Goodnight Sweetheart

by Annie Groves

  * * *

  ‘What’s up with you?’ June demanded forthrightly later that evening as she and Molly prepared for bed. ‘Anyone would think you’d lost a shilling and found a farthing.’

  Molly put down her hairbrush and turned to look at her elder sister. ‘The thing is, June, I’m not rightly sure I want to be engaged,’ she said miserably, too tongue-tied to be able to explain just how confused and worried Johnny’s constant urgings to allow him more intimacy were making her feel. Even with sisters as close as they were, it was unthinkable that she should tell June how little she enjoyed Johnny’s kisses and how alarmed and uneasy they made her feel. June was so lucky to have Frank. Molly could see there was a world of difference in the way Frank treated June and the way Johnny kept on trying to pressure her.

  ‘Don’t be daft. Of course you do. And besides, you can’t change your mind now. That would be a shocking thing to do with him about to go off and fight. Anyone can see that he’s mad for you, and hundreds of girls would kill to be engaged to someone as good-looking as Johnny. He looks like a matinée idol, he does. But you be careful and play your cards right, our Molly, and make sure you don’t go giving him nothing he shouldn’t be having until after you’ve got his ring on your finger,’ June warned her darkly. ‘Frank’s mam looks down on us enough, without you getting me a bad reputation by getting yourself in the family way before you’ve got a husband.’

  Molly gave her elder sister an indignant look. As usual, June’s thoughts were foremost with herself.

  ‘Of course, that’s not to say that now that you are engaged you can’t let him have a few little liberties, like – especially if he does have to go off to war. A girl doesn’t want to send her sweetheart off to fight without giving him a bit of a taste of what he’s fighting for, does she?’ June giggled. ‘Wait till we tell them at the factory on Monday that you’re engaged.’

  The two sisters both worked as machinists at a small garment factory within walking distance of their home. Mr Harding, the factory owner, employed nearly twenty girls. June had got a job there when she left school, having seen it advertised in the Liverpool paper, and she had approached Mr Harding on Molly’s behalf a couple of months before Molly was due to leave school, to ask that her sister be considered for any likely vacancy. It was piece work and unless you were very quick and didn’t make any mistakes the pay wasn’t good, but it was no worse than the girls would have earned anywhere else, and as June often said, at least the small factory was clean, and warm in winter as Mr Harding was well aware that cold fingers didn’t work as nimbly and made mistakes – expensive mistakes for him if his customers rejected the work as not good enough. The other girls were a jolly bunch and, whilst they were all older than Molly, their company meant that there was always someone for her to have a laugh with.

  The factory’s main business came from a distributor who provided them with both pattern and fabric and who supplied clothes to the big Lewis’s store in the centre of the city. Sometimes the girls were allowed to buy leftover pieces of cloth to make things for themselves. Two or three times a year, a very important dark-suited gentleman from Lewis’s came up to the long sewing machine-filled room where the girls worked, to inspect their sewing. Molly was happy working there, even if June sometimes grumbled and complained.

  Molly started to brush her hair again. Both girls had thick, naturally curly hair. June’s was a mid-brown, but Molly’s was much darker and richer, with a warm chestnut hue.

  Pensively, Molly stared into the mirror, her cornflower-blue eyes clouding. Her mouth trembled and she blinked away tears.

  ‘Now what’s up?’ June demanded, pinching her younger sister’s arm almost crossly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Molly fibbed.

  ‘I should jolly well think there isn’t. You don’t know how lucky you are, our Molly. There’s a lot of girls in Liverpool would give their right arms to be in your shoes and engaged to a handsome lad like Johnny. And besides …’

  Molly could see that June was looking very determined, and her heart sank. She had been hoping that June would understand her feelings but now she could tell that she wasn’t going to get very much sympathy from her.

  ‘Besides what?’ she pressed her anxiously.

  ‘Well, the way I see it, Molly, is that this engagement of yours is a good thing for everyone. Frank has already hinted to me as how his mam will be on her own after we get married and that he feels it’s his duty to have her come and live with us. Well, there’s no way I’m going to have that, but Frank can be that stubborn when he really wants something, and his mam has brought him up to think she’s got a right to tell him what to do with his life! Anyway, like I’ve said to him, with you marrying Johnny that’d leave our dad on his own, and that’d mean that we would have to have both of them to live with us and we can’t do that.’

  ‘But why would Dad have to live with you? He’s got Uncle Joe at number 63,’ Molly objected. ‘And, anyway, he’s always saying as how, once he’s got us off his hands, Auntie Violet has said as how he’s welcome to go and live with them in Cheshire.’ Their father’s elder sister was married to a farmer who lived near Nantwich.

  ‘Well, yes, but there’s no call for you to go saying any of that to Frank,’ June warned her sharply. ‘So far as he’s concerned, you marrying Johnny means that our dad will need to come and live with us, because he’ll be on his own just like Frank’s mam. And since we won’t have room for both of them we can’t have either of them,’ she announced triumphantly.

  ‘You mean you want me to marry Johnny so that you won’t have to have Frank’s mam to live with you?’ Molly protested.

  ‘Oh, don’t go looking at me like that. Just think how lucky you are to be engaged,’ June told her firmly. ‘And if war does break out, you’ll know you’ll be sending your Johnny off to war knowing he’s got someone of his own here at home waiting for him. That means a lot to a lad, our Molly, and don’t you forget that.’

  TWO

  ‘Oh Gawd, I’ve gone and laddered my stocking. Here, Molly, you put the roast in, will you – I’ve turned on the gas ready – whilst I go and change them, otherwise we’ll be late for church.’

  The girls’ father worked on the railway sidings at Edge Hill station – ‘the gridiron’, as it was called locally – as a track maintenance man employed by the railway company. The work was back-breakingly hard and often dirty, but he never complained. Like many of the generation who had lived through the depression, he simply considered himself lucky to be in work.

  Although he didn’t earn much, with June and Molly’s wages, they had enough coming in to be able to afford a joint of meat on a Sunday, to be eaten with the potatoes and vegetables Albert grew on his allotment.

  Molly slid the roasting tin into the gas oven and then dashed upstairs to get her hat and gloves.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Albert bawled up the stairs, ‘otherwise we’re gonna be late.’

  Chestnut Close was a Protestant street, with all its inhabitants attending the parish church of St Michael and all the Angels.

  The custom was that everyone filed into church in silence, merely exchanging nods of acknowledgement, and then got together for a good gossip after the service. So although the Deardens could see Frank and his mother walking down the street up ahead of them, June made no attempt to catch up with her fiancé.

  ‘Look at her!’ she muttered to Molly. ‘Hanging on to Frank’s arm for dear life, acting like he belongs to her. Well, if she thinks that Frank’s going to be taking her to church every Sunday once he’s married to me, then she’s got another think coming. Of course, she thinks that I’m not good enough for him. That’s why she’s been sucking up to that friend of hers who lives on Carlton Avenue, in Wavertree – you know, them as has the laundry on the Scotland Road? Boasting all up and down the cul-de-sac she was at one time about how her Frank and their Angela would be perfect for one another.’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘Maybe she would have been, an’ all, if she ha
dn’t got buck teeth and no bust.’

  To Molly’s relief, she couldn’t see any sign of Johnny, although she spotted his mother and two sisters.

  ‘There’s your ma-in-law-to-be,’ June told her, nudging her in the ribs. ‘You’re going to have to watch those sisters of his: always on the cadge, so I’ve heard. Don’t you go letting them boss you around, Molly.’

  Despite herself, Molly smiled a little at the prospect of swapping a bossy sister for an equally overbearing sister-in-law.

  As they walked to their pew, it struck Molly that the church seemed much fuller than usual, and when they stood up to sing ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’, it was obvious that Sally Walker in the pew in front of them, next to her soldier husband, Ronnie, in his uniform, was crying quietly. They’d only been married a year and their first baby was due in September.

  Once the service was over, small groups of people started to congregate outside the church.

  ‘You and Dad wait here. I’m going to find Frank so as we can have a word with the vicar,’ June announced determinedly.

  ‘His mam won’t be happy about you wanting to bring the wedding forward,’ Molly pointed out. ‘She wasn’t too keen on the pair of you getting engaged.’

  ‘Well, she’s going to have to lump it, isn’t she, because me and Frank are going to be wed no matter what she thinks,’ June responded, tossing her head before turning to disappear into the crowd. June usually got what she wanted, Molly thought, but wondered if perhaps she’d met her match in Doris Brookes.

  All around her, Molly could see anxious faces, as families clung together, the men looking serious and grim-faced, many of the women crying and those with grown-up sons clinging desperately to their boys. It was easy to pick out Frank’s tall, broad-shouldered frame as he stood with his arm around his mother.

  Molly could see that several of the younger men had already gone over to talk to Sally Walker’s husband, Ronnie, who was in the regular army and could tell them what life in the Forces was like.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us – that’s what I’d like to know.’ One of their neighbours started to sob noisily.

  ‘Well, I reckon the first thing as is going to happen is that we’re going to have to get used to wearing them ruddy gas masks,’ her husband responded. ‘Else we’ll be having that Alf Davies, the ARP chap from number 14, giving us all a good ticking-off.’

  ‘At least the kiddies will be safe,’ another neighbour chimed in, ‘seeing as how they’re going to be evacuated.’

  ‘Aye, and our brave lads will soon sort out that Hitler.’

  ‘Will it soon be over, Dad?’ Molly asked her father fearfully when he came to join her.

  ‘I hope so, lass, but there’s no telling,’ Albert answered solemnly, whilst he and a couple of other men who had survived the Great War exchanged concerned looks.

  ‘Seems we’re going to be needing that ruddy air-raid shelter putting up at the bottom of the cul-de-sac, so we may as well make a start on it this afternoon,’ their next-door neighbour, John Fowler, commented to Molly’s father, adding grimly, ‘They’ll be calling all the young ’uns up, like as not now.’

  Molly bit her lip. The Fowlers had a son working for the railways like John Fowler and her father, and a nephew in the merchant navy. Elsie Fowler’s normally happy face looked pinched and strained. Molly reached out and took hold of her hand, squeezing it sympathetically.

  Elsie had been a good neighbour to them, taking both girls under her wing, and giving them a bit of mothering after their mother had died. She’d plait their hair, sew them pretty things when she could get the material, and never once forgot to bake them birthday cakes, taking over all those little motherly duties that their father couldn’t do. She’d been a godsend to Albert, who was desperately aware that, though he was doing all he could for his young daughters, they missed a mother’s love and attention. Molly loved Elsie and was grateful to her, but she knew that June, with her more bossy nature, sometimes resented Elsie, claiming that her good intentions were ‘interference’.

  It was a good half-hour before June came back. Her eyes looked suspiciously puffy but she was still managing to smile.

  ‘The vicar has said as how we can have the banns read right off so that we can be married just as soon as Frank gets some leave,’ she told them, adding, ‘There was that long a queue waiting to see him you wouldn’t believe it. Seems like everyone is having the same idea as me and Frank.’

  ‘What did his mam say?’ Molly asked her anxiously.

  A militant gleam sparkled in June’s eyes. ‘Just as you might expect. She was all for us waiting to see what happens, but Frank told her as how we didn’t want to wait. When we go to Lewis’s tomorrow to get that blackout material we can have a look at some wedding dress patterns as well. Frank has just had a word with Ronnie Walker, and he reckons it will be Christmas before Frank gets any leave, but there’s no harm in being prepared.’

  Slipping her arm through Molly’s, she fell into step beside her as they headed for home.

  By the time they had got back to number 78 and had had their dinner, it was well into the afternoon. Their father announced that he was off to join the other men from the terraced houses at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. Because their gardens weren’t large enough for individual Anderson shelters, they had been told they would have to erect a shared one on the piece of unused land at the end of the cul-de-sac. The corrugated iron for it had already been delivered, but the men had to dig out trenches for it themselves and install it.

  ‘I suppose we’d better measure up for those blackout curtains we’ve got to put up,’ Molly suggested when she and June had finished the washing-up.

  ‘Come on then,’ June agreed reluctantly.

  ‘I don’t see as how we need to do this when we aren’t even at war yet,’ she grumbled ten minutes later as she made Molly climb up the ladders to measure the windows, whilst she wrote down the measurements.

  ‘But if we don’t, when the ARP warden comes round to check, we’ll be fined,’ Molly reminded her, her forehead pleating into a worried little frown. June hated being told what to do by anyone and wasn’t afraid of saying so, but Molly was much more timid and keen to do her duty.

  Half an hour later, when they had almost finished, June complained, ‘I’m fair parched, Molly. Get down off them ladders, and go and make us a cuppa, will you?’

  Molly had just filled the kettle when there was a knock at the back door, and Frank came in.

  ‘June, it’s your Frank,’ she called from the kitchen.

  ‘About time too,’ June announced wrathfully. ‘I was expecting you’d have bin here before now, Frank, seeing as it’s going to be our last evening together.’

  ‘I would have been,’ he agreed placidly, giving Molly a gentle smile, ‘but Fred Nuttall from next door asked me to give him a lift putting up his Anderson shelter.’

  ‘Oh, I see, and of course he comes before me, does he?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. He’s invited me mam to share the shelter with them, so I felt obliged to give him a hand. Don’t let’s fall out, June, not tonight, seein’ as how me and Johnny have to report for our training tomorrow.’

  Tactfully, Molly squeezed past them and closed the kitchen door.

  Five minutes later the door opened and Frank told her quietly, ‘Me and June are just going for a bit of a walk, Molly.’

  Molly had never seen her lively sister looking so upset. She was clinging to Frank’s arm as they left the house together and he was holding her tenderly as though she was something precious and frail.

  What must it be like to love someone like that, Molly wondered. Part of her was glad that she did not know because she didn’t think she could have coped with the pain of watching them go off to war. The thought of Johnny going away didn’t fill her with dread at all. In fact, secretly she was looking forward to not having to evade his advances, or worry about the fact that she didn’t really want him to kiss her or touch her. The tr
uth was that she felt much safer and more comfortable with her girlish and innocent little daydreams about Frank’s kind smiles and gentlemanly ways than she did with the reality of Johnny’s urgent demands. But didn’t that make her a terrible person, she worried guiltily. She ought to feel very different from how she did, she knew that. Perhaps if she just didn’t think about how she really felt, somehow she would change.

  June and Frank had been gone almost an hour when there was another knock at the door – the front door this time. Molly went to open it, her eyes widening with surprise when she saw Johnny standing there.

  ‘Thought I’d come and say goodbye to you proper, like, Molly,’ he told her boldly, winking at her, and then walking into the small hall without so much as a by-your-leave, pushing the door closed behind him. ‘Come here and give us a kiss,’ he grinned, making a grab for Molly as she backed away from him into the front parlour.

  ‘Johnny,’ Molly began in protest, but he ignored her as he took her hand, led her to the settee and sat her down, all the while kissing the side of her neck.

  Frantically she tried to push him away but he grabbed hold of her other hand.

  ‘We’re engaged now, remember,’ he told her, ‘so how about showing me how much you love me before I go? I’ve gorra ring for you, look, Molly,’ he added cajolingly. ‘Bought it off a chap in the pub.’

  Delving into his pocket, he produced a gold ring set with a small red stone, which he pushed onto her finger.

  The slightly sour smell of his beery breath was making Molly feel sick. She didn’t want to be engaged to him because she was afraid of the unwelcome intimacies being engaged would bring. His open hunger for her was too much, too soon, and it repelled rather than pleased her. But she didn’t know how to tell him how she felt, and could only submit mutely to his kiss, longing for it to be over.

  When June first started walking out with Frank, Molly, who had already begun to have a secret girlish crush on him, had envied her elder sister, but now she acknowledged miserably that sighing over a tender kiss on the cinema screen was far nicer than actually having to endure being kissed. Did other girls feel like her, or was there something wrong with her, she wondered unhappily as she finally managed to wriggle away from him far enough to warn him breathlessly, ‘Our dad will be back soon, Johnny, and you know what he said.’ She only hoped that it was true. She felt horribly guilty about not wanting him to kiss her, but she was too conscious of the fact that he could be going off to war to be able to tell him that she didn’t want to be engaged to him.