Annie Groves - Goodnight Sweetheart

‘June, come and look at this,’ she begged her sister. ‘This box has got all my exercise books from Neville Road Junior School, right back to me first year, in Miss Brown’s class, and here’s yours next to it.’

Molly could feel tears prickling her eyes as she saw the careful way their father had written their names on the boxes.

‘Well, they can’t stay up here. Everything that might catch fire has got to be got rid of – that’s what the Government has said – and any glass taped up or removed in case we get hit by a bomb. Mind you, Jerry would have to be daft to be bombing us instead of aiming for the docks,’ June added prosaically.

Reluctantly abandoning her school books, Molly started to help her sister go through the other boxes.

An hour later, Molly sat back on her heels and pushed her hair off her hot forehead with a dusty hand.

‘We’re nearly done,’ June told her. ‘There’s just this box here that some fool has wedged right at the back.’ Panting, she tugged it free, and then started to open it. ‘Gawd knows what’s in it … Oh …’

As June’s voice changed and she suddenly went still, Molly stopped what she was doing and crawled over to her side, demanding, ‘June, what is it?’ And then her own eyes widened as she saw the crumpled, slightly yellowing lace that June was holding close to her cheek.

‘It’s Mam’s wedding dress,’ June said to her in a small choked voice.

The two sisters looked at one another. There were tears in June’s eyes and Molly’s own gaze was blurred with the same emotion.

‘Let’s take it downstairs so that we can look at it properly,’ she suggested quietly.

As carefully and reverently as if they were carrying the body of their mother herself, between them they took the dress down to the bedroom they shared and then slowly unpacked it.

‘Look how tiny her waist was,’ Molly whispered, as she smoothed the lace gently with her fingertips. The dress smelled of mothballs and dust, but also of their mother – the scent of lily of the valley, which she always used to wear.

‘Mam must have put it away up there when she and Dad moved here.’ June’s voice was husky, and Molly was startled at how much finding the dress had affected her normally so assured and controlled sister. It was at times like these that she realised June had a soft centre underneath her hard shell.

‘It’s too small for you to wear but maybe we could use some of the lace to trim your wedding dress,’ Molly suggested.

June smiled with shining eyes. ‘Oh, Molly, could we? I’d feel like I’d got Mum with me.’

‘Does this lipstick look all right with this frock?’ June demanded later that evening, as she scrutinised her appearance in the bedroom mirror. Molly, who had been applying pale pink lipstick to her own mouth, stopped what she was doing and put her head on one side to study her sister.

‘It looks fine,’ she assured her. ‘What time are we supposed to meet up with the others?’

‘Seven o’clock, outside the dance hall. Have you seen my shoes?’

‘They’re over there, by your bed,’ Molly told her, watching as June slipped her feet into her silver dancing shoes and fastened the strap round her ankle.

The two sisters were wearing dresses cut from the same pattern, bought in Lewis’s in the spring and carefully sewn by Molly. But whereas her own dress had a white cotton background printed with flowers in varying shades of pink and red, June had opted for a cotton with blue and yellow flowers, and whilst Molly’s dress had a neat sweetheart neckline and puff sleeves, June’s was a more daring halter-neck style. Both dresses showed off the sisters’ neat waistlines and pretty ankles, though.

It was gone six o’clock before they were finally ready to leave, June complaining that she wasn’t going to hurry anywhere because she didn’t want her face to go all shiny, despite the powder she’d applied.

‘At last,’ Irene greeted them impatiently when they reached the dance hall ten minutes late. ‘We was just beginning to think you weren’t coming.’

‘It was our Molly’s fault,’ June fibbed unrepentantly, as they all hurried inside in a flurry of brightly coloured cottons and excited giggles.

‘It feels like I haven’t bin dancing in ever such a long time,’ June sighed, as they queued up to buy their tickets, even though the factory girls got together to go dancing every month or so.

‘Here, look over there at them lads in their uniforms,’ Ruby giggled happily, nudging Molly.

‘Give over staring at them, will you, Ruby?’ Irene chastised her. ‘Otherwise they’ll be thinking that we’re sommat as we’re not.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ruby demanded, oblivious to the looks the others were exchanging.

Several groups of young men, clustered round the dance floor, looked eagerly at the girls as they walked past, but Irene led them firmly to a table where they could sit down and then said sternly, ‘Just remember that some of us here have husbands and fiancés, and we don’t want to be embarrassed by the behaviour of those of you who haven’t.’

‘Well, if we’re just going ter sit here all night, what have we come for?’ May objected, eyeing up one of the young men.

‘I didn’t say as we wouldn’t dance, only that I don’t want to see none of you behaving like that lot over there,’ Irene told them, nodding in the direction of another group of young women standing by the entrance, boldly eyeing up the men coming in and exchanging banter with them.

To her discomfort, Molly realised that two of the girls were Johnny’s sisters, and when she told June as discreetly as she could, June looked past her to where they were standing and then warned her quickly, ‘Well, don’t say anything to the others. We don’t want to be shown up. You’d best act as though you haven’t seen them.’

The young soldiers the Hardings girls had seen on the way in had come to stand close to them and were quite plainly watching them.

Molly turned away whilst Irene raised an eyebrow as she lit a Woodbine and then told June drily, ‘They’re just a bunch of kids. My Alan would make mincemeat of them.’

‘And my Frank,’ June agreed, taking one of the cigarettes Irene was offering her.

Molly looked disapprovingly at her sister but kept quiet. She wanted them to have a good time – they all needed to release some tension after such an emotional day.

‘June, Molly, I thought it was you two,’ a male voice announced, and Molly’s frown changed to a wide smile of delight as she recognised Eddie. ‘Auntie Elsie said she thought you were coming down here tonight.’

‘Are you on your own?’ June asked him after they had introduced him to the others.

‘I came down with our Jim, but I’ve met up with a gang of other lads off the ship. If you girls fancy dancing with us, I can vouch for them.’

‘Oh, yeah? As if we’d believe that,’ Irene teased him, but Molly could see that she wasn’t averse to the suggestion.

‘Well, just you remember before you go introducing us to anyone that we’re respectable girls and dancing is all we shall be doing,’ June told him sternly.

‘Auntie Elsie would have me hide if I was to say anything else. She thinks of you and Molly as part of the family,’ Eddie assured her, before he disappeared into the crowd of young people now filling the dance hall.

Within five minutes he was back, along with half a dozen other young men, all slightly bashful but very eager to be introduced to the girls.

‘How about you and me being the first up on the floor, Molly?’ Eddie asked her with a big grin.

Molly laughed back at him. It had been Eddie, years ago, when they had all been children, who had been her partner at the dancing lessons they had had at the church hall in preparation for the annual Christmas party.