Molly's War

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Why, yer bugger!’ said Joe, glaring at Molly. ‘I could be fast asleep in bed if it wasn’t for you. A fella’s just doing his duty and now I’m going to lose a morning’s pay for it. What’s the world coming to, I ask you?’

  ‘It’s the law,’ said the policeman. And, picking up Molly’s suitcase, led the way down the street.

  Chapter Eight

  AT LEAST SHE didn’t have to worry about where she was going to sleep, thought Molly. She sat on the hard bed in a police cell in Bondgate and looked about her in total disbelief. How could this have happened? The cold struck through the bare stone walls but she didn’t feel it; she didn’t feel anything. There was a barred window set so high up the wall it was impossible to see through, a metal door with a peephole which denied her all privacy, a battered table and a chair.

  ‘Lights out in five minutes, lass,’ a policeman said through the peephole. ‘If I were you I’d try to get some sleep.’ He sounded quite kindly, she thought, and opened her mouth to appeal to him but he had gone. She could hear his footsteps retreating down the passage.

  She looked at the bed. A hard flock mattress. A lumpy striped pillow with no pillowslip. A brown blanket, clean but worn almost away in patches. She took off her shoes, thought about removing her dress but decided against it. She lay on the bed, covering herself with the blanket. Her mind felt blank, she couldn’t even think. She stared at the door. The light from the bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling shone in her eyes and she closed them against the glare. The next minute it was suddenly dark, a dense blackness relieved only by bars of lighter grey near the ceiling and coming from the window.

  ‘Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Dad.’ She needed him here so much but he was dead. And then a moan she hardly recognised came from her lips. ‘God help me. Please, God, please.’

  She became aware of noises. Someone in the next cell was drunk. He was singing a song from the Great War. ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres’, that was it. Someone else, a woman’s voice it was, shouted, ‘Stop that ruddy racket, will you?’ And a policeman walked in heavy boots outside the door.

  ‘Quiet in there!’ an authoritative voice shouted and the drunk was quiet for a few minutes then started up again with ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.

  Suddenly Molly was desperate to pass water. There was a lavatory pan in the corner. She got up and went over to it, moving hesitantly in the dark, her hands out in front of her, feeling her way. She sat on the lavatory, finding herself at first unable to use it. There was no seat and the cold of the pottery pan bit into her. At last she managed and made her way back to the bed, stubbing her toe on the leg. The pain was agonising. She fell into bed, pulled the blanket over her head and sobbed and sobbed, shoulders heaving. No one was going to help her, no one at all. She was completely alone. Eventually the storm of crying passed and she fell into an uneasy sleep.

  It was morning when she awoke and the cell looked worse in the daylight than it had in artificial light. Molly sat up, disorientated for a moment. Her head throbbed, her throat was dry. A tin mug stood on the table. She pulled on her shoes and went over to it. As she had thought, it held water and she drank thirstily, stale though the water tasted.

  A policeman opened the door and came in with a tray which he put down on the table. There was porridge, bread and butter and jam, and a mug of tea, strong and brown.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ said Molly. She felt dirty and dishevelled, her dress creased from sleeping in it. The policeman looked at her, considering. He was about the same age as her father, she thought. Did he have a family?

  ‘You should eat something, lass,’ he said. ‘Howay now. And drink the tea, I put two sugars in, it’ll give you strength.’

  ‘I want to wash.’

  ‘All right, I’ll bring you a dish of water and a towel. But drink the tea at least.’

  He went out, the door clanging behind him. Molly took a spoonful of porridge. It was lukewarm and sweet. She drank the tea because the policeman seemed kind and had told her to. When he came back she washed and combed her hair, rubbed at a mark on her dress with the soapy water.

  At ten o’clock, feeling better, she followed the policeman upstairs to the magistrates’ court and stood before the bench. The magistrates would let her go, she told herself. Surely no one would believe Mr Jones?

  ‘Remanded in custody until Monday next,’ said the chairman.

  ‘Why? I didn’t do anything!’ cried Molly. The chairman sighed. ‘No one ever has,’ he remarked to his neighbour, a white-haired lady in twinset and pearls, who nodded sagely.

  ‘You have no fixed address,’ he went so far as to explain to Molly.

  ‘But I have. I have a room in West Auckland,’ she said eagerly, filled with relief. ‘I told the officer –’

  ‘Take her down, Constable,’ said the magistrate. ‘Bailiff, call the next case.’

  As Molly was led away, an old man shuffled in, his eyes bleary with drink, his movements unsteady. He took her place before the bench. The bailiff was saying something about him being drunk and disorderly.

  For the rest of the day, Molly sat in her cell, going over and over the hearing in her mind. Mr Jones had appeared an upright citizen, worried to death about his daughter in a sanatorium, allowing Molly to keep on her room out of the kindness of his heart. His neighbour had testified to seeing him bring the bangle out of Molly’s suitcase, said he recognised it as once being the property of the late Mrs Jones. The evidence was all against her, Molly conceded, but it was lies. She’d protested her innocence, told them that Mr Jones had come into her room and attacked her, but they had cut her off. ‘That’s enough of that!’ the chairman had said sharply. ‘You can get into serious trouble if you take that line, my girl.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Take her away,’ said the chairman.

  ‘Have you not got anyone who will testify as to your good character?’ asked the kindly policeman later on. ‘Where did you say you come from? Eden Hope? Well, there must be someone there, surely?’

  His name was Constable Hardy and he was the only one who tried to help her. She learned he came from Coundon, his father a pitman there. His daughter was a teacher now and he was very proud of her.

  Molly shrank within herself at the thought of asking Ann Pendle to testify for her. Mrs Morley might have done, but Molly was too ashamed to ask. She didn’t want anyone in Eden Hope to find out, anyone who had known her family in better days. But surely when the magistrates heard the whole story she would be set free, they would know they had made a mistake? British justice was the best in the world, her dad had always told her so, and she believed him.

  In the end, Molly decided not to ask anyone from Eden Hope. She would stand up in court, tell the truth and the magistrates would have to believe her, of course they would. She would be set free and would go to Cathy’s house in West Auckland and then, with a room in a decent house and Cathy for a friend, the nightmare would be over.

  Wearing a clean dress which Constable Hardy had had pressed for her, and with her hair brushed back from her temples and gleaming almost chestnut in the overhead lights of the court, Molly faced the magistrates once more. Her heart beat so fast she could feel it in her throat and she clasped her hands behind her to still their trembling. It would soon be over and she would go free, she told herself. A disturbance took her attention. It was someone coming in late and sitting down on the Press bench. The chairman of the magistrates frowned down at him.

  There was a report in the local paper next day.

  Before Bishop Auckland Magistrates yesterday morning, Molly Mason, of no fixed address but previously of Eden Hope, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for the theft of a gold bangle, value fifteen pounds and ten shillings, from her then landlord, Mr Bartram Jones. Mr Jones said the bracelet belonged to his late wife and was of great sentimental value to him. In sentencing, the chairman, Sir John Hume, made the following remarks to the defendant.

  ‘Mr Jones tr
usted you in his house and you betrayed that trust and stole from him. I am aware that you are of previous good character and also that you recently lost your father in the mining disaster at Eden Hope colliery. Nevertheless I have consulted with my colleagues and we are agreed that three months in prison could be just the shock you need to force you to see the error of your ways.’

  Molly had climbed into the van which was to take her to prison, sat beside a policewoman, did what she was told automatically. It was a nightmare, she told herself, a nightmare which went on and on. And now she was sitting in a workroom with a number of other women, dressed in a stiff grey dress, sewing thick calico bags which the other girls said were to hold gun powder. The sewing machine she was using might have been the first one ever invented. She was in a line not unlike the one in the factory at St Helen’s Auckland, but here there was no wireless, the women weren’t chattering and laughing or singing along to music. There was just the clattering of the machines, the wardresses walking up and down, and the ache in Molly’s fingers from handling the stiff fabric all day long.

  Chapter Nine

  THE TROOPSHIP NOSED its way into Southampton and came to a slow, lumbering halt alongside the quay. A band of marines was playing far below them as Harry and Jackson stood to attention on deck with the rest of their platoon, part of this army of men returning to Britain to defend the homeland.

  They were sunburned a dark brown by the Indian sun in contrast to the civilians below, waiting for the gangplank to be lowered and the soldiers to come on to dry land. They had been in transit for weeks, going the long way round by Cape Town rather than risk coming through the Suez Canal and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. There was no war as yet but the threat of it was ever present though some members of the government still thought it could be averted.

  The August sun was shining, a pale imitation of what they were used to in India. But to the men on the deck of the ship it was infinitely preferable to what they had left behind in Bombay.

  England, thought Jackson. Everything about it was different. The smells, the feel of the air, the noises. They would be in barracks for a few nights, but next week, always supposing war wasn’t declared, they’d be on their way north, with rail vouchers which would take them all the way home. Or at least to Bishop Auckland which was as near as made no difference at all. Two whole weeks at home! Time enough for them to make sure Molly was managing on her own and coming to no harm.

  The order to fall out was given, the men were beginning to file down the gangplank, and eventually the recently promoted Sergeant Morley was at liberty to talk to Corporal Mason. They threaded their way through the crowds of wives and sweethearts come to meet their men and onlookers who were simply curious or liked the atmosphere of excitement when a troopship came home.

  ‘Molly’s not here,’ said Harry. They had searched and searched again, just in case they had missed her in the crowds.

  ‘Oh, come on now, Harry, you didn’t expect her to come all the way down here to meet the ship? The train is expensive. And besides, Molly will be at work. She has to make her living, hasn’t she?’

  Harry nodded. ‘I know. But I still looked for her somehow.’

  Jackson knew exactly how he felt. He too had felt a moment’s disappointment when he had scanned the people meeting the ship and not seen Molly. They couldn’t have missed her either. Both Harry and he had been looking and they had keen eyes.

  ‘Five days and we’ll be on our way any road,’ said Harry as the soldiers came together again and the order rang out to form ranks. A step nearer home, he thought. They marched through the town to their temporary barracks, led by their own regimental band. It was August and the sun beat down on them but to men who had been in India for two years or more the air felt fresh and clean, the familiar scents of England carried on a breeze from the west. Yet it was not quite the same as the breeze which would be blowing down the Wear Valley, straight from the moors, Jackson mused. And five days suddenly felt like an awful long time.

  The Northumbria, the Newcastle express train, was packed with soldiers as it left King’s Cross and picked up speed as it steamed north. Harry and Jackson sat together in a compartment reserved for non-commissioned officers where they could relax, their kitbags stowed on the rack above their heads. They talked little as the train sped through the northern outskirts of London and on into the dark countryside. They were due in Darlington at five past six in the morning. There would then be a wait of half an hour or so for the local train to Bishop Auckland.

  There was little talking among the men, each of them had their thoughts fixed on home and family. Jackson settled down to sleep. The compartment light was dim. With his long legs stretched out in front of him and his cap over his eyes he took only minutes to drop off, waking only briefly as the train pulled into Peterborough and later on Doncaster. When it arrived in York he sat up, as did most of the others. There was a buzz of quiet talk. They all gazed at the Minster as it fell behind them in the grey light of early morning.

  ‘It has the Taj Mahal beat, mate,’ said a burly corporal, and Jackson agreed, grinning, aware that they were a tiny bit prejudiced. He took out his comb and tidied his hair, stroked his chin where he could begin to feel stubble. It didn’t matter, though, soon be home. Harry and the others were also tidying themselves up. Jackson looked across and grinned.

  ‘Not long now, mate, Molly will be waiting at the station, I bet.’ They had sent a telegram to her and one to Jackson’s mother. ‘Everything will be all right,’ they assured each other, though both had misgivings which intensified the nearer they got to home. It was such a long time since they’d heard from Molly, Harry hadn’t even had a Christmas card. But mail could go astray so easily …

  ‘Darlington in ten minutes,’ said the conductor, sliding open the door of the compartment. ‘Next stop Darlington.’

  ‘By, that sounds grand,’ a soldier remarked. ‘I’ve been dreaming someone would say that.’

  There was no one to meet them at the station at Bishop Auckland. Jackson hadn’t expected his mother, not when she had his father at home an invalid, but he had been hoping against hope that Molly would be there. This time he had no words of comfort to offer Harry.

  ‘Let’s walk through the woods to Eden Hope,’ he said instead. ‘It’ll be almost as quick as going down the street for the bus. It’s no good you going off to West Auckland when you don’t know where abouts Molly lives.’

  ‘Righto.’

  Newgate Street was a mile long. If they cut across country they could be halfway home before they’d even have got to the bus stop. Shouldering their kitbags, they set off.

  The wood was pleasantly cool and the Gaunless flowing through it tinkled and splashed, a sound they hadn’t heard often in India. They emerged on to a hill where they could see a number of colliery villages, all clustered round a winding wheel and chimneys. The countryside was green apart from patches of gold where corn was ripening. And, of course, the black heaps by the pits, slag heaps. But even the mineheads were beautiful to the two homecomers, pale smoke curling from the tall chimneys.

  They hadn’t far to go to Eden Hope and soon Jackson was turning into his own back gate while Harry went on to the house where he had been brought up. Or rather to the house next door to question Ann Pendle about Molly’s new address.

  ‘Eeh, I’ve been looking out for you for hours,’ Mrs Morley cried, running to Jackson, her arms outstretched. He could feel her bones, he thought as his arms enfolded her, she’d lost weight. He realised why when he heard his father’s voice, calling weakly from the sitting room. Frank Morley was laid in a sort of large perambulator, more like a wooden box bed on wheels. His back really was broken, Jackson realised. His mother had written to say so but somehow he couldn’t believe it until now. His dad was such a solid, strong man, had always been so. God damn the pit, he thought, filled with helpless anger.

  ‘I’m all right, son,’ Frank said quickly, seeing the horror which Jackson had been to
o late to disguise. ‘An’ we’ve got the house and a bit of compen to live on, dinna fash the’self.’

  Compensation? thought Jackson. No amount of money could compensate for what had happened to his dad. But he smiled and bent over him, almost kissed him but stopped himself in time. You didn’t kiss men, not unless they were dying. And he knew his father wasn’t about to give in just yet. But he was only a third of the weight he had been. The muscles of his arms, which Jackson remembered as being so powerful, were wasted away, his neck scraggy, cheeks fallen in.

  ‘Why, no, man, I didn’t think you were ready to pop your clogs yet a while,’ was all he said.

  ‘How’ve you been doing?’ his father asked eagerly. ‘Maggie, have you got the kettle boiling? I dare wager the lad’ll be glad of a proper breakfast now he’s home. He likely hasn’t had anything worth eating since he went in’t army. Hey, a Sergeant are you now? That’s grand!’

  As the kettle had been kept on the boil for the last couple of hours and bacon and eggs were already on the table ready to cook, Maggie was soon bustling about, smiling broadly but with suspiciously wet eyes. She looked up as she was breaking an egg into the pan as there was a knock at the door and Harry Mason walked in, his kitbag on his shoulder. Her smile became a look of concern. In the excitement of Jackson’s homecoming she had forgotten about the Masons and their trouble. Had Harry heard about Molly?

  ‘Harry, lad, howay in,’ she said now. ‘How would you like some breakfast? I can soon do enough for two.’

  ‘No, thanks, Mrs Morley,’ Harry replied. He wasn’t hungry, simply bewildered and upset. The story which Ann Pendle had told him couldn’t be true, it was quite unbelievable. Maggie saw he was white as a sheet under his tan.

  ‘Sit down, lad, you look all in,’ she said swiftly, pulling the pan off the fire and going to him. Her heart sank. Obviously Ann had told him. She only hoped that cat Joan hadn’t been in to add her ha’porth of spite.