by Annie Murray
Molly sensed in her an aching loneliness, akin to that she felt herself. Of course, it was not the done thing to miss the war. Everyone had to be glad it was over, overjoyed to be getting on with their lives – getting married, having families, building a life. But what if you were not destined for any of those things? She could see that Phoebe missed the army with the same endless ache as she did herself, knowing, as she felt it all slipping away, that it had been the best time of her life, and that it was over now. And that somehow you had to go on.
As they were all getting up to leave, though, Phoebe surprised her by slipping her a piece of paper.
‘My address. I don’t suppose you have a fixed address – but do drop me a line if you think of it, will you?’ There was a hesitant smile on her face.
‘D’you really want me to?’ Molly spoke lightly, jokingly, to cover the fact that she was so touched by the request. She could see that Phoebe Morrison had not found it easy to ask. ‘Course I will – I’ll send you a card now and then, let you know where I’ve got to next!’
‘Do,’ Phoebe said briskly, turning away. ‘I’d like that.’
Forty-Six
All that winter she had kept running. That was how it felt now. Keep moving: don’t settle to anything for too long. That was the way to keep life feeling like an adventure, like being on the road – a place where no one could expect or demand too much of her or get to know her too well.
At first she had been with Liza.
‘You can come back to Mum’s with me,’ she said, as Molly wondered what to do at the end of their first camp summer. The season ended in September. ‘See what we can find.’
After a few nights sleeping downstairs on a lumpy couch at Liza’s house in Plaistow, where her thin, harassed mother was bringing up eight other children, Molly moved out to be a paying guest in another house. Liza’s mother also put in a word for her at Tate & Lyle, where she worked, and Molly got a job packing sugar. It was all right for a bit and helped her get on her feet. But she didn’t like factory work and some of the women got on her nerves, forever taking the rise out of her accent (‘Ow! Yow from Birmigum, boy any chance?’). Liza, back in London now, where she had other friends, began to treat her in a very offhand way. Molly knew when she wasn’t wanted and moved on.
In her bag she had a scrap of paper with the address on it of one of the guests at Clacton, a married man who had taken a blatant fancy to her. But he had also offered her a job in a cinema in South London. Molly had been surprised. He was a big, beefy, red-faced man who looked more like a butcher.
‘You’re just the sort of girl I could do with,’ he’d said, ogling her shamelessly, even in front of his wife, while tucking into his roast chicken. ‘You’d bring in the crowds all right – wouldn’t she, Rene?’
Rene looked mildly across the table. ‘I s’pect she would, Bert, yes.’
‘You’ll want somewhere to go – yer can’t stick here all the year round.’ He had insisted on writing the address down and Molly took it, with no thought of doing anything about it – until now.
‘Albert Carter,’ the paper said, ‘Gaumont Cinema’, followed by a scrawled address. She had to ask someone to decipher it for her.
‘Oh, I get it – that’s down Walworth way,’ the man told her. ‘Bit of a way from ’ere, love.’
She had thought Bert Carter might have forgotten about her by now, that he used his chat-up line wherever he went, handing out his address, but he had seemed very pleased to see her. She arrived at the Gaumont, a dark old fleapit of a place, and, heart sinking, asked the girl in the ticket kiosk for him by name.
The girl looked her up and down with a snide, knowing glance and said pertly. ‘Who shall I say it is?’
‘Molly Fox,’ Molly said, trying to sound dignified.
Anyway, if he doesn’t remember or he’s rude, he can stuff it, she thought.
But Bert Carter soon appeared, in his shirtsleeves, red-faced as if he had been hurrying, and seemed delighted to see her. A job? Of course! Hadn’t he promised? Within a day Molly was installed as an usherette at the Gaumont and had a room in the house of a Mrs Willetts a few streets away.
The work was all right, and she liked to see parts of the pictures as she stood waiting. But she waited to see what the catch was. Sure enough, it was the obvious one. Bert Carter’s line of suggestive remarks – ‘You’re looking very lush-civious today, my dear . . .’ – and attempts to grope her in dark corners whenever he got the chance were no more than she expected. But, as Mavis, the rather superior girl who worked at the front, told her world wearily, ‘Oh, you don’t want to take too much notice – ’e’s all mouth, that one. Some of ’em like the girly papers for a bit of an eyeful; ’e just likes to ’ave it walking around, that’s all. It don’t amount to anything.’
Molly fended him off and made friends with the other usherettes, all of whom were pretty, buxom girls, and comparing notes, they realized they had all been employed for the same reason. As Lily, one of them, said with a cackle one day, ‘We’re just ’ere to ’elp ’im keep ’is right hand busy!’
It was all right until Christmas. Christmas Eve was hectic, but Molly could feel it building up: the sense of dread of the next lonely day. Why had she come back to London of all places? She’d burned her boats with Liza, so there was no invitation there. That evening, on the way home, she broke all her rules and bought a bottle of Scotch.
‘I can’t get through tomorrow without you,’ she whispered to the bottle, tucking it under her arm in the foggy, dimly lit street. As she stood there, she had a moment of complete giddy panic: a vision of herself, all alone on the vast, spinning world. She had to right herself against the front of a shop.
Her landlady, a reclusive woman, didn’t seem to be celebrating Christmas either. Molly spent the day alone in her room, sinking lower and lower. For lunch she heated a tin of soup and ate a ham sandwich. Too late she realized she should have done something about it, gone to Birmingham and asked Em if she could be with them. But the thought of Birmingham – and of being anywhere near her mother – oppressed her.
She thought of past Christmases, army Christmases with all the laughter and entertainments. Faces flashed before her mind, especially from that final Christmas, in Belgium. They knew it was all coming to an end, and that had that lightened the pressure on everything. She remembered a group of them singing round an old piano in a school hall; Cath’s face, pink and joyful, knowing that soon she might be with her beloved Derck; the pianist, a plump girl called Susan, so close to being helpless with laughter that she struggled to play; and in the background – as usual – Phoebe Morrison, singing, her face alight as she watched everyone with an almost maternal air. She had looked happy. Molly thought of the dulled, almost bitter woman she had seen in London, the gruff cards she had received with sardonic references to ‘keeping on keeping on’.
It was that scene among many memories that floated through her mind as sat on her bed and stared at the bottle. Johnnie Walker. It was the same spirit that her brother Bert had plied her with that night during the war when she went to the house, until she was almost too drunk to know what was happening. She saw his bony face in her mind, then her mother’s bloated one. She thought of the men whom she might have ended up with, had things been different, had she been different – Tony, and Len. All the sadness and regrets of her life, which she usually tried to run away from, welled up in her today and she couldn’t seem to stop them. Look at me! I might as well go and walk the roads like a proper tramp – I’m living like one anyway. Tears came, sharply, making her sob. The rest of the day was a haze. She slept for most of it. On Boxing Day she woke feeling terrible and her first thought was: I’ve got to get out of here.
She left the Gaumont and her lodgings and got a job as a school cook. Her landlady, in a little terraced house, was a Marion Letts, a petite, dark-haired woman in her thirties whose husband had deserted her, leaving her with two young sons, Jimmy and Alan. Though harassed, she w
as keen to have a bit of company, and the boys, who were six and eight, liked having Molly in the house, especially as it was also at their school that she worked. Together they struggled through that bitterly cold winter, knitting balaclavas for the boys while pipes burst in the school where Molly worked, and spent every evening sitting on top of the fire, in all the clothes they could find, smoking all the cigarettes they could get hold of, to keep warm.
‘You’d make a nice mum,’ Marion said one evening, head on one side. ‘Haven’t you got anyone in your life, Molly? You’re so pretty, I’d’ve thought they’d be swarming around you.’
‘Oh, there’ve been one or two,’ Molly said lightly. She didn’t go into any real detail about her life to Marion. ‘But I’ve been moving about a fair bit lately. I’ll be off again, come the spring.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Marion said, and Molly could tell she meant it. ‘You’ve been such a help, and the boys like having you here an’ all.
‘Maybe I’ll be back next winter,’ Molly said. ‘We’ll just have to see.’
But she had enjoyed the boys’ company too. They were friendly little lads, and during that hard winter she knew she had been a real part of the household. ‘Almost like a husband!’ she had joked to Marion, who replied drily, ‘Yeah – but more use!’
By the spring she had been restless again and, as soon as the camp season was about to begin, she decided to head for somewhere new: this time, Butlin’s at Filey. She knew the drill now, so doing it without Liza didn’t feel difficult. Getting on a train at King’s Cross, travelling up the east coast, reminded her of the war, when the length of the coast had bristled with camps and ack-ack batteries and every kind of operation for prediction and security. Now the beaches were innocent again, dotted with holidaymakers. All the urgency and heightened intensity of that time was gone, and Molly knew she mourned it.
I’ll give Filey a few weeks, she promised herself, sitting beside her little holdall on the train. And then see where I might go.
When Ruth came to Bracklesham Bay, Molly had been there for three weeks. She always let Ruth know where she was, dropping her light-hearted postcards in a ‘Guess what I’m up to now!’ sort of tone. She had also sent Em and Cath cards too, ashamed of how long it was since she had been in touch. They always wrote a note back, but they were busy with husbands and children. They lived another sort of life. She could hardly admit to herself how much it meant that Ruth had become such a good friend. In all the dashing here and there and the changes in her life, Ruth had become a fixed point – almost like a sister. Ruth was the one person now who cared enough to take Molly to task.
‘So,’ Ruth demanded, the last evening of her visit as they strolled along the beach, ‘how long are you going to keep this up, Molly?’
‘Keep what up?’ Molly pretended innocence.
‘This life you’re living – shifting here and there with no aim in sight. You’re like some kind of gypsy!’
Molly turned away, looking out across the mauve evening water.
‘You can do better, Molly,’ Ruth insisted.
Tears in her eyes, Molly said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how else to do it.’
X
KATIE
Forty-Seven
1948
Over those next days, the household with its new members had to settle in and get used to one another. Everyone was busy, and most conversations took place over the evening meal. They all sat round in Sybil’s dining room – the two Poles, quickly becoming familiar to them, at first peering curiously at the food and sometimes conferring quickly in Polish, as if trying to make out what they were about to eat. (Corned beef – this is same as Bully Beef? Baked beans?) At the sight of green haricot beans their eyes lit up. ‘You grew these on your land? Ah – marvellous!’ They were very polite, making sure everyone had what they needed, passing dishes across the table, Piotr with his strong, beefy hands, Marek long-limbed and long-fingered, the shadows cast by the lamp showing up his sharp cheekbones.
Katie learned things gradually, listening to the tea-time conversations. She discovered that the Poles were not free to come and go as they pleased; that if they went anywhere new, they had to register with the local police. They were also not allowed to work in any job of their own choosing. Their employment was restricted, for the time being, to menial jobs and ‘dirty’ industries. In the Displaced Persons camps scattered across Britain, Polish ex-soldiers and airmen and civilian arrivals to the country were being taught English and had often been learning trades. Piotr had trained as a barber.
Soon after the men arrived, Katie met Piotr on the middle landing one morning, as she was on her way out to take Michael to Maudie’s house.
‘Ah, hello!’ he said. ‘How are you today?’
They exchanged polite greetings. Katie still felt shy of both of them.
‘And how are you, little Michael?’
‘All right,’ Michael said. Both the men made a fuss of him. They seemed very happy to be living in a home, and with a child about.
Katie was about to move on past when Piotr took a lock of Michael’s hair between his finger and thumb.
‘I can cut for you, if you please . . .’
‘Oh!’ Katie was startled. It was true, Michael’s hair was getting rather long. ‘Can you?’ she said doubtfully. She felt Piotr’s eyes on her for a moment, unmistakably sizing her up, and found herself blushing.
‘I am barber – I train. Now I get work in barber shop. So I can do . . .’ He made a scissor motion with his hands.
‘Well, that would be very nice, wouldn’t it, Michael? Would you like Mr . . . Mr Piotr to cut your hair?’
‘Yes!’ Michael said excitedly. He had taken to Piotr. Marek always smiled at him in a kindly way, but was more reserved.
‘OK,’ Piotr said happily, ‘OK – I cut! Tonight, yes?’
That evening they took a plank from the shed outside and, to Sybil’s great amusement, set it across the arms of one of the chairs in the dining room to make a high seat. They tucked a towel round Michael’s neck, and Piotr lifted him onto his makeshift chair.
‘You can take the mirror down,’ Sybil suggested, as she sat, smiling at this spectacle. ‘That’s it . . .’ Katie lifted the oval mirror from its hook on the wall near the door and held it, so that Michael could watch while his new barber gave him a short back and sides. Piotr kept up a run of little jokes.
‘Now, this needs to be cut,’ and he tweaked the boy’s nose. ‘And this’ – one ear, until Michael was squirming and giggling. ‘Oh, you must be still!’
But Piotr tickled the little boy’s neck so that he wriggled all over again.
‘How’re we going to finish – huh?’
Katie found herself laughing at his antics. Then, as Piotr was snipping away, over his shoulder she noticed a movement. Marek had come to stand in the doorway and was watching with a gentle smile on his lips. Their eyes met for a moment, then she turned away, blushing, wondering what this quiet, lean man was thinking.
A moment later, looking very grown-up, Michael slid down off the chair.
‘All finished!’ he cried, triumphant.
‘Bravo!’ Marek clapped.
‘Don’t you look grown-up?’ Sybil said. Katie saw that she was thoroughly enjoying all these comings and goings in her house.
Marek had found work at Lucas’s in Great King Street. When Sybil asked him, over one evening meal, what he had done before, in Poland, he listened to the question in his polite, intent way, then shrugged.
‘I was student. When the Germans came in thirty-nine – then Soviets – I was sixteen years. I have no job.’
‘No, of course, how silly of me,’ Sybil said, while Katie realized, to her surprise, that she and Marek were the same age. She had thought him to be older. He seemed older – both of the Poles did.
‘And what about your sister?’
‘She was then twelve years.’
Since the war Lucas had stopped making parts fo
r Beaufighters and Stirling bombers and had returned to the production of parts for cars and peacetime aeroplanes. Marek had a quite menial job in assembly.
‘But surely,’ Sybil said, ‘a bright young man like you could be apprenticed?’
‘Perhaps one day.’ Marek nodded. ‘But not now. Is not allowed.’
‘Should you like that, d’you think?’ Sybil asked. And in a rare moment of probing for facts, ‘What was your father’s occupation?’
‘He was chemist. Not in a factory – I mean . . .’ Marek put down his knife and fork. ‘He was teacher.’ After a moment he added, ‘My mother too.’
‘A chemist?’
‘No.’ A faint smile reached his eyes. ‘She teached small children.’
‘Taught,’ Sybil corrected.
‘Ah yes, taught. Thank you.’
‘Was it she who taught you to play the piano?’ They had heard Marek play, haunting tunes and infectious dances that made Katie want to tap her feet immediately, his long body leaning into the piano, relearning things he had not played for years. Gradually they were coming back to him. It was lovely to listen to, and Sybil was delighted.
‘Er, no – it was a lady, a neighbour. My mother, she played, but only little bit – in the school.’
‘Ah, songs for the children, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes,’ Marek nodded, ‘that sort of thing.’
Further questions about his family seemed to hang in the air, but it didn’t feel right to ask them.
About his sister, though, Marek was more forthcoming and they soon found out more about her. Agnieska’s ship had docked at Southampton at the end of June and she had been taken, with many of the others who had travelled from Mombasa, to Daglingworth Camp, outside Gloucester. Soon after they moved in, Marek had visited the camp to be reunited with her, coming back to report that she had been placed for the moment in the care of a Polish family, and that she had some problems with her health. She would stay in the camp for at least a few months to learn more English and become acclimatized.
