by Annie Groves
Molly gave a small nod and told him quickly, ‘I’ll tell him as soon as he comes home.’
She could hardly bear it that he was leaving again so quickly, and on a sudden impulse she reached up on her toes and placed her lips against his, unable to let him go without physically showing him how much she loved him.
‘Aw, Molly …’ He hugged her so tightly she could hardly breathe, but that didn’t matter, not with the big solid warmth of him all around her, holding her.
‘I wish I could come down to the dock with you and see you off properly,’ she whispered.
‘Aye, well, best you don’t, not this time …’ cos if you did I might be tempted not to go.’
He kissed her quickly and then released her, leaving her to watch him walk away. When he got to the end of the road he turned round and waved.
The busy bustle when she walked back into the room, all the girls apparently engaged in what they were doing and carefully avoiding looking at her, told its own story, Molly realised guiltily as she picked up the cup of tea she had been drinking before Eddie had arrived and took a quick defensive sip, even though it had gone cold and tasted of tannin.
‘Well, I know what ter think when I see a girl who’s already engaged – and to one of our brave soldier lads – mekking up ter another fella as bold as brass without any shame in her,’ Irene announced condemningly to the room at large as she banged down her own cup and left the room, quickly followed by several other girls, including, Molly saw, her own sister.
In the silence that followed Irene’s condemnation, Ruby came over to Molly and said sympathetically, ‘Don’t tek no notice of her, Molly. He looked a right ’andsome lad ter me.’
Hot tears filled Molly’s eyes.
Jean, who was still walking out with Eddie’s cousin Jim, looked uncertainly at her and then looked away as though not sure whether to sympathise with her or condemn her.
It was a relief when the bell rang, summoning them back to work. Molly was glad of the excuse her sewing gave her to keep her head bent over her machine.
‘Seein’ as how they’ve opened the Grafton Dance Hall up again, why don’t we go there this Saturday? I’m getting fed up of staying in every night,’ one of the girls called out above the noise of the machines.
‘Ooh, yes,’ Ruby agreed eagerly.
‘Well, it’s up to them as wants to go to mek up their own minds,’ Irene chipped in. ‘Not as most of us needs to guess who will want to go and who won’t. There’s some of us as has too much respect for them as we’re promised to and who won’t be here to want to go dancin’ whilst they’re fightin’, and then there’s some of us as doesn’t,’ she announced with a meaningful look at Molly. ‘And, of course, there’s them of us who wouldn’t want to be seen in public wi’ a girl who’s bin seen kissing one lad whilst she’s engaged to another.’
There was no point in her trying to defend herself or to point out that less than two months ago Irene had been perfectly happy to go dancing without her fiancé. Molly knew that she had been tried and judged by her peers, and found guilty. Irene was making it very plain what she thought of her, and Molly was acutely aware of the cold looks she was receiving from several of the other girls, as they followed Irene’s lead. In a small enclosed society like theirs, where a young woman’s reputation reflected on her family and her friends, people were often quick to judge and then exclude those who broke the rules.
‘See what you’ve done? I hope you’re happy now,’ June hissed at Molly as they got off the bus and crossed the road, heading for home. ‘And to think I didn’t take that job at Napiers on account of me not wanting to leave you. I wish I had taken it now. It’ll be all over the cul-de-sac what you’ve done,’ said June angrily. ‘And what my Frank’s goin’ to say about it I don’t know! Proper shocked, he’s going to be. And as for his mam—’
‘If you don’t want me to be your bridesmaid any more then I won’t be,’ Molly cut across her angry outburst.
‘Oh, yes, and a fine lot of gossip that would cause, an’ all. It’s bad enough as it is, wi’ out making it any worse.’
As they turned into the cul-de-sac, a small group of women who lived there were chatting together, but they broke off their conversation to turn and look at the sisters.
Molly forced herself to smile at them, flushing hotly when none of them smiled back, and one of the women even went so far as to grab hold of her son’s hand and turn her back very deliberately on them.
‘Looks like they’ve heard already,’ June seethed.
They had almost drawn level with Frank’s mother’s house when unexpectedly the door opened and Doris Brookes came out to say sharply, ‘If you’ve got a minute, please, June.’
Giving Molly a bitter ‘I told you so’ look, June reluctantly followed her future mother-in-law into the house, leaving Molly standing alone outside.
While deliberating whether or not to wait for her sister, Molly saw Sally Walker coming towards her wheeling her pram. When she saw Molly she checked and looked as though she was about to cross the road to avoid her, but then she changed her mind and came up to her.
‘Well, Molly,’ she announced forcefully, ‘if what I’ve just been hearing from Pearl about you is true, I’m very disappointed in you. I never thought of you as the sort of girl who would do sommat like that. I’m grateful for you helping me when I was having me baby, but I can’t forgive you this.’
Without giving Molly the opportunity to say anything, she wheeled the pram past her.
It seemed that the whole world was against Molly as she hurried into the kitchen of number 78, relieved to escape the censorious scrutiny of her neighbours. What she had done was wrong, she knew that, but when she had allowed June to convince her to remain engaged to Johnny she had had no idea what falling in love would be like or how it would make her feel.
Tears filled her eyes and ran down her face to drip onto the draining board as she reached for the kettle.
‘Yoo-hoo …’
Molly shrank visibly as the kitchen door opened and Elsie came in, but she saw immediately from Eddie’s auntie’s face that she at least was sympathetically inclined towards her.
‘Eh, Molly love,’ she clucked, putting her arms round her and giving her a cuddle. ‘What’s to do?’
‘Everyone’s so angry with me because of me and Eddie, and me still being engaged to Johnny,’ Molly wept.
‘There, lass, don’t tek on so. Of course there’s them as disapproves – there’s bound to be. But for meself, there’s no one I’d sooner see married to our Eddie. I can see in yer eyes that you love him. Aye, and he loves you, an’ all. And as for young Johnny …’ she added, her voice taking on an unfamiliar note of disapproval.
‘What?’ Molly asked her uncertainly.
‘It’s not my place to say, and it’s perhaps only a bit o’ gossip anyways,’ Elsie announced, maddeningly refusing to be drawn or to say any more, even though Molly pleaded with her to do so.
‘No. Least said, soonest mended, lass. So did our Eddie get ter see yer then?’
Molly nodded her head, happiness illuminating her expression as she remembered the sweetness of their goodbye.
‘Where’s your June?’
‘Frank’s mam asked her to go in.’
‘Aye, it’ll be about the weddin’, most like. I have heard as how Doris is worried that she’s going to be shown up in front of them posh friends of hers.’ Elsie gave an inelegant snort. ‘Well, I might not be able to boast that I’ve bin a ward sister, but everyone who knows me knows that me cookin’ is the best in the cul-de-sac, so she needn’t worry that them friends of hers will be turnin’ up their noses at it.’
Molly had to laugh, and she was still laughing a few seconds later when June came in, scowling darkly, taking her temper out on Molly as she declared, ‘I wouldn’t be laughin’, if I was you, Molly, because you haven’t got nowt to laugh about. I’ve just seen Sally Walker, and she was telling me about how shocked she was to hear what y
ou’d bin up to. She says as how all the mothers in the cul-de-sac have taken right against you on account of it.’
‘Oh, leave ’er alone, do, June,’ Elsie defended Molly firmly. ‘Poor lass can’t help how she feels.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if it were your son she were engaged to,’ June retorted. ‘Showing us up like that, and getting talked about behind our backs.’
‘What did Frank’s mam want then?’ Elsie asked June determinedly, whilst Molly held her breath, dreading hearing June say that her future mother-in-law had called her into her house to complain about Molly’s behaviour.
‘Oh, nowt much,’ June shrugged disinterestedly. ‘She only wanted to ask about the wedding and to have a bit of a go at me, an’ all, complaining that she hadn’t been consulted about anything.’
‘Aye, well, it’s natural that she should want to know what’s goin’ on,’ Elsie agreed cheerfully. ‘So would I, an’ all, if it were my lad as was marryin’. Luckily for me I’ll be living right next door when our Eddie weds Molly here,’ she added with a chuckle that brought an angry frown to June’s face.
‘Don’t you go encouraging her, Elsie,’ she stormed. ‘And I’ll thank you to remember that our Molly is engaged to Johnny.’
‘Aye, well, she might be now,’ Elsie answered her back, ‘but she won’t be for much longer, if what I’ve heard about him is true.’
‘And what does that mean?’ June demanded suspiciously.
Elsie shook her head. ‘Like I’ve already told Molly, I ain’t saying no more. I’m no gossip,’ she sniffed virtuously. ‘Unlike some folks about here.’
Once that comment would have been enough to unite Molly and June in a shared grin of mutual understanding, but on this occasion June didn’t even bother to look at her, Molly acknowledged miserably, as Elsie left.
TEN
Tenderly Molly touched the shimmering blue folds of the fabric Eddie had given her. June had flatly refused to allow her to use it to make herself a new bridesmaid’s dress, claiming that Molly’s relationship with Eddie had caused her enough trouble already.
June’s dress, finished now, had been carefully folded away. With less than a month to go to the wedding, June was becoming increasingly on edge and anxious, and – or so it seemed to Molly – increasingly hostile about Molly’s feelings for Eddie.
Molly had grown accustomed now to being ignored in the street by the other women from the cul-de-sac, but their coldness towards her still hurt.
With daylight saving time over, and the clocks put back, a grey darkness seemed to have settled over everything, exacerbated by the blackout. Most people who had to be out after dark now carried a torch with them, making sure to point its beam downwards.
‘Instead of t’hospital being filled with folk wot have been bombed, it’s filled with them as has fallen off of t’pavements,’ Bert had complained pithily earlier in the week.
It made Molly smile to see the way in which Bert was steadfastly refusing to pay any attention to Alf’s warnings and threats, claiming that since there hadn’t been any air-raid sirens, there was no need to go into the shelters, which in turn meant that his dog was not going to panic and bite anyone out of fear.
‘Poor old Bert.’ The girls’ father had shaken his head dubiously. ‘It’s all very well him arguing wi’ Alf now, but once rationing comes in there’ll be plenty of folk ready to complain about ’im feeding his dog whilst their kiddies are going wi’out.’
‘But Bert feeds Rover on scraps, doesn’t he?’ Molly had protested.
‘Aye, he does, but folks won’t take account of that, Molly, if’n they gets their dander up. That’s the nature of ’em, you see.’
The last of the sweet juicy tomatoes had long since been plucked from the vines in the allotments’ greenhouses, and the cold dampness of the November air sent a mist swirling over the brown earth and a warning of colder weather to come.
Eddie was back at sea, his ship barely having had time to unload on its return before it was off again across the Atlantic, and Molly listened anxiously to every news bulletin, her stomach tightening with sick fear every time she heard the words ‘the Atlantic’.
Everyone knew that Hitler had his U-boats patrolling the icy grey wastes of that ocean, hoping to destroy the merchant ships ploughing steadily to and fro across it, bringing into Britain much- needed supplies.
Although the girls at work had thawed slightly towards her, Molly was still conscious of their disapproval. The women in the cul-de-sac, though, whom she had always thought of as friends as well as neighbours, especially Sally Walker, were making it very clear that they did not intend to forgive her. She had been ‘sent to Coventry’, their backs turning to her whenever they saw her in the street.
No one, it seemed, sympathised with her apart from Elsie. Molly hadn’t dared confide her misery to Anne, knowing that she too would disapprove.
Only her driving lessons were bringing a small ray of light and laughter to her days, since it had turned out, to her own astonishment, that she had what Mr Noakes had approvingly described as ‘a natural aptitude’ for driving. Seated beside him in his Wolseley, she had followed his brisk instruction to her to watch what he did, and then she had listened carefully whilst he explained to her about the gears.
‘See this here,’ he had commanded, motioning to Molly to get out of the now stationary car and stand beside the open driver’s door whilst he demonstrated the use of the pedals to her. ‘This first one is what we call the accelerator, this one next to it is the brake and this last one is called the clutch. ABC, that’s what you’ve got to remember, ABC. And what you have to do once you’ve got the engine turned on is get the car in gear and you do that with the clutch.’
That lesson had been followed by a nerve-racking interlude during which Mr Noakes had lectured Molly on the importance of good clutch control. Despite that, she had still had the car kangaroo jumping all over the road the first time she had tried to put this lesson into practice. Now, though, she knew to the second when the clutch had bitten and she could change gear as smoothly as anything.
Even Mrs Wesley had given Molly a frosty smile on being told of her new accomplishment.
‘Driving!’ June had exclaimed when Molly had told her what she was doing. ‘Getting ideas above your station, you are, my girl,’ she had added, insisting, ‘Tell her, Dad.’
But to Molly’s relief their father had said, ‘I reckon now that they’ve brought in conscription, it’s a good thing if women do learn to drive,’ cos if Hitler does drop his blummin’ bombs, they’re going to be needin’ someone as can drive ambulances and the like.’
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be that good, Dad,’ Molly had protested.
‘So what will you be driving then?’ June had demanded.
‘The WVS are going to have sommat as they call mobile kitchens,’ Molly had explained. ‘That Lord Woolton has designed them.’
‘And what’s them when they’re at home?’ June had derided her.
‘It’s a van with a bit of a kitchen at the back so as we can drive them into bombed places and make sure that folk can have a cuppa and a bite to eat,’ Molly had explained patiently.
The driving was in small part helping take her mind off Johnny. But now, with less than a month to go before Frank and Johnny came home on leave, before being sent into action, Molly was becoming increasingly apprehensive. Over and over again inside her head she had rehearsed the words she would have to say to Johnny. Nothing could change her mind about her feelings for Eddie, she knew that, but she also knew that she was scared of telling Johnny their relationship was over.
What would she do if he refused to accept that their engagement was at an end – if he lashed out at her with his fists, or threatened her, she worried, as she hurried back from her Saturday afternoon driving lesson.
The cul-de-sac rang with the sounds of the activities of its children, most of whom had now been brought back home by their mothers when the threatened bombs had
failed to appear. Over the last few weeks, the sound of children playing, quarrelling and laughing had increased in the Edge Hill streets once more. Smoke curled upwards from chimneys to hang on the still autumn air. A handful of little girls, skirts tucked into their knickers, were skipping, one at either end of the rope, whilst the others jumped in and out of it in time to the words they were singing.
‘Wallflowers, wallflowers, growing up so high, we’re all little children, we all have to die.’
Molly paused to watch, shuddering inwardly as she listened to the familiar schoolyard songs she and June had once sung, aware now as she had not been then of the dark warning of the words.
‘Excepting little Betty, and she’s the youngest child, half a shame – half a shame – turn your face to the wall again.’
A few boys were pretending to fight, firing imaginary guns, one of them almost running into Molly. She laughed as she recognised Pearl’s younger boy, glad to be released from the darkness of her own thoughts of war and death, reaching out to steady him.
But instead of returning her smile, he pulled away from her and said fiercely, ‘Me mam says we’re to have nowt to do with you on account of what you’ve done.’
White-faced, Molly watched him dart away, oblivious to his mother’s approach until Pearl had drawn level with her.
‘I’ll thank you not to go interfering wi’ my kiddies, if you don’t mind,’ she began sharply. ‘I don’t want you goin’ tittle-tattlin’ about them to them WVS friends of yours, like you done with poor Daisy’s little lad. Shamed her, you did, and no mistake, letting it out that they’d had to be brung home on account of wettin’ their beds when they was evacuated. Not that either o’ mine would go wettin’ their beds, mind …’
Molly stared at her and then demanded, ‘What do you mean? I haven’t said anything about Daisy’s children to anyone.’
Pearl started to frown. ‘Well, that’s not wot we ’eard. First Daisy goes rushin’ off to bring her kiddies back wi’out saying anything, and then Beryl from number 71 starts tellin’ everyone who’ll listen that they had to come back on account of wettin’ their beds. Of course, it didn’t tek long for us to put two and two together and guess that it had to be you wot had bin talkin’ about it, wot with you being in the WVS an’ all. Ashamed of yourself, you want to be,’ Pearl denounced her roundly.
