Molly's War (35 page)

She pulled down her skirt and buttoned up her blouse,
still
conscious of the marks of his fingers on her breast, squeezing and twisting. She shrugged into her costume jacket and winced.

‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not, what am I saying? Dear God in Heaven, you’ve done for me today, Molly. I was going to treat you like the whore you are, but when it came to it I couldn’t.’ Jackson sighed heavily and turned to the window, his back straight and unforgiving.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and he laughed mirthlessly.

‘What was it, Molly? I gave you a taste for it, did I? Was it my fault, all of this?’ She was shaking her head in denial but he wasn’t looking at her, talking to himself. ‘I know it’s been happening a lot in this blasted war, I hear of it often enough. What’s it going to be like by the end, whenever that might be? Oh, God, I never thought it would happen to me!’

His voice was full of anguish and bitterness and Molly couldn’t bear it. She moved towards him, to comfort him; put a hand out to him. But he shrank away from her touch as though it burned him. She moved quickly away, sat down on the only chair in the room and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap.

‘I love you, Jackson,’ she said. ‘I’ll never love anyone but you.’

‘I know that really,’ he replied. ‘I know you thought I was probably dead. But you didn’t know for sure, did you? So soon, Molly, it was so soon after I’d gone!’

‘I was half-mad with grief.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you were,’ said Jackson heavily. He sounded so sad, so resigned, and Molly knew that he had decided, he wasn’t going to change his mind, not now.

‘I’ll have to go back to my baby,’ she said and rose to her feet.

‘I don’t want my mother and father to find out what has happened, not yet,’ he said again. ‘They’ve had enough grief. You’ll have to pretend.’

‘I can’t stay there, Jackson. I have my baby. Dora looks after her when I’m at work, that’s all.’

‘Yes, well, you’ll have to concoct a story, won’t you? You’re good at lying.’

There seemed nothing more to say. Jackson had been going straight from the Wear Valley to the train in any case; he did it now instead of a few days later. She knew he didn’t want her to go with him to the station, of course he didn’t, but she watched through the window as the train steamed away and felt as though her heart was being cut out of her body.

Molly stayed in the room that night, sitting sleepless in the chair, staring at the wall. She didn’t eat; couldn’t face the curious eyes of the women working in the hotel. On Monday, she packed her bag and went downstairs, said a dignified goodbye and went out to catch the bus to Eden Hope.

‘I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow,’ said Maggie, surprised when she came in.

‘I wasn’t, but Jackson was called back early so I might as well go to work.’

‘You’ll be bringing your things here, will you?’ Maggie studied her; Molly looked so white and there were huge shadows under her eyes.

‘It’s easier to travel from Ferryhill,’ she said. ‘Jackson sends his love and says he’ll be seeing you.’

‘By, I hope he doesn’t have to go abroad again,’ said his mother. ‘In my opinion he’s done his bit, it’s somebody else’s turn.’

‘I’d like to take the marble clock, is that all right?’

‘Oh, aye, it’s yours, isn’t it? I bet you’re fond of it, what with it coming from your mam’s house.’ Maggie lifted the clock down from the mantelpiece and dusted it with the corner of her pinny, spotless and gleaming though it already was.

Oh, Mam, thought Molly. If you could see me now you’d be ashamed of me, and that’s a fact.

‘I’ll be back to see you, you know that,’ she said aloud. ‘But, you know, we’re going to be working overtime …’

Back in Ferryhill, the clock wrapped in newspaper under one arm, her going-away case in the other hand, Molly walked down the street to Dora’s door, knocked and went in.

‘You’ve told him, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he left you. Well, I could have told you what would happen. You should have let me have the bairn and kept quiet.’

‘I couldn’t do that, Dora.’

Molly walked over to the sofa where Beth lay propped up between cushions. She was smiling and waving her arms, chirruping away to her mother to attract her attention.

‘Hallo, my precious,’ said Molly. She cuddled the baby tightly until Beth began to struggle and protest. Molly sat down on the sofa with her, jiggling her knees and turning the cries of protest into chuckles.

‘You’re all I’ve got now, petal,’ she said softly. The baby burped and a dribble of milk ran down her chin and dripped on to Molly’s skirt. Dora ran over with a cloth and began wiping it.

‘Oh, leave it alone, Dora.’

‘But it will spoil! It’ll smell an’ all. Clothes aren’t that easy to come by these days,’ she protested.

‘I don’t care. I’ll never wear it again,’ said Molly. ‘Coupons or no flaming coupons.’ She bent her head until her chin touched the soft curls of Beth’s head and wept. The tears ran down and mingled with those of the baby who began to cry also, frightened by her mother’s emotion.

‘Give her here,’ Dora commanded. ‘You’re tired out. Get away up to bed and get some sleep. I’ll bring you a nice cup of cocoa. Once I’ve got Beth to sleep, that is.’

As Molly climbed the stairs she reflected that Dora looked happier than she had done since Jackson came home.

Chapter Thirty-two

IT SEEMED TO
Molly that she was living in a kind of limbo. The weeks dragged on, one after the other, filled with going to work and sewing and coming home and sewing. The only bright spots, the only times she came alive at all, were when she was with Beth, her baby, watching her grow, sit up unaided, begin to crawl. The war passed her by apart from the fact that rationing tightened and the news was all of the Tunisian campaign with little maps on the front page of the
Northern Echo
illustrating the position of the troops; the line sometimes moving forward, sometimes back towards Egypt. Was Jackson among them? she wondered, anxiety for his safety rising in her.

‘You look tired out, lass,’ Dora greeted her one evening, a dark, cold evening with sleet slanting down the street as she walked home, drenching her skirt and bare knees for her last pair of stockings had ‘gone home’ as Dora put it. She should have worn her one pair of slacks, Molly thought dully, but the morning had been fine and sunny.

‘I am tired, Dora,’ she admitted. ‘And I promised Mrs Jones that I would finish her skirt tonight.’

Molly took in sewing now. She had bought herself a hand-operated sewing machine and specialised in making over clothes from others bought before the war. Mrs Jones’s skirt was cut out of a full-skirted coat, which had been her mother’s. The style looked as though it could date from the last war. Still, it was a warm tweed and when the material was turned it looked quite good.

‘Tell her you’ll do it the morrow, lass,’ Dora advised. ‘Go on, have a night off.’

Molly shook her head, smiling. She couldn’t, she needed the money. She received a small allowance from Jackson’s pay every month but she didn’t use it, of course. The slips were all in the top drawer of the chest in her room. Sometimes she opened the drawer and looked at them. They were the only link she had with him now. She thought back to the last time she had seen Harry.

He had come to see her on his last leave. He’d met her out of the factory and insisted on going with her to Ferryhill. He had nodded to Dora gravely and said hallo before going over to where Beth was lying on the couch, waving her arms in the air and cooing. Molly waited for his condemnation. He sat down beside the child, put out a finger and she clasped it tightly.

‘Well, will you look at that?’ he said admiringly. He put out his hands and lifted the baby in the air and she gurgled and tried to grab at the badge in his red beret. Obligingly he settled her on his knee and gave her the beret. The badge twinkled in the firelight and Beth smiled
in
delight, touching it with her tiny baby fingers.

‘Mind, you’re a bonny bairn, aren’t you?’ her uncle asked, and she chuckled and tried to pull off the medal ribbon.

Molly relaxed. Oh, he was the best brother anyone had ever had, he was indeed. ‘Thanks, Harry,’ she said, and he smiled at her, before turning his attention back to the baby.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘We Masons have to stick together, haven’t we?’ He stood up with the baby on one arm and put the other round Molly’s shoulders, kissed her on the cheek. ‘You have had a hard time of it, little sister,’ he said without looking at her. ‘I don’t blame you for anything. Mind, that bloody Joan is spreading her poison all over Eden Hope. Jackson’s parents are bound to have heard.’

Molly nodded. Well, she thought, she couldn’t keep Beth a secret forever and she wouldn’t want to.

He tickled the baby under her chin and she gurgled, wetly, making a damp patch on his khaki shoulder.

Now, as she took out her sewing machine and set it up on the kitchen table, Molly thought back on that day fondly. She would always be grateful for Harry’s love and support, but he had refused to talk about Jackson.

‘I don’t see him now,’ was all he had said. Had she caused a rift between the two men or was it simply that they had been separated by the war?

‘Are you going to Eden Hope on Saturday?’ Dora
asked
. ‘’Cause if you are, I’d like to know now. I thought I might go to the pictures if you’re here to look after Beth.’

Molly thought about it. She tried to go to see Maggie and Frank whenever she could but she was sick to death of pretending to them that everything was all right. Still, if Joan had been talking she wouldn’t have to pretend. She would have to face them sometime. She quailed at the thought of going again, though. Sometimes she saw a letter from Jackson propped up on the mantelpiece and itched to take it down and devour it. But she couldn’t, of course. She found it harder and harder to conceal the fact that he never wrote to her. She had to guard her tongue at all times, in case she should let slip something about the baby, so she always made an excuse to leave early.

‘I don’t think I’ll go this weekend, Dora,’ Molly said now. ‘I have some jobs to do.’

It was true, she had half a dozen orders waiting for her in a pile in the corner of the sitting room. She glanced up at the marble clock and frowned. It had stopped, she couldn’t think why. She had dragged it all over the place with her since her father was killed and it had never stopped before but now it didn’t seem to run for five minutes after she had wound it before stopping again. She would have to take it to the clock mender’s on Saturday morning, she thought.

Dora went off to the pictures on Saturday afternoon to see
Pride and Prejudice
with Greer Garson and Molly got on with her sewing. But her head ached for some reason
and
she was glad to have a break when Beth woke from her afternoon nap and demanded attention.

‘We’ll go for a walk, shall we?’ she asked the child and Beth crowed with pleasure as her mother struggled to put on her siren suit. She had made the suit the night before from a remnant of cloth she’d found on the market; an all-in-one suit in yellow with a hood which she had trimmed with white. Siren suits had become all the rage since Churchill began to wear one, even for babies.

She pushed the pram along the road to the park that looked strangely denuded with its railings chopped off at the base and gone to make tanks or something. The trees were bare, the only bird about a dejected-looking robin pecking beneath an elm. Molly shivered. She was wearing her slacks under her coat and a headscarf over her head but the wind was cutting. Only Beth looked cosy and warm, sitting up in her pram in her siren suit with an old quilt that had been Mona’s over her. She chuckled and talked in her own personal language to the bird, the trees, anyone who happened to pass. But Molly’s headache was becoming more insistent, like a hammer pounding in her temples. She longed for a hot drink and a couple of aspirins.

Back home she was surprised to find Dora had returned from the pictures. Surely the big film wasn’t over yet?

‘I’ve got a headache,’ Dora explained as she blazed the fire and put on the kettle for tea. ‘I expect I’m getting that ’flu which is going around the village.’

‘Is it? I hadn’t heard.’ Molly gazed anxiously at Beth, dreading the thought that she might get it. There had been an epidemic the month before but it had passed by their house, thank the Lord. Beth looked back at her, her smiles turning to howls of indignation for it was time for her tea too. She held up her arms to be taken out of the pram, pumping them up and down when Molly didn’t immediately rush to do her bidding. But her yells were loud enough, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed with health as well as temper. No, she wasn’t sickening for anything, not Beth. And Molly herself was probably only suffering from eyestrain. She had sewed on late last night, trying to finish the siren suit.

‘I’ll tend to her. You make the tea, will you, Molly?’ asked Dora. ‘I have to stop her making such a noise, I feel my head might burst with it.’

Eventually the child was settled and peace reigned again. Dora and Molly sipped their tea and ate corned beef hash and cabbage, took some aspirin each. But it didn’t seem to work as it should and in the end Molly stopped sewing and folded her work away.

‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ she said to Dora.

‘That makes two of us,’ the older woman replied.

Jackson fingered his weekend pass and even now, after all that had happened, his pulse quickened at the thought that if he wished he could be on a train in half an hour and on his way to see Molly. He didn’t want to see her, though,
did
he? Not after what she had done. It was what all the married and engaged men in his unit feared, and it had happened to him.

‘Well, Sergeant?’ The middle-aged Captain sitting behind the desk looked up at him impatiently. ‘Do you want a travel warrant or not? Come on, make up your mind, I have men waiting.’

If he did go north he would see Molly, Jackson knew that, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. And how was he going to tell his parents? Or had they found out already? He shied away from the thought. But he should see his parents, he told himself, there was no telling when he would get back to England. Not that they had been told where they were going but there had been a short, intensive course in everyday French.