Goodnight Sweetheart

by Annie Groves

  Steam rose from the tin bath as the piping-hot water flowed into it.

  ‘I’ll put some cold in whilst you’re getting undressed and then I’ll get the geyser going again.’

  He made it all seem so matter-of-fact, but Molly had never undressed in front of anyone other than her sister, much less a man.

  ‘What’s up?’ Johnny began when she didn’t move, and then he grinned and said, ‘Oh, I get it. Hang on, then.’

  Molly heard him moving around in the scullery and when he came back he was carrying a wooden clothes maiden, which he opened out and placed between the bath and the rest of the kitchen, solemnly hanging the other towels on it to provide her with a small screen.

  ‘You’ll have to turn your back,’ Molly told him, ‘and keep it turned.’

  ‘OK.’

  She took off her coat first, and then her jacket and then, making sure he was not looking, she scurried behind the makeshift screen and quickly tugged off her skirt, and then unclipped her suspenders so that she could roll down the thick lisle stockings that were part of her uniform. Her blouse came off next, and then, after a quick look to make sure that Johnny wasn’t watching, she hurriedly unfastened her brassiere and removed the rest of her underwear.

  Parts of her body were bruised and scraped, but Molly ignored them, quickly stepping into the tub and then exhaling as she felt the welcome warmth of the clean warm water against her skin.

  ‘Forgot to give you the soap.’

  ‘Johnny!’ Molly squeaked indignantly, as she heard his voice coming from behind her, her face bright red as she drew up her knees and covered her naked breasts with her hands. She didn’t dare to turn round and look at him.

  ‘Johnny what?’ he asked her softly. ‘I just thought you might want a helping hand, that’s all.’ And then to Molly’s shock she could feel him soaping her back with a surprising tenderness.

  The coke crackled and burned, sending a warm glow over the room, whilst the sensation of Johnny’s hands on her bare back was sending an equally warm glow shooting through her body right down to her toes. And once she had begun to get over her apprehension and embarrassment, the sensation was, well, rather nice. Even so, she felt obliged to protest shyly, ‘Johnny, don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’ he demanded softly, his breath tickling her neck and making her shiver deliciously, and then shiver again when she felt him kissing where his breath had touched. His fingertips trailed down her bare arm, making her gasp and quiver. ‘Stay there.’ She could hear the laughter in his voice and something deeper and darker as well, which made her heart bounce. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  He was back before she could think of anything to say, standing beside the bath, holding the towel open for her.

  ‘If you think I’m going to step out of this bath naked …’ Molly told him, trying to sound nonchalant, but instead blushing so hotly she felt as though her face were on fire.

  ‘Well, we’ve only one bath and one lot of hot water, and it’s my turn now, but you stay there if you want,’ Johnny told her, grinning.

  ‘Johnny, don’t you dare get in this bath,’ Molly commanded ineffectively. When he dropped the towel and advanced on the bath she squeaked and used her hands to send a showery deterrent in his direction. It hit his shirt, soaking him to his skin, so that in the firelight she could see the broad plane of his torso roped with hard muscle.

  ‘Right. That’s it …’

  ‘No, Johnny, don’t you dare come any closer. Don’t you dare,’ Molly objected.

  Of course he ignored her, and so Molly splashed more water over him in an attempt to keep him away, and then laughed to see how wet he was, and was still laughing and protesting several seconds later when he braved her watery onslaught, ignored her attempts to deflect him, and simply scooped her out of the bath, quickly wrapping her in a towel, and then sliding her to her feet in between her giggles and his own laughter.

  Almost sliding her to her feet, Molly recognised dizzily, her giggles and his laughter fading into silence as he held her close to him, still wrapped in the towel, and then bent his head and kissed her, very slowly. And then when she sighed in pleasure he kissed her again, much harder this time.

  ‘Oh, Johnny, I don’t think …!’ Suddenly she felt shaky and unsure of what she was doing, and afraid of her own feelings.

  ‘We could be dead tomorrow,’ Johnny told her, almost roughly.

  Molly shuddered, all too aware of the truth of what he was saying. ‘Yes.’ Then she kissed him shyly, and they both knew exactly what she was agreeing to.

  ‘Did you and Eddie ever?’ Johnny asked her thickly when he had stopped kissing her.

  ‘No, never,’ Molly answered, her face burning afresh.

  ‘So you’re still a …?’ Johnny probed.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Molly agreed hurriedly, embarrassed.

  There was a small silence. Then Johnny asked her slowly, ‘Are you sure you want to?’

  Did she? All Molly knew was that having come so far, she didn’t want to turn back. She might not love Johnny like she had Eddie – she would never love anyone else like that ever again, she knew that – but she liked it when he kissed her, and if she walked away from him now she knew that a part of her would always regret doing so.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she told him firmly. ‘I don’t want to die without knowing what it feels like, Johnny.’

  Rather than think what she was doing was wrong, as she would have done before, after what she had seen tonight, it suddenly seemed so right and so very, very necessary.

  Could there be anything more comforting than this, Molly reflected sleepily as she lay tucked up next to Johnny, her body savouring the warmth of his whilst he held her close. She was a woman now and there was no going back, but she didn’t regret what had happened. It had been neither as bad as she had dreaded as a young girl, nor as good as she had dreamed lying alone in her bed thinking of Eddie, the excitement generated by Johnny’s passionate kisses fizzing so impatiently inside her somehow but not quite reaching what she had sensed might be its potential. But if the pleasure hadn’t been as intense as she had secretly dreamed, then neither had the pain been anything like as bad as she had heard other girls at the factory describe.

  ‘All right?’ Johnny asked her.

  She could hear the tenderness in his voice, and nodded. ‘I have to go home,’ she reminded him. June and her dad were used to her being out all hours with the WVS but she knew she should get back before dawn arrived.

  ‘Not yet. The all clear’s only just gone.’ He kissed her forehead and Molly relaxed into the comfort of his hold, only too willing to stay in his embrace.

  Did she look any different? Would those who were close to her, like her sister, be able to see any difference in her face, Molly wondered, stepping into the kitchen of number 78, hearing June’s slipper-shod feet on the stairs.

  She hadn’t let Johnny come into the house with her, nor had she let him kiss her goodbye on the doorstep as he had obviously been intending to do, and yet for all her fierce determination not to do anything that would publicly link them together as a couple, she could not and did not regret what had happened, she admitted.

  ‘You’re back! Thank goodness. I’ve hardly slept a wink, what with Elizabeth Rose crying, and them bombs going off all the time,’ said June, giving her a quick hug and then hurrying to fill the kettle. Molly was surprised and touched by her concern but also worried that June would smell Johnny’s scent on her and quickly released herself from June’s embrace.

  ‘Where was you anyway?’

  ‘We were called out to one of the streets down near the docks. There’d been a direct hit and half of the houses had gone.’

  Something in her voice must have given her away, Molly realised, because June stopped filling the kettle and waited.

  ‘Two kiddies were trapped, but we managed to get them out,’ Molly answered June’s unspoken question, making a heroic effort to smile and sound relaxed.

  ‘What
about their mam?’ asked June.

  Molly’s throat had gone dry. Her eyes felt itchy and sore. From the dust in the tunnel? From the tears she had cried in Johnny’s arms for the two children now without a mother and for the young woman whose whole life should have been ahead of her? Molly didn’t know. What she did know, though, was that she didn’t want to upset her sister.

  ‘They hadn’t found her when I left,’ she said. It was, after all, technically the truth in the sense that the young mother had still been sealed in the tomb of her destroyed house.

  ‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ said June in a low voice, ‘but how are we supposed to want to celebrate it with all that’s going on?’

  ‘We’ve just got to do our best, June,’ Molly answered her. ‘There’s nothing else we can do. Your Frank would want you and Lillibet—’

  ‘My Frank?’ June cut across her. ‘I dunno that he is mine any more, Molly, nor if I want him to be. Us getting married and all that seems ever such a long time ago now. When he came home for Elizabeth Rose’s christening it were like I didn’t really know him any more.’

  ‘June, don’t say that,’ Molly protested, her voice muffled by tiredness and despair.

  June started to cry so Molly went to put her arms around her, trying to comfort her. ‘It’s just this war, June. Frank loves you and you love him and—’

  ‘No.’ June shook her head. ‘I don’t know as I do any more, Molly. In fact, sometimes I think I hate him for leaving me with Elizabeth Rose to worry about and him not being here. It’s all right for him, all he has to do is come home once in a while and everyone thinks he’s wonderful, but it’s me as has to cope with everything, not him. Molly, if anything was to happen to me I want you to promise me that you’ll bring my Elizabeth Rose up as though she were your own.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ Molly stressed.

  ‘You can’t say that – no one can. That woman last night whose kiddies you rescued – that could have bin any of us. And if it were to be me, Molly, I don’t want my little girl being brought up by Frank’s mam, and I do not want her being like you and me neither, having to grow up without her mam. If I wasn’t to be here then you’re the nearest thing she’s going to have to a mam of her own, Molly, and I want you to promise me that if owt does happen to me, then you’ll love her and look after her like she was your own.’

  ‘June …’

  ‘Promise me,’ June insisted, her grip on Molly’s arm so tight that her nails were digging into Molly’s flesh.

  Tears stung Molly’s eyes. ‘You don’t have to ask me to promise anything, June. You know that I already love her like she was my own.’

  ‘But promise me all the same.’

  June’s face was grey with tiredness and strain in the dull late December light grudgingly seeping into the morning sky. Molly’s heart turned over inside her chest as she looked at her sister. When had the lively and vivacious June grown so gaunt and desperate-looking? So much as though something were eating her up inside and destroying her warmth and spirit.

  ‘I promise,’ Molly told her. There could be no exchange of confidences now from her to June, telling her about last night and Johnny, Molly realised. The June with whom she might once have had that kind of exchange had gone and been replaced by someone Molly was frighteningly aware she hardly recognised.

  ‘There she is, crying again,’ said June, looking up towards the ceiling.

  ‘I’ll make her a bottle and take it up to her, if you like,’ Molly offered.

  June shook her head. ‘She’s not due a feed for another hour yet,’ she told Molly sharply.

  ‘Surely it wouldn’t do her any harm to feed her now. She sounds so hungry, and then you can go back to bed and have another hour yourself, seeing as how the bombers kept you awake,’ Molly coaxed, hardly daring to breathe as June frowned and seemed to consider. But then just as she looked about to accept, her shoulders tightened as though she were preparing herself to carry a heavy burden, her mouth tightening as she shook her head again.

  ‘I’m not going against what Dr Truby says to do,’ she informed Molly fiercely. ‘So you can stop trying to persuade me.’ Her expression changed, tears filling her eyes and her voice wobbling slightly as she exclaimed woefully, ‘Oh, Molly, I don’t know what’s happening to me sometimes. I feel that mytherated and cross wi’ meself, you and me shouldn’t be falling out – you’re me sister.’

  ‘We aren’t falling out,’ Molly tried to comfort her, giving her a hug. ‘Like you said, we’re sisters, you and me, June, and nothing can ever come between us,’ she added stoutly, and meant it.

  ‘Oh, I know what I meant to tell you,’ June sniffed, trying to regain control. ‘You know them tins of fruit Pearl Lawson’s hubby were supposed to have got for Christmas Day?’

  Molly nodded, relieved to see June behaving like the June of old, for now at least.

  ‘Well, it seems that Marjorie Gladdings from number 53 opened a tin t’other day, expecting to find peaches and that inside, and instead it were full of carrots. Went mad, she did, running across to Pearl’s, yellin’ her head off that she’d bin robbed on account of paying George under the counter for them, and saying as how it were all a con, and that George were as bent as a nine-bob note.’

  When Molly had finished laughing, more out of relief than mirth, she hugged June again.

  ‘What’s that for when it’s at home?’ June demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ Molly answered her, still smiling, ‘exceptin’ that you’re my sister.’

  She couldn’t remember a time she had last felt as sick with nerves as this, Molly admitted as she stood outside the front gate of the neat semidetached house. With every step she had taken down the tree-lined avenue she had wondered if she had the courage to go on. This part of Wavertree, with its smart houses and its tennis club, was a world away from her own home in Chestnut Close. The palms of her hands felt sweaty inside her gloves, and her stomach was churning. But this was something she had to do. She had made up her mind about that. She just hoped that Anne would listen to her and that somehow they could be friends again. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the latch on the gate and walked up the path. It was impossible to know if anyone was watching her through the thick net curtains screening the windows.

  The brass door knocker was polished and shiny. Molly’s hand shook as she raised it and then let it drop. No response. She tried again. Still no response.

  Her shoulders hunched with defeat, Molly turned round and walked back down the path, blinking away her tears. She felt so bad about what had happened, and about losing Anne’s friendship.

  She was less than halfway down the avenue when she heard the sound of someone running up behind her. Turning round, she saw Anne, hatless and coatless, running after her, calling out breathlessly, ‘Molly, stop.’

  Uncertainly, Molly did so.

  ‘Philip says I’m being mean and that it isn’t fair to blame you. He says that he’d have done the same thing in your shoes, and that you were just trying to protect me.’

  ‘Men don’t understand. I shouldn’t have kept it from you, Anne. I should have told you.’

  They each took a step towards the other.

  ‘We’ve been such good pals, it would be a pity if we were to fall out now,’ Anne said huskily.

  ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh, Molly, I’m sorry I was so horrid. It was all such a shock.’

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Can you forgive me?’

  Suddenly they were hugging each other, both laughing and crying at the same time as they exchanged apologies.

  ‘We must stay friends for the rest of our lives,’ Anne told Molly emotionally, half an hour later, when Molly was sitting perched slightly uncomfortably on the edge of a chair in Anne’s parents’ immaculate front room. In her hand she balanced the cup of tea Anne had insisted on making her when she had invited Molly in so that
they could talk properly. Her parents were out, she explained, and Philip was upstairs resting. ‘We’ve been through so much together.’

  Molly agreed, her heart almost too full of emotion for her to be able to speak.

  ‘When this war is over, and me and Philip are properly settled, I want you to come and stay with us. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Molly. I wish you had told me about Richard but I can understand now why you didn’t.’

  ‘I wish I had done too.’

  They exchanged mutually understanding looks.

  The war might keep them apart but Molly knew that they would always remain firm friends because of what they had shared.

  NINE

  ‘White Rabbits,’ said Molly, as she and Johnny met up, one evening the following spring, outside the church hall, where they had been attending a civil defence meeting, Molly with her WVS colleagues, and Johnny with his own rescue group.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the first of May,’ she reminded him. ‘You have to say “White Rabbits” for luck at the beginning of a new month!’

  ‘I wouldn’t need no White Rabbits for good luck if you was to agree to be my girl, Molly.’

  She gave him a reproving look, and changed the subject. ‘Elsie was round at our house last night and she says she reckons she saw Mr Churchill when he were here. Swears it were him she saw. Mind you, if everyone who reckons they saw him did, then half of Liverpool must have seen him,’ she laughed.

  There had not been any repetition of the night they had shared after the bombing. Molly had made it plain that she wasn’t a fast girl and that she did not want to have that kind of relationship, and Johnny, to his credit, had not attempted to press her. They both recognised that their union had been the result of an extraordinary night – a night when they had needed to take comfort from the devastation and destruction all around them. She had allowed Johnny to take her out, though: to the Grafton over Christmas, and just recently she had been going to the cinema with him once a week.