A Sister's Promise (33 page)

‘What is it?’ Mark cried, alarmed at the colour that had drained out of Molly’s face. ‘What’s the matter?’

Molly had a flashback to the day her parents died. Just a few hours before that dreadful news came through, she remembered her father running his hand over the bonnet of a car the exact same as the one before her. ‘Might give you a ride in it later, mate,’ he’d said to Kevin, and then he had turned to Molly. ‘What d’you think, Moll? Ain’t she just the business?’

He had been so vibrant and full of life, laughing and chafing Granddad, and everyone had been happy.

The tears welled in her eyes, and though she tried to stop them, they spilled down her cheeks. Mark didn’t understand – how could he? – and he tried to draw Molly towards the car but she shook her head so violently that he stopped. The trickle of tears had turned into a torrent, gushing from her and punctuated with little anguished sobs, and Mark, not knowing what else to do, put his arms around her and held her tight as she wept on his shoulder.

Later, she was eventually able to explain what had upset her so much and Mark felt Molly’s pain as keenly as if it was seeping through the pores of her skin.

‘Oh, my dear girl,’ he said. ‘There are no words I can say to ease this for you in any way, and I feel so crass and
stupid. I knew your parents died in a car accident. Why didn’t I think and come for you in a taxi? In fact, that is what I will do. I will leave the car here and ask the hospital to call for a taxi.’

‘No.’

‘It’s no bother,’ Mark said. ‘I am not having you upset like this.’

‘No, Mark,’ Molly said. ‘Don’t make me feel worse than I do already. I am bitterly ashamed at making a holy show of myself, but I am over it now, really I am, and I would like to go in the car.’

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

Molly swallowed the lump of dread in her throat and nodded.

It did take courage to climb into that car, and she felt a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mark knew how nervous she was and he drove the car with great care so that nothing might alarm her further.

Molly was impressed by the size of the air base. There were huge sheds, which Mark said were the hangars where some of the planes were stored. Others stood on the runway in formation. ‘Those are the Spitfires that I fly,’ Mark told her with pride, ‘and further away is where the Wellingtons are stored. Those are bombers and need a longer runway.’

‘But where do all the planes come from?’

‘The other side of the road we have just driven down,’ Mark said. ‘There is a big factory there called Vickers. Each night they close the road and the planes are pushed across it. They turn them out at a rate of knots, I can tell you, and every one is needed.’

He drew the car to a stop in front of another large building. ‘This is the Naafi,’ he said. ‘Terry arranged to meet us here so you can kill two birds with one stone, as it were.’

‘Gosh, I thought the dining room at Moor Hall was big until I saw this place,’ Molly said to Mark. ‘You could get that dining room in four times and still have space.’

‘Well, think of all the hungry airmen to feed and water, not to mention the ancillary and office staff,’ Mark said. ‘Anyway, come and meet your fellow workmates.’

They were all much older than she was, Molly noticed, but looked a friendly enough bunch and said they would welcome an extra pair of hands. ‘Even better when those hands know what to do,’ said one of them with a smile, and Molly knew it was her experience at the hotel as well as Mark’s influence that had secured her the job.

Terry Sallinger said he would be delighted if she would take the house on.

‘It will be commandeered by the military if you don’t,’ he said, ‘and if you saw what shape the houses are in when they leave, well, you wouldn’t credit the damage, and my mother thinks a lot of her house.’

Molly remembered Ray saying something similar about the flat she was incarcerated in, but there any similarity ended.

She grasped Terry by the hand and shook it as she said, ‘I will always be grateful to you for this, and I know I will speak for my brother as well as myself. It will be wonderful for us to be together again. What about rent?’

‘We’ll come to some arrangement about that when you see what wages you’re getting,’ Terry said, and added with a laugh, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t fleece you.’

‘I didn’t think for one moment you would,’ Molly said, and suddenly any misgivings about taking the house on disappeared.

So when, later, Helen said a little anxiously, ‘You are sure you feel all right about this?’ Molly was able to assure her.

‘Mark didn’t bully you into it?’

‘Maybe he did a bit,’ Molly admitted, and added with a smile, ‘But really it is the best solution all round. Now that I have met Terry Sallinger I feel much better.’

‘How does your brother feel about it?’

‘He doesn’t mind anything really, as long as we are
together,’ Molly said. ‘Meeting once a week in artificial surroundings and after a gap of more than five years was not nearly enough. And, as might be expected, he does think that living next to an airfield is the most exciting place in the world to be. He told me only last week that he is going to join the air force just as soon as he can. I pray to God that this war will be over by then.’

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Helen. ‘So do I. Your brother is only eleven. That would mean another seven years of this.’ Her eyes looked suddenly bleak, and Molly said gently, ‘You must worry about Mark. In fact, Lynne has said you do.’

‘Worry is perhaps an understatement,’ Helen told her. ‘When the Battle of Britain was on, the average airman lasted a mere six weeks.’ She stopped suddenly and Molly, totally shocked herself, saw the agonising memory of those nightmare days and nights flit across Helen’s face. ‘Six weeks. Did you know that?’

Molly shook her head. ‘No, I had absolutely no idea.’

‘And all so young,’ Helen went on. ‘At the start of their adult lives. I thought and prayed about Mark every minute of the day then. He was always so tired too, and tiredness can kill as easily as the enemy – he told me that himself – but all of them were the same: no time to take proper rest before they were off again. Mark would sometimes bring a few of the chaps home with him and they’d laugh and joke as if they hadn’t a care in the world, but that was just to mask the fear they carried around with them daily, though they often could do little about the trepidation behind their eyes.’

‘The point is, Mom, it had to be done,’ Lynne said. ‘Mark said so often.’

‘I know that,’ Helen said. ‘I know that without their bravery and their skill, Britain could be under the Nazi jackboot now, and Birmingham could have been another Rotterdam, but even when you know it to be necessary, no mother wants to throw her own son into the slaughter you know is coming.’

Molly understood that perfectly. ‘God, Helen, it must have been dreadful for you,’

‘Even now, there are airmen shot down every day,’ Helen said. ‘Selfishly I always hope that one of them is not my son, that some other mother bears that pain, and I can’t help feeling that way.’ She sighed. ‘It might help if my husband, Gerald, was here to share the burden. I worry about him too and miss him. We have never been apart so long before, but Lynne, I must admit, has been a tower of strength, for all her tender years.’

‘Not that tender, Mom.’

‘Tender enough,’ Helen said firmly. ‘And talking of tender years, how do you feel about going back to school next week when the term starts again? You can’t afford to lose much time with those exams looming next summer.’

Molly knew that Lynne was a very clever girl, had passed the eleven-plus and was at Sutton Girls’ Grammar School. The following year she would matriculate, followed by the sixth form and then on to university. Molly envied her for she knew such a future might have been hers once, if the cards hadn’t been stacked against her.

‘Flipping heck, Mom,’ Lynne burst out. ‘You don’t need to remind me when those exams are. I know exactly.’

‘And as far as I can see, the only way to get a good job when this little lot is over, is by getting a good education,’ Molly said. ‘I am always using this fascination that Kevin has for the air force to keep his head down over his books. I keep telling him they will take no dumb kids in.’

‘Oh, I don’t know so much about that,’ Lynne said with a huge grin plastering her face. ‘I mean, they took our Mark in all right.’

The following Monday morning, Mark took a taxi to the hotel where he collected Daisy, who had bundled up Molly’s few possessions, together with, a meat pie, a loaf of bread, butter, fresh milk and, remarkably, four eggs, as a present
from the chef. Then the taxi took them to the Erdington Cottage Homes, where they picked up the ecstatic Kevin, who had had his case packed since six o’clock that morning and could barely believe that he was going to live with Molly again as she had once promised him. Molly was already at the house, staring about her in amazed wonder, when they arrived.

The front door opened on to a hall, the stairs were to the right and one door led into the large lounge.

‘It used to be two rooms,’ Terry said, ‘but my father had it made into one just the year before he died, with that arch as a feature.’

Molly thought it a beautiful room and attractively decorated, with large rugs covering much of the lino on the floor. The kitchen, off the hall to the back of the house, she knew many women would give their eyeteeth for. It had plenty of storage space, including a pantry, the gas boiler was fairly new and the cooker was of the latest design.

Added to that, there were three bedooms upstairs, two doubles and a single, all decorated beautifully and a bathroom with a bath, washbasin and toilet. Molly could hardly believe that she was mistress of such a place and vowed that Terry would never regret his decision to let her and Kevin live there.

They soon settled in. Molly registered with the grocer, greengrocer and butcher in the little parade of shops on the Chester Road, not far from the house. She also arranged for Kevin to leave Osbourne Road School, as it was too far from the house, and begin at Paget Road School on the nearby Pype Hayes council estate a couple of days before she was due to start work in the Naafi.

Kevin didn’t mind moving school at all. In fact, he preferred it because none there knew that he had been living at a Cottage Home. He was starting Paget Road with a clean sheet, and when asked he said that his parents were dead and that he now lived with his sister and that they
had moved because his sister had a job at Castle Bromwich aerodrome. That raised his standing quite highly. He didn’t say what she did, said in fact it was better not to discuss things like that – ‘Careless talk and all that, don’t you know’ – and when they assumed from this that Molly was connected to the RAF in some military capacity, Kevin didn’t put them right.

Molly liked her job in the Naafi, and being unafraid of hard work and always pleasant, she was soon very popular with her colleagues. She liked all the people she worked with, though she was most friendly with May, Doris and Edna, as she worked with them most of the time. Though Molly was by far the youngest worker, they all got on remarkably well. She also kept in touch with Helen and Lynne, and with Daisy at the hotel. As time passed she couldn’t believe how contented she was. The only downside to the job was the general sadness if any of their aircrew were lost, and it was hard to see the empty chairs grouped around the tables.

The war went on apace, and Molly often asked herself if the carnage was to go on for ever. The raids in Birmingham had more or less ceased, but other cities, including London, were getting a pasting. The loss in shipping was colossal too. Not only did this mean food was not getting through, but each ship sunk meant hundreds of men also lost their lives.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December brought America into the war. It was all anyone talked about at Helen’s house on Christmas Day, where Molly and Kevin were just two of the party of people invited, including her parents and many of Mark’s friends that couldn’t get home for the festive season.

‘Enough war talk,’ Helen said eventually. ‘It’s frightening enough to turn a body off their food, and I haven’t been slaving away in the kitchen all morning to produce a meal fit for a king and see it all go to waste. Mark, will you pour everyone another drink, and Molly and Lynne can help me dish up in the kitchen?’

As soon as the kitchen door closed behind the women, Molly heard the conversation between the men start up again. ‘They’re still at it.’

Helen smiled wryly. ‘They won’t once I put their dinner before them,’ she said as she transferred roast potatoes to a serving dish. ‘I’ll see to it that they don’t.’

‘Kevin, of course, is hanging on to their every word.’

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ Helen said with a smile. ‘He’s a nice boy. Still enjoying the Boy Scouts?’

‘Oh, he’s keener, if anything,’ Molly said. ‘And he is incredibly busy, because besides the Scout meetings, he has also learned how to operate a stirrup pump and is practising first aid. He’s always out collecting salvage and newspapers, or on digging duty in Pype Hayes Park, as well as weeding the garden at home, which Terry cultivated and now has little time to see to. It reminds me of Ireland, to eat potatoes and cabbages and the like that have just been lifted from the ground. Terry is always immensely grateful that Kevin hasn’t let the garden go to rack and ruin.’

‘Do you see much of him then?’

‘Hardly anything,’ Molly said. ‘I mean, I put the rent up every week and it might be three weeks or more before he calls to collect it.’

‘Good job you are not the sort to borrow it back,’ Lynne put in.

‘No,’ Molly said. ‘Mug’s game, that.’

‘You’re right there,’ Helen said. ‘Now let’s get this food on the table before it gets cold. My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.’

Singapore was impregnable, everyone knew, so it was a great blow when it fell to the Japanese on 15 February after thousands lost their lives and thousands more were taken prisoner. But life had to go on – another battle, another day – and by Easter, American servicemen had moved on to the base. There were a fair few in Sutton
Coldfield, according to Daisy, and a great attraction they were proving to be.