girls shook their heads.
‘Now what about an Anderson shelter?’
‘We’re sharing with the rest of the end of the cul-de-sac,’ June informed him.
‘Is it true that all the children will be evacuated even if their mothers don’t want them to be?’ Molly couldn’t stop herself from asking him. The words of the government leaflet still haunted her, and she couldn’t imagine how terrifying it would be for a small child to be sent off to a strange place to live with a strange family.
‘I can’t answer them sort of questions, but I can tell you that we are looking for volunteers to help wi’ what’s got to be done, if you twose wanted to help out.’
‘Volunteer? We’ve got enough to do, sewing uniforms for soldiers – aye, and paid next to nuttin’ for doing it, an’ all,’ June informed him sharply.
But for once Molly overrode her sister and asked quietly, ‘Where would we go, if we wanted to volunteer?’
‘You can just come round and have a word with me – you know where I am – number 14. The missus will take a message if I’m not there.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea, and remember, when the time comes for them curtains to go up, I’ll be coming round to check that they ain’t lettin’ out no light, so make sure youse do a good job.’
‘What’s got into you?’ June demanded when Molly had shown Alf Davies out. ‘What did you want to go telling him you wanted to volunteer for?’
‘Because if there is going to be a war, I want to do my bit,’ Molly answered firmly. She’d been thinking for weeks about how helpless she would feel if – when, she now acknowledged grimly – war broke out, and so jumped at the chance to be able to do something for the war effort.
‘Well, you’re already sewing these blummin’ curtains,’ June grumbled. ‘You’re daft if you volunteer to do any more.’
She repeated her comment later when their father came back in, but he merely smiled and looked tenderly at Molly.
‘You tek after your mam, right enough, Molly lass,’ he told her gently. ‘A right kind heart she had, an’ all.’
‘Now what am I supposed to do with it?’
Molly giggled helplessly as June struggled to put on her gas mask. ‘Oh, give over larking about, do,’ she protested. ‘I’m laughing that much it hurts.’
‘Well, let’s see you put yours on then,’ June challenged her.
They had arrived at the school an hour ago to join the tail end of the queue waiting to receive their gas masks, and now, despite the tension gripping everyone, several other people had joined in Molly’s mirth as she watched her elder sister struggle.
‘You gorra do it like this, love,’ an elderly woman informed June, deftly demonstrating just how the mask should go on, after she had stopped laughing.
‘We gor another of them leaflets come dis mornin’,’ a woman standing close to Molly announced. ‘Full of a lorra stuff about food and rationing, it were, sayin’ as how we gorra have ration books and that, like.’
Immediately the laughter stopped and the women looked worriedly at one another.
‘Rationin’? What’s that when it’s at home?’ a young girl with sharp features and a thin anxious face demanded.
‘It’s wot we had during the last war,’ the older woman who had shown June how to put on her mask answered her grimly. ‘The Government tells yer what food yer can buy and what yer can’t.’
‘That’s all we need,’ June told Molly glumly. ‘Nothing to eat!’
‘It won’t be so bad. At least we’ll have Dad’s allotment – and if it helps our lads …’ Molly tried to comfort her, as she packed her gas mask back in its box and shyly returned the approving smile of a pretty WVS volunteer she had been talking to earlier. June might not like it, but Molly was determined to join up for some voluntary work.
‘Who’s that you were just smiling at?’ June demanded as they left the building, the summer breeze catching the cotton skirts of their dresses.
‘I don’t know her name. She was the one who gave me my mask. I was telling her about wanting to do some voluntary work. She’s told me how to go about it. We could both do it,’ she added hopefully.
‘Huh, you won’t catch me volunteering for anything,’ June told her crossly. ‘All them folk telling me what to do! We get enough of that at work. Daft, that’s what you are. As if we don’t have enough to do, and there’ll be even more if this blummin’ rationing comes in … What time did you say as we would meet the others?’
‘Six o’clock,’ Molly told her.
They had arranged to go to the cinema with some of the other girls from the factory, but despite this promised treat June was still looking glum, and Molly thought she knew why.
‘Frank’s bound to write soon,’ she tried to comfort her.
‘He better had, an’ all, if he knows what’s good for him. How the blinkin’ heck am I supposed to organise a wedding when I don’t know when he’s going to get leave?’ June sounded angry but Molly knew her sister well enough to realise that the anger masked her real feelings. Impulsively she reached out for June’s hand and squeezed it.
Back outside on the street, Molly looked round for their father, who had gone to collect his gas mask with some of the other men from the allotments.
‘It’s our mam’s birthday next week,’ she reminded June.
Every year, on her birthday, among other days, the two girls and their father visited Rosie’s grave to lay flowers on it.
‘Aye, I know.’
‘What was she like, June?’ Molly asked her sister softly. ‘I can’t remember her properly at all.’ She’d asked the question many a time over the years but never tired of hearing her sister describe their mother.
June paused for a moment as though she was thinking hard and then said slowly, ‘Well, you look the image of her, and she was a bit of a softie too, like you, but by, she could give you a fair clout when she got angry. Allus laughing, she was, an’ singing too, like – you’ve got her voice, our Molly. Fair gives me a turn sometimes to hear you singing ’cos you sound just like her. Right pretty she was, an’ all, excepting for them last months.’ Tears filled June’s eyes and Molly was once again reminded of how much harder it must have been for June to see their mother fade before her very eyes. Molly had been too young to appreciate the extent of their mother’s illness but June, two years older, had not been spared the reality of what was happening. ‘Dead thin she went, just bones in the end. She’d been poorly all winter, coughing and the like. We thought as how she would get better when it came warmer weather …’
Molly gave a small shiver and moved closer to her sister. She might not always agree with June’s way of going about things, and resent her control over her sometimes, but she was still her sister, the sister who’d been a substitute mother to her for so many years, and Molly loved her dearly.
‘What about this?’ Molly suggested, directing June’s attention to the bolt of white satin fabric she had found wedged between some brightly patterned cottons.
‘But I’d got me heart set on lace.’
‘Haven’t we all, duck, so mek sure you let on to us if you find any,’ a woman with brassily bleached hair and bright red lipstick, standing close enough to overhear, chipped in. ‘My Harry says as how he don’t care nuttin’ wot me wedding dress is made of just so long as he don’t ’ave to waste a lorra time gettin’ it off us,’ she confided saucily.
‘Common as muck,’ Molly heard June muttering contemptuously, turning her back as the other woman reached