The Street of Broken Dreams by Tania Crosse

Author:Tania Crosse [Crosse, Tania]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2018-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Private Saul Williams hesitated on the corner of the London back street, nervous sweat seeping from every pore of his dark skin, despite the cool July afternoon. Was this the right place? It had been well over a year and so much had happened since. But he’d bet his last American dollar it was.

In his head, he’d retraced his steps on that night a million times. Normally he probably wouldn’t have been able to. It had been just one more darned evening to kill among the tension of manoeuvres down in what the British cutely called the West Country. Something big had been afoot, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that it was going to be the invasion of occupied France.

It was almost impossible to relax, nerves jangled as they’d awaited the order for the big push. So when the squad had been granted a seventy-two hour pass, some of them had decided to jump on the first train up to London. Maybe they’d find sufficient entertainment there to take their minds off what was in store. And for Saul and others of his race, it meant more freedom. Black GIs weren’t supposed to mix with the locals, but in the capital, nobody seemed to care.

That night back in May the previous year, Saul’s heart had sunk when Chuck Masters had announced he was coming with them. ‘Got to keep an eye on ya black bastards,’ he’d pretended to joke. But Saul knew he meant it. Except that it was more the other way round.

Chuck liked the ladies, and Saul knew he thought he’d have a better chance of a one-night stand in London than in the local towns and villages of Devonshire. The train had arrived in time for them to check in at a boarding house they’d been recommended before the pubs opened. As soon as they had, Chuck had started drinking heavily straight away, going from one pub to another on the hunt. As the evening wore on and he wasn’t having much luck picking up a willing girl, he’d become more and more drunk and abusive. He was unpopular with his squad, and the other soldiers had made themselves scarce. But Saul – God knew why – had stayed by him. God-fearing and teetotal, he supposed he must have wanted to keep Chuck out of trouble. Chuck might be Saul’s sergeant, but they hailed from the same small town in Alabama, and Saul supposed he must have felt some sort of responsibility towards him, even though it put him in such an awkward position.

By the time Chuck was almost legless and declaring that he wanted to find a brothel instead to satisfy his needs – Soho was the place, wasn’t it? – he was so drunk that Saul had been relieved when he’d persuaded him that they should return to the boarding house. He only managed to do so by suggesting they go straight to Soho the next evening. Quite what would happen then, Saul didn’t know.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.