Molly's War

by Maggie Hope

  ‘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.

  ‘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 s
ewing 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.’

  Mag
gie 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.