by Anne Bennett
Tom was absolutely bowled over when he was hailed by an excited Nellie when he went into the post office on 31 October. ‘Tom, I received a letter today from Molly, and so did Cathy.’
The shock was so great, Tom’s mouth dropped open and the blood drained from his face as he breathed, ‘Ah, glory be to God.’
‘Don’t be so quick thanking the Almighty,’ Nellie said. ‘Our little Molly has been through the mill, if you ask me.’
‘Why? What’s happened to her?’
‘You’d had better read it for yourself,’ Nellie said. ‘It’s what she doesn’t say that is so worrying.’
Tom agreed, for there were large gaps in his letter too. Molly said she was sorry for not getting in touch sooner, but gave no explanation as to why that was. She merely told them how her grandfather had died, and that she had found Kevin in an orphanage. Though she didn’t go into details, she did say that he was now living with her.
‘Whatever happened to her that she is not telling us about?’ Tom asked Nellie.
‘Heaven knows,’ Nellie said. ‘She said a little more in Cathy’s letter, and to be frank, Tom, I am that worried about her.’
‘Well, we can’t write back and ask her anything because she didn’t include her address on the letter,’ Tom said. ‘I need to go over there and see for myself she is all right. Shame about the grandfather dying and all, for all she semi-expected the news would not be good. She was right fond of that old man.’
‘Aye, and that brother of hers,’ Nellie said. ‘I bet it cut her to the quick, finding he had been put into an orphanage.’
‘Aye,’ Tom said sadly. ‘No alternative, I suppose. It’s grand that they are together again at last, but I will not rest easy till I find them and see that they are all right.’
‘What about the farm?’ Nellie asked. ‘Is Joe able for it yet?’
‘Aye,’ Tom said, for Joe had been badly injured in a raid in London and had brought his family to live on the farm until he should recover fully. ‘He is almost fighting fit again now. That son of his, Ben, is no slouch either, for all he is not nine years old until next year.’
‘Aye, he is a fine wee boy, all right.’
‘It isn’t Joe holding me up. It’s Mammy.’
‘How is she?’ Nellie felt bound to ask.
Tom shook his head. ‘Not good!’ he said. ‘The doctor said that it is a matter of weeks. Before Christmas, anyway. And bad as she is, I can’t leave her now. When it is all over and I see her decently buried, I will be off.’
‘But where will you go?’ Nellie asked.
‘I have that Hilda’s new address, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, but think about it, Tom. She is Birmingham born and bred, and she couldn’t find Molly either, don’t forget. That is why she wrote that time, to see if we had any information.’
‘Aye, well, maybe the two of us will have better success,’ Tom said. ‘And she might at least know a place I can stay for a wee while. We have Kevin to find as well. That might make it easier, for the child must go to school someplace.’
‘Tom, have you any idea the number of schools there probably are in Birmingham?’ Nellie asked him. ‘It isn’t a bit like Buncrana, you know.’
Nellie thought he was heading for further heartache and yet she knew too that neither she nor anyone else would be able to dissuade him.
Tom confirmed this when he said, ‘Nellie, I know you mean well but I need to see Molly and Kevin with my own two eyes.’
‘All right,’ Nellie said. ‘I see you are determined on this course of action and I will say no more about it, but if you let me have that old neighbour’s new address, I will write to her today and get it away with the post.’
‘How are you getting to the court?’ Helen asked Molly.
‘The police are collecting both Will and myself – insisting on it, in fact. Inspector Norton said it wouldn’t be the first time a witness was nobbled on their way to court and he doesn’t want that happening to us.’ She shook her head, then went on, ‘It’s all alien stuff to me. Inspector Norton has been very good, finding us a solicitor and all, and warning us of the type of questions that the other side might throw at us. It was harder for Will, of course, because he was worried that he might lose his job, or even be imprisoned, and he only found out last week that neither is going to happen.’
‘It must have been a terrific load off his mind.’
‘It was,’ Molly said. ‘And he was able to write and reassure Betty, who must have been worried herself, though she never nagged Will about it or anything. She is a lovely person and so proud of Will doing the right thing that nothing else seems to matter. Will misses her something awful, but he can write and tell her to come back now. After all, Kevin came back home a week ago. Will was just more cautious and would never allow them back while there might be the slightest risk.’
Molly was extremely fond of Will and they had drawn closer together as they were both filled with dread at the ordeal before them. She had never been attracted to him sexually, however, and wasn’t now, and so she tried to ignore the pointed nudges made in her direction, though no one openly said anything to her that she could refute.
Helen, knowing how her own son had misconstrued things, said to Molly, ‘I bet many people think he is your fancy piece.’
‘Oh, I am a complete femme fatale, don’t you know?’ Molly said with a smile. ‘After all, there is me canoodling with Will all the day long and him a married man and all, and then until recently another man had been walking me to and from work each day, and he used to stay the night. The neighbours, I know, assumed he was my boyfriend and it was safer for me not to deny that. They thought it scandalous, of course. I heard them talking about it when I was filling a bucket of coal from the bunker before work. I was intended to hear. My neighbours either side were shouting to one another about how morality has gone to the wall since the war, and then one said she can’t abide this practice of living together. Disgusting, she called it, and the other agreed and said it was worse when there was a child involved, seeing all this laxity.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ Helen said with sympathy. ‘What did you do?’
‘Oh,’ said Molly with a grin, ‘I wished them both good morning and took myself and the coal bucket back to the house.’
‘Don’t you mind?’
‘Do you know, I don’t,’ Molly said. ‘However, I will mind very much getting up and telling perfect strangers about my behaviour and letting them judge me.’
‘You are not the one on trial, Molly.’
‘And you know as well as I do that regardless who is in the dock, I will be judged as harshly, maybe more harshly, than them, especially as Inspector Norton says their prosecution will go all-out to prove what a harlot I am underneath. Set against that, what does it matter if workmates and neighbours have got the wrong end of the stick?’
‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘I understand exactly what you mean.’
Inspector Norton knew how Molly and Will were feeling. He hadn’t been joking either when he talked about a witness being got at in one way or another on his way to court because he knew that if there was some person on the loose who didn’t want Molly and Will to testify, then this was their last chance to see that didn’t happen. So, early that morning, because they were on the stand first, he came to accompany them in the back of a squad car while another officer sat beside the driver in the front.
Molly watched the neighbours’ curtains twitch as she walked down the path to squeeze into the back of the car, followed by Inspector Norton. She knew the neighbours would note the heavy police presence and probably conclude that she was a hardened criminal, a mass murderer at least.
But she refused to think of them and instead tried to concentrate on what Inspector Norton was saying to them both.
‘Tell the plain truth,’ he said. ‘Just as you did to me that day when you first came into my office. Imagine that you are there doing the same thing again, for the way you spoke that day will s
tay with me for a long time. Sometimes,’ he warned, ‘you might be interrupted and sometimes the other barrister will try and cast doubt on your evidence. If that happens, keep calm, answer any question asked and reaffirm what you said before.’
Molly was remembering that as the car drew up before the large red-brick courthouse in Corporation Street, and she looked at the huge flight of steps leading up to it and shivered. She was so pleased that Helen, Lynne and Daisy had come to give her moral support, though she could hardly bear to meet Mark’s eyes, terrified that she would see the revulsion in them.
He so wanted to lift her head and tell her how he felt about her, but it was neither the time nor the place, and anyway, the solicitor was by her side now.
The hardest thing was facing the people grouped in the dock: Edwin Collingsworth, Raymond Morris, Charles Johnson and two heavy-set men she had never seen before. It took every inch of courage to stand before them and take the oath. Her barrister told her first to tell the tale in her own words and Molly nodded and, fixing her eyes on a point above the wall just above the jurors’ heads, she began.
All in the courtroom heard of a young life that had already tasted so much tragedy and then of the men that had befriended her at New Street Station, and all she had suffered under their hands and that of others involved. Sometimes she faltered, as if almost afraid to go on, and once she stopped altogether, consumed by shame for the words she had to say. Tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. However, when the judge asked her if she wanted an adjournment to compose herself, she shook her head. She was offered a glass of water, which she sipped gratefully, and then she reminded herself why she was there and continued her account in a low voice, full of pain and anguish.
Even in the throes of war that had claimed many lives and much heartache, Molly’s tale seemed particularly poignant, and all were affected by it. Many of the women on the jury dabbed at their eyes. As for Mark, although his mother had told him everything, his heart ached to hear from Molly’s own lips how she had suffered.
He realised too in that moment that he loved her before any other, and quite understood why she had refused to get involved with men. An experience like that could put many off men for life, but he somehow knew that wouldn’t be the case with Molly. She had such strength of character, and he would be ready and willing to wait until she was ready.
All their friends congratulated Molly and Will warmly afterwards, and Mark shook Will by the hand, and said he had seldom seen a braver man. As for Molly, he wanted to take her away somewhere quiet and show her how much he loved her, but Molly was surrounded by people. He envied his mother, sister and Daisy, who could hug Molly with such ease, but he knew she would pull away if he tried, though he would give his eyeteeth for the chance to hold her in his arms.
‘You were both sensational,’ Norton said as the car took them away from the city. ‘God, we’ve waited for this opportunity for years. We’ll really nail the bastards now.’
‘When will sentence be passed?’ Will asked.
‘Not for some time,’ Norton said. ‘They are both wanted for a whole heap of other crimes – murder, drug-running, robbery … the list is endless. Saying that, though, we should have the whole thing wrapped up well before Christmas, but for you the ordeal is over. Put it behind you.’
‘If it wasn’t for Hitler,’ said Will, ‘I would say the future looks rosy.’
‘Don’t worry about Hitler,’ Norton said. ‘He’s just a bit player and we will soon kick him into touch.’
They were laughing as they neared Molly’s house and she saw the curtains twitching again.
‘Wonder what they make of this now,’ she said. ‘You have obviously released me and I have returned laughing my head off. Goodness, it will keep them going for weeks.’
Norton smiled. ‘Everyone will likely know all about it soon enough.’
The inspector was right, as Molly found out a good few hours later when a furious Kevin came home, waving the Evening Mail.
‘Read that,’ he said, thrusting it in front of her.
Molly’s horrified eyes saw a picture of her and Will, and a full account of what she had said in court.
‘Bet you’re in the Despatch too,’ Kevin commented morosely, ‘and you treated me like I was five years old again and only told me half of what had happened to you.’
‘I was only trying to protect you, Kevin,’ Molly said.
‘Oh, yeah, it protected me all right,’ Kevin said sarcastically. ‘Reading about what happened to my own sister in the bloody newspaper and in front of all my mates was real protection.’
‘All right then,’ Molly burst out angrily. ‘You want the truth so you will have it. I was ashamed – yes, bloody ashamed – and for myself I would rather have gone and hid my head in the sand than put myself through what I did today. I took no pleasure in it at all. I only did it to stop other girls going down the same road. As you are such a reader of newspapers, maybe you will remember the case of Christine Naylor, who left home after a row and virtually disappeared.’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, the people who are in prison now had her too,’ Molly said. ‘That was the real spur that made me go ahead. She wasn’t even fifteen, younger than Helen’s daughter, Lynne, and for her sake and to keep others safe from the depraved clutches of those men, I spoke out today. If you are going to be all sniffy and narky with me for not telling you all this sordid stuff, you must get over it on your own. I’ve had about as much as I can take today.’
Before Kevin had time to answer this, there was a knock at the door. Curiously and a little cautiously, for they had few visitors, Molly went to open it. Mark stood the other side with a parcel wrapped in newspaper under one arm.
‘Mark,’ Molly said in surprise, really pleased to see him. ‘Come in.’
Mark’s heart had leaped at the smile in Molly’s eyes, and as he stepped into the hall he said, ‘I came to see how you are feeling now. Then, as I passed the fish-and-chip shop on the Chester Road, there was a queue forming and a woman told me there was word that there was some fish in, so I joined on the end. I thought I would be queuing until tomorrow morning, but I got to the counter in the end and I have three portions of fish and chips here. Could you and Kevin do it justice?’
Molly’s mouth watered and she realised she hadn’t eaten all day, she had just existed on cups of tea.
‘Thank you, Mark,’ she said. ‘That will be just the job, and a sight better than the whale meat I got last week. I’ll get the plates. Maybe you can go in there and talk some sense into Kevin, who is sulking because I didn’t tell him the whole story and he had to read it in the newspapers.’
However, before either of them could move, Kevin came into the hall, tears streaming down his face. Molly hadn’t seen her young brother cry since the time she had arrived at the Cottage Homes for the first time, and she wrapped her two arms around him.
‘I’m sorry, really sorry,’ he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. ‘I should never have said those things to you. It was just that … well, you always said that we were in this together and I felt that you were shutting me out. When I read all about what you went through and that, I was bloody scared at what might have happened to you.’
Molly held Kevin away from her so that she could look in his eyes and said, ‘Listen to me, Kevin. I promise you here and now that I will never ever keep things from you. You are growing up and I need to recognise that. Is that OK?’
Kevin’s grin was a bit wobbly, but his voice was firm. ‘OK.’
‘Just two more things,’ Molly said.
‘What?’
‘The first is, if you keep swearing, young man, I will wash your mouth out with carbolic,’ Molly said.
Kevin had a fleeting memory of his mother threatening his father with the same thing, though he himself had been very small at the time, and he smiled and said in a singsong voice, ‘OK, OK. What’s the second?’
‘The second,’ sa
id Molly, ‘is that from the sounds and smells coming from the kitchen, the fish and chips Mark brought are on the plates and ready to eat.’
‘Oh boy!’ Kevin cried, for shop-bought fish and chips was a real treat.
‘How hungry are you?’ Molly asked.
‘Are you kidding?’ Kevin cried. ‘For fish and chips I’m starving,’ and then with a sideward glance at Molly and a grin he said, ‘Absolutely bloody ravenous, in fact.’
Molly cuffed him over the side of the head playfully as he passed and they entered the kitchen laughing.
Mark’s heart nearly stopped beating as he saw Molly, her face alight with laughter, a Molly he hadn’t really seen, he realised, for this was a Molly released from tension and fear and the Molly he knew he would love until the breath left his body. However, he betrayed none of this. Instead he threw the tea towel over his arm to resemble a waiter, gave a bow and said, ‘If madam and the young master are ready now, dinner is served.’
‘Thank you,’ Molly said, sitting down in the chair he pulled out for her. ‘Won’t you join us?’
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Mark. And the three sat and ate together, talking and chatting and laughing, completely comfortable with each other at last.
Kevin was not the only one to see Molly’s picture in the paper and hear the account of what had happened to her. So also did Hilda Mason. Just that day she had received the letter from Nellie saying that Molly had been in touch.
We were grateful to get the letter, though it makes grim reading. I am enclosing it for you so you may see it for yourself. We feel so helpless over here, and Tom is bound to the farm just now, for his mother is dying and he doesn’t want to leave her until the end …
Hilda read Molly’s letter and was disturbed by it. Then that same evening she unfolded the Evening Mail and saw Molly’s picture on the front page, and read her account of what had happened to her. Hilda’s mouth dropped open. She realised what a watered-down version she had given to those in Ireland and knew that she had to go and see the girl.