Goodnight Sweetheart

by Annie Groves

  ‘And I promise I’ll write to you and tell you everything that she’s doing,’ Molly assured Frank as she held Lillibet up to the open window of the train carriage so that he could kiss his daughter goodbye.

  Frank had told her that she didn’t need to put herself out to see him off at the end of his leave, but she had insisted that she wanted to, and he had to fight to stop himself from kissing her more passionately than was seemly when she had lifted her face so innocently towards him.

  Whatever had she been thinking of, practically begging Frank to kiss her like that, Molly fretted guiltily, trying to conceal her discomfort by fussing over Lillibet’s bonnet, and avoiding looking directly at him.

  She wasn’t able to relax properly until the train finally started to pull out of the station and her face still felt hot with guilt and confusion when she put Lillibet back in her pram.

  Tomorrow morning she would go and visit June’s grave and explain to her that she hadn’t intended any harm. It had just been a silly mistake, that was all.

  ‘And now we’re going to go home and I’m going to tell you a story about your mummy,’ she told the smiling baby.

  Talking to Lillibet about June was a ritual she had begun within days of June’s death. It comforted her and she hoped it would keep June’s memory forever fresh in Lillibet’s little mind. It was all very well for others, like Frank’s mother, to urge her to let the baby forget about her mother, and she knew they meant their advice for the best, but she knew how she had clung to every memory she had had of her own mother and how she had relished those extra memories June had shared with her.

  Already she had carefully put away all the mementoes she could think of for Lillibet to have as she grew up and asked for them, even the Dr Truby King book.

  She had felt guilty about putting that away instead of using it, Molly admitted, as she pushed the pram out into the warm sunshine. It was wrong of her to blame Dr Truby for the changes they had all seen in June, and to feel that he was partly responsible for her death, she knew. But she still hadn’t been able to overcome her own repugnance for the book. Now she comforted herself with the knowledge that she had never kept it a secret from June that her own belief was that the doctor wasn’t always right and that June should listen to her own instincts.

  It was a lovely sunny day, and once she got home Molly lifted Lillibet out of the pram and put her down on a blanket on the small patch of grass in the back garden, watching her lovingly as she kicked and crowed, and then rolled over onto her back to play with her toes. Making sure she could see her from the window, Molly went inside to turn on the wireless and to gather together some darning that she had been putting off doing. She could sit on the step with it and work whilst she kept an eye on Lillibet. But her mind wasn’t really on her darning. Instead, it kept straying to Frank. It had felt so comfortable, somehow, going to the station with him to see him off, just as though they were … Molly dropped her darning and sucked her thumb where she had stabbed it with her needle. That was what she got for letting such terrible thoughts into her head, she told herself guiltily. There was poor Frank, grieving over losing June, and she had gone and behaved so terribly.

  Tears filled her eyes and she hung her head, whispering helplessly, ‘Oh, June …’

  ‘I’ve got sommat to tell you,’ Johnny announced excitedly. He had arrived at number 78 only minutes earlier, cutting across Molly’s proud urging that he look and see how well Lillibet was crawling.

  ‘What’s up?’ She gave in but her newly maternal gaze was tracking Lillibet’s progress towards the danger of the climbing rose smothering the wall. ‘No, sweetheart, don’t touch that.’ Smiling adoringly, she ran to scoop up her niece, blowing kisses into her tummy and making her giggle.

  ‘Put her down, Molly. I want to talk to you.’

  She could hear the impatience in Johnny’s voice. ‘If I put her in her pram now she’ll only make a fuss,’ she told him, holding on to the baby. ‘What is it you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘I’ve bin offered the chance to take charge of a new emergency services team that’s being set up out Cheshire way. Had me name put forward for it by the top brass here, so I’ve bin told, on account of what I’ve bin doing here in Liverpool.’

  Molly could hear the impatience give way to pride.

  ‘Of course it will mean moving out of Liverpool,’ he continued. ‘It’ll be worth it. They’ll be paying me a fair bit, for one thing, and there’s talk of them throwin’ in a little house as well.’

  Molly didn’t know what to say. She was pleased for him, of course, but she also knew that she would miss him.

  However, before she could say anything he told her bluntly, ‘I want you to come with me, Molly – as me wife. We’ll have to get married pretty quick, like,’ cos they want me to start wi’ ’em from the beginning of next month. It will mean a fresh start for both of us, Molly.’

  ‘Johnny, I can’t leave Liverpool,’ she protested shakily. ‘It would mean taking Lillibet away from me dad and from her Granny Brookes as well. I know that Frank has said that he’s happy for me to bring her up, but I don’t know how he’d feel about me moving right away from his mam with Lillibet.’

  Johnny shrugged impatiently. ‘Then leave her here. I reckon Doris Brookes will be only too pleased to have her to herself. If you ask me it would be a good thing, an’ all,’ he added darkly. ‘You and me deserve to have some time to ourselves, Molly, instead of you having to run yourself ragged looking after someone else’s kid. Aye, and what’s going to happen if Frank gets tired of supportin’ her, or he gets himself a new wife?’ Johnny shook his head firmly. ‘No, if you ask me, Molly, it would be best all round if the little ’un was handed over to Doris Brookes to raise, and the sooner the better.’

  Molly stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘You can’t mean that, Johnny.’

  ‘Why not?’ His jaw jutted out pugnaciously. ‘You and me – we’ve got our lives to lead, Molly, and I don’t want mine cluttered up wi’ someone else’s kid.’

  There was a huge hard lump in Molly’s throat and her heart was thudding heavily into her ribs in shocked misery.

  ‘Lillibet isn’t someone else’s kid to me, Johnny. She’s … she’s our June’s, and she’s mine now as well. I promised June that if anything happened to her I’d mother Lillibet for her and, anyway, I don’t want to give her up. I love her, Johnny.’

  ‘Aye, and more than you do me, I reckon,’ he responded angrily. ‘You’ll feel differently when we’ve got kiddies of us own, Molly.’ He tried to wheedle her, his tone changing. ‘This is our big chance. Think about it. More money, a place of us own … you and me together, like we was.’ He reached for her hand and she could smell the hot excited male scent of him. Excited but not exciting, she acknowledged tiredly. Not to her any more. Not now, after what he had just said about not wanting Lillibet.

  ‘I’m very pleased for you, Johnny,’ she told him tonelessly. ‘But I won’t be going with you.’ When she saw the pain in his eyes she pleaded, ‘It’s not just Lillibet, Johnny. There’s me dad as well. I’m all he’s got now, and I’d be worrying meself sick about him. He’s not getting any younger, and losing our June on top of losing me mam has knocked him for six. He doesn’t say anything, but I’ve seen him looking at her photograph when he doesn’t think I’ve noticed.’ Her voice thickened with tears. She missed June too. ‘I can’t leave them.’

  She dipped her head, unable to look at him, as she said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Johnny, but I can’t go with you.’

  She winced when she heard the front door being slammed behind him, her tears rolling silently down her face, until Lillibet lifted a little starfish-shaped hand and patted her wet cheek gently.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Lord knows when my Ronnie and Frank will be home again, now that the battalion’s bin sent to Egypt,’ said Sally gloomily. Although officially no one was supposed to know the movements of the troops because of the risk of the information falling into enemy
hands, somehow or other word did manage to get through and Sally had come hurrying round to tell Molly that the battalion was now on the move from Sicily. ‘Have you heard from Frank? Only it’s over a week now since I had a letter from my Ronnie.’

  ‘I did have a letter from Frank last week,’ Molly said, ‘but I couldn’t make much sense of it on account of that much having been censored,’ she admitted, heaving a small sigh. ‘He did write, though, that he’d got the photographs of Lillibet I’d sent him. She was standing up on her own in them,’ she added proudly, turning round to hold out her arms to her niece as she came toddling towards her and then lifting her up onto her lap.

  ‘She’s really coming on now, Molly,’ Sally approved. ‘Walking really well, she is, and she’ll be talking next. Have you thought about what you’re gonna do about that?’ Sally asked her.

  ‘I’m trying to teach her to say “Dada”. I keep saying it over and over again to her and—’

  ‘No, that’s not what I was meaning. What I was getting at is what is she going to call you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Molly admitted. ‘I’ve got a photograph of our June upstairs and every night when I put Lillibet to bed I show it to her and say, “kiss your mam good night,” but she’s too young yet to understand.’

  ‘Well, if you ask me you’d be better putting June’s photograph away for now, Molly, and letting the little ’un grow up calling you her mam,’ Sally told her forthrightly. ‘Not that I’m trying to say she shouldn’t know anything about your June, but you’re doing Lillibet’s mothering now, and it will only mek her feel different from t’other kiddies if she has to call you Auntie Molly like she hasn’t got a proper mam.’

  ‘I’ll have to wait and see what Frank thinks.’

  ‘I wish my Ronnie were coming home.’ Sally gave a gusty sigh. ‘And I do not know what’s to become of us women now, Molly, what with the Government saying that we’ve all got to register for war work, never mind if we’ve got kiddies to look after.’

  The two women exchanged sombre looks. The Government had also recently lowered the age for male call-up to eighteen and a half, and extended it to fifty, and everyone knew what that meant. There was no point in hoping for a speedy end to the war when the Government was making it plain it needed even more fighting men.

  ‘Wot you doing for Christmas this year, anyway?’

  ‘Dad was talkin’ about us going to Nantwich – it won’t be the same being here without our June.’ Molly’s voice revealed her pain. ‘But Auntie Violet says that she’s got a houseful already so we’re going to have to stay here.’

  ‘It’s a pity that Johnny took that job, Molly. You must miss him.’

  ‘I did at first,’ Molly admitted. She hadn’t told Sally the full story about Johnny’s ultimatum to her and she wasn’t going to do so now. ‘But Lillibet comes first.’ Her expression softened as she looked down at the little girl snuggled in her lap.

  Merry Christmas, mate, and welcome home to Blighty, Frank thought humorously to himself as he hefted his kitbag up onto the overhead luggage rack and looked enviously at the men who had been fortunate enough to secure themselves a seat. The train was packed and still filling up.

  The troop ship bringing him back to England had docked in Portsmouth two days ago, on Christmas Eve, and it had taken him this long to travel up to London in order to get a train for Liverpool. He had spent Christmas night sleeping in the underground close to Euston station, joining in with the singsong and gratefully accepting the tea and sandwiches the regulars there had shared with him. Indeed, he considered himself fortunate to have secured a place there, and to have been able to wash and shave before finally boarding this Liverpool-bound train.

  His arm ached from the bullet wound that had festered, the cause of his being hospitalised and left behind when the rest of his battalion had left for Egypt. It had been touch and go for a while as to whether or not he would lose his arm, but in the end he had been lucky and the infection had started to clear. The damage it had done, though, had left him with severely weakened muscles in his right arm as well as a deep raw wound where the infection had eaten into his flesh.

  Along with the rest of the not-fit-for-active-duty and non-combat forces left on Sicily, he had been shipped back to England.

  The man leaning against the wall in the corridor beside him offered him a cigarette, but Frank shook his head in refusal. He had given up the habit whilst he had been in the military hospital and was determined not to take it up again. He intended to put the money he would save on one side for Elizabeth Rose. Just thinking about her made him smile and reach inside his greatcoat to his jacket to remove Molly’s last letter and the photographs she had enclosed with it.

  ‘Pretty-looking kiddie. Yours, is she?’ the other man asked, peering over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ Frank acknowledged, his heart filling with tender pride as he looked at his daughter’s picture. Not that he needed a grainy black-and-white photograph to remember how she looked. She had his own dark, almost black, hair, but unlike his, hers curled prettily, just like June and Molly’s. Her eyes were like Molly’s and he reckoned she had her auntie’s smile too. Something twisted sharply inside him and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was itching to unfold Molly’s letter and read it yet again. She had kept her promise to write to him regularly, telling him all about Elizabeth Rose, and he had her other letters carefully folded away in his kitbag. June hadn’t written very often towards the end, claiming that she was too busy.

  June. He had gone into a small church in Portsmouth and said a prayer for her. Molly was right to say that she wanted to keep her sister’s memory fresh for Elizabeth Rose, and he wanted to remember the beautiful, excitable young woman he had married, not the woman war had made her.

  Once again he felt that painful aching tug on his heart, quickly followed by a fierce feeling of guilty disloyalty. June had not been dead a year, and here he was letting thoughts he had no right to have fill his heart.

  * * *

  Christmas Day and Boxing Day had come and gone, and although Molly had done her best she knew that neither she nor her father had had the heart to celebrate. Christmas Day morning they had gone to the grave, and Molly’s father had said heavily that at least June and Rosie were together again now. Afterwards, Molly had left Lillibet with Doris Brookes and gone by herself to Eddie’s grave. He seemed so very far away from her now, as though their love for one another had existed in a different life. But she knew she would love him for ever and if things had worked out differently they would have been together when they were old and grey.

  Now the grey December afternoon had given way to an even greyer dusk, and Molly’s mouth tightened a little to hear Vera Lynn’s voice on the radio singing about bluebirds and white cliffs. Her mouth soon softened into a smile, though, when she bent down to help Lillibet build a tower from the wooden bricks she had had from ‘Father Christmas’. Doris Brookes had brought them round on Christmas Day afternoon, saying that she’d been having a rummage around in her attic because she’d remembered she still had some of Frank’s old toys there.

  Right now Lillibet seemed more interested in knocking down the tower Molly had built for her than in building one of her own and, looking down into her happy, innocent face, Molly couldn’t stop herself from sweeping her into her arms and kissing her.

  ‘I could eat you up, little Lillibet, do you know that?’ she crooned lovingly to her. She frowned when she heard someone knocking on the front door. Her father had gone round to see Uncle Joe, and she wasn’t expecting any callers. Putting Lillibet in her playpen, she went to open the door, switching off the hall light as she did so in order not to break the blackout laws.

  At first all she could see was a male outline masked by the shadows but then he stepped towards her and the moonlight revealed his face.

  ‘Frank.’ She could hear the pleasure in her own voice and feel it in the dizzying beat of her heart, and then he was stepping into
the hall and lifting her off her feet, to swing her round, laughing as he kicked the door closed and then suddenly not laughing at all as he held her close and lowered his mouth to her own.

  Men – fighting men – said and did all manner of things they wouldn’t have said or done in peacetime, Molly knew that, and she knew too it was up to her own sex to make them keep in line, and do what was proper. So why was she wrapping her arms around Frank’s neck and kissing him back, for all the world as though she had every right to do so? What he was doing was wrong. Frank was June’s, and she had no right to be feeling what she was feeling right now.

  Quickly she pulled back from him, putting a safer distance between them, glad of the hall’s darkness to hide her burning face and all the other evidence of what his kiss had done to her.

  ‘So the doctor says he’s not goin’ ter sign yer back up for active duty yet then?’ Molly’s father asked Frank, whilst Molly sat at the kitchen table, feeding Lillibet, who was sitting next to her in her highchair.

  ‘Here comes a train, choo choo choo …’ Molly coaxed, holding out a spoonful of mashed potato, making Lillibet clap her hands together excitedly.

  ‘No,’ Frank answered him. ‘He says me wound’s healing up, but he reckons I still won’t be able to fire me gun proper.’

  ‘No.’ Lillibet refused a second spoonful of the mash, pouting flirtatiously and eyeing her father as she said proudly, ‘Dada.’