girl she had picked up in the street. The child had stopped crying now and, instead, had fallen asleep. She couldn’t be more than five, Molly guessed.
‘She’s wet herself,’ she told Anne unhappily. ‘I was wondering if I could take her somewhere to change her. I hate to think of her sitting on the train and being uncomfortable.’
Anne sighed. ‘There’s some done worse than that to themselves,’ she told Molly forthrightly. ‘I know the Government meant well, giving them that chocolate, but I can’t help thinking it might not have been a good idea.’
Molly grimaced as the loudspeakers suddenly boomed out teachers’ names and classes.
‘Here we go,’ Anne told her as the children surged forward towards the waiting LNWR train.
‘I just keep thinking about those children and their poor mothers,’ Molly said back home, pushing her dinner around her plate without eating it.
She had told June all about her day when she had got home. June, despite her cynicism at Molly volunteering, had actually been interested and touched by the children’s plight.
‘Like I’m allus saying, you’re a right softie, our Molly.’
‘Sally Walker was there at the school. She’s refused to be evacuated in case her Ronnie comes home on leave,’ Molly told her.
‘I wish my Frank blinkin’ well would. Every letter I get says the same thing – he doesn’t know yet!’
‘Now that I’ve tacked your wedding dress, I need you to try it on before I start machining it,’ Molly reminded her. ‘We don’t want Frank coming home and it not being ready,’ she added, trying to cheer June up a little bit, as well as shake off the feelings of misery the evacuation of the children had left her with.
‘If he does come home,’ June stressed sombrely.
‘Oh, June, you mustn’t say that,’ Molly protested. ‘Of course he will. You know what Ronnie Walker said. He said that the trainees were bound to be given leave before they go on active duty.’
‘I know what he said all right, but Ronnie Walker isn’t the blinkin’ Prime Minister, is he?’
Molly could see how upset and unhappy her sister looked and wished she could offer her some proper reassurance.
‘Let’s have the wireless on, eh, Dad?’ June suggested to her father, who had just come into the room. ‘A bit of Tommy Trinder will give us a laugh.’
Molly looked in the mirror and straightened her hat, pressing her lips together to set the lipstick she had just carefully applied. She was wearing her navy-blue ‘going to church’ suit, bought from Lewis’s sale in the spring. Her hat was last year’s but she had retrimmed it to match her suit, and her polka-dot blouse she had made herself.
June was also wearing a navy-blue suit in a similar style – they had bought them together, agreeing that they were a sensible buy – but her blouse had a floral pattern and a different collar, and she had bought herself a new hat.
On Sundays they used the front door, and their father beamed proudly as he walked up the cul-de-sac with a daughter on either arm.
‘How’s them chicks of yours?’ one of their neighbours, Gordon Sinclair, called out to him, crossing the road with his wife to walk along with them, shaking his head and telling Albert, ‘It would have saved youse a lorra messin’ if’n you’d got point-of-lay pullets.’
‘Chicks is best,’ the girls’ father insisted, the two men arguing good-naturedly as the small group made its way to the church.
‘By, but it’s quiet without the kiddies,’ Gordon’s wife, Nellie, commented, adding, ‘You was at the school helping, wasn’t you, Molly? I heard as how Sally Walker didn’t go. Mind you, I don’t blame her, what with her due any week now. Oh Gawd,’ Nellie continued without pausing to take a breath, ‘there’s Alf Davies. Up and down the cul-de-sac all the time, he is, sticking his nose into other people’s business.’
The Sinclairs were Scottish Liverpudlians and had family connections down in the tenements by the docks. It was no secret that Gordon was the person to ask if you wanted to get hold of something, no questions asked. Some inhabitants of the cul-de-sac looked down on the Sinclairs and considered them to be rough, but for all her outspokenness Molly knew that Nellie Sinclair had a kind heart, and she knew too that, despite conceiving several children, Nellie had miscarried them all and lamented the fact that they had no family. Every child in the street knew that if you went round to number 39, like as not Nellie’s face would crease into a smile and she would reach into the special jar she kept in her kitchen and give you a bit of Spanish or a humbug.
‘Oh dear, I thought we was going to be late,’ Elsie puffed as she and John caught up with them.
‘Your Eddie gorn back to his ship then,’ as he, Elsie?’ Nellie asked, whilst Molly and June shared eloquent glances. Not for nothing was Nellie known as the cul-de-sac’s most enthusiastic gossip.
‘Last week,’ Elsie confirmed, ‘and our Jim won’t be coming to church this mornin’ either. He’s doing a Sunday shift on the gridiron.’
‘I was just sayin’ to my Gordon last night that I don’t envy them who’s got fellas working on the railways when this war does come. Bound to try to bomb the railways, that Hitler is,’ Nellie announced tactlessly.
‘Why don’t we try and catch up with Frank’s mam?’ Molly suggested hurriedly to June. ‘Then you could ask her how she’s going on.’
‘What’s to stop her asking how I’m going on?’
June challenged Molly, before adding miserably, ‘Oh, our Molly, I’m missing him that much. I never thought it’d be like this.’
Molly squeezed her hand sympathetically.
They had reached the church now and instead of going straight inside as usual, people were gathering outside to talk in angry and anxious voices.
‘It seems so quiet without the children,’ Molly murmured, echoing Nellie’s earlier sentiments. She loved hearing the little ones sing every Sunday.
Almost as soon as she had finished speaking she saw Pearl Lawson hurrying towards the church, defiantly holding the hands of her two children, the expression on her face both mutinous and challenging as she came over to Molly, whilst her husband, George, hung back slightly.
‘I heard as you was down at the school yesterday ’elping with the evacuation,’ she announced to Molly. ‘Sally Walker told me. No way was I letting my two go, not once I’d heard as how they would be mixing with that lot from down the docks,’ she sniffed disparagingly. ‘My kiddies have been brought up to mind their manners. They know how to behave proper, like.’ Ere, Georgie, get that finger out of yer nose,’ she commanded the younger of her two sons crossly, before turning back to Molly and continuing, ‘It’s not right, sending decent respectable kiddies off wi’ the likes of them – Gawd knows what they might pick up. You should be ashamed of yourself, helping to send them away. Mine is staying right here wi’ me.
’Ere, Sally, are you all right?’ she demanded as Sally Walker walked slowly towards them, one hand pressed into the small of her back.
‘Just
