Molly's War Read online

  He didn’t say much more, except that he was expecting leave and would try to get up to see her and the Morleys. Molly told Maggie but she didn’t know whether the older woman had taken it in. She and Frank had withdrawn into themselves since the telegram came, sitting for hours in silence. Frank didn’t even listen to the wireless now except for the news. In vain Molly told them that it wasn’t definite. She felt in herself that if Jackson were dead she would have known, have felt it in her heart. But the next minute she was telling herself not to be a superstitious fool. There was no way, no way at all, she would be able to tell. And then Harry came home.

  When Molly came back from the factory he was waiting for her on the corner of the rows, a tall, rangy soldier, a lock of dark hair falling over one eye, his forage cap stuck in his epaulette. He was leaning against the end wall of the last house and there was a ring of lads surrounding him, firing off questions, asking about the battles, about Dunkirk. When Molly saw him he had his back to her and was describing something, using his hands to draw in the air. For a moment she thought it was Jackson. Her heart leapt, her pulse raced, she could hardly see. But then her vision cleared and she saw it was her brother. And a surge of gladness and a wave of sorrow washed over her at the same time.

  ‘Harry!’

  He picked her up and swung her round then grimaced as he put her down. ‘Oh, heck, I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said, putting a hand to his side.

  ‘Why? What’s the matter?’ She gazed anxiously at the place.

  ‘Nothing, just a nick, it’s better now.’

  Molly was desperately wondering if he knew anything at all about what had happened to Jackson. He had said nothing and she couldn’t ask him in the street for fear of his reply.

  They went into the house arm in arm. Maggie and Frank were by the fire in spite of the warmth of the day. They looked more alert than they had since the day the telegram came. Maggie had even made the tea, a salad with lettuce and scallions from next-door’s garden, tomatoes and cucumber from the cold frame.

  It was Frank who brought up the subject which was uppermost in Molly’s mind. ‘Harry thinks Jackson might be still on his way back. He might even be a prisoner-of-war, the lists haven’t all come out yet,’ he said. For the first time for days there was an air of hope about him.

  Molly glanced quickly at her brother. ‘You saw him?’

  ‘We were attached to a French platoon,’ he said. He dropped her arm, looked guilty somehow. ‘I was wounded, came away in an ambulance while Jackson was left behind.’ He was looking at the floor as he spoke. Suddenly he lifted his head and looked at them. ‘I couldn’t help it, honest!’ he exclaimed. ‘I was hit in the side, I would never have left him otherwise, I wouldn’t.’ He sounded on the defensive and the others stared at him.

  ‘Nay, lad, of course you wouldn’t,’ said Maggie. ‘We never thought it was your fault, not at all.’

  At the weekend Molly took him to Ferryhill to see Mona’s grave and pay his respects to her mother. It was an uncomfortable interview. Mrs Fletcher seemed surprised to see them and politely glad to see them go. There was simply nothing to say, thought Molly sadly.

  Harry went back to barracks the following Monday. Molly was on fore shift and so she could go in with him to the station at Bishop Auckland. She smiled and waved as she stood on the platform and the train pulled away, but behind the smile she felt desperately alone. More alone than she had ever been in her life, even after her dad was killed in the pit. She went back to Eden Hope where Frank and Maggie had relapsed into sad apathy, hardly noticing her coming or going, not even listening to the news.

  ‘He got away then?’ Maggie did manage to say as she came in the door.

  ‘Yes,’ Molly replied. She went upstairs to toss and turn in Jackson’s bed, getting up once to take his old coat off the hanger in the closet and lie cuddling it, breathing deeply, catching the essential scent of him. She slept fitfully, waking with a headache and that deep sense of loss which wouldn’t go away.

  Her days and nights were filled with the factory. She began working in the sewing room. Mrs Fletcher came back to the canteen, thinner and older-looking but as efficient as she had always been.

  The battle in the air faded or moved away. The RAF had beaten off the Luftwaffe, people said, the threat of invasion was not so imminent. But Molly felt as though she was in a fog, it was all so unreal. Her wage packet became lighter. For the first time she had to pay income tax of eight shillings and sixpence in the pound.

  ‘It’s a flaming disgrace!’ Jenny Johnson said when she sat down beside Molly in the canteen. She ate her Cornish pasty and chips rapidly then lit a cigarette. ‘Fags going up an’ all. They’re making us workers pay for the war, all right.’ She sat back in her chair and took a long drag on her cigarette, blowing out smoke through a round ‘O’ of bright red lipstick. Jenny was on Molly’s band in the sewing room. They were sewing cordite bags for the navy today.

  ‘Yes,’ she said absently.

  Jenny regarded her thoughtfully. ‘You’re going to have to come out of it, you know.’

  Molly looked up in surprise. ‘Out of what?’

  ‘Look, there’s more than you lost somebody in this war. I know it was rotten losing your friend and your boyfriend, but you have to pull yourself together. You’ve not been to the concert party rehearsals for weeks and we could certainly do with you. Most of us can’t sing for toffee. We just go for a laugh and a bit of fun.’

  ‘I can’t. Anyway, rehearsal’s after the shift and I have to get home.’

  ‘Want to see if there’s a letter? You’re not still thinking your lad might be in a prisoner-of-war camp, are you?’

  Anger bubbled up in Molly, rousing her from apathy, stinging her to a reply. ‘You shut up! What’s it to do with you anyway? Mind your own business!’

  Jenny got to her feet. ‘Suit yourself.’ She shrugged. ‘I was only telling you for your own good.’

  And Jenny was right, Molly admitted to herself as she ran the bags under the needle back at work after the break. She would go to rehearsals. She had to face the fact that Jackson wasn’t coming back, he was never coming back again.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  JACKSON TRIED TO fight his way through the cotton wool clouds which enveloped him, but they were too thick. As fast as he thought he was getting out, the clouds thinning so that he could see shapes moving about, they closed in on him again. There was something he had to do … what was it? He had to watch out. There was danger, terrible danger, he knew it even if he didn’t know what the danger was.

  There were voices close by. He tried to listen but they were incomprehensible. He couldn’t even make out what language this was. Where was he? His mind struggled with the problem. He had no time to waste, the sense of urgency was overwhelming. He tried to hold his thoughts together. The voices droned on. Then there was a prick in his arm and suddenly sleep, taking away the urgency. He fell into nothingness.

  When he woke he was in a strange bed in a strange room. He moved his head to get a better view and winced as pain darted through him, searing in its intensity.

  ‘Don’t move,’ a man’s voice said, heavily accented, ‘be still.’ A face swam into view, a strange face with a black beret atop it.

  ‘Where am I?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘Never mind,’ said the man. ‘You were hit in the head. Go back to sleep.’

  ‘Hit in the head?’ Who’d hit him?

  ‘We’re going to try to get you back,’ said the man. ‘You are a very brave man.’

  Jackson looked blank. What was the man talking about? But thinking hurt too much, he was weary to death, thought slid away and he was asleep once again.

  The Frenchman called to someone through the door, an older man perhaps in his sixties. He brought in clothes, a rough fisherman’s jersey, baggy trousers and beret, and they dressed Jackson in them. He moaned once or twice as they moved him but didn’t open his eyes.

  ‘We’ll have to go
tonight, there’s no moon,’ the older man said. ‘Do you think he’ll be able to stand it?’

  The younger one shrugged. ‘We have no choice,’ he replied.

  A few minutes later the door of the cottage opened and the older Frenchman came out. He looked around and beckoned and the other followed him quickly down a path to a narrow beach. They were carrying Jackson wrapped in a blanket. They laid him in a small boat, similar to the cobles the fishermen of the Durham coast used when the mackerel were running, and climbed in beside him. They did not start the engine but rowed out to sea with long, sure strokes which carried them through a channel they knew well, away from the dangerous undertow which could so easily tip and sink a small boat like this one.

  In the bottom of the boat Jackson stirred. His eyes fluttered and his lips moved. He was in a nightmare again, one where danger was drawing nearer and nearer and he had to help … but who he had to help, he didn’t know.

  Some time later, it could have been days or even weeks, he woke up and his mind was clear. He turned his head, and though the movement made him wince it wasn’t unbearable. He was in a hospital ward, he recognised it as such, two parallel rows of beds with pale green counterpanes, a screen around one of them.

  ‘How are you today? Feeling more yourself, are you?’

  A doctor was standing by his bed, an open file in his hands. He looked down at it and made a quick note.

  ‘Fine,’ said Jackson. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘This is a military hospital in Essex,’ the doctor replied. ‘Now, can you tell me your name, rank and number?’

  Jackson tried to remember, it was there on the edge of his mind but oddly elusive. ‘I don’t know,’ he had to admit in the end.

  ‘Don’t worry, it will come back to you.’

  ‘But how did I get here?’

  ‘As I understand it, you were smuggled out of France. The Frenchmen who brought you said only that you had held off a German assault virtually on your own. They insisted you were a hero.’

  ‘I don’t feel like one.’ Jackson gave a small smile at the thought.

  The doctor looked at his head, shone a light in his eyes and nodded with satisfaction. ‘Well, you are definitely on the mend. Don’t worry, it will come back to you,’ he repeated. ‘This often happens after a head injury. Don’t push it, it will come.’

  After he had gone, Jackson relaxed back on to his pillow. France … There was something about France … what was it? He puzzled and puzzled and then was seized by a violent headache and had to give up.

  Molly was late coming out of rehearsal. They were practising for a Workers’ Playtime programme for the wireless, and Mr Dowson had made them do the last song over and over again. She was bone weary. It was the end of a very long and hard week and she was looking forward to her free weekend.

  Though she didn’t have anywhere to go, she thought. But she would at least get out of the house in Eden Hope, she had to. The atmosphere there just made her more depressed than ever. Perhaps she would go the pictures in Bishop, she thought. Take in the matinee at the Majestic, do a bit of early shopping afterwards for already things suitable for Christmas presents were growing scarce in the shops. There was talk of bringing in ration coupons for clothes.

  ‘That’ll be the next thing,’ Maggie had reckoned in a rare moment when she came out of her sombre mood and talked to Molly.

  ‘Best get a move on if you want to catch the train,’ said Mr Dowson. As usual he had contrived to be by her side as she came out of the gates. Sometimes she wished he would just leave her alone; other times it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. She quickened her pace, however.

  ‘Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’ he went on, increasing his pace to match hers.

  ‘I don’t go out much in the evenings.’

  ‘We could go to the dance at –’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Molly, beginning to run up the platform, jumping on the train and leaving him behind. Why couldn’t he take a hint?

  The following afternoon as the lights went up in the cinema and they all stood to sing ‘God Save The King’, she saw him standing on the end of her row. Almost as though he felt her gaze upon him he turned and smiled at her, his hopeful, ingratiating smile.

  When she came out he was waiting in the foyer, just as she had feared he would be. Molly sighed. She had sat through the film, one with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon being heroic against all the odds and setting a fine example to the lower orders, though she couldn’t remember much more about it than that. During the newsreel, with the cheerful voice of the news reader booming out over the audience, she had scanned the faces of troops whenever they came on, hoping against hope that Jackson would be there among them. But he was not and she was once more filled with melancholy. Hope was gradually draining away from her.

  ‘Hallo, Molly. Did you enjoy the picture? I thought you might like to go for a bite. Maybe a cup of tea? My treat. We could go to the King’s Hall, what do you say?’

  He wouldn’t be snubbed, she realised. He stood before her, smiling so hopefully, so persistent! Did he really feel for her as she felt for Jackson? Molly wondered as people milled around them and the foyer began to empty. No, of course he couldn’t. Or was that a sort of arrogance on her part?

  ‘All right,’ she said at last.

  They sat in the cafe at the King’s Hall, eating toasted teacakes and drinking milky tea. The cafe was half empty, most of the afternoon shoppers had already gone home, Molly thought. And that was where she should be as well. She could stay in her room, keep out of the way of Maggie and Frank if they wanted to be on their own.

  ‘I think I’d best be going now, Mr Dowson,’ she said suddenly, picking up her bag and making as though to get up from her seat. ‘Or I’ll miss my bus.’

  ‘No, no, there’s no hurry. You don’t have to catch the bus,’ he exclaimed anxiously. ‘I’ve got my car, I’ve enough petrol to take you home.’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘You’ve got petrol?’ she asked.

  He winked and nodded. ‘You can get the coupons if you’re in the know,’ he said. ‘Any road, let’s just say I’ve got it. I thought we could go for a spin.’

  Molly was shaking her head and he looked crestfallen.

  ‘Aw, come on, it won’t hurt. You could do with some fresh air after breathing in that powder. We both could. What do you say, just a little run up the fell? Please, Molly, I promise to get you home early.’

  She considered it, tempted. She thought of the sharp moorland air. It was ages since she’d been up the dale. And there was nothing to rush home for, nothing to hope for, there wasn’t another post until Monday. And Maggie and Frank were so quiet, so wrapped up in each other and their grief just now, they hardly noticed if she was there or not. They had given up and she was beginning to feel the same way. Her thoughts shied away from that, she couldn’t bear to think it.

  ‘Righto.’

  The car was a Morris four-seater with dark blue paintwork and leather upholstery, all polished to a high gleaming gloss. There were few cars in Eden Hope and those there were belonged to the management of the pit and the doctor. None of the ordinary people owned one. Once she was sitting in the front passenger seat with Gary Dowson pulling away from Newgate Street and heading for the ancient stone bridge over the Wear which a fourteenth-century bishop had had constructed to take him to his hunting grounds in Weardale, Molly couldn’t help being shaken out of her apathy a little and started showing interest in her surroundings. The little car climbed gradually out of the valley and soon they were out in the open with great vistas of fields and tiny villages and woods. Down below them on their left she caught glimpses of the Wear, running back to Bishop and Durham and beyond. The war seemed to be an irrelevance as they caught glimpses of farmers gathering in the harvest. They were held up by a tractor chugging along the road with a load of straw, then an old cart pulled by a horse, straining forward, its muscles rippling as it hauled its load.

  ‘We�
�ll stop here, I think. I don’t want to waste too much petrol,’ said Gary. He pulled into the side along a winding track. They were past the fields now, close by huge swathes of heather, some of it still purple with summer flowers.

  He sat there, not moving, and the tiny frisson of alarm which Molly had felt faded away. He didn’t mean anything, he wouldn’t do anything, no, of course he wouldn’t. Anyway, she could look after herself, couldn’t she? She was a woman now, an experienced woman.

  She made herself relax too, staring out over the fells, wondering what it would be like to live in a remote place like the tiny farm she could see half hidden in a fold of the moor some distance from the road. Gary offered her a cigarette from a gunmetal holder, lighting one for himself when she refused. He wound down his window and the sharp air came into the car, the muted baa-ing of sheep audible amongst the heather.

  Molly relaxed into her seat, put her head back and closed her eyes. She let the evening sun play on her eyelids. Just for a moment, she told herself, just for a moment she would pretend it was Jackson sitting beside her in the little car, Jackson’s warmth she could feel beside her.

  ‘Molly?’

  Her eyes flew open as Gary flung the cigarette end out of the car and turned to her. He put a hand to the nape of her neck and stroked it gently. She stiffened, didn’t move. She could feel his fingers on her neck. She lifted her head to protest but his arm slid around her shoulders and he drew her towards him.

  He kissed her on the lips, a soft, gentle kiss, becoming more insistent. Molly sat there, feeling the warmth of his lips, not thinking, just feeling.

  ‘I love you, Molly,’ he murmured against her ear, and her eyes flew open. She struggled upright. What was she doing?

  ‘Gary,’ she said, against his restraining arm. ‘Gary! Let me up!’

  ‘Why? Don’t you like it?’

  ‘You know I’m engaged to a soldier – he’s away in France, I can’t do this.’