Kitabı oku: «A Mother’s Blessing»

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: July 1939

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Two: Christmas 1939

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Part Three: October 1940

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About Annie Groves

Also by Annie Groves

About the Publisher

PART ONE

ONE

‘No! Don’t.’

‘Aw, what’s up with yer?’

‘It’s not right, that’s what,’ Molly announced, keeping her arms folded tightly over her chest to prevent Johnny from making a fresh attempt to touch her breasts. It was a warm July evening and they had decided to walk home from the cinema on Lime Street to Edge Hill, the small tight-knit community of streets clustered together in a part of the Liverpool that didn’t belong to the dockside but wasn’t part of the new garden suburbs like Wavertree either. A few yards ahead of them, she could see June, Molly’s elder sister, locked in the arms of her fiancé, Frank.

‘Aw, come on, Molly, just one kiss,’ Johnny persisted cajolingly. ‘Look at your June. She knows how to treat a chap.’

Molly didn’t really want to look at June because June was with Frank, and just thinking about her sister’s boyfriend always made Molly’s heart ache painfully and her skin flush. But Frank was June’s. And the only smiles he ever gave to Molly were kind and older-brotherly. Agreeing to go out with Johnny was the best way Molly could think of to stop herself from thinking about Frank. Frank belonged to June, and that was that.

‘Come on, Molly, give us a kiss,’ Johnny coaxed. ‘There’s nowt wrong in it. Look at your June and Frank.’

Molly tensed. There it was again – that pain she had no right to have. She had been struggling all evening to evade Johnny’s amorous advances, and the eagerness she could hear in his voice now, as he pressed closer to her, made her feel wretchedly miserable and uncomfortable. What was wrong with her? Johnny was a good-looking lad, tall with thick dark hair. But his bold gaze and knowing smile intimidated Molly. Instinctively, she knew that Frank would not make a girl feel uncomfortable when she was with him; neither would he start pressing her for intimacies she wasn’t ready to give. Unhappiness clogged her throat and tears burned at the back of her eyes.

June and Frank were oblivious to Molly’s plight. Not that June would have had much sympathy with her, Molly knew. It was June who had insisted on her going out with Johnny in the first place – he was a friend of Frank’s and an evening out all together meant June could see Frank and keep an eye on her younger sister at the same time. Like every girl in the country who was walking out with a lad who had just received his call-up papers for the now obligatory six months’ military training, June was anxious to spend time with Frank whilst she still could.

‘June and Frank are engaged,’ was all Molly could think of to say to Johnny to justify her own refusal, her voice slightly breathless as she wriggled away from his embrace.

‘Well, me and you are as good as – leastways we would be if I had me way,’ Johnny told her.

She stared at him with a mixture of dismay and shock. ‘You can’t say that,’ she objected. ‘We aren’t even walking out proper. And besides …’ She looked towards her sister and Frank.

‘Besides what?’ Johnny too turned to look at the other couple, then said sharply, ‘You spend that much time looking at your June’s Frank, you’ll have me thinking you’d rather it were him you were with than me.’

‘Don’t be silly. Frank’s engaged to our June.’ Her heart was pounding now and her face was starting to burn. Her hands felt hot and sticky.

‘Aye, and you could be engaged to me, if you was to play your cards right,’ Johnny told her meaningfully, moving closer. ‘Especially now that I’ve had me papers, and me and Frank have to report for training on Monday.’

To Molly’s relief the other two had stopped spooning and her sister was turning round to face them.

‘What’s up with you, our Molly?’ June demanded when Molly and Johnny had caught up with them. ‘You’ve got a face on you like a wet bank holiday.’

‘Aye, that’s what I’d like to know, an’ all,’ Johnny joined in, ‘seein’ as how I’ve just been telling her I want us to be engaged.’

‘What? You’re engaged!’ June shrieked excitedly.

As usual, June had got carried away and heard only the words she wanted to. Molly groaned inwardly. Now she would really have a job saying no to Johnny.

‘Here, Frank, did you hear that? Our Molly and Johnny have just got themselves engaged. Course, me and Molly know that it’s our duty to do everything we can to keep you soldiers happy.’ She giggled, but her face started to crumple as she added, ‘I was just saying to Frank that him and me should perhaps think about getting married sooner rather than later now that it looks certain there’s going to be a war.’

‘Now don’t go getting yourself upset, June. We don’t know that for sure yet,’ Frank protested.

‘Course we do. Haven’t you seen them leaflets the Government has sent out to everyone?’ she asked him scornfully, before turning to Molly and demanding, ‘Here, Molly, give us it. You did put it in your handbag like I told you to, didn’t you? We’ll have to have it with us when we go to work on Monday, so as we can tell old Harding that we’re going to need time off to go down to Lewis’s and buy that blackout material it says we have to have.’

Molly nodded and obediently opened her bag to remove the notice. She could hardly bear to touch it, let alone read it again. When it had dropped onto the doormat of the little terraced home they shared with their father, she had been innocent of the realities of war. The leaflet’s warnings about air raids, gas masks, lighting restrictions and evacuation alarmed her no end. She couldn’t believe that the familiar streets of her beloved home town might one day be poisoned by gas or blasted by bombs. She could only hope that the Government were being overly cautious and that the war – if it even happened – would be short and not affect the city …

‘See?’ June had triumphantly finished reading the leaflet aloud to the men, jolting Molly back to the present.

‘Well, we still don’t know for sure,’ Frank insisted, ‘but if there is going to be a war, mind, Hitler won’t be able to keep them tanks of his rolling against the British Army. Proper professional soldiers we’ve got,’ he told them proudly.

‘Oooh, Frank, don’t say any more. You’re making me feel right upset,’ June protested tearfully, her earlier glee at being in the know having evaporated, whilst Molly shivered at her sister’s side despite the warmth of the evening.

Everyone had been talking about war for so long without anything happening that it was hard to believe that anything was going to happen, despite the fact that the Government had already put in hand so many preparations. But its threat still hung over them like the dark rumbling shadow of distant thunderclouds. It was on everyone’s minds and everyone’s lips – a tension and anxious expectation that no one could ignore.

‘Well, we’d better get ourselves home and tell our dad that you’re an engaged woman now, Molly,’ June insisted, rallying herself.

‘That she is,’ Johnny grinned, taking hold of Molly and hugging her so tightly that it hurt as he pressed a hot hard kiss on her mouth.

Molly’s eyes stung with tears. She didn’t think she really wanted to be engaged to Johnny, but of course it was too late to say so now. He was fun and so handsome, and she knew she should be happy instead of miserable. It made her feel guilty to think that she didn’t want to be engaged to Johnny when he was going off to war. Besides, she could see how pleased June was. All her life Molly had done what her older sister had told her to do.

There were two years between them, and Molly could hardly remember the mother who had died when she was seven years old, other than as an invalid.

She could remember, though, lying in bed at night and listening to her mother cough. She could remember too the low anxious voices of Elsie from next door and the other women from the street when they came round to visit the invalid and do what they could to help. In the last weeks of their mother’s life, Elsie had come round every day, bringing home-made soup for their mother and some of her elderberry wine for their father. But in the end her mother’s illness had proved too much.

Their father had been devoted to their mother, and Molly knew how much he loved both his daughters. She and June were lucky to have such a good parent, and she was lucky, too, to have June as her sister. June had always been there for her, through good and bad, and Molly loved her deeply, even though she knew that other people sometimes found her sister a bit too know-it-all and bossy.

The four of them crossed the road, Johnny making a grab for Molly’s hand as they did so, and then turned into the street that would eventually take them into Chestnut Close, the cul-de-sac of redbrick terraced and small semidetached houses, where the two girls and Frank lived.

‘Dad will be wondering where we are,’ Molly urged the others on, fearing that Johnny’s sudden lagging behind meant that he was going to attempt to kiss her again.

‘Don’t be daft. He’ll be down at the allotments,’ June corrected her.

Their father, like many men in that community, rented a small allotment. It backed onto the railway line, and there he grew carrots, potatoes, turnips and peas as well as lettuce and tomatoes for salads.

In the summer months the men virtually camped out there to take advantage of the long days, often sleeping in the small wooden huts they had put up, boiling up billycans of tea on Primus stoves and eating sandwiches packed up by their long-suffering wives. And now, of course, the Government was encouraging them to do so. Every spare bit of land was to be turned over to the production of food.

The house their father rented was not one of the larger semis, like Frank’s widowed mother’s, but a small terrace, down at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. The bedroom Molly and June had always shared was a bit cramped now that they were both grown up. June often complained that they needed more space, that the house was a bit old-fashioned and shabby, and their furniture had seen better days, but number 78 Chestnut Close was home and Molly wouldn’t have swapped it for a castle.

‘There’s your mam spying on us, Frank,’ June commented sourly as they walked past Frank’s home. Molly stole a glance at the pristine house; the net curtains definitely seemed to be twitching.

Molly felt a little bit sorry for Frank at times, what with his mother forever trying to tell him how to run his life, vehemently taking against his choice of wife-to-be, and June equally determined to return Frank’s mother’s hostility towards her, but he was an easy-going, big-hearted young man, a right softie, always ready to do others a good turn.

They had all grown up together, although Molly, at seventeen, was younger than the other three. They had shared so much together over the years – including the loss of a parent each. Both Frank’s mother and Johnny’s were widows, but whilst Frank’s mother had been left with a bit of money and a pension, and only one son to bring up, her Bert having been killed in the Great War, Johnny’s mother had been left with three children and no money, her husband having been killed when he had stepped out in front of a tram after drinking too much.

‘If yer dad’s down his allotment then why don’t me and Frank come in for a bit?’ Johnny suggested with a cheeky wink, much to Molly’s dismay. She didn’t want to have to endure any further intimacies with him. His kisses and wandering hands made her nervous.

To her relief, Frank shook his head.

‘We can’t do that, Johnny,’ he protested. ‘It wouldn’t be right. We don’t want to be giving our girls a bad name, do we?’

‘Oh, and what do you think you’d be doing that would give us a bad name, eh, Frank Brookes?’ June giggled teasingly. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing, especially with your mam always waiting up for you,’ she added grumpily. Brightening up, she continued, ‘Look, seeing as how our Molly and Johnny have just got themselves engaged, why don’t we go to Blackpool tomorrow and celebrate? I fancy going dancin’ and having a bit of a good time.’

‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ Frank reminded her, ‘and there won’t be enough time to get there and back after church.’

‘Well, we ought to do something,’ June protested, none too pleased at being denied her dancing.

‘I don’t mind if we don’t,’ Molly assured her. When the other three turned to look at her she coloured up and said quickly, ‘I mean … what with everyone talking about the war, perhaps we shouldn’t celebrate …’

They had reached number 78 now, where the girls lived, and were standing by the privet hedge that bordered the small front garden.

‘Oh, Frank …’ June’s bottom lip trembled, her high spirits suddenly evaporating. Her emotions had always been able to change like quicksilver, although Molly wondered if they wouldn’t all become as volatile if war did break out. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go, not so soon. I’ll be glad when you’ve finished with this military training, and you’re back home proper, like. I just hope we don’t have this war. But if we do, you’re not going off to fight without us being married first,’ she warned him fiercely.

‘I think we should have a word with the vicar tomorrow after church, and tell him that we want to be married as soon as we can, instead of waiting until next June. And I’ll have a word with Mr Barker, the rent collector, and ask him to let me know if anything comes empty.’

‘What’s to stop you moving in with Frank’s mam? She’s got plenty of spare room,’ Johnny asked June.

June tossed her head belligerently. ‘I want me own house, thank you very much, and that’s why … oh, Frank …’ There were tears in her eyes and Frank put his arm round her and tried to comfort her.

Tactfully, Molly looked away, but at the same time she moved as far from Johnny as she could, not wanting him to get any ideas. To her relief she saw their father coming up the road, his familiar limping gait caused by the loss of a leg in the Great War.

‘Dad …’ Ignoring Johnny, she hurried towards her father, slipping her arm through his when she eventually caught up with him.

Albert Dearden was fond of saying that it was just as well his two daughters took after their mother and not him, reminiscing about how his wife had been a real beauty, and how, with her lovely naturally curly dark brown hair and her smiling blue eyes, Rosie had won his heart the moment he had laid eyes on her.

‘Here, Dad,’ June told him excitedly. ‘You’ll never guess what. Our Molly’s only gone and got herself engaged to Johnny.’

‘Well now. What’s all this then, lass? You’re only seventeen, you know.’

‘There’s a war on, Mr Dearden, and me being called up for the militia and like as not being sent off to fight—’ Johnny began boastfully.

But Molly’s father shook his head and stopped him, saying grimly, ‘There’s no war been announced yet, lad, and let me tell you, when we were called up to fight, the first thing we thought of was our country, not about getting hitched and leaving some poor lass worrying herself sick about us.’

‘Aw, Dad, have a heart,’ June complained.

‘Perhaps we should wait,’ Molly started to say, relieved a way out was being offered to her – for the time being, at least.

But her father was smiling lovingly at her, and he shook his head again and said, warmly, ‘Nay, lass, I’ll not stand in the way of young love. But mind now, Johnny, my Molly is a respectable girl and there’s to be no messin’ about and getting her into any kind of trouble, and no marriage neither until she’s eighteen.’

Molly smiled wanly, in stark contrast to Johnny’s beaming grin. A year seemed a long way off but it would come round eventually and then she’d have no choice but to marry Johnny. The reality of being engaged to Johnny was so very different from the chaste daydreams of Frank she had blushed over in the privacy of her own thoughts. Frank, with his gentle understanding smile and brotherly kindness, made her feel so comfortable and so safe. She didn’t feel either comfortable or safe with Johnny.

‘What’s up with you?’ June demanded forthrightly later that evening as she and Molly prepared for bed. ‘Anyone would think you’d lost a shilling and found a farthing.’

Molly put down her hairbrush and turned to look at her elder sister. ‘The thing is, June, I’m not rightly sure I want to be engaged,’ she said miserably, too tongue-tied to be able to explain just how confused and worried Johnny’s constant urgings to allow him more intimacy were making her feel. Even with sisters as close as they were, it was unthinkable that she should tell June how little she enjoyed Johnny’s kisses and how alarmed and uneasy they made her feel. June was so lucky to have Frank. Molly could see there was a world of difference in the way Frank treated June and the way Johnny kept on trying to pressure her.

‘Don’t be daft. Of course you do. And besides, you can’t change your mind now. That would be a shocking thing to do with him about to go off and fight. Anyone can see that he’s mad for you, and hundreds of girls would kill to be engaged to someone as good-looking as Johnny. He looks like a matinée idol, he does. But you be careful and play your cards right, our Molly, and make sure you don’t go giving him nothing he shouldn’t be having until after you’ve got his ring on your finger,’ June warned her darkly. ‘Frank’s mam looks down on us enough, without you getting me a bad reputation by getting yourself in the family way before you’ve got a husband.’

Molly gave her elder sister an indignant look. As usual, June’s thoughts were foremost with herself.

‘Of course, that’s not to say that now that you are engaged you can’t let him have a few little liberties, like – especially if he does have to go off to war. A girl doesn’t want to send her sweetheart off to fight without giving him a bit of a taste of what he’s fighting for, does she?’ June giggled. ‘Wait till we tell them at the factory on Monday that you’re engaged.’

The two sisters both worked as machinists at a small garment factory within walking distance of their home. Mr Harding, the factory owner, employed nearly twenty girls. June had got a job there when she left school, having seen it advertised in the Liverpool paper, and she had approached Mr Harding on Molly’s behalf a couple of months before Molly was due to leave school, to ask that her sister be considered for any likely vacancy. It was piece work and unless you were very quick and didn’t make any mistakes the pay wasn’t good, but it was no worse than the girls would have earned anywhere else, and as June often said, at least the small factory was clean, and warm in winter as Mr Harding was well aware that cold fingers didn’t work as nimbly and made mistakes – expensive mistakes for him if his customers rejected the work as not good enough. The other girls were a jolly bunch and, whilst they were all older than Molly, their company meant that there was always someone for her to have a laugh with.

The factory’s main business came from a distributor who provided them with both pattern and fabric and who supplied clothes to the big Lewis’s store in the centre of the city. Sometimes the girls were allowed to buy leftover pieces of cloth to make things for themselves. Two or three times a year, a very important dark-suited gentleman from Lewis’s came up to the long sewing machine-filled room where the girls worked, to inspect their sewing. Molly was happy working there, even if June sometimes grumbled and complained.

Molly started to brush her hair again. Both girls had thick, naturally curly hair. June’s was a mid-brown, but Molly’s was much darker and richer, with a warm chestnut hue.

Pensively, Molly stared into the mirror, her cornflower-blue eyes clouding. Her mouth trembled and she blinked away tears.

‘Now what’s up?’ June demanded, pinching her younger sister’s arm almost crossly.

‘Nothing,’ Molly fibbed.

‘I should jolly well think there isn’t. You don’t know how lucky you are, our Molly. There’s a lot of girls in Liverpool would give their right arms to be in your shoes and engaged to a handsome lad like Johnny. And besides …’

Molly could see that June was looking very determined, and her heart sank. She had been hoping that June would understand her feelings but now she could tell that she wasn’t going to get very much sympathy from her.

‘Besides what?’ she pressed her anxiously.

‘Well, the way I see it, Molly, is that this engagement of yours is a good thing for everyone. Frank has already hinted to me as how his mam will be on her own after we get married and that he feels it’s his duty to have her come and live with us. Well, there’s no way I’m going to have that, but Frank can be that stubborn when he really wants something, and his mam has brought him up to think she’s got a right to tell him what to do with his life! Anyway, like I’ve said to him, with you marrying Johnny that’d leave our dad on his own, and that’d mean that we would have to have both of them to live with us and we can’t do that.’

‘But why would Dad have to live with you? He’s got Uncle Joe at number 63,’ Molly objected. ‘And, anyway, he’s always saying as how, once he’s got us off his hands, Auntie Violet has said as how he’s welcome to go and live with them in Cheshire.’ Their father’s elder sister was married to a farmer who lived near Nantwich.

‘Well, yes, but there’s no call for you to go saying any of that to Frank,’ June warned her sharply. ‘So far as he’s concerned, you marrying Johnny means that our dad will need to come and live with us, because he’ll be on his own just like Frank’s mam. And since we won’t have room for both of them we can’t have either of them,’ she announced triumphantly.

‘You mean you want me to marry Johnny so that you won’t have to have Frank’s mam to live with you?’ Molly protested.

‘Oh, don’t go looking at me like that. Just think how lucky you are to be engaged,’ June told her firmly. ‘And if war does break out, you’ll know you’ll be sending your Johnny off to war knowing he’s got someone of his own here at home waiting for him. That means a lot to a lad, our Molly, and don’t you forget that.’

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 kind-hearted 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?