Molly's War (12 page)

She served the pie, rich with onion gravy and succulent steak, which had cost more than she usually spent on meat in a week. There were mashed potatoes and vegetables from the garden, the pie crust was thick and savoury, and the men tucked in with a will in spite of their anxiety over Molly, a feeling which worsened as the days went on.

Today they had become desperate enough to knock on doors at random in West Auckland. And they thought their luck was getting better when one woman had said yes, she had seen her.

‘Come after the attic room,’ she had said. ‘A nice lass
an
’ all, I thought, though that’s not what folk said about her, not when she was sent down for thieving. I didn’t think she looked the type at all. I was looking forward to having her living here but she never came back. I would have took her in an’ all, I don’t care what other folk think or say.’ Cathy looked speculatively at the two soldiers. ‘You her brothers, are you?’

‘I am,’ said Harry. ‘This is my friend, we’re both from Eden Hope. Molly didn’t do it, you know. She wouldn’t, she’s an honest girl. Look, if you see or hear from her, will you let us know? This is Jackson’s mother’s address.’ He handed her an envelope, addressed and stamped.

Cathy took the envelope and studied it for a second or two.

‘I’ll do that,’ she said. She bit her lip and hesitated before going on: ‘I know that Bart Jones – he’s a flaming hypocrite, always was! They chucked him out of the Chapel once, some goings on they hushed up. Now
that
never got told to the magistrates. His own daughter went about like a timid mouse before she went into the sanatorium up Weardale. But there’s no justice, is there?’

The men nodded in agreement. They were both silent at first as they walked on to the bus stop. There was no point in knocking on any more doors and it was almost tea-time.

Jackson couldn’t bear to speak, in fact, his emotions were so mixed. Anger that the magistrates had taken the
word
of Bart Jones against a girl like Molly, frustration that yet another day of their leave had gone and they were no nearer to finding her. Worst of all was the anxiety of wondering where she was, if she was all right, always hoping nothing had happened to her.

Now they had to go back to camp without finding her. The order said immediately which meant the overnight train to King’s Cross where they would get their connection. Suddenly he’d had enough of his mother’s steak pie and pushed his plate away.

‘Now then, lad. You have to eat, keep your strength up. Don’t you go wasting good food, not after all the years we were short during the slump.’

With an effort he managed to clear his plate. Leaving food was indeed a sin in Eden Hope. And then the two friends had to pack their kitbags and go dashing through the wood to the station at Bishop Auckland, to catch the train by the skin of their teeth.

‘I’ll watch out for Molly, I will, son, I promise,’ Mrs Morley called down the street after them. She stood gazing after them long after they had turned the corner.

‘You’ve had the lad home on leave then?’

Turning, she saw Ann Pendle coming towards her and was just in the mood to give her a piece of her mind.

‘Aye, I have,’ snapped Maggie. ‘The both of them. Not that we saw much of them, mind, they’ve been out looking for young Molly most of the time. I blame your Joan for most of it an’all, the spiteful little cat!’

‘Well! How could it be Joan’s fault, eh?
She
never pinched anything.’

‘No, and neither did Molly Mason. You should be ashamed, Ann Pendle, an’ you her mother’s best friend. Your Joan spreading lies about her, just because she was jilted by Harry. If you ask me, he had a lucky escape there!’

‘By, you have a flaming nerve, talking like that about my lass! I’ll have you know –’

But what she was going to let Maggie know was lost as that lady stalked up her yard and went into the house, slamming the door behind her.

At Darlington, Harry and Jackson found the train full of soldiers returning to barracks and had to settle down on their kitbags in the corridor. Neither of them caring much about it, they sat there and stared at the floor or their boots, occasionally standing to stretch their legs and staring out of the window at the darkening landscape. Jackson lifted his eyes to see Harry, a Woodbine in his fingers, the ash on the end growing longer and longer as he forgot about it. Jackson got to his feet and stood beside him.

‘We did all we could,’ he said.

‘An’ not very much, was it?’

‘No.’ Jackson spoke heavily, feeling defeated.

The train was slowing down as it came into York station. It was crowded with men in uniform and women seeing them off but Jackson stared out unseeingly.

They had gone to Adelaide Street, found the house where Bart Jones lived, but there’d been no one in. The man next door had come out, angry at being woken.

‘Can you not let a man sleep when he’s on night shift?’ he had snarled.

‘Sorry, mate,’ said Jackson. ‘I wonder, though, now you’re awake, when does Mr Jones get in from work?’

‘He’ll be here any minute,’ the neighbour had replied. ‘Ah, look, here he is now. Now if you don’t mind …’ He went inside and closed the door behind him.

‘Yes?’ Bart Jones had asked, his head cocked to one side. ‘Are you looking for me?’

‘We are if you’re the man Molly Mason used to lodge with,’ said Harry. ‘We want to know where she is.’

Bart’s demeanour changed. He looked about him before gesturing them closer. ‘Aye, I am,’ he said. ‘An’ a sorry day it was too when I let her into my house. Stole from me, she did.’

‘You’re a liar!’ Harry had suddenly yelled at him, and Bart Jones visibly paled and jumped away from the two soldiers. ‘My sister never stole a penny in her life! She’s just a young lass, brought up right an’ all, she wouldn’t steal anything.’

‘Harry, calm down,’ Jackson had cautioned, though his own blood was boiling.

‘Aye, you tell him, coming here, threatening a poor chap like me. I’ve got a bad leg, let me tell you, and if you go
for
me I’ll have the polis on you, I will!’ As if he had been summoned, a policeman appeared at the top of the street. ‘Constable Horton! Constable!’ Bart Jones yelled, suddenly sounding more confident. ‘These soldiers are threatening me!’

‘What’s all the commotion?’

The policeman was middle-aged and portly. He walked slowly up to them and frowned at the soldiers.

‘It’s about that young lass what stole from me. You know, the one who got sent to prison. They want to know where she is. I’m sure I don’t know, I don’t want anything to do with the likes of her again.’ Bart sniffed and pursed his lips in disdain.

‘He was saying things about my sister,’ said Harry, his fingers itching to squeeze Bart’s throat.

‘An’ you threatened me! I have a good mind to lay you in, threatening innocent citizens …’

Jackson took a step towards Bart and he hurriedly backed into the house, ready to close the door on him.

‘Aye, well, I’m sure it was in the heat of the minute. We don’t want to be putting our soldier lads in gaol, do we? Not just now, we might need them,’ said the constable mildly. ‘Howay then, lads, time to be away, I think.’ He gave them a friendly nod.

‘Aw, come on, Jackson,’ said Harry. ‘We’re going to get nowt out of him, the dirty little bugger. I suspect he was sniffing up our Molly’s skirts and when she turned him down …’

‘I didn’t! I never did!’ shouted Bart Jones, his head peeping out from behind the door.

‘Never mind that,’ said the constable. ‘Inside wi’ you now. An’ you two, away wi’ you.’

And Jackson and Harry had turned on their heel and marched up the street.

‘I didn’t expect to find out anything from him any road,’ said Harry. ‘I just wanted to see the man who put the lass in prison.’

‘Aye,’ Jackson agreed. ‘I think you hit the nail on the head too. That was likely the way it happened, he’ll have made up to her.’

‘Aye.’

They lapsed into silence. Jackson was thinking of Bart Jones with his hands on Molly and his skin crawled. There were plenty of Bart Joneses out there, ready to take advantage of young girls. Pray God nothing more happened to her before they found her.

He sat down on his kitbag and leaned his head and shoulders against the side of the train. He closed his eyes, unable to get out of his mind a picture of Molly, frightened, at the mercy of men like Bart Jones. Or else in gaol, trying not to show how humiliated she was. For she would have been humiliated. Molly was a proud girl. Even as a little ’un she’d held her head high like a queen.

The train was steaming into Peterborough when on impulse he got to his feet and worked his way to the door through the crowds already on the train and the crowds
beginning
to get on, most of them soldiers with kitbags.

‘Watch it, Sergeant!’ a voice protested as he pushed his way out, bumping into a sailor and knocking the kitbag from his shoulder.

‘Sorry,’ Jackson muttered and jumped down from the train.

‘Jackson!’ Harry was shouting through the open window of the carriage.

‘You go on, Harry,’ he shouted back. ‘I’ll be there in a couple of days. Nothing will happen before then but there’s no need for two of us to get into bother. With a bit of luck, I’ll find her.’

His last words were lost as the whistle blew and the London train chugged out of the station. Jackson ran over to the opposite platform and jumped on the train standing there, this one half empty. He couldn’t just go away like that, war or no war. He had to have another try at finding her.

Molly woke in black darkness. For a moment she thought herself back in prison and fear of the morning overwhelmed her before her mind cleared of nightmares and she sat up in bed. There was the sound of water. Rain was drumming against the small window at the top of the basement wall. There was more, though, not just raindrops. Water was lapping against something, it sounded close. She got out of bed, putting her feet directly into her shoes for the floor was of stone slabs and bitterly cold even at
this
time of the year. Groping her way over to the light switch, she slipped and almost fell. She was treading in water!

The light came on briefly and went off with a crackle. She had to find the mantelshelf and the candle and matches she kept there, for the electricity here was always going off. The hem of her nightie was wet, she realised, it flapped coldly about her legs. Something else brushed against her legs, something furry. She felt a scream rise up from her throat and forced it down again.

Her fingers closed around the box of matches. She fumbled to open it, almost dropped it, managed at last to take out a match and strike it to light the candle. Lifting it high, she gazed around the room: the dank walls, the steps leading up to the ground floor of the old house, the door with the bottom rotted away and a hole as big as a fist. Water was running down towards her.

Molly jumped on to the bed in a panic as she saw two, no, four, rats thrashing in the water, one of them actually swimming. For a moment she stood on the bed, frozen into stillness, then her brain began working again. She jumped down and grabbed her coat from the hook on the back of the door, lifting the latch.

The door swung open with the force of the water; the passage outside was completely covered. There was no sound but for the rushing of the water, the drumming of the rain, and from a room upstairs a man snoring, oblivious to it all.

‘Get up! Get up! The place is flooded!’ Molly shouted at the top of her voice. No one answered. She climbed up the stairs and shouted again, ‘There’s a flood! Wake up – wake up, all of you!’

‘What the hell’s all that noise?’ a man’s voice shouted, the landlord’s voice it was. ‘Has Hitler invaded or what?’

‘There’s a flood,’ cried Molly, ‘the river must be up!’

‘Aye, well, it does that now an’ again down here,’ the voice said. ‘I’m going back to bed. It won’t reach me up here. We’ll deal with it in the morning.’

‘But what about me?’ she screamed.

‘Oh, aye, you’re in the basement, aren’t you? Well, you’ll just have to sit it out at the top of the stairs. I’m away back to bed, I have work the morn.’

Molly stared after him as he went back into his bedroom. She heard the springs creak as he got back into bed. Then she ran up and knocked on his door in total disbelief.

‘What about me, I said? What about me? I pay my rent!’

‘Aye, well, there’s nowt to be done about the Wear. I’m not Moses, I can’t hold back the waters,’ he replied. The bedsprings creaked again, the door opened and he threw out a blanket and pillow. ‘I told you, bed down on the landing, will you? And don’t disturb me again.’

Someone shouted from the floor above. ‘It’s all right, go back to sleep!’ the landlord shouted back, and closed his door.

Molly stared at the blanket and pillow, neither of them too clean. Then she rushed back down the stairs. The water in the basement was up to the level of her mattress. She waded in and grabbed her underclothes and skirt and jumper, wet though they were. Her teeth clenched against screams as more furry bodies brushed against her. She waded to the chest of drawers and took out her spare underclothes, all wet, and took them up the stairs to the dry landing. As an afterthought she went back for the marble clock which had come from Eden Hope.

Shivering, she lay down on a strip of carpet on the landing, pulling the blanket over her. Her mind was numb. She was past worrying about anything, even managed to doze a little. When she awoke, the light of morning was creeping on to the landing from an open bedroom door. The rain had stopped. Someone was moving about downstairs. Molly stood up, pulling the blanket round her.

‘You can give us a hand here, if you like,’ said the landlord. He had a yardbroom in his hand. As she watched he opened the front door and began sweeping water out. It cascaded over the steps, brown river water, dark with peat and full of debris. The rats had disappeared or perhaps were still in the basement.

The grass in front of the house was bedraggled and sodden, bits of debris caught in patches of nettles and ground elder.