Goodnight Sweetheart

‘Aye, I can’t see your Bert getting excited about you tekkin’ home a few pairs of these to surprise him wiv, Janet,’ the girl working next to her grinned cheekily. ‘I’m sick to me back teeth of ’em meself.’ She too sighed as she surveyed the mound of bloomers waiting to be made up.

The girls were three-quarters of the way through a big order for ‘quality undergarments’, which in reality meant enormous pairs of bloomers as favoured by older women, and equally utilitarian brassieres. The kind of corsets favoured by most middle-aged women were supplied and made by specialist mail-order firms so that customers could be measured for them in the privacy of their own homes, and were so expensive that it was rare for the women Molly and June knew to own more than a best corset and a spare.

‘Pity it’s not some of them fancy French knickers we’re mekkin’ up,’ Janet said longingly.

‘Well, there’s nothing to stop you getting a pattern from Lewis’s and making yourself some, Janet,’ June pointed out briskly. She already had her eye on a nice piece of selvedge material. She reckoned she could get three pairs of drawers out of it if she got Molly, with her clever fingers and good eyes, to cut them for her. If she was very lucky she might be able to come by enough fabric to get Molly to make her a matching brassiere as well. There was a strict list that allowed each girl one piece of spare or unused fabric from any one contract, and the only way to get more was to ask one of the other girls to do a swap or to sell off her piece. Perhaps she’d ask Molly to let her have hers, June decided.

‘’Ere, guess what?’ another of the girls demanded breathlessly, as she came hurrying into the room. ‘I was just happening to be standing outside the office and what should I hear—’

‘Come off it, Ruby. Admit it, you was listening on purpose,’ May teased her.

‘Do you want to know what I heard, May Dunning, or do you want to wait until old man Harding tells you?’ Ruby demanded.

‘Go on then, tell us,’ May gave in.

‘Well, old man Harding was talking to his missus, and saying as how they gorra take on more machinists, because of the Government wanting him to make a lorra stuff, like, for the army.’

‘What, you mean uniforms?’ May demanded excitedly. ‘Cor, that will be a change from stitching bloomers. Just imagine the chaps as’ll be wearing them: all fit and handsome, like …’ May was notorious for having an eye for the men and often regaled them with saucy tales on a Monday morning of the latest man she’d met over the weekend.

‘They might be fit and handsome when they first put on their uniforms, but they won’t be for very long. Soon they’ll start coming home dead, just like my Thomas …’ The high-pitched emotional voice that joined the conversation belonged to Hannah Carter, the oldest and normally the quietest of the machinists, a small spare woman who had been widowed at the end of the First World War. Everyone turned to look at her with varying degrees of consternation or accusation.

‘’Ere, Hannah, there’s no call for you to be saying stuff like that, and upsetting people,’ Sheila Williams protested, her already florid complexion turning even pinker.

‘Yes, there is. You don’t know what it’s going to be like, but I do. You don’t know how it feels to send your husband off to war and never see him again.’ Hannah had started to cry in earnest now.

Molly went over to try to comfort her.

‘Watch out. Boss is on his way,’ one of the girls called out, and immediately they all hurried to their machines so that by the time the door opened to admit a grey-haired middle-aged man and the thin-faced woman accompanying him, the room was filled with the sound of treadle machines busily stitching.

Robert Harding rang a small hand bell as a signal to the women to stop work, and then announced importantly, ‘From today we’re going to be making some changes at Hardings, on account of us being called on by the Government to make uniforms for our brave soldiers.’

‘What kind of changes?’ Irene demanded sturdily.

‘Well, for one thing we’re going to be taking on more machinists, and for another, Miss Jenner here is going to be in charge of all you machinists, to make sure that the uniforms are made to the proper standard.’

Molly gave a small shiver as she looked at the thin, hard-eyed woman standing at Robert Harding’s side, surveying them all with unsmiling grimness. There was something about her that sent a chill right through Molly.

‘All right, back to work, everyone.’

The sharp command was given almost before the door had closed behind Robert Harding, and although the girls obediently bent over their work, Molly was anxiously aware that some of them, June included, were not likely to take very well to Miss Jenner’s arrival. It sent another shiver of apprehension all the way down Molly’s spine to know that the supervisor was patrolling the narrow aisles between the rows of machines, standing behind each of them in turn to observe their work. Up to now Molly had liked her job. She was a good machinist, quick and deft, but with the cold censorious weight of Miss Jenner’s gaze on her back she was all fingers and thumbs.

‘So when are we gonna be starting working on these uniforms, then, Miss Jenner?’ May asked boldly, causing a collective sigh of relief to spread through the room at this breaking of the silent tension.

Their relief had come too soon though. Miss Jenner strode towards May and said coldly, ‘In future you will speak only when you are spoken to. And let me remind you that you are all here to work, not to engage in time-wasting chatter. I have already told Mr Harding that I think he would do well to put in place a system of fines for workers who shirk their duties – in any kind of way.’

Molly could see the tide of angry red staining the back of May’s neck.

Without the normal banter between the girls to speed them through the day, time seemed to drag, and Molly could scarcely conceal her relief when the dinner bell rang, signalling the end of the morning’s work.

Immediately June stood up and called, ‘Come on, our Molly. We’ll have to put a bit of speed on if we’re to get down to Lewis’s and back …’

‘You there, girl. Who gave you permission to stop work?’ Miss Jenner demanded icily.

‘The dinner bell’s been rung and that means that it’s dinner time. And me and me sister have got to get down to Lewis’s and get our blackout material, just like the Government has told us to do,’ June defended herself, raising her eyebrows as though defying Miss Jenner to claim a higher authority than that of the British Government.

‘Very well then. But see that you are back here before the work bell rings otherwise you’ll be docked half a day’s pay.’

‘You gorra be careful with that Jenner, June. It looks to me like she’s going to give us a lorra grief,’ May warned ten minutes later as they all streamed out of the room, heading for the small ‘canteen’ where they were allowed to eat their dinner and make themselves a hot drink.

‘So what? Let her try, if she wants,’ June shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Come on, Molly,’ she instructed. ‘We’ve got to get down to Lewis’s.

‘It’ll be quicker if we walk instead of waiting for the bus,’ June announced once they were outside the factory, but in the end, even though they ran almost the whole way down to Ranelagh Street, it still took fifteen precious minutes.

‘Oh Gawd, look at the queue,’ June complained when they hurried into Lewis’s haberdashery department. The shop was filled with customers milling around amongst the rainbow-coloured bolts of cloth and shelves of pins, needles and buttons.

Lewis’s was Molly’s favourite store and she could remember the thrill of coming here as a little girl, holding tightly on to Elsie’s plump hand for fear that she might be lost in the crowd of shoppers. Now that she was older, though, one of her favourite treats was to wander round the well-stocked haberdashery department. Unlike June, Molly loved sewing and was a dab hand at making things. She also had a good eye for the right bit of trimming to smarten up an old blouse, or last year’s hat.

‘Look, you go and get the blackout stuff,’ June told her, ‘and I’ll go and look for a pattern for me wedding dress whilst you’re queuing. Here’s the measurements for the windows.’

‘June, we’re not going to get served in time to get back. Wouldn’t it be better if we came back tonight?’ Molly begged her.

‘What, after we’ve gone and run all the way here? Don’t be so soft. You go and get in that queue.’

Half an hour later, when Molly was only three from the front of the queue, June came hurrying up to her, pulling a face and complaining, ‘I was hoping you’d have been served by now …’

‘Did you find a pattern?’ Molly asked her.

‘Yes, but I wanted you to come and have a look at it with me and there won’t be time now. Here, come on, it’s our turn next,’ she warned, digging Molly in the ribs.

‘By, but this stuff is heavy,’ June complained, stopping to push her hair off her hot face.

‘We should have left it until tonight and then gone straight home on the bus,’ Molly told her.

‘Oh, give over saying that, will you, our Molly?’

It was just gone one o’clock when they finally trudged wearily into the factory yard, but when Molly would have made straight for the workroom, June shook her head at her.

‘What are you doing?’ Molly asked worriedly when she saw her sister heading determinedly for Mr Harding’s office.

‘Wait and see. And here, take hold of this lot for a mo, will yer?’ June thrust her own parcel on top of Molly’s, before knocking firmly on the office door.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Harding,’ Molly heard June announcing when the factory owner opened the door, ‘only I thought as how we should explain ourselves on account of us being late back from our dinner break.’

‘You’re late?’ Molly saw him frown as he looked at his watch.

‘Yes,’ June confirmed, ‘and I’m right sorry about it, only I felt it was our duty to go down to Lewis’s just as soon as we could to get our blackout material, what with us getting notices about it from the Government, and all.’

‘Well, yes, quite right. We must all be aware of our duty from now on,’ Mr Harding agreed immediately.

‘Of course we’ll make up the time by working late,’ June continued.

‘No, that won’t be necessary … June, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Mr Harding. And this is me sister, Molly.’

‘Very good, very good … Back to your machines now, both of you.’

‘What did you do that for?’ Molly asked curiously as they hurried away. It wasn’t like June to admit to doing something wrong.

‘By, you’ve got a lot of learning to do, our Molly,’ June told her, shaking her head. ‘Wait and see.’

The unfamiliar silence when they walked into the workroom almost caused Molly to miss a step and cannon into her sister.

All the girls were seated at their machines but none of them was working. Instead, they were all staring straight ahead whilst Miss Jenner stood in front of the machines watching them.

‘And what time do you call this?’ She pounced immediately on Molly and June.

‘I’m sorry we’re a bit late only there was a bigger queue at Lewis’s than we were expecting,’ June apologised.

‘You are five minutes late, and since no work has been done by anyone whilst we have waited for you to return, that means that thirty lots of five minutes have been lost – the cost of that amount of time will be deducted from your wages, just as soon as I have spoken with Mr Harding.’

‘Well, I’ve already seen him and he has said as how it was our duty to go and get our blackout material,’ June told her, ‘and if you don’t believe me you can go and ask him yourself.’

Molly watched as an ugly red flush of anger spread up over Miss Jenner’s thin neck, and then held her breath, fearing that her sister had gone too far. But the new supervisor didn’t say anything, leaving June to give the other girls a triumphant wink behind Miss Jenner’s back before sitting down at her machine.

‘By, June Dearden, you’ve gorra lorra cheek,’ Sheila Williams commented admiringly when the afternoon whistle had gone and they were all getting ready to leave.

‘Aye, and you’ll have made yourself an enemy as well,’ Irene warned her darkly. ‘She’s not the sort who’s gonna forget what you’ve done – she’s gonna have it in for you an’ for your Molly from now on, mark my words.’

‘I’m not walking all the way home lugging this stuff,’ Molly told June as they left the factory carrying the fabric. ‘It’s too hot.’

‘All right then, we’ll get the bus, but you’re going to be doing the paying, mind,’ June warned her. ‘I wonder how long it will be before we get word from Frank and Johnny.’

The boys had been gone only a day but it had already affected the girls – though in very different ways. Underneath her bright exterior, Molly could tell that June was missing Frank keenly, while she herself felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders with Johnny’s absence – albeit with some guilt attached.

‘I’ve told Frank as how he’s got to write to me as soon as he can. I was thinking this afternoon that one of them uniforms we’re going to be making could be for Frank. It gave me a rare old turn, an’ all,’ June admitted.

‘Hannah’s very upset that we’re going to be making uniforms,’ Molly commented sympathetically.

‘Aye, well, she’s got to snap out of that, otherwise she’s going to find herself out of a job and she can’t afford that. All she’s got is that bit of a pension.’

‘It must be awful for her, though, June. I was talking to her for a bit this morning and she was saying as how she’d been married only a few weeks when her husband was killed.’

‘Maybe so, but that was nearly twenty years ago,’ June responded bracingly. ‘Things are different now.’

Their bus arrived and they both climbed on board, Molly paying both fares before slumping thankfully into an empty seat.

‘What you got there, girls?’ the conductor ribbed them jovially.

‘Blackout material, that’s what,’ June answered.

‘Want me to come round and give you a hand putting it up?’ he offered, winking at Molly.

‘Give over with yer cheek,’ June told him firmly, but she was still smiling at him, Molly noticed with amusement.

The bus set them down on the corner of the cul-de-sac and they walked up it together in their normal manner, Molly pausing frequently to admire the flowers growing in the small, neatly tended front gardens whilst June hurried her along, her attention concentrated on reaching home.

As they drew level with Frank’s mother’s house, Molly stopped walking and suggested warmly, ‘Why don’t you give Frank’s mam a knock, our June, and see if she wants a hand with making up her blackout curtains? Those big windows of hers will take a lot of covering and we could easily run the curtains up for her on our Singer.’

‘Why should I put meself out to do her any favours?’ June demanded belligerently.

‘You’d be doing it for Frank,’ Molly said gently.

‘You’re a right softie, you are – just like Frank. But, aye, go on then, we might as well give her a knock,’ June agreed.

Unlike their own, Frank’s mother’s gate did not squeak when it was opened, but Molly did not think that the Edwardian tiled pathway looked any cleaner than their own, nor the front step better donkey-stoned. Their mother had been as house-proud as the next woman, and June and Molly, encouraged by Elsie Fowler, had grown up maintaining those standards.

It was true that their front door did not have the coloured leaded lights adorning number 46’s, nor did they have the advantage of a big bay window overlooking their small front garden, but their father kept their privet hedge every bit as neatly clipped.

‘Come on, she mustn’t be in, and I’m not wasting any more time standing here knocking again,’ June announced, turning round.

Molly had started to follow her when she heard the door opening and stopped.

Mrs Brookes – a former ward sister at the hospital before her marriage, whose discipline and rigidity still remained – was a tall, well-built woman, firmly corseted, with a sharp-eyed gaze that rested disapprovingly on everything and everyone apart from her beloved son. It was certainly fixed less than welcomingly on them now, Molly recognised.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ she declared grimly.

She hadn’t invited them in and quite plainly wasn’t going to do so. Molly quickly realised that June was leaving it to her to speak.

‘We were just passing on our way home and we wondered if you wanted any help with your blackout curtains, only me and June are going to be sewing ours tonight and …’

Was that a small softening Molly could see in the grimly reserved features?

‘Yes, and whilst we were in Lewis’s I had a good look at their wedding dress patterns,’ June chipped in determinedly.

Immediately Frank’s mother’s hackles rose and her mouth pursed with displeasure.

‘I’m already sorted out with me blackout curtains. My friend on Carlton Avenue and her daughter have invited me round there so that we can make them together. In fact, Angela is going to come round for me tonight in her car. Such a lovely girl. A schoolteacher, she is, and the whole family so refined.’ She stepped back into the house and started to close the door, pausing to add coldly, ‘Oh, and I wouldn’t be making too many plans for any wedding, if I were you. From what I’ve heard, my Frank isn’t likely to get any leave for quite some time and when he does, the last thing he’s gonna want is to be rushed into a wedding.’

‘Well, that’s not what Frank has said to me,’ June insisted angrily. ‘And since it’s him and me that is going to be gettin’ married, it’s our business what we do, and no one else’s.

‘Gawd, she’s got her nose so stuck up in the air it’s a mercy she doesn’t fall over her own feet,’ June complained to Molly as she slammed Frank’s mother’s gate forcefully behind them. ‘So much for your idea, eh, Miss Clever Clogs?’

‘Well, at least Frank will be pleased that you offered,’ Molly told her, trying desperately to salvage something from the situation. Privately she half suspected that June quite enjoyed her set-tos with Frank’s mother and even deliberately encouraged them, but her loyalty to her sister prevented her from saying as much.

‘It works both ways,’ June replied. ‘So how about you going round and asking Johnny’s mam if she wants a hand with her curtains?’

‘She’s got Johnny’s sisters to help her,’ Molly protested, but she knew her face was burning guiltily.

‘What, them pair of useless articles?’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘A lot of good them two will be, from what I know of them.’

‘All right then,’ Molly gave in reluctantly. ‘I’ll go round and see her as soon as we’ve had our tea.’

Half an hour later Molly was standing in her apron, slicing what was left of the Sunday roast for their cold meat salad tea, to be served with hot new potatoes from the allotment, while listening to the wireless, when she heard the sound of her father’s heavy work boots on the back step. Leaving what she was doing, she went to fill the kettle.

‘Kettle’s on, Dad.’

His walk back from Edge Hill railway yard had brought a sheen of perspiration to Albert’s sun-reddened forehead. As always, Molly was filled with a rush of love for him when she saw him. Left with two young daughters to rear alone, he could have opted to hand her and June over to their mother’s family and got on with his own life, but instead he had done everything he could to provide them with a loving happy home. It must have been so hard for him. He had had to work long gruelling hours at the gridiron to ensure there was food on the table, but he had never once missed reading them a bedtime story, nor listening to them recite their times tables, nor checking their spelling homework. Tears pricked Molly’s eyes. She could scarcely remember her mother but she knew from the way he still talked about her that her father had loved her and still missed her.

‘I’ll get washed up, love,’ he called, disappearing into the small back scullery. Repairing railway lines and working on rolling stock was dirty and often heavy work, but Albert took pride in his appearance and was fastidious in scrubbing up the minute he got home. ‘Costs nowt to be clean’ was one of his favourite phrases. Medium height and slightly stooped, he faithfully clung to the small domestic details of family life originally put in place by the girls’ mother. A bath once a week, their hair washed on Sunday night ready for school on Monday, a kitchen that was kept spick and span with the pans, like the family’s shoes, polished so brightly that you could see your face in them. Albert had instilled in his daughters his own respect for cleanliness and neatness. There was another side to him, though, a side that had him cultivating flowers in the tiny back garden.

‘Your mam allus loved them,’ he had once told Molly when she had admired the scent of some roses, his arthritis-damaged fingers gently touching the velvety soft petals.

And he was not the kind of man to go off to the pub of a Saturday night, leaving his young motherless daughters to the care of a neighbour like some men in his position would have done. Instead, in winter the small family had gathered around the wireless after Saturday night’s supper, whilst in the summer the girls had gone down to the allotment with their father.

‘You’ll never guess what’s happened at the factory today, Dad,’ June announced once they were all sitting down and eating.

‘Aye, well, you don’t want to go getting on the wrong side of that Miss Jenner,’ Albert warned his elder daughter after she’d finished telling him with relish how she had outwitted the new supervisor. He knew June could be a firebrand at times.

Molly could see the worry in her father’s eyes and vowed silently to do what she could to keep June from baiting Miss Jenner. No one else would take on a machinist who had lost her job for cheeking a superior.

Once the meal was over and everything cleared away, and their father had set off for his allotment, Molly ran upstairs to comb her hair. She knew she couldn’t put off the visit any longer.

Johnny’s mother and sisters lived three streets away from Chestnut Close, down a narrow backstreet. Its double row of small terraced houses were of poor quality. Unlike the houses on the close, those of Moreton Street did not have gardens or indoor bathrooms, but had to make do with small dank back yards and outside privies.

Two tow-headed little boys, playing in the dusty street, stopped their game to watch Molly until a young very pregnant woman, with untidy hair and wearing a grubby apron, called out to them to get themselves inside.

Moreton Street had a slightly rank smell, and Molly tried not to wrinkle her nose at it. On the cul-de-sac they had the benefit of more modern housing, the allotments, with their smell of fresh earth and air, and even the scent of roses from some front gardens. Not that some of the residents of Moreton Street didn’t make an effort. Several of the houses had freshly donkey-stoned steps and clean windows with neat curtains hanging in them, but unfortunately Johnny’s mother’s house wasn’t one of them.

Molly climbed the steps and knocked on the shabby door.

She could hear sounds of people talking inside the house, but it seemed an age before the door was finally opened to reveal the elder of Johnny’s younger sisters, Deirdre, her hair in curling rags, and a grubby brassiere strap visible as she clutched at the front of her dressing gown.

‘’Ere, Mam, it’s our Johnny’s fiancée,’ she called back to the darkness of the cluttered hallway.

Molly’s tender heart couldn’t help but pity Johnny’s mother, with her nervous air, her hands disfigured and reddened from her cleaning job at the hospital. It must have been so hard to bring up three children alone with only one wage coming in. It was no doubt because their mother had had to work such long hours cleaning that Johnny’s sisters were the way they were. The fact that their mother was out at work all day and most evenings meant that they had had far more freedom than most girls in the area, whose parents kept a much stricter eye on them.