Molly's War (31 page)

‘You’re not listening to me,’ she accused.

‘I am, really I am,’ said Molly. ‘You were saying how I made more money at the munitions factory.’

‘Aye. Just as well when I had to leave work to look after my little princess, isn’t it, petal?’ The question was addressed to the baby who turned her head sideways to smile at Dora. A milky sort of a smile but one of delight that Dora was speaking to her. Her first word will be ‘Dora’, Molly thought sourly.

It was a Sunday morning, the time when Molly usually took the baby out on her own, a time she looked forward to all week. Only today Dora had declared her intention of coming with her.

‘It’s a nice crisp morning, just the sort I like,’ she had said. ‘Autumn is so lovely, isn’t it?’

‘It’s still September,’ Molly had replied shortly. But she couldn’t say to Dora that she didn’t want her company as she strolled down the lane away from the village and between the fields where the corn was being harvested. The fact was she needed Dora and she couldn’t afford to antagonise her.

They strolled in silence for a few minutes then Dora started again.

‘I mean, a house like mine has a big mouth,’ she said. ‘The winter coming on and coal to buy and the electric. A baby has to be kept warm in the winter, you know.’

‘You mean, I don’t give you enough money? Is that what you’re saying, Dora?’

‘Well, like I said –’

‘I can raise it to four pounds a week, I suppose,’ said Molly doubtfully. It was practically the whole of her pay, she thought. But she didn’t need much for herself and if she did she would have to try to get more overtime, that was all she could do.

They called at the newsagent’s on the way home, Dora buying the
News of the World
and Molly the
Sunday Sun
, the local North Eastern Sunday paper. Because the weather had taken a turn for the worse they didn’t even look at the headlines, simply rolled the papers up and put them under the pram’s storm cover before making a dash for home as the rain began coming down in earnest.

It wasn’t until the dinner was cooked and eaten and the dishes washed and put away that the two women sat down before the fire to read their papers, Beth asleep in her pram.

It was the photograph that caught Molly’s attention first, a grainy photograph on the inside page of a soldier with dark hair under his forage cap, dark eyes and an unassuming smile. A lop-sided smile like her brother Harry’s but it wasn’t him, oh, no, it was Jackson Morley. LOCAL HERO, it read in big letters beneath the photo.

Molly sat straight in her chair with a sharp intake of breath. It couldn’t be, not after all this time!

‘What’s the matter?’ Dora had noticed her agitation and leaned forward, full of curiosity. But Molly didn’t hear her; her heart was beating so fast she felt as though she was choking. There was a mist before her eyes so that when she tried to read the text she couldn’t, it merged and blurred before her eyes. Dora got to her feet and came round to the back of Molly’s chair. ‘What is it?’ she asked again. ‘By heck, you’ve gone as white as a sheet, you have.’

She leaned over Molly’s shoulder to see what it was. ‘Do you know that lad, like?’

‘No,’ said Molly, only half-attending. ‘I mean, yes.’

‘He comes from Eden Hope, I see,’ said Dora. ‘The Croix de Guerre, eh? That’s French, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Eeh, why, fancy. I wouldn’t have thought they’d have been giving out medals, not now, not when they gave in.’

Molly wanted to jump to her feet and scream at Dora,
tell
her to shut up, stop looking over her shoulder, go to hell or anywhere, she didn’t care where. But mainly just to
shut up
!

Her vision was clearing now after the initial shock. Oh, yes, it was Jackson. My love, my love, my love is alive, her heart sang. A great thankfulness enveloped her whole body. ‘Thank you, God,’ she said aloud. ‘Thank you, God.’

‘What for?’ asked Dora, mystified.

‘It’s Jackson, don’t you understand? He … we are engaged to be married.’

Molly began walking about the kitchen with quick, jerky steps, over to the window, stopping, turning around and walking back.

‘For goodness sake, lass, stand still, you’ll have me dizzy,’ said Dora. Molly picked up the paper again, stared hard at it as though she might have been mistaken the first time. Her fingers trembled so much the paper rustled. But it was still Jackson’s face looking out at her. Blurred as it was, definitely him. And didn’t it say so anyway? She read the text properly this time.

… Sergeant Jackson Morley of the Durham Light Infantry, presented with the Croix de Guerre by General De Gaulle for bravery when seconded to a French unit in Belgium, in that he manned a field gun against a German advance so allowing the rest of the unit to escape with the wounded. In the action Sergeant Morley was wounded …

Molly dropped the paper. Oh, she had to go to Eden Hope, she had to find out where he was, write to him …

‘I have to go to Eden Hope,’ she said to Dora, and started towards the stairs. ‘If I hurry I’ll catch the bus to Bishop. Or maybe Merrington to catch the Eden bus. That’ll be the best, I think.’

‘An’ what will he have to say about the bairn then?’ asked Dora. She gazed at Molly, head on one side, an ironic half-smile playing around her mouth.

Molly looked blankly at her. ‘The bairn?’ She stopped in her tracks and turned slowly round. ‘I … I …’

‘I bet he doesn’t know about our little Beth, does he? Innocent little babe that she is, he’s not going to like it, is he?’

Molly looked piteously at her and Dora nodded her head.

‘Aye, I thought as much,’ she said. ‘Oh, go on then, you go. I’ll see to her. At least it’ll put your mind at rest. But mind, don’t build your hopes up because it takes a saint of a man to accept another man’s bairn, I’m telling you that for nothing.’

‘I have to go, Dora,’ said Molly. She crossed to the pram and touched her child’s face briefly; Beth slept on. Molly ran upstairs to change into her best costume, a grey flannel cut on the new utility lines with a short skirt and only one pleat and square military shoulders to the jacket. She brushed her hair until it shone, looked into the mirror and
frowned
slightly, added a touch of colour to her lips and ran back downstairs again.

Dora had abandoned the papers and was sitting with her feet propped up on the fender, staring into the fire.

‘That didn’t take you long,’ she said, and sniffed.

‘No, well, I have to catch the bus, don’t I?’ said Molly. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’

‘Oh, don’t hurry on my account,’ said Dora. ‘Nor Beth’s neither. We’ll be all right, don’t you worry yourself.’

‘Dora –’

‘Aye. Well, go on then. An’ don’t forget to close the door properly. It’s getting cooler by tea-time now.’

It was only as she stood at the bus stop by the triangular green in Kirk Merrington that Molly allowed herself to wonder what Maggie’s reception of her might be like. Had word got back to Eden Hope that she’d had a baby? Perhaps not, she thought. After all, no one knew her in Ferryhill apart from Dora and the immediate neighbours. And these days there were often strange folk about, especially young mothers and children evacuated inland from Sunderland or Hartlepool, even Middlesbrough. As far as she knew no one in Ferryhill had asked who she was.

There was fifteen minutes to wait for the Eden bus. Molly, filled with excitement, couldn’t stand still. She walked up and down, up and down. Gazed at the corner from which the bus would appear as though she could make it do so by the power of her will.

‘I’m not going to tell her,’ she said aloud on the corner. A door opened in one of the houses bordering the green. A young woman came out, glanced at Molly, startled, then decided she couldn’t possibly have been talking to her and disappeared round the corner. Talking to yourself was a bad sign, thought Molly, and turned the other way and walked to the opposite corner.

She wouldn’t tell Maggie about Beth, she decided. At least not before she told Jackson. Jackson … Would he be there, in Eden Hope? In his mother’s house? Her pulse leaped at the thought and panic rose into her throat. She would have to tell him, wouldn’t she? And she wasn’t ready yet, oh, no. He would send her packing, he would too. Oh, God, if he should look at her with contempt, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

The sound of an engine impinged on her anxious thoughts. The bus was coming. She couldn’t go, couldn’t face Jackson with what she had done, not now. She needed more time.

What a fool she was, Molly told herself as she climbed on to the bus, she had to go, had to see him one more time even if he did reject her. The bus set off, winding its way round the farming communities and colliery villages, coasting down hills and creaking slowly round corners, drawing nearer and nearer to Eden Hope and her own personal Judgement Day. All the time Molly’s thoughts whirled chaotically. One minute she was filled with wild elation that she could see Jackson at any minute and the
next
plunged into despair, sure he would cast her off. She alighted at the top of the rows, her stomach churning, and walked the short distance to the Morleys’ house on trembling legs.

‘Molly! Well, who would have believed it? Frank, Frank – here’s Molly come to see us.’

Maggie stood in the doorway, one hand on the door, her face breaking into a smile of surprised welcome. ‘Why, yer bloke, we were just talking about you, wondering where you were. Why the heck didn’t you keep in touch?’

‘Hallo, Maggie, Frank,’ said Molly as Maggie took her arm and drew her into a kitchen still redolent of Yorkshire pudding and boiled cabbage. ‘Eeh, who would have believed it? We were just talking about you, wondering where you were …’

‘Is it true? Is he alive?’ Molly butted in, unable to wait any longer to ask. She gazed anxiously round at Frank in his chair by the fire; an ordinary chair now with crutches propped against the wall beside it, not his wheel chair she noted with one part of her mind. No Jackson, though, he wasn’t here, she thought, and slumped in disappointment.

‘He is, lass,’ said Frank. ‘And out of his mind wondering what happened to you. Where the hell have you been, any road? There’s been no word from you in all these months, you never even told us you’d changed your job.’

Molly heard what he said, the words were there in her head, but for a second or two she was incapable of understanding anything but the first three. It was true,
Jackson
was alive, it wasn’t some cruel trick the
Sunday Sun
had played on her. It wasn’t some other Jackson Morley, it was
hers
.

‘Where is he?’ she whispered as Frank fell silent.

‘A place out Sunderland way. A convalescent place.’

‘He’s hurt?’

‘He was. Getting better now, though. He’ll be back with his unit soon.’

Frank had instinctively answered her questions as tersely as they were given. Molly sat down again for she had risen to her feet when she had thought Jackson was hurt.

‘You never even wrote, lass,’ said Maggie reproachfully. But she was affected by Molly’s obvious agitation, as was Frank.

‘Put the kettle on, Maggie, make the lass a cup of tea,’ he said now. ‘She looks as though she could do with it.’ She did an’ all, he thought. By heck, she must love their Jackson all right. Well, mebbe this time there would be a happy ending to it. They deserved one, that was for sure.

‘Near Sunderland?’

Molly looked as though she was ready to go there now, this minute. She sat on the edge of her chair, looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Her clock it was, she thought suddenly. The clock that had come from her dad’s house, the marble clock, still ticking away. Beside it stood a wooden clock from around 1930 that had stopped.

Maggie saw her glance. ‘You don’t mind, do you? But
ours
stopped and yours was upstairs doing nothing, so I thought …’

‘No, of course I don’t mind,’ said Molly. She looked at Maggie, really looked at her for the first time since she had entered the house. Jackson’s mother looked well, better than she had done for ages. The dullness had left her eyes, the corners of her mouth turned up as though she was ready to smile at any minute and there was a healthy colour in her cheeks. Very different from the last time Molly had seen her, when they had both thought Jackson was lost.

Maggie lifted the kettle and felt its weight before settling it on the fire. Then she began bustling about from the pantry to the kitchen table, laying a cloth and bringing out the best cups from the press.

‘I’ll help you,’ said Molly, moving to do so.

‘No, I can manage,’ said Maggie. Then, realising she must sound short, she paused and smiled at Molly. ‘Look, like I said, we’ll forget the past, will we? I know I likely said things I shouldn’t but I was near out of my mind about the lad. You an’ all, I shouldn’t wonder. I just didn’t have room in me to consider how you were feeling.’

‘It’s all right, I know.’

‘An’ if I should have had suspicions I shouldn’t, I’m sorry about that too,’ Maggie went on.

‘What the heck are you on about, woman?’ Frank demanded.

‘Nothing, it was nothing. I’m sure I took no notice,’ said Molly hastily.

How could she say it like that? she asked herself. How could she take a forgiving tone when Maggie had been right all along and it was she herself who was in the wrong? By, she was a right bad ’un, she knew that. But she would tell Maggie the truth, she would really, after she had had a chance to explain to Jackson. If he forgave Molly, his mother would. But it was a blooming big if, indeed it was.

Suddenly the need to see him for herself, even if it meant he couldn’t bear the sight of her after what she had done, was paramount, an all-consuming desire.

‘How far away is it? The convalescent home, I mean?’ Perhaps she had time to go there and see him tonight.

Maggie looked up from setting out a raspberry sponge filled with jam from the canes that grew wild on the old disused railway embankment. She saw at once by her expression what Molly had in mind.

‘Eeh, you can’t go there tonight, man, it’s thirty miles or more. You have to get a bus to Sunderland from Bishop and another out to the place. No, don’t be so daft. There’s time for you, he’ll likely be there a while yet. It’s two or three weeks before he goes back to his unit.’