Molly's War (27 page)

‘Old misery guts,’ she heard one of them whisper at work. ‘Does she think she’s the only one to lose her man in this damn’ war?’

‘She was always the same,’ Joan Pendle assured them. ‘Ever since I’ve known her.’

Mrs Fletcher called her to the end of the serving counter one day at lunchtime, a day when Molly was feeling sick and dizzy and had had trouble sewing a straight line that morning.

‘I heard you were living in a hostel now, Molly,’ the older woman said. She hesitated before going on, taking time to tuck a stray lock of grey hair up under her turban. Molly watched her. Surely Mrs Fletcher hadn’t been so grey before? Poor woman, she thought compassionately, forgetting her own troubles for a minute.

‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs Fletcher.’

‘Well, I just wondered … how would you like to stay with me? I have plenty of room in my house.’ She bit her lip as she gazed at Molly, trying to gauge her reaction.

‘Well …’ For a moment Molly was unsure what to say, she was so taken by surprise. Since Mona’s death her mother had been quiet as a mouse at work, simply getting on with what she had to do and keeping herself to herself.

‘Like I said, I have the room and could do with a bit of rent coming in to help out with the rates and that,’ Mrs Fletcher went on. ‘It cannot be very nice in a hostel.’

Molly was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know, really I don’t. I might be having to leave the factory anyway.’

Mrs Fletcher nodded, unsurprised. She cast a quick glance at Molly’s stomach though she was sure there was nothing to see, not with the enveloping overall.

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘I thought so. And you won’t be able to stay at the hostel, will you?’

Molly didn’t know what to say. She looked at the floor, at the food on her tray. Food she certainly didn’t feel like eating.

‘You’d be doing me a favour, it’s lonely on me own,’ Mrs Fletcher said. She put a hand on Molly’s arm persuasively. ‘And Mona would have liked me to help you out an’ all.’

‘Are you going to give me a hand or are you going to stand there all day gossiping?’ the woman serving along the counter called.

‘Sorry! I’m coming now,’ Mrs Fletcher called back.
Turning
to Molly, she said, ‘Look, come along of me home tonight, will you? I’ll give you a bite of supper and we can talk. It’ll be better than going back to that hostel, won’t it? You can get the Ferryhill bus, can’t you?’

She was already walking back along the counter so Molly nodded her agreement before carrying her tray to a table where she could sit on her own. She was even avoiding Jenny these days.

Why was Mrs Fletcher offering to help her? she wondered. She picked up her fork and forced herself to eat a few bites of Woolton pie, drank the cup of sugarless tea. As she walked back to the sewing room, Joan Pendle fell into step with her.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard from your Harry?’

‘By, you’re bold as brass, aren’t you? After the lies you’ve told about me.’ Molly could hardly believe Joan would come and talk to her. ‘No, I haven’t heard from him lately. He’s off somewhere training for some new thing as far as I know.’ She could hardly bear to think about her brother. What would he say if he knew how she had let the family down?

‘I wondered, that was all,’ said Joan. Molly glanced at her. The other girl wore such an expression of longing on her face Molly could almost feel sorry for her in spite of her meddling.

‘If I hear from him, I’ll let you know how he is,’ Molly surprised herself as well as Joan by saying. She sat down at her sewing machine and began the monotonous work of
sewing
powder bags yet again. At least she had reason to look forward to the evening, she thought. Going to Ferryhill on the bus and having supper with Mona’s mother was better than going back to her bare room in the hostel. Anything was.

It was a dark and stormy night when Molly got off the bus in Ferryhill market place and walked along the end of the rows of terraced houses until she came to George Street. Sadness flooded through her as she walked halfway down its length to the house where Mona had lived for all her short life. Molly was glad of her flashlight for the street was very dark, not a chink of light from the windows and of course not a street light lit. She played the beam of the torch on the number of the house to make sure she’d the right one and a passing air raid warden growled: ‘Keep that light down!’

Hastily she lowered it and knocked at the door. ‘Sorry, warden.’

Mrs Fletcher had been waiting for her. The door opened in a trice and Molly was ushered into the kitchen where there was a delicious smell of meat and onions.

‘Sit yourself down, it’s all ready,’ the older woman said. She was bustling about from oven to table, cloth in her hands as she took out a shepherd’s pie which even had a crust of cheese on the top.

‘I don’t want to take your precious meat ration,’ said Molly, though in truth her mouth had begun to water
embarrassingly
. It was a long time since the canteen meal she had been unable to finish.

‘Nonsense, get it down you, it’s a pleasure to have you,’ said Mrs Fletcher. She served the meal and sat opposite Molly. ‘Tuck in,’ she said. ‘We can talk later. No use letting the food get cold.’

Later they sat by a blazing fire and drank tea from a pot which Molly suspected held at least two days’ tea ration. Mrs Fletcher was putting herself out to be friendly, she thought. Completely different now from the silent woman who served them in the canteen at dinnertime. She had a look of Mona, thought Molly as she sipped her tea. And, yes, her hair had gone completely grey, she could see that now the turban Mrs Fletcher had to wear at work was removed. But the thing was, if she was to take up this offer, Molly had to tell her the truth, she owed her that.

‘Mrs Fletcher –’

‘Call me Dora, dear.’

‘Dora … I would love to come and live here, I really would, but you should know I won’t be at the factory for very long. I’m expecting a baby.’ There, she’d said it. Molly hung her head in shame.

‘I know. I can tell. There are signs, you know. That wet streak of nothing Gary Dowson, was it?’

‘How did you know?’

‘We hear things in the canteen, you’d be surprised.’ Dora leaned forward and gazed earnestly at her. ‘You can come here, I told you you could. Our Mona would have
wanted
it. And any road, I have the spare room now, don’t I?’

Molly felt tears spring to her eyes. The back of her throat swelled up, thick with those unshed.

‘But if I lose my job …’

‘Why, there’s nowt so sure but you’ll do that,’ said Dora calmly. ‘Look, lass, you’re not the first this has happened to, not by a long chalk. Many a lass has been taken down by a good-for-nowt. Aye, and let down after an’ all. Now, I think we should be making a few plans, don’t you?’

Molly could only smile tremulously and nod her head. At least her immediate worries were over, she told herself. Though a small voice within her said that
she
had not been taken down, she had been as willing as Gary Dowson though she still couldn’t understand why. Oh, if only the father of her baby had been Jackson, her own dear Jackson, though she hadn’t the right to call him that now. But if only! The two most poignant words in the language.

Chapter Twenty-five

THERE WAS ANOTHER
telegram from the War Office. Maggie gazed at it as the new telegram boy, a young lad of sixteen years whose one fear was that the war would end before he had a chance to register for the Royal Air Force, proffered it.

‘That cannot be for us, lad,’ she said.

‘Aye, it is,’ he said. ‘Look you here. Mr F. Morley – it says, plain enough.’ He hadn’t been in the job long enough to know the hatred the sight of a lad in Post Office uniform with a yellow envelope in his hand could generate, so he was surprised by Maggie’s joyful reaction.

‘Frank! Come here, will you?’ she cried and Frank rolled towards the door in his wheel chair.

‘Who is it, lass?’ he asked testily. He glanced at the boy, still holding the telegram. ‘Aw, give it here, man,’ he said. ‘How do you expect to find out what it says if you don’t open it?’ he asked his wife. Tearing the envelope open with his third finger because the tip of his index finger and thumb had been chopped off in the pit, he drew out the thin sheet.

‘Why, yer bugger! Yer bugger!’ he said, over and over,
before
handing the sheet to his wife. ‘Our Jackson’s not dead at all, Maggie, now what do you think of that?’ This last was a shout of triumph which made the telegram boy back away down the yard.

‘There’s no reply then?’ he asked, before diving out of the gate and on to his bike.

Maggie and Frank didn’t even hear him. They were clinging to one another, tears streaming down their faces.

‘I told you he wasn’t dead,’ she asserted, though she’d told him nothing of the sort. ‘I told you!’

‘Eeh, lass, isn’t it grand?’ asked Frank, not bothering to contradict her. Maggie dried her eyes on the corner of her apron and ran down the yard and into the next where her neighbour was hanging out clothes.

‘Our Jackson’s not dead!’ she cried, waving the telegram at the woman who stood, forgetful of the couple of clothes pegs sticking out of her mouth. ‘He’s in a hospital down south. Look, here’s the name of it here.’ She pointed to the piece of paper. ‘He’s not dead!’ she shouted aloud.

‘Mind, I’m right glad for you, Maggie,’ the neighbour said after removing the clothes pegs and dropping them on top of the basket of clothes. ‘Eeh, who’d have thought it, eh?’ But Maggie was off down the row, calling her news out to anyone else who was there.

When she finally calmed down a little and returned to her own door, Frank was still sitting there. ‘Give us another look at that, woman,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
Taking
the telegram, he read it again. ‘It doesn’t say what it is that’s the matter with him, does it?’ he muttered. ‘Just that he’s been injured.’

The delight died from Maggie’s face as she stared at him, visions of her lad being brought home in a wheel chair like his dad’s filling her mind.

‘I wonder, like,’ said Frank soberly, ‘why it’s been so long? I mean, it’s months since the lads got back from Dunkirk, isn’t it?’

‘What can we do, Frank?’ She sank down on the rocking chair by the fire, the chair where she had sat for so many unhappy hours contemplating the fact that, barring miracles, they weren’t going to see Jackson again, not in this life.

The pit hooter had gone for the first shift. Men were coming out of the mine when there was a second knock at the door.

‘Mrs Morley, me dad says will you come? There’s a telephone call for you,’ the little boy from the post office said. ‘An’ he said will you hurry? It’s long distance.’

Maggie raced down the street after him and into the little shop at the bottom of the rows. The man behind the counter looked up as he saw her.

‘Mind, I wouldn’t allow this if it wasn’t for the fact it’s long distance and about your lad,’ he said. ‘It’s not allowed, really.’

‘Oh, thanks, Mr Dunne, thank you,’ Maggie said humbly, still breathing hard from her exertions.

‘Aye. Well, he said he’d ring back in ten minutes,’ said the postmaster and looked up at the clock, kept on time by a phone call every morning from the exchange. On cue the bell rang and he picked up the receiver, handing it over to her.

‘Mrs Morley? Is that you? This is Harry Mason here, I’m speaking from a hospital in Kent. I’ve seen Jackson, Mrs Morley, he’s going to be fine! A knock on the head, that’s all. Did you get a telegram from the War Office?’

‘We did, lad, not long since. Are you sure now? I mean, are you sure he’ll be all right? We wondered why it took so long …’

‘I’ll write and explain, Mrs Morley. Come home if I can next leave. Have you told Molly, Mrs Morley?’

‘No, I haven’t. She’s –’

‘At work, is she? Well, I bet she’ll be pleased as punch.’

The pips sounded, an operator’s voice cutting in. ‘Your time is up, caller. Three minutes only for civilian calls.’ The line went dead and Maggie handed the receiver back to the postmaster.

‘Good news, eh?’

‘By, it is, Mr Dunne, it is. The best news there is.’

‘Aye, I thought as much.’

Maggie practically skipped up the rows, her head in the clouds, but as she neared her own back gate she slowed. Molly … She had to get in touch with Molly. In her euphoria she was prepared to forget her suspicions of her lad’s fiancée. There were lots of things stopped a girl’s
courses
. That blasted powder for one, the stuff which dyed all the lasses’ necklines.

Maggie nodded to herself as she turned in at the gate. Jackson wouldn’t thank her for losing touch with Molly again, indeed he would not. She would write now, catch the four o’clock post.

Frank was waiting, a thin white line of strain around his mouth. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘It’s fine, Frank, really it is. That was Harry on the phone. He says our Jackson has nowt but a bump on the head!’

‘When will he be able to travel home, Doctor?’ Harry had waited at the door while the doctor examined Jackson, heard him pronounce approval of the way the patient had recovered physically. ‘Good,’ he had said, testing Jackson’s reflexes. ‘Yes, the wound has healed nicely. I think we should leave the bandages off now.’ There was a vivid red line above Jackson’s brow and disappearing into his hair, a puckering of scar tissue on his right temple and a patch where the hair had had to be shaven above his ear. The hair was grown again now, of course, except in one stubborn part about two inches long.

The doctor frowned at Harry, his expression forbidding. ‘Patience,’ he pronounced.

Harry had managed to get down to see Jackson for at least a short visit every week, but he knew this wouldn’t be able to carry on. He was being posted shortly. He wasn’t
supposed
to know where but the fact that he and his fellow paratroopers had been given an intensive course in Norwegian was a good pointer. And he dearly wanted to get Jackson home before then. Harry felt his friend looking gravely up at him and he smiled, his quick lopsided smile, his teeth gleaming white against a face still brown after so many years in the Indian sun. Just as Jackson’s was. This visit he had been sure that the past was coming back to his friend. Sometimes he started to say something then stopped, wearing a frown of puzzlement.