Soldier Girl

by Annie Murray

  The sight of the po, and the bare boards, and the crumbling walls of the room, and the even more depressing sight of the heaped mound of Iris, her mother, snoring intermittently on the other bed, did nothing to raise her spirits. Dear God, couldn’t things ever get better? They’d always been rotten, ever since she could remember, and they were never going to improve with Iris and Joe pouring almost every penny that came into the house down their necks, that was for sure. When was she ever going to get out of here?

  Anger drove her to her feet, and it only dawned on her then that she was still fully dressed. She stared down at herself bemused, trying to recall going to bed. She must have come in and flung herself straight down. Still, that settled it – all she had to put on was her shoes. Pushing her feet into them she winced, cursing. Looking down, she saw her lisle stockings were all torn and there was blood on her left heel. So she started shuffling along on the backs of them.

  For a moment she stopped beside Iris. Her mother was forty-six years old and looked twenty years older. Molly stared down at her, seeing a big-boned woman who had once been statuesque, though she was now well past her finest. Her large frame, which Molly knew she had inherited, was upholstered with thick layers of fat. Iris lay on her back, one plump arm splayed over the side of the bed, her immense breasts only just contained by a torn camisole which had aged to a yellowish grey. As she shifted in the bed a rank and sweaty smell wafted up. Her head was turned to one side, pressing on the rolls of fat under her chin; her faded brown hair was still roughly pinned up in her distinctive topknot, though much of the hair had worked loose in her sleep and had gathered into a frizz. Iris’s thick lips were parted, those lips which had spat out vile secrets to Molly last night. Snores rattled in the back of her throat.

  She looks like a pig, she is a pig . . . Molly stared at Iris’s rounded nose and pugnacious nostrils. But in the prominent cheekbones and long neck she could see her own inheritance of features. The main difference was her hair, which was thick and blonde. Where did that come from? she wondered bitterly. But heaven forbid she should end up like Mom with her coarse, broken-veined skin and liver spots already showing on her cheeks and red nose – like him. Molly clenched her fists. She felt like killing the great fat sow, breaking the chamber pot and its stinking contents over her head. She started to shake with anger and loathing.

  Iris’s eyes opened, narrow and piggy between dark lashes, the whites bloodshot from a life of drinking. That was all they did now, she and Joe, they drank and drank, courtesy of Molly’s wages and Bert’s.

  Iris struggled to focus, frowning with confusion. ‘Molly – that you? Make us a cuppa will yer? Don’t feel too good.’ The eyes closed, and in seconds she was snoring again.

  A hand over her heaving stomach, Molly crept down the bare boards of the stairs. The house had one room downstairs with a tiny scullery at the back and two upstairs. Bert had the other room when he deigned to come home at all, and wild horses wouldn’t drag her into sharing a room with him, the filthy bugger. She’d sleep in the coal hole rather than go anywhere near him. After all, he’d had the perfect grandfather to learn his dirty tricks from, hadn’t he?

  Downstairs, Joe was asleep in his chair by the dead fire and the room was very cold. He had an old blanket over his knees. Molly tiptoed past, seeing his almost hairless head tilted to one side, the scalp dotted with downy tufts of grey. She couldn’t bear to look at his face, and not only because she knew how it would be: the drooping, toothless mouth, his defeated, old man’s face even though he was only a year older than Iris. Unlike Iris, he had always been able to arouse tenderness in Molly. She couldn’t remember him before the Great War, back in those innocent days when he was sprightly and fit and had even been able to play the piano. They’d actually owned a piano back then, she’d been told, though it’d been sold long since, after Joe had come back from France a wreck, his nerves and health shattered and his younger self buried in the mud with his dead comrades. Molly had often wondered what kind of man he would have been had he never gone to war, had married a different wife, had had a chance. Time after time she had been told of his decency as a young man, his intelligence, and she had clung to these stories. ‘He were a good lad, yer father was,’ those who remembered would say. ‘A kind-hearted, decent fella, and he could sing and play lovely. Such a shame . . .’ She had seldom seen anything of this, except for a kindly gleam in his more usually vacant eyes. But she had clung to that image in hope for the best she might have in herself. Maybe she was like him, not like Mom, she had often desperately hoped. I don’t have to end up like her, she used to tell herself.

  But today she would not look at Joe. Joe Fox – some man she lived with, but not Dad. A stranger, in terms of blood. She went to the mantelpiece for the privy key, tied to a cotton reel, and went outside, down the narrow entry and round to the yard on to which faced five back houses. Molly’s own house was at the front of these. She slunk across the yard with her head down and her arms folded, not wanting to speak to anyone. Someone was in the brew house where the washing was done, steam curling out from the water heating in the copper. Two raggedy kids were playing outside, waiting for their mother. Normally Molly was friendly, and it was a nice yard, much better than some they’d lived on. It was clean and people were decent to her, felt sorry for her, most likely. But today she was too upset for friendliness.

  All three toilets were occupied and she waited until a chain flushed and a woman came out of one, holding the door open.

  ‘All right Molly? You ain’t looking so good this morning. Bit of a night, was it?’ She went off, chuckling.

  Molly bolted herself inside the smelly privy, sinking on to the already warm wooden seat with a sigh – a combination of both physical relief and deep inner despair. The sight of the crudely built brick walls between which she was perched and the roughly cut squares of newspaper hanging from a nail on the back of the door dragged her down even further.

  Surely to God there must be something better than this. There had to be . . . She felt absolutely at rock bottom.

  A thought came then, as if someone had shone a bright light in her head.

  I’m not staying here any longer. I’ve got to get out if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll sink into the mud, else. And a second later, she had the answer. I know – I’m going to join up!

  Three

  What had set Molly off was what had happened the previous night.

  She had always been restless about jobs, moving from firm to firm, easily bored. Her latest was in a factory in Vauxhall which had gone over to the war effort, making tin hats and jerry cans and other war needs that could be bashed out of metal.

  Last night she’d worked on late to finish a batch and hurried home in the dark, tense, like everyone else, waiting in fear of the sirens going off. No one wanted to get stuck in a raid, having to get off the bus and find a shelter or risk it, depending whether the bus driver was prepared to go on or not. Some nights the raids began early and were on and off all night. You just never knew.

  It had already been a dull grey day and the darkness was of a heavy, cloaking kind with a lid of cloud. No bomber’s moon at least. It was hard to hurry in the blackout. Molly got off the bus with a weary heart and wended her way carefully along the dark Nechells streets. It was an old, poor neighbourhood, close to the heart of the city, which had suffered a lot of raids. So far, though, no one they knew had been bombed out. But the Buttons worried Molly to death. Stanley and Jenny Button lived a few streets away and were the kindest people Molly knew. Jenny Button had taken her in as a child, when Iris’s behaviour to Molly had forced her to run away. Molly loved the two of them far more than she did her family. They had always been so kind to her, had shown her that life doesn’t have to consist of cruelty and neglect. Stanley was an invalid and couldn’t walk, but the two of them flatly refused to have anything to do with going into any sort of shelter.

  ‘Stanley and me will take our chances where we are, in our own home,�
� Jenny Button said with dignity. ‘We’re not having those Jerries forcing us into some godforsaken cellar.’

  There was no arguing with them. Molly knew that quite a few older people took this attitude. Every time there was a raid Molly rushed round to see if they were all right.

  The walk home seemed to take ages. It had been a long day, her left shoe was rubbing her heel raw so that she was limping, and there was no telling what she’d find at home.

  ‘I bet the fire won’t even be lit,’ she muttered resentfully, ‘let alone anything on for tea.’

  Practically everything in the house was now left to her. Iris could hardly bestir herself to get down to the shops for groceries these days. It was rationing that had finished her off.

  ‘I can’t do with all them stupid coupons and that,’ she complained as soon as the system was introduced. ‘You and Bert’ll have to do it, Molly. You’re the clever ones.’

  Molly was enraged by this. Clever ones? Since when had Mom ever taken any notice of whether she was clever or not? It was just a marvellous excuse for Iris to sit on her backside and do even less than she did already except devote herself to her dearest friend, the bottle.

  Molly could predict exactly how she’d find them tonight, Iris and Joe. (Never again would she call them Mom and Dad. When had either of them been a mother or father to her?) They’d be either side of the cold range, he half asleep, muttering to himself. Iris would be tanked up and aggressive, ready to pick a fight with the very draught under the door. Not a thing would have been done in the house, no shopping or cleaning up. As for Bert, they never knew from one day to the next whether he’d be there or not. Molly pulled her old brown-and-white-weave coat round her as if to shield herself from this squalid sight. She’d be so ashamed for anyone to come to the house. They never had callers: Iris had long ago frightened off anyone who might have set foot in there and no one knew what to say to Joe. His old cronies who had come years back to visit out of pity had long ago melted away. Fair enough, the number of moonlight flits the family had done to evade the rent meant it was hard for anyone to keep up. But now they were back in the district and settled, and still no one came. What a shower, Molly thought furiously. Why had she ended up in such a rotten, useless family? No wonder her older brother Tom had got out as soon as he could. It had been more than four years now since anyone had heard from him.

  At least the house they were in now was a bit better. During the worst years, before she and Bert started work, they had lived in squalid, bug-ridden places, sometimes having the chance to move their few sticks of furniture with a handcart, sometimes, nothing. The worst time, they’d rented two rooms on the ground floor of a house, sleeping on straw mattresses on the floor, waking up a mass of flea bites. Since then things had come on a bit. With her and Bert out at work there were two lots of wages, and lately Bert had extra money about him, though she wasn’t sure how he came by it. Probably they only saw a tiny fraction of it too, knowing him. But he had got hold of a wireless from somewhere, which graced the downstairs room, even though Iris mostly snored in front of it.

  The front door was closed against the cold, but she could see the light was on inside. At least the street had electric lighting now, even though they still cooked on the old coal-fired range. She pushed the door open, letting out the usual odours of must and booze.

  ‘ ’Bout time you got ’ere.’ Iris’s voice assailed her before she was even inside the door. ‘Where the ’ell’ve yer been?’

  ‘Had to work over.’ Molly shut the door, thankfully slipped off her shoes from her freezing feet and rubbed her sore left heel. ‘There’s a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Don’t you be lippy with me,’ Iris snarled. ‘Bert’s been in an hour and ’e brought some pigs’ liver. You need to get on and get the tea.’

  She never knew exactly what it was that had set Iris off that night, why then and not some other time. She was already spoiling for a fight though, that was clear. As Molly straightened up, she took a few moments to absorb the strange sight in front of her. Iris and Joe were, as expected, ensconced by the fire – nothing unusual in that – except that it was alight for once. The reason for this was also obvious: standing by the table in the crowded little room with his back to her was Bert, and Bert felt the cold.

  He had not even turned to look at her. His skinny back, always slightly bowed – he never stood quite straight – was bent over the table. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and Molly noticed the sharp points of his elbows.

  In front of him, covering the whole table, was a selection of objects which made the house look like a pawn shop.

  ‘What’s all this?’

  Looking more closely, she saw a strange collection of things. There were ornaments, a china sheep, two clocks – one in a wooden case, one brass – a silver hand mirror, pretty and valuable looking (‘What’s this doing here? Where on earth did you get that?’), a hessian bag, wooden shoe trees, a rusty old biscuit tin and even a set of false teeth.

  As she rifled through the things on the table, Bert’s head turned sharply towards her, eyes narrowed. She thought how mean he looked, how unhealthy and cruel, with his mousy hair slicked back, his pasty face and extreme thinness which made him look sharp and pinched. There were angry pink spots on his chin and he smelt pungently of stale sweat.

  Molly picked up the old biscuit tin, surprised by its weight. ‘What’s in here?’

  Bert watched as she struggled to pull off the lid, a smug, calculating expression on his face.

  ‘Ooh, see – she’s interested now,’ Iris said nastily.

  A horrible suspicion was already forming in Molly’s mind, confirmed when she managed to yank the lid off the tin, to find it more than half full of money. It was a mixture of change, mostly coppers, bitter smelling and green with age, shillings, and half crowns, but there were ten-bob notes in there too, and sitting crisply on the top, two pound notes. Molly gasped.

  ‘What’s this, Bert? Who the hell’s is it?’

  Iris raised her voice. ‘Why don’t you get the kettle on, and bloody hurry up. We want our tea!’

  Molly knew there was something about this that was all wrong. Bombed-out houses made for rich pickings.

  ‘This is someone’s savings, isn’t it?’ she kept on. ‘And this, I’ll bet—’ She picked up the old hessian bag, which gave off a sound of clinking coins. ‘Where d’you get all this stuff?’

  ‘Where d’yer think?’ Bert sneered. He said most things with a sneer.

  Molly looked wildly across the collection of possessions. ‘You’ve never . . . Not . . . You wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t I? Why not? This stuff ain’t gunna be any good to them where they’ve gone is it?’

  Molly didn’t notice Iris struggling to get out of her chair.

  ‘You mean—’ She tried to take this in. ‘You’ve been sneaking into people’s houses after they’ve been bombed out – pinching their things? How could you? What if – I mean, they could still have been in there, injured or anything, and you’d just go in and steal off them!’

  ‘Hard cheese!’ Bert gave his snickering laugh. ‘Should’ve gone down the shelter then, shouldn’t they?’ he went on gleefully. ‘It’s all out there waiting. You go out, same night or the night after. Couple of sacks. Go somewhere where there’s a bit of lolly about. Keep out the way of the fuzz, and those nosy bloody wardens. Early morning’s the best – four or five. You can get more of a scout round without someone bothering yer. The dead ’uns don’t take no notice!’

  Molly was so appalled that it was a few seconds before she could say, ‘I can’t believe you could do anything so wicked . . . Even you . . .’

  Iris shuffled over and stood holding the back of one of the chairs. She was wearing a big purple frock, her belly pushing it out at the front, with stains all down it. There was a strange, leering expression on her face.

  ‘You’re vile, Bert.’ Molly felt like spitting, as if to get rid of the taste of
him, far more bitter than the smell of old pennies. This was the worst yet. There was his bullying, sadistic nature, and then the gross maulings she’d suffered from him which he’d learned first-hand from their late grandfather, Old Man Rathbone, Iris’s father. William Rathbone, who died when Molly was ten, had taken out his filthy masturbatory desires on her up until his final illness, and Bert had then set out to do the same – would have done worse in fact, had Molly not fought him off. Things had changed then. Jenny Button had taken her to see that doctor, and that had made Molly stronger. But she had hated Bert nearly all of her life, and at this moment she felt more contempt and loathing for him than ever before.

  ‘You’re just muck, you are, you’re lower than a worm. I’m ashamed to be anywhere near you. I can’t stand the fact that you’re my brother.’

  Iris, seeming excited by their fight, let out a blaring laugh. ‘Oh, ’e’s yer brother all right – make no mistake.’ She leaned her hip against the chair, her weight on one foot, the other knee bent, in an oddly seductive pose. ‘There’s summat you’ve got in common at least. All three of us ’ave, come to think of it . . . You both ’ad the same father, anyroad. Only shame was ’e ain’t been alive to see the two of yer grow up.’

  Molly and Bert were momentarily united then, if only in staring at her.

  ‘What d’yer mean by that?’ Bert snarled.

  Iris laid her hand coquettishly on her thick waist. She spoke with relish, as if delivering a juicy morsel of gossip.

  ‘You didn’t think you were the first one ’e ever messed with, did yer, Molly?’

  Hearing her words felt like a blow. Molly could scarcely breathe. It was as if her body had shut down, was paralysed. To hear her shame tripped out so casually, and to realize Iris had known of it all that time, when she had never said a word about it before and never raised a finger to stop him, hadn’t cared a jot in fact! But Iris hadn’t finished. Swaying, she pointed towards Joe, who was sitting dumbly. It was hard to tell if he was listening.