Soldier Girl (46 page)

‘It was nice of yer to come all this way,’ she said, shyly, picking at the frayed arm of the chair. She felt softer towards him now. At that moment it felt truly good to see him, to sit drinking tea with an old friend, now they were in yet another place where the only familiar faces were those of the battery she had arrived with.

‘I had to,’ he said. ‘I’ve never stopped thinking about you, Molly. I tried to stay away, because of what you said, but my feelings are too strong. I’ve missed you so much.’

‘But . . .’ Molly frowned. ‘What about Sheila? You should have gone home and married her – she sounded ever such a nice girl.’

‘No—’ He was shaking his head vigorously and Molly felt a catch of emotion in her. So he really did love her! She had expected him to run straight back to Sheila after she had rejected him, back into the safe certainty of his childhood sweetheart’s arms. Molly would be looked back upon as a crazed mistake in a time of turmoil, a young man needing to sow his oats, his head turned by a pretty blonde in the heat of the moment. There would be marriage and then, once the war was over, village and farm life, children, continuing things the way they had always been. But he had rejected that! She was moved, suddenly. Maybe she really had affected him – she hadn’t just been a fling.

But Len’s face flushed with anger.

‘I did go back – after Christmas, when I had some leave. I’d written to her, but she wasn’t answering either. I thought it was because she was angry with me for hurting her feelings. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you? So I went back to sort things out, to tell her we’d get married after all. When I turned up at the house she looked really put out to see me.’

He tutted, shaking his head.

‘Well, she must’ve been upset, with yer,’ Molly said. ‘Breaking off the engagement and everything.’

‘Upset! She wasn’t upset!’ Len burst out. ‘Turns out she was already set up with someone else and hadn’t had the guts to tell me! Some bloody conchie who was working on the next farm. A right pansy, I’ll bet you. She didn’t want to know about me no more, that was for sure. There was me thinking she was faithful, that she’d be breaking her heart over what had happened, that she’d welcome me back with open arms – and her mum, once they’d got over it. And there they are with this yellow skiver from London with his knees under the table and Sheila saying, “I didn’t like to tell you . . .” God, it’s a good job I didn’t get my hands on that soft bugger I can tell you . . .’

‘So what you’re telling me is . . .’ Rage rose up inside Molly so fast she thought she might explode. She got to her feet and stood towering over him. ‘You went back to Sheila, all ready to marry her, and she wouldn’t have yer? So then you thought you’d come running back to me . . .’ She had sat and listened to him, nearly been taken in. She’d nearly fallen for it – God, she nearly had! What a bloody fool! ‘You thought I’d ’ave to do instead, because I’d just be mooning about waiting for yer, without any other thought in my mind. You’ve got a flaming bloody cheek coming all the way over ’ere when I’ve already told yer I don’t want to know! D’you think you’re God’s gift or summat and I’ll just drop everything for yer?’

‘No – but Molly . . .’ Len scrambled to his feet, startled by the fierceness of her attack. He looked wretched.

But her anger was boiling like tar. Even as she went for him she knew some of this rage should have been directed at other people – her grandfather, Iris, Bert, the war for taking Tony away from her – but she spewed it all over Len.

‘D’you really think I don’t have anything else going on in my head? If there’s one thing the war’s taught me it’s that there’s more to life – I don’t have to spend my time mooning after time-wasters like you and turning myself into a drudge for you and your brats. There are other things to do instead of just running round after some tinpot Hitler of a man! You’re all the bloody same, ain’t yer? Filthy buggers who take everything you want without a care for anyone else! Well I’m not sodding well having it! I’m not interested in yer – all right? You’re not God’s gift – you’re not irresistible to me any more than you are to Sheila, so go and find some other bloody fool who’ll take you on. Go on!’ She was yelling now. ‘Get out of ’ere. I’ve got better things to do than sit here listening to you drivelling on, you selfish bastard.’

Len looked completely stunned by the extremity of her outburst. ‘But, Molly . . .’

‘“But, Molly” be damned!’ she roared in an ecstasy of anger. ‘Go on – get out, and don’t ever bloody come back ’ere again!’

‘I’ve nowhere to go – there won’t be a train . . .’

‘So sleep at the railway station! I don’t care where you go – just get out of my sight!’

But Len sank down on to the sofa again. His face twitched and he looked up at her pathetically, in utter confusion. For a moment she thought he was going to cry. ‘
Please
, Molly, don’t be like this. I don’t know what to do. Just be with me . . . I can’t live without you, Molly. I never used to be like this, but now I can’t think of anything else. Everything was . . .’ His face twisted. ‘I was all right ’til I met you . . .’

The words pierced into her, but she would not let him see. She managed to speak less harshly. ‘It’s no good, Len. You’ve got the wrong idea about me. Just go away – please.’

There was a silence. He drew his gaze from her down to the floor, defeated, and at last stood up slowly and picked up his cap. ‘Christ.’ He looked at her with revulsion, as if she was a stranger he had just met. ‘That’s it –
go on
. Door’s in the usual place.’ Without turning back he left the room. She heard the front door open and slam, his footsteps along the quiet street. Only then did she realize she was limp and shaking all over.

The next afternoon, the sun was shining and Molly rode against a brisk wind along the cliff overlooking Dover-court Bay. She had cycled fast, past the Cliff Road Hotel and all the elegant houses, and turned into the village, pushing down as hard as she could on the pedals to relieve her feelings, until her chest was tight and her eyes filled with tears. She stopped, gasping for breath, and wiped her eyes. In front of her was the village church, and she wheeled the bicycle to the gate, propped it up and went in.

To her relief, the graveyard was deserted and she was glad of the sanctuary of a quiet, green place out of the wind. She went and sat at the foot of a tree, from where she could see the church’s square tower and the rows of silent, sun-warmed gravestones. The dead seemed to offer company, without comment or judgement, all their loves and mistakes now past and gone. She became aware how quiet it was, so that she could hear bees butting against the flowers and the breeze moving among the leaves. In the distance, someone was striking something, a metallic chink-chink which broke into the silence.

Molly sat with her knees drawn up, her ATS skirt pulled over them. The tears soon came, had been waiting there to be shed since last night, when there were too many people about, the others full of questions when they heard her shouting and Len slamming out of the house. For a few moments she put her hands over her face and gave way to weeping, then wiped her face and sat in the calm shade, wrung out and exhausted. The things she had said to him, much worse than he deserved: she’d been awful! She’d really let rip! But it was his words that echoed in her head. ‘
I was all right ’til I met you
. . .’ She knew she was right to tell him to go, that he had only come back to her as a last resort, and in truth she didn’t want him. But if he had never met her, wouldn’t he have remained the straightforward, confident boy she had first known? Would Sheila have rushed into the arms of her conscientious objector, or wouldn’t they be marrying this spring instead, keeping things the way they ought to have been until she, Molly, came into the situation and poisoned it?

She had felt alone for most of her life, but never more so than now. She was cutting the threads of her life, one by one: home, family, men – for she was not good for them, nor they for her – until what remained? There was Em of course, from a distance. There were friendships, comrades. And there was the army. Without that, she would be floating loose through the world with no one, nothing. It was a love affair in itself.

Molly wrote the date at the top of the sheet of paper, ‘July 20th 1944’, then seemed unable to write any more. For some time she stared out from her bedroom at the grey sky, then continued: ‘Dear Em . . .’

Em seemed so far away now. In her mind she had cut off from Birmingham and almost everything there. But Em was a true friend – she must keep in touch. Who else was there to go back to when the war was over? The thought of the war ending filled her with emptiness and desolation. Where would she go, who could she be if there was not the war to be a part of?

She wrote:

She paused. D-Day, June 6th. It had been the strangest time. None of the American boys had breathed a word. Maybe they hadn’t known anything to tell. Funny markings had appeared on the roads, trucks parked on them. Then, the sudden silence and emptiness once they’d gone. That night, they’d sat round the wireless, absolutely silent, she and Cath, Jen, Nora and the others, looking at each other with awed faces, drinking in the news of the landings on the Normandy coast. Cath had put her hands over her face, distraught.

‘He won’t come back – he won’t,’ she sobbed. She wrung all of their hearts. ‘I know it. I knew it was too good to be true!’

This time Molly sat for a while staring at the page, thinking there ought to be more she could say. But she couldn’t think of anything and signed off.

Three days after Em’s letter arrived, quite early in the morning Molly was still in her room when a scream pierced through the house.

Oh God
, she thought, running to the stairs.

Jen was also on her way down. ‘Was that Cath? Oh God, that sounds like bad news!’

They saw Cath in the hall by the front door, Nora already beside her. Cath had something pressed to her face, over her nose and mouth, and was making incoherent squealing sounds while Ann clucked beside her. Molly’s heart was pounding.

‘What’s up, Cath – what is it?’

Cath started jumping up and down, pulling the sheet of paper away from her lips and at last managing to choke out the words. ‘He’s alive! It’s from Dirck, my lovely Dirck! He was wounded, but he’s alive!’

All of them went to her, and by the time they’d finished hugging and screaming with her, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The casualties on the days following D-Day had been massive – huge losses among the Dutch alone. But Dirck had survived.

Cath’s lovely face was blotchy with tears and lit up with joy. ‘Maybe I’m not cursed after all! Maybe he’ll make it!’

‘Oh Cath – that’s fantastic!’ Molly cried, and seeing Nora and Jen’s watering eyes, she found she wanted to sob with relief, happiness, release of tension and pure joy for Cath. There had been so much grim news all through the summer – at last something good!

‘He’s alive!’ Cath was dancing round the hall now, hysterical with joy, waving the sheet of paper. ‘He’s alive and I love him so much! Oh thank you, life – thank you!’