Annie Groves - Goodnight Sweetheart

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.