As she walked past the allotments she stopped to speak to Bert Johnson, who, despite the fact that he was coming up for eighty, still worked on his allotment. Rover, his mongrel dog, was lying faithfully at his side, and Molly stooped to pat the dog’s head.
‘Tell yer dad that he wants to get a rooster for them chickens of his,’ he told Molly.
Her father often went round to check up on Bert, who lived several doors down from them on the opposite side of the road. Although he was older than their father, he too had served in the Great War and the two men got on well together. He had survived the war without any injury, but Bert had lost both his wife and his two young children in the influenza outbreak that had followed, and now lived alone apart from his loyal dog.
Promising him that she would pass on his message, Molly hurried down the road. She and the other WVS involved had been told to be at their designated schools well before the children to be evacuated were due to arrive. Molly’s job was to tick off their names on a list she was going to be given and then later to help escort the children to Lime Street station to board the trains that would take them to their designated evacuation areas.
To her relief, the first person she saw when she reached the school was Anne, who beamed at her.
‘I’ve been looking out for you. We’re going to be working together. What luck!’
Two hours later, armed with her list, Molly was busily asking children’s names as they arrived at the school, whilst at the same time trying to reassure desperately worried mothers that they were doing the right thing. Already the school seemed to be full of children carrying suitcases tied with string, the older children with pillowcases containing the rest of their belongings slung over their shoulders. Many were also holding on to younger siblings, the gas masks they had been issued with hanging round their necks.
The boys, as boys will, were scuffling lightheart-edly with one another, whilst the girls looked on disapprovingly. Molly knew that behind the teasing and jostling lurked real fear at what lay ahead.
‘If you can, then do try to persuade the mothers to say their goodbyes to the kiddies here instead of going with them to Lime Street,’ Molly’s superior had told her, but it wasn’t as easy as that. Molly found it heartbreaking to see the brown labels tied onto the children’s clothes and belongings, their names often written in shaky handwriting, bearing silent witness to the mothers’ anguish at the thought of the coming parting. The children were clinging resolutely to their gas masks, as they had been told to do.
‘You’ll look after them, won’t you?’ more than one mother had begged Molly with tears in her eyes, although there were some desperately sad little ones lined up, who seemed to have no one to care for them at all. Although she knew that she was not supposed to do so, Molly discreetly gave just that little bit more attention to these children, some of whom were very shabbily dressed and didn’t seem to have with them the new clothes and personal items the Government had instructed that each child was to have.
‘A toothbrush each, if you please, and how am I supposed to give my three that, when they all share the same one at ’ome?’ Molly heard one mother demanding indignantly of one of the other WVS girls.
By and large, though, the children she was dealing with were well fed and properly clothed. It tore at Molly’s sensitive heart, though, to see their wan little faces and anxious expressions when they thought that none of the grown-ups was watching them. How would she have felt if this had been her and June? She would have been crying and looking every bit as upset as the little girl she had just tried to comfort. But it was all being done for the children’s own good – to keep them safe if the cities were bombed.
Molly tried to remind herself that she was here to do a job and that she must not let herself give in to her emotions. It wasn’t easy, though, especially when one poor mother handed over her little girl wearing a heavy metal calliper on a badly twisted leg, and begged Molly, ‘She has to have her leg rubbed every night with warm olive oil. I’ve written it down on her label, look. You’ll mek sure that whoever she goes to knows that, won’t you, miss?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Molly promised her gently.
Every child had been given a block of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and a bottle of Edmondson’s lemonade for the journey, but some of the children hadn’t been able to wait and had already consumed the whole lot.
She had lost count already of the number of times a small hand had tugged urgently on her skirt and a small voice had piped up shrilly, ‘Please, miss, I want the lav,’ or, ‘Please, miss, me bruvver’s peed his pants,’ or, ‘Please, miss, our kid’s bin sick.’ It made Molly think again of her mother – all the tiny, thankless tasks she’d done for her and June, and how they had fallen to her father after her death.
She had been thinking of her mother such a lot since they had found her wedding dress. How would she have felt if she were alive? She would have been worrying about the war like they all were. Would she have been proud of Molly for joining the WVS; might she have even joined with her and persuaded June to do the same? Molly sensed that their mother’s presence in their lives would have had a softening effect on June’s sometimes determined nature. She would certainly have shared in June’s pride that Frank was doing his duty. Their mother would have liked Frank – Molly knew that instinctively. But what would she have thought of Johnny? Would she have understood how confused Molly felt, or would she have taken June’s side and told Molly that she was being silly? Molly liked to think that she would have understood.
The day seemed to be passing in an unending toing and froing, but eventually the supervisors came round to collect the lists and to announce that they would shortly be leaving for Lime Street.
‘There seem to be a lot of gaps on my list,’ Molly apologised.
‘I’m afraid that rather a lot of the mothers have changed their minds at the last minute,’ the supervisor told her, as the children were marshalled into a crocodile, ready, along with their teachers and helpers like Molly, to walk to Lime Street station to wait there for the train that would take them to North Wales.
Molly was just about to leave the school when she caught sight of Sally Walker. She looked pale and unwell, one hand pressed into her lower back as though to ease away an ache.
Hurrying over to her, she exclaimed, ‘Sally, aren’t you coming?’
Women who were pregnant, or who had babies and very young children, had been offered the opportunity to be evacuated. The more well-to-do could afford to rent houses for themselves, but for most people evacuation meant having to live under someone else’s roof, and very few women were keen to do that, especially when it meant moving away from their own homes and their families.
Sally shook her head. ‘No. I want to stay here just in case my Ronnie gets leave unexpected, like. Besides, I don’t fancy having to live alongside strangers, and having to ask every time I wanted to mek meself a brew and all that. I like ’aving me own home and me own things around me.’ Her eyes were swollen and she had obviously been crying. ‘I came down with me neighbour. She’s sending her kiddies off. Bloody awful it is, an’ all, poor little mites.’
‘It’s the best thing for them, Sally,’ Molly tried to comfort her.
‘What would you know?’ Sally demanded sharply. ‘You haven’t got any kiddies.’ She winced as she spoke and Molly asked her worriedly if she was all right.
‘Stop goin’ on, will yer, Molly, and leave us alone,’ Sally snapped.
The walk down to Lime Street seemed to take for ever, and some of the younger children had already started to flag. In an attempt to cheer them up and spur them on, their teacher started to sing loudly ‘Sing As We Go’, urging the children to join in. One little girl, too exhausted to walk any further, suddenly dropped down on her bottom, sobbing. Molly bent down and picked her up. She was wet through and crying, and Molly comforted her as best she could, wondering how she would be feeling if she did have children.
Had it really only been a week