Goodnight Sweetheart. Annie Groves
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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