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 kindhearted 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
