Goodnight Sweetheart (19 page)

Four days ago she had been eighteen, but she might as well have been eighty. That was how old she felt, how empty of any desire to go on living. There was no point to life for her any more without Eddie, and she wished passionately that instead of standing here in the bright sunlight of this cold March morning she was in that dreadful wooden coffin with Eddie. At least that way they would be together, she would be in his arms, lying heart to heart with him, even if their cold lifeless flesh couldn’t register the joy of that shared intimacy.

She looked dry-eyed at the coffin up ahead of her, borne aloft on the shoulders of his shipmates. John Fowler, dressed in funereal black, walked immediately behind them. Elsie had been too distraught to attend the funeral of the young nephew she had brought up almost as though he were her own child. Molly too had been gently advised not to come, in case it was too much for her, but how
could she let Eddie be locked away in that box and buried in the black coldness of the earth without her being there? Eddie, whose last words had been for her, whose last thoughts had been of her; Eddie who had loved her as no one else ever could.

The whole cul-de-sac had turned out to walk him to his grave, along with many of his shipmates and officers from the merchant navy.

‘Why did he have to sail on that ship?’ Molly had asked brokenly when June had led her into their front room, the raw agony of her loss permeating her numbness. ‘Why did it have to be him, my Eddie? Why …?’

It had been Frank’s mother – reluctantly summoned by June when she had realised that the fits of shivering that gripped Molly, alternated with hot sweats, needed more experienced help than she could give her – who had finally answered her terrible question.

Doris Brookes had taken hold of Molly’s hot and sweaty hand, clasping it in the firm coolness of her own as she told her calmly, ‘When there is no reason or explanation, we have to accept that some things are God’s will. Eddie has gone, Molly, but if he was here do you think he would want to see you like this? Do you think you are the only young woman to lose the man she loves?’ The sympathy in her voice took June by surprise. She’d forgotten that Doris was not much older than she was herself when she lost her husband.

Her words had made Molly turn towards her, remembering that she had been widowed in the Great War.

‘Eddie wouldn’t want to see you upsetting yourself like this. He’d want to be able to be proud of you, just as you should be proud of him.’

‘Proud of him? For dying?’ Molly had challenged her bitterly. ‘For leaving me here without him?’

Huge sobs racked her body. She had never dreamed she could feel like this, or that she would have to. Her pain was shot through blood red with anger. Anger because Eddie had had to change ships; anger against the Germans; anger against the authorities; anger against other people whose men were not dead; but, most of all, anger against Eddie himself for leaving her here alone without him.

She had tried to drag her hand free of Doris Brookes’s but she had refused to release it, saying with firm authority, ‘It will get better, Molly, I promise you, but you have to help it. You have to be strong and brave, and think about what Eddie would have wanted you to do.’

Molly had tried to take comfort from her words but she couldn’t. How could it be God’s will that Eddie had to die so young and so cruelly?

But he was dead, and now she was walking slowly behind his coffin, four days after her eighteenth birthday, her head bowed beneath the brim of her borrowed black hat to conceal her tears.
She ought to be wearing a bridal gown, not mourning clothes. Her father and her sister were on either side to support her, whilst Frank, newly returned on leave, walked up ahead of them in his uniform.

Inside the church, dust motes danced on beams of sunlight. But despite the sunshine outside the church, here inside it was bitterly cold. As cold as the grave. The thought tormented her and she had to force back an anguished sob. She had promised herself that today at least she would be brave for Eddie, not disgrace him.

June was standing next to her in the pew with their father on her other side. June, who was carrying a new life inside her, a child who would never see the man who would have been his uncle. Molly pressed her hand flat to her belly as a steel-sharp pain twisted it, taunting her for the emptiness of her own womb. She should have pressed Eddie harder that last time they were together. Then at least she might have had something of him to fill the emptiness inside her and take some of the pain from her loss. Eddie’s child would have been a blessing, a ray of hope at this bleakest of times.

Tears filled her eyes and spilled down onto her cheeks. At her side June reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly, whilst on her other side, Molly could see out of the corner of her eye how her sister also reached for the comfort of her own husband’s hand. An unfamiliar bitterness gripped her.
Eddie hadn’t even been in the forces. He had been a merchant seaman, a soft target for Hitler’s torpedoes. She had to bite the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from crying aloud.

‘Why don’t we go home now, Molly?’

She turned her head to look at Frank, staring at him as though his quiet compassionate words had been spoken in a language she didn’t understand. His hand was on her arm, his eyes filled with sadness and pity for her. They were outside the church now, waiting for Eddie’s body to be conveyed to its final resting place.

A huge wave of raw pain tore at her, savaging her, as she shook off Frank’s hand and went to join the other mourners making their way to the graveside.

‘Molly lass.’ Her father was standing in front of her, blocking her way. ‘Come on home now. You don’t need to see this.’ He knew from experience that seeing your loved one being put into the ground for ever was the worst thing imaginable, and he feared for his younger daughter.

Stubbornly Molly looked away from him. Couldn’t he, of all people, understand?

‘Molly …’ her father urged.

‘I can’t leave, Dad, not yet. I’ve got to stay with him until … until it’s over.’ Tears she wasn’t going to let herself cry burned the back of her eyes and her throat felt like there was
something lodged within it. She should have been there with him to share his last moment and hear his last words, to send him from her with her love and the touch of her hand in his. His flesh was cold now and far beyond feeling her touch but she still felt a need to be with him at the very last.

‘I’m taking June home,’ she heard Frank saying quietly to her father.

Had she really once dreamed foolish girlish dreams of Frank? How distant and unreal all that seemed now when she was suffering the adult pain of loving and losing Eddie. Of course, Frank would be concerned for June, and all the more so now that he knew she was to have their child.

She
would never have a child now, never love another man, never stand in church with Eddie at her side, whilst they exchanged their marriage vows.

A narrow grassy pathway led to the place where the grave was discreetly covered, but nothing could truly conceal the yawning pit of dark earth.

Her father tried to screen her from it by standing in front of her, but Molly pushed her way past him. The other mourners averted their faces when they saw.

Only the vicar looked directly at her, his watery blue eyes kind behind his spectacles.

There was a movement at the edge of Molly’s line of vision and then the men were lifting the
coffin. Suddenly, as they started to lower it, one of them let go of a rope just a bit too fast and the box lurched towards her as though inside it some life force was pleading to be set free. Molly reached forward towards it, crying out Eddie’s name, struggling against the arms that held her back. Through her tears she saw the coffin being lowered into the earth.

‘It’s all right, Molly. Eddie is being laid to rest now.’

Laid to
rest
! He was twenty-one – he hadn’t wanted to
rest
. He had wanted to live and to love.

The vicar was speaking, each word stabbing Molly’s heart: ‘“Earth to earth …”’

Her father leaned forward and picked up a handful of the rich black soil, letting it crumble through his rough and calloused hand onto the coffin.

Soon others were doing the same, but Molly couldn’t. How could she throw the heavy black choking earth that would entomb him onto her beloved Eddie?

Eddie, please don’t, please come back … The pleading words filled her head, but what was the use of speaking them? How could Eddie hear her when the sound of the earth being thrown down on top of him was drowning out her voice?

Most of the other mourners had left number 78 now. Only Elsie was still here, her homely face shadowed with abject sadness. Momentarily
Molly felt guilty – Elsie had loved Eddie too, as much as she loved her own son, and Molly hadn’t tried to comfort her in any way since they’d heard the news. But at least Elsie had Jim and John left. Working down at the gridiron was back-breaking, low-paid work, but at least there they were safe, since Jerry had miraculously not dropped the bombs they had all been told to expect. God willing, Elsie would see the end of this war with both her husband and her son still alive, and probably a grandchild on the way as well if her Jim got wed, Molly reflected, gripped by her own pain.

Elsie watched Molly. She had loved Molly and June since they were born and she had helped Rosie out with both babies. But there had always been an extra special place in her heart for Molly. She couldn’t have been happier, knowing that her much-loved nephew was going to marry the girl she had always loved as much as though she were her own daughter. Now she was grieving not just for Eddie but for Molly as well.

Thank God Frank was here now for June, Elsie thought, his arm wrapped comfortingly and protectively around her, but there was no saying what might happen to him once his leave was over and he went back to France. They were a lovely family, the Deardens, but they had not had much luck, what with Albert losing Rosie so young, and now Molly losing Eddie before they had even had time to wed.

Fresh tears filled Elsie’s eyes and she welcomed the warmth of her John’s sturdy arm to lean on. Poor, poor Molly. What a terrible thing to have happened.

Numbly Molly watched as Frank looked down at June, giving her a little hug and smiling gently before bending his head to whisper something to her that brought a smile to her sister’s lips.

The emptiness inside Molly became a huge roaring burn of pain. Once that would have been her, with Eddie holding her. But she would never have that love again. Not now. Eddie would never look at her like that, nor hold her like that. She would never be able to put her hand on her still flat belly as June was now doing and look up at the man she loved, filled with love and happiness at the knowledge that between them they were bringing a new little life into the world to love and cherish. Never …

The sun was just coming up, lifting thin mist from the graveyard. Somewhere close at hand Molly could hear the early morning twitter of waking birds.

This was the day she should have been marrying Eddie, instead of visiting his grave.

In another week it would be Easter; the Church’s celebration of the resurrection and the triumph of life over death. She was walking faster now, almost slipping on the wet grass in her haste.

The kind cloaking cloths of Eddie’s burial had gone now, leaving the raw scar of the disturbed earth. There was no headstone as yet, just a small cross with Eddie’s name written on it. Very carefully Molly kneeled down beside it. Her skirt would be muddied but what did that matter now? She put down the basket she was carrying and started to scratch at the earth with her bare fingers, and then dug more fiercely into it. Tears ran down her face to drip onto the soil as she tore at it, panting and sobbing. It was so newly dug that it fell back into the hole as soon as she had made it. She stopped to push her hair out of her eyes, leaving a smear of dirt on her forehead, and sat back on her heels, trying to catch her breath.

The sun was coming up, throwing long early morning shadows across the graveyard. One of them moved slowly towards her but she was oblivious to it as she went back to her self-imposed task.

‘You should have brought a trowel with you instead of getting your hands all muddy like that. Here, give them to me and let’s see if I can clean you up a bit.’

She turned obediently at the gentle familiarity of her father’s voice, holding out her hands to him in the same way that a young child might have done.

Very slowly and carefully he wiped the soil from them with his handkerchief.

‘How did you know I would be here?’ she asked him.

‘I heard you get up so I got up too.’

‘I decided about the flowers the day we buried him. I bought the plants off Mr Thomson at the nursery.’

‘Yes. He told me.’

‘Heartsease,’ she told him, giving the tiny purple and yellow violas their popular name. ‘And there’s rosemary for remembrance, and lavender for later in the summer.’ Her father took out his trowel and within minutes he was tucking the small plants into the little pockets he had dug for them.

‘You put them in nice and square, with plenty of room for their roots so as they can breathe, and then you mek sure that when you put the soil back it’s holding them in good and firmly. Good sturdy plants, these are, as deserve a proper planting.’

They worked together for nearly an hour, Albert Dearden tenderly cherishing the plants Molly had bought, and equally tenderly cherishing his daughter, unable to find the words to tell her how much he grieved for her and for the fine young man who had died.

‘I can remember as clear as though it were yesterday the day we buried my Rosie,’ he told her quietly. ‘A black day that was for me, Molly.’

‘At least you and Mam were married, Dad. At least you’d been together,’ Molly burst out.

Her father sighed, guessing what she was feeling. ‘Aye, lass, and you’ve bin cruelly denied that, and that’s hard to bear.’