Molly's War (3 page)

Taking a pencil and piece of paper from the press drawer, she wrote a ‘room wanted’ sign. She could ask the paper shop to put it in the window, she thought. In the end she left it lying on the table while she put on her coat and hat and, picking up her bag, went out for the bus into Bishop Auckland.

She met Mrs Pendle at the door. ‘Look, Molly,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it would be a good idea to get a place near the factory? Think of the bus fare you’d save. The thing is, pet, I don’t think I can take you in. I’ve thought about it and it’s not fair to ask Joan to share her room …’

Mrs Pendle was the picture of embarrassment. Molly decided to take pity on her.

‘Just what I was thinking myself,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m going there now. Do you want anything brought from Bishop? I’ll be going through.’

The relief showed on Ann Pendle’s face. ‘Eeh, no, I don’t think so, ta, not today.’ She put out a hand and laid it on Molly’s arm. ‘I think you’re doing the right thing, I really do. Get away … that’s best.’

‘Ta-ra,’ said Molly, walking off for the bus. Ann Pendle looked after her as she strode purposefully up the street. Waiting at the bus stop at the end of the rows, she calmed
the
butterflies of panic in her stomach by counting the number of people who crossed over the street rather than walk by her, averting their faces, pretending they hadn’t seen her.

Molly sighed. Oh, she knew they weren’t unfeeling, the trouble was they were
too
feeling, just didn’t know what to say to her. But most of them had been to the funeral, had paid their respects. The trouble was there were so many bereaved in Eden Hope just now, misery was all pervasive. They wanted to get back to normal. And everyone wasn’t the same, she thought, remembering old Mr Bailey.

In Auckland the wind blew down Newgate Street, built on the line of the old Roman road and providing no corners for shelter. In Hardisty’s, the greengrocer’s and florist’s, there was a Christmas tree in the window, strung with coloured lanterns and tinsel. Christmas? When was that? she thought vaguely. Not that it mattered. Christmas was nothing to her now.

Lockey’s bus for West Auckland and St Helen’s Auckland was standing waiting, only a few passengers already aboard. Molly sat at the back on her own and stared fixedly at her hands so that no one getting on the bus could catch her eye and talk to her.

‘Where are you going, love?’ asked the conductor after waiting patiently for her to look up.

‘Oh, St Helen’s.’

‘Tuppence ha’penny return.’

He took a ticket from his board and handed it to her, and went off whistling to the front of the bus. Molly looked out of the window, seeing nothing until the line of new factories came into view, built on the site of an old colliery. The bus stopped right beside the clothing factory. She got off and walked in.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, the wages aren’t made up until four,’ said the girl behind the desk. She looked uncomfortable. Of course she had heard about the disaster and Bill Mason being one of the dead. Molly felt like telling her not to worry, she was fine, everything was fine. And everything would have been if it wasn’t for the leaden feeling somewhere inside her.

‘I’ll come back,’ she said instead, and went to look in the newsagent’s window to see if there were any single rooms to let at a price she could afford. Or even some live-in digs, with a family.

The newsagent’s was closed for dinner, which surprised Molly, she hadn’t realised it was after twelve. But there were cards in the window. She took her indelible pencil out of her bag and jotted addresses down on the back of the envelope she had received from the mine manager. Peering through the window, she saw it was twelve-twenty-five. She didn’t have a watch, that was what her dad had been going to get her for Christmas, he’d promised her.

Molly walked along to the fish and chip shop. She should eat, she told herself. But the line of girls from the
factory
made her shrink inside herself and the smell of the grease took away any appetite she had. Instead she turned and walked down a side street.

Adelaide Street – that was the first address on the envelope. It was cheap too, only 8/6 a week, and she’d have no bus fares to pay. Cheaper than any of the others. When Molly saw the house she was heartened. The lace at the windows was clean and white and the front door step scrubbed and sand-stoned. She lifted a hand to the shining brass knocker. The door was opened by a girl who looked to be about twelve, wearing a green gym slip and cream-coloured blouse and over them a pinafore that was much too big for her. Her hair was tied back severely with a length of green tape.

She stared at Molly through thick-lensed glasses with large, nervous eyes.

‘What do you want?’ she asked baldly.

‘I’ve come about the room,’ said Molly, and smiled to show she was friendly and harmless.

‘My dad’s at work,’ said the girl. ‘And I have to go back to school in ten minutes.’

‘Well, can I come in? When does your dad get in from work? Where’s your mother?’

‘I haven’t got a mother and Dad doesn’t get in until four o’clock.’

Molly looked at her and after a moment the girl opened the door wide, revealing a passage with brown linoleum polished to a gleaming finish. There was even a length of
carpet
in the middle and a side table. Oh, yes, Molly liked the look of this house.

‘I’ll leave my name, shall I? I can come later. Four o’clock, did you say?’

The girl looked even more nervous and glanced about her hesitantly. ‘Er, I haven’t got a pencil,’ she murmured.

‘I have, I’ve got one here,’ said Molly. Taking charge, she walked past the girl and wrote her name swiftly on a piece of paper torn from the envelope, laying it on the table. She looked around her. The door to the living room was open, there was a smell of beeswax. ‘I’ll be back tonight,’ she said. ‘By the way, what’s your name?’

‘Betty. Betty Jones.’

‘I’ll see you later, Betty.’

By, thought Molly as she walked off, that girl’s as timid as a mouse. But she felt some fellow feeling with the poor kid. After all, she hadn’t been much older when she had lost her own mother.

The line outside the fish shop had disappeared, the factory only allowed thirty minutes for dinner. Molly went in and bought a penny bag of chips and walked along to where the Gaunless stream ran alongside the road. She sat on a low wall by the water and ate the chips. Already she was feeling slightly better. With luck she would get the lodgings at a shilling or two less than she had expected to pay. Nice, clean lodgings an’ all.

Chapter Three

‘I’LL BE BACK
at work on Monday, I promise, Mr Bolton,’ said Molly.

‘Yes, well,’ he answered, standing up to show that the interview was ended, ‘I hope you are. You understand I have every sympathy with your position, my dear, but I can’t keep your place open any longer. We have a lot of orders to fill and there is a national emergency.’

‘Yes, Mr Bolton.’

Molly left the factory, her wage packet safely tucked away in her bag. He hadn’t
looked
very sympathetic, she thought to herself, but as though he wanted rid of her so that he could get on with his work. She took deep breaths of the clean cold air as she walked outside. The atmosphere in the office had been hot and stuffy despite the winter weather.

She would have liked to have told Mr Bolton where to put his job, she thought rebelliously. She’d had every intention of starting on Monday anyway but he’d implied, by his tone at least, that she was slacking, the tone of a manager who knew there were plenty more where she
came
from. But Molly’s innate caution had stopped her from rising to the bait. During the long depression she had seen what being out of work did to people. Too many friends and neighbours had been broken by it.

Molly turned her collar up against the bitter wind and walked over the road towards the streets on the other side. She would pass the time until four by looking at the other houses with rooms to let.

It was half-past four when she stood once more outside the door of number 44 Adelaide Street and knocked. Her feet ached and her stomach felt empty, reminding her that a bag of chips was all she had eaten since breakfast. This time the door was opened by a thin little man in a suit, his meagre hair smoothed flat against his skull and shining with Brylcreem.

‘Good afternoon,’ Molly began, ‘I’ve come about the room, I –’

‘Aye, I know, our Betty told me a lass had been looking. Come on in then,’ the man said impatiently. ‘Don’t stand there on the step for all the neighbours to gawp at. I won’t have them gossiping about me and my doings.’

A bit surprised, Molly glanced about. The street was deserted, not a soul in sight, but she stepped inside the passageway obediently. He opened a door to the left and went in, motioning her to follow. There was electric light. When he switched it on the harsh glare showed her a square room with an empty grate, a brown leather three-piece suite shining with polish, and a side board with
nothing
on it except for a picture of him with a woman holding a bouquet of flowers. The Joneses’ wedding picture she presumed. There was a faint smell of damp; obviously the room was not lived in.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, and Molly sat on the edge of the sofa, knees together, handbag clutched nervously in her hands. I’ve nothing to be nervous about, she told herself firmly and lifted her chin. Mr Jones took up a stance, legs apart, hands on hips, before the tireless grate and stared at her over the top of rimless spectacles.

‘Now then, young lady,’ he said, rather in the tone her old headmistress had used when confronting a recalcitrant pupil. ‘I haven’t much time, my tea’s nearly ready. You want to rent the room, do you?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Molly, though she was beginning to wonder if she did. But only one of the other houses on her list had been as clean as this one and it had been 1/6 extra per week.

‘It’s 8/6 a week, including breakfast but not including evening meal. You can use the kitchen to cook your own food for that. But mind, I won’t have anything which stinks the house out. Let’s say between five and six? We’ll leave you to it for that hour.’

‘That will be all right,’ said Molly, perking up a little. She hadn’t realised the price included breakfast. Perhaps if she ate a good breakfast she wouldn’t need much during the day. His next words disillusioned her on that score.

‘I’ll leave bread and margarine and jam out for you
before
I go to work. I leave the house at six o’clock every morning. Now, I suppose you want to see your room?’ He was already leading the way out of the sitting room. Molly got to her feet and followed him meekly up the stairs.

It was quite a large bedroom at the back of the house. A single bed stood in solitary splendour in the middle of an expanse of highly polished linoleum. It was covered with a white cotton bedspread. But there was a dressing table in the corner with a plain wooden chair in front of it, and in the corner a cupboard. Mr Jones opened the cupboard door and showed Molly a row of hooks with a shelf above. ‘You can put your things in here,’ he said, and turned and stared fiercely at her. ‘I can’t abide slovens,’ he snapped. ‘I won’t have things laid about, do you understand?’ Without waiting for an answer he went on, ‘That’ll be two weeks in advance, you can move in when you like. Seventeen shillings, please.’

‘Is there a fire?’

He looked affronted. ‘If you must have a fire, you’ll have to find your own coal. I don’t hold with fires in bedrooms. I can’t have you using electric either, I’m not made of money. It’s a coal fire or nothing. An’ you’ll have to see to getting the chimney swept yourself an’ all.’

Molly hesitated. She looked about her. There were floral curtains at the window and a tiny cast-iron fireplace with a paper fan in the grate. But there was a key in the lock; she could shut herself in at least. She wouldn’t have to see a lot of Mr Jones. And if she hated it she could always
move
out. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, and fumbled in her bag for her purse. ‘I’ll be back with my stuff on Sunday, I have to work Monday.’

‘I won’t have the place cluttered up, mind,’ he warned. ‘And I don’t know about Sunday. Me and Betty go to Chapel on Sunday, ten o’clock service. Are you Chapel?’

‘I’ll be bringing just a few things,’ Molly insisted, thinking that for two pins she would tell him what to do with his room. ‘I will be cleaning it after all. And since you ask, yes, I’m Chapel.’ Not that she’d been to service much since Dad died, she thought dismally.

‘Aye, well. Just mind what I’ve told you,’ said Mr Jones, and marched off down the stairs leaving her to follow.

Molly caught the bus back to Eden Hope, it came along just as she approached the stop. She sat staring out of the window, wondering if she had done the right thing. Maybe not, she thought, chewing on the corner of a thumb nail. As she had walked down the stairs in Adelaide Street the door to the kitchen was open. She had smelled boiled cabbage and overdone meat.

‘Haven’t I told you to keep this door shut, you gormless fool? The place will stink of food,’ she’d heard Mr Jones snap as he banged the door to behind him. She thought she’d heard a muffled cry too but was letting herself out of the house by then.

Molly caught sight of her reflection in the darkened window of the bus and put her hand down on her lap. It was years since she’d chewed her thumb, Mam had always
been
telling her off about it. Suddenly she felt such an intense desire for her mother, her father, Harry, any of them, that it cut into her like a knife. She blinked, blew her nose, and stared fixedly out of the window. The bus had just stopped. Shildon, she thought, it’s Shildon. She forced herself to think of that. Home of the railways, most of the men hereabouts worked in the wagon works. There were Christmas lights in the windows of some of the shops, shining out on to the pavement. What was she going to do to celebrate Christmas? Suddenly she dreaded the thought of it. Her first Christmas on her own. Oh, Harry, where are you? she thought sadly.