by Annie Groves
‘Fancy stopping at the chippy?’ Eddie asked them, nodding in the direction of Harry Scott’s chip shop up ahead of them.
‘Go on then,’ June agreed.
The three of them waited their turn in the queue whilst Hilda, Harry’s wife, removed a new batch of chips from the fryer, testing one between her forefinger and thumb before expertly shaking them free of fat. The chips were the best in Liverpool and people flocked from the opposite side of the city to get their fish supper.
‘Three penn’orths of mix, please,’ Eddie ordered when it was their turn.
Nodding her head, Hilda placed three portions of chips on separate pages of the Liverpool Echo, then took the huge pan of mushy peas off the gas stove, and scooped half a ladleful out onto each pile of chips.
‘Salt and vinegar?’ she asked.
All three of them nodded.
Quickly wrapping their chips in another sheet of newspaper, she handed them over.
Now intent on eating their chips and peas, they slowed their conversation to match their pace as they headed for Chestnut Close.
The cul-de-sac was in darkness, and their chips long finished by the time they finally reached number 78. Knowing that Eddie was going to be rejoining his ship in the morning, Molly wanted to say something to tell him that she was conscious of the danger he would be facing once war came – that though she may be safe at home at the moment, she knew that things would change for ever for them all once hostilities were declared. But at the same time she was reluctant to spoil the happiness of the evening by reminding them all of what lay ahead.
Whilst she hesitated, not sure what to do, Eddie turned to June and hugged her, kissing her on the cheek. And then, having released June, he turned back to Molly. She had been in his arms for a good part of the evening whilst they danced, so she had no qualms about being held tightly by him now. But when he bent his head to kiss her, it was not with the same brotherly peck on the cheek he had given June, but a lingering kiss on her mouth that took her by surprise.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise and confusion. In his she could see a mixture of emotions. With the shock of an icy cold finger pressed against her spine, she recognised that what she was seeing in his eyes were the feelings of a man about to face the reality of war and death. With a mix of compassion, tenderness and a wholly female response to his need, she kissed him back, shyly and inexpertly, as though somehow her kissing him was a kind of magic talisman that would protect him.
‘I’m off early in the morning,’ Eddie told them both gruffly as he released Molly. ‘Keep an eye on me auntie for me, won’t yer?’
Both girls nodded. Molly hoped it wouldn’t be too long before he was back home again, safe – and in her arms.
‘I really enjoyed it tonight,’ Molly told June sleepily when they were both in bed. ‘Did you?’
‘I’d have enjoyed it a sight more if my Frank had been there,’ June responded, immediately making Molly guiltily aware of the fact that she had not given Johnny much thought at all, apart from when she had spotted his sisters. As for the kiss she had given Eddie … Her face burned afresh, not just because she had given it, but also because she had enjoyed giving it.
SIX
Proudly Molly smoothed down the grey-green tweed skirt of her WVS uniform suit. Under the jacket she was wearing the red jumper that was part of her uniform, like the felt hat that she had pulled firmly over her curls. For winter there was a dark green coat to wear over the suit.
When Mrs Wesley had handed Molly the voucher to enable her to buy the uniform, she had praised her for passing her first-aid test, and had told her warmly to wear her uniform with pride. Although the suit was more functional than glamorous, Molly had managed discreetly to alter the fit of the skirt so that it looked more shapely. She had collected it earlier in the week and she was very conscious of wearing it, and also that she was about to play her part in a very important event. Today was the day when the children of the cul-de-sac and the surrounding area were to be evacuated from Liverpool to the safety of the Welsh countryside.
As she walked past the allotments she stopped to speak to Bert Johnson, who, despite the fact that he was coming up for eighty, still worked on his allotment. Rover, his mongrel dog, was lying faithfully at his side, and Molly stooped to pat the dog’s head.
‘Tell yer dad that he wants to get a rooster for them chickens of his,’ he told Molly.
Her father often went round to check up on Bert, who lived several doors down from them on the opposite side of the road. Although he was older than their father, he too had served in the Great War and the two men got on well together. He had survived the war without any injury, but Bert had lost both his wife and his two young children in the influenza outbreak that had followed, and now lived alone apart from his loyal dog.
Promising him that she would pass on his message, Molly hurried down the road. She and the other WVS involved had been told to be at their designated schools well before the children to be evacuated were due to arrive. Molly’s job was to tick off their names on a list she was going to be given and then later to help escort the children to Lime Street station to board the trains that would take them to their designated evacuation areas.
To her relief, the first person she saw when she reached the school was Anne, who beamed at her.
‘I’ve been looking out for you. We’re going to be working together. What luck!’
Two hours later, armed with her list, Molly was busily asking children’s names as they arrived at the school, whilst at the same time trying to reassure desperately worried mothers that they were doing the right thing. Already the school seemed to be full of children carrying suitcases tied with string, the older children with pillowcases containing the rest of their belongings slung over their shoulders. Many were also holding on to younger siblings, the gas masks they had been issued with hanging round their necks.
The boys, as boys will, were scuffling lightheart-edly with one another, whilst the girls looked on disapprovingly. Molly knew that behind the teasing and jostling lurked real fear at what lay ahead.
‘If you can, then do try to persuade the mothers to say their goodbyes to the kiddies here instead of going with them to Lime Street,’ Molly’s superior had told her, but it wasn’t as easy as that. Molly found it heartbreaking to see the brown labels tied onto the children’s clothes and belongings, their names often written in shaky handwriting, bearing silent witness to the mothers’ anguish at the thought of the coming parting. The children were clinging resolutely to their gas masks, as they had been told to do.
‘You’ll look after them, won’t you?’ more than one mother had begged Molly with tears in her eyes, although there were some desperately sad little ones lined up, who seemed to have no one to care for them at all. Although she knew that she was not supposed to do so, Molly discreetly gave just that little bit more attention to these children, some of whom were very shabbily dressed and didn’t seem to have with them the new clothes and personal items the Government had instructed that each child was to have.
‘A toothbrush each, if you please, and how am I supposed to give my three that, when they all share the same one at ’ome?’ Molly heard one mother demanding indignantly of one of the other WVS girls.
By and large, though, the children she was dealing with were well fed and properly clothed. It tore at Molly’s sensitive heart, though, to see their wan little faces and anxious expressions when they thought that none of the grown-ups was watching them. How would she have felt if this had been her and June? She would have been crying and looking every bit as upset as the little girl she had just tried to comfort. But it was all being done for the children’s own good – to keep them safe if the cities were bombed.
Molly tried to remind herself that she was here to do a job and that she must not let herself give in to her emotions. It wasn’t easy, though, especially when one poor mother handed over her little girl wearing a heavy metal calliper on a badly
twisted leg, and begged Molly, ‘She has to have her leg rubbed every night with warm olive oil. I’ve written it down on her label, look. You’ll mek sure that whoever she goes to knows that, won’t you, miss?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Molly promised her gently.
Every child had been given a block of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and a bottle of Edmondson’s lemonade for the journey, but some of the children hadn’t been able to wait and had already consumed the whole lot.
She had lost count already of the number of times a small hand had tugged urgently on her skirt and a small voice had piped up shrilly, ‘Please, miss, I want the lav,’ or, ‘Please, miss, me bruvver’s peed his pants,’ or, ‘Please, miss, our kid’s bin sick.’ It made Molly think again of her mother – all the tiny, thankless tasks she’d done for her and June, and how they had fallen to her father after her death.
She had been thinking of her mother such a lot since they had found her wedding dress. How would she have felt if she were alive? She would have been worrying about the war like they all were. Would she have been proud of Molly for joining the WVS; might she have even joined with her and persuaded June to do the same? Molly sensed that their mother’s presence in their lives would have had a softening effect on June’s sometimes determined nature. She would certainly have shared in June’s pride that Frank was doing his duty. Their mother would have liked Frank – Molly knew that instinctively. But what would she have thought of Johnny? Would she have understood how confused Molly felt, or would she have taken June’s side and told Molly that she was being silly? Molly liked to think that she would have understood.
The day seemed to be passing in an unending toing and froing, but eventually the supervisors came round to collect the lists and to announce that they would shortly be leaving for Lime Street.
‘There seem to be a lot of gaps on my list,’ Molly apologised.
‘I’m afraid that rather a lot of the mothers have changed their minds at the last minute,’ the supervisor told her, as the children were marshalled into a crocodile, ready, along with their teachers and helpers like Molly, to walk to Lime Street station to wait there for the train that would take them to North Wales.
Molly was just about to leave the school when she caught sight of Sally Walker. She looked pale and unwell, one hand pressed into her lower back as though to ease away an ache.
Hurrying over to her, she exclaimed, ‘Sally, aren’t you coming?’
Women who were pregnant, or who had babies and very young children, had been offered the opportunity to be evacuated. The more well-to-do could afford to rent houses for themselves, but for most people evacuation meant having to live under someone else’s roof, and very few women were keen to do that, especially when it meant moving away from their own homes and their families.
Sally shook her head. ‘No. I want to stay here just in case my Ronnie gets leave unexpected, like. Besides, I don’t fancy having to live alongside strangers, and having to ask every time I wanted to mek meself a brew and all that. I like ’aving me own home and me own things around me.’ Her eyes were swollen and she had obviously been crying. ‘I came down with me neighbour. She’s sending her kiddies off. Bloody awful it is, an’ all, poor little mites.’
‘It’s the best thing for them, Sally,’ Molly tried to comfort her.
‘What would you know?’ Sally demanded sharply. ‘You haven’t got any kiddies.’ She winced as she spoke and Molly asked her worriedly if she was all right.
‘Stop goin’ on, will yer, Molly, and leave us alone,’ Sally snapped.
The walk down to Lime Street seemed to take for ever, and some of the younger children had already started to flag. In an attempt to cheer them up and spur them on, their teacher started to sing loudly ‘Sing As We Go’, urging the children to join in. One little girl, too exhausted to walk any further, suddenly dropped down on her bottom, sobbing. Molly bent down and picked her up. She was wet through and crying, and Molly comforted her as best she could, wondering how she would be feeling if she did have children.
Had it really only been a week ago that she had been dancing and laughing at Grafton Dance Hall? Now, watching Liverpool’s children wrenched away from their homes and their mothers, she couldn’t believe she would ever laugh again.
‘Miss, will they have pictures where we’re going?’ one little boy asked her. ‘Only I ain’t going if’n I can’t see Flash Gordon of a Saturday no more.’
‘I’m sure there will be a cinema,’ Molly reassured him, treating his concern seriously. ‘And there’ll be lots of places for you to play as well, nice green fields, and fresh air.’
‘Fields?’ one sharp-faced boy asked her warily. ‘What’s them, then?’
These were city children – some of them slum children, Molly reminded herself as she struggled to find the right words to calm their fears.
‘Fields are where farmers grow things for us to eat,’ she told them. ‘I dare say that those of you who get billeted with farmers will be able to collect your own eggs from the farmer’s wife’s hens. My auntie has a farm and she used to let me do that when I was your age.’
‘Will there be ponies for us to ride?’ one little girl asked eagerly.
‘Maybe …’ Molly answered her cautiously, adding firmly, ‘I expect you’ll all make lots of new friends at your new schools.’
Although some of the children accepted her words happily, she could see that others were not so easily convinced or appeased, and she could hardly blame them.
Once they reached Lime Street station, the combined noise of so many people packed into one place was such that Molly was tempted to put her hands over her ears. She had never seen so many children. They were everywhere – crying, sobbing, shouting, throwing tantrums, or else completely silent, as if they had been struck dumb by the trauma they were enduring, whilst mothers wept, and harassed officials did their best to make some sort of order out of the chaos. The trains that were to take the children away stood silently beside the platforms, their doors firmly closed. No one would be allowed to board until they were queuing up in the right order, their names ticked off the appropriate list. So much careful planning had gone into this operation to protect the country’s young, but right now all Molly could think of was its emotional cost to the families involved.
A small boy tugged on her sleeve, and demanded, ‘Did all these kids get a bar o’ chocolate, miss?’
‘I expect so,’ she murmured. She knew that from now on the smell of Dairy Milk was always going to remind her of this heart-rending scene.
Behind the barriers, mothers were standing ten deep, calling out their children’s names, and as Molly watched, one young woman reached over and grabbed her child, refusing to give her back.
‘This is so awful,’ Molly whispered to Anne, who had just materialised at her side.
‘It’s for their own good, Molly. We must remember that, and think of how much safer they are going to be instead of thinking of this.’
Mutely, Molly nodded. She was still holding the little girl she had picked up in the street. The child had stopped crying now and, instead, had fallen asleep. She couldn’t be more than five, Molly guessed.
‘She’s wet herself,’ she told Anne unhappily. ‘I was wondering if I could take her somewhere to change her. I hate to think of her sitting on the train and being uncomfortable.’
Anne sighed. ‘There’s some done worse than that to themselves,’ she told Molly forthrightly. ‘I know the Government meant well, giving them that chocolate, but I can’t help thinking it might not have been a good idea.’
Molly grimaced as the loudspeakers suddenly boomed out teachers’ names and classes.
‘Here we go,’ Anne told her as the children surged forward towards the waiting LNWR train.
‘I just keep thinking about those children and their poor mothers,’ Molly said back home, pushing her dinner around her plate without eating it.
She had told June all about her day when she had got home
. June, despite her cynicism at Molly volunteering, had actually been interested and touched by the children’s plight.
‘Like I’m allus saying, you’re a right softie, our Molly.’
‘Sally Walker was there at the school. She’s refused to be evacuated in case her Ronnie comes home on leave,’ Molly told her.
‘I wish my Frank blinkin’ well would. Every letter I get says the same thing – he doesn’t know yet!’
‘Now that I’ve tacked your wedding dress, I need you to try it on before I start machining it,’ Molly reminded her. ‘We don’t want Frank coming home and it not being ready,’ she added, trying to cheer June up a little bit, as well as shake off the feelings of misery the evacuation of the children had left her with.
‘If he does come home,’ June stressed sombrely.
‘Oh, June, you mustn’t say that,’ Molly protested. ‘Of course he will. You know what Ronnie Walker said. He said that the trainees were bound to be given leave before they go on active duty.’
‘I know what he said all right, but Ronnie Walker isn’t the blinkin’ Prime Minister, is he?’
Molly could see how upset and unhappy her sister looked and wished she could offer her some proper reassurance.
‘Let’s have the wireless on, eh, Dad?’ June suggested to her father, who had just come into the room. ‘A bit of Tommy Trinder will give us a laugh.’
Molly looked in the mirror and straightened her hat, pressing her lips together to set the lipstick she had just carefully applied. She was wearing her navy-blue ‘going to church’ suit, bought from Lewis’s sale in the spring. Her hat was last year’s but she had retrimmed it to match her suit, and her polka-dot blouse she had made herself.
June was also wearing a navy-blue suit in a similar style – they had bought them together, agreeing that they were a sensible buy – but her blouse had a floral pattern and a different collar, and she had bought herself a new hat.