Molly's War

by Maggie Hope

  ‘A shame about Mrs Fletcher,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve had a few similar cases after this ’flu.’ He paused and wrote something on his prescription pad. As he handed a torn-off sheet to Harry he added, ‘Don’t worry, your wife will be fine in a few days. And it looks like your little daughter has escaped it though she’ll be to watch for a while. When are you due back?’

  ‘Monday evening. But I’ll ask for compassionate leave. It should be all right for a few days at least. Then there’s my mother.’

  The doctor sighed. ‘So long as proper care can be arranged if you have to go.’

  After he had gone and Jackson had dispatched a neighbour’s son for the prescription, he started up the stairs with Beth on one arm. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he took Molly’s hand. Already she was looking more her old self.

  ‘Mind, you gave me a heck of a shock,’ he said. He bent and kissed her on the forehead, squashing Beth a little so that she protested loudly and he sat up straight.

  ‘You’re not going to come between us all the time, young lady,’ he said to her, and Beth smiled and crowed and held out a hand to him. Obviously she was taken with him and by the look on his face the feeling was reciprocated.

  Downstairs, the marble clock suddenly chimed. It must be going again, Molly thought, startled. Her hand beneath the bedclothes, she crossed her fingers.

  ‘Is it all right now, Jackson?’ she asked, holding her breath in case she had misread the signs. Was he being nice simply because she was ill? Oh, she couldn’t bear it if it was that.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel.’

  In truth his emotions were in complete chaos. He looked at the baby and she gazed back at him, with Molly’s eyes. She even tilted her head in the way Molly did. He couldn’t hate her, of course he couldn’t. None of this was her fault. In the back of his mind he knew it was nobody’s fault. It was the war, the flaming war.

  Molly said no more, she was afraid to. Instead she stared out of the window at the row of chimney pots opposite. But a spark of hope had been ignited and it was still flickering.

  ‘Well, at least Dora is going to get better,’ said Jackson. ‘Though you won’t be in a fit state to look after her when she comes out of hospital.’

  He had been down to the telephone box to ring the hospital to enquire after Dora. Now he sat on the edge of Molly’s bed again, dandling Beth on his knee. She was gurgling and smiling for all the world as though she had known him all her short life rather than a few hours. Molly, already feeling a little better, was propped up on pillows, a doting smile on her face as she looked from her man to her daughter and back again. She refused to think about tomorrow.

  ‘At least she’ll be all right. I’ll manage somehow.’

  ‘No, you won’t, my love.’

  Had the endearment just slipped out? Molly wondered.

  ‘I know you’re used to managing but I won’t have you doing too much. You have this one to see to.’ Jackson lifted Beth up in the air and jiggled her about and she crowed with pleasure.

  ‘There’s my mother …’

  ‘But she has your dad on crutches,’ Molly reminded him.

  ‘I’ll ring up, ask for extended leave,’ said Jackson. ‘But I’m not sure …’ After all, Molly was not in any danger now.

  She suddenly sat bolt upright, her weakness forgotten. ‘I know! I’ll ask Vi.’

  ‘Vi?’

  ‘A girl who worked in the maternity home. I got friendly with her when I was there and I’ve felt guilty ever since that I hadn’t asked her here at all. She has no family of her own and she loved Beth. Oh, I know she’ll come! I’ll ask Vi. Send her a card now. It’ll catch the post, won’t it?’

  It was the following morning at nine o’clock, just half an hour after the post was delivered at the home, that Vi presented herself before Matron.

  ‘I have to leave,’ she said, her smile stretching from ear to ear. ‘I’m going to help my friend, live at her house.’

  ‘Are you sure of what you are doing?’

  Matron gazed at the diminutive figure before her. She would be sorry to lose Vi, she thought. The girl was a good worker. Vi handed over the card from Molly.

  ‘Molly Mason, is it?’ asked Matron and Vi nodded. Matron sniffed. Molly Mason was a strong-minded girl. She had refused to put her baby up for adoption which was the only sensible course for a girl in her position. Still, she had been kind to Vi, Matron remembered that.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, handing the card back. ‘You can take a week’s notice.’

  Vi lifted her head and gave Matron a determined look. ‘Eeh, no, Matron. I’m going now,’ she said.

  ‘The funny thing is,’ Molly wrote to Jackson a fortnight later, ‘that Dora and Vi have taken to each other really well. Dora is thinner and still weak but Vi couldn’t look after her better if she was her own mother …’

  Molly stopped writing and looked over to where Beth lay on the rug. She rolled over on to her stomach and tried to push herself up, her head wobbling a little as she grunted with the effort. Her hands slipped from under her and she whimpered before trying again. Her mother went over to her and picked her up and sat down on the rocking chair with her. She crooned as she rocked back and forwards, the baby laid against her shoulder, and eventually Beth fell asleep.

  Molly was supremely happy. She felt that she had never been so happy in her life. There was Maggie, of course, and Frank. They weren’t nasty to her when they found out about Beth, not at all.

  ‘They are my family now,’ Jackson had said to them. ‘Both Molly and Beth. I don’t want to hear a word against them.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say one,’ said Maggie. She and Frank had exchanged a glance, each understanding what the other was thinking. They didn’t want to lose Jackson again and were definitely not going to say anything to risk it.

  ‘Any road, she’s a fine bairn,’ Frank had said.

  Molly stood up and put the baby down in her cot and went back to her letter to Jackson.

  ‘’Til we meet again,’ she wrote. ‘Watch yourself, my love.’

  Things might seem OK between them but she wasn’t so soft as to think everything was as it had been before Beth. There were bridges to build still. And it was difficult to do it by letter. But when the war was over …

  ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:

  A Daughter’s Gift

  Elizabeth Nelson is only ten years old when her mother dies in childbirth. With her father gone, the siblings are separate; her Aunt Betty takes baby Kit. Elizabeth and her brother, Jimmy, are sent to a children’s home and Alice and Jenny are sent into foster care.

  Life in the home is hard, but Elizabeth is determined to look after her brother and make a better life for them both. Working as a nurse gives Elizabeth a purpose but she risks everything by falling for local mine owner, Jack Benson. Wounded at Gallipoli, Jack is far above her in wealth and station. Elizabeth cannot marry him and she risks losing her nursing place if there is any hint of impropriety about her conduct.

  Then Elizabeth learns that her sister, Jenny, has been adopted by an abusive farmer. Torn between her hopeless love for Jack and her sister, must Elizabeth make an extreme sacrifice to reunite her family?

  ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:

  A Mother’s Gift

  Taken in by her grandparents to ease the pressure on her poverty-stricken family, Katie Benfield knows she’s one of the lucky ones. Even so, she dreams of a better life and of pursuing a nursing career. Despite many hardships, Katie achieves her goal, but tragedy strikes Winton Colliery when both her grandfather and childhood sweetheart are killed in a mining accident. Shocked and distraught, Katie finds herself vulnerable to the advances of the owner of the mine, Matthew Hamilton, a married man who wastes no time in taking advantage of her.

  Thrown out by her grandmother, her reputation and career in tatters, Katie finds herself facing a home for unmarried mothers. Only Matthew Hamilton offers her a way to keep her baby, but only if she forg
oes her principles and becomes his mistress …

  ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:

  A Nurse’s Duty

  Torn between love and duty …

  Following a disastrous marriage to a miner, Karen has devoted herself to a nursing career. Rising to the challenge of caring for the wounded soldiers returning home from the Great War, she has resigned herself to putting her vocation before any hope of a romantic life.

  However, she finds herself drawn to handsome, troubled Patrick Murphy. But Patrick is also a Catholic priest. Dare Karen risk scandal and her position by falling for the one man she cannot have …?

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  First published as The Marble Clock in 2001 by Piatkus Books

  This edition published in 2013 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

  A Random House Group Company

  Copyright © 2001 Una Horne writing as Maggie Hope

  Maggie Hope has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780091952938

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