Goodnight Sweetheart

TWO

‘Oh Gawd, I’ve gone and laddered my stocking. Here, Molly, you put the roast in, will you – I’ve turned on the gas ready – whilst I go and change them, otherwise we’ll be late for church.’

The girls’ father worked on the railway sidings at Edge Hill station – ‘the gridiron’, as it was called locally – as a track maintenance man employed by the railway company. The work was back-breakingly hard and often dirty, but he never complained. Like many of the generation who had lived through the depression, he simply considered himself lucky to be in work.

Although he didn’t earn much, with June and Molly’s wages, they had enough coming in to be able to afford a joint of meat on a Sunday, to be eaten with the potatoes and vegetables Albert grew on his allotment.

Molly slid the roasting tin into the gas oven and then dashed upstairs to get her hat and gloves.

‘Come on, you two,’ Albert bawled up the stairs, ‘otherwise we’re gonna be late.’

Chestnut Close was a Protestant street, with all its inhabitants attending the parish church of St Michael and all the Angels.

The custom was that everyone filed into church in silence, merely exchanging nods of acknowledgement, and then got together for a good gossip after the service. So although the Deardens could see Frank and his mother walking down the street up ahead of them, June made no attempt to catch up with her fiancé.

‘Look at her!’ she muttered to Molly. ‘Hanging on to Frank’s arm for dear life, acting like he belongs to her. Well, if she thinks that Frank’s going to be taking her to church every Sunday once he’s married to me, then she’s got another think coming. Of course, she thinks that I’m not good enough for him. That’s why she’s been sucking up to that friend of hers who lives on Carlton Avenue, in Wavertree – you know, them as has the laundry on the Scotland Road? Boasting all up and down the cul-de-sac she was at one time about how her Frank and their Angela would be perfect for one another.’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘Maybe she would have been, an’ all, if she hadn’t got buck teeth and no bust.’

To Molly’s relief, she couldn’t see any sign of Johnny, although she spotted his mother and two sisters.

‘There’s your ma-in-law-to-be,’ June told her, nudging her in the ribs. ‘You’re going to have to watch those sisters of his: always on the cadge, so I’ve heard. Don’t you go letting them boss you around, Molly.’

Despite herself, Molly smiled a little at the prospect of swapping a bossy sister for an equally overbearing sister-in-law.

As they walked to their pew, it struck Molly that the church seemed much fuller than usual, and when they stood up to sing ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’, it was obvious that Sally Walker in the pew in front of them, next to her soldier husband, Ronnie, in his uniform, was crying quietly. They’d only been married a year and their first baby was due in September.

Once the service was over, small groups of people started to congregate outside the church.

‘You and Dad wait here. I’m going to find Frank so as we can have a word with the vicar,’ June announced determinedly.

‘His mam won’t be happy about you wanting to bring the wedding forward,’ Molly pointed out. ‘She wasn’t too keen on the pair of you getting engaged.’

‘Well, she’s going to have to lump it, isn’t she, because me and Frank are going to be wed no matter what she thinks,’ June responded, tossing her head before turning to disappear into the crowd. June usually got what she wanted, Molly thought, but wondered if perhaps she’d met her match in Doris Brookes.

All around her, Molly could see anxious faces, as families clung together, the men looking serious and grim-faced, many of the women crying and those with grown-up sons clinging desperately to their boys. It was easy to pick out Frank’s tall, broad-shouldered frame as he stood with his arm around his mother.

Molly could see that several of the younger men had already gone over to talk to Sally Walker’s husband, Ronnie, who was in the regular army and could tell them what life in the Forces was like.

‘What’s going to happen to us – that’s what I’d like to know.’ One of their neighbours started to sob noisily.

‘Well, I reckon the first thing as is going to happen is that we’re going to have to get used to wearing them ruddy gas masks,’ her husband responded. ‘Else we’ll be having that Alf Davies, the ARP chap from number 14, giving us all a good ticking-off.’

‘At least the kiddies will be safe,’ another neighbour chimed in, ‘seeing as how they’re going to be evacuated.’

‘Aye, and our brave lads will soon sort out that Hitler.’

‘Will it soon be over, Dad?’ Molly asked her father fearfully when he came to join her.

‘I hope so, lass, but there’s no telling,’ Albert answered solemnly, whilst he and a couple of other men who had survived the Great War exchanged concerned looks.

‘Seems we’re going to be needing that ruddy air-raid shelter putting up at the bottom of the cul-de-sac, so we may as well make a start on it this afternoon,’ their next-door neighbour, John Fowler, commented to Molly’s father, adding grimly, ‘They’ll be calling all the young ’uns up, like as not now.’

Molly bit her lip. The Fowlers had a son working for the railways like John Fowler and her father, and a nephew in the merchant navy. Elsie Fowler’s normally happy face looked pinched and strained. Molly reached out and took hold of her hand, squeezing it sympathetically.

Elsie had been a good neighbour to them, taking both girls under her wing, and giving them a bit of mothering after their mother had died. She’d plait their hair, sew them pretty things when she could get the material, and never once forgot to bake them birthday cakes, taking over all those little motherly duties that their father couldn’t do. She’d been a godsend to Albert, who was desperately aware that, though he was doing all he could for his young daughters, they missed a mother’s love and attention. Molly loved Elsie and was grateful to her, but she knew that June, with her more bossy nature, sometimes resented Elsie, claiming that her good intentions were ‘interference’.

It was a good half-hour before June came back. Her eyes looked suspiciously puffy but she was still managing to smile.

‘The vicar has said as how we can have the banns read right off so that we can be married just as soon as Frank gets some leave,’ she told them, adding, ‘There was that long a queue waiting to see him you wouldn’t believe it. Seems like everyone is having the same idea as me and Frank.’

‘What did his mam say?’ Molly asked her anxiously.

A militant gleam sparkled in June’s eyes. ‘Just as you might expect. She was all for us waiting to see what happens, but Frank told her as how we didn’t want to wait. When we go to Lewis’s tomorrow to get that blackout material we can have a look at some wedding dress patterns as well. Frank has just had a word with Ronnie Walker, and he reckons it will be Christmas before Frank gets any leave, but there’s no harm in being prepared.’

Slipping her arm through Molly’s, she fell into step beside her as they headed for home.

By the time they had got back to number 78 and had had their dinner, it was well into the afternoon. Their father announced that he was off to join the other men from the terraced houses at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. Because their gardens weren’t large enough for individual Anderson shelters, they had been told they would have to erect a shared one on the piece of unused land at the end of the cul-de-sac. The corrugated iron for it had already been delivered, but the men had to dig out trenches for it themselves and install it.

‘I suppose we’d better measure up for those blackout curtains we’ve got to put up,’ Molly suggested when she and June had finished the washing-up.

‘Come on then,’ June agreed reluctantly.

‘I don’t see as how we need to do this when we aren’t even at war yet,’ she grumbled ten minutes later as she made Molly climb up the ladders to measure the windows, whilst she wrote down the measurements.

‘But if we don’t, when the ARP warden comes round to check, we’ll be fined,’ Molly reminded her, her forehead pleating into a worried little frown. June hated being told what to do by anyone and wasn’t afraid of saying so, but Molly was much more timid and keen to do her duty.

Half an hour later, when they had almost finished, June complained, ‘I’m fair parched, Molly. Get down off them ladders, and go and make us a cuppa, will you?’

Molly had just filled the kettle when there was a knock at the back door, and Frank came in.

‘June, it’s your Frank,’ she called from the kitchen.

‘About time too,’ June announced wrathfully. ‘I was expecting you’d have bin here before now, Frank, seeing as it’s going to be our last evening together.’

‘I would have been,’ he agreed placidly, giving Molly a gentle smile, ‘but Fred Nuttall from next door asked me to give him a lift putting up his Anderson shelter.’

‘Oh, I see, and of course he comes before me, does he?’

‘Don’t be daft. He’s invited me mam to share the shelter with them, so I felt obliged to give him a hand. Don’t let’s fall out, June, not tonight, seein’ as how me and Johnny have to report for our training tomorrow.’

Tactfully, Molly squeezed past them and closed the kitchen door.

Five minutes later the door opened and Frank told her quietly, ‘Me and June are just going for a bit of a walk, Molly.’

Molly had never seen her lively sister looking so upset. She was clinging to Frank’s arm as they left the house together and he was holding her tenderly as though she was something precious and frail.

What must it be like to love someone like that, Molly wondered. Part of her was glad that she did not know because she didn’t think she could have coped with the pain of watching them go off to war. The thought of Johnny going away didn’t fill her with dread at all. In fact, secretly she was looking forward to not having to evade his advances, or worry about the fact that she didn’t really want him to kiss her or touch her. The truth was that she felt much safer and more comfortable with her girlish and innocent little daydreams about Frank’s kind smiles and gentlemanly ways than she did with the reality of Johnny’s urgent demands. But didn’t that make her a terrible person, she worried guiltily. She ought to feel very different from how she did, she knew that. Perhaps if she just didn’t think about how she really felt, somehow she would change.

June and Frank had been gone almost an hour when there was another knock at the door – the front door this time. Molly went to open it, her eyes widening with surprise when she saw Johnny standing there.

‘Thought I’d come and say goodbye to you proper, like, Molly,’ he told her boldly, winking at her, and then walking into the small hall without so much as a by-your-leave, pushing the door closed behind him. ‘Come here and give us a kiss,’ he grinned, making a grab for Molly as she backed away from him into the front parlour.

‘Johnny,’ Molly began in protest, but he ignored her as he took her hand, led her to the settee and sat her down, all the while kissing the side of her neck.

Frantically she tried to push him away but he grabbed hold of her other hand.

‘We’re engaged now, remember,’ he told her, ‘so how about showing me how much you love me before I go? I’ve gorra ring for you, look, Molly,’ he added cajolingly. ‘Bought it off a chap in the pub.’

Delving into his pocket, he produced a gold ring set with a small red stone, which he pushed onto her finger.

The slightly sour smell of his beery breath was making Molly feel sick. She didn’t want to be engaged to him because she was afraid of the unwelcome intimacies being engaged would bring. His open hunger for her was too much, too soon, and it repelled rather than pleased her. But she didn’t know how to tell him how she felt, and could only submit mutely to his kiss, longing for it to be over.

When June first started walking out with Frank, Molly, who had already begun to have a secret girlish crush on him, had envied her elder sister, but now she acknowledged miserably that sighing over a tender kiss on the cinema screen was far nicer than actually having to endure being kissed. Did other girls feel like her, or was there something wrong with her, she wondered unhappily as she finally managed to wriggle away from him far enough to warn him breathlessly, ‘Our dad will be back soon, Johnny, and you know what he said.’ She only hoped that it was true. She felt horribly guilty about not wanting him to kiss her, but she was too conscious of the fact that he could be going off to war to be able to tell him that she didn’t want to be engaged to him.

‘How many of us did you say had to fit in here?’ Molly heard June demanding in disbelief as, along with the other women, they crowded into the Anderson shelter the men had spent the afternoon installing.

‘The lorra us from number 56 down,’ one of the men answered her, whilst the women exchanged concerned looks.

When the corrugated iron shelter had been sunk into the ground, the top had been covered with the earth that had been dug out.

‘It will seem more like home once you get some curtains hung in it,’ Brian, their neighbour from number 80, called out to his wife with a grin, whilst he winked at the other men.

‘Curtains? But there aren’t any windows …’ Mavis Leadbetter began, and then shook her head when the men burst out laughing. ‘Go on with you, you’re nothing but overgrown lads, the lot of you. No one would think there’s going to be a war on.’

‘Come on, love,’ her husband chivvied her. ‘It’s either laugh or cry.’

‘Aye, well, there’ll be a lorra crying done before we’re out of this,’ someone else chipped in.

‘We’ve gotta sort the inside of this out yet,’ Brian Leadbetter changed the subject firmly, ‘but at least we’ve made a start …’

‘Well, let’s hope that none of us gets caught short whilst we’re down here,’ Nellie Sinclair, who lived on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac, said pithily.

‘Don’t worry about that, Nellie,’ Molly and June’s Uncle Joe grinned. ‘I reckon the ARP lot won’t miss a couple of those buckets they’ve told us we need to have in case of a bomb dropping. Brian’s a fair joiner and it won’t tek him long to fit a nice polished seat on top of one of them for you.’

‘Go on with yer, you’ve gorra lorra cheek, you have. And we’ll have less of that mucky talk, if yer don’t mind.’ Nellie might be pretending to be shocked but Molly could see that she was laughing.

Uncle Joe was their father’s cousin, not his brother, but the girls had grown up calling him Uncle Joe and his wife Auntie Averil. Following their father’s example, Joe had moved into Chestnut Close shortly after he and Averil had married. He was a tall, well-built man, always ready with a smile and a joke, and much more outgoing than their own father, and so he had soon become a popular figure, not just in the close but also beyond it. He had a fine singing voice, and that, plus the fact that he could play the accordion, made him welcome at every local social event. Joe enjoyed a drink and a laugh, and he was a good father and husband as well as a kindhearted uncle. He might tease June for being bossy, and make Molly blush with his saucy jokes, but Molly was always glad to see him. June might say disapprovingly that he had a bit of a reputation for being quick with a quip and even quicker with a silver-tongued compliment, but their father always defended him and said that there was no real harm in him.

As different as chalk and cheese was how people described the two men. Where the girls’ father was quiet and self-effacing, Joe was boisterous and ready to put himself forward. Where Albert Dearden liked nothing better than to spend his spare time working on his allotment, Joe preferred to go down to the pub for a beer.

‘What about your mam, Frank?’ Albert asked a few minutes later as they all made their way home. ‘I could go round and give a bit of a hand getting her shelter sorted out.’

‘Thanks, Mr Dearden, but it’s all sorted. She’s to share with next door, and me and Fred Nuttall got it in this afternoon.’

‘Well, don’t you go worrying about her whilst you’re away, Frank. I’ll keep an eye on her.’

‘I’d be obliged if you would, Mr Dearden. It’s going to be hard for her, being on her own …’

‘What about me? It’s going to be hard for me as well, worrying about you,’ June put in crossly. ‘You don’t want to be spoiling your mam too much, Frank.’

‘Leave him alone, lass. Of course he’s worried about her. If she needs a hand putting up them blackout curtains, Frank, you tell her that she’s only got to say,’ her father responded sharply.

‘Never mind that. You remember to find out when you can have some leave, Frank, so that I can tell the vicar.’

‘Ronnie Walker was saying that on account of me being a qualified electrician they might put me into the Royal Engineers.’

‘Aye, and if’n you’d thought of it in time and got yourself a job with the electric company you’d have been in a reserved occupation,’ June reminded him tartly.

Unlike their father, and most of the other men in the cul-de-sac, Frank had been lucky enough to get a proper trade apprenticeship – thanks to his skill and his mother’s determination. And that was yet another reason why Mrs Brookes felt that June wasn’t good enough for her Frank, Molly suspected.

‘Now that’s enough of that, June,’ Frank rebuked her gently, adding too quietly to be overheard, ‘I want to do me bit, and I wouldn’t want anyone thinking any different. Especially not folk like your dad.’

A couple of the women with young children were gathering them up and Molly went to help them.

‘No way am I letting mine be evacuated,’ Pearl Lawson was saying vehemently.

The Government had sent out notices earlier in the year advising people of their plans to evacuate city children out of danger in the event of war, sending them to live in the country along with their teachers, who would make sure that they continued to have their lessons. Pregnant women and mothers with babies were also included in the evacuation plans, but the mothers of Chestnut Close, like many mothers up and down the country, were divided in their feelings about the planned evacuation. Some accepted that it was a necessary decision if their children were to be kept safe but others were openly hostile to it.

‘Aye, well, there’s no way I’m going to let mine stay here and be bombed,’ another said equally determinedly. ‘And besides, I don’t want mine missing out on their schooling and I’ve heard as how the Government will be closing down some of the schools here in Liverpool out of fear that they might be bombed. Why shouldn’t our kiddies have as good as posh kiddies get and be sent into the country where it’s safe?’

Pearl Lawson’s next-door neighbour, Daisy Cartwright, chipped in, ‘It’s different for them. They’ll be going with their schools and not sent off to some strangers like ours.’

It had been in the papers that some of the public schools based in cities were moving out wholesale to safer country locations where their pupils would board.

‘Ta, Molly,’ Daisy thanked her as Molly picked up the small toddler who had been making a determined effort to escape. ‘Is it true that you and Johnny Everton are engaged, only I heard it from his mam that you are?’

‘Yes,’ Molly confirmed, blushing slightly.

‘Well, you’re a bit on the young side, if you don’t mind me saying, and you’re gonna have to watch him. He’s gorra bit of an eye for the girls, from what I’ve heard,’ Daisy told her. ‘Marriage isn’t allus all that it’s made out to be, and once you’ve gorra couple of kiddies to think about it’s too late to change your mind.’

Pearl, sensing Molly’s embarrassment, tactfully changed the subject. ‘Have you measured up for them blackout curtains yet?’

‘Yes, me and June are going to Lewis’s to buy the material tomorrow,’ Molly told her.

‘I’ve told my George he’s gorra make frames for the windows so that we can pin the stuff to them. Catch me mekkin’ curtains when I’ve enough to do as it is! And wot’s all this about not buying in food? Chance’d be a fine thing on what George brings home! Don’t know what we’d do if it weren’t for the allotment.’

Leaving the women to chivvy their children out of the shelter, Molly went to rejoin her own family.

‘Has Johnny been round to see you, Molly?’ Frank asked her in a kind voice.

‘Yes. He called round earlier whilst you and June were out, but he couldn’t stay.’

‘Aye, well, I hope you didn’t go and say anything daft to him,’ June challenged her, adding for Frank’s benefit, ‘Daft thing’s bin saying that she isn’t sure she wants to be engaged, if you please!’

Molly could hear the impatience in June’s voice.

‘Well, if she isn’t sure…’

Molly could feel herself starting to blush guiltily as her heart gave a funny little beat. She liked Frank so much. He was always kind to her, listening to her as though he really cared about what she was saying and treating her like a grown-up, while June was impatient with her. But then that was Frank all over, being kind to folk.

‘Don’t you go encouraging her to be daft, Frank,’ June warned sharply. ‘Of course she wants to wed Johnny – just like I want to wed you,’ she added more softly, before demanding, ‘Don’t you, Molly?’

Obediently Molly nodded her head. What else could she do?

THREE

‘Well, I’ll tell you something for nothing, young Molly, you’re not gonna be the only one sporting a new engagement ring this weekend,’ Irene Laidlaw announced on Monday morning when the other machinists had all finished examining Molly’s ring, ‘seeing as how so many young men have received their papers. Of course, it’s different for me,’ she added loftily, ‘since my Alan was one of the first to volunteer …’

‘Probably because he wanted to get away from her,’ one of the other girls muttered, causing a ripple of giggles to spread across their small enclosed work space, with its sewing machines and air smelling of new cloth.

Although she had no official senior status, it was accepted by the other girls that Irene was their leader. She had been working there the longest and, although opinionated, was a kind soul and the first to befriend a girl new to the factory and help her settle in.

All the girls worked in pinafore coveralls to prevent bits of thread and cotton from clinging to their clothes. And at least Hardings, unlike some of the factories, had windows big enough to let in proper daylight so that the girls weren’t straining their eyes as they bent over their machines.

‘I’ll be glad when we’ve finished this bloomin’ bloomers order, and start workin’ on sommat a bit more glamorous,’ one of the girls complained with a noisy sigh.