Soldier Girl

by Annie Murray

  When the day came to say goodbye, Molly went along to the Kinnys’ billet and asked to speak to her. It was a bright day, and Ruth came to the door, squinting in the spring sunshine.

  ‘Just came to say goodbye,’ Molly said. ‘We’re off a bit later. All packed up.’

  ‘Oh dear, what a shame!’ Ruth cried. ‘I do wish you weren’t going! I expect we’ll turn up in the same place again – like bad pennies, eh? Listen though, just in case – I’ll give you my home address. Come in for a sec—’ Molly stood in the house, one similar to their own billet, as Ruth hastily wrote her address on a scrap of paper.

  ‘What about yours – why don’t you give me that?’

  Molly shook her head. ‘I can’t. I don’t know where I’ll go after.’

  ‘Good gracious! Well, you drop me a line, do, when you’ve got settled? I’d love to hear from you. I shall be hurt if you don’t.’

  ‘All right, I will,’ Molly said, meaning it.

  There was an awkward moment, then the two women embraced each other.

  ‘Good luck – TTFN,’ Ruth said heartily.

  Molly smiled. ‘TTFN.’

  They soon settled into their new billet, just along the coast from Harwich. It felt more like being back at Clacton again, with the low, sweeping east coastline and bracing winds. As the girls were all together still, it didn’t take Molly and the others long to settle into a pleasant, if ramshackle billet in the stately little town, or to learn about the Yanks being ‘over here’ in a big way, and about the German POW camp a few miles away, where the men were trucked out to work on farms. In between shifts, there was a lot of socializing. Jen and Nora, who parted from their boyfriends in Dover without undue heartbreak, were soon happily walking out with other GIs. But the Americans were far from being the only foreigners in the area – among the others was a contingent of Dutch soldiers. A group of them were in a pub one evening where the girls were having a night out. Jen and Nora were in a huddle with the two GIs, shrieking with laughter at their jokes, while another huge, gentle character called Hank had sat down beside Molly and was taking great interest in her, and she found she quite liked his company. He was rather sweet, and not pushy, though a little slow on the uptake. He came, he said, from a farming family in Ohio.

  ‘Look at your hands!’ Molly exclaimed as she sat beside him. She took hold of one of them, a vast, beefy thing, and he allowed her to hold it up and try one of her own against it. ‘They’re enormous!’

  Hank gave his slow, rumbling laugh, the upper half of his body shaking. Molly was seized by a longing to lie beside him, to feel that immense body greet hers with desire. But she pushed the feeling away. No – no more of that. She knew she had no other feeling for Hank. As she listened to him talk about his family, the farm, the church they attended, and took in the cleanly, good-natured, God-fearing picture he painted of their lives, it all felt familiar – like being with Len, only different. Here was another person who could never imagine her life, her family, who must not be allowed to. Could anyone, ever? she wondered, with a wrenching sense of despair and loneliness. She dragged her lips into a smile and tried to look amiable as Hank drawled on to her. But suddenly, glancing across the table, her attention to his words faded completely when she saw what was happening opposite them.

  Cath was sitting beside a tall, striking-looking man with sharp cheekbones and intensely blue eyes. They were turned towards each other, talking as if there was no one else in the room. Cath’s cheeks were rosy, her wild hair springing up in coils, and her expression gentle and intent. She smiled often as they talked. Molly found herself smiling at the sight of her pink-cheeked friend falling in love before her eyes.

  Cath was the last one back that night, returning to the billet long after the duty corporal’s roll-call at ten o’clock.

  ‘Where is she?’ the corporal asked, looking anxious. ‘It’s not like Cath to be out late.’

  ‘Don’t be hard on her, will ye?’ Jen pleaded with her. ‘She’s found herself a fella and it looks serious. One of the Dutch lads.’

  ‘Well I hope she won’t be long. I’ll have to wait up for her . . .’

  When Cath got in, closer to eleven than ten, they were all ready for her. Once she’d signed in with the corporal she was ambushed at the top of the stairs and dragged into the room she shared with Molly amid much giggling.

  ‘OK, OK!’ she surrendered, sitting on the bed, the other three all agog. She had a huge smile on her face. ‘What d’you want to know?’

  ‘Well everything, you flaming idiot!’ Molly said. ‘What about his name, who is ’e? What’s ’e like?’

  ‘Cath who never ever goes out with men . . .’ Jen put in.

  ‘His name’s Dirck.’

  ‘Yes – and . . . ?’

  ‘Well go on!’

  ‘He’s . . .’ Cath breathed in, then let out a delicious sigh. ‘He’s just so-o-o-o . . . Nice! Gorgeous in fact!

  The others all erupted with delight. ‘Ooh, we knew you’d fall for it one of these days!’

  Cath looked serious. ‘I know, I know – but heaven help me, it feels a bit terrifying, all the same.’

  As the spring progressed, the build-up of activity continued. Everyone knew something was going on, but no one knew quite what it would be or when. No trippers were allowed to visit the south or east coastlines. There were all sorts of rumours flying – new, unusual equipment seen concealed in rivers and creeks and woodland glades. There were preparations in airfields, and more and more traffic, all heading for the south coast. But all everyone could do was to watch and wait and wonder.

  In May, a grand offensive was launched against the ruined monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy, and on May 18 the Allies captured the monastery. Molly had a note from Em saying that she was hoping and praying Norm wasn’t involved. It had been a little while since she had heard from him and she was worried.

  Molly passed the spring happily enough. The work was light and there was plenty of social life. She had a few light flings with some of the Americans, who she found different and fun to be with. And she watched as Cath fell more and more deeply in love with her Dutch soldier. Though she felt pangs of sadness and some envy seeing them together, she was very happy for Cath, after all the sad times she’d had. And Dirck, though very tough looking, was kind and easy to be with. Molly found she liked him too.

  Late one afternoon, Molly and Cath were hand-washing underclothes in the bathroom, Cath at the basin, Molly with a bucket in the bath. It was still sunny outside and the birds were singing, though inside, the girls were too busy chatting to notice. ‘It’s nice to see how keen he is on yer,’ Molly said. ‘You can see it a mile off!’

  Cath smiled at her in the mirror. She had blossomed and looked even prettier, her cheeks rosy and a smile lighting her face more easily these days, crinkling the outer corners of her eyes.

  ‘He’s lovely,’ she said, raising her arm to push her hair out of her face. ‘I never thought I’d have the luck to meet someone so nice – and someone who wants to be with me as well. It feels like a miracle, Molly!’

  ‘Well you deserve a miracle,’ Molly said, firmly wringing out her stockings. She held them up to the light. ‘Damn – another hole! I just hope . . .’ She stopped, realizing that what she had been about to say was not very tactful. I hope he’s as nice as he seems . . . that he’s not a two-timing sod, that he doesn’t already have a wife back in Holland . . .

  ‘What?’ Cath said.

  ‘Just that you’ll be able to be together – that you can be happy.’ Molly stood up and dried her hands on the roller towel behind the door.

  ‘God, I hope so too.’ Cath was standing still, seeming troubled. ‘Are you OK, Molly?’

  ‘Course I am!’ She was trying to keep her mind on the job at all times, not to think about anything, about the past, about Bert and what he had done, about Len . . .

  ‘It’ll be my turn to find you a bloke now.’

  ‘Oh no – I don’t think so!
Here – put yours in here with mine—’ She held out the bucket. There was a clothing rack on a pulley in the back room downstairs and they were on their way down to hang their clothes on it, but Jen met them, blocking the way. From her face it was immediately obvious that something was going on. She put her fingers up to her lips urgently and glanced behind her.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Shhh! Molly . . . There’s . . .’ Jen hissed frantically, coming up close. She seemed unusually lost for words. ‘There’s someone to see you – in the front room. It’s him.’

  Heart pounding, Molly tiptoed to the front and peered inside. A burly, khaki-clad figure was standing with his back to her, one hand holding the net curtain a little to one side, staring out through the front window. There he was, lit by a shaft of the setting sun: so solid, so familiar. Len.

  Forty-Five

  He heard her steps and, releasing the curtain, turned to face her, his expression nervous, vulnerable. For a few seconds they stood looking at each other. A muddle of feelings rioted inside Molly. Resentment was there, anger: she had told him so clearly she did not want to see him and he had overridden her wishes. There was curiosity. What was he doing here, all of a sudden? And there was his familiarity, which made her long simply to walk into his arms, just like old times.

  She waited, standing in a stiff, formal way, almost as if she was to be interviewed by an army officer. They were in the communal sitting room the girls shared, amid the tatty boarding-house furniture and smell of stale cigarette smoke.

  ‘Molly?’ He walked slowly round the chairs to her, not looking away from her face. His cheeks were pinker, more weathered than she remembered, though his eyes still had the same appealing little-boy look.

  ‘Len. What’re you here for?’ Molly shifted her weight onto one leg, folding her arms. Her tone was tough. Why had he come, disturbing her heart?

  He stopped, with a faded green chair between himself and her, and took his cap off. He gave a little laugh. ‘That’s what I always love – no soft-soaping with you, is there, Molly? You just come straight out with it.’

  She didn’t reply. Within her folded arms she clenched her fists.

  ‘You never wrote back. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to see you.’ He said it so sadly, so appealingly, that she began to soften. After a moment she uncrossed her arms.

  ‘It was no good me writing back.’ She shrugged. ‘I told yer – there was no point in going on with it and that was that.’

  He stepped forward, as if to plunge into a speech, but she held a hand up to stop him. ‘How come you’re here?’

  He looked down, fingering his cap. ‘I asked for compassionate leave. Told them there was a tragedy in the family.’ He looked up at her, his face tragic to match. ‘I had to come. All these months – I left it, I tried to forget about you, Molly. And then when I wrote and you never answered. And I came to find you and you weren’t there . . .’

  ‘I had a tragedy in the family,’ she said dryly. But she was not unmoved by him, the miserable state of him and the fact that he’d come all this way.

  ‘It’s taken me a while to be able to get away. They’ve sent me to Southampton for a bit – all hands on deck sort of thing. It’s like a madhouse down there. Everyone says it was a ghost town ’til a few months ago, but now the docks are choc-a-bloc, hardly a bare inch of sea-water, the roads full day and night, tanks, lorries, nonstop. And there’s no room anywhere – we’re having to sleep in a school . . . They’re building up to something big all right . . . But I had to come, somehow. Molly – let’s just . . . Look,’ he dared to approach, laying his cap on the back of the chair and walking round to her. He put his hands on her shoulders and she didn’t resist. ‘I know I made a mess of it all. I’m like that – I go too fast. I shouldn’t have asked you to marry me, not that quick, when we hadn’t spent all that much time together. I just wanted you that bad . . .’

  She stood quite still, looking up at him. A truck rumbled past on the road outside.

  ‘Look, Molly – I love you. I want to call you mine, but I don’t want to frighten you. I tried to push on too fast, didn’t I?’

  Already she could feel herself susceptible to him, to the pull of his maleness, his desire and need overcoming her.

  ‘Yeah – I s’pose yer did. But . . .’

  The door handle clattered and Nora’s face appeared. ‘Oh!’ she said, startled. ‘Sorry – can I just get my . . . ?’ She scuttled across the room to retrieve something from the table in the corner, then disappeared. Molly stepped back.

  ‘Look – d’yer want a cuppa tea?’

  She went to the kitchen to boil the water. The break gave her time to collect herself. She stood by the simmering kettle, thinking of Cath, her face as she looked at Dirck. Do I feel that for Len? Molly thought. Did I ever? But she could feel her defences tumbling down. Perhaps she could make do with less. It was so warming to feel wanted and loved. It would be nice to know Len was out there, loving her, even if they were apart.

  She took two cups of tea into the front room and they sat down on the battered sofa.

  ‘It was nice of yer to come all this way,’ she said, shyly, picking at the frayed arm of the chair. She felt softer towards him now. At that moment it felt truly good to see him, to sit drinking tea with an old friend, now they were in yet another place where the only familiar faces were those of the battery she had arrived with.

  ‘I had to,’ he said. ‘I’ve never stopped thinking about you, Molly. I tried to stay away, because of what you said, but my feelings are too strong. I’ve missed you so much.’

  ‘But . . .’ Molly frowned. ‘What about Sheila? You should have gone home and married her – she sounded ever such a nice girl.’

  ‘No—’ He was shaking his head vigorously and Molly felt a catch of emotion in her. So he really did love her! She had expected him to run straight back to Sheila after she had rejected him, back into the safe certainty of his childhood sweetheart’s arms. Molly would be looked back upon as a crazed mistake in a time of turmoil, a young man needing to sow his oats, his head turned by a pretty blonde in the heat of the moment. There would be marriage and then, once the war was over, village and farm life, children, continuing things the way they had always been. But he had rejected that! She was moved, suddenly. Maybe she really had affected him – she hadn’t just been a fling.

  But Len’s face flushed with anger.

  ‘I did go back – after Christmas, when I had some leave. I’d written to her, but she wasn’t answering either. I thought it was because she was angry with me for hurting her feelings. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you? So I went back to sort things out, to tell her we’d get married after all. When I turned up at the house she looked really put out to see me.’

  He tutted, shaking his head.

  ‘Well, she must’ve been upset, with yer,’ Molly said. ‘Breaking off the engagement and everything.’

  ‘Upset! She wasn’t upset!’ Len burst out. ‘Turns out she was already set up with someone else and hadn’t had the guts to tell me! Some bloody conchie who was working on the next farm. A right pansy, I’ll bet you. She didn’t want to know about me no more, that was for sure. There was me thinking she was faithful, that she’d be breaking her heart over what had happened, that she’d welcome me back with open arms – and her mum, once they’d got over it. And there they are with this yellow skiver from London with his knees under the table and Sheila saying, “I didn’t like to tell you . . .” God, it’s a good job I didn’t get my hands on that soft bugger I can tell you . . .’

  ‘So what you’re telling me is . . .’ Rage rose up inside Molly so fast she thought she might explode. She got to her feet and stood towering over him. ‘You went back to Sheila, all ready to marry her, and she wouldn’t have yer? So then you thought you’d come running back to me . . .’ She had sat and listened to him, nearly been taken in. She’d nearly fallen for it – God, she nearly had! What a bloody fool! ‘You th
ought I’d ’ave to do instead, because I’d just be mooning about waiting for yer, without any other thought in my mind. You’ve got a flaming bloody cheek coming all the way over ’ere when I’ve already told yer I don’t want to know! D’you think you’re God’s gift or summat and I’ll just drop everything for yer?’

  ‘No – but Molly . . .’ Len scrambled to his feet, startled by the fierceness of her attack. He looked wretched.

  But her anger was boiling like tar. Even as she went for him she knew some of this rage should have been directed at other people – her grandfather, Iris, Bert, the war for taking Tony away from her – but she spewed it all over Len.

  ‘D’you really think I don’t have anything else going on in my head? If there’s one thing the war’s taught me it’s that there’s more to life – I don’t have to spend my time mooning after time-wasters like you and turning myself into a drudge for you and your brats. There are other things to do instead of just running round after some tinpot Hitler of a man! You’re all the bloody same, ain’t yer? Filthy buggers who take everything you want without a care for anyone else! Well I’m not sodding well having it! I’m not interested in yer – all right? You’re not God’s gift – you’re not irresistible to me any more than you are to Sheila, so go and find some other bloody fool who’ll take you on. Go on!’ She was yelling now. ‘Get out of ’ere. I’ve got better things to do than sit here listening to you drivelling on, you selfish bastard.’

  Len looked completely stunned by the extremity of her outburst. ‘But, Molly . . .’

  ‘“But, Molly” be damned!’ she roared in an ecstasy of anger. ‘Go on – get out, and don’t ever bloody come back ’ere again!’

  ‘I’ve nowhere to go – there won’t be a train . . .’

  ‘So sleep at the railway station! I don’t care where you go – just get out of my sight!’

  But Len sank down on to the sofa again. His face twitched and he looked up at her pathetically, in utter confusion. For a moment she thought he was going to cry. ‘Please, Molly, don’t be like this. I don’t know what to do. Just be with me . . . I can’t live without you, Molly. I never used to be like this, but now I can’t think of anything else. Everything was . . .’ His face twisted. ‘I was all right ’til I met you . . .’