by Maggie Hope
‘Nobody,’ said Harry, hearing her as he came up. ‘She’s nobody. It’s the interval now, how about lemonades all round?’
Chapter Sixteen
‘THAT LASS HAS her sights fixed on you,’ Jackson commented. He didn’t say which lass, he didn’t have to. They were sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast and for once the two of them were on their own for it was Monday morning and Maggie was out in the wash house in the yard, the rhythmic thumping of her possing the clothes in the zinc tub loud and clear.
‘Aye, well, she’s wasting her time,’ said Harry. He picked up the Daily Herald and glanced through it, quickly put it down again. ‘Funny war this, man,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s happening.’
‘It will soon enough,’ said Jackson. ‘Aye, but you want to watch yourself, Harry, she’s a determined sort. Look how she butted in for that excuse-me quickstep. Brass-faced I call it after all she’s said about your Molly.’
‘Well, it’ll do her no good, will it?’ asked Harry. ‘Any road, I’ve a fancy for little Mona, she’s promised to write to me.’ He grinned at Jackson and changed the subject.
‘You going down to Bishop to buy that ring?’
‘Yes.’ He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and got to his feet. ‘I’d best be off, catch the bus.’
‘I’ll come with you, I’ve nothing else to do, not ’til Mona finishes work. We’re going to the pictures after.’
The girls were on first shift and Mona was still staying with her aunt in Eden Hope. She’d only known Harry for four days yet they were going steady. It was happening all around them, for a lot of young miners had been in the territorials before the war and had recently been drafted. There was a sense of urgency somehow, a feeling of time being short.
The girls had travelled in to work together on the train, gravitated towards each other during the break.
‘I wish we were getting engaged the night,’ Mona said as they drank lukewarm tea and ate currant buns in the canteen. ‘By, you never told me you had a dream boat for a brother!’ She grinned, eyes sparkling over the rim of her mug.
‘Well, I can’t let everyone know, I might get knocked over in the rush,’ said Molly, laughing before turning serious. ‘Aw, come on, you’ve only known him four days. You can’t get engaged to a fella when you’ve just known him four days.’
‘I could!’ Mona said fervently. ‘If he asks me, I could. We’re going to the pictures this afternoon. I’m going to take him to see a love story if I can. Do you know what’s on at the Majestic or the Hippodrome?’
‘Can’t say I do,’ said Molly as the buzzer went and they joined the crowd going back to work.
If anything the rest of the shift dragged by even more slowly than the one on the Friday before. Molly’s hands were busy but the work came to her automatically now. Her mind was left to wander happily on thoughts of Jackson and the future. Because, she told herself, nothing was going to happen to Jackson or Harry. They were experienced soldiers, weren’t they? Just occasionally Joan Pendle came to her mind, the way she’d butted in on Harry and Mona in the dance. Why had she done that? Probably it was just an urge to make mischief, thought Molly, Joan was a nasty piece of work all right.
There was a surprise for the two girls as the train pulled into Shildon. There were Jackson and Harry on the platform, running up and down, looking for them through the windows. Neither girl saw them at first. Mona was still talking about Harry. It seemed as though every other sentence had to be about him.
‘Are those soldiers waving at you?’ someone asked, and the two girls just managed to jump down from the train before the guard’s flag went down and the other girls catcalled and wolf-whistled, emboldened by their numbers.
Harry grinned, not at all put off, and swept Mona into his arms. He gave her a smacking kiss then bowed to his audience on the train as it pulled away from the station.
‘You daft ha’porth!’ cried Mona when she could get her breath, and he swung her round and off her feet before putting her down again. ‘Now we’ll have such a ragging when we go in tomorrow!’ But she loved it and so did Molly as Jackson took her hand and kissed her gently, his lips brushing against hers.
They walked down the path to Eden Hope, not noticing that the distance between the two couples grew longer and longer until they disappeared from each other’s view. Skirting a wood by the corner of a ploughed field, brown and with dank dead grass sticking up in tufts in places for this had been a meadow before the war but now was needed to grow crops, Jackson drew her to a halt. It was sheltered here, halfway down the bank side, the sun shone, it could almost have been spring.
‘I’ve been to Bishop this morning and bought you something,’ he said softly, and drew a small box out of the breast pocket of his uniform. A ring box. Molly was speechless. She hadn’t expected it yet. In fact, she’d thought it would be during his next leave.
He opened the box and put the ring on her fourth finger. The tiny diamonds sparkled and shone in the sun looking twice as big as they were. She gazed at it and it was the most beautiful ring in the whole world. Oh, yes, it was, it was!
They ambled along, arms around each other, sometimes stopping to cuddle closer. Molly couldn’t help thinking that in three days he would be gone away, out of England even, to that menacing place the continent. It was a shadow on her happiness, one which took more and more of an effort to push to the back of her mind. She couldn’t let him see how much it upset her.
The winter sun had disappeared by the time they reached the end of the rows at Eden Hope, the pit hooter had sounded and the back shift men were coming out of the pit yard making for home and a bath and hot meal. Smoke curled up towards the sky from the chimneys, visible in the star light. But the houses themselves were already blacked out, shutters up, blackout curtains drawn together.
‘Where the heck have you been?’ asked Maggie as they went into the kitchen. ‘Harry was back hours ago. They’ve gone to the first house pictures. I’ve kept your meal hot in the oven but …’
Molly held out her hand, holding it under the gas mantle so that it caught the light. ‘We’re engaged.’
‘Eeh, will you look at this, Frank! A ring – our Jackson’s given Molly a ring! By, I’m right pleased for you both,’ Maggie cried and flung her arms around them both. ‘Congratulations, son,’ she whispered into Jackson’s ear, ‘you’ve got a good ’un in Molly. An’ you an’ all, pet,’ she nodded to the girl. ‘Now, come on, sit yourselves down an’ I’ll dish up or it’ll be kizzened to a cinder.’
As she turned to the oven she wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. If she could have wished her lad had picked someone without the shadow of prison hanging over her, even if it had been a big mistake, she was wise enough to hide it.
Later, Jackson and Molly had the front room to themselves as befitted their engaged status while Maggie and Frank listened to the wireless in the kitchen. They sat on the imitation leather chesterfield in front of the fire and made plans for what they would do when the war was over. For both of them had decided they had to live for the present, it was no good meeting trouble before it happened. The Germans would be sent back to their own country, and Jackson would come back. How could it be any other way when men like him were there to make it happen? With his arms around her, Molly felt safe, confident, optimistic. The war might have just begun but her own bad times were over.
Somehow she was not so sure the day before they had to report back to their unit. The reality of the impending separation hit her. There were twenty-two hours left, twenty-one, nineteen. And she had to spend precious hours at work filling bombs, the sharp smell of the TNT getting up her nose, shrinking from the knowledge that the two men she loved most in the world could be killed. They were soldiers, for goodness’ sake. But somehow she had to batten the dark thoughts down, show a cheerful, loving face to Jackson and to Harry.
Mona was cheerful enough when they met in the canteen, giggly in fact.
‘We went to the Kin
g’s Hall pictures – you know, those seats made for two in the back row? Eeh, it was lovely. Deanna Durbin it was. She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? Harry wanted to go to see a cowboy but I told him this was a gangster picture. Well, it was set in the twenties, wasn’t it?’ Mona sighed. ‘She’s got a gorgeous voice an’ all, hasn’t she, Molly? Molly, are you not listening to me?’
‘I am, yes, I am,’ said Molly but soon went back to studying her mug of tea. The buzzer went and she still hadn’t drunk it. She put it down and went back to her work room and the band started up again and she worked away for the rest of the shift, trying hard to keep her mind a blank and succeeding to some extent.
At the end of the shift Mona was waiting for her in the changing room. She was going back to Eden Hope to stay with her auntie again, just until Harry went back from leave. ‘Auntie June doesn’t mind,’ she had said to Molly, ‘she likes me to stay, only she wants to know all about everything.’ Molly knew Mona’s auntie by sight. She lived on the other side of the village, her husband was a postman.
‘Harry and me, we’re going into Darlington this afternoon. There’s a tea dance on at the Grand, very grand it is an’ all.’ Her eyes twinkled at Molly but then, all of a sudden, the grin left her face as Molly took her engagement ring from its hiding place at the back of her locker and put it on, saying nothing.
‘Aw, Molly,’ said Mona. ‘Don’t look so worried. They’ll be all right, I know they will. I’d go mad if I didn’t have a laugh. I can’t stand the glooms, I can’t.’ Molly glanced at her. Mona’s normally bright little face was pale, her eyes frightened.
‘I’m all right, really,’ she said. ‘You’re right, the glooms never did anyone any good. Come on, let’s run for the train, see if we can get a seat for once.’
By the time they were sitting in the carriage, breathless from the race through the crowds, Mona was her old self, looking as though she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Blondie and Dagwood!’ she cried, and the whole compartment burst into laughter.
And then it was the last afternoon. Molly and Jackson had the house to themselves. Harry was round at Mona’s auntie’s: ‘Getting his feet under the table,’ as Maggie put it. And she herself had gone with Frank in the ambulance to Durham County Hospital where he was going to be re-examined by the surgeons to see if there was any sign of improvement.
The whole family was excited about it, swinging between hope and resignation. Not many men with spinal injuries such as he had suffered ever walked again.
‘But if he could just sit up, you know,’ Maggie had said to Molly the evening before. ‘Sit in a wheel chair, get out a bit in the fresh air – by, it would do him the world of good.’ And when he went out of the door, the stretcher manoeuvred expertly by the ambulance men, Frank had had such a look on his face, a look of desperate hope which Molly prayed wouldn’t be dashed before the day was out.
In the street men and women stood at their yard gates to see him off, calling out to Frank as he was lifted into the ambulance. ‘Good luck, Frank!’ ‘All the best, lad!’
Maggie climbed in beside him and waved her thanks to the well-wishers before the door was closed and then the ambulance was off, down the street and round the corner, on its way to Durham.
So Molly and Jackson were left alone in the house. Neither of them felt like going to the pictures and there was a wind outside sharp enough to cut a person in two. Molly jobbed about, changing the sheets on Frank’s carriage, tidying the kitchen. Jackson carried in coal for the fire in the front room, and then they were free to sit together on the chesterfield, the doors closed, cocooned in a small world of their own.
The sense of urgency, of time fleeting, was in both their minds as Jackson took her into his arms, his kisses all the sweeter for it, her response all the stronger. Everything outside his arms faded to insignificance for Molly, the touch of his hands so unbearably exciting, the feel of his body sweet against hers. And for all their good resolutions, Jackson’s in particular, they were carried away on the strong tide of their love, sinking to the thick clippie mat which lay in front of the fire. Somehow her dress was open, discarded, the straps of her satin camiknickers down from her shoulders until her breasts were bare, the rosy tips standing firm and erect. And then they were lost completely, drowning in such a depth of feeling that nothing mattered except the two of them together, expressing their love, taking it to its limits.
When he entered her the sharp pain gave her only momentary pause before it was forgotten in the triumph of fulfilment. Molly held him to her, her love for him heightened if that was possible, such a feeling of contentment as she had never experienced before washing over her, filling her with peace and a quiet elation.
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ Jackson said brokenly. ‘I am, Molly, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? I never meant to go that far, not when I’m going …’
‘Shh, don’t say it,’ Molly whispered in his ear, ‘don’t. Not now. Don’t spoil it, this is our time.’
Jackson was quiet. He lay by her side as his blood quietened, his breathing returned to normal.
‘I’m not sorry,’ said Molly, her voice soft with love. ‘I’m glad, I am. So glad.’
She could be pregnant now, Jackson thought, what had he done? He was going to war, God only knew when or even if he would get back to Eden Hope, hadn’t she had enough trouble in her short life without him going and adding to it? He groaned and Molly rose on one elbow and looked down at him. His face was lit by the firelight. Outside on this short winter’s day it was already dark. The firelight lit the strong planes of his cheeks, the straight brows above the dark eyes, hidden in shadow now. A coal flared in the grate and she caught a glimpse of the uncertainty and pain in those eyes. Oh, she didn’t want him to feel pain, she did not!
‘Don’t be sorry, please don’t be sorry,’ said Molly.
The firelight made her skin glow with a rosy light, glinted on her hair which hung down over her shoulders and glorious breasts, and in spite of his resolution he felt himself responding again, the blood rising in him.
Abruptly he sat up, kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose, forced himself to look away. ‘I’m not sorry, Molly, not if you’re not. But we have to be sensible, my love. Come on, Mam and Dad will be back soon. And if we don’t draw the curtains the warden will be knocking at the door. The firelight will be showing through the window.’
Feeling slightly rejected, Molly stood up, pulled on her underclothes and frock, keeping her back to him as he too dressed, unsure of herself. Until she felt his arms around her as he turned her to face him.
‘I love you, Molly,’ he said. ‘More than anything in the world. You know that, don’t you?’
She sagged against him. ‘I love you too.’
‘It’s just, well, suppose you were to have a baby and me not here to look after you? I don’t want you to be in trouble because of me, Molly, you’ve had enough of that.’
She thought of having his baby. The prospect didn’t frighten her, she longed for it in fact. But she knew she had to be sensible. When they were married would be time enough, she told herself. When they were married. By, those four words sounded grand. But when?
‘My next leave,’ said Jackson. ‘I’ll get a special licence. Everything will come right, you’ll see. Then when this war is over …’ He stopped, thinking of the war. It was hardly begun, never mind being over.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS ALMOST six o’clock when the ambulance returned with Maggie and Frank. Molly and Jackson were back in the kitchen by now. She had the tea all ready, the mince cooking nicely in the oven just waiting for the dumplings to go in for the last ten minutes, vegetables coming to the boil on the fire. They had worked together, Jackson peeling potatoes surprisingly expertly, something he said he had learned in the army, not mentioning that it was when he was in detention after being absent without leave.
The table was set and Molly was just beginning to worry that the meal would be ready too soon when the do
or burst open and there was Maggie, her face wreathed in smiles as she almost danced into the kitchen.
‘Come and see! Come on, you two, come and see!’ And she took hold of both of them and dragged them out, down the yard to the back street, not even noticing or caring that the back door was left open and light was spilling out into the yard. The ambulance men were just opening the doors and putting down the step and then, instead of a stretcher with Frank laid flat on it, they were lifting out a wheel chair and he was sitting up.
‘Dad!’ cried Jackson. ‘Dad, what’s happening?’
‘Hey, lad, let me get in the house first,’ said Frank jovially as he was wheeled down the yard and over the step through into the kitchen. ‘Thanks, lads, you’ve done a grand job,’ he said to the ambulance men. ‘How about a cup of tea now?’
‘No thanks, mate, we have to get back,’ one said. ‘See you next time.’
It wasn’t until they were gone and his wheel chair settled by the fire in the place where his old armchair used to be, Maggie by his side, still beaming all over her face, that Frank spoke.
‘Me back’s getting better! There now, what do you think about that, eh? A bloody miracle it is! I thought it was, I could feel me toes. I wiggled them a bit when I was on me own but didn’t want to say anything ’til I’d been to see the specialist. Why, man, I might even get back on me feet – mebbe not digging coal just yet, but you never know!’
‘That’s grand, Dad, grand,’ said Jackson. He didn’t go so far as to throw his arms around Frank or kiss him but his grasp on his father’s arm was eloquent enough. Molly, though, did bend and kiss and congratulate him, and Maggie stood back, content as a queen.
In the excitement Molly forgot to put the dumplings in among the mince but no one minded that the tea was late. It gave Jackson time to go down to the Miner’s Arms in the village and bring back a jug of brown ale and a bottle of lemonade, and they all toasted Frank’s health, and when Harry came in with Mona they celebrated all over again.