,” I said, and the way I sounded sent Georgia off into another peal of laughter.

  “Hey, who’s there!” a male voice called.

  Georgia pulled me back, but we had been spotted.

  “Is that you Lil? Georgia?” I heard Gilly’s voice and she started to laugh. “You want some of him, girls? He’s got plenty to go around.”

  Georgia grabbed my hand and tugged me back around the corner and we ran off across the parade ground giggling. My hand felt cold and lonely when she finally released her grip.

  We became best friends and, I like to think, more than friends, although I never gave Georgia any indication of my true feelings. I found reading Georgia more difficult. She always appeared relaxed and different, so tactile, thinking nothing of slipping her arm around my waist in the hut, but never outside, sometimes resting her hand low down where my skinny backside tried to fill my uniform skirt. I became, if anything, more reserved around her, standing at the other end of the shower room, but my strategy didn’t work because Georgia always strolled down to join me.

  The other girls were friendly, but there always seemed a distance between Georgia and I and the rest. Everyone regarded us as best friends and an unspoken rule existed we should not be parted. We ate together, rode into town to watch newsreels and films together, took walks across the downs, ate at the same table and slept separated by three feet of space between our beds.

  Four weeks after we met, in the middle of July, I first heard Georgia when she thought I lay asleep. I listened to the noises coming from the darkness of her bed for several nights until I resolved I simply had to confirm my suspicions.

  The bedroom wasn’t fully dark, it never was. A night light always burned in case we were called out unexpectedly and needed to find our way. I lay on my back gazing at the ceiling, listening to the sounds coming from Georgia’s bed. The metal springs needed little encouragement to squeak, and I heard them moving in a gentle rhythm. I had listened to these noises every second or third night for almost two weeks. There could be only one cause, and the thought made the breath catch in my chest.

  I lay on my bed, a tingle growing between my legs together with a powerful urge to touch myself. To touch myself in the same way as Georgia was obviously doing. I didn’t know why I wasn’t touching that spot. It wouldn’t be the first time. All through school I had touched myself. All the girls did. Well, almost all. Masturbation was common enough no-one thought anything about it. We teased each other, asking if anyone had tickled one out today. Common enough for some of the girls to do it in front of each other. Not me… but sometimes I wanted to.

  It wasn’t mere shyness but also because I felt things too deeply. For most of the girls self-satisfaction was a passing phase, growing up, their sexuality blossoming. They needed to find a release and touching themselves was one easy way. In a few years they would meet nice boys, marry and hopefully find other ways of achieving pleasure. I simply didn’t think about boys.

  I sighed, hoping Georgia believed me asleep, rolled onto my side until I faced her bed. I slitted my eyes, opening them just enough to see across the gap to her bed. Georgia also lay on her side, looking back across the gap and my heart hammered in my flat chest. Did Georgia know I was awake? I lay still, trying to make my breathing slow and calm.

  Georgia’s eyes opened, staring across the gap. Staring at me, an almost pained expression on her pretty lips, her eyebrows pulled together in a tiny frown. The bed shook gently. Georgia’s right leg lifted. Her shoulder, which showed above the blankets, moved rapidly. The blankets worked loose as she moved and displayed the front of her low cut nightdress, that American nightdress I remember shocking me when Georgia first pulled it on. It fell to below her knees, but cut low enough on top for her breasts to almost spill loose, not that it made a great deal of difference, the material sheer enough to display everything lying beneath.

  Now Georgia’s abundant breasts trembled and quivered in sympathy with the movement of her arm, her deep cleavage shadowed. I felt a sudden warmth but tried to keep my breathing steady and my eyes closed to a slit. My hand resting against my belly wanted to move down, wanted to fumble into my old pajama bottoms and I willed myself to be still.

  Georgia’s movement sped up, her breathing growing harsher and she lifted her free hand and pushed the back against her mouth, trying to suppress the sounds escaping her. Her eyes glittered above her hand, her shoulder rocking faster as her fingers worked under her nightdress.

  I was sure I smelled the scent of Georgia’s sex drifting across the space between the beds. I let slip a soft sigh, trying to make it sound like a snore, hoping to convince Georgia I remained asleep. Georgia looked like she didn’t care anymore, her entire body moving now, her leg lifting and dropping back, the rough blanket rising and falling with it. Her hand pressed back harder against her wonderful lips and she gave a little whimper, trying hard to keep the noise in. Her arm stopped moving and went rigid. Her eyes fluttered, still staring across at me, then rolling back a little. Another cry slipped between her lips and she dropped her hand and I saw her bite her bottom lip in a failed attempt to still the noise. Georgia shivered violently, her whole body shaking, and the old springs on her single bed creaked a
nd bounced in sympathy. This went on for almost a minute before Georgia let out her held breath and relaxed.

  I watched as Georgia re-arranged the bedding, pulled her nightdress down under the blankets, tugged the blankets over her shoulders. She looked across at me for a while longer then rolled onto her back.

  I waited, watching Georgia’s wonderful breasts heave and grow still. Listened as her breathing smoothed and grew hushed. Georgia rolled again, turning away. I lay still, aware of my hand against my belly, fighting hard to keep it there. My fingers wanted to creep down and touch that wonderful, sensitive area between my legs, where I just knew I would find myself wet.

  Two days later we both had a long weekend pass. Georgia and I arranged to travel to Berkshire where I had invited her to my parents farm. I told Georgia she must come and find out what real English country life was about. She had only ever seen London, where her father was based, and the small area around the camp we were allowed out to, heavily defended and thick with troops. As soon as I offered my invitation Georgia laughed and agreed at once.

  The morning of our departure Georgia was her usual loud self, shivering in the cold of our small room but still not putting any more clothes on. She leaned over the tiny sink to brush her teeth, the sheer nightdress hiding little of what lay beneath, and I lay in bed waiting my turn and watched guiltily the curvaceous shape of my roommate.

  Our train was packed with troops even as we travelled far into the countryside. The whole of the south of England was temporary home to thousands of soldiers recently returned from mainland Europe, the majority evacuated from Dunkirk. They teemed and trained but as yet no one knew quite what to do with them. The Germans sat in northern France, as close as twenty miles from the English coast, and everyone waited for them to attack. As July moved into its last weeks and the weather stayed fine bombers flew over the English Channel and pounded London and the southern ports.