The Leaving Of Liverpool (49 page)

‘You’d need second sight for that, darlin’. I felt nothing when my own husband was killed.’ She’d walked into the house in Allerton expecting Tom to be there, yet he’d been dead for hours.

Esme sniffed. ‘Did you have a nice Christmas, Mollie?’ she asked politely.

‘Lovely,’ Mollie replied automatically. But watching Finn being the jovial father and loving husband, wondering if it was nothing but an act, had spoiled what should have been a wonderful holiday. She had genuinely believed her brother when he promised to end his affair with Yvonne, but on the day of the shopping trip to Kildare, she’d come out of Jock’s Place and discovered she had mislaid a glove. When she went back to retrieve it, Yvonne was at the table again with Finn. They didn’t notice her and she could tell from the expressions on their faces that they only had eyes for each other.

Her glove was lying under the table. It was only an old woollen one. Mollie had left it there.

 

On New Year’s Eve, she stayed in to look after the children while Agatha and Phil went to a party. At first, Agatha wouldn’t hear of it. Mollie could come to the party with them and she’d find someone else to babysit the children, but Mollie had insisted she didn’t want to go. ‘I honestly don’t feel like a party,’ she said wanly.

‘Are you still worried about your brother?’ She’d told Agatha about Finn.

‘I’ll probably never stop worrying.’ It wasn’t just that: she couldn’t stop thinking about Esme and all the other wives whose husbands had been killed or taken prisoner, not just in Hong Kong, but in many other places. It brought back the memory of Tom’s death and the anguish and emptiness she’d felt afterwards, and still felt on occasions like New Year’s Eve.

Agatha put Pamela to bed before she left, but Donnie, who was ten, stayed up, and he and Mollie played cards, followed by Snakes and Ladders and Ludo. He was a lovely little boy, very smart: Mollie lost more games than she won.

The games over, she made tea for herself and a cup of warm milk for Donnie, who was beginning to look tired. He was almost asleep by the time the milk was finished, so she took him to bed.

‘I won’t see Mam and Dad until next year,’ he chuckled when she tucked him in.

‘I know, darlin’. It’ll be nineteen forty-two by the time you wake up.’ She’d be relieved when the festivities were over and life returned to normal.

The world seemed exceptionally quiet when she returned downstairs. She lifted the curtain a fraction. It was snowing quite heavily. A car passed the house, travelling so slowly it hardly made a sound, the headlights barely showing. The roofs of the houses opposite already had a coating of snow. Shuddering, she let the curtain fall and switched on the wireless. Vera Lynn was singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’. She hurriedly switched it off, knowing the song would only make her cry.

Impulsively, she went to the telephone in the hall and called the house in Duneathly. She’d spoken to the children earlier and had promised to telephone after midnight to wish everyone who was awake a Happy New Year.

‘It’s me,’ she said when Hazel answered. ‘It sounds like bedlam there. What’s going on?’

‘Aidan found a fiddler in the pub and brought him home: your Joe and Tommy are playing “Chopsticks” on the piano. There’s a game of hide and seek going on upstairs. Not one of the children is in bed, not even Bernadette.’ Despite this, Hazel sounded happy. ‘Oh, and you know what happened, Moll? Finn took the office staff for a drink in Kildare and was awful late home - he’s hardly been back a minute - but he’d bought me a lovely brooch. It’s a gold bird with a diamond for an eye. Isn’t your brother a marvellous husband?’

‘Marvellous,’ Mollie agreed. And also one with a guilty conscience. She’d like to bet it was Yvonne he’d been with, not the staff from his office. She rang off, wishing she hadn’t rung in the first place. It had only made her feel worse.

She put the light off in the hall and opened the front door. The snow was falling steadily, the flakes as big as golf balls. Someone was trudging along the road towards her. She was about to close the door, when a voice called, ‘Is that you, Agatha?’ The figure had stopped and was opening the little garden gate. It was a man, she saw when he came closer, a soldier, his khaki uniform made white with snow.

‘Agatha and Phil are at a party,’ she told him. ‘I’m babysitting the children.’

‘Ah, it doesn’t matter, then. I just thought I’d wish them a Happy New Year.’ He turned and walked back towards the gate.

‘Where are you going?’ she called when he opened the gate to leave.

‘Don’t know,’ he said, shrugging. ‘A pub, I suppose. At least it’ll be warm.’

‘It’s warm here and I’ll make you some tea, if you like.’ She couldn’t turn a soldier away on a night like this, particularly not on New Year’s Eve. ‘Have you come far?’ she asked when he entered the house and stamped his boots on the doormat. The snow came off in clumps. ‘Take your greatcoat off.’

‘It’ll make a mess on the floor,’ he warned.

‘It doesn’t matter, it’s only lino.’ She took the coat into the kitchen and hung it beside the boiler. It had two stripes on the arms meaning he was a corporal. Only the outside felt damp, inside was dry. She put the kettle on and returned to the hall where he was shaking his cap. ‘Hang it on that empty hook,’ she advised, ‘then come and sit by the fire. The kettle won’t be long boiling.’

He went into the sitting room and held his hands in front of the fire. ‘This looks cosy,’ he remarked. He was a tall man, very slim, with dark-blue eyes and brown hair. His lean face had a hungry look and she wondered if it was always like that or because he hadn’t had a decent meal in days.

‘Agatha and Phil had a delivery of coal just over a week ago and we’ve had big fires all over Christmas. As from tomorrow, they’ll be little ones again.’ Fuel was in very short supply. ‘How come you know Agatha?’ she enquired.

‘Phil and I have been friends since we were at school together. My name is Mike Bradley.’ His blue eyes narrowed. ‘I was best man at their wedding and I’m pretty certain you were there. Your name is Mollie, but I can’t remember your surname.’

‘Ryan, Mollie Ryan. Agatha wanted me to be matron-of-honour, but I refused. I was eight months pregnant at the time and would have looked ridiculous. I’m afraid I can’t remember you. I didn’t feel very well that day, but Phil often talks about his friend Mike - you were the first person at his school to go to university.’ She could hear the kettle boiling and went to make the tea. ‘Have you come far?’ she asked again when she brought his tea in the giant mug that Phil used.

‘The north of Scotland. We were allowed five days and, like a fool, I decided to come home and see my wife.’ He rolled his eyes as if to emphasize how foolish he’d been. ‘It’s taken two days to get here. I’ve travelled by train and bus, hitched lifts in lorries and cars, walked a bit. Last night I slept in a station waiting room, but when I arrived home, my wife was out.’ There was a pause and he continued in a bleak voice, ‘I knocked next door in case they knew where she’d gone. There’s new people living there and the woman who answered said my wife was out with her husband.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Mollie said gently. ‘You should have let her know you were coming.’

‘I thought about that, but decided not to.’ He smiled and the smile was as bleak as his voice. ‘You see, I don’t trust my wife - she’s been unfaithful before - and I was setting her a test: I was a teacher in civvy life, so I suppose I’m used to setting tests. I didn’t expect her to be waiting patiently for me to turn up, not on New Year’s Eve. I thought she might be at her mother’s or with a friend, in which case I intended going to bed and seeing her in the morning.’ He paused again and drank some tea. ‘I also thought it quite likely she’d be out with another man, though not for him to be actually living there. After I’d spoken to the neighbour, I went upstairs and his clothes were all over the place.’

‘What are you going to do?’

He stared into the fire. ‘I’ve asked myself that same question quite a few times since I married Gillian and the answer is always the same - I have no idea.’

‘It depends on how much you love her,’ Mollie said awkwardly.

He must have been aware of the awkwardness in her voice, because he rolled his eyes again and said, ‘I’m sorry. I expect you were having a nice, quiet evening, and I’ve come bursting in and laid my sad life bare. The truth is, I had a couple of whiskies on the way. I’m usually regarded as taciturn rather than talkative - ask Phil, he’ll tell you.’

Mollie laughed. ‘I’m actually glad you’re here, though for your sake I wish it were for a different reason. Since Donnie went to bed, it’s been much too quiet. I was beginning to wish I’d gone to the party with Agatha and Phil.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I wasn’t in the mood to have a good time. I’m still not. I’d’ve gone to the party and made everyone cry with my miserable face.’ She made a miserable face and he smiled, a genuine smile this time. ‘Are you hungry?’ she enquired. ‘You
look
hungry. If so, I can put together a meal. There’s bits of chicken, half a tin of baked beans, some sprouts already cooked and cold roast potatoes - I’ve no idea what Agatha was keeping them for. If I put everything in the frying pan we can call it something foreign that you’ve never had before.’

‘My mouth’s already watering.’ He seemed much less fraught than he’d done at first. ‘As my old dad used to say, “Me stomach thinks me throat’s been cut.” I’ve had nothing but the odd sandwich since I left Scotland yesterday morning.’

‘I won’t be long. Put the wireless on, if you want, but keep it low in case it wakes the children.’

‘I’d sooner listen to the fire hiss and crackle; it’s very soothing.’

In the kitchen, Mollie put a lump of lard in the frying pan and was slicing the potatoes when Mike Bradley appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ve just remembered something: your husband was a policeman and he was murdered. I take it you didn’t get married again, otherwise you wouldn’t be on your own on New Year’s Eve?’

‘You’re right, I didn’t. There’s no need for me to be on my own: I have four lovely children who are having a wonderful time in Ireland where I’ve just spent Christmas, but I decided I wanted to do war work.’ The potatoes went in the pan and began to sizzle. She wondered if Brussels sprouts had ever been fried before. ‘I came to live with Agatha last September and work in the same factory as she does.’

‘Good for you,’ he said admiringly. He looked at the food. ‘I’m starting to drool. I’d better go away before I embarrass myself.’

Ten minutes later, she gave him the meal along with a bottle of brown sauce, a piece of bread, ‘to wipe the plate with’, and a slice of Christmas cake for afters. ‘It’s the oddest Christmas cake you’ll ever eat. It’s made with marmalade because dried fruit has virtually disappeared from the shops, and it isn’t iced. Did you know there is a government order restricting “the placing of sugar on the exterior of any cake after baking”?’

‘I didn’t know that, no.’ He began to tuck into the food. It reminded her of another time she’d watched a man attack a meal with such enthusiasm, but couldn’t quite bring the incident to mind, until she recalled it was Zeke Penn in Charlie’s - he’d called it a ‘diner’. She’d never heard of him again. Each night, Harry Benedict had taken him back to the Adelphi, worried someone would steal his coat. She didn’t think about Harry nearly as much as she did Tom, she realized; he’d played a much smaller part in her life.

‘Penny for them?’ She looked up. Mike had finished eating and the plate had been wiped clean. ‘I think I can say without fear of contradiction that that was the best meal I’ve ever had. My congratulations to the chef.’

She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Thank you.’

He enquired about her children and she told him all about them, then asked what he did in the Army.

‘I’m a translator. Why I have to do that in the wilds of Scotland is a mystery to me. I expected to work in London, but the Army have a language section up there. I keep applying for active service, but they keep turning me down. I was a language teacher before the war and can speak French, German, and Spanish, so I suppose I’m more useful to them that way.’

They took turns answering each other’s questions. It kept their minds off their own problems. Mollie liked him and guessed he liked her, but there was a distance between them. They’d been thrown together by circumstance and the likelihood was that they would never see each other again after tonight when he was there for her and she for him.

Just before twelve, she turned on the wireless and they listened to Big Ben herald the arrival of the New Year. She hoped he wouldn’t feel obliged to kiss her and was relieved when he just nodded and said, ‘Happy New Year, Mollie.’

‘And the same to you.’ She nodded back.

Not long afterwards, Agatha and Phil came home. Phil was delighted to see his old friend and the two men staying up talking after the women had gone to bed - they were due at Garston Electrics that morning.

When Mollie went into the kitchen ready for work, Phil had gone and Agatha was making porridge for the children’s breakfast. ‘Don’t go in the living room,’ she whispered. ‘Mike’s fast asleep on the settee.’

When they returned that night, Mike had left. ‘Back to Scotland,’ Agatha surmised.

 

Mollie’s life resumed its normal, regular pattern: work, a visit to the pictures at least once a week, and a trip to Duneathly once a month. Every other Saturday afternoon, she met her sisters-in-law in the Kardomah for coffee. Sundays, she took Agatha and Blanche’s children to the park while Agatha made the dinner. She had trouble thinking up things to tell the children in her weekly letters, which were beginning to get very repetitive, until one day something happened in the office that enabled her to fill three whole pages.

It was Friday, the busiest day, and Dolly had accompanied Mr Parrish to the bank to collect the wages. Half an hour later, she returned without him.