Molly's War (25 page)

‘Oh, go away, Gary Dowson, and leave me alone, will you? I tell you, I don’t want to go with you!’

Molly marched off towards the train, leaving him standing on the track. ‘You’ll come looking for me afore I ask you again!’ he shouted and turned on his heel and stomped off. Molly was the last to get on the train so she
had
to stand all the way in the corridor of the last carriage. The others there looked curiously at her but they were not people she knew and at least they left her alone.

A couple of weeks later Molly went into work and sat down at her machine, turning to take the thick, densely woven material from the box beside her. It was quiet in the sewing room, the wireless not as yet switched on, so that the sound of the new girl’s voice rang out loudly and Molly turned to look at her.

‘Well, would you believe it, it’s Molly Mason!’

Molly’s heart plummeted. She looked incredulously at the girl who had been on her way to the furthest machine but had stopped right opposite her.

‘Joan,’ Molly said faintly.

‘That’s right, it’s me, Joan Pendle,’ the girl said, and gave a smile which didn’t quite reach her eyes. She looked around at the other girls. ‘We know each other well. We should do, we were brought up next door to each other, me and Molly.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.

‘Same as you, what do you think I’m doing here?’ demanded Joan. ‘I got a transfer from West Auckland. Well, it’s more money, isn’t it?’

Suddenly the wireless came on, the music drowning out what she was saying. The other girls were bending over their machines. Joan grinned, came closer to Molly so that she could speak into her ear. ‘I’ll see you in the break, will
I
?’ Her voice was heavy with meaning. Then she laughed and went on to her own machine.

Molly sewed automatically. Picking up the cut out material, sewing and oversewing, dropping it in the basket, picking up more material, repeating the process over and over. The Andrews Sisters were singing a popular melody, the other girls singing along with them, but it might as well have been a dirge for all it meant to Molly. Her mind was busy with what it might mean if Joan were to tell everyone about her past, the fact that she had been to prison. Well, she would just have to face up to it, she told herself when the whistle blew and the machines fell silent. Face it out. By this time she was almost past caring.

She got to her feet, squared her shoulders and followed the other girls on their way to the canteen. She queued at the counter and got her meal. Sausage and mash it was, two pale sausages and a pile of mash with a spoonful of processed peas. Jenny was sitting halfway down the room but Molly didn’t go to sit beside her, instead taking a place at an empty table in the corner. Stolidly she began to eat, though for all she tasted it might as well have been cotton wool. She kept her eyes on her plate. Perhaps Joan would not see her, she thought dimly.

She did. ‘Now then, Molly Mason,’ she said as she slipped into the empty chair beside her. ‘How’ve you been getting on then? Managed to keep quiet the fact that you’re a thief and a gaolbird?’

Molly put down her knife and fork and sat up straight,
squaring
her shoulders. ‘Just leave me alone, will you?’ Joan laughed and began to eat her own meal, grimaced and put down her knife.

‘Pass the brown sauce, will you?’ she asked, and Molly handed it to her silently. ‘That’s not very friendly, is it?’ Joan went on, shaking a dark stream of sauce from the bottle.

‘You’ve not exactly been a friend to me!’ she was stung into replying. Suddenly she was sick of talking. If Joan expected her to plead, she wasn’t going to. Rising to her feet, Molly picked up her bag and turned for the door, feeling an urgent desire to get out into the fresh air.

‘See you later then,’ Joan called gaily after her.

Outside Molly had to skirt round a group of men lounging against the wall of the canteen. At least Gary Dowson wasn’t among them, she thought. She walked along the road between the sheds, up to the top and back again, and then it was time to go back into work. Gary was waiting at the door, in spite of what he had said the last time they met.

‘Don’t forget there’s a rehearsal tomorrow dinnertime. I thought we could meet tonight an’ all, run through that duet …’

‘I can’t tonight. Anyway, I’m thinking of dropping out of the concert party,’ Molly said, backing away down the corridor as she spoke. She felt panicky. She’d almost let herself be caught and dreaded the thought of his putting a finger on her now. She couldn’t bear that.

Gary frowned. ‘What do you mean, drop the concert party? You can’t do that,’ he called after her. He made as if to follow her but the whistle had blown for work to start, he halted and she ran, making good her escape.

Somehow she managed to elude both Gary and Joan for the rest of the day. She didn’t see Joan on the train back to Bishop Auckland but that wasn’t too surprising, there were so many people working at the munitions factory now. But the day’s bad news wasn’t finished for her yet. When she got in from work, Maggie was waiting for her.

‘You look a bit peaky, lass,’ she said, gazing intently into Molly’s face.

‘No, I’m all right, I’m fine,’ she protested. ‘I just had a hard day at work, that’s all.’

‘There were none of your monthly clouts in the wash,’ observed Maggie. ‘I wondered about it, that was all.’

Dear God, no! It was like a shout in Molly’s mind. In fact, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t spoken it aloud. It couldn’t be … could it?

‘I’m not due ’til next week, Maggie,’ she managed to say.

She folded her arms. ‘I think you are.’

For goodness’ sake, how could she know? thought Molly.

‘I tell you, I’m just not myself. I think I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow. Maybe I need a tonic or something.’

Maggie pursed her lips but said no more. Instead she began to ladle broth from the iron pan on the bar. Molly
watched
her. She couldn’t understand the older woman. One minute she was showing not a bit of interest in her lodger and the next she was saying she knew when Molly’s periods were due. Why was she so suspicious? She couldn’t think that Molly might be having Jackson’s baby, it was too long since that last time he had been home. It was almost as if she was jealous on behalf of her son, could that be it? But Molly was too tired even to think about it. She looked at the broth which Maggie put before her, saw the globules of yellow fat floating on the top and jumped out of her chair. She ran for the outside sink where she retched and retched. Bile came into her mouth, sour bile which stung the back of her throat.

‘Aye, I think you should see the doctor all right,’ Maggie sighed as she turned away and flopped into her chair.

Next morning Molly waited her turn to see the doctor in a waiting room full of women with pale children. Though the cold weather had seen off the diphtheria epidemic, the children who had survived it were debilitated and prone to other infections. In the yard leading to the waiting room a few men clustered, some sitting on their hunkers, wheezing and coughing. Cigarette smoke curled up into the damp air.

‘You haven’t been doing something you shouldn’t, young lady?’ was the first question Doctor Hardy put to Molly when it was her turn to go in and she’d stammered
out
her symptoms. His gaze was penetrating and she lowered her eyes as she replied.

‘Yes, Doctor.’

The examination was brisk and brief and when she came out she knew her worst fears were realised.

Chapter Twenty-three

MOLLY FELT NUMB
with shock as she left the surgery, stumbling blindly through the waiting room. Outside she leaned against the wall for a few minutes with her eyes closed until she heard a woman’s voice.

‘Are you all right, hinny?’

‘Yes, thank you, just dizzy for a minute,’ Molly managed to reply and hurried off down the street and along past the pit to the open country beyond. What she was going to tell Maggie she had no idea. She shrank inwardly from saying anything at all to Jackson’s parents. In the end she walked all the way to Shildon and went into a cafe in Church Street and bought a cup of tea and sat with it in a dark corner, not even drinking it, just moving the spoon round and round in it, hardly knowing what she was doing.

The day wore on. The woman behind the counter kept looking at her. In the end she walked over to where Molly sat.

‘Do you want anything else?’ she asked. ‘Because I’ll be closing in a few minutes.’

It was four o’clock, Molly suddenly realised, and she
had
to go to work on the night shift. She left the cafe and caught the bus back to Eden Hope.

‘Where the heck have you been?’ Maggie demanded in an injured tone as she walked through the door. ‘Here I’ve been, worried to death about you!’

‘Sorry, I went for a walk … to see a friend in Shildon,’ said Molly.

‘You didn’t think about me and Frank, did you? Of course, I’m just your landlady …’

‘Oh, Maggie, of course you’re not, you know I’m fond of you both. It wasn’t like that, really. Only the doctor said I need to get more fresh air so I thought I’d take the opportunity, that’s all,’ Molly protested.

‘Hmmm. Well, what else did he say?’

Maggie stood with her hands on her hips, her expression showing only too plainly her suspicions, and Molly quailed before her.

‘He said I was anaemic,’ she lied on a quick inspiration. One lie begat another, she thought miserably, that was what her mother used to say. ‘He gave me an iron tonic.’ He had. She took it out of her bag now, showing the bottle of dark brown fluid to Maggie.

‘He gives that to all them as has fallen wrong.’

‘Does he? Well, that’s what he said to me anyway,’ Molly replied, and escaped upstairs to change for work.

‘I’m doing some tatie hash for the tea. Only you’d best look sharp. It’s nearly ready,’ Maggie called after her.

‘No, thanks, I’m not hungry. I had a bite in Shildon, at … my friend’s.’

‘Well, I’ll keep it to warm up for you the morrow,’ said Maggie. ‘We can’t afford to waste food. There’s a war on, you know.’

Even the thought of warmed-up hash made Molly feel nauseous. She could feel the bile rising in her throat and made a desperate effort to keep it down. She sat on the bed and closed her eyes and after a minute or two felt better, able to finish changing her clothes. She stayed upstairs until it was almost time to go for the bus then went down, drank a cup of tea with Frank, asked about the day’s news and escaped thankfully as soon as she could.

‘You’re going to be early for the bus,’ Maggie observed, her face grim and expressionless, implying she hadn’t been fooled one little bit.

‘Well, sometimes it comes early,’ Molly replied. She hated the atmosphere in the house now but didn’t know what to do about it.

She stood at the bus stop, the only one there until a queue began to form behind her. The line chatted and laughed behind her but Molly heard nothing. Being first in the queue she got a seat and sat still and quiet though her thoughts were still whirling. She knew she had to tell Gary Dowson. He would surely offer to marry her, that’s what always happened in this situation, but her mind shied away from the thought in horror. How could she possibly marry Gary? After all her hopes, her love for Jackson, all
their
plans. Oh, Jackson, she cried inside herself, why did it have to happen?

‘I’m only sitting here because it’s the last seat left on the bus.’ Joan Pendle sat down beside her.

Molly jumped. Dear God, she thought, what did I do? What did I do to deserve this? She barely looked at Joan but stared out of the window instead.

‘By, you’re a stuck-up madam, you,’ said Joan. ‘I don’t know why I bother to talk to you.’

‘Well, don’t then,’ Molly was stung into replying.

Joan ignored that. ‘But I wanted to ask you if you’d heard from Harry?’

‘Harry?’

‘That’s what I said, Harry. Your brother, remember him?’

Molly was so surprised by the question that Joan’s attempt at sarcasm went over her head. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m interested, that’s all.’

Molly’s attention was diverted. For a few seconds she forgot about her own trouble. ‘I haven’t as it happens, not since he went back last time. But I didn’t really expect to. He said he was going on some sort of special duty.’

Joan sat quietly as the bus drew into Bishop Auckland, got off it with Molly and walked beside her to the station platform where the train was standing. They had joined the queue of workers before she spoke again.

‘I could make it pretty hard for you at work. If I told
them
about you being in prison, and why.’

Molly waited for her to go on. Obviously Joan had more to say. Molly had been worrying about her past getting out ever since she’d come to the factory but her present trouble loomed even larger, more threatening. She felt quite detached as she waited. In a few months she would have to leave work anyway.

‘You could write to Harry, you must have his address.’

‘Come on, Joan, just say what you mean,’ said Molly, though she was beginning to get the idea.

‘You could tell him about me, say how we’re friends now that we’re working together.’

‘Friends?’ Molly’s eyebrows rose. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Yes. Say how I didn’t tell on you, how I admitted I was wrong about you. Maybe say I was asking after him?’

Molly started to laugh. She couldn’t help herself, the laughter bubbled up inside her. She laughed as she climbed on to the train so that people turned to gaze at her in astonishment; laughed until tears came to her eyes and she had to fish out a handkerchief to wipe them away. The compartments were full so she walked on, not looking behind to see if Joan had followed her. When she did stop at the end of the carriage she leaned against the window, blew her nose and smiled at those around her.

‘Sorry, just a fit of the giggles,’ she said. There was no sign of Joan. She must have found a seat. Joan was the sort who usually did, Molly told herself. She couldn’t believe
the
girl. Oh, she had known that Joan still had feelings for Harry even though she went the wrong way about expressing them. But after all that had happened … Yes, Molly would write to Harry, through the regiment, tell him about it. He would have a good laugh and no doubt he could do with one. Especially now that Jackson wasn’t there with him as he’d always been, ever since their schooldays. But for the minute Molly had other things on her mind.