Molly's War (21 page)

‘Fall back to the gun emplacement,’ said Jackson. ‘Now!’

Only two of the men got to their feet. As the dust cleared, Jackson crept closer to the others. They were all dead.

Harry … He had to get back to Harry. What would Molly think if he let her brother fall into the hands of the Germans? With its even occurring to him how ludicrous the thought was when they were all likely to be taken by the enemy at any minute, Jackson picked up one of the dead men’s rifles and carried it along with his own down the hill to the cluster of houses near the bottom.

Thank God there was a French ambulance standing there, they must be taking away the wounded. There were bodies all around, the German fire had taken a heavy toll of the French infantrymen.

‘Harry?’

His friend was being brought out of the cottage, leaning heavily on the arm of a Red Cross man. He was white from loss of blood, but he was on his feet.

‘I’m fine, Jackson, don’t bother about me. I reckon this lot’ll get me a nice fortnight back in Blighty.’ He looked
over
his shoulder and winked at his friend as he was helped into the ambulance which was already crowded with wounded.

‘Lucky beggar,’ said Jackson. At least Harry was getting out of it, he thought as he turned away and began to climb back up the hill to the clump of bushes where the French ack-ack gun was, barrel trained on the skyline where the Germans would appear. The thing was to hold them back as long as possible, he told himself.

The French were falling back, only the gun crew were still there. But even as Jackson slid behind the sandbag barrier the Germans appeared on the skyline, inexorably moving nearer. The French were shouting to each other. The soldier manning the gun left it and moved back. Jackson realised they were going to abandon the position. But if they did, the Germans could easily overrun the ambulance, take them all prisoner, and then what about Harry?

‘
Allez! Allez!
’ he shouted, and took hold of the gun. With a quick glance behind him he waved them away, a gesture they understood more easily than his terrible French. He began firing at the enemy, succeeded in halting the first car, then the tank behind. He didn’t pause but carried on firing until the ammunition was exhausted. When he looked behind him the French were gone, all of them, men and vehicles, including the ambulance carrying Harry, thank God.

Now was the time to get away himself, while the
Germans
were momentarily halted. Jackson slid away from the gun emplacement on his belly, got almost to a clump of trees by the now roofless farmhouse when an explosion rocked the earth once more. The gun he had been manning was flung into the air like a child’s toy and he sank into oblivion.

Chapter Nineteen

‘MIDDLESBROUGH BOMBED!’

The news spread fast around the Royal Ordnance Factory.

‘Bloody hell,’ the guard on the gate said as Molly showed him her pass to get in. ‘Middlesbrough! Not a kick in the backside away from here, is it?’

Molly agreed. All of them felt a surge of disquiet at the news. It wasn’t the fact that Middlesbrough was the first industrial town to be bombed so much as the thought of what would happen if a bomb dropped on this factory. Half of County Durham could be blown to smithereens.

‘What the heck?’ said Mona when they met during the break. ‘They’ll never find us, not with the fog down most of the time. Any road, we have to go sometime, haven’t we?’

They were getting used to the feeling of danger, all of them. At the beginning of the war they’d all carried their gas masks everywhere but now fewer and fewer people did, though more might well after this latest event.

‘No letter from Harry,’ Mona said as they walked down
to
their places. For once she was solemn-faced. It had been on the radio that the Germans had broken through, were streaming into France. She looked at Molly questioningly.

‘I haven’t had anything either.’

Mona sighed. ‘Oh, well, let’s get on with it.’

Today at dinnertime they were to give their first show to the workers. Gary Dowson was full of himself, they moaned to each other.

‘Don’t forget, girls, straight in and go to the head of the queue. I’ve arranged it,’ he said, hurrying past them. Though even then he still had time for an ingratiating smile at Molly, followed by a look which drank her in from head to toe, though her figure was hidden under the enveloping overall. Instinctively she folded her arms over her breasts.

‘My Lord, Molly, you’re going to have to watch him,’ Mona commented as they paused outside Molly’s door. She watched the foreman disappear around the bend in the corridor.

‘Not so easy when we’re singing a duet,’ she replied.

They were singing ‘The Indian Love Song’ from
Rose Marie
, and Gary Dowson gave every indication of revelling in it. He was only acting, Molly assured herself. Don’t be a fool, he knows you’re engaged.

‘Bring your heel down on his instep,’ Mona advised. ‘Or there are other moves I could teach you which will make him reach high C.’

‘Oh, Mona!’ said Molly. She was smiling as she went in to begin work.

The concert was a success, the canteen packed with their fellow workers. Everyone cheered and clapped with enthusiasm for the dancers, now not quite so ragged in their performance as they got into the swing of it. They cheered Gary Dowson and Molly when they sang their duet, Gary looking deep into Molly’s eyes until she discovered she could fake rapture in return by staring fixedly at the Brylcreemed lock of hair arranged carefully on his forehead.

They fell about laughing when Mona recited her comic monologue, but it was when Molly stood on the improvised stage and sang the ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ that they clapped and cheered the most. Her heart beat fast and her palms sweated so she had to rub them with her handkerchief and then keep it there, twisting it between her fingers as she began the song. But then the image of Jackson appeared in her mind’s eye, his dark eyes smiling into hers, one eyebrow lifted quizzically, and she sang to him. It was so quiet in the canteen that she could have been all alone but for her dreams. And then the applause began.

Afterwards, brought down to earth by the need to get back to her work, she stood by the hopper filling shells, one after the other. Her workmates actually liked her, she thought. They did. A few of them had come up to congratulate her, clapped her on the shoulder. This was a new life for her in spite of the dangers of the war and the fact that her brother and Jackson were in France fighting. She
felt
that everything would turn out well, her bad times were surely over.

She was smiling softly to herself when there was a loud bang and the alarm sounded. For a second she was disorientated. She looked around at the door as the belt stopped its progress and the music halted on the wireless.

‘Evacuate the building! Evacuate …’ Molly rushed for the door, turning to see if Mona was there before realising that she wouldn’t be. She had been transferred to the detonator section at the beginning of the week.

Joining the stream of people as they hurried for the emergency exits, Molly tried to ask what had happened but those around her had been working in closed-off rooms themselves, and were as mystified as she was.

‘Have we been bombed?’ She caught sight of Gary Dowson standing by the door, but he was busy ushering them out and for once not willing to talk to her.

Outside groups of workers were talking in hushed voices as they went to their emergency stations, away from the danger. One of the First Aid team came out of a door and hurried down the street and everyone watched as though that would give them the answer to what had happened.

‘What was it, do you know?’ Molly asked Violet, a girl from her group.

‘You know as much as I do, Molly,’ she replied.

‘Fifth columnists, I bet,’ one of them said. ‘Sabotage.’

The girls fell silent as they reached the perimeter wall
and
lined up by the emergency exit. The idea that a saboteur could get into the works and cause mayhem was sobering to say the least.

‘It was the detonator shed,’ a new voice broke in. ‘I was working right close. I was deafened by the bang, I can tell you.’ She put her fingers in her ears and wiggled them about, frowning. ‘I never ran so quick in all my days.’

‘Are you sure? I mean, that it was the detonator shed?’ asked Molly anxiously, an awful dread creeping over her. She began looking round for Mona, her gaze going from group to group, but her friend was nowhere to be seen. A fire engine went by along one of the internal roads, followed by an ambulance.

‘Was anyone hurt, do you know? Mona was working there, has anyone seen her?’ Molly’s dread was mounting. Her heart beat so fast it threatened to choke her. She went from group to group, asking if they had seen Mona but no one had. But it couldn’t be true. Mona couldn’t be dead. She was so alive, always laughing. Molly had a vision of her flicking her long blonde hair back from her forehead. Oh, she was so
pretty
. She couldn’t be gone, blown to smithereens, of course she couldn’t, the idea was ludicrous. Mona was her friend, her very best friend. Please God, not her.

Molly struggled to keep a hold of herself, fighting down the panic, the feeling that it was true and that it was all her fault. She had a jinx on her. Mona was her friend, ergo Mona had to die.

The group looked at one another, shook their heads. Molly chewed her lip. It seemed like an age before they could move away from the emergency exit. The ambulance drove away, not using its siren. Was that a good sign or was it a bad? The Tannoy crackled and everyone looked up expectantly.

‘Everyone to the canteen. Move to the canteen in orderly fashion, please,’ a tinny voice ordered and the girls started to move away, quiet now, all of them wondering the same thing.

In the canteen Molly searched the faces behind the counter for Mona’s mother. If anyone knew what had happened to Mona she would. But Mrs Fletcher wasn’t there. Perhaps she was working in the kitchen, Molly thought. No, of course, she was probably not back yet. Even the catering staff would have had to go to their emergency stations.

There was tea from the urn but Molly couldn’t face it. She sat at the table with the others while they drank and lit cigarettes. For the first time Molly wished she smoked, it seemed to release tension. Then the word went round the room, coming from nobody knew where: a girl had been killed working on detonators.

It still didn’t have to be Mona, thought Molly, but where was she? The next minute her worst fears were confirmed as Mrs Fletcher was led out of the kitchens, supported on either side by members of the First Aid team. Head bent she was taken out, looking neither to left nor to right as
she
went. Molly was on her feet and pushing her way through the crowd to reach her but by the time she got to the door Mrs Fletcher was being helped into a car.

‘Mrs Fletcher!’ Molly called, and the woman looked up, her face white, her eyes staring. Molly ran to her.

‘Is it –’ But she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t. Mrs Fletcher merely nodded and began to get into the car.

‘Are you a friend of hers?’ someone asked, and looking up Molly saw it was the works doctor.

‘A friend of her daughter’s,’ she said. And it was because of her that this had happened, she thought again. The numbness of grief crept over her, mixed with guilt. It was because of her own bad luck. It had rubbed off on her friend.

‘You’d best go with her then,’ he said. He was a middle-aged man with heavy jowls and thinning hair which was parted in the centre of his large head and plastered to either side with some sort of dressing. His eyes were dark brown and sympathetic. He had been a local GP for twenty years. Now his list was twice as big with the advent of this sprawling factory amid the green fields of central Durham.

Molly hesitated. ‘I’ll have to ask … get permission.’

Five minutes later she was sitting in the back of the car with Mona’s mother. They didn’t talk, there was nothing to say.

‘I’ll leave her with you,’ said the driver. ‘I’ll be outside.’ Not until they were inside the little terraced house in Ferryhill did Mrs Fletcher speak.

‘Our Mona’s not usually careless,’ she said. ‘I mean, she wasn’t.’

‘No! I’m sure she wasn’t,’ Molly answered. ‘It must have been an accident, you know.’ She looked around, hardly knowing what to do, or what to say. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’ll get you one, shall I?’

‘No. I’ve had enough tea to sink a ship. Well, if she wasn’t careless, how could it happen?’

‘It does, these things do,’ said Molly helplessly.

Mrs Fletcher looked at her. She seemed to accept Molly’s assurances and changed tack. ‘I mind when her dad died,’ she said. ‘It’s funny, it doesn’t seem real at first.’

‘No,’ said Molly, thinking back to the time when her own father was killed. Her heart ached for the older woman.

‘I was that pleased when she got on with your brother. A nice lad, yes, a nice lad.’

‘Yes.’

Molly looked about the neat kitchen-cum-living room. The linoleum on the floor was scrubbed and polished and covered with oblong clippie mats, just like most of the houses she’d known. The windows gleamed. Cheap cotton curtains hung there, lined with thick blackout material, the same as Maggie had at her windows, bought at the Co-op no doubt. A cinder fell to the enamelled plate covering the hearth. Automatically Mrs Fletcher got to her feet and scooped it up with the steel-handled brush and shovel which hung on the companion set by the side of the grate.

‘Will you be writing to Harry?’

Molly looked back at Mrs Fletcher. Mona’s mother sounded so polite. She sat on the edge of her chair, smoothing her skirt over her knees as though she had unexpected company.

‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ Molly said. The clock on the mantel ticked loudly. ‘Are you sure I can’t do anything for you?’ she asked. ‘Is there a neighbour I should call? Anyone else that I could get in touch with?’

‘No, no, that’s fine, you’ve been very good,’ said Mrs Fletcher. She got to her feet. ‘I’d like to be on me own now. It’s not that I don’t appreciate …’