An Ordinary Life

by Amanda Prowse

  Geer had a knack for mimicry and storytelling and it always felt like listening to a good play on the wireless when one of Richard’s long letters arrived. Molly felt she got almost as much from the post as Geer herself. It wasn’t only the lovey-dovey content of his correspondence that was so thrilling, but also the glimmer of excitement it offered. Any news from the front stirred something inside that felt awfully similar to envy.

  Despite her reservations, Molly felt the first burble of excitement as she and Geer trotted up the steps of the Army and Navy Club, as the strains of Glenn Miller’s ‘I’ve Got a Girl in Kalamazoo’ drifted from behind the satinwood doors of the ballroom.

  Geer shrugged her arms from her coat and threw it playfully at the cloakroom attendant with a grin, jiggling her shoulders, as if the dancing simply could not wait. Molly took her time, happy to be in the warm, as she pushed her scarf down into the empty sleeve of her coat for safekeeping, still unsure if coming along at all was a good idea or whether maybe she should make her apologies right now and run home to that slice of pickled brawn.

  Suddenly the ballroom doors opened. Molly looked up and her eyes widened as her stomach flipped. She had never felt this strange surge of desire in all of its forms. It was like a magnet that drew her to him and him to her, so powerful it could only alter her course that evening and for the rest of her life.

  She saw only one person and he was looking at her. He smiled and there was a sudden strange flutter of recognition in her chest, as though she already knew him.

  As though she had always known him.

  As though she’d been waiting for him.

  ‘Joe!’ Geer ran forward and threw her arms around her brother’s neck, pulling him close. Johan beamed and kissed his sister on the cheek, his fair hair flopping over his eyes, which never left Molly’s.

  Everything she thought and everything she wanted became scrambled in her head, wrapped in an unfamiliar band of self-doubt. She stood still, suddenly not quite sure how to walk, where to place her feet, in which direction to cast her eyes or how to position her hands. Ridiculously, she wished she was wearing a clean blouse or even her tea dress, the teal one with the wide belt, and wished that she, too, had bothered to put on lipstick, like Geer. And curiously and selfishly, she also wished that Geer was not there at all.

  ‘You look skinny,’ Geer said, pinching his face. ‘Come and meet my friend! She’s absolutely marvellous! A whizz of a linguist, speaks three languages and beats me at cribbage every time.’ Geer grabbed Johan’s hand and pulled him towards Molly, whose heart raced.

  ‘Molly, this is Johan, my big brother, and Joe, this is Molly.’

  ‘Marvellous Molly, I believe.’ His smile was wide and easy.

  He reached out to shake her hand and, as he did so, one of the brass buttons on the front of his tunic came loose and clattered to the floor, coming to rest by the toe of her shoe. Molly bent down and gathered up the small thing, which bore the stamp of a naval crest and a knot of rope on it. She held it out in her palm.

  ‘Your . . . your button.’ She cursed the wobble in her voice.

  Johan reached out, but instead of taking the shiny button he closed his hand around hers, trapping it inside. ‘Keep it as a good-luck charm.’

  The heat from his hands warmed a place deep inside her that she was quite unaware had been cold.

  ‘Thank you, I will.’

  ‘Now then,’ Geer said, clapping her hands, ‘you take Moll for a spin on the dance floor while I ask a nice young gentleman to help me with the beers.’ And with that she strode towards the bar, her fingers snapping in time to the tune as she went.

  Johan was slow in removing his hand from hers. ‘A dance then, Marvellous Molly?’ He took a step closer and she breathed in the scent of him: a heady combination of cigarette smoke, hair oil and musky cologne.

  ‘I . . .’ What did she want to say? ‘I’m not the best dancer . . . I would love to dance . . . I feel nervous and excited all at once . . .’ Johan crooked his arm while her thoughts and mouth tried to catch up and she slipped hers through as they walked hip to hip towards the dance floor.

  ‘You know, Marvellous Molly, I should tell you now that if you don’t immediately say no to a dance, I will always assume it’s a yes.’

  She smiled. Nerves and apprehension robbed her of the ability to speak clearly and openly the way she did each and every day. It was bonkers! She so wanted to present the best version of herself to this man, her smartest self. Molly coughed to clear her throat, as a new song began to play, ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ – the deep, melodic tones of Billie Holiday masked the crackles and scratches of the record.

  Johan pulled her close to him and she trembled from top to toe. He raised her hand and she rocked slowly against him in time to the music, with her head coming to rest beneath his chin, the button still held tightly inside her hand, inside his.

  ‘Do you prefer Johan or Joe?’ she asked, having heard Geer call him by the shortened nickname.

  ‘If it’s coming from your lips, Marvellous Molly, I really couldn’t care less,’ he said, squeezing her hand.

  ‘Please don’t call me that; I’m not in the least bit marvellous.’

  ‘Are you calling my sister a liar?’

  She heard rather than saw the smile softening the question, and felt an answering one on her own lips. ‘No.’ The mournful lyrics and soft harmony spun them inside a web on the dance floor . . . The words were haunting, carrying a message of love and hope. It seemed as though they were the only two in the room. Molly felt a heady and unexpected surge of sexual attraction for this man, a low, grumbling desire in her gut. It was a powerful force that left her weak at the knees. Curling her fingers tightly against his, she instinctively wanted to reach up and touch his face, although it seemed inappropriate, given they had only just met.

  ‘In that case, I shall call you M – and everyone will think it’s short for Molly, but you and I will know differently. M for “marvellous”.’

  ‘Johan . . .’ she whispered, too quietly for him or anyone else to hear, but simply for the joy of hearing his name leave her mouth.

  Across the room, Geer held up three bottles of beer in her hands by the necks and, with a cigarette between her teeth, smiled, jigging up and down on the spot, as if she might be just as delighted with this turn of events as Molly herself.

  Johan pulled her closer. ‘Don’t look at her, M, don’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that for the first time in her life she’s done something I wholeheartedly approve of!’

  ‘Why, what’s she done?’ she asked, unashamedly fishing for the compliment.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asked, pulling back just enough to hold her gaze. ‘She’s got us beer!’ And he laughed and she laughed too. This funny, handsome boy who had her all of a dither.

  Molly put the key in the door and cringed at the sound of it closing loudly. She was certain the slam would wake her mother.

  ‘Is that you, Molly?’ her mother called out, bang on cue.

  ‘Go back to sleep, Mum!’

  ‘Surely you’re not just coming home? It’s after midnight!’

  ‘Of course not.’ Molly pushed her back against the front door and closed her eyes, dizzy with a little too much beer and the feel of her hand inside his as they danced. ‘I was just checking something.’

  ‘What were you checking?’ Her mother was irritatingly tenacious.

  ‘I thought I heard something – an animal.’ She shook her head. Was that the best she could come up with?

  ‘Well, make sure you throw the bolts top and bottom!’

  ‘I will, Mum. Night night.’

  In her room, Molly washed her face and slipped into her nightgown, but then lay in bed, quite unable to sleep despite dancing for more hours than she cared to remember. She looked up at the sliver of moon visible through her window and wondered where Johan was at that very moment and whether he might be looking at the same moon.

  She quietly hummed
the tune they had danced to and it had the power to put her back in that moment, in his arms.

  Was this how it started? Was this the feeling that made women want to slip into white frocks and give up their ambition?

  ‘Don’t worry, Moll, there’s someone for everyone!’ her older sister had trilled just recently while trimming crusts from cucumber sandwiches and warming a pot for the tea.

  Joyce, by the age of seventeen, had swept up the aisle with Albert, quite possibly the most boring man on the planet. Her sister was content to stay at home and fill her time running the carpet sweeper over the rugs and making crumbles in the winter, salads in the summer and cakes on a Sunday. Molly had decided she would rather be an old maid than settle for someone like Albert and their ordinary life in a neat red-brick house in Tonbridge, Kent.

  But Molly loved Joyce and didn’t wish to insult her sister or her lifestyle, so she chose not to say that if marriage meant doing little more than baking, polishing scuffs and scratches from dark wood and washing, starching and pressing white table linens or shirt collars without breaking a sweat, she’d rather remain an old maid with a career in the Diplomatic Corps or the Foreign Office.

  But suddenly it felt as though everything had changed. Maybe Joyce was right.

  For the love of God, slow down, Molly! These thoughts were as terrifying and alien as they were wonderful. The idea that he might be feeling the same, thinking the same, made her grab her pillow to squeal silently into the feathers and drum her heels against the mattress.

  When she removed the pillow she saw her mother standing at the end of the bed.

  ‘Jesus, you scared me!’ Molly laughed.

  Her mother stared at her. ‘What on earth are you doing, Mary Florence?’

  ‘I was having a dream . . .’

  Her mother shook her head and muttered under her breath as she left the room, but Molly guessed it was something along the lines of ‘Lord, give me strength . . .’

  Not that she cared. In fact, she felt so giddy she nearly confessed that maybe her mum and Joyce might be right about this whole marriage malarkey. Instead, she smiled and called out into the darkness, ‘Goodnight, Mother dearest!’

  THREE

  Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London

  December 20th 1943

  Aged 18

  ‘So you like him?’ Geer asked casually over lunch, as she dunked a biscuit into her tea, a habit Molly found quite disgusting.

  ‘I don’t . . .’ She shrugged, swallowing the uncharacteristic impulse to let her feelings gush.

  ‘You don’t like him or don’t know if you do?’ her friend prompted.

  ‘I don’t know if I should say. I mean, you’re his sister and, to be honest, it all sounds faintly ridiculous.’

  ‘Of course you can say, no matter how ridiculous!’ Geer rolled her eyes. ‘I’m your pal, and I’m in the perfect position to pass on any messages and act as go-between.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ She couldn’t help the note of excitement in her voice.

  Geer grinned, nodding frantically, then dipped her biscuit into the hot dark brew again before lowering the whole soggy mess into her mouth.

  ‘We’ve only met once, but I can’t stop thinking about him,’ Molly confessed in a lower tone, wary of anyone else at the lunch table overhearing. ‘It’s as if every thought I have and everything I see now has to pass through a Johan filter.’

  Geer widened her mouth. ‘I am honestly trying my very hardest not to say that it’s fast work!’

  Molly sighed. ‘I know, I know, and if you were saying that to me, I’d be taking you to task and telling you to pull yourself together.’

  It had been mere hours since Geer had introduced Molly to her brother at the Army and Navy Club, hours that felt simultaneously like months and mere moments. Molly found herself distracted at work, the direct result of a whirring brain and as yet no word from the object of her desires. For the first time in her life she felt unbalanced, thrown by her own thoughts. The plan in her head of forging ahead with her career, undistracted by love, was now a little frayed at the edges and, she feared, with the right words of encouragement from Johan, might unravel altogether. And it was all based on no more than a single evening of dancing and an exchange of smouldering looks. She reminded herself not to be so silly: this was, after all, a fledgling thing and might never get off the ground. The words sounded sensible in her head, but her heart, it seemed, had no intention of listening. All she wanted was contact with Johan, and when Geer had asked about her feelings for him earlier this afternoon it had been almost embarrassingly welcome to say his name.

  She had nodded, lips pressed together, swallowing the joy that threatened to burst from her. And so she had waited . . . and still she was waiting.

  ‘He did say he’d be in touch.’

  Geer grinned. ‘Yes, Molly, so you might have mentioned once or twice.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do, just wait?’

  ‘That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do, darling.’

  She rubbed her face. ‘Waiting is driving me bonkers! I’m impatient and I’ve never felt that way before.’

  Geer smiled warmly at her friend. ‘I know I’ve been ribbing you, but I’m genuinely delighted that you like the boy. He’s a wonderful human. I mean it. He’s one of the good ones.’

  ‘Back to work, ladies, please!’ Mrs Templar, the supervisor, coughed and tapped her wedding ring on the doorframe of the dining room.

  The girls put their teacups on the sideboard and made their way back to the office. Molly had a smile on her face, and willed the hours to pass quickly, keen to hurry home just in case a letter might be waiting.

  ‘I’m exhausted.’ Molly yawned as she reached for her coat at the end of the day.

  ‘Me too,’ Geer said, yawning into the mirror of her powder compact. ‘Got to look our best in the morning, though – it’s nearly Christmas!’

  In the bottleneck of people trying to leave for the day, Molly held back in the foyer. Despite the early hour, night had fallen. The smoky air was cold, crisp, and she longed for the day when the faintest hue of pink would sit on the horizon, promising the warmth of summer, tantalisingly only a half a year or so away, when, God willing, this whole awful war might be over. A summer free of war – now that really would be something: boat trips, plump berries, green salad pulled from the earth and thin cotton frocks. Fresh shellfish and trips to Brighton, where, hopefully, the beach would have re-opened, finally cleared of the ugly barricades, mines and barbed wire. It was hard to remember the summers she used to enjoy in this highly strung world the colour of mud, where fun was in short supply and stomachs rumbled with lack of food, in anticipation of bad news or both.

  She heard Geer shout some way ahead of her in the throng.

  Molly finally made it through the mass of heavy coats and hats, then came to a stop on the top step beyond the doors, gazing towards the postbox in front of the building where Geer stood, looking quite invigorated, with her arms looped around the neck of a very handsome naval lieutenant.

  ‘Johan!’ Molly mouthed, and excitement exploded inside her like a firecracker, all traces of fatigue entirely extinguished at the sight of him. He looked up, caught her eye and saluted.

  ‘I just need a minute! Back in a sec!’ Molly beamed at him before turning and making her way, elbows and all, back through the very crowd she had only just been so keen to pass, ignoring their tuts as she ran up the wide staircase to the ladies’ lavatory on the first floor. With her heart pounding, she stared at her reflection in the mottled looking glass over the china sink.

  ‘Oh my God! Get a grip, Molly!’ She fanned her face with her hands before leaning on the edge of the basin. The lavatory door opened and Molly was as surprised as she was embarrassed to see Marjorie exit the cubicle.

  ‘Don’t think God’ll help you with your nerves.’ She sidled past Molly to wash her hands under the cold tap. ‘Milk of magnesia might be better.’

  Molly lau
ghed. ‘Marjorie, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I seem to have lost my head a little. It’s this chap I’ve met – Geer’s brother, actually – and he’s here, he’s . . .’ Molly knew she was babbling.

  Marjorie wiped her hands on the loop of towel that hung from a roller on the back of the lavatory door as if she hadn’t heard or wasn’t paying attention. She pushed her glasses up onto her nose and buttoned up her mackintosh. ‘You shouldn’t be nervous. Anyone would be lucky to have you interested in them.’

  Molly felt touched by the unexpected vote of confidence. ‘Do you think so?’

  Marjorie reached for her shoulders and turned her towards the mirror. ‘You take a good look and like what you see. It’s important. It’s hard for people to love you if you don’t love yourself.’

  ‘I do love myself. It’s just that . . . I guess . . . I know I’m not one of the pretty ones, and it’s not bothered me too much before, but I want him to like me back,’ Molly admitted.

  ‘He’s here, isn’t he?’ Marjorie smiled at her and left the small room.

  Molly again studied her reflection in the glass, and for the first time she could remember, she did like what she saw. Her eyes had a certain sparkle, her blemish-free skin was bright and her tawny hair, while not neat, hung in soft tendrils around her face, which looked, if she dared use the word, alluring. It startled and concerned her how much his opinion of her mattered. It was a novel feeling and a new vulnerability that she was wary of. She was a girl old enough to know what she wanted, on the threshold of womanhood and all that it promised. Emboldened and with her heart pounding, she finally left the safety of the lavatory.

  ‘There she is!’ Geer yelled. ‘I told Johan you’d probably scarpered, run away via the back door!’