Goodnight Sweetheart. Annie Groves

we’re going?’ one little boy asked her. ‘Only I ain’t going if’n I can’t see Flash Gordon of a Saturday no more.’

      ‘I’m sure there will be a cinema,’ Molly reassured him, treating his concern seriously. ‘And there’ll be lots of places for you to play as well, nice green fields, and fresh air.’

      ‘Fields?’ one sharp-faced boy asked her warily. ‘What’s them, then?’

      These were city children – some of them slum children, Molly reminded herself as she struggled to find the right words to calm their fears.

      ‘Fields are where farmers grow things for us to eat,’ she told them. ‘I dare say that those of you who get billeted with farmers will be able to collect your own eggs from the farmer’s wife’s hens. My auntie has a farm and she used to let me do that when I was your age.’

      ‘Will there be ponies for us to ride?’ one little girl asked eagerly.

      ‘Maybe …’ Molly answered her cautiously, adding firmly, ‘I expect you’ll all make lots of new friends at your new schools.’

      Although some of the children accepted her words happily, she could see that others were not so easily convinced or appeased, and she could hardly blame them.

      Once they reached Lime Street station, the combined noise of so many people packed into one place was such that Molly was tempted to put her hands over her ears. She had never seen so many children. They were everywhere – crying, sobbing, shouting, throwing tantrums, or else completely silent, as if they had been struck dumb by the trauma they were enduring, whilst mothers wept, and harassed officials did their best to make some sort of order out of the chaos. The trains that were to take the children away stood silently beside the platforms, their doors firmly closed. No one would be allowed to board until they were queuing up in the right order, their names ticked off the appropriate list. So much careful planning had gone into this operation to protect the country’s young, but right now all Molly could think of was its emotional cost to the families involved.

      A small boy tugged on her sleeve, and demanded, ‘Did all these kids get a bar o’ chocolate, miss?’

      ‘I expect so,’ she murmured. She knew that from now on the smell of Dairy Milk was always going to remind her of this heart-rending scene.

      Behind the barriers, mothers were standing ten deep, calling out their children’s names, and as Molly watched, one young woman reached over and grabbed her child, refusing to give her back.

      ‘This is so awful,’ Molly whispered to Anne, who had just materialised at her side.

      ‘It’s for their own good, Molly. We must remember that, and think of how much safer they are going to be instead of thinking of this.’

      Mutely, Molly nodded. She was still holding the little 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