Molly's War (22 page)

And Molly found herself outside on the street, ushered out. She needed to be allowed to mourn, with Mona’s mother, oh, she did. But she couldn’t push herself forward, she wasn’t wanted. Mrs Fletcher closed the door behind her, leaving Molly staring at it for a moment. A minute or two later the curtains closed too, leaving the windows looking strangely blind as the black cloth gave back her own reflection through the glass. The sign of a death in the family, a sign for the neighbours to walk past quietly, the children not to play too close, show some respect. It was always done.

Molly was surprised to find the car still waiting. She had supposed that she would go straight home from Ferryhill. As she approached it the driver got out and opened the door for her.

‘All right, is she?’

‘As all right as she’s going to be,’ Molly said shortly. ‘Are we going back to the factory?’

‘Those are my orders. To take you back to Administration.’

The Administration building was on the opposite side of the complex from where Molly had been working and when she came out it was only five minutes to the end of her shift. Instead of taking the internal bus she walked across to the station, glad of the fresh air.

The manager had asked if she was a friend of the family, told her the funeral would be taken care of, all in very business-like tones. He made notes on a piece of paper in front of him, looking up at Molly from time to time.

‘Mrs Fletcher has a sister in Eden Hope,’ he commented. ‘Her only relation. She will have to be notified. Well, I think that’s all.’ He put down his pen and sat back in his seat. ‘May I say how sorry I am about the death of your friend? By the way, how was Mrs Fletcher when you left her?’

‘Shocked,’ said Molly. ‘I don’t think it has hit her yet.’

‘No, of course not.’

He looked uncomfortable as Molly stared at him, but what could he do? How was he supposed to act?

‘Well, goodbye then, Miss Mason,’ he said finally, standing up.

The funeral was small. There had been nothing in the
paper
about the explosion and workers weren’t encouraged to take time off to go to the funeral. The powers that be didn’t want a fuss made, nor did they want the public to think the works were unsafe. Molly did get the afternoon off. She went with Maggie, Mona’s aunt and uncle to the Methodist Chapel at Ferryhill. A few of the girls from the concert party who were off shift went too. But it was a low-key affair.

What on earth was she going to write to Harry? How could she tell him that Mona had been blown up and the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death? They sang the twenty-third psalm and then the minister began to talk about Mona as a child in Sunday school, or telling jokes to the back row of the choir as a fourteen-year-old. And now she was buried in the wind-swept cemetery, only twenty-one years old.

Molly travelled back to Eden Hope with Maggie, Mona’s aunt and uncle going back to the house with her mother. As soon as she got in, Molly resolved, she would sit down at the little table and write that letter.

It took a few sheets of spoiled paper before she felt reasonably satisfied. She told the bare facts and expressed her sympathy and in the end didn’t try to write anything else. She put the letter in an envelope and addressed it care of the regiment. It would be forwarded to wherever Harry was from there.

‘I’ll just go to the post with this,’ she said to Maggie. ‘I’ll be back in time for tea.’

As she walked past the newsagent’s to the post office she saw the chalked notice on the billboard:

FRANCE CAPITULATES

The first thought which came into her head was that at least it meant Harry and Jackson would be coming home soon.

‘They will, won’t they?’ she asked Frank when she got home and told them the news.

‘Nay, lass, how would I know?’ he replied. Seeing the look on her face and hearing her sigh, he went on swiftly, ‘I’d say they stood a good chance of getting leave any road, when they get back this side of the Channel. We’ll get it on the news.’ He wheeled himself over to the wireless which stood on a table in the corner and began twiddling with the knobs, causing bursts of static before the voice of the BBC announcer came on.

Chapter Twenty

THERE WAS AN
epidemic of diphtheria in Eden Hope. The summer days were fine and hot. While there were often planes droning overhead, sirens wailing, dog fights in the sky, and the excited cries of bairns on the ground searching for bits of shrapnel for souvenirs, ambulance sirens were wailing too as they took small children to the fever hospital.

The panel doctor went to the schools to vaccinate the ones who were well while their teachers harangued them about the dangers of collecting shrapnel and of drinking from each other’s cups.

In their houses people sheltered under the stairs or built underground shelters in the gardens. Others used the entrance to an old drift mine, putting in chairs and emergency supplies, a door across the opening made out of pieces of wood. That was until a bomb was dropped too close for comfort, the German pilot obviously mistaking it for a working mine.

The fumigating team was in the street as Molly came home one morning from night shift. They usually followed
the
ambulance after a diphtheria victim was sent to hospital.

‘Little Annie Sutton,’ said Maggie in answer to her query. ‘There was an allowance of oranges the day at the Co-op store. One for each ration book. I sent them up for the other Sutton bairns. You don’t mind, do you?’

Molly assured her that she didn’t mind at all. She looked up at the mantelpiece but there was no letter. She sighed. She had even resorted to the old child’s game of adding up the numbers on her bus ticket and dividing them by seven. It all depended on how many were left over.

One for sorrow,

Two for joy.

Three for a letter …

The rhyme went on and on endlessly in her mind, she had to make a conscious effort to stop it. It was just too childish altogether to think it might work. It showed how much she missed him, missed them both. Harry was on her mind a lot. She couldn’t bear for anything to happen to him, he was all she had left of the family.

Men were filtering back from Dunkirk. It was on the wireless all the time about the army of little boats bringing them home. A triumph, they said, when the Germans thought they had had them trapped.

‘They just don’t know us British,’ Frank said proudly. ‘Just like in the last war. The Kaiser called our lads “that
contemptible
little army”. But we showed them, didn’t we, Mother?’

‘Aye,’ said Maggie absently. She had her baking things out on the table and was about to make a meat and vegetable pie, though it wouldn’t taste like one of her usual pies, she told Frank crossly. ‘Not with only half the fat, like.’

Most folk didn’t care that they had lost their main ally. They’d manage better without the French, they told each other. There was an air of relief almost, they were on their own now.

‘Well,’ said Frank, who had been occupying his time reading history books from the library, ‘we’ve been on our own afore now.’

‘If I only had word of our Jackson I wouldn’t care,’ Maggie said wistfully. Frank was fiddling with the wireless, hoping for the racing results. He had a sixpenny bet on a horse in the one-thirty at Sedgefield. The bookie’s runner still came to the end of the rows on racing days, slyly taking slips of paper wrapped round coins while keeping an eye out for the polis. To Molly it was amazing that racing and football or any kind of sports should go on just as though the war wasn’t happening, as though Jackson and other mothers’ sons weren’t in danger.

‘You’re all strung up, lass,’ said Maggie, seeing her exasperated expression. ‘But folk like Frank have to have something to take their minds off the war.’

It was true, Molly thought, as she ate her porridge
sugarless
, like the Scots did, and drank her tea sugarless too. Frank had a sweet tooth and they were saving sugar to make bramble jam in the autumn. It was strange coming in from work in the mornings to eat breakfast and getting up in the evenings to eat dinner before going out again. But she couldn’t ask Maggie to cook things separately just for her.

Afterwards she took a few turns at the poss tub, thumping the stick up and down in the soapy water, watching the clothes twist and turn. It had a strangely soothing effect and when, later on, she washed and changed into her nightie and climbed into bed, the curtains drawn against the bright sunshine outside, she fell easily into a deep sleep.

It was still light when she woke but the sun’s rays had left the front of the house, showing it must be afternoon. At first she didn’t recognise the noise outside. It took a minute or two to realise it was the pit blowing the air raid siren. Soon there was a plane droning overhead. Molly wondered if it was British or German, if she should get up and investigate, even look for shelter. But her limbs were heavy with sleep. Instead she simply lay there. In the end the noise faded away, the plane evidently heading home, its bombs already dropped.

The chapel had been full on Sunday, people turning back to God who hadn’t seen the inside of a church for years apart from weddings and funerals. Molly’s thoughts wandered back to it. She had prayed for Jackson and Harry
but
all the while she couldn’t help thinking that there must be women in Germany praying for their sons and sweethearts too. Ah, well. She sighed and climbed out of bed. She would go downstairs and see if Maggie needed a hand with the ironing. If only there was a letter when she came home tomorrow, if only she had some news.

Downstairs, Maggie was extricating Frank and his wheel chair from the cupboard under the stairs.

‘I’m going in there no flaming more, woman,’ he growled. ‘If a bomb drops on us, we’ll go any road, I’ve told you before. Besides, I want you to push me up to the corner, I have some winnings to collect.’

‘I’ll do it, if you like?’ offered Molly.

‘No, I’ll go. I could do with a bit of fresh air,’ Maggie replied.

After they had gone, Molly covered the table with an old blanket which Maggie kept for ironing and connected the gas iron to the outlet by the gas ring. Soon she was working away at the pile of clothes which she brought in from the yard, filling the overhead line which stretched across the kitchen.

It was hot working in the glow of the gas and the fire which had heated the oven for Maggie’s pie. Molly paused and rubbed her brow with the back of her hand, then hung up the shirt she had just finished and turned to pick another from the pile. And through the open doorway saw the telegraph boy just coming to the door, raising his hand to knock.

Her heart dropped into her shoes. She felt sick and faint with dread. The telegraph boy meant only one thing nowadays, especially if you had a soldier in the family. Carefully she turned off the gas at the outlet, turned her back on the boy and stood for a minute or two, trying to tell herself it wasn’t happening. Dear God, she’d prayed for a letter, not this. The boy interrupted her frantic thoughts.

‘Missus?’

Molly turned slowly. The boy was holding out a yellow envelope. ‘I’m sorry, Missus.’ His face was solemn. He had done this before, of course he had, he must have done it countless times over these last few months. Molly took the envelope. It was addressed to Frank. It wasn’t Harry then, she thought. Suddenly she tore it open, not able to bear the suspense any more.

‘…
regret to inform you that Sergeant Jackson Morley is missing, believed killed
.’

‘There’ll not be a reply, Missus?’ asked the boy. No one wanted to reply to the War Office.

Molly shook her head and he went off up the yard. He started to whistle in his relief to have it over, realised what he was doing and stopped, looking guiltily over his shoulder.

It wasn’t true, of course it wasn’t true. Missing he might be but he wasn’t killed. Anyone as full of life as Jackson couldn’t be dead. Molly was still standing there, the telegram in her hand, when Maggie came back with Frank.

*

Jackson’s name was read out in chapel on the following Sunday along with half a dozen others. Molly stopped going to the services then. After all, she thought dully, they did no good. All these years of Christianity, all the centuries even, and there were still wars. If there was a God, He didn’t care.

About a week later, there was a letter from Harry.

I got your letter today. It had followed me around for weeks. Little Mona, I can’t believe it. This bloody war. And you, Molly, you be careful, I don’t want to lose you too. Can’t you get a transfer or something? It doesn’t seem right, lasses getting blown up, doesn’t bear thinking about. I don’t know where Jackson is, we got separated. But he’ll be all right, Jackson knows what he’s doing.

He didn’t say much more, except that he was expecting leave and would try to get up to see her and the Morleys. Molly told Maggie but she didn’t know whether the older woman had taken it in. She and Frank had withdrawn into themselves since the telegram came, sitting for hours in silence. Frank didn’t even listen to the wireless now except for the news. In vain Molly told them that it wasn’t definite. She felt in herself that if Jackson were dead she would have known, have felt it in her heart. But the next minute she was telling herself not to be a superstitious fool.
There
was no way, no way at all, she would be able to tell. And then Harry came home.

When Molly came back from the factory he was waiting for her on the corner of the rows, a tall, rangy soldier, a lock of dark hair falling over one eye, his forage cap stuck in his epaulette. He was leaning against the end wall of the last house and there was a ring of lads surrounding him, firing off questions, asking about the battles, about Dunkirk. When Molly saw him he had his back to her and was describing something, using his hands to draw in the air. For a moment she thought it was Jackson. Her heart leapt, her pulse raced, she could hardly see. But then her vision cleared and she saw it was her brother. And a surge of gladness and a wave of sorrow washed over her at the same time.