by Annie Murray
In her sweet, spontaneous way, Maudie swept Michael up into her arms and kissed him and Katie laughed, suddenly amazed by how good life felt.
V
MOLLY
Thirty-Three
10th July ’46
Hello, Molly,
Norm is home. We’re living at his mom’s now. All going all right, though Robbie not very settled. We’re going along. Are you ever coming up this way to see us? Please write.
Love Em x
PS Robbie drew this for you.
Em had sent a plain white postcard on which she had got Robbie to do a drawing. It was only in two colours. Molly looked at the square, red house with swirls of angry black smoke pouring from the chimney. And there was a dullness to Em’s message and, reading between the lines, a lot of things not said. At times Molly envied Em’s staid, family life, never far from her mom and dad and her sisters, husband home from the war, a child. All the things Molly didn’t have, could never even imagine having now. Once she had, for a time, with Tony, during those sunlit, dreamlike days in 1942 before he was killed. She still tried to imagine that it might have worked for them, had he lived. But not now. None of that was for her. But for all that, she didn’t think Em sounded especially full of the joys, either.
She did not hear from Em often. To her surprise the person who kept in touch with her very faithfully was Ruth Chambers. Every couple of weeks a blue envelope would slip through the door, addressed in Ruth’s neat, sloping hand. Molly found she had started to look forward to the letters very much, even though she had a little smile at some of Ruth’s expressions.
Molly and Ruth had begun their basic training in the ATS together and immediately loathed each other. Molly thought back with shame and embarrassment on her first weeks in the army. Feeling very unsure of herself, and inferior to a lot of the other girls in every way, she had played up and been loud and rude, and got a lot of people’s backs up. Ruth, a staid, studious girl from a sheltered middle-class background, had been about to start studying natural sciences at Cambridge. Ruth was rather buck-toothed and awkward, and had absolutely no idea how to cope with someone like Molly, whose behaviour had been mostly noisy and as crude as possible. They had hoped never to set eyes on each other again after basic training, but had met up several times – including at Clacton. Ruth had been trained in technical work as a kiné-theodolite operator and Molly ended up in ack-ack. The very last time she had come across Ruth, the girl had been badly frightened by unwanted advances from a man and had confided in Molly. The two had managed to get past some of the barriers of prejudice that separated them and form an unlikely friendship.
Molly realized to her astonishment that Ruth was genuinely fond of her and was missing her. She wrote letters about adjusting to Cambridge. She was enjoying the work, but finding it hard to settle to such a quiet life.
‘As soon as term ends I’ll be down to see you,’ she wrote. ‘I do hope that’s all right? I can come and stay in your guesthouse and we can go on the beach. How funny it will be to be in Clacton again. I suppose you’ve got used to it in peacetime now, but I can only think of it with all those guns going off all the time and the beach closed off. Actually I remember Clacton awfully fondly.’
‘Awfully fondly,’ Molly murmured, grinning affectionately as she slipped the letter back in the envelope and laid it with her other letters from Ruth. They felt like something to hold onto, because the truth was, soon after her excitement at escaping Birmingham and arriving back in Clacton, her spirits had plummeted.
She had in fact got used quite quickly to the routine at The Laurels. They had their evening ‘praise meeting’, as they called it, in the house, which the guests could join in or not as they pleased. Ten or eleven people would start to appear at eight o’clock, all of them drably dressed and wearing expressions of anxious enthusiasm. Molly longed to wrap colourful feather boas round each of their necks and paint the women with lipstick. The sounds of hymn-singing interspersed with silences sometimes filtered up to the attic. And every Sunday evening the Lesters attended church.
And, of course, there were the mornings. Molly had gained some respect for Mr Lester, even though he was clearly a fanatic. She appreciated his courage and felt almost protective of him. She had also realized that she had a good strong singing voice, so she belted out the hymns and, she thought, if people laughed, they laughed – that was up to them. Most people just joined in the hymns and were polite; there was just the odd one now and again who would collapse into incredulous laughter. Molly had thought about leaving and moving on, but to what? She’d only have to find some other boarding house. And she knew Mrs Lester would find it hard to cope without her.
It also would not make any difference. She felt herself sinking, day after day. The army had given her life a structure: the day organized for her, the orders, the tasks, the ready-made company and chances of approval and promotion. It had contained her and made her feel safe and purposeful. Ever since she had taken off her uniform, with her Corporal’s chevrons worn proudly on the sleeves, it was as if she had lost a part of herself – her better self, who had a place to be in the world. It was a world that had a shape. Now, though, she felt as if she had been let out into a wide, bleak plain and did not know where she belonged, or which way to turn. She could keep on forever with the drudgery of The Laurels. That at least was a routine. But, all the time, all that kept coming to her was the hurt and grief of the past, dragging her further and further down.
On one of her afternoons off she walked along the front at Clacton. It was quite a nice day, hazy but warm, the sea calm and flat, but Molly’s spirits would not even lift with the weather. Her head ached slightly, and she felt heavy in herself, ambling along in the shapeless afternoon. She made her way along to where there were fewer people about, found a bench looking out to sea and sat down to have a smoke. All the stark facts of her life began to crowd in, reported in her head like newspaper headlines: Molly Fox, child of a Birmingham back yard, mother a drunkard, father . . . ? Well, that was a hard one. Father a broken casualty of war. Real father? Her grandfather – a filthy old man who had molested her and spawned her with his own daughter. Brothers? One vanished, one a vile crook, hanged for murder. The one chance of real love, Tony, dead from a delayed-action bomb in London . . .
Stinky little Molly Fox . . . All her childhood she had been the outsider. The poorest, the smelly one, with problems – she realized now – stemming from her grandfather’s attentions, so that she could not always hold her water. Thinking back on her past self, she was filled with an anguished fury. What a family! Round and round in her head it all went, until she could stand no more. She pushed herself up and, walking as if propelled by a will stronger than her own, went up a side street and found the nearest pub.
‘I’ll have a whisky,’ she said abruptly.
The landlord gave her a look, but served her anyway.
She sat in a dark corner while a row of men nursed pints along the bar. She saw them eyeing her and turned away, looking as unfriendly as she could. Men always paid her attention: her figure, her blonde hair. It was as if they couldn’t help themselves, had some picture in their minds, ready-made, that was really nothing to do with her.
Molly drank quickly, going to the bar for another, turning away from their comments. The drink reached down into her, warm and numbing. It was a long time since she had drunk. In the army she had made a fresh start. She was going to make something of herself, break away. The very last thing she was going to do was turn out like Iris. But now . . .
Not wanting to go back to the bar for a third drink, she went to another pub, then another. By the time she weaved her way back to The Laurels she couldn’t walk straight. She climbed up to her room and flung herself on the bed. Thoughts battered her, despite the drink. Tony, and Len, with whom she had had a desperate love affair after Tony’s death – Len who had been promised to someone else, and she had ruined it, all of it . . . And she had lain with them and coupled with
them: Len and others. And she had taken no care, yet there had been no child – not ever.
I can’t even do that, she thought, sinking into a despairing sleep. Can’t do men, can’t do children: barren. When she woke it was dark and her head was pounding. She just made it down to the bathroom and was sick, her body heaving painfully. She drank some water and sat groggily on the toilet trying to pull herself together.
Whatever was the time? The house seemed to be completely quiet. Molly crept down to the hall and switched on the light to look at the clock. It was a quarter to one in the morning. She had slept through all the serving of dinner! She would dearly have loved a cup of tea, but there was no chance of that now, so she crept back up and crawled into bed again, feeling doubly ashamed.
‘I told Mr Lester that you were ill,’ Mrs Lester said the next morning. She was up in time for breakfast, looking pale and strained, and Molly realized that she had dragged herself out of bed in case Molly hadn’t made an appearance. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with Mrs Lester: she realized it was probably mostly in her mind. ‘Well, I wasn’t feeling too well,’ Molly admitted. ‘I never meant to just sleep the evening away, though. I’m ever so sorry.’ Molly had managed to get down and carry out her breakfast duties, including singing, with a throbbing head, the smell of powdered egg making her feel even more sick.
Jane Lester went and closed the kitchen door, careful to check that her husband was nowhere within earshot.
‘Molly,’ she said sternly, ‘I came up to look for you. The smell of drink was overpowering. You might have been sleeping in a distillery. If Bernard had smelt it . . .’ She rolled her eyes. ‘He’s very strong on temperance – oh, you’ve no idea.’
Molly did have some idea, because Mr Lester seemed to be strong on everything. But she was ashamed. Blushing, she hung her head, trying to think what to say.
‘We cannot have strong drink in this house!’ Mrs Lester declared with a passion. ‘Do you understand? I had no idea that you . . . You never seemed that kind of person!’
Molly bit back a bitter reply. Well, that’s what you think – but I am, so there!
‘I’m not really – I just . . . I can’t really explain.’
‘You must pray for strength against temptation.’ Mrs Lester’s face took on a zealous shine, but Molly could see that she was also frightened of her husband. ‘We can’t have this here, Molly – and if Bernard finds out, you’ll be sacked immediately. Pray to the Lord, and don’t ever let it happen again!’
It was easier said than done. Just those few drinks had started Molly off again and it felt as if her body craved a drink – even that next morning. It developed a taste for it all over again, and so quickly.
I can’t start off doing all that again, she thought, frightened of herself and what she might do. She remembered some of the more humiliating times she’d had as a result of drink – in the army and before it. The thought made her feel even more lonely. Everything was slipping away from her.
She tried desperately hard in those following days to pull herself together. Though at times she was almost screaming for a drink, Jane Lester kept her very busy and she didn’t have much free time. She managed not to do anything she would regret. But it did not stop the craving. And as the days passed, her mood sunk lower. At night, when she finished work, feeling utterly worn down by the task of keeping going, she fell into bed only to find her mind full of terrible thoughts: memories of the past and her own jeering voice telling her she was no good, that anything that might have worked out well for her was all over now, and there was nothing left to look forward to. The past pulled at her, sucking her down like a foul, bony hand, and the present didn’t seem to offer her anything of hope to pull her up against it. She was a prisoner of all the bad things of the past, and that was that. And it was unbearable.
She sneaked out one afternoon when she knew Jane Lester was resting and bought a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Just a drop every night – I won’t have much. It’ll just help me sleep. The nights had become restless, full of uneasy dreams.
Carrying the bottle home in a shopping basket, she crept back into the house and almost jumped out of her skin when she saw Bernard Lester standing at the other end of the long hall, watching her.
‘Oh my goodness, you made me jump!’ she said, laughing to cover up how much her heart was thumping. Suppose he looked in the basket. She had covered the bottle with her cardigan, but wasn’t it obvious what she had been doing? He watched her climb the stairs.
Hands shaking as she reached the room, her resolve to have only a nip from the bottle last thing at night went straight out of the window. She closed her door and, without even sitting down, opened the bottle and took a long swig. God, seeing that creeping Jesus down there had given her a start!
‘Aah.’ Molly sank down on the bed, cradling the bottle. ‘That’s better!’ She took one last swig and put the top back on. Then she hid the bottle under her mattress at the head of the bed and sat down with her eyes closed for a moment, to let the drink really take hold. She was warmer, suddenly, and comforted. Now she could face the rest of the day.
And that was how it was the next day, and the next.
Thirty-Four
‘Molly – over here!’
Molly had caught a glimpse of Ruth’s long, pale face and dark hair behind the glass as the train pulled in, and it made her even more jittery. She’d already had a nip of her secret supply of the hard stuff to ease her butterflies. Ruth Chambers, whom she had known in the ATS, was coming to stay for three days – they were like chalk and cheese. Writing letters was one thing, but what on earth was she going to say to her?
But seeing Ruth here, Molly felt a sudden great rush of fondness for her. She was in civvies of course, some rather sludgy-coloured slacks and a short-sleeved white blouse, her long hair tied back in a schoolgirlish pony-tail, just as she always had, and giving her buck-toothed smile. For a second the two of them stood in front of each other, uncertainly, then Ruth held out her arms and they embraced.
‘Well, well,’ Molly joked to cover her nerves. ‘Fancy seeing you!’
Ruth pulled back with a grin, picking up her case. ‘It’s so nice to see you, Molly.’
She looked closely into Molly’s face and seemed about to say something, but held back. As they moved towards the exit Molly said, ‘So – back here in Clacton.’
‘I know,’ Ruth said, excited. ‘It feels so strange. I suppose you’ve got used to it, but I’ve never seen it except with the army all over it.’
Molly smiled at hearing Ruth’s distinctive voice, well spoken and somehow always sounding rather strangulated, as if her throat was tight. But it was truly lovely to see her – one of the people she had shared that intense time of her life in the army with, which she could not talk about with anyone else.
‘It’s still quite busy,’ Molly said. ‘There’s a lot down here on holiday. Our place isn’t the most popular, not being on the main parade . . .’
‘And they do sound a bit sent,’ Ruth said.
‘Sent – how d’yer mean?’
‘You know, overly religious. It’s not what everyone wants, especially if they’re on holiday.’ Ruth was only religious in a reserved, Church of England way.
‘You’re telling me!’ Molly laughed. ‘And they have to put up with my singing. It’s really embarrassing at times. But I suppose you have to hand it to him – it takes some guts. And some people seem to come back specially to hear ’im!’
‘Well,’ Ruth said drily. ‘I can hardly wait.’
They had reserved a single room for Ruth on the second floor, as she had come as a normal paying guest.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, seeing the small, simple room. ‘It’s our billets all over again, isn’t it?’
Having her there helped Molly feel that same sense of adventure again, of the army, of moving from place to place, with a purpose, a real job to do. It was as if, in those seconds, they could recapture that.
�
��You’ll want the window open,’ Molly said, wrestling with the stiff catch. ‘The cooking smells come up, and it gets stuffy. When you’re ready we’ll go and get you a cup of tea.’
She explained to Ruth that she would have to work some of the time, but on Ruth’s last day there she would have the whole day off.
‘Oh, that’s perfectly all right. I’m quite happy to go off and wander round. It’s lovely to see the sea – a change from Cambridge, I can assure you.’
The girls spent the next two days catching up and reminiscing. Because Molly was working for most of the day, she only saw Ruth in snatches. The first morning she felt even more nervous and awkward than usual when facing the breakfast hymn-singing. That morning Harold Lester had chosen ‘Soldiers of Christ, Arise!’ Ruth, who was a little late, hurried in as they reached ‘From strength to strength go on, wrestle and fight and pray!’ and took her seat. Molly felt herself blushing, but gratefully saw Ruth pick up her hymn sheet and, with a calm, polite expression, join in the singing.
‘I see what you mean,’ she laughed afterwards. ‘It takes courage to do that all right! For him, I mean. But you, too – it’s the very last thing I’d ever ’ve imagined seeing you doing! But you’ve got the most lovely voice by the way, Molly.’