Goodnight Sweetheart

by Annie Groves

  ‘Oh, size eleven, is it?’ Uncle Joe broke into June’s monologue with a knowing wink.

  ‘Give over, do,’ she gave back, before calling out, ‘Molly, where’s that tea? I’m dying for a proper brew – that hotel tea was awful.’

  The newlyweds had arrived back in the cul-de-sac just over half an hour earlier, and June had talked non-stop ever since, whilst Frank had looked on indulgently. He was obviously still as besotted with his new bride as he was when they left for Blackpool.

  ‘I’m on me way with it,’ Molly assured June when she came into the kitchen. Her cheeks were flushed from bustling around in the heat from the oven, buttering the scones she had made earlier in the day, in between laying out their late mother’s best tea service, bought at Preston Pot Fair, the year before Molly’s own birth.

  ‘What’s all this for?’ June asked, pushing the door to so that they couldn’t be heard by the others.

  ‘You, of course,’ Molly told her, pausing to wipe her hands on her apron as she did a quick count of the scones, wondering if there were enough to go round with so many neighbours having called in to see the newly married couple.

  ‘Ah, you daft bugger.’ June shook her head, but Molly could see the pink tinge of pleasure warming her skin.

  ‘I wanted to do something a bit special, like, to welcome you and Frank home, June,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve missed you. I know that we’ve had a few words these last few months, specially about Johnny, and me joining the WVS, but …’

  As Molly’s voice trailed away, June put her arms around her and gave her a fierce hug.

  ‘We’re sisters, you and me, our Molly, and nothing can ever change that, specially not a few cross words. When our mam died it was just you and me and our dad, and I had to tek charge a bit, like, me being the eldest, an’ all. I felt it were me duty to look out for you just like Mam would have done. I know you thought it was being a bit hard on you, like, with Johnny and that, but I was just trying to do me best for you,’ June told her earnestly.

  For a moment Molly was too overwhelmed to say or do anything other than look at her pink-cheeked sister, suddenly seeing her through more mature eyes. They were equals now and even June was acknowledging that fact.

  ‘Oh, give over looking at us like that, do,’ June protested, as tears welled in Molly’s eyes, and she hugged June tightly.

  ‘Where’s that tea? I’m dying for a brew to wet me whistle.’

  Both sisters burst out laughing as they heard Uncle Joe’s complaint outside the door.

  ‘Here, give me the teapot; you bring the tray,’ June ordered, adding wryly, ‘I’ll tell you something, Molly, I’m not looking forward to having to sleep over at Frank’s mam’s tonight. I’m not saying that I’m not right glad that I married Frank, because I am, but having to live with his mother until we can find somewhere of us own to rent is something I could do without. It doesn’t seem right somehow, me not being here at number 78. With you and Dad. Even though me and Frank are married now, this house is still me home.’

  ‘I miss you too, June. But you won’t have to stay with Frank’s mam for long,’ Molly consoled her.

  ‘I hope not. You should have seen her face when I told her that me and Frank would be having our Christmas dinner here. Mind you, she soon changed her tune when she heard that our Auntie Violet was sending a nice big turkey up from Nantwich for our Christmas dinner.’

  ‘It came yesterday, with one for Elsie as well,’ Molly informed her. ‘Me and Elsie spent all morning taking out the giblets and making a bit of stuffing for it.’

  ‘Well, mind you don’t start cooking it until I’m here. I don’t want you burning it and showing me up in front of Frank’s mam,’ June warned her, reverting to her normal bossy elder-sister role. Molly smiled. Her sister might be married now with more responsibilities, but she would always give Molly her twopenn’orth, and Molly wouldn’t have it any other way.

  It was late afternoon before all the well-wishers had left, Frank having been dispatched to bring his mother round to join in the merrymaking, only to return with the information that she was suffering from a headache and had gone to lie down.

  ‘Headache, my foot,’ June protested angrily to Molly as the two sisters carefully washed their mother’s tea set whilst Frank and their father sat talking about the war in the parlour. ‘If you ask me, she was just pretending to be poorly.’

  ‘Oh, no, June, surely she wouldn’t do that,’ Molly replied. The steam from the hot washing-up water had turned her cheeks pink and a few stray curls clung damply to her forehead, whilst the pinny she was wearing emphasised the slenderness of her waist.

  ‘You don’t know her like I do, Molly,’ June retorted. ‘I’ve already told Frank that I’ll not stand for his mam trying to tell me what to do like she does him. He’s a married man now, and he’s got a wife to think about, and the sooner his mother knows that the better.

  ‘Me and my Frank had best be on our way,’ June told her when the tea set had been carefully put away in the china cupboard in the front room. ‘I’ll come over early tomorrow to give you a hand with everything. Eeh, Molly …’

  To Molly’s surprise, she saw that June’s eyes had filled with tears.

  ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow, me not being here on Christmas Eve. Do you remember when you was little how we allus used to hang up our stockings together?’

  Molly nodded her head, remembering those childhood Christmases and their innocent happiness. They never had much money but there was always a turkey on the table and stockings hung above the fireplace, which would be full come Christmas morning. The festive season had never lost its magic for Molly. She still felt like a child every year, creeping downstairs as dawn gave way to the early morning light.

  ‘I knew, of course, that there was no Santa, but of course I had to pretend I still believed in him because of you. I knew it was what our mam would have wanted me to do.’

  ‘One year you took my sugar mouse and put your dates in my stocking instead,’ Molly remembered with a chuckle.

  ‘I never.’ June tried to look innocent but the corners of her mouth were twitching.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Molly laughed back, and then they were crying and laughing and holding on to each other as tightly as they could, reminiscing about the Christmases they had shared as young girls.

  ‘You’re sure then about Eddie, are you?’ June demanded as they recovered themselves.

  Molly nodded so vigorously that her curls bounced, her blue eyes shining with love and conviction. ‘I know he’s the one for me, June.’

  ‘How long will it be before he’s back?’

  ‘He said that he hoped he’d be home for Christmas, but obviously that’s not going to happen now. Maybe it will be before the new year,’ Molly told her.

  It was almost midnight. June and Frank had left to go to Frank’s mother’s, and Molly looked tiredly round the spick-and-span kitchen, checking to make sure she had left nothing undone.

  ‘Come on, lass,’ said her father. ‘It’s time you was in bed, otherwise Santa might not come.’

  Molly smiled lovingly at him as she took off her apron. ‘I want everything to be right for our June tomorrow, Dad, what with Frank’s mam going to be here.’

  ‘Eeh, but you’re just like your mam, Molly, allus worrying about others. Aye, and you look like ’er an’ all,’ he added gruffly. ‘A right bonny girl was my Rosie. Thought that the minute I set eyes on her, I did. It was in Ma Wheeler’s pie shop that I first saw her, standing waiting to be served. I knew straight away that she were the one for me. Come over from Ireland, she had, to stay with her auntie, after she lost her mam and dad. I’d not long bin living in Liverpool meself then. Come here looking for work, I had, aye, and bin lucky to be took on by the railways. I was living in digs then down on Daffodil Street and it turned out that your mam was living just round the corner. I asked her if I could call on her and she told me that I could. Walking out for two years, we was, before I were ea
rning enough for us to get married. We were that proud when we paid our first week’s rent on number 78. I can still see your mam’s face now when we came to look round and she saw that it had its own bathroom. I told meself then that I’d find the money to pay the rent even if I had to work round the clock to get it. Never a day goes by wi’out me thinking about her, and even more so at this time of year. She loved Christmas.’

  ‘You must have loved her so much,’ Molly whispered. She had heard how her mother and father had met dozens of times, but she never grew tired of the story. She had grown up without her mother, and over the years had learned to accept her absence, but now, loving Eddie as she did, she recognised how very hard her mother’s death must have been for her father.

  ‘Aye, I did. And you think on about that, lass,’ her father told her. ‘I knew the moment I met your mam that she were the one, and I reckon that you tek after me that way, Molly. So you mek sure you listen to what’s here inside yer in future,’ he urged her, touching his own chest, ‘and not what other folk tell yer to do. Our June – now, she’s different. She’s got more of a practical head on her shoulders, just like me sister.’

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ Molly choked, ‘I’m sorry I’ve caused everyone so much trouble, but I do truly love Eddie.’

  ‘Aye, lass, I can see that. I’ve bin worrying about you these last weeks, I admit. I could see as sommat were wrong, and I’m right glad that everything’s bin sorted out now.’

  It was the longest speech she could ever remember her father making to her. She ran over to him and hugged him fiercely. She knew how lucky she and June were to have their father. Never once in the whole of their lives had he said an unkind or sharp word to them, never mind taken his belt to them.

  ‘All I want is for the two of you to be happy like me and your mam was,’ he told her. ‘Best thing that ever happened to me, meeting your mam were, and I shall want to hear that this young man of yours thinks the same about you an’ all.’

  Molly was so tired she could barely climb the stairs after she had bade her father good night and Happy Christmas. She paused as she opened her bedroom door, her eyes widening in disbelief as she saw the small stocking hanging from the mantelpiece, her tiredness suddenly vanishing, her eyes sparkling with happiness.

  ‘Oh, June,’ Molly whispered to herself as she ran over to the fireplace and removed the sock, just as eagerly as if she were still a child. She could feel the nuts stored in its toe and something round and hard, which she suspected would be an apple. There was a pencil too – a reminder of childhood Christmases of the past when Molly would laugh with glee when presented with another coloured pencil for her collection.

  She sat down on the bed, both laughing and weeping. It was so typical of June – always so touchy on the outside and so loving on the inside.

  June had sworn that just because she was married that didn’t mean that anything was going to change. She had said that she and Frank would find somewhere to rent close by, and that with Frank in the army she would probably end up spending more time in her old home than her new one, but Molly knew that June was making those assurances for herself as much as for her, and that they both knew that their old set-up as older and younger sister, bound together by the loss of their mother in a relationship in which June took charge and gave the orders, and Molly obeyed them, had already gone. She had outgrown her childhood need to have June ‘look out’ for her, Molly knew, but if anything she loved her sister more now that they had to look out for each other.

  She undressed quickly after washing in the chilly bathroom, burrowing into her small bed, and luxuriating in the warmth of the hot-water bottle she had put there earlier, squeezing her eyes tightly closed so that she could think about Eddie.

  Eddie. She couldn’t wait for him to come home. She touched the golden heart he had given her, a small secret half girl’s, half woman’s smile curving her mouth as she dreamed of being with him and of the future they would share.

  Excitement and longing bubbled up inside her, but it was different from what she had known as a child on Christmas Eve. She wondered what next Christmas would bring. Hopefully peace and married life for her and Eddie.

  Restless, she tossed and turned, thinking of the presents she had made and wrapped so lovingly and which were now carefully tucked beneath her bed: a warm muffler and a pair of fingerless gloves for her father to wear through the winter when he worked on the allotment; a pretty tray cloth she had embroidered for June, ready for when she got her own home; some handkerchiefs for Elsie next door; and, best of all, the two pairs of thick warm socks she had knitted for Eddie from the oiled wool she had unpicked from an old fisherman’s sweater she had bought from a secondhand market stall.

  ‘Oh, Eddie,’ she whispered lovingly. She couldn’t wait for the time to come when they would spend Christmas together as man and wife.

  ‘Listen up at the fellas putting the world to rights,’ Sally Walker laughed, cocking her head in the direction of the parlour that Christmas morning.

  ‘Aye, well, they’ll have to talk up a bit to hear themselves over Frank’s mam’s snoring,’ June grinned. ‘How many glasses of Elsie’s sloe gin did you give her, Molly?’

  The three girls were in the kitchen washing up the dishes from their Christmas dinner, whilst Frank’s mother slept off the effects of her after-dinner drink, whilst supposedly keeping an eye on Sally and Ronnie’s baby, Tommy. When Sally had told Molly that they would be on their own for Christmas because there wasn’t any room for them with their families in Manchester, Molly had invited them to come round and join in their own festivities.

  ‘I dunno how I kept me face straight when Frank’s mam started telling them bawdy jokes,’ Sally giggled.

  ‘Huh, don’t be fooled by her,’ June complained. ‘Got a face like thunder most of the time. Done nothing but boss me about, she has, and I’m fair sick of it. The sooner the war is over, and him and me get a place of our own, the better.’

  ‘Well, she has got a bit of a reputation for having a sharp tongue,’ Sally agreed, ‘but I haven’t forgotten how good she were to me when I were having baby. I don’t mind bettin’ that you’ll see a change in her once you and Frank have a little ’un, June.’

  ‘Aye, well, when we do she’d better not start trying to interfere,’ cos I won’t stand for it,’ June said crossly.

  The combination of the hot kitchen, a glass of sloe gin and the conviviality they had all shared around the dinner table had brought a pretty flush to all three young female faces and the kind of mood that led to shared confidences.

  ‘I dunno if it’s on account of this war and living for the moment or what, but my Ronnie has been that keen on having his you-know-whats whilst he’s bin home that you’d think we was newly married,’ Sally informed Molly and June frankly, with a small giggle. ‘I’ve told him that I don’t want to be left with another kiddie on the way, not while he’s away.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ June agreed. ‘Not that my Frank isn’t very mindful of what he’s doing,’ she added, blushing self-consciously.

  ‘Oh ho, “mindful”, is it?’ Sally ribbed her, grinning. ‘Well, you wait until he comes back from the pub late on a Friday night, wanting his nuptials – he won’t be so “mindful” then, you mark my words. I remember when we was first married my Ronnie used to give me this look, and quick as you like he’d have me upstairs, and out of me knickers that fast …’

  ‘Oh, he never,’ June protested, before confiding, ‘Me and my Frank was in bed every night before ten when we was on our honeymoon and some afternoons as well. One tea time the landlady came up and knocked on the door when we was … you know, and he called out to her that we was checking that the blackout worked!’

  ‘I can’t see you gettin’ away with that at his mother’s, June,’ Sally laughed. ‘You’ll have to come up with sommat else. Whilst your Frank’s coming up with sommat of his own.’

  ‘Oooh, cheek! I don’t want none of that kind of talk in front of our Mol
ly, Sally,’ June protested, suddenly remembering her younger sister was in the same room. ‘It’s not fitting, her not being married yet.’

  From their position as married women, Sally and June exchanged smugly knowing looks, whilst Molly blushed furiously. Whilst she no longer envied her sister her happiness with Frank, she couldn’t help enviously imagining sharing the married intimacies June and Sally were describing with Eddie.

  ‘Well, from what I’ve seen, it won’t be long before Molly’s gettin’ wed herself,’ Sally relented, giving Molly an arch look. ‘We’ve all seen how keen Eddie is on her. And her on him!

  ‘You’re miles better off wi’out that Johnny, Molly,’ Sally continued. ‘A real wild ’un he is, from what my Ronnie has said. Aye, and that lass he’s got in the family way isn’t the only one he’s bin messin’ with, by all accounts. He were even givin’ me the eye at one stage! Mind you, there’s no denying that he’s a handsome-lookin’ lad wi’ a bit of a way about him. I’ve heard as his dad were just the same. A real good looker, wi’ enough blarney in him to get into a nun’s knickers. That sort’s all right for a bit o’ fun but when it comes to settling down a girl needs a good steady chap she can depend on.’ Ere, June, have you put those mince pies in the oven?’

  ‘Oh Gawd, I’d forgotten,’ June groaned, grabbing for the tray of pies they’d made with precious butter and flour rations. ‘We’ve got half of Chestnut Close coming round ’ere tonight, so we’d better crack on and get the supper sorted out ready.’

  Molly had never known a Christmas Day pass so quickly. Whilst Sally took baby Tommy upstairs for a feed, she and June worked side by side preparing a cold buffet.

  ‘I just hope that John from next door remembers that he said he’d bring along some beer, because Dad and Uncle Joe haven’t held back this afternoon.’