Molly's War

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Well! Will you look what the cat’s brought in?’ the hated voice exclaimed, the voice she had been dreading ever since Mr Bolton had told her she had got the job. Joan’s.

  ‘It’s the little sneak thief!’

  Molly cringed. She wanted to curl up and die. She concentrated hard on threading her machine needle. The other girls fell quiet. One sniggered in embarrassment.

  ‘That’s enough of that! I’ll hear no more of that or whoever it is they’ll be out on their ear. Now get on with your work.’

  Mr Bolton was standing in the doorway. The girls hurriedly sat down at their places on the band, the electricity began humming, the machines zipped away and the wireless came on: Fred Astaire singing ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek’.

  Molly felt grateful to Mr Bolton even though she knew he hadn’t said it to protect her but to ensure the work went on smoothly. She concentrated on her sewing. She was stitching the bands on battledress jackets, more interesting than sideseams and more complicated too. But Molly soon got the hang of it.

  At dinnertime she took her sandwiches outside and sat on the low wall which bounded the factory. The sun was shining and the air felt fresh after the stuffiness and lint-laden atmosphere of the machine room. There were a number of girls doing the same thing. Some of them were laughing and flirting with the male cutters and pressers, Joan Pendle among them. She was smoking a Woodbine, holding it up in the air and gesturing with it, her elbow cupped in her other hand. Molly took care not to catch anyone’s eye but looked down at her sandwiches and the apple she had bought on the way to the bus.

  There was a burst of laughter from the group of men and girls on the corner, Joan’s laughter ringing out over the others’. Involuntarily, Molly glanced quickly over at them to find they were looking back at her and grinning. Joan’s expression was pure malice, she thought, flinching. Molly took a bite of fish paste sandwich and chewed doggedly but somehow it refused to go down for ages and when it did she almost choked, coughing and spluttering.

  ‘Get yourself a cup of tea, lass,’ one of the men said. He was older, about forty, with kindly eyes.

  Joan’s jeering voice rang out. ‘Don’t tell me you’re taken in by her big brown eyes an’ all, Tom?’ She looked round the group, inviting the others to laugh with her.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody soft!’ he growled, and turned his back on Molly.

  She put the remains of her sandwich back in her box and went inside, not to the canteen but to the cloakroom where she got a drink of water from the tap. After all, a cup of tea cost tuppence and she couldn’t afford to waste money like that.

  All in all, she reflected on her way home at six o’clock that evening, it hadn’t been so bad. While she was working on the machine no one had bothered her. Enid had taken the sewn pieces away and left her fresh batches, not speaking to her while she did. But then, Enid was busy. They all were. Only one or two girls actually spoke to her but it was difficult what with the wireless being on and her being at the end of the line. Things would get better, she thought, surely they would? If it wasn’t for Joan Pendle …

  She had a potato to bake for her tea and a piece of hard cheese she’d picked up cheap at the store to grate over it. She washed the potato and put it in the ancient coal oven in the basement of the tumbledown old house which she shared with half a dozen other people down on their luck. While she waited Molly toasted her feet at the fire, glad to be able just to relax. No one was going to make snide remarks here. The fact that she had been in prison wasn’t so remarkable in this house; she wasn’t the only one.

  Sitting in the rickety armchair Molly began to doze, what with her tiredness and the heat from the fire. She awoke with a start when a door banged somewhere in the house and a draught blew in under the kitchen door. Disorientated, she looked round apprehensively, thinking she was still in prison. The horror of that first night was still with her. The loneliness, the feeling of being abandoned by God and everyone else.

  She could never go through that again, she told herself. Harry, where are you? Jackson, help me! She was still caught up in the dream she had been having. She saw Jackson running towards her and she was trying to run to him but somehow they never drew any closer no matter how fast they ran. The wall of the prison loomed between them suddenly. She sobbed. It was hopeless. And Harry, Harry was calling to her over Jackson’s shoulder, calling her name …

  Molly woke up properly. She could smell the potato now, it must be ready. Her heart still beat fast and her head throbbed but she was awake and no longer behind the prison wall. She took the cloth which was singed brown with oven marks from the line under the mantelshelf and retrieved the potato from the oven. She was hungry, that was all that was the matter. She cut the potato and grated the cheese on to it and ate. She would feel better when she had her stomach full, she told herself.

  She missed the old relationships she had had with her workmates. Though she hadn’t been close friends with any of them at least she had felt part of the crowd. Now she was excluded, she thought sadly. But given time, and if Joan Pendle didn’t stir things up too much, she would be accepted again.

  Climbing into bed in her damp little room in the basement, she said a prayer for Harry and, of course, Jackson. She had grown used to thinking of them together. She wondered where they were now, yearned to see them. She felt so lonely. She hadn’t written to either of them for months, had been unable to bring herself to while she was in that awful place. She was ashamed to, shrank from letting them know what had happened to her, felt degraded somehow.

  At first she had been confident that Harry would believe her, Jackson too, surely they both would? But now she had doubts. Had Jackson’s mother written to him, told him of the scandal?

  Perhaps she had. Maybe that was why Molly hadn’t heard from them. Perhaps even they didn’t want to know her now. Restlessly she turned over in bed, trying to find a comfortable spot on the lumpy mattress. She must get some sleep. She had to catch the seven-thirty bus in the morning – couldn’t afford to miss it. If she lost her job again she didn’t know what she would do.

  Most of the time Molly couldn’t bear to think about what it was like in prison but tonight the memories wouldn’t go away. Why were people so hard, so spitefully cruel? It wasn’t just the wardresses, who were only doing their job, she supposed. The other women were worse, some of them at least. And then there was Bertha. Oh God, Bertha! She’d had to share a cell with Bertha. Only for one night but that had been enough. Molly had really reached rock bottom that night. She had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion and when she woke it was like the night when Bart had put his slimy hands on her. Only this time it was a woman, Bertha.

  Molly shuddered, tried desperately to think of something else, anything else. She jumped out of bed and walked the floor, backwards and forwards. Her skin crawled. She could still feel Bertha’s hands on her, hear that voice whispering obscenities in her ear. Things she had never heard before, couldn’t even comprehend.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, Molly regained control of her thoughts, forced herself to push the memories out of her mind. Eventually numbness crept over her, brought on by extreme exhaustion. It allowed her to go back to bed and at last she slept.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘YOU’VE BOTH BEEN called back, lads,’ said Mrs Morley as they walked into the kitchen. Her voice wobbled slightly with disappointment and apprehension at what was to come.

  ‘What? You must be joking!’ cried Jackson, unbelieving.

  ‘No, your mother’s not having you on,’ his father said, his voice coming through the door from the room beyond. ‘It’s come over the wireless. All troops to return to barracks. There’s a telegram an’ all.’

  Jackson slumped into a chair, despair rising in him. They were so close to Molly, he knew they were. In another couple of days they would surely find her.

  ‘What are we going to do, Jackson?’ asked Harry. He too sounded thoroughly dispirited. But his question was rhetorical. He knew th
ey had to go back to camp. War was coming nearer all the time and they were in the regular army. Jackson didn’t even bother to answer, he knew too.

  ‘Have you got any news of the lass?’ asked Maggie, as she had asked every evening when they’d come in from searching the area for Molly.

  ‘Oh, aye, we have,’ said Harry. ‘We know she started work back at the clothing factory three or four days ago. Worked the first two days then didn’t go back.’

  ‘Harry! You asked at the factory three days ago, or Jackson said you did any road.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jackson. ‘Evidently we asked only an hour before she was set on. I tell you what, Mam, anyone would think we weren’t meant to find her. We seem to keep missing her all the time.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘Well, howay, lads,’ she said, taking the oven cloth from the line. ‘Come and eat your dinner. I’ve made a nice steak pie. I reckon we won’t be getting a lot more of them if the war comes what with rationing an’ all.’

  She served the pie, rich with onion gravy and succulent steak, which had cost more than she usually spent on meat in a week. There were mashed potatoes and vegetables from the garden, the pie crust was thick and savoury, and the men tucked in with a will in spite of their anxiety over Molly, a feeling which worsened as the days went on.

  Today they had become desperate enough to knock on doors at random in West Auckland. And they thought their luck was getting better when one woman had said yes, she had seen her.

  ‘Come after the attic room,’ she had said. ‘A nice lass an’ all, I thought, though that’s not what folk said about her, not when she was sent down for thieving. I didn’t think she looked the type at all. I was looking forward to having her living here but she never came back. I would have took her in an’ all, I don’t care what other folk think or say.’ Cathy looked speculatively at the two soldiers. ‘You her brothers, are you?’

  ‘I am,’ said Harry. ‘This is my friend, we’re both from Eden Hope. Molly didn’t do it, you know. She wouldn’t, she’s an honest girl. Look, if you see or hear from her, will you let us know? This is Jackson’s mother’s address.’ He handed her an envelope, addressed and stamped.

  Cathy took the envelope and studied it for a second or two.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she said. She bit her lip and hesitated before going on: ‘I know that Bart Jones – he’s a flaming hypocrite, always was! They chucked him out of the Chapel once, some goings on they hushed up. Now that never got told to the magistrates. His own daughter went about like a timid mouse before she went into the sanatorium up Weardale. But there’s no justice, is there?’

  The men nodded in agreement. They were both silent at first as they walked on to the bus stop. There was no point in knocking on any more doors and it was almost tea-time.

  Jackson couldn’t bear to speak, in fact, his emotions were so mixed. Anger that the magistrates had taken the word of Bart Jones against a girl like Molly, frustration that yet another day of their leave had gone and they were no nearer to finding her. Worst of all was the anxiety of wondering where she was, if she was all right, always hoping nothing had happened to her.

  Now they had to go back to camp without finding her. The order said immediately which meant the overnight train to King’s Cross where they would get their connection. Suddenly he’d had enough of his mother’s steak pie and pushed his plate away.

  ‘Now then, lad. You have to eat, keep your strength up. Don’t you go wasting good food, not after all the years we were short during the slump.’

  With an effort he managed to clear his plate. Leaving food was indeed a sin in Eden Hope. And then the two friends had to pack their kitbags and go dashing through the wood to the station at Bishop Auckland, to catch the train by the skin of their teeth.

  ‘I’ll watch out for Molly, I will, son, I promise,’ Mrs Morley called down the street after them. She stood gazing after them long after they had turned the corner.

  ‘You’ve had the lad home on leave then?’

  Turning, she saw Ann Pendle coming towards her and was just in the mood to give her a piece of her mind.

  ‘Aye, I have,’ snapped Maggie. ‘The both of them. Not that we saw much of them, mind, they’ve been out looking for young Molly most of the time. I blame your Joan for most of it an’all, the spiteful little cat!’

  ‘Well! How could it be Joan’s fault, eh? She never pinched anything.’

  ‘No, and neither did Molly Mason. You should be ashamed, Ann Pendle, an’ you her mother’s best friend. Your Joan spreading lies about her, just because she was jilted by Harry. If you ask me, he had a lucky escape there!’

  ‘By, you have a flaming nerve, talking like that about my lass! I’ll have you know –’

  But what she was going to let Maggie know was lost as that lady stalked up her yard and went into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  At Darlington, Harry and Jackson found the train full of soldiers returning to barracks and had to settle down on their kitbags in the corridor. Neither of them caring much about it, they sat there and stared at the floor or their boots, occasionally standing to stretch their legs and staring out of the window at the darkening landscape. Jackson lifted his eyes to see Harry, a Woodbine in his fingers, the ash on the end growing longer and longer as he forgot about it. Jackson got to his feet and stood beside him.

  ‘We did all we could,’ he said.

  ‘An’ not very much, was it?’

  ‘No.’ Jackson spoke heavily, feeling defeated.

  The train was slowing down as it came into York station. It was crowded with men in uniform and women seeing them off but Jackson stared out unseeingly.

  They had gone to Adelaide Street, found the house where Bart Jones lived, but there’d been no one in. The man next door had come out, angry at being woken.

  ‘Can you not let a man sleep when he’s on night shift?’ he had snarled.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Jackson. ‘I wonder, though, now you’re awake, when does Mr Jones get in from work?’

  ‘He’ll be here any minute,’ the neighbour had replied. ‘Ah, look, here he is now. Now if you don’t mind …’ He went inside and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Yes?’ Bart Jones had asked, his head cocked to one side. ‘Are you looking for me?’

  ‘We are if you’re the man Molly Mason used to lodge with,’ said Harry. ‘We want to know where she is.’

  Bart’s demeanour changed. He looked about him before gesturing them closer. ‘Aye, I am,’ he said. ‘An’ a sorry day it was too when I let her into my house. Stole from me, she did.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’ Harry had suddenly yelled at him, and Bart Jones visibly paled and jumped away from the two soldiers. ‘My sister never stole a penny in her life! She’s just a young lass, brought up right an’ all, she wouldn’t steal anything.’

  ‘Harry, calm down,’ Jackson had cautioned, though his own blood was boiling.

  ‘Aye, you tell him, coming here, threatening a poor chap like me. I’ve got a bad leg, let me tell you, and if you go for me I’ll have the polis on you, I will!’ As if he had been summoned, a policeman appeared at the top of the street. ‘Constable Horton! Constable!’ Bart Jones yelled, suddenly sounding more confident. ‘These soldiers are threatening me!’

  ‘What’s all the commotion?’

  The policeman was middle-aged and portly. He walked slowly up to them and frowned at the soldiers.

  ‘It’s about that young lass what stole from me. You know, the one who got sent to prison. They want to know where she is. I’m sure I don’t know, I don’t want anything to do with the likes of her again.’ Bart sniffed and pursed his lips in disdain.

  ‘He was saying things about my sister,’ said Harry, his fingers itching to squeeze Bart’s throat.

  ‘An’ you threatened me! I have a good mind to lay you in, threatening innocent citizens …’

  Jackson took a step towards Bart and he hurriedly backed into the house, ready to close the door on him.r />
  ‘Aye, well, I’m sure it was in the heat of the minute. We don’t want to be putting our soldier lads in gaol, do we? Not just now, we might need them,’ said the constable mildly. ‘Howay then, lads, time to be away, I think.’ He gave them a friendly nod.

  ‘Aw, come on, Jackson,’ said Harry. ‘We’re going to get nowt out of him, the dirty little bugger. I suspect he was sniffing up our Molly’s skirts and when she turned him down …’

  ‘I didn’t! I never did!’ shouted Bart Jones, his head peeping out from behind the door.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said the constable. ‘Inside wi’ you now. An’ you two, away wi’ you.’

  And Jackson and Harry had turned on their heel and marched up the street.

  ‘I didn’t expect to find out anything from him any road,’ said Harry. ‘I just wanted to see the man who put the lass in prison.’

  ‘Aye,’ Jackson agreed. ‘I think you hit the nail on the head too. That was likely the way it happened, he’ll have made up to her.’

  ‘Aye.’

  They lapsed into silence. Jackson was thinking of Bart Jones with his hands on Molly and his skin crawled. There were plenty of Bart Joneses out there, ready to take advantage of young girls. Pray God nothing more happened to her before they found her.

  He sat down on his kitbag and leaned his head and shoulders against the side of the train. He closed his eyes, unable to get out of his mind a picture of Molly, frightened, at the mercy of men like Bart Jones. Or else in gaol, trying not to show how humiliated she was. For she would have been humiliated. Molly was a proud girl. Even as a little ’un she’d held her head high like a queen.

  The train was steaming into Peterborough when on impulse he got to his feet and worked his way to the door through the crowds already on the train and the crowds beginning to get on, most of them soldiers with kitbags.