Molly's War (2 page)

If you have any questions concerning the above, you may call at the colliery office at your convenience and I will endeavour to answer them.

Molly stared at the letter, uncomprehending. There was an unrecognisable scribble for signature. She felt no alarm but was dimly aware that she would have to do something about this. Go to see Mr Hill, that was it. She glanced at the clock. It was nine o’clock, she could go today, Friday. If she didn’t she would have to put it off until Monday and she was going back to work then. She had to, they wouldn’t keep her job open forever.

Glad of something positive to do, Molly put the letter down on the table. She stirred the fire and grey ash fell through to the box underneath. There was a hint of red so she added a few sticks from the box by the fire, raked cinders on top and a few good lumps of coal. Then she filled the kettle and put it on the gas ring.

Ten minutes later, sipping milkless tea, she picked the letter up again and read it through once more. Three hundred pounds was the usual compensation for a miner killed in the pit; she knew that, had heard the men discussing it. It had not occurred to her that she was no longer a dependant because she was working at the factory. And in the back of her mind she had known she would have to move, that the house would be wanted for a working miner, oh, yes, she’d known that. But she had put off facing the knowledge until after the funeral; hadn’t been able to think beyond that.

The tea tasted acidic on her tongue, churned in her stomach. She would have to eat something, she thought, and found the heel of a loaf, buttered it and spread on blackcurrant jam. Methodically, she chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. She was not angry or upset at the letter, just felt disconnected, as though it was happening to someone else.

She felt vaguely angry at Harry, her brother. He was three years older than she was and should have been here to see to things. But, no, he was in India. India! He probably didn’t even know yet that Dad was gone. Though how could he, she hadn’t written to him? She was being unfair, she knew it.

Sighing, Molly rose from the table and cleared away the breakfast things. She washed and dressed in her grey costume, the Sunday one, the only one she had really. There was nothing for it but to wear her old shoes, she
hadn’t
got into West Auckland for last week’s pay yet. She brushed her straight brown bobbed hair and clipped it over her right ear with the tortoiseshell slide which Mam had bought for her years ago when she was still at school. She didn’t have another. As an afterthought she pulled on her velour hat with the brim and gazed in the mirror of the press. Did it make her look older? She decided it did. Picking up her handbag, imitation leather and cracked now but all she had, she went out of the door and down the yard, turning to where the black path led off, a shortcut to the pit used by generations of miners.

‘It is the agreed policy of the Owners’ Association,’ said Mr Hill. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid it is all I can do.’ He looked away from the slight young girl sitting before his desk. She reminded him of his own daughter, away at the Friends’ School in Great Ayton now, and the comparison made him slightly uncomfortable. The two girls were of an age. He dropped his eyes before Molly’s direct gaze and walked to the window, staring out across the yard to the stack of new pit props just come from Norway.

‘You have a brother in the army, don’t you? Have you written to him yet?’

‘He’s in India,’ said Molly. ‘Won’t have got the letter yet. In any case, he can hardly get back from there by next week, can he?’

The manager coughed, bit his lip, sought for a handkerchief in his trouser pocket and held it to his lips to
conceal
a momentary shame. But there was nothing he could do. He turned back to the desk.

‘Take the cheque, my dear,’ he said. His tone, which had been business-like up until then, sounded softer. ‘I’m sure someone in the village will take you in. Or why don’t you get a room closer to your place of employment? Think of the bus fare you would save.’

He meant to be kind, she knew. He had sounded almost fatherly. And Molly couldn’t bear it suddenly. She jumped to her feet, picked up the cheque and stuffed it in her bag though she would rather have stuffed it down his throat.

‘Don’t worry about me, Mr Hill,’ she said. ‘I’ll manage fine.’

‘Got a plan, have you?’ he asked, relief showing in his face. ‘Oh, good, you –’ He broke off as she turned on her heel and hurried to the door, banging it shut behind her. Oh, well, he thought, he certainly didn’t need to worry about that little madam. That was all the thanks one got for trying to be kind.

Molly began to walk back along the path. Oh, Dad, she cried silently, what am I going to do? On impulse she cut off to the side and made her way to the cemetery, to the fresh-turned earth of the new graves. The flowers were already beginning to wilt, she saw, even the large wreath of white lilies which had come from the owners. Her own bunch of dahlias was lasting better, she thought, and bent to straighten a large sunshine-yellow head. Dad had loved his garden, the dahlias were his pride and joy. He had
grown
these himself. She bent down and moved the bunch into a more prominent position, pushing the lily wreath to one side. There was going to be a big memorial one day, there was a subscription fund already.

‘Dad?’ she said tentatively. ‘Mam?’ For she was laid in this grave, too, though there was no headstone. It was something Dad had been going to do once he was back at work. ‘As soon as we’re back on our feet, pet.’ Though, of course, that couldn’t happen now.

After a minute or two Molly became aware that it had started to rain. She walked away, slowly at first then briskly, out of the cemetery and down the path to the houses. There was no sense in catching pneumonia on top of everything else. And besides she had work to do, a new life to arrange.

‘Don’t let the buggers get you down,’ Dad was always saying, and by heck, she’d be blowed if she did.

Chapter Two

HARRY MARCHED SMARTLY
out of the Adjutant’s office and stopped abruptly on the edge of the verandah. He stared out over the dusty parade ground, the officer’s voice still echoing in his ears, though the words hadn’t sunk in, not yet.

‘It’s ruddy hot,’ he observed to no one in particular. Even though it was barely eight o’clock in the morning, the air shimmered with heat. The sky glared white above the roof of the barracks on the opposite side of the square. Suddenly Harry’s shoulders slumped and he looked at the paper in his hand, an official communication from headquarters.

No matter how often he read the few typewritten words, they told him only the bare fact that Dad was dead, killed in the pit. He stared in front of him, seeing not the parade ground but the pithead buildings at Eden Hope; smelling not the heat and dust and multifarious smells of India but soot and engine oil and damp coal.

The day when he was thirteen and had first gone down in the cage with his dad returned vividly to Harry’s mind.
The
steep drop, and the feeling of having left his stomach somewhere up there in the light. Then trembling dread as he had followed his dad to the coalface, ducking when his father said duck, too late once or twice so that he had banged his head on low-slung battens; a dread he had tried valiantly to hide because that day he was finally a man, a miner like his dad.

Not that he had worked in the pit for long. Six months after that day he had been laid off, never to go down the mine again as the depression of the thirties bit deep into the coalfield. He remembered the day he’d joined the army as a boy soldier at sixteen, along with Jackson Morley, his mate at school and his marra in the pit. At least it was employment and money in his pocket.

All those years Dad had fretted to get back down the pit. And now the pit had got him. Harry couldn’t believe it. He wiped his brow with a khaki handkerchief, adjusted his hat and started out over the parade ground. He was halfway across it before he thought about young Molly. She was on her own now. God, and she was just a kid! There were no relatives left at home; his mother had been an orphan, and Gran, his father’s mother, had died before Mam. Harry halted, thinking about going back in to see the Adjutant. He had to get home, he realised desperately.

Then he saw Jackson come to the door of the barracks, lifting his hand to shade his eyes as he looked over towards Harry. He’d talk it over with Jackson, the only one who would understand exactly because he came from Eden
Hope
too. There was still time before he had to go on guard duty at the main gate.

‘Your old fella? No! Are you sure?’

Jackson Morley stopped buttoning his tunic and stared at Harry. Shocked, he thought of Bill Mason, his cheeky, lopsided grin so like Harry’s and wavy black hair only just touched with grey. A man so full of life couldn’t be dead, it had to be a mistake.

‘Here, read it,’ said Harry and thrust the piece of paper into Jackson’s hand. He studied the few words written there. No ambiguity, no room for doubt. Bill Mason was gone, poor beggar.

‘But what about Molly? What will she do?’ Little Molly, only fifteen when they had left England. Bonny little Molly. Jackson was going to marry her when she grew up – that was what he’d always told her, jokingly of course.

‘I’ll have to try for home leave,’ said Harry. ‘The Company won’t let her stay in the house on her own, there’s nowt so sure.’

‘No,’ Jackson agreed. ‘But she’ll be taken in by somebody in Hope, you know she will. Folks’ll rally round.’

‘It’s up to me, she’s my sister,’ said Harry. ‘I must try to get home. I’m off to see the Adjutant again.’

‘I’ll walk over there with you.’ Jackson bit his lip. ‘Oh, man,’ he said, ‘I’m right sorry.’

‘Aye.’

The Adjutant, Lieutenant Carey, was just coming out of the office.

‘Private Morley,’ he said, ‘I was about to send for you.’ He had a paper in his hand similar to the one he’d given Harry and Jackson’s heart sank to his boots. He cast a quick glance at Harry.

‘I’ll wait here,’ said his friend.

Five minutes later, Jackson came out of the office. ‘Dad was injured,’ he said, ‘he’s in hospital. Come on, I’ve asked to see the Colonel, we can ask for home leave together.’

They waited around the verandah for ten minutes before being summoned into the office only to be told that home leave was unlikely to be granted.

‘I’m sorry, men,’ said the Colonel, a dapper little man with steel-grey hair who, in spite of the heat, looked as though he had never sweated in his life. ‘With the situation as it stands at the moment – well, you have my sympathy, I’m sure, especially you, Private Mason, for the loss of your father. But after all your sister is an adult, she is not dependent on you, is she?’

‘She’s sixteen, sir,’ said Harry. ‘And we have no other relatives.’

‘Sixteen? Well, there you are. Earning her own living, I presume?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Despair ate into Harry. Outside a Sergeant-Major began to bark orders; there was the sound of marching feet. Harry opened his mouth to ask what the Colonel would do in his position but the habit of deferring
to
a superior officer was too strong. He merely stood to attention and stared straight ahead.

‘Well then, request for compassionate leave denied.’ The Colonel turned to Jackson. ‘I hope your father recovers, Private Morley. However, your request is denied also, for the same reasons. You men have to realise these are troubled times. We have to be constantly on the alert. A number of our men have problems at home but this is the army. We must all do our duty.’ He nodded a dismissal and the two men from Eden Hope marched smartly out of the office.

‘I’ll put in for a transfer to the Durham Light Infantry,’ said Harry as they walked over the parade ground.

Jackson glanced at his friend; Harry’s face was set, his eyes steely. ‘We both will,’ he agreed. ‘I’m fairly sure war is coming, no matter what Chamberlain says. The Durhams will have us, I don’t think the Colonel can stop that.’

‘It’s my bedroom, Mam, and I’m not sharing it! Especially not with that toffee-nosed Molly Mason. Let her find somewhere else to live.’

‘But, Joan, in simple Christian charity … You know her mother was my friend.’

‘Aye, well, Molly isn’t mine and I want nothing to do with her. Or her good-for-nothing brother!’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? It’s because Harry jilted you?’

‘He did not! I didn’t want him!’ shouted Joan. ‘Don’t you go saying he jilted me …’

Molly, just about to turn into the back gate of the Pendles’ house, paused, clearly hearing the raised voices. She flushed, hesitated for a moment, backed away from the gate and leaned against the coalhouse wall. The sun shone brightly, low on the horizon this December day, blinding her. She closed her eyes tightly.

‘Are you all right, pet?’

The concerned voice was that of old Tom Bailey who worked in the lamp cabin at the mine and lived in one of the older, single-storey cottages on the end of the rows.

Molly did her best to summon a smile. ‘I’m fine, Tom,’ she mumbled.

He leaned on his stick and gazed at her with faded but shrewd blue eyes.

‘Aye, well, you don’t look fine to me,’ he pronounced. ‘Still … I was right sorry about your dad, Molly. A grand man.’ He coughed and she looked away quickly, her eyes filling. ‘Aye,’ he said and went on, his stick tap-tapping and his pit boots ringing on the cobbles.

‘Pull yourself together!’ Molly said fiercely, her words loud in the empty house. She had run back into her own kitchen and closed the door, wiped her eyes and blown her nose. She had to plan her next move. She could ask Mrs Morley, she supposed, but though Jackson was Harry’s friend she didn’t know his mother all that well. Mrs Morley was a woman who kept herself to herself. No doubt one of the other families would take her in but she couldn’t offer much for her board, her usual wage was only
12/6
even with bonuses. Now the pit was working there were single miners coming in and they took up most of the spare rooms in the village. The mining folk had been poverty-stricken during the long slump and were struggling to pay back debts even now.