by Maggie Hope
‘Was anyone hurt, do you know? Mona was working there, has anyone seen her?’ Molly’s dread was mounting. Her heart beat so fast it threatened to choke her. She went from group to group, asking if they had seen Mona but no one had. But it couldn’t be true. Mona couldn’t be dead. She was so alive, always laughing. Molly had a vision of her flicking her long blonde hair back from her forehead. Oh, she was so pretty. She couldn’t be gone, blown to smithereens, of course she couldn’t, the idea was ludicrous. Mona was her friend, her very best friend. Please God, not her.
Molly struggled to keep a hold of herself, fighting down the panic, the feeling that it was true and that it was all her fault. She had a jinx on her. Mona was her friend, ergo Mona had to die.
The group looked at one another, shook their heads. Molly chewed her lip. It seemed like an age before they could move away from the emergency exit. The ambulance drove away, not using its siren. Was that a good sign or was it a bad? The Tannoy crackled and everyone looked up expectantly.
‘Everyone to the canteen. Move to the canteen in orderly fashion, please,’ a tinny voice ordered and the girls started to move away, quiet now, all of them wondering the same thing.
In the canteen Molly searched the faces behind the counter for Mona’s mother. If anyone knew what had happened to Mona she would. But Mrs Fletcher wasn’t there. Perhaps she was working in the kitchen, Molly thought. No, of course, she was probably not back yet. Even the catering staff would have had to go to their emergency stations.
There was tea from the urn but Molly couldn’t face it. She sat at the table with the others while they drank and lit cigarettes. For the first time Molly wished she smoked, it seemed to release tension. Then the word went round the room, coming from nobody knew where: a girl had been killed working on detonators.
It still didn’t have to be Mona, thought Molly, but where was she? The next minute her worst fears were confirmed as Mrs Fletcher was led out of the kitchens, supported on either side by members of the First Aid team. Head bent she was taken out, looking neither to left nor to right as she went. Molly was on her feet and pushing her way through the crowd to reach her but by the time she got to the door Mrs Fletcher was being helped into a car.
‘Mrs Fletcher!’ Molly called, and the woman looked up, her face white, her eyes staring. Molly ran to her.
‘Is it –’ But she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t. Mrs Fletcher merely nodded and began to get into the car.
‘Are you a friend of hers?’ someone asked, and looking up Molly saw it was the works doctor.
‘A friend of her daughter’s,’ she said. And it was because of her that this had happened, she thought again. The numbness of grief crept over her, mixed with guilt. It was because of her own bad luck. It had rubbed off on her friend.
‘You’d best go with her then,’ he said. He was a middle-aged man with heavy jowls and thinning hair which was parted in the centre of his large head and plastered to either side with some sort of dressing. His eyes were dark brown and sympathetic. He had been a local GP for twenty years. Now his list was twice as big with the advent of this sprawling factory amid the green fields of central Durham.
Molly hesitated. ‘I’ll have to ask … get permission.’
Five minutes later she was sitting in the back of the car with Mona’s mother. They didn’t talk, there was nothing to say.
‘I’ll leave her with you,’ said the driver. ‘I’ll be outside.’ Not until they were inside the little terraced house in Ferryhill did Mrs Fletcher speak.
‘Our Mona’s not usually careless,’ she said. ‘I mean, she wasn’t.’
‘No! I’m sure she wasn’t,’ Molly answered. ‘It must have been an accident, you know.’ She looked around, hardly knowing what to do, or what to say. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’ll get you one, shall I?’
‘No. I’ve had enough tea to sink a ship. Well, if she wasn’t careless, how could it happen?’
‘It does, these things do,’ said Molly helplessly.
Mrs Fletcher looked at her. She seemed to accept Molly’s assurances and changed tack. ‘I mind when her dad died,’ she said. ‘It’s funny, it doesn’t seem real at first.’
‘No,’ said Molly, thinking back to the time when her own father was killed. Her heart ached for the older woman.
‘I was that pleased when she got on with your brother. A nice lad, yes, a nice lad.’
‘Yes.’
Molly looked about the neat kitchen-cum-living room. The linoleum on the floor was scrubbed and polished and covered with oblong clippie mats, just like most of the houses she’d known. The windows gleamed. Cheap cotton curtains hung there, lined with thick blackout material, the same as Maggie had at her windows, bought at the Co-op no doubt. A cinder fell to the enamelled plate covering the hearth. Automatically Mrs Fletcher got to her feet and scooped it up with the steel-handled brush and shovel which hung on the companion set by the side of the grate.
‘Will you be writing to Harry?’
Molly looked back at Mrs Fletcher. Mona’s mother sounded so polite. She sat on the edge of her chair, smoothing her skirt over her knees as though she had unexpected company.
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ Molly said. The clock on the mantel ticked loudly. ‘Are you sure I can’t do anything for you?’ she asked. ‘Is there a neighbour I should call? Anyone else that I could get in touch with?’
‘No, no, that’s fine, you’ve been very good,’ said Mrs Fletcher. She got to her feet. ‘I’d like to be on me own now. It’s not that I don’t appreciate …’
And Molly found herself outside on the street, ushered out. She needed to be allowed to mourn, with Mona’s mother, oh, she did. But she couldn’t push herself forward, she wasn’t wanted. Mrs Fletcher closed the door behind her, leaving Molly staring at it for a moment. A minute or two later the curtains closed too, leaving the windows looking strangely blind as the black cloth gave back her own reflection through the glass. The sign of a death in the family, a sign for the neighbours to walk past quietly, the children not to play too close, show some respect. It was always done.
Molly was surprised to find the car still waiting. She had supposed that she would go straight home from Ferryhill. As she approached it the driver got out and opened the door for her.
‘All right, is she?’
‘As all right as she’s going to be,’ Molly said shortly. ‘Are we going back to the factory?’
‘Those are my orders. To take you back to Administration.’
The Administration building was on the opposite side of the complex from where Molly had been working and when she came out it was only five minutes to the end of her shift. Instead of taking the internal bus she walked across to the station, glad of the fresh air.
The manager had asked if she was a friend of the family, told her the funeral would be taken care of, all in very business-like tones. He made notes on a piece of paper in front of him, looking up at Molly from time to time.
‘Mrs Fletcher has a sister in Eden Hope,’ he commented. ‘Her only relation. She will have to be notified. Well, I think that’s all.’ He put down his pen and sat back in his seat. ‘May I say how sorry I am about the death of your friend? By the way, how was Mrs Fletcher when you left her?’
‘Shocked,’ said Molly. ‘I don’t think it has hit her yet.’
‘No, of course not.’
He looked uncomfortable as Molly stared at him, but what could he do? How was he supposed to act?
‘Well, goodbye then, Miss Mason,’ he said finally, standing up.
The funeral was small. There had been nothing in the paper about the explosion and workers weren’t encouraged to take time off to go to the funeral. The powers that be didn’t want a fuss made, nor did they want the public to think the works were unsafe. Molly did get the afternoon off. She went with Maggie, Mona’s aunt and uncle to the Methodist Chapel at Ferryhill. A few of the girls from the concert party who were off shift went too. But it was a low-key affair.
What on earth was she going to write to Harry? How could she tell him that Mona had been blown up and the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death? They sang the twenty-third psalm and then the minister began to talk about Mona as a child in Sunday school, or telling jokes to the back row of the choir as a fourteen-year-old. And now she was buried in the wind-swept cemetery, only twenty-one years old.
Molly travelled back to Eden Hope with Maggie, Mona’s aunt and uncle going back to the house with her mother. As soon as she got in, Molly resolved, she would sit down at the little table and write that letter.
It took a few sheets of spoiled paper before she felt reasonably satisfied. She told the bare facts and expressed her sympathy and in the end didn’t try to write anything else. She put the letter in an envelope and addressed it care of the regiment. It would be forwarded to wherever Harry was from there.
‘I’ll just go to the post with this,’ she said to Maggie. ‘I’ll be back in time for tea.’
As she walked past the newsagent’s to the post office she saw the chalked notice on the billboard:
FRANCE CAPITULATES
The first thought which came into her head was that at least it meant Harry and Jackson would be coming home soon.
‘They will, won’t they?’ she asked Frank when she got home and told them the news.
‘Nay, lass, how would I know?’ he replied. Seeing the look on her face and hearing her sigh, he went on swiftly, ‘I’d say they stood a good chance of getting leave any road, when they get back this side of the Channel. We’ll get it on the news.’ He wheeled himself over to the wireless which stood on a table in the corner and began twiddling with the knobs, causing bursts of static before the voice of the BBC announcer came on.
Chapter Twenty
THERE WAS AN epidemic of diphtheria in Eden Hope. The summer days were fine and hot. While there were often planes droning overhead, sirens wailing, dog fights in the sky, and the excited cries of bairns on the ground searching for bits of shrapnel for souvenirs, ambulance sirens were wailing too as they took small children to the fever hospital.
The panel doctor went to the schools to vaccinate the ones who were well while their teachers harangued them about the dangers of collecting shrapnel and of drinking from each other’s cups.
In their houses people sheltered under the stairs or built underground shelters in the gardens. Others used the entrance to an old drift mine, putting in chairs and emergency supplies, a door across the opening made out of pieces of wood. That was until a bomb was dropped too close for comfort, the German pilot obviously mistaking it for a working mine.
The fumigating team was in the street as Molly came home one morning from night shift. They usually followed the ambulance after a diphtheria victim was sent to hospital.
‘Little Annie Sutton,’ said Maggie in answer to her query. ‘There was an allowance of oranges the day at the Co-op store. One for each ration book. I sent them up for the other Sutton bairns. You don’t mind, do you?’
Molly assured her that she didn’t mind at all. She looked up at the mantelpiece but there was no letter. She sighed. She had even resorted to the old child’s game of adding up the numbers on her bus ticket and dividing them by seven. It all depended on how many were left over.
One for sorrow,
Two for joy.
Three for a letter …
The rhyme went on and on endlessly in her mind, she had to make a conscious effort to stop it. It was just too childish altogether to think it might work. It showed how much she missed him, missed them both. Harry was on her mind a lot. She couldn’t bear for anything to happen to him, he was all she had left of the family.
Men were filtering back from Dunkirk. It was on the wireless all the time about the army of little boats bringing them home. A triumph, they said, when the Germans thought they had had them trapped.
‘They just don’t know us British,’ Frank said proudly. ‘Just like in the last war. The Kaiser called our lads “that contemptible little army”. But we showed them, didn’t we, Mother?’
‘Aye,’ said Maggie absently. She had her baking things out on the table and was about to make a meat and vegetable pie, though it wouldn’t taste like one of her usual pies, she told Frank crossly. ‘Not with only half the fat, like.’
Most folk didn’t care that they had lost their main ally. They’d manage better without the French, they told each other. There was an air of relief almost, they were on their own now.
‘Well,’ said Frank, who had been occupying his time reading history books from the library, ‘we’ve been on our own afore now.’
‘If I only had word of our Jackson I wouldn’t care,’ Maggie said wistfully. Frank was fiddling with the wireless, hoping for the racing results. He had a sixpenny bet on a horse in the one-thirty at Sedgefield. The bookie’s runner still came to the end of the rows on racing days, slyly taking slips of paper wrapped round coins while keeping an eye out for the polis. To Molly it was amazing that racing and football or any kind of sports should go on just as though the war wasn’t happening, as though Jackson and other mothers’ sons weren’t in danger.
‘You’re all strung up, lass,’ said Maggie, seeing her exasperated expression. ‘But folk like Frank have to have something to take their minds off the war.’
It was true, Molly thought, as she ate her porridge sugarless, like the Scots did, and drank her tea sugarless too. Frank had a sweet tooth and they were saving sugar to make bramble jam in the autumn. It was strange coming in from work in the mornings to eat breakfast and getting up in the evenings to eat dinner before going out again. But she couldn’t ask Maggie to cook things separately just for her.
Afterwards she took a few turns at the poss tub, thumping the stick up and down in the soapy water, watching the clothes twist and turn. It had a strangely soothing effect and when, later on, she washed and changed into her nightie and climbed into bed, the curtains drawn against the bright sunshine outside, she fell easily into a deep sleep.
It was still light when she woke but the sun’s rays had left the front of the house, showing it must be afternoon. At first she didn’t recognise the noise outside. It took a minute or two to realise it was the pit blowing the air raid siren. Soon there was a plane droning overhead. Molly wondered if it was British or German, if she should get up and investigate, even look for shelter. But her limbs were heavy with sleep. Instead she simply lay there. In the end the noise faded away, the plane evidently heading home, its bombs already dropped.
The chapel had been full on Sunday, people turning back to God who hadn’t seen the inside of a church for years apart from weddings and funerals. Molly’s thoughts wandered back to it. She had prayed for Jackson and Harry but all the while she couldn’t help thinking that there must be women in Germany praying for their sons and sweethearts too. Ah, well. She sighed and climbed out of bed. She would go downstairs and see if Maggie needed a hand with the ironing. If only there was a letter when she came home tomorrow, if only she had some news.
Downstairs, Maggie was extricating Frank and his wheel chair from the cupboard under the stairs.
‘I’m going in there no flaming more, woman,’ he growled. ‘If a bomb drops on us, we’ll go any road, I’ve told you before. Besides, I want you to push me up to the corner, I have some winnings to collect.’
‘I’ll do it, if you like?’ offered Molly.
‘No, I’ll go. I could do with a bit of fresh air,’ Maggie replied.
After they had gone, Molly covered the table with an old blanket which Maggie kept for ironing and connected the gas iron to the outlet by the gas ring. Soon she was working away at the pile of clothes which she brought in from the yard, filling the overhead line which stretched across the kitchen.
It was hot working in the glow of the gas and the fire which had heated the oven for Maggie’s pie. Molly paused and rubbed her brow with the back of her hand, then hung up the shirt she had just finished and turned to pick
another from the pile. And through the open doorway saw the telegraph boy just coming to the door, raising his hand to knock.
Her heart dropped into her shoes. She felt sick and faint with dread. The telegraph boy meant only one thing nowadays, especially if you had a soldier in the family. Carefully she turned off the gas at the outlet, turned her back on the boy and stood for a minute or two, trying to tell herself it wasn’t happening. Dear God, she’d prayed for a letter, not this. The boy interrupted her frantic thoughts.
‘Missus?’
Molly turned slowly. The boy was holding out a yellow envelope. ‘I’m sorry, Missus.’ His face was solemn. He had done this before, of course he had, he must have done it countless times over these last few months. Molly took the envelope. It was addressed to Frank. It wasn’t Harry then, she thought. Suddenly she tore it open, not able to bear the suspense any more.
‘… regret to inform you that Sergeant Jackson Morley is missing, believed killed.’
‘There’ll not be a reply, Missus?’ asked the boy. No one wanted to reply to the War Office.
Molly shook her head and he went off up the yard. He started to whistle in his relief to have it over, realised what he was doing and stopped, looking guiltily over his shoulder.
It wasn’t true, of course it wasn’t true. Missing he might be but he wasn’t killed. Anyone as full of life as Jackson couldn’t be dead. Molly was still standing there, the telegram in her hand, when Maggie came back with Frank.
*
Jackson’s name was read out in chapel on the following Sunday along with half a dozen others. Molly stopped going to the services then. After all, she thought dully, they did no good. All these years of Christianity, all the centuries even, and there were still wars. If there was a God, He didn’t care.
About a week later, there was a letter from Harry.
I got your letter today. It had followed me around for weeks. Little Mona, I can’t believe it. This bloody war. And you, Molly, you be careful, I don’t want to lose you too. Can’t you get a transfer or something? It doesn’t seem right, lasses getting blown up, doesn’t bear thinking about. I don’t know where Jackson is, we got separated. But he’ll be all right, Jackson knows what he’s doing.
