Goodnight Sweetheart (9 page)

‘Give him to me, Molly,’ Sally demanded huskily.

Molly looked at Doris, who nodded her head. Very gently she carried the baby over to his mother.

An expression of intense joy flooded Sally’s face as she took hold of him and instinctively put him to her breast.

‘You’re lucky you’re the kind that can give birth as easy as shelling peas,’ Doris told Sally unemotionally, ‘otherwise you might not be smiling right now.’

‘I was frightened I’d be sent away, and I wanted to be here in case my Ronnie gets some leave,’ Sally protested.

Someone was knocking on the door. Nodding to Molly, Doris told her, ‘Take these things down to the back kitchen for me, will you, whilst I go and answer the door.’

The caller turned out to be Doris’s neighbour, come to see how Sally was and to explain that they’d heard that the air-raid siren had simply been a test.

‘Over an hour we was in that Anderson shelter,’ she complained after she had admired the baby, and accepted the offer of a cup of tea.

After that the visitors came thick and fast, and Molly was kept busy making tea and washing up until, at five o’clock, Frank’s mother told her that she could go.

‘You’re not a nurse but at least you’ve got a bit of gumption about you, not like that sister of yours,’ she told Molly grudgingly. ‘What my lad sees in her I’ll never know.’

‘Frank loves our June and she loves him,’ Molly defended her sister heatedly. ‘She’s missing him so much,’ she added.

Was that a small softening she could see in Doris Brookes’s eyes? Molly hoped so.

‘When will Sally be able to go home, only I thought when she does I could go round and give her a bit of a hand?’ she asked quietly, changing the subject.

‘She’ll be back in her own bed tomorrow night,’ Doris answered her.

Why should she be feeling so tired, Molly wondered wearily as she walked home. It was Sally who had had the baby, not her.

‘You’re back, are you?’ June greeted her as she walked into the kitchen. ‘What took you so long? Elsie was round here hours back, saying as how Sally had had a little boy.’

‘People kept coming round to see them and I was making them cups of tea,’ Molly told her tiredly.

‘I don’t know why you wanted to go putting yourself forward like that anyway, offering to help. What do you know about nursing? You’ve changed since you got involved with that WVS lot,’ she accused Molly sharply. ‘Become a bloody do-gooder and helping others rather than your own.’

Molly suddenly realised that June felt threatened by her voluntary work, scared she wouldn’t be there for her, especially now she was so lonely with Frank being away. It made her heart go out to her sister.

‘I didn’t offer; it was someone else who said—’

‘Mebbe not, but you didn’t refuse, did you? A lot of use you must have bin.’

‘I didn’t do anything really, only fetch and carry. Oh, June, the baby is so gorgeous.’ Molly burst into tears. ‘I wish you could have seen him.’

‘Aye, well, I shall have to wait until Sally goes back to her own place. I’m not going knocking on Frank’s mam’s door and begging to be let in.’

‘Why don’t you, June?’ Molly suggested impulsively, adding before June could say anything, ‘She must be feeling lonely without Frank, and worried about him too, just like you are. I know she always seems a bit standoffish, but I’m sure if you let her see how much Frank means to you and sort of, well, talked to her a bit about the wedding and things, make her feel involved—’

‘What?’ June put her hands on her hips and glowered. ‘Me go round there making up to her?

Don’t make me laugh. I’m not going round there to be shown up and told how she wants Frank to marry someone else.’

Molly sighed. She wanted to urge her sister to adopt a less antagonistic attitude towards Frank’s mother, but she could see she was in no mood for such talk.

‘I don’t notice you going round to Johnny’s mam’s, making up to her,’ June accused.

‘That’s different,’ Molly protested. ‘Me and Johnny have only just got engaged, and his mam’s not living on her own.’

‘It seems to me that you aren’t that bothered about poor Johnny. You hardly ever talk about him,’ June sniffed disparagingly.

‘I write to him every day,’ Molly defended herself. It was true, after all, even if Johnny’s letters back to her didn’t arrive with the fatness and frequency of Frank’s to June. She wondered, though, if her regular letter-writing was more down to guilt than anything else. She certainly didn’t look forward to receiving Johnny’s letters, not like June did her Frank’s.

And not like she would have done if it had been Eddie who was writing to her.

‘And you don’t wear Johnny’s ring,’ June pointed out critically.

‘It made my finger go green and you said that that was because it wasn’t proper gold,’ Molly reminded her, trying to subdue her guilty feelings over how much time she now spent thinking about
Eddie. Eddie’s warm but gentle kiss had not left her feeling worried and wary like Johnny’s fiercer kiss had done. Eddie was familiar and his return to her life welcome, whereas she felt she hardly knew Johnny at all.

‘Well, that’s as maybe, but from the way you were kissing Eddie Saturday night, no one would ever have guessed you were engaged to someone else.’

Molly could feel her face starting to burn, betraying her guilt.

‘It was you who wanted me and Johnny to be engaged, not me. I don’t want to be engaged to him – I never have,’ she burst out, angry tears filling her eyes. Her heart was thudding and she felt sick, but relieved as well, now that she had finally said how she felt.

She could see how much her outburst had shocked her sister, who was simply standing staring at her.

‘Well, you can’t break your engagement to him now, Molly,’ June said finally. ‘Not with ’im definitely about to go to war. A shocking thing that would be!’ she pronounced fiercely. ‘It would bring shame down on all of us, me and our dad included.’

Molly tried to blink away her tears. A hard lump of misery lay like a heavy weight inside her chest. She knew that what June had said was right, but she still wished desperately that she was not engaged to Johnny.

Because of Eddie?

Something about his gentleness reminded her of Frank. Eddie made her laugh and she felt safe with him. He didn’t possess Johnny’s brash self-confidence, and he didn’t share Johnny’s desire to take things further than she wanted to go. From listening to the conversation of the other machinists, Molly was well aware that not all girls felt as she did. Some of them, like May, actually not only welcomed the advances of men like Johnny, but also actively encouraged them. But May was nearly twenty-two and Molly was only seventeen.

She wasn’t too young, though, to know that the kiss Eddie had given her had been more than that of a childhood friend, and she wasn’t too young either to know that she had liked being kissed by him. They had been children together, she and June playing hopscotch in the street, whilst Eddie and the other boys played football, all of them sitting down together on Elsie’s back steps to eat meat paste sandwiches and drink their milk. It had always been Eddie who had taken Molly’s side and defended her from the others, and Eddie, too, who had comforted her when she had accidentally allowed Jim’s best marble to roll down the street grid. Luckily he and Jim had been able to rescue it. Eddie who had carried her safely piggyback, in the mock fights the close’s children had staged, telling her to ‘hang on’ whilst she had screamed and giggled with nervous excitement. In the winter, when it was too cold to play outside, they had
done jigsaws together on Elsie’s parlour table, and then later, when they were more grown up, had scared themselves silly with ghost stories. But then Jim and Eddie had left school and moved into the grown-up world of work, Jim joining his father at the gridiron and Eddie getting work on a fishing boat out of Morecambe Bay so that his visits became infrequent and then fell off altogether.

Molly couldn’t say honestly that she had missed him. She had been busy growing up herself, anxious to follow in June’s footsteps, and leave school and get a job. But now that he’d been back she discovered how much she enjoyed his company, and how their relationship was all the sweeter for the years they had been apart and the growing up they had both done.

But now June’s accusation forced Molly to confront a truth she hadn’t wanted to recognise. It had been bad enough being engaged to Johnny before, but now when the first person she thought of when she woke up in the morning was Eddie, just as he was the last person she thought of when she went to bed at night; when every time she did think about him her heart lifted and bounced so hard against her chest wall that it made her feel dizzy, her engagement to Johnny was an unbearable burden.

‘Where’s our dad?’ Molly asked June. She felt unable to look at her sister, but somehow she had managed to stem her tears.

‘Gone down the allotment to have one of them
committee meetings. Uncle Joe came round for him half an hour back.’ June’s voice was terse. ‘Seemingly Uncle Joe has been asked to take charge, and make sure that them as has allotments looks after them proper, like. I heard him telling Dad that he wants to set up some sort of plan so that they can grow enough stuff for everyone in the close. Mind you, it will take a bit more than him telling a few jokes to get some of that lot from the allotments to listen to him. Even Dad admits that some of them are that cussed they won’t listen to anyone.’

‘It’s different now. We’re all in this war together,’ Molly reminded her stoutly.

‘Oh, I see, and that’s why you’ve been making eyes at Eddie, is it, and letting him think you was some fast, flirty type like May?’

‘I haven’t …’ There was panic as well as misery in Molly’s denial. Was that what Eddie thought of her? That she was a flirt? Or even worse,
fast
?

‘Yoo-hoo, it’s only me – can I come in?’

Instantly both girls tensed and looked at one another, June giving Molly a small warning look, as she called out, ‘Yes, of course you can, Elsie,’ and pushed the half-open door fully open to smile at their neighbour.

‘I’ve brought yer some of me pressed tongue for your teas. I know your dad likes it. And I’ve brought some of that strawberry jam we made the other week as well. We might as well enjoy it before we gets bombed to bits. I were that worried
when that siren went off, what with our Jim down at the gridiron.’

‘Would you like a brew, Elsie?’ Molly asked her, desperate to avoid any more gloomy talk, for a few minutes at least. Besides, she acknowledged guiltily, Elsie might have some news about Eddie.

‘Yes, ta, love,’ she confirmed, sitting down with a relieved sigh.

‘So tell us all about the baby then, Molly. Came quick, didn’t he?’

‘Sally told Frank’s mother that she’d been having pains all day yesterday but hadn’t wanted to say anything,’ Molly answered her obligingly.

‘Aye, well, I reckon the shock of hearing that we’re at war can’t have done her any good in her condition. We’re gonna see some hard times from now on, you just see if we don’t. When I think about my lads …’

The evening air was warm but Molly still shivered, tears blurring her eyes, as she had a sudden mental image of Eddie.

What was happening to her? She had known Eddie all her life. He had fixed her doll for her when Jim had pulled off one of its arms. He had always been there, as an accepted part of her life – how could she suddenly be feeling all breathless and giddy just because she was thinking about him?

‘I went right cold all over when I ’eard.’

‘I were that shocked, I could hardly breathe, and then when that air-raid warning went off …’

The girls might be trying to outdo one another as they described their feelings on hearing the previous day’s announcement but none of them was exaggerating the strength of the emotions they had felt. All of them had waited anxiously for every wireless news bulletin, and most of the girls had stopped to buy a paper on their way in to work.

‘Our boys’ll be needin’ these uniforms now,’ Irene announced sturdily, ‘so we’d best not waste any time gettin’ them made.’

‘Me cousin Lizzie wot works at the hospital were tellin’ us last night as how she’s seen empty cardboard coffins stacked up fifty deep and that they’ve bin told that Hitler will be blitzing Liverpool, on account of the docks,’ Ruby informed them ghoulishly, her voice trembling.

Molly’s hands were shaking as she put her gas mask over the back of her chair. The morning paper was full of the dangers Liverpool’s merchant fleet would be facing from Germany’s U-boats, along with reminders about blackout regulations, and the importance of attending regular air-raid warning drills.

‘I thought we’d really had it when that bloomin’ siren went off yesterday,’ Jean admitted. ‘Scared me to death, it did. Ran as fast as we could for the nearest shelter. I didn’t sleep a wink last night for fear of us being bombed.’

There were heartfelt murmurs of agreement from the other girls, several of whom were yawning tiredly.

‘Watch out, here comes our own bloody little Hitler,’ Irene warned them all just before the door opened and Miss Jenner came in.

‘What’s up wi you, Hannah?’ Ruby asked after the dinner bell had rung and the girls were crowded together in their blacked-out canteen, eating their dinner.

Molly looked over to where Hannah Carter was sitting staring into space, her fingers plucking fretfully at her clothes.

‘It’s all them bodies,’ Hannah told her in a high-pitched voice. ‘They keeps saying as how we’re to blame for making them those uniforms.’

Some of the younger girls nudged each other and started to giggle, whilst Irene frowned and said firmly, ‘Don’t talk so daft, Hannah. There’s no bodies here.’

‘Yes, there are. They’re everywhere, wi’ their arms and legs cut off, just like my hubby … Sent him back wi’out his legs, they did …’ She had started to rock herself to and fro, as though trying to comfort herself. ‘There’s no sense in mekkin’ uniforms for dead men, and that’s what they’ll all be soon enough; all of them dead. You just wait and see. Them uniforms as we’re making for them will be the death of them, just like last time. Sent me his uniform back they did… but he weren’t in it …’