Goodnight Sweetheart

by Annie Groves

  ‘Frank’s written to say that he’s hoping to get leave in November, so we’ll have the baby christened then, providing Jerry doesn’t go and bomb our church like he’s done the Cathedral.’

  ‘Aye, and he got them kiddies in that convalescent home in Birkenhead, damn him,’ Joe added soberly. ‘Poor little blighters didn’t stand a chance. Half of them couldn’t even walk, never mind run.’

  ‘Stop it – I can’t bear to hear about those little bairns,’ June told their uncle sharply. ‘And I keep telling our Molly that she’s worryin’ me half to death going out driving them ambulances. It’s bad enough me not sleepin’ on account of baby, and Jerry bombers coming over, but then I’ve got our Molly coming in at all hours, wakin’ me up when I do get off.’

  ‘I’ve offered to sleep downstairs when I’m on ambulance duty,’ Molly reminded her stiffly.

  ‘Don’t go on at the poor lass, June,’ Joe protested, giving Molly a warm smile. ‘Where’d the rest of us be wi’out the likes of her? I’d have volunteered to do a bit more meself if we weren’t on twelve-hour shifts now.’

  ‘Aye, well, it’s us mothers who have the worst of it, worrying ourselves sick about our kiddies,’ June retaliated stubbornly.

  ‘Auntie Violet has already offered to have you and Sally and the children at the farm, June,’ Molly pointed out quietly. ‘And it’d be safer for you there as well, what with Liverpool being bombed every other night.’

  ‘What, and have our auntie making me and Sally work our fingers to the bone doing farm work,’ cos that’s what will happen, I reckon. She’s allus complaining about them not having enough men to do the work.’

  It seemed to Molly sometimes that instead of being happy because she had such a beautiful baby, June was constantly worrying and getting upset. It was the war that was making everyone’s temper wear a bit thin, she reasoned, what with the relentless pressure of Hitler’s bombing campaign night after night, depriving people of much-needed sleep and wearing down their nerves. Molly was now doing a full day’s work at the factory, and her WVS work as well, plus driving when it was her turn on the rota. Mr Harding had told her that any time she needed to come into work late because she had been driving the previous night she was free to do so, but Molly’s pride wouldn’t let her take advantage of his offer when she knew that others were turning up for work after doing voluntary service at night.

  Sometimes it seemed to Molly that she was closer now to the other people on the emergency services team than she was to her own family, and one member of that team was Johnny Everton.

  ‘How come you’ve got transferred to this lot?’ Molly had asked him suspiciously when he had suddenly appeared amongst them one night, announcing that he had been included in their team because they were a man short.

  ‘Had a word with a friend of a friend and said as how I fancied transferring,’ Johnny had told her meaningfully, before adding, ‘Nod’s as good as a wink, if you know the right lads, and there’s a chap in charge whose brother was in the same unit as us. Aren’t you going to ask me why I transferred then?’ he had teased her.

  ‘Why should I? It isn’t any business of mine,’ Molly had answered.

  ‘No? Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Miss Know-it-all,’ cos the only reason I asked to be part of this lot was on account of you,’ he had told her softly. ‘I should never have given you up, Molly, and if I had me time again …’

  Her heart thudded unevenly now, remembering the way he had looked at her when he had said those words. She wasn’t in love with him – not like she had been with Eddie, she knew that – but there was definitely something about Johnny that made her heart race that little bit faster.

  * * *

  ‘Anne!’ Molly exclaimed in delight as virtually the first person she saw when she arrived at the church hall for WVS was her friend.

  ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘How is Philip? Did you see him?’ Molly asked her urgently.

  Anne nodded. ‘He’s very poorly, though, Molly. He won’t talk about what happened. At first he wouldn’t talk to me at all. He said he didn’t want me there because I pitied him. But I don’t pity him, Molly, I love him. He’s still Philip, even if he has lost his legs, and he’s still the man I love. I hated having to come back and leave him. The nurses are wonderful but they are so busy, and when Philip is having one of his bad days … I just wish he would talk to me properly, Molly.’

  Molly listened sympathetically. She could understand how Anne must feel. She would have felt the same if it had been Eddie who had been hurt.

  ‘It must have been dreadful for you,’ Molly whispered as they helped to hand out cups of tea to the queue of people now coming in through the doors. Most of them were now homeless, having been bombed out, and they had come to the WVS centre for advice and help.

  ‘No, no such thing,’ Molly reassured an anxious young mother concerned that her children would be taken from her and packed off overseas.

  ‘I’m joining the ATS,’ Anne announced abruptly.

  Molly almost dropped the cup of tea she had just poured.

  ‘I can’t bear not being with Philip, Molly. And it’s so awful at home,’ Anne told her sadly. ‘My parents can’t get over losing our Richard. It’s like life stopped for them the day he died. I feel guilty sometimes ’cos it’s him that’s dead and me that’s alive. Don’t get me wrong, I miss him too and I always will, but …’ Anne heaved a heavy sigh and then continued, ‘I sorted everything out whilst I was down there. I’ll be leaving for Aldershot at the end of the week. I’m going to be based there, which means I’ll be able to do my bit for the war effort and be close to Philip, for when he comes out of hospital.’

  Molly shook her head. Her friend’s news was so unexpected she didn’t know what to say, other than a gruff, and truthful, ‘I’m going to miss you, Anne.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you too, but I know it’s for the best. Philip needs me and I want to be with him more than anything.’

  The two girls exchanged mutually understanding looks.

  ‘Promise me you’ll write to me,’ Anne begged.

  ‘You know I will,’ Molly assured her emotionally.

  TWO

  ‘Quick, you’re to get t’ambulance over to Durning Road, Edge Hill, as fast as you can.’ The young Civil Defence cadet was red in the face from pedalling frantically through the smoke-filled streets, or at least what you could see of his face was red in the flare of the fires still burning from bombs that had been dropped earlier in the evening, Molly corrected herself, as he delivered his message to the nearest warden. ‘There’s bin a bomb dropped on the Junior Technical College, right on top of t’shelter there. There’s a message gone out for as many ARP wardens, fire engines and ambulances as can get there.’

  With that he was back on his bike, pedalling furiously in the direction of the nearest ARP station.

  They had just finished evacuating the occupants of a street down by the docks where one of the houses had taken a direct hit from the new parachute mines Hitler’s bombers were dropping on the city. Fortunately no one had been hurt.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ the senior warden asked Molly curtly.

  She nodded and started the ambulance’s engine.

  ‘Come on, lads,’ she heard him call out to his men. ‘We’ll leave this for now. We’ve had an emergency call at Durning Road.’

  Durning Road – there would be people in that shelter she knew, Molly thought. She couldn’t help exchanging a worried look with Johnny, though, when he swung himself up into the ambulance to take the seat beside her.

  ‘Your mam and your sisters won’t be up there, will they?’ she asked him tersely.

  ‘I doubt it. Me mam won’t leave the house when there’s a warning. She says she reckons she is safest under her own stairs.’

  ‘Them seats you’re sitting in are supposed to be for medical personnel,’ Molly reminded Johnny.

  ‘That’s all
right then. Done me first-aid training now, I have,’ he told her with a grin.

  Molly laughed.

  She had come to know every short cut in the city during these last few weeks, and now she set off, expertly driving up what looked like an impossibly narrow street, which she knew would take them right up to Durning Road.

  After London, Liverpool had suffered the worst of Hitler’s bombing raids, although, unlike London, the attacks on Liverpool by Jerry bombers had not been mentioned in the news. So far, Liverpool had suffered over two hundred air raids, but tonight’s was the worst so far, Molly decided, as she cut through a back alleyway using the pavement, causing the men crammed into the ambulance cab with her to start making jokes about women drivers.

  ‘Don’t you pay them no attention, Molly,’ one of the nurses defended her stoutly.

  ‘Gawd, look at that,’ Johnny whistled as up ahead of them, low in the sky, they saw the unmistakable outline of a German plane and, below it, the parachute mines it had just dropped drifting slowly down to earth.

  All around them they could see fires burning, casting an orange glow through the choking smoke.

  ‘I heard as how one of Jerry’s bombers chased a corporation bus all the way up Neddy Road the other night. Thought they was gonna be goners, all the passengers did, when he started strafing ’em. One poor woman lost her little kiddie. Only six months old, got killed by a piece of shrapnel,’ one of the men announced.

  Listening to him, Molly winced, and then turned into Durning Road. Up ahead of them they could see where the parachute mine had landed and the devastation it had caused. Several fire crews were trying to put out the blaze.

  Other rescue workers were already on the scene, and everyone inside the ambulance fell silent as they saw how bad the damage was.

  Molly pulled up next to a couple of other ambulances that had arrived ahead of them. Everyone bailed out of the ambulance, including Molly.

  ‘Wait here,’ the senior ARP warden told them. ‘I’ll go and find out what’s happening.’

  He was back in less than five minutes, his face set and pale.

  ‘The shelter underneath the school collapsed when the mine hit the school. They’re starting to bring folk out now. There’s no knowing yet how many injured there’ll be. Come on, lads,’ he told his men. ‘Let’s go and get started.’

  At the site, rescue workers were digging frantically, some with just their bare hands, to try to reach those trapped inside the shelter. Suddenly Johnny realised that Molly was with them.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘Get back to the ambulance, Molly. Bloody Jerry might come back and finish what he’s started.’

  ‘Well, and if he does, all the more reason for me to be here helping, to get them as is trapped out before he drops any more bombs on them,’ Molly answered him firmly.

  A pall of brick dust and smoke hung over the bombed building. Horrifically, mingled with the sounds of people using everything they could to remove the debris, interspersed with monosyllabic commands from those in charge, could be heard quite plainly the tormented cries and pleas for help of those trapped inside the building.

  Molly had been digging for nearly ten minutes, working side by side with Johnny, driven by the thin unremitting wail of a young child, when abruptly it ceased, causing bile to rise sourly in her throat. She didn’t stop working, though, not even to look at Johnny.

  ‘Watch out,’ Johnny warned her, making a grab for her arm and hauling her out of danger, as the ground suddenly gave way beneath her.

  ‘You’d best get back to your ambulance, Molly. They’re bringing some of them out now,’ one of the ARP men hurried over to tell her.

  ‘How bad is it?’ Molly asked him anxiously.

  ‘It’s bad. It seems like the central heating system’s bin damaged and there’s boiling water and gas pouring into the ruddy shelter.’

  A woman being helped to safety, her hair and clothes almost burned off her and blood oozing from her cuts, kept asking over and over again, ‘My little lad, where is he? He were sitting on me knee. Only four he is …’

  ‘Calm yerself, love. Let’s get yer cleaned up a bit, then we’ll see about your lad,’ Molly said gently, going to help.

  The rescuer who had helped her free gave Molly a meaningful shake of his head and told her quietly, ‘Her kiddie’s bought it – lying dead in her arms, he were, but she wouldn’t let us take him. She didn’t want to believe that he were dead, see.’

  On the ground beyond the devastation an ominous number of unmoving bodies were being lined up by the rescuers, some of them so small that the sight of them made Molly’s eyes sting with anguish.

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and Molly was due to go off duty, but she knew that, like the others, she would keep on working until everything that could be done had been done.

  It was just gone four when someone digging alongside her into the rubble, which they did sometimes with their bare hands if they thought they might be close to reaching a trapped person, nudged her in the ribs and said, ‘There’s the all clear.’

  Numbly, Molly listened. The all clear signalled the end of another night’s bombing and the coming of a new day, but, to those who mourned the victims of this terrible night, it could only emphasise that the tragedy of what had happened to them and those they loved could never be set aside.

  Molly looked tiredly at the back door to number 78. After driving her ambulance back to its base, she had then walked home through the grey smoke-hazed chill of the late November morning, not even pausing to look at fresh bomb sites in appalled horror as she had done in the early days of the air raids.

  Small groups of people huddled outside some of the newly bombed houses, clutching bundles of belongings. By the time it was properly daylight the bomb sites would have been picked over by looters searching for anything of value the householders might have left behind.

  Already, straggling lines of trekkers were returning to the city, having spent the night wherever they could find a bed, usually a church hall or other place of temporary accommodation for the homeless in the villages on the outskirts of Liverpool, some because they no longer had a bed of their own and some because they were too afraid to risk staying in their own beds any more.

  Wearily Molly opened the back door, always left unlocked now, and then shut it again, leaning on it and closing her eyes as she willed herself to gather up her strength. June would want to know where she had been and why, and she knew how much what had happened would upset her sister.

  Whilst she was still leaning there with her eyes closed, a gentle but firm hand touched her shoulder and a kind voice commanded, ‘Come on and sit down. I’ve bin waiting for you to get in safely, and I’ve got the kettle on.’

  ‘Frank!’ Molly stared at her brother-in-law. ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Last night. Come on,’ he repeated, reaching to take hold of her arm.

  ‘I’m filthy,’ Molly warned him. ‘There was a bomb dropped on the college in Durning Road.’ She gave a small shudder.

  ‘Yes, I know. I thought you might be there,’ Frank told her quietly. ‘Mam was sent for to go and help out at the hospital. We heard that it was a bad ’un.’

  ‘Yes,’ Molly agreed bleakly. ‘There’s bin a lot killed, some of them kiddies…’ She started to shake, tears pouring down her face. ‘There was this poor woman, Frank, still holding on to her kiddies, even though they was dead…’

  Suddenly she was in Frank’s arms and he was holding her firmly, his hand cradling the back of her head, whilst he ignored her tearful almost incoherent protests that she was all smoky and dirty, and her tears soaking into his shirt.

  THREE

  What time was it? She could see light coming in through the curtains, and she could hear voices from the room down below so it must be early morning.

  Her eyes felt sore and gritty and her throat felt raw from the smoke of last night’s bomb.

  Last night! Molly sat bolt uprigh
t in her bed, and then reached for her watch. The pain of Eddie’s death had softened enough for her to be able to wear it now without being filled with misery, but she still thought of him every time she put it on. It had been so typical of him that he had thought to make sure she had her birthday present even though he had known he wouldn’t be there to give it to her.

  It was half-past one, gone dinner time. She pushed back the bedclothes. The gold satin eiderdown hadn’t even shifted from its position on top of the matching bedspread, a sure sign of how deeply she had slept. She could not even remember getting undressed. All she could remember was the hell on earth that had been the scene at the college – that and coming home to find Frank waiting for her.

  A thin wail pierced the muted adult voices downstairs. Baby Elizabeth Rose was obviously awake and hungry.

  ‘No, Frank, don’t pick her up, you mustn’t. Dr Truby King says it will spoil her if we pick her up every time she cries,’ Molly heard her sister cautioning her husband crossly. As Molly walked into the kitchen she sighed. Elsie had said how much she regretted giving June the book, which now seemed to rule her life.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ June commented. ‘I suppose you’re going to want some breakfast now, are you, and me having only just finished cleaning up the kitchen?’

  ‘I’m not really hungry, June,’ Molly answered her quietly, unaware of the look Frank was giving her. ‘I’ll just make meself a cuppa and then I’d better get off to work, otherwise Mr Harding will be wondering what’s happened to me.’