Goodnight Sweetheart

by Annie Groves

  ‘Don’t you worry, love. With lads like Frank and Johnny to look out for us, we’ll be just fine,’ he assured her, although in his heart he felt mounting anxiety.

  Sombrely the three of them made their way along the familiar footpath until they came to Rosie’s grave. For once, even June was silent. The grave was marked with just a simple headstone, but at least she was with those she had loved and who had loved her, and as a child Molly had taken comfort from that knowledge.

  One by one they kneeled down and offered up their flowers and their prayers. Molly could see that their father was trying not to cry.

  Afterwards, though, when they made their way home, it was the sight of that empty land waiting to receive the bodies of those who were still alive that occupied Molly’s thoughts and tore at her heart. For the first time she knew properly what it was to be afraid of war and death. So many graves; so many people who were going to die. She looked at her father and her sister, anguish inside her. It wasn’t just the men abroad. What if one of them …?

  She could taste dust in the August heat when they got off the bus and walked up the cul-de-sac.

  ‘I thought we’d make a start on turning out the attic tonight,’ she heard June telling her once they were back home, briskly back to business.

  Numbly Molly looked at her.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ June asked her.

  ‘All those graves, June, so many of them …’ Molly’s voice shook.

  Immediately June’s expression softened. ‘Aye … I thought like that meself when I knew that my Frank would be joining up, but we’ve got to keep our chins up, Molly. Don’t you worry about Johnny – he’s a tough one.’

  The two sisters looked at one another, both fighting against tears. Molly felt guilty that she was not thinking of Johnny but of every man fighting.

  The door opened to admit their father, who had been upstairs to remove his collar. His shoulders were bowed, his expression drawn and sad.

  Giving Molly a warning look, June said briskly, ‘I expect you’ll be off down the allotment, won’t you, Dad, after you’ve checked on them blummin’ chickens of yours. All over the kitchen, they are.’

  June was so strong, Molly thought admiringly, as she watched their father respond visibly to her goading.

  The chickens had escaped from their box and greeted their owners’ return home with excited cheeps as they hopped and jumped all over the place. Their antics broke the sombre mood, and Molly couldn’t help but laugh at them as she gave them their feed.

  ‘Come on,’ June instructed Molly, once their father had gone out. ‘We’d better go up and make a start on that ruddy attic. Otherwise we’ll be having that fusspot Alf Davies round.’

  Molly nodded her head, determinedly putting her earlier despair firmly behind her.

  ‘I could do with getting meself some new stockings before tonight, seeing as how Irene’s set us all up to go dancing at the Grafton,’ June commented. She and Molly clambered into the loft space and stood looking at the dusty boxes, illuminated by the bare bulb. ‘Gawd, look at all this stuff! Just how long is it since we last came up here? We’ll never get it all sorted out.’

  But Molly wasn’t listening. Instead, she was on her knees, examining the contents of a box she had found behind the pile of cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other, labelled ‘Christmas Decorations’.

  ‘June, come and look at this,’ she begged her sister. ‘This box has got all my exercise books from Neville Road Junior School, right back to me first year, in Miss Brown’s class, and here’s yours next to it.’

  Molly could feel tears prickling her eyes as she saw the careful way their father had written their names on the boxes.

  ‘Well, they can’t stay up here. Everything that might catch fire has got to be got rid of – that’s what the Government has said – and any glass taped up or removed in case we get hit by a bomb. Mind you, Jerry would have to be daft to be bombing us instead of aiming for the docks,’ June added prosaically.

  Reluctantly abandoning her school books, Molly started to help her sister go through the other boxes.

  An hour later, Molly sat back on her heels and pushed her hair off her hot forehead with a dusty hand.

  ‘We’re nearly done,’ June told her. ‘There’s just this box here that some fool has wedged right at the back.’ Panting, she tugged it free, and then started to open it. ‘Gawd knows what’s in it … Oh …’

  As June’s voice changed and she suddenly went still, Molly stopped what she was doing and crawled over to her side, demanding, ‘June, what is it?’ And then her own eyes widened as she saw the crumpled, slightly yellowing lace that June was holding close to her cheek.

  ‘It’s Mam’s wedding dress,’ June said to her in a small choked voice.

  The two sisters looked at one another. There were tears in June’s eyes and Molly’s own gaze was blurred with the same emotion.

  ‘Let’s take it downstairs so that we can look at it properly,’ she suggested quietly.

  As carefully and reverently as if they were carrying the body of their mother herself, between them they took the dress down to the bedroom they shared and then slowly unpacked it.

  ‘Look how tiny her waist was,’ Molly whispered, as she smoothed the lace gently with her fingertips. The dress smelled of mothballs and dust, but also of their mother – the scent of lily of the valley, which she always used to wear.

  ‘Mam must have put it away up there when she and Dad moved here.’ June’s voice was husky, and Molly was startled at how much finding the dress had affected her normally so assured and controlled sister. It was at times like these that she realised June had a soft centre underneath her hard shell.

  ‘It’s too small for you to wear but maybe we could use some of the lace to trim your wedding dress,’ Molly suggested.

  June smiled with shining eyes. ‘Oh, Molly, could we? I’d feel like I’d got Mum with me.’

  ‘Does this lipstick look all right with this frock?’ June demanded later that evening, as she scrutinised her appearance in the bedroom mirror. Molly, who had been applying pale pink lipstick to her own mouth, stopped what she was doing and put her head on one side to study her sister.

  ‘It looks fine,’ she assured her. ‘What time are we supposed to meet up with the others?’

  ‘Seven o’clock, outside the dance hall. Have you seen my shoes?’

  ‘They’re over there, by your bed,’ Molly told her, watching as June slipped her feet into her silver dancing shoes and fastened the strap round her ankle.

  The two sisters were wearing dresses cut from the same pattern, bought in Lewis’s in the spring and carefully sewn by Molly. But whereas her own dress had a white cotton background printed with flowers in varying shades of pink and red, June had opted for a cotton with blue and yellow flowers, and whilst Molly’s dress had a neat sweetheart neckline and puff sleeves, June’s was a more daring halter-neck style. Both dresses showed off the sisters’ neat waistlines and pretty ankles, though.

  It was gone six o’clock before they were finally ready to leave, June complaining that she wasn’t going to hurry anywhere because she didn’t want her face to go all shiny, despite the powder she’d applied.

  ‘At last,’ Irene greeted them impatiently when they reached the dance hall ten minutes late. ‘We was just beginning to think you weren’t coming.’

  ‘It was our Molly’s fault,’ June fibbed unrepentantly, as they all hurried inside in a flurry of brightly coloured cottons and excited giggles.

  ‘It feels like I haven’t bin dancing in ever such a long time,’ June sighed, as they queued up to buy their tickets, even though the factory girls got together to go dancing every month or so.

  ‘Here, look over there at them lads in their uniforms,’ Ruby giggled happily, nudging Molly.

  ‘Give over staring at them, will you, Ruby?’ Irene chastised her. ‘Otherwise they’ll be thinking that we’re sommat as we’re not.’

  �
��What do you mean?’ Ruby demanded, oblivious to the looks the others were exchanging.

  Several groups of young men, clustered round the dance floor, looked eagerly at the girls as they walked past, but Irene led them firmly to a table where they could sit down and then said sternly, ‘Just remember that some of us here have husbands and fiancés, and we don’t want to be embarrassed by the behaviour of those of you who haven’t.’

  ‘Well, if we’re just going ter sit here all night, what have we come for?’ May objected, eyeing up one of the young men.

  ‘I didn’t say as we wouldn’t dance, only that I don’t want to see none of you behaving like that lot over there,’ Irene told them, nodding in the direction of another group of young women standing by the entrance, boldly eyeing up the men coming in and exchanging banter with them.

  To her discomfort, Molly realised that two of the girls were Johnny’s sisters, and when she told June as discreetly as she could, June looked past her to where they were standing and then warned her quickly, ‘Well, don’t say anything to the others. We don’t want to be shown up. You’d best act as though you haven’t seen them.’

  The young soldiers the Hardings girls had seen on the way in had come to stand close to them and were quite plainly watching them.

  Molly turned away whilst Irene raised an eyebrow as she lit a Woodbine and then told June drily, ‘They’re just a bunch of kids. My Alan would make mincemeat of them.’

  ‘And my Frank,’ June agreed, taking one of the cigarettes Irene was offering her.

  Molly looked disapprovingly at her sister but kept quiet. She wanted them to have a good time – they all needed to release some tension after such an emotional day.

  ‘June, Molly, I thought it was you two,’ a male voice announced, and Molly’s frown changed to a wide smile of delight as she recognised Eddie. ‘Auntie Elsie said she thought you were coming down here tonight.’

  ‘Are you on your own?’ June asked him after they had introduced him to the others.

  ‘I came down with our Jim, but I’ve met up with a gang of other lads off the ship. If you girls fancy dancing with us, I can vouch for them.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? As if we’d believe that,’ Irene teased him, but Molly could see that she wasn’t averse to the suggestion.

  ‘Well, just you remember before you go introducing us to anyone that we’re respectable girls and dancing is all we shall be doing,’ June told him sternly.

  ‘Auntie Elsie would have me hide if I was to say anything else. She thinks of you and Molly as part of the family,’ Eddie assured her, before he disappeared into the crowd of young people now filling the dance hall.

  Within five minutes he was back, along with half a dozen other young men, all slightly bashful but very eager to be introduced to the girls.

  ‘How about you and me being the first up on the floor, Molly?’ Eddie asked her with a big grin.

  Molly laughed back at him. It had been Eddie, years ago, when they had all been children, who had been her partner at the dancing lessons they had had at the church hall in preparation for the annual Christmas party.

  ‘Just so long as you don’t tread on my toes,’ she agreed.

  ‘Well, I can’t pull the ribbons out of your hair any more, can I?’ Eddie laughed as he led her onto the floor, adding, ‘But I promise I won’t let anyone put any worms down your back.’

  ‘Oh, do you remember that too?’ Molly asked him eagerly, and then blushed slightly, as she realised that the music had started but she’d been too engrossed in their reminiscences to notice. As though he sensed her self-consciousness, Eddie gave her hand a small squeeze.

  ‘I remember what a game little kid you were, Molly – aye, and a pretty little thing as well.’

  As he swung her into his arms, there was a look in his eyes that made Molly’s heart skip a beat. And when the band slowed into a new number and the lights dimmed, Molly didn’t object when Eddie slipped his arm round her waist and drew her closer.

  He smelled of Pears soap, the skin on his hands rough against her own softer flesh, just as the muscles of his thighs felt so much harder than hers as he pulled her into his body.

  However, when the dance ended and they returned to their table, June gave them both a baleful look and demanded sharply, ‘Why aren’t you wearing your engagement ring, Molly?’

  Molly’s face burned. She had forgotten all about her ring, which she didn’t like wearing because of the greenish mark it left on her finger. But June’s tone of voice made it sound as though she had deliberately chosen not to wear it.

  ‘It’s all right, June,’ Eddie said promptly and easily. ‘I’ve already heard from Aunt Elsie that you and Molly are both spoken for now.’

  Molly gave him a grateful look for rescuing her from her elder sister’s disapproval and her own forgetfulness.

  ‘I didn’t mean to forget about my ring,’ she told him quickly when he insisted on her getting up for another dance.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that, Molly,’ Eddie reassured her. ‘I know you well enough to know you’re not the kind of girl who’d cheat on a lad. I just wish I’d had the gumption to come courtin’ you before Johnny did.’

  Molly’s face burned even hotter. He was just teasing her, that was all, she told herself. She had always got on well with Eddie, with his ready smile and twinkling blue eyes. He was fun and he made her laugh, and that was why she felt so much happier and more comfortable being held in his arms than she had ever felt being held in Johnny’s. Eddie, she knew instinctively, was not the kind to press a girl for something she was not ready to give.

  Johnny! She almost missed a step, causing Eddie to look down at her.

  ‘I was just thinking about Johnny,’ she told him honestly when he asked her if she was all right. ‘It’s horrible knowing there’s going to be a war, but not knowing when it’s going to happen. It feels a bit like waking up in the morning used to feel when it was Mr Roberts’s arithmetic lesson that day, only worse. You sort of forget about it for a while but then when you remember …’ She gave a small shiver.

  ‘Aye, I know what you mean,’ Eddie agreed soberly. ‘The Government is going to be using the merchant navy to carry supplies and we’ve all been warned that Jerry submarines are going to be after us, trying to stop us.’

  ‘Oh, Eddie …’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you that,’ he said gruffly. ‘Not a word to me auntie about it, Molly, promise? ’Cos she’ll worry herself sick about it, and she’s got enough to worry about with Uncle John and our Jim working on the gridiron.’

  ‘I promise,’ she assured him solemnly, suddenly feeling very grown up and mature, not a girl any more but a confidante and an equal in this war that would soon be engulfing them all.

  The Molly she had been last Christmas could not have imagined that the Molly she was now would be learning to drive, and going to first-aid classes, making notes on what to do if she was called upon to help out in an emergency. Being in the WVS wasn’t just a matter of making cups of tea and knitting socks for soldiers, Molly acknowledged proudly. It was proper war work for women, and she was proud to be one of those women.

  ‘When do you go back to your ship?’ she asked Eddie.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he told her, and then added determinedly, as he swung her round into another dance, ‘So tonight I am going to mek sure I enjoy meself.’

  ‘It’s a good band, but I’m gettin’ hot so shall we sit this one out?’

  They had been dancing together non-stop for nearly an hour, so Molly nodded her head, fanning herself with her hand as Eddie led her back to the table.

  All around them, Molly could see young men in uniform, holding their girls as tightly as they could, so determined to enjoy every minute they had together that the sight of them brought a lump to Molly’s throat. Some couples were even embracing, something that would never have happened normally in such a public place without the management intervening, but tonight, instead of reacting disapprovingly to su
ch intimacy, onlookers were viewing them with sympathy and understanding.

  ‘Our Jim seems well taken with that Jean, who works with you,’ Eddie commented to Molly, looking over at his cousin slow-dancing with Molly’s work pal.

  ‘Jean Hughes? She’s really nice,’ Molly told him.

  ‘Where’s she from?’ Eddie asked. ‘I’ve not seen her around before.’

  ‘Her family’s from down near the docks.’ When Eddie started to frown, Molly told him quickly, ‘The flower streets, Eddie, and she’s a very respectable sort. I like her.’

  ‘A Welshie, is she?’ Eddie nodded his head approvingly.

  June came up to join them, flushed and out of breath from dancing.

  ‘The last time I came dancing here it was with my Frank.’

  ‘Aye, and you’ll be dancing with him at your own weddin’ soon,’ Eddie replied, trying to keep her spirits high.

  ‘Yes, I will, an’ all,’ June agreed. ‘I can’t wait for my first dance as Mrs Frank Brookes.’

  It was gone eleven when they finally left the Grafton, Molly laughing, her face flushed with the pleasure of dancing and the warmth of the camaraderie and laughter they had all shared, even if at times she had felt as though the frantic giddiness with which they were throwing themselves into the fun of the evening masked an awareness of what lay ahead that none of them wanted to acknowledge. It was almost as though they felt they had to enjoy themselves whilst they still could, Molly admitted to herself uneasily.

  Eddie insisted on walking them home – Jim having mysteriously disappeared, along with Jean.

  ‘Well, I suppose it will be all right walking home with you at this time of night – no one’s going to gossip about it if they do see us with you,’ June acknowledged, ‘seeing as you and Jim are the nearest thing me and Molly have got to brothers.’

  ‘Come on then, sis,’ Eddie teased her, offering each girl an arm and then pretending to strut along the street like a comic turn, making Molly giggle and protest.

  ‘Oh, give over, do, Eddie. You’ll give me a stitch.’