Molly's War (26 page)

When the dinner break came she sought out Gary at the table where he was sitting with a few of the other men.

‘Can I have a word with you, Mr Dowson?’ she asked. The other men looked at one another with knowing amusement. They obviously thought she was chasing the foreman. Had he said anything to them? she wondered.

Gary Dowson had finished his meal. He paused to light a cigarette, making a show of keeping her waiting. The men smirked. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said at last. ‘Come on, we’ll take a walk outside.’

They walked between the buildings, along the road to Admin, round the corner and back in a circle. They walked in the dark, no flashlights allowed in the grounds in case they attracted the attention of a stray bomber. Molly glanced sideways at Gary; there was nothing to see but the dark shape of him. Now they were out on their own she couldn’t get the words out. This was the wrong time anyway, she thought.

‘Can I see you when the shift is over?’ she asked at last.

‘I don’t think I have anything to say to you,’ he said carefully. She could feel the change in him and was bewildered. She stopped walking and peered at him in the dark, trying to make out what he meant. A shaft of moonlight caught his face. His eyes glinted coldly in it.

‘Why? What’s the matter?’

For answer he pulled her round the corner of a building and slammed her against the wall, holding her there with his body.

‘Here, is this what you want?’ he asked roughly, grasping her breast in his hand and pushing his knee hard between her legs so that she cried out at the sudden pain of it.

‘Don’t! Gary, don’t!’ she cried.

‘Oh, come on, don’t act the innocent with me, I know you better than that. You were panting after it the other week and then you pretended to hold me off. What do you take me for, a neddy?’

‘No, no! What do you mean? I haven’t done anything!’ Molly cried.

‘No, not lately you haven’t. Though you thought you could string me along, didn’t you? Well, I’ve been hearing a thing or two about you from that lass what used to work with you at West Auckland. You never told me about what you did there, did you? About taking that poor fella for his dead wife’s jewellery and landing up in prison.’

Too late, Molly realised what a fool she had been. She remembered Joan’s venomous expression when she had
laughed
so uncontrollably on the train. Already she was spreading her poison around the factory.

‘Whatever she’s told you, it wasn’t true,’ Molly said at last.

‘No? Then you haven’t been in prison for leading your landlord on and robbing him?’

‘No! Yes, I was, but I didn’t do it! I didn’t, really I didn’t.’

‘No. Well, they all say that, don’t they?’

The buzzer went for the return to work. Automatically they turned and began to walk back. The words to tell him were in her mind, on her tongue, but somehow Molly had trouble uttering them. It wasn’t until they were practically at the door of her building that she said them aloud and even then she wasn’t sure whether she had or not.

‘I’m expecting.’

Gary halted and caught hold of her arm, pulled her into the building and whirled her round to face him. The entrance was deserted, they were the only two who had gone out into the night.

‘Say that again?’

‘I’m expecting. Fallen wrong. Pregnant.’

‘All right, all right, I know what it means. Are you trying to say it’s mine?’ His tone was hard, his pale eyes narrow.

‘Of course it’s yours. You’re the only one …’

‘Oh, aye? You’d say that any road, wouldn’t you?’

Molly wrenched her arm away from his grasp and
walked
rapidly away to her own section, the sewing room. As she turned into the doorway she caught a glimpse of him still standing where she had left him.

Molly felt numb and just for the minute nothing else. This was a day for surprises all right, she thought as she took her seat at the machine, switched on the power, placed the bag she was sewing under the needle and began sewing. It was indeed … All of a sudden she had an urgent need to throw up. She left her work and rushed for the toilets, knocking over a basket of material as she went.

Afterwards she wiped her mouth with a piece of hard toilet tissue and leaned against the wall. There was a strong smell of Lysol so after a moment she went out into the corridor before she started gagging again. One or two people walked past and looked curiously at her but Molly hardly noticed.

It was no longer a question of whether she could bring herself to marry Gary Dowson, she thought. He didn’t
want
to marry her. The idea that this might happen had simply not occurred to her. So much for that. She wasn’t good enough for Gary Dowson. Well, at least that made her decision easier. Molly stood up straight and went back into the rest room, washed her face in cold water at the basin and dried it on a clean bit of the roller towel hanging in the corner. Then she went back to her machine and bent her head over her work, not lifting it until the buzzer went for home time.

‘Were you not well earlier on?’ asked Jenny, coming to
walk
by her side out of the gate before crossing towards the buses which took girls back to the eastern end of the county.

‘Something I ate, I think,’ said Molly. ‘But I’m all right now.’

‘You’re not talking to her, are you?’ Joan was close by, a hard grin of contempt fixed on her face as she glanced at Molly. ‘Did you not know she’s a gaolbird, a convicted thief? Oh, aye, I could tell you a few things about that one there,’ she went on to Jenny, who looked bewildered.

‘What’s she talking about, Molly?’

‘You may well ask,’ said Joan. She drew closer to Molly and took hold of her arm, pinching. ‘I’ll show you, you bitch!’ she said in an undertone. ‘You won’t laugh at me again in a hurry.’ She smiled and nodded to emphasise her words then went on ahead to the station platform.

‘Molly?’

Jenny was gazing at her, waiting for an explanation. ‘It’s true. I was in prison but it was a mistake, I didn’t do anything,’ said Molly. It sounded lame even in her own ears.

Chapter Twenty-four

‘I AM LOOKING
for my friend, Captain. His name is Sergeant Morley. Sergeant Jackson Morley, I understand he may be a patient here, sir?’

The middle-aged Captain pushed his chair a little way back from the desk and crossed his left leg over the right, swinging it once or twice. He put his hand up to his moustache and studied the soldier standing before him, a tall, upright man, obviously regular rather than enlisted.

‘Ask my Sergeant to look through the lists,’ he drawled. Why had the man been allowed to come in here pestering him? It had been a long hard day and it wasn’t finished yet. Though no longer crammed with wounded from the Dunkirk evacuation as it once had been, the hospital was still full.

‘He’s not on the lists, sir, but still …’

‘What are you talking about, man?’

‘I think he may be the unidentified man brought in by the French a few weeks back. My friend was seconded to a French unit, sir, we both were.’

The Captain sighed. ‘Evidently a few men were. How
did
you find out about him?’ he demanded. ‘Hell’s bells, I’m sick to death of being pestered by people who think they might know who he is! I won’t have him disturbed again –’

The Captain stopped, got to his feet and turned his back on Harry to stare out of the window.

‘Sir?’

‘Did your friend have any identifying mark?’ The officer turned back to him.

‘Like a birthmark?’ He had been asked this question before. There were lists of unidentified men, both living and dead, and most had a mark – a mole, a birthmark, even a bad vaccination mark – somewhere on their bodies. ‘Sergeant Morley had a mole on the back of his calf, sir.’

The Captain picked up a paper from his desk, scanned it quickly. He sighed again. ‘OK, Sergeant.’ He took a chit, scrawled something on it and handed it to Harry. ‘My Sergeant will show you where to go.’

Fired with hope, he went out to the wards. This time perhaps it would be Jackson. He was in a fever of excitement. Had been ever since he had heard about the French fishermen who had rowed across the Channel in a tiny fishing boat which had never been out of French coastal waters before. They’d brought with them a wounded Englishman whom they insisted was a hero, nominated for the Croix de Guerre. A man who had held off a German attack with a French machine gun while its crew escaped over the border from Belgium.

There were three men in the side ward, two of them sitting in armchairs facing the windows which looked out on to sodden grass and dripping trees. They glanced up when Harry entered the room with little interest, then turned back to their contemplation of the landscape. Another man was lying in bed, his face white in startling contrast to his bright red hair.

None of them was Jackson. The disappointment was crushing. Harry stared at them each in turn in disbelief. He had been so sure Jackson would be there.

‘You looking for someone, mate?’

The voice was of the North Country, and not just North Country but definitely County Durham. Harry whirled around and there he was, standing by the door.

‘Jackson!’

Harry covered the few yards between them in two strides. His arms went out and he grasped his friend by the shoulders as though to embrace him, then saw something in the eyes and changed the gesture. He took hold of Jackson’s hand and pumped it up and down in a fervour of recognition and joy.

‘I knew it would be you! I knew you wouldn’t let the bloody Jerries get hold of you. Too fly for that, you are, Jackson!’ he cried, words falling over themselves in the emotion of the moment. At first he didn’t realise that the hand in his was still not reciprocating. In fact, Jackson wasn’t even smiling. He was looking at Harry as at a stranger, a polite half-smile playing around his lips.

‘Who are you?’

Harry dropped his hand, stood back a pace or two and gazed into his face. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to him that Jackson might not recognise
him
. After all, they had been mates since they were bairns together at school.

‘I’m Harry, man, don’t you know me?’

Jackson looked puzzled. ‘I should do, shouldn’t I?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘You should that,’ agreed Harry. ‘By, I’ve been looking all over for you.’

‘You know who I am then?’ Eagerness lit Jackson’s face. ‘For God’s sake, tell me, man!’

Suddenly, it was Harry who was hesitant. Jackson looked so different. He had lost weight, his cheeks hollow, his uniform hanging slackly on him. And his dark hair, though as thick as ever, was flecked with grey now. Harry glanced at the door. A male nurse had appeared and was standing silently watching them. He stepped forward.

‘Don’t get too excited,’ he warned Jackson. ‘You know it brings on your migraine.’

Jackson threw him a look of contempt. ‘I’m not a bairn!’ he said, and turned back to Harry. ‘Tell me, man. If you don’t, I think I’ll go stark staring mad!’

The two men sitting in the window had turned from their study of the garden and were watching Harry and Jackson, even showing interest in what was happening. One leaned forward to hear what Harry had to say.

‘I’m your friend Harry,’ he said simply. ‘And you are
Jackson
Morley – and I’m that glad to see you, lad, I could eat you! They’ll be dancing a jig back home in Eden Hope tonight when I ring the post office to tell them!’

In Eden Hope Maggie and Frank were sitting as usual around the fire in the kitchen. They were on their own again for Molly had gone. That morning she had packed her straw box and left.

‘You don’t need me now, with Frank so much better. And I’ll find somewhere nearer the factory where I don’t have the travelling to work. It’s hard sometimes, especially on first shift when I have to go in the dark.’

Molly could hardly look at Maggie and Frank as she made up all the excuses she could think of to get away. But how could she stay? What would her life be like when Maggie found out that what she’d suspected was true? Shame flooded through Molly as she stood by the door, her box in her hand, her new utility coat buttoned up to her neck against the December cold.

‘But why, lass? Where are you going to stay?’ Frank knitted his brow and looked from his wife to Molly and back again. He couldn’t understand what was happening, in the way of most men hadn’t even noticed any tension between the two women. But he could see there was something now. Maggie wasn’t half so upset as he’d have thought she would be.

‘Have you two had a row? Has the wife upset you, pet?’

‘No, I haven’t, Frank Morley, and I’ll thank you not to
blame
me every time anything goes wrong,’ Maggie snapped. She was knitting a striped jumper from odd pieces of wool which would once have ended up in her darning bag. Her needles clicked away fast and furious, cheeks flagged with bright patches of red.

‘No, we haven’t.’ Molly shook her head in agreement with the older woman. ‘It’s like I said, I could do with living closer to my work and when an empty place came up at the hostel … Anyway, I’ll always be grateful to you both for giving me a home when I needed one, I really will.’ She paused, unable to go on. Was it only a few months since they had been so happy here, both she and Harry? He meeting Mona and falling for her, and she and Jackson … It seemed like a lifetime ago.

‘I’ll keep in touch,’ she said. ‘I’ve written to Harry to tell him.’

‘Aye, well,
Harry
will always be welcome to a bed here,’ said Maggie, and Molly flushed and turned away.

‘I’ll be going then,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’ll be any letters but if there should be, you can send them to the factory.’

The conversation went round and round in her head as she sat on the bus to Bishop Auckland, then the train to the factory. When she arrived she put her box in the cloakroom. She would take it to the hostel after she had worked her shift.

It was almost as bad as the first time she had had to leave Eden Hope. Once again she was going to live among
strangers
only this time it was entirely her own fault. ‘You deserve everything you’ve got!’ she whispered fiercely to herself as she bent her head over the machine, stitching away at the tough cloth which left calluses on her fingers and broke her nails. She felt a sort of perverse satisfaction in that. When her working day was over she sat on the only chair in her tiny room at the hostel or lay on the bed, not reading or even relaxing, just in a kind of stupor. When a girl asked her to go down into the communal sitting room to listen to the wireless Molly refused, making weak excuses. After a few days the other girls stopped asking her and left her alone.