Goodnight Sweetheart (35 page)

‘I’ve bin offered the chance to take charge of a new emergency services team that’s being set up out Cheshire way. Had me name put forward for it by the top brass here, so I’ve bin told, on account of what I’ve bin doing here in Liverpool.’

Molly could hear the impatience give way to pride.

‘Of course it will mean moving out of Liverpool,’ he continued. ‘It’ll be worth it. They’ll be paying me a fair bit, for one thing, and there’s talk of them throwin’ in a little house as well.’

Molly didn’t know what to say. She was pleased for him, of course, but she also knew that she would miss him.

However, before she could say anything he told her bluntly, ‘I want you to come with me, Molly – as me wife. We’ll have to get married pretty quick, like,’ cos they want me to start wi’ ’em from the beginning of next month. It will mean a fresh start for both of us, Molly.’

‘Johnny, I can’t leave Liverpool,’ she protested shakily. ‘It would mean taking Lillibet away from me dad and from her Granny Brookes as well. I know that Frank has said that he’s happy for me to bring her up, but I don’t know how he’d feel about me moving right away from his mam with Lillibet.’

Johnny shrugged impatiently. ‘Then leave her here. I reckon Doris Brookes will be only too pleased to have her to herself. If you ask me it would be a good thing, an’ all,’ he added darkly. ‘You and me deserve to have some time to ourselves, Molly, instead of you having to run yourself ragged looking after someone else’s kid. Aye, and what’s going to happen if Frank gets tired of supportin’ her, or he gets himself a new wife?’
Johnny shook his head firmly. ‘No, if you ask me, Molly, it would be best all round if the little ’un was handed over to Doris Brookes to raise, and the sooner the better.’

Molly stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘You can’t mean that, Johnny.’

‘Why not?’ His jaw jutted out pugnaciously. ‘You and me – we’ve got our lives to lead, Molly, and I don’t want mine cluttered up wi’ someone else’s kid.’

There was a huge hard lump in Molly’s throat and her heart was thudding heavily into her ribs in shocked misery.

‘Lillibet isn’t someone else’s kid to me, Johnny. She’s … she’s our June’s, and she’s mine now as well. I promised June that if anything happened to her I’d mother Lillibet for her and, anyway, I don’t want to give her up. I love her, Johnny.’

‘Aye, and more than you do me, I reckon,’ he responded angrily. ‘You’ll feel differently when we’ve got kiddies of us own, Molly.’ He tried to wheedle her, his tone changing. ‘This is our big chance. Think about it. More money, a place of us own … you and me together, like we was.’ He reached for her hand and she could smell the hot excited male scent of him. Excited but not exciting, she acknowledged tiredly. Not to her any more. Not now, after what he had just said about not wanting Lillibet.

‘I’m very pleased for you, Johnny,’ she told him tonelessly. ‘But I won’t be going with you.’ When
she saw the pain in his eyes she pleaded, ‘It’s not just Lillibet, Johnny. There’s me dad as well. I’m all he’s got now, and I’d be worrying meself sick about him. He’s not getting any younger, and losing our June on top of losing me mam has knocked him for six. He doesn’t say anything, but I’ve seen him looking at her photograph when he doesn’t think I’ve noticed.’ Her voice thickened with tears. She missed June too. ‘I can’t leave them.’

She dipped her head, unable to look at him, as she said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Johnny, but I can’t go with you.’

She winced when she heard the front door being slammed behind him, her tears rolling silently down her face, until Lillibet lifted a little starfish-shaped hand and patted her wet cheek gently.

‘Lord knows when my Ronnie and Frank will be home again, now that the battalion’s bin sent to Egypt,’ said Sally gloomily. Although officially no one was supposed to know the movements of the troops because of the risk of the information falling into enemy hands, somehow or other word did manage to get through and Sally had come hurrying round to tell Molly that the battalion was now on the move from Sicily. ‘Have you heard from Frank? Only it’s over a week now since I had a letter from my Ronnie.’

‘I did have a letter from Frank last week,’ Molly said, ‘but I couldn’t make much sense of it on account of that much having been censored,’ she admitted, heaving a small sigh. ‘He did write, though, that he’d got the photographs of Lillibet I’d sent him. She was standing up on her own in them,’ she added proudly, turning round to hold out her arms to her niece as she came toddling towards her and then lifting her up onto her lap.

‘She’s really coming on now, Molly,’ Sally approved. ‘Walking really well, she is, and she’ll be talking next. Have you thought about what you’re gonna do about that?’ Sally asked her.

‘I’m trying to teach her to say “Dada”. I keep saying it over and over again to her and—’

‘No, that’s not what I was meaning. What I was getting at is what is she going to call you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Molly admitted. ‘I’ve got a photograph of our June upstairs and every night when I put Lillibet to bed I show it to her and say, “kiss your mam good night,” but she’s too young yet to understand.’

‘Well, if you ask me you’d be better putting June’s photograph away for now, Molly, and letting the little ’un grow up calling you her mam,’ Sally told her forthrightly. ‘Not that I’m trying to say she shouldn’t know anything about your June, but you’re doing Lillibet’s mothering now, and it will only mek her feel different from t’other kiddies if she has to call you Auntie Molly like she hasn’t got a proper mam.’

‘I’ll have to wait and see what Frank thinks.’

‘I wish my Ronnie were coming home.’ Sally gave a gusty sigh. ‘And I do not know what’s to become of us women now, Molly, what with the Government saying that we’ve all got to register for war work, never mind if we’ve got kiddies to look after.’

The two women exchanged sombre looks. The Government had also recently lowered the age for
male call-up to eighteen and a half, and extended it to fifty, and everyone knew what that meant. There was no point in hoping for a speedy end to the war when the Government was making it plain it needed even more fighting men.

‘Wot you doing for Christmas this year, anyway?’

‘Dad was talkin’ about us going to Nantwich – it won’t be the same being here without our June.’ Molly’s voice revealed her pain. ‘But Auntie Violet says that she’s got a houseful already so we’re going to have to stay here.’

‘It’s a pity that Johnny took that job, Molly. You must miss him.’

‘I did at first,’ Molly admitted. She hadn’t told Sally the full story about Johnny’s ultimatum to her and she wasn’t going to do so now. ‘But Lillibet comes first.’ Her expression softened as she looked down at the little girl snuggled in her lap.

Merry Christmas, mate, and welcome home to Blighty, Frank thought humorously to himself as he hefted his kitbag up onto the overhead luggage rack and looked enviously at the men who had been fortunate enough to secure themselves a seat. The train was packed and still filling up.

The troop ship bringing him back to England had docked in Portsmouth two days ago, on Christmas Eve, and it had taken him this long to travel up to London in order to get a train for Liverpool. He had spent Christmas night sleeping
in the underground close to Euston station, joining in with the singsong and gratefully accepting the tea and sandwiches the regulars there had shared with him. Indeed, he considered himself fortunate to have secured a place there, and to have been able to wash and shave before finally boarding this Liverpool-bound train.

His arm ached from the bullet wound that had festered, the cause of his being hospitalised and left behind when the rest of his battalion had left for Egypt. It had been touch and go for a while as to whether or not he would lose his arm, but in the end he had been lucky and the infection had started to clear. The damage it had done, though, had left him with severely weakened muscles in his right arm as well as a deep raw wound where the infection had eaten into his flesh.

Along with the rest of the not-fit-for-active-duty and non-combat forces left on Sicily, he had been shipped back to England.

The man leaning against the wall in the corridor beside him offered him a cigarette, but Frank shook his head in refusal. He had given up the habit whilst he had been in the military hospital and was determined not to take it up again. He intended to put the money he would save on one side for Elizabeth Rose. Just thinking about her made him smile and reach inside his greatcoat to his jacket to remove Molly’s last letter and the photographs she had enclosed with it.

‘Pretty-looking kiddie. Yours, is she?’ the other man asked, peering over his shoulder.

‘Yes,’ Frank acknowledged, his heart filling with tender pride as he looked at his daughter’s picture. Not that he needed a grainy black-and-white photograph to remember how she looked. She had his own dark, almost black, hair, but unlike his, hers curled prettily, just like June and Molly’s. Her eyes were like Molly’s and he reckoned she had her auntie’s smile too. Something twisted sharply inside him and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was itching to unfold Molly’s letter and read it yet again. She had kept her promise to write to him regularly, telling him all about Elizabeth Rose, and he had her other letters carefully folded away in his kitbag. June hadn’t written very often towards the end, claiming that she was too busy.

June. He had gone into a small church in Portsmouth and said a prayer for her. Molly was right to say that she wanted to keep her sister’s memory fresh for Elizabeth Rose, and he wanted to remember the beautiful, excitable young woman he had married, not the woman war had made her.

Once again he felt that painful aching tug on his heart, quickly followed by a fierce feeling of guilty disloyalty. June had not been dead a year, and here he was letting thoughts he had no right to have fill his heart.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day had come and gone, and although Molly had done her best she knew that neither she nor her father had had the heart to celebrate. Christmas Day morning they had gone to the grave, and Molly’s father had said heavily that at least June and Rosie were together again now. Afterwards, Molly had left Lillibet with Doris Brookes and gone by herself to Eddie’s grave. He seemed so very far away from her now, as though their love for one another had existed in a different life. But she knew she would love him for ever and if things had worked out differently they would have been together when they were old and grey.

Now the grey December afternoon had given way to an even greyer dusk, and Molly’s mouth tightened a little to hear Vera Lynn’s voice on the radio singing about bluebirds and white cliffs. Her mouth soon softened into a smile, though, when she bent down to help Lillibet build a tower from the wooden bricks she had had from ‘Father Christmas’. Doris Brookes had brought them round on Christmas Day afternoon, saying that she’d been having a rummage around in her attic because she’d remembered she still had some of Frank’s old toys there.

Right now Lillibet seemed more interested in knocking down the tower Molly had built for her than in building one of her own and, looking down into her happy, innocent face, Molly couldn’t stop herself from sweeping her into her arms and kissing her.

‘I could eat you up, little Lillibet, do you know that?’ she crooned lovingly to her. She frowned when she heard someone knocking on the front door. Her father had gone round to see Uncle Joe, and she wasn’t expecting any callers. Putting Lillibet in her playpen, she went to open the door, switching off the hall light as she did so in order not to break the blackout laws.

At first all she could see was a male outline masked by the shadows but then he stepped towards her and the moonlight revealed his face.

‘Frank.’ She could hear the pleasure in her own voice and feel it in the dizzying beat of her heart, and then he was stepping into the hall and lifting her off her feet, to swing her round, laughing as he kicked the door closed and then suddenly not laughing at all as he held her close and lowered his mouth to her own.

Men – fighting men – said and did all manner of things they wouldn’t have said or done in peacetime, Molly knew that, and she knew too it was up to her own sex to make them keep in line, and do what was proper. So why was she wrapping her arms around Frank’s neck and kissing him back, for all the world as though she had every right to do so? What he was doing was wrong. Frank was June’s, and she had no right to be feeling what she was feeling right now.

Quickly she pulled back from him, putting a safer distance between them, glad of the hall’s
darkness to hide her burning face and all the other evidence of what his kiss had done to her.

‘So the doctor says he’s not goin’ ter sign yer back up for active duty yet then?’ Molly’s father asked Frank, whilst Molly sat at the kitchen table, feeding Lillibet, who was sitting next to her in her highchair.

‘Here comes a train, choo choo choo …’ Molly coaxed, holding out a spoonful of mashed potato, making Lillibet clap her hands together excitedly.

‘No,’ Frank answered him. ‘He says me wound’s healing up, but he reckons I still won’t be able to fire me gun proper.’

‘No.’ Lillibet refused a second spoonful of the mash, pouting flirtatiously and eyeing her father as she said proudly, ‘Dada.’

Molly might have been secretly coaxing Lillibet to say the special word for days, but it still gave her a sharp pang of mingled joy and pain to see the look in Frank’s eyes as he got up and walked over to the high chair.

‘Yes. I am your dada,’ he agreed tenderly.

‘I talk to her about our June every night at bedtime,’ Molly told him slightly breathlessly, ‘but I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do when she starts wanting to say “Mama”.’ Her colour was high and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Only yesterday Sally had commented that it would not be long before a good-
looking chap like Frank caught some girl’s eye.

‘Our June’s not bin dead a year yet, Sally,’ Molly had objected sharply.

‘I know that, Molly, but it’s different in wartime,’ responded Sally. And Molly had not felt able to argue with her.

‘I’d better get off to work,’ Albert announced, heaving himself up out of his chair. Frank went with him to the door and Molly half expected him to leave as well. Although he was spending virtually all day at number 78 so that he could see as much as possible of Lillibet, he was naturally staying at his mother’s. When he didn’t leave but returned to the back room, Molly could feel her body stiffening with apprehensive guilt. It had been one thing to acknowledge how she felt about him when she had been a girl, even though he had been June’s boyfriend, but it was something else again to acknowledge that she still had those feelings for him, albeit a far more grown-up version of them, when her sister was dead. She felt awkward and angry whenever he was around – awkward with him and angry with herself – and yet at the same time the first thing she thought of when she woke up in the morning was the pleasure of knowing he would be coming round.

‘You’d better get off to your mother’s,’ she told him now, determined not to let him see how she felt.

‘There’s no rush; she knows where I am.’

Molly had finished feeding Lillibet and she went
to lift her out of the highchair, but Frank stayed her, putting his hand on her arm.

‘There’s sommat I’ve bin wanting to say to you, Molly. It’s about our Lillibet.’ Molly’s stomach tightened, her heart lurching sickeningly into her ribs. ‘I’ve bin thinking as how I’d like her to have both a mam and a dad. You and me – we grew up wi’ just the one parent so we know what it’s like to want to have two.’

He felt as though he were walking barefoot on top of a factory wall cemented with broken glass, Frank admitted. He wished more than anything else he had more time for this, but, as his mother was constantly warning him, ultimately he would be going back to war, and a pretty girl like Molly would have any number of lads chasing after her, even if, from what she’d heard, she’d sent Johnny packing.

It was worse than Molly had thought it was going to be. Much worse. But she had her pride and so she lifted her head and said determinedly, ‘If you’re trying to tell me that sooner or later you’ll be wanting to get married again and when you do, you’ll not be needin’ me to take care of Lillibet, you don’t need to say it. There’s plenty enough folk around here told me that already.’

She could see that he was frowning and her heart missed several beats.

‘Molly.’ He reached for her hands but she pulled them away, folding them onto her lap. ‘What’s up?’ he asked her uncertainly. ‘You and me have
allus got on well, Molly, and yet since I’ve bin home this time you’ve bin like a cat on hot bricks around me – aye, and acting like you can’t bear to have me anywhere near you. I thought you and me was pals, Molly.’

Molly’s eyes filled with tears that she tried to blink away.

‘We are,’ she answered him gruffly. ‘It’s just that I’m that miserable at the thought of you marryin’ again, Frank, and tekkin’ Lillibet away.’

It was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole of it.

‘Eeh, lass. There’s only one girl I’d want to be Lillibet’s mam, and that’s you. That’s what I was wanting to talk to you about. To ask if you would think about you and me …’

Her heart was pounding so loudly she was surprised the whole street couldn’t hear it. If an air-raid warning sounded now, they wouldn’t be able to hear it above the racket her heart was making, Molly thought shakily.

Somehow or other he had taken hold of her hands, and he was looking into her eyes, his own filled with earnestness and concern. In another minute he would be kissing her and she
wanted
him to kiss her so badly. But how could she let him when there was June’s memory ever present in her mind?