‘Yes, Slapton Sands, Devon.’ The incident during which Johan had died had only recently come into the public domain. ‘An exercise rehearsing for the D-Day landings.’
‘Yes.’ Marjorie nodded, as if already aware.
‘I think it was mainly American allies that were killed, but a few Brits too. Johan was one of them. The last time I saw him, he told me he was one of the lucky ones, and I believed him. He said he would be safe and sound in Devon.’
‘He had every reason to believe he would be; it was the most tragic set of events. I heard it might have been as many as a thousand that died over two days, maybe more.’
‘That’s terrible.’ Molly tried and failed to picture a thousand people like her, all mourning the men they loved.
‘Yes, Molly, terrible. For you especially. I remember your face at the time and that you were’ – she paused – ‘quite unwell.’
‘I was. Did you . . . did you ever get the letter I sent to you at the Ministry? During the time I was absent?’ She bit her lip.
‘No,’ Marjorie answered, a little too quickly and with a practised gaze.
Molly wasn’t sure she believed her. She put the boxes of tea back on the shelf and reached into her pocket for her handkerchief. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘You know, I have a wonderful family and I’m happy, but I never met anyone else like him.’
‘You didn’t marry?’
Molly shook her head, thinking briefly of Rex and refusing to feel shame about her battles with her mental health. It was his loss and for her a lucky escape.
‘I was quite, erm . . . I was unwell after the war and then it felt easier to stay quiet, stay alone and forge my own way. For a while I was so very disappointed by the way things turned out. That’s the truth. I loved him and yet I barely knew him. But as I say, I now have a lot to feel thankful for. I think, when you’re young, you reckon you’re owed the fairy tale, but of course you’re not, and it doesn’t work out for everyone, does it? And yet I still have a good life, an ordinary one.’
‘I’m glad, Molly. You deserve a good life. War intensifies everything, doesn’t it? The normal rules don’t apply.’
Molly smiled at hearing the very phrase Johan had used. ‘He said once that time was compressed, stolen. And I thought I understood what he meant when he said it, but I certainly do now I’m able to look back. It was so intense, so all-consuming, and yet was no more than a blink in time.’
‘I think,’ Marjorie began, ‘that we all choose how we remember and how we celebrate the lives of those we lost. There’s no hard and fast rule, is there? But I do think sometimes a bit of nostalgia can be good, comforting.’ Marjorie reached up to the shelf and gathered the box of tea with the picture of the Queen from the shelf, placing it in Molly’s basket.
‘It’s been so very lovely to see you, Marjorie. I shall think about it long after we’ve said goodbye. You are the first person’ – Molly coughed to clear her thickening throat – ‘you’re the first person I’ve had to talk to about him in as long as I can remember, and I’m very grateful for that. It may seem like a small thing, but it’s actually of such great significance to me. Small things can mean so much. I have a brass button from his tunic that fell off the first time we met, the first time we danced; it’s terribly precious to me. Just an ordinary button.’
‘I can imagine, my love.’ Marjorie placed her hand on her forearm and took a step forward, her voice low. ‘You did a wonderful thing, Molly. A very brave thing. You were in the gravest danger, transporting those keys . . . If they’d found you, found them . . . they’d have tortured and killed you, without a doubt.’
Molly felt the blood rush from her head and she felt icy all over, her breath stuttering. ‘It was wartime . . . We all did what we had to, didn’t we?’
‘And your cousin, she was a remarkable woman, too,’ Marjorie said, as their eyes locked. ‘Violet.’
‘Violet. Oh my God, Marjorie! I still see her face!’ Molly swallowed. It was the first time she had said Violet’s name out loud since that night. Her eyes brimmed.
‘Yes, she did wonderful things – brave things that made all the difference to an awful lot of people, who have no idea that it’s her they need to thank and remember in their prayers, such was the nature of her work.’
Molly nodded. It seemed incredible, but it was true.
‘I . . . I don’t know whether to thank you for asking me or curse you.’
Marjorie fixed her with a stare. ‘I can imagine, but you did it anyway.’
‘But it went wrong – Violet and Pascal, they . . .’
‘Yes.’ Marjorie kept her voice level. ‘But that was not their first time at the rodeo: they knew the risks and it was a chance we were all willing to take because the reward was so great. You have to know that nothing was ever undertaken without the utmost thought or planning.’
‘But it was a trap, Marjorie! There was a mole: Jean-Luc – I saw him as a prisoner in the ranks walking towards the station, but he wasn’t a prisoner . . . He was supposed to be one of the motorcycle riders that night – he betrayed Pascal, told the Germans . . .’ Molly glanced over her shoulder and felt the old sickness rise in her gut. To talk about it so freely felt strange and oddly wonderful, like letting something trapped out of a bottle.
‘I know.’ Marjorie paused. ‘He didn’t survive the war: that’s all you need to know. And you did your bit, called out to the General, caused a distraction – you tried! And then you went back, informed on Jean-Luc, identified the mole. That was huge, bigger than you know . . . Trust me, if you hadn’t, we’d have lost a lot more than those two that night . . .’ Marjorie shook her head. ‘You were the courier, Molly, but also an extra pair of hands, and you put yourself in harm’s way.’
‘But she died anyway!’ Molly swallowed at the futility of it all, and then a thought dawned. ‘How . . . how do you know I called out – how did you know I went back?’
‘My husband . . .’ Marjorie looked at the floor and swallowed. ‘His instrument was the accordion.’
The two women locked eyes and Molly smelled once again the potent scent of that moment: a mixture of cigarette smoke, sweat and the stale tang of liquor, all with a base note of fear that she was sure came from her own skin.
‘He . . . he told me to run!’
‘And you did.’ Marjorie nodded.
‘And I did.’ Molly remembered the way her heart had felt as though it might burst in her chest.
‘It was all a long time ago,’ Marjorie said, stiffening, as if to indicate there was little point in digging at old wounds.
‘Yes, a long time ago.’
‘Darren!’ A young woman called after a toddler who was now racing down the aisle towards them. ‘Can you grab him?’
Marjorie bent down and placed her hand on the chest of the toddler to stop his mad dash; the other she placed on his back. ‘Hello there, little one! Are you running away from your mum?’ The boy squealed in laughter and showed her the little red and white Starsky and Hutch car in his palm.
‘Oh, thank you!’ Darren’s mum caught up. ‘He’s a rascal – runs away from me at every opportunity, don’t you, you little devil?’ She bent down and scooped the boy into her arms before smothering his face with kisses. Molly averted her eyes, finding it hard to watch the ease with which the lady cradled her boy, free to do so. ‘Sorry, ladies, it comes to something when you can’t stand in the supermarket and have a good old natter without being bowled into by a little monster. Come on, you! Say goodbye!’
Darren waved over his mum’s shoulder as she carted him off.
‘She probably thinks we were talking about the weather,’ Molly observed.
‘People only see what they want to see, Molly. To her, we are just two middle-aged women buying teabags. She cannot imagine being us, because when you’re young or even just younger than we happen to be, it seems unthinkable that you will ever become the older people around you. I think the older you get, the more invisible you b
ecome.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’
‘I do think about it sometimes, Molly, the things we did, the things we saw, the way we lived. It shapes you, doesn’t it?’
‘It certainly does.’
‘And then I remind myself that it was all so that our kids, grandkids and that little boy over there’ – she pointed after Darren – ‘won’t ever have to do the same,’ Marjorie said thoughtfully.
Molly nodded, knowing this was the truth. ‘I don’t talk about it much. But I don’t . . . I don’t ever forget,’ she admitted. ‘I have always wanted to know,’ she added, looking up, ‘what her real name was? Violet’s name? I’ve often wondered.’
Marjorie looked a little uncomfortable suddenly, as if making a judgement call. ‘Her name was Elizabeth.’
‘Elizabeth,’ Molly repeated, picturing the beautiful feisty girl with the same name as her own mother. She looked along the aisle at the shelves stacked with foods from all over the globe and suspected that Elizabeth would still, despite the vast array and choice, think that a well-baked spud with butter might be the very best thing to eat in the whole wide world.
‘I’d better go,’ Marjorie said, looking towards the window. ‘It’s been good to see you, it really has.’
‘It . . . it’s been good to see you too.’
Marjorie leaned in and gave her the sweetest kiss on the cheek, then slowly set off down the aisle.
‘Marjorie?’ Molly called after her, watching as the other woman turned on her heel to look back at her.
‘Yes?’
‘Did . . . did Elizabeth have family?’
Marjorie swallowed, her eyes misting as if overwhelmed by memories, and then walked away down the aisle past the coffee and hot chocolate.
Molly made her way along Marshalls Drive and turned into the driveway of the spacious home where Joe and Estelle lived. She knocked on the door and Joyce answered.
‘Where have you been? We’ve eaten nearly all the cake! Well, when I say we, I mean Frances.’ She whispered the last bit and gave a false grin. ‘You should see all the presents Adam’s got – quite unbelievable! They have so much these days – too much, if you ask me. Do you remember when we were little and at Christmas we got one doll! One doll! That was it, and we knew we were lucky.’
‘We did,’ Molly agreed, thinking back to those far-off days.
‘Well, you’re here now!’ Joyce nodded, her gaze a little off.
‘Yes, sorry, I got held up; bumped into an old friend I knew donkey’s years ago.’
‘Oh, from where?’
‘From . . . from work.’ Molly put her bags down on the floor and shook her hair from her collar.
‘And what did he have to say?’ Joyce asked curiously as she sipped her Cinzano and lemonade to the sound of kids squealing in the back garden.
‘She, and nothing,’ Molly replied, as she walked into the party. ‘Nothing, really.’
‘I see.’ Joyce tilted her head and stared at her.
‘What?’
‘Secrets, Molly. All these bloody secrets.’ Joyce rolled her eyes to the heavens and sniffed a little. ‘We have this wonderful life and yet it’s all underpinned by an enormous secret and I sometimes worry that, when we least expect it, it will fly out of someone’s mouth and cut us all, like some wild, loose scythe that will do nothing but irreparable damage.’
‘How many of those have you had?’ Molly eyed the Cinzano in her sister’s hand.
‘A few!’ Joyce raised her glass. ‘I couldn’t face not seeing David, couldn’t stand the thought of him not being here, and Clara crying into her hankie, and Frances being so very bolshie, so I decided to have a little drink.’
‘It’s probably best, dear.’ Molly tutted, trying to make light of the situation and knowing that she, too, keenly felt the absence of her brother.
‘I mean it, Molly.’ Joyce gripped her arm now, standing close. ‘I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time and I want you to promise me something. I don’t ever want our situation to be like some known but unspoken thing, like Mr Mason—’
‘Why are you talking about Mr Mason?’ Molly was perplexed.
‘Mr Mason! Our old neighbour!’
‘Yes, I know who he is!’ Molly tutted her irritation. ‘But what do you mean, an unspoken thing?’
‘Well, surely you must know that he and Mum . . .’ Joyce made a clicking noise at the side of her mouth.
‘He and Mum what?’ Molly needed clarification because she suddenly thought she knew what her sister was talking about, but surely to goodness not!
‘They were . . . friends,’ Joyce said with a wink.
‘Are you trying to tell me they had an affair?’ The prospect was monstrous, not only because the very idea of her mother having sex with anyone was unwelcome, but she could also still picture the sour-faced judgement her mother had poured on her: ‘Illegitimacy and infidelity are stains that do not wash off, not ever! As a woman of low moral conduct, what job do you think you might secure, exactly?’
‘Yes, I think it started when Papa got really ill and Mr Mason would drop by the house with bank stuff. They worked together at the—’
‘Yes, I know they worked together!’ Impatient now, Molly wanted Joyce to get to the point.
‘Well, after Papa died, he carried on “popping over” and David and I heard a few . . . noises, shall we say.’
‘David knew?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘You were our Little Moll – why would we tell you?’
‘Because I have not been “Little Moll” for the last fifty fucking years! I’m a grown woman!’ She laughed.
‘Molly!’ Joyce put a hand to her face, her expression shocked. ‘I have never heard you use that word.’
‘I have rarely felt the need to use the word! But my God! Mr Mason?’ She shuddered. ‘No wonder he was always turning up. I am so stupid!’
‘You’re not stupid and I think it’s rather lovely that Mum found comfort when Papa was very ill and after he died.’
‘I suppose it is lovely. I’m just a bit shocked, partly at my own naivety. But, yes, I’m really pleased she had someone I hope made her happy.’ Molly thought of her Victorian mother, who, it seemed, had also been a woman bound by the constrictions of her time. ‘I just hope Mrs Mason felt the same way!’ She tutted.
‘Are you going to swear again?’ Joyce stared at her.
‘Fuckity fuck, Joyce. Fucking fuckity fuck!’
Joyce laughed loudly and Molly joined in, but in truth she felt on the edge of tears. Her sister pulled her into a one-armed hug.
‘Poor old Mum, Joycey. She was miserable and guilt-ridden and judgemental, but she was still our mother.’
‘I thought, if she could, she might have sent us a sign after she died,’ Joyce said, taking another sip of her Cinzano.
‘Like what?’ Molly laughed.
‘Oh, I don’t know – you hear of things, don’t you, like doorbells ringing and lights going on and off?’
‘Stop it, Joyce, you’re scaring me!’ Molly shivered, thinking that if Johan could have sent her a sign, he would have by now. ‘And if you want to send me a sign, Joyce, do it subtly so I don’t jump out of my skin, and I promise I’ll do the same for you.’
‘That’s a deal, my little sunflower.’
‘A deal, my darling dandelion.’ Molly smiled at her sister, whom she so loved.
Joyce nodded, her tone suddenly serious. ‘I want you to promise me something, Molly—’
‘What?’ Molly asked, pulling away.
‘If I die first . . .’
‘Oh, Joyce, please don’t talk like that!’
‘No! I mean it, Molly. It’s important.’ She took her time now and Molly listened. ‘If I die first, I want you to tell Joe. Tell him everything, but I don’t think I want to be around when you do. And I know I have no right to ask that, Moll, but you are the dearest thing to me. There’s o
nly one thing dearer and that’s our boy.’
Molly nodded at her big sister, who was also one of her dearest things. It was a family secret that was kept because the repercussions of letting it out of the bag felt too huge, but maybe her sister was right – with everyone gone, would that be the right time to give Joe his history? It would, she knew, be her greatest moment to be called Mum by the boy she had given birth to.
‘All right, Joycey, I promise.’
‘Promise me!’
‘I just did!’ Molly held her gaze. ‘I did.’
‘We don’t need to mention this again, do we?’ Joyce asked, leaning in close to her.
‘No, dear, we don’t.’
And they never did.
‘Look at you two conspiring in the hallway!’ Joe boomed, as he appeared from the kitchen. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ Joyce laughed.
‘Nothing,’ Molly confirmed.
TWENTY
Chelmsford, Essex
1985
Aged 60
Molly swapped her grocery bag to the other hand and flexed her fingers, newly released from their plastic-handled stranglehold. She had only nipped into the store on her way home for some tomatoes and fresh milk but been swayed by the offers on freshly ground coffee and tinned soup, which now weighed down her bag. She’d also bought a newspaper, which today carried only one story: the end of the year-long miners’ strike. Molly hoped that the miners, their families and the communities who had supported them could finally find some kind of peace, but with many of the pits closed for good and many a hard-working man on his knees, she doubted it.
Turning into her road, she spotted a police car parked someway along on the left and her first thought was that she hoped no one had been hurt or anything ghastly like that. Cars and motorbikes tended to roar around these streets and she often thought it only a matter of time before something dreadful happened. The lack of ambulance was, she figured, either a very good sign or a very bad one. Reaching into her jacket pocket, Molly ran her fingers over her house keys. It was a fact that, as she entered her early sixties, her memory had started to sprout leaks. Not for the important or ancient things, oh no, those were locked in with as much detail as if they had occurred yesterday. It was more the everyday stuff, like remembering to take her keys out with her when she left the house, wondering whether or not she had switched off the iron, and trying to recall if she had put the bins out already on bin day – these were the kind of chores and tasks that she found fell through the gaps between intention and action. It drove her crackers and she suspected this was the exact kind of event that would have far less of an impact and be far less of a concern, had she been in a relationship. It wasn’t that she was lonely per se, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that her loneliness did not overly trouble her, but there were certainly times when she thought of how much easier life might be for an ageing woman if there was someone by her side to age with. How she envied those with the ability to look over the breakfast table at the person they loved and ask, ‘Did I remember to . . .?’ It must be nice. She often wondered what kind of couple she and Johan would have become: happy, harmonious friends or bickering, petty rivals, or worse: indifferent to each other? The former, she suspected, and even the thought of it made her smile.
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