Molly's War

by Maggie Hope

  Harry put down his kitbag and she led him to an armchair by the fire.

  ‘What is it? What?’

  Jackson had come back into the kitchen, alarm making his voice sharp. He gazed from his mother to Harry. Something had happened to Molly, he knew it. Oh, he should have tried harder to get home before now. Both of them should have. No one answered him for a moment.

  Maggie thrust a mug of hot strong tea into Harry’s hand. ‘Drink that, lad, go on,’ she said, and stood over him until he had taken a few sips. ‘Right then, come on now, you’ll both eat something. There’s nothing to be done this minute, nothing at all. You can get something in your stomachs and we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘What? Talk about what?’ Jackson demanded, frustrated. Why didn’t they tell him?

  ‘Our Molly is in prison,’ said Harry. He looked up at his friend. ‘Ann Pendle says so any road.’

  ‘In prison? Don’t be so flaming daft!’

  It was unbelievable, someone was having them on was all Jackson could think.

  ‘It’s true. They said she robbed the house where she was lodging. Took a gold bangle.’

  ‘No!’ Jackson said flatly. ‘That’s a lie, Molly wouldn’t rob anybody.’

  Harry looked up at Mrs Morley who was standing biting her lip, her face red. ‘You knew about it?’ he said.

  ‘Aye, I did. Everyone did. I didn’t see it in the Echo but Joan Pendle made sure we knew. She told anybody who would listen.’

  ‘You believed Molly had done it?’ asked Jackson, staring at his mother, and her face went redder still, as though she had been caught out in some wrongdoing herself.

  ‘I … I didn’t know what to think, that’s the God’s honest truth, son. That fella was a respectable man, like, and they said his neighbour saw it in Molly’s suitcase.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I blame meself, really. I should have made time to go and see the lass. She was on her own like, must have been hard up … I don’t know. But your dad was so poorly at the time …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Well, I know!’ said Jackson. ‘An’ Harry does an’ all. She didn’t do it. We’ll never believe it, no matter what anybody says.’ Without his meaning it to happen, his voice had risen, emphasising his words.

  ‘Hey, lad, you’ve only been home a minute and you’re shouting at your mother. I won’t have it!’ his father was calling and Jackson subsided immediately.

  ‘Oh, Mam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout at you, you know I didn’t.’

  ‘I know. I know, lad. It’s all right.’ Maggie looked at the food beginning to congeal in the pan. ‘Look, eat this afore it spoils. Howay now, we can’t waste good food, we’ll be short enough of it if the war comes. Harry’ll have a bit an’ all, won’t you, lad? Please, for me. Then we can sit down and decide what’s to be done.’

  The soldiers sat at the table and ate the food before them though neither of them could have said what it was they were eating. It was just a matter of getting the meal out of the way. Both their minds were working on how they were going to get to see Molly.

  Mrs Morley wheeled the ungainly carriage through and stood it by the side of the table so that Frank could join in the talk.

  ‘Thanks, Maggie,’ he murmured. They were quiet until Jackson and Harry had finished the meal and laid down their knives and forks.

  ‘More tea?’ asked Maggie but they shook their heads.

  ‘Well then,’ said Harry, sounding more normal as the initial shock wore off, ‘I think the first thing I’ve to do is telephone the prison.’ There was a murmur of assent from the others.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jackson. The nearest telephone was three-quarters of a mile away, by the post office in the next village.

  ‘Mind, I think it was May or June, you know,’ said Maggie. ‘Joan Pendle said Molly got three months. She might be out by now.’

  ‘What I can’t understand is why they put her in gaol when she had a good character? The lass hasn’t done a thing wrong in her life, I dare swear she hasn’t,’ said Frank.

  Maggie flushed. ‘They said in the Co-op that it was because she had no fixed address,’ she said in little more than a whisper. ‘I blame myself, I do. I could have let her stay here but she was gone before I had the chance to say. I thought she was all right, honest I did, Harry.’

  ‘I’m sure you had enough on your plate, Mrs Morley. It’s not your fault.’ A terrible anger was replacing his initial sense of shock, an anger he kept well under control, the only sign being the white line around his lips and the set to his chin. ‘Is it all right if I leave my kitbag here, Mrs Morley?’

  ‘Why, lad, you know it is. An’ you can stay here an’ all, I’ll make a shakey down bed up in Jackson’s room. Now, I’ll have no arguments, that’s what you’ll do.’

  Harry nodded, he had had no intention of arguing. ‘Thanks, Mrs Morley.’

  The soldiers crossed over the field to Jordan, the next village, taking the path well worn by the miners and their families. At the phone box they both went in, their broad shoulders squashed against the glass. Jackson looked up the number and they scrabbled between them to find the six pennies the operator asked for.

  ‘Who’s enquiring?’ the male voice at the other end asked.

  ‘Does that matter?’ Harry was exasperated. This was wasting time and they had no more change between them.

  ‘We can’t give out information –’

  ‘All right, all right! I’m her brother. I’ve just returned from India and I have to find her,’ he shouted down the phone.

  ‘Steady on, Harry,’ Jackson murmured. ‘Losing your temper isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

  ‘If you hang on a minute, I’ll look it up. What did you say the name was? And what was she in for?’

  ‘Molly Mason. She was in for theft, though she didn’t …’

  ‘Right then, here it is. Molly Mason, age eighteen years. Discharged 20th August. You’ve just missed her, son.’ The man was beginning to sound almost human.

  ‘Your time is up, caller. If you want to continue, please put another fourpence in the box,’ the operator butted in.

  ‘But where? Where did she go?’ shouted Harry.

  ‘Why, home, I should think, wouldn’t …’ But the line was disconnected.

  ‘I’ll get some change at the post office,’ suggested Jackson as they eased themselves out of the box. ‘Or maybe we should just go to West Auckland and see if she’s gone there? After all, she might have got her job back.’

  ‘We could ask Ann Pendle first. Or Joan might be home now.’

  ‘Any road, we’ll go back and ask around Eden Hope. Tell Mam where we’re going too,’ Jackson decided, and they set off back across the field. They walked in silence, each man’s thoughts on the young girl and what had happened to her. What might still happen to her if they didn’t find her and help her put her life back together. For both of them knew what it could be like for anyone coming out of prison into the small enclosed mining communities. Molly could be in for a rough ride.

  Chapter Ten

  JACKSON AND HARRY were on the Eden bus bound for West Auckland by one o’clock that afternoon. They could have gone through Bishop Auckland, changing buses in the town, but Mrs Morley advised them to go on the Eden. ‘You won’t have to change,’ she said. ‘It’ll likely be quicker.’ She couldn’t do enough to help them, she felt so guilty over Molly. She could have got someone to sit with Frank when the lass was up before the magistrate; she could have gone and backed her up, told the chairman what a good lass Molly had always been. Aye, she said to herself, she could have done. But her thoughts had been centred on her husband, on his pain and looking after him night and day. She had been so tired those first few months after the accident.

  ‘Bring her back with you, Jackson,’ she said as the two soldiers went out. ‘Bring her back, she can stay with us, I’ll find space for her.’

  He gazed at his mother for a long moment but it would be cruel to tell her she could have
taken Molly in before now, and probably asking too much of her anyway. Maggie looked so careworn, he knew he was being unreasonable even to think it.

  The bus passed the old coach house at Shildon which had been the very first railway ticket office in the world, a fact which always gave him a thrill of pride. But today he only wondered where Molly was. Was she in trouble? A nagging anxiety about her had grown inside him ever since he’d heard she had been in prison, innocent, and alone. For he had no doubt at all that she was innocent, he was as sure of that as Harry. But where was she?

  At that moment Molly was walking down Newgate Street in Bishop Auckland after leaving the small damp room down by the Wear where she had been living since she came out of prison. She was on her way to the Labour Exchange where she went every morning searching for work. The money from the colliery, the £25 which she had received after her father’s accident, had run out, careful though she’d been, eating only one meal a day and that as frugal as she could possibly exist upon. Now she had to get work, had to!

  She rounded the corner into South Church Road and then again into Kingsway. The bus was just coming in from Eden Hope. She paused for a moment and gazed at it. It came from another world, it seemed to her, the world of her childhood where, even when the depression was at its height, she had felt safe because there was her dad and her mam and Harry.

  The bus pulled up, people alighting, Molly hunched her shoulders and bent her head. Oh, she didn’t want them to see her, no, she did not!

  ‘Isn’t that Molly Mason over there on Kingsway?’ a housewife asked her friend. They were off to the store, the Co-op, to see if they could find any tinned food they could afford to buy to stock up against the threat of war, for everyone said there would likely be rationing.

  ‘Is it?’ her friend replied, looking, but Molly was gone. ‘I felt sorry for that lass all right,’ she went on. ‘I would have offered her a place wi’ me, but she was away afore I had the chance.’

  ‘Aye. Do you know, I saw their Harry in the street the day. A fine upstanding lad he’s grown into an’ all. I wonder if she knows he’s back?’

  ‘Well, we can’t go chasing after her. She must know, surely? But if she doesn’t, no doubt she’ll soon find out. Howay then, there’ll likely be a crowd in the store.’ And the two women bustled off into Newgate Street.

  ‘There’ll be more chance of work for you shortly, especially if the war does come,’ the clerk in the Labour Exchange said to Molly. ‘Nothing at present.’ He looked over her shoulder at the queue: shabby, down at heel, depressing. ‘Take this chit over to the cash desk for your money.’

  ‘But I must get something!’ she said, desperation making her tone sharp. ‘I can’t live on the dole, it’s not enough.’

  ‘Well, it’s all you’re going to get,’ the clerk said wearily. ‘Next, please.’

  Already the next person in line was moving forward, nudging Molly out of the way. She took her chit and went over to the cash desk. Eight shillings and sixpence. It barely covered her rent. Out on Kingsway once again, she stood for a moment irresolute. She had tried all the shops in the town the day before, there was nothing there. Lingford’s the baking powder factory, too. They had vacancies but when they’d asked where she had been working last and where her references were Molly had backed away. ‘Excuse me,’ she had said. ‘I must go, I … I forgot …’ She’d left the manager looking after her in astonishment. Did she want work or not?

  ‘I’ll walk to West Auckland, St Helens at least,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Eh? What did you say?’ A man was turning into the Labour Exchange. He paused and stared at her.

  ‘Nothing, sorry, just talking to myself,’ replied Molly, blushing.

  ‘Aye, well, pet, it’s when you begin to answer back that you have to worry,’ he said, grinning. He was an older man. His shirt collar was clean but threadbare, his suit shiny with age. His grin slipped a little as he looked into her face, saw the shadows under her eyes, how thin she was.

  ‘Are you all right, pet?’

  It was the first time anyone had spoken to her with any sort of concern for such a long time that her eyes filled and she had to turn away in case he saw it. ‘I’m fine, really,’ she mumbled, and fled down Kingsway and round the corner into South Church Road.

  It was a fine day at least, she thought, as she got her emotions under control and strode out for West Auckland. She paused at a butcher’s shop in Cockton Hill and bought a penny dip, a bread bun dipped in the juices from roasted meat. Once away from the houses and on the open road she stopped at a stile and sat down to eat it. She had to force herself to take it slowly, savouring every bite. She had been so hungry she had felt sick with it, and light-headed too. She sat for a short while until the food made her feel better before resuming her journey. She was approaching Tindale Crescent, close to the factories which had been built on the site of an old colliery. Not far to go now. The sun was warm on her face, her spirits lifted. Perhaps Mr Bolton would give her her job back? After all, the factory was working full pelt, she knew that, turning out khaki uniforms for the troops.

  Molly was hot and dusty by the time she reached the factory. She hesitated at the gate, her heart thumping in her breast as she tried to raise the courage to go in. It had been one thing thinking about it but now she was actually here … She lifted her chin and went into the reception area.

  ‘Molly Mason!’ exclaimed the girl behind the desk. ‘By, I never expected to see you.’

  ‘Hello, Alice.’ The receptionist hadn’t been hostile, merely surprised, and Molly felt slightly better. ‘I’d like to see Mr Bolton, if I may?’

  He kept her waiting for half an hour before calling her into his office.

  ‘I suppose you want your job back,’ he said with no preamble. He sat back in his chair and stared at her, no expression on his face.

  ‘I would, yes,’ said Molly in a small voice. She looked down at her clenched hands. He wasn’t going to give her work, she could tell by his attitude. By, she wished she hadn’t come back, wished she were anywhere but here.

  ‘I don’t know if it would be wise to take you on again.’

  ‘But I’m a good worker, you know I am, I always kept my production up!’

  ‘Aye, I know that. I wouldn’t be seeing you otherwise.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk, the first and second stained brown with nicotine. She was a bonny lass, he thought, and wondered if there had been hanky-panky in that house when she was alone with her landlord. Maybe he had given her the bangle for favours received and then said she’d stolen it when she would no longer perform.

  Molly rose to her feet. ‘Well, if you don’t want me, I’ll be on my way,’ she said. She had had enough humiliation, she wasn’t going to beg him, not Bolton.

  ‘Hold your horses, woman, I never said I didn’t want you.’

  Molly paused on her way to the door and looked back at him.

  ‘Where would you live if I did take you back?’ he asked. ‘No one round here would have you, I’m certain of that.’

  ‘I have a room in Bishop,’ said Molly. She was so filled with a mixture of embarrassment and humiliation, she could hardly see straight.

  Mr Bolton studied her for a moment. A bonny lass she was. There was no doubt she was a good worker, had always earned her bonuses in the past. And he didn’t think the other workers would care that she had been in prison. At least most of them would not. And what would it matter if they did? None of them would want to lose their job. There was the added advantage that she would probably work harder than anyone to prove herself, and keep her head down too. She was just the sort of experienced machinist he needed to fill the government orders. He came to a decision.

  ‘Righto. You can start tomorrow. But mind, you’ll have to keep yourself out of trouble.’ He stood up and came round the desk to pat her on the shoulder, a move which caused her to jump and back towards the door.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bolton,’ she managed to say, her cheeks flushed ye
t again. ‘I’ll be here at eight o’clock.’

  Outside she took a deep breath of air, laden with the scent of new-mown grass where the gardener was trimming the lawn in front of the building. She couldn’t believe her luck in being taken on again at the factory, had shrunk initially from trying there where she was known. But now she felt as though a load had rolled off her shoulders. She would be able to keep herself, no more hated dole office.

  The afternoon sun was shining along Manor Road. She walked along in the opposite direction to Bishop Auckland with a fancy to see the house in West Auckland where she would have been living now if it weren’t for Mr Jones. She felt the familiar twinge of hatred and despair as she thought of him but put it firmly from her mind. This was turning into a good day, the best for ages, and she wasn’t going to spoil it. She walked past the entrance to Adelaide Street without even looking down it.

  Cathy’s house was still there, its windows dusty in the sun. She wondered about her. What had she thought when she’d heard about Molly? That she’d had a lucky escape, could have had a thief in the house? As Molly watched the house from across the street the little boy, Jimmy, came out and picked up the bicycle which had been laid down on the cobbles. He glanced across at Molly and she smiled tentatively but he simply looked at her and pedalled off along the street. Of course, she thought sadly, he had only met her for a few minutes that night.

  So had Cathy. Molly had thought of knocking at the door, maybe apologising for not being able to take up the room, telling her the true story. But no, Cathy didn’t know her either, it might just embarrass her. Molly walked back the way she had come with a sense of loss which dimmed the happiness of getting her job back.

  Next day as she went into work it felt as though she had hardly been away, at least for the first few minutes. She was anxious and therefore earlier than the other girls who worked on the line. Enid was there, though. She said nothing, just allotted Molly a machine. She hung up her coat on the rack in the cloakroom, put her bag with her sandwich box in the small space by the side and waited for the electricity to be switched on. Her machine was at the far end of the line now. When the other girls came in she was sitting with her back to them.