Molly's War (11 page)

Molly was hot and dusty by the time she reached the factory. She hesitated at the gate, her heart thumping in her breast as she tried to raise the courage to go in. It had been one thing thinking about it but now she was actually here … She lifted her chin and went into the reception area.

‘Molly Mason!’ exclaimed the girl behind the desk. ‘By, I never expected to see you.’

‘Hello, Alice.’ The receptionist hadn’t been hostile,
merely
surprised, and Molly felt slightly better. ‘I’d like to see Mr Bolton, if I may?’

He kept her waiting for half an hour before calling her into his office.

‘I suppose you want your job back,’ he said with no preamble. He sat back in his chair and stared at her, no expression on his face.

‘I would, yes,’ said Molly in a small voice. She looked down at her clenched hands. He wasn’t going to give her work, she could tell by his attitude. By, she wished she hadn’t come back, wished she were anywhere but here.

‘I don’t know if it would be wise to take you on again.’

‘But I’m a good worker, you know I am, I always kept my production up!’

‘Aye, I know that. I wouldn’t be seeing you otherwise.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk, the first and second stained brown with nicotine. She was a bonny lass, he thought, and wondered if there had been hanky-panky in that house when she was alone with her landlord. Maybe he had given her the bangle for favours received and then said she’d stolen it when she would no longer perform.

Molly rose to her feet. ‘Well, if you don’t want me, I’ll be on my way,’ she said. She had had enough humiliation, she wasn’t going to beg him, not Bolton.

‘Hold your horses, woman, I never said I didn’t want you.’

Molly paused on her way to the door and looked back at him.

‘Where would you live if I did take you back?’ he asked. ‘No one round here would have you, I’m certain of that.’

‘I have a room in Bishop,’ said Molly. She was so filled with a mixture of embarrassment and humiliation, she could hardly see straight.

Mr Bolton studied her for a moment. A bonny lass she was. There was no doubt she was a good worker, had always earned her bonuses in the past. And he didn’t think the other workers would care that she had been in prison. At least most of them would not. And what would it matter if they did? None of them would want to lose their job. There was the added advantage that she would probably work harder than anyone to prove herself, and keep her head down too. She was just the sort of experienced machinist he needed to fill the government orders. He came to a decision.

‘Righto. You can start tomorrow. But mind, you’ll have to keep yourself out of trouble.’ He stood up and came round the desk to pat her on the shoulder, a move which caused her to jump and back towards the door.

‘Thank you, Mr Bolton,’ she managed to say, her cheeks flushed yet again. ‘I’ll be here at eight o’clock.’

Outside she took a deep breath of air, laden with the scent of new-mown grass where the gardener was trimming the lawn in front of the building. She couldn’t believe her luck in being taken on again at the factory, had shrunk initially from trying there where she was known.
But
now she felt as though a load had rolled off her shoulders. She would be able to keep herself, no more hated dole office.

The afternoon sun was shining along Manor Road. She walked along in the opposite direction to Bishop Auckland with a fancy to see the house in West Auckland where she would have been living now if it weren’t for Mr Jones. She felt the familiar twinge of hatred and despair as she thought of him but put it firmly from her mind. This was turning into a good day, the best for ages, and she wasn’t going to spoil it. She walked past the entrance to Adelaide Street without even looking down it.

Cathy’s house was still there, its windows dusty in the sun. She wondered about her. What had she thought when she’d heard about Molly? That she’d had a lucky escape, could have had a thief in the house? As Molly watched the house from across the street the little boy, Jimmy, came out and picked up the bicycle which had been laid down on the cobbles. He glanced across at Molly and she smiled tentatively but he simply looked at her and pedalled off along the street. Of course, she thought sadly, he had only met her for a few minutes that night.

So had Cathy. Molly had thought of knocking at the door, maybe apologising for not being able to take up the room, telling her the true story. But no, Cathy didn’t know her either, it might just embarrass her. Molly walked back the way she had come with a sense of loss which dimmed the happiness of getting her job back.

Next day as she went into work it felt as though she had hardly been away, at least for the first few minutes. She was anxious and therefore earlier than the other girls who worked on the line. Enid was there, though. She said nothing, just allotted Molly a machine. She hung up her coat on the rack in the cloakroom, put her bag with her sandwich box in the small space by the side and waited for the electricity to be switched on. Her machine was at the far end of the line now. When the other girls came in she was sitting with her back to them.

‘Well! Will you look what the cat’s brought in?’ the hated voice exclaimed, the voice she had been dreading ever since Mr Bolton had told her she had got the job. Joan’s.

‘It’s the little sneak thief!’

Molly cringed. She wanted to curl up and die. She concentrated hard on threading her machine needle. The other girls fell quiet. One sniggered in embarrassment.

‘That’s enough of that! I’ll hear no more of that or whoever it is they’ll be out on their ear. Now get on with your work.’

Mr Bolton was standing in the doorway. The girls hurriedly sat down at their places on the band, the electricity began humming, the machines zipped away and the wireless came on: Fred Astaire singing ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek’.

Molly felt grateful to Mr Bolton even though she knew he hadn’t said it to protect her but to ensure the work went
on
smoothly. She concentrated on her sewing. She was stitching the bands on battledress jackets, more interesting than sideseams and more complicated too. But Molly soon got the hang of it.

At dinnertime she took her sandwiches outside and sat on the low wall which bounded the factory. The sun was shining and the air felt fresh after the stuffiness and lint-laden atmosphere of the machine room. There were a number of girls doing the same thing. Some of them were laughing and flirting with the male cutters and pressers, Joan Pendle among them. She was smoking a Woodbine, holding it up in the air and gesturing with it, her elbow cupped in her other hand. Molly took care not to catch anyone’s eye but looked down at her sandwiches and the apple she had bought on the way to the bus.

There was a burst of laughter from the group of men and girls on the corner, Joan’s laughter ringing out over the others’. Involuntarily, Molly glanced quickly over at them to find they were looking back at her and grinning. Joan’s expression was pure malice, she thought, flinching. Molly took a bite of fish paste sandwich and chewed doggedly but somehow it refused to go down for ages and when it did she almost choked, coughing and spluttering.

‘Get yourself a cup of tea, lass,’ one of the men said. He was older, about forty, with kindly eyes.

Joan’s jeering voice rang out. ‘Don’t tell me you’re taken in by her big brown eyes an’ all, Tom?’ She looked round the group, inviting the others to laugh with her.

‘Don’t be so bloody soft!’ he growled, and turned his back on Molly.

She put the remains of her sandwich back in her box and went inside, not to the canteen but to the cloakroom where she got a drink of water from the tap. After all, a cup of tea cost tuppence and she couldn’t afford to waste money like that.

All in all, she reflected on her way home at six o’clock that evening, it hadn’t been so bad. While she was working on the machine no one had bothered her. Enid had taken the sewn pieces away and left her fresh batches, not speaking to her while she did. But then, Enid was busy. They all were. Only one or two girls actually spoke to her but it was difficult what with the wireless being on and her being at the end of the line. Things would get better, she thought, surely they would? If it wasn’t for Joan Pendle …

She had a potato to bake for her tea and a piece of hard cheese she’d picked up cheap at the store to grate over it. She washed the potato and put it in the ancient coal oven in the basement of the tumbledown old house which she shared with half a dozen other people down on their luck. While she waited Molly toasted her feet at the fire, glad to be able just to relax. No one was going to make snide remarks here. The fact that she had been in prison wasn’t so remarkable in this house; she wasn’t the only one.

Sitting in the rickety armchair Molly began to doze, what with her tiredness and the heat from the fire. She
awoke
with a start when a door banged somewhere in the house and a draught blew in under the kitchen door. Disorientated, she looked round apprehensively, thinking she was still in prison. The horror of that first night was still with her. The loneliness, the feeling of being abandoned by God and everyone else.

She could never go through that again, she told herself. Harry, where are you? Jackson, help me! She was still caught up in the dream she had been having. She saw Jackson running towards her and she was trying to run to him but somehow they never drew any closer no matter how fast they ran. The wall of the prison loomed between them suddenly. She sobbed. It was hopeless. And Harry, Harry was calling to her over Jackson’s shoulder, calling her name …

Molly woke up properly. She could smell the potato now, it must be ready. Her heart still beat fast and her head throbbed but she was awake and no longer behind the prison wall. She took the cloth which was singed brown with oven marks from the line under the mantelshelf and retrieved the potato from the oven. She was hungry, that was all that was the matter. She cut the potato and grated the cheese on to it and ate. She would feel better when she had her stomach full, she told herself.

She missed the old relationships she had had with her workmates. Though she hadn’t been close friends with any of them at least she had felt part of the crowd. Now she was excluded, she thought sadly. But given time, and if
Joan
Pendle didn’t stir things up too much, she would be accepted again.

Climbing into bed in her damp little room in the basement, she said a prayer for Harry and, of course, Jackson. She had grown used to thinking of them together. She wondered where they were now, yearned to see them. She felt so lonely. She hadn’t written to either of them for months, had been unable to bring herself to while she was in that awful place. She was ashamed to, shrank from letting them know what had happened to her, felt degraded somehow.

At first she had been confident that Harry would believe her, Jackson too, surely they both would? But now she had doubts. Had Jackson’s mother written to him, told him of the scandal?

Perhaps she had. Maybe that was why Molly hadn’t heard from them. Perhaps even they didn’t want to know her now. Restlessly she turned over in bed, trying to find a comfortable spot on the lumpy mattress. She must get some sleep. She had to catch the seven-thirty bus in the morning – couldn’t afford to miss it. If she lost her job again she didn’t know what she would do.

Most of the time Molly couldn’t bear to think about what it was like in prison but tonight the memories wouldn’t go away. Why were people so hard, so spitefully cruel? It wasn’t just the wardresses, who were only doing their job, she supposed. The other women were worse, some of them at least. And then there was Bertha. Oh God,
Bertha
! She’d had to share a cell with Bertha. Only for one night but that had been enough. Molly had really reached rock bottom that night. She had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion and when she woke it was like the night when Bart had put his slimy hands on her. Only this time it was a woman, Bertha.

Molly shuddered, tried desperately to think of something else, anything else. She jumped out of bed and walked the floor, backwards and forwards. Her skin crawled. She could still feel Bertha’s hands on her, hear that voice whispering obscenities in her ear. Things she had never heard before, couldn’t even comprehend.

Slowly, painfully slowly, Molly regained control of her thoughts, forced herself to push the memories out of her mind. Eventually numbness crept over her, brought on by extreme exhaustion. It allowed her to go back to bed and at last she slept.

Chapter Eleven

‘YOU’VE BOTH BEEN
called back, lads,’ said Mrs Morley as they walked into the kitchen. Her voice wobbled slightly with disappointment and apprehension at what was to come.

‘What? You must be joking!’ cried Jackson, unbelieving.

‘No, your mother’s not having you on,’ his father said, his voice coming through the door from the room beyond. ‘It’s come over the wireless. All troops to return to barracks. There’s a telegram an’ all.’

Jackson slumped into a chair, despair rising in him. They were so close to Molly, he knew they were. In another couple of days they would surely find her.

‘What are we going to do, Jackson?’ asked Harry. He too sounded thoroughly dispirited. But his question was rhetorical. He knew they had to go back to camp. War was coming nearer all the time and they were in the regular army. Jackson didn’t even bother to answer, he knew too.

‘Have you got any news of the lass?’ asked Maggie, as
she
had asked every evening when they’d come in from searching the area for Molly.

‘Oh, aye, we have,’ said Harry. ‘We know she started work back at the clothing factory three or four days ago. Worked the first two days then didn’t go back.’

‘Harry! You asked at the factory three days ago, or Jackson said you did any road.’

‘Yes,’ said Jackson. ‘Evidently we asked only an hour before she was set on. I tell you what, Mam, anyone would think we weren’t meant to find her. We seem to keep missing her all the time.’

Maggie sighed. ‘Well, howay, lads,’ she said, taking the oven cloth from the line. ‘Come and eat your dinner. I’ve made a nice steak pie. I reckon we won’t be getting a lot more of them if the war comes what with rationing an’ all.’