Goodnight Sweetheart. Annie Groves

no call to say that about June,’ Molly defended her sister.

      ‘Mmm, well, since you are here you might as well make yourself useful,’ Doris told Molly grimly. ‘Not that you’re likely to be much use. Wait here a minute.’

      She was gone only a few seconds, returning with a white starched overall. ‘Go downstairs, and give your hands a good scrubbing with carbolic soap right up to your armpits, then put this on and come back.’

      Molly marvelled that Frank’s mother could remain so calm in the face of the danger they might be in, and then winced as Sally suddenly screamed loudly again.

      ‘Hurry up,’ Doris chivvied her. ‘I need to examine her and I can’t do that until I’ve scrubbed up meself.’

      Molly did as she had been told as quickly as she could, leaving her jacket and blouse downstairs and hurrying back to the bedroom dressed in the voluminous overall she had been given.

      ‘Scrubbed yourself properly, have you, like I told you?’ Frank’s mother demanded.

      Molly nodded her head. Her hands were red and stinging slightly from the carbolic.

      ‘Good,’ cos we don’t want no dirty germs getting everywhere. You stay here whilst I go and get scrubbed up.’

      Sally, who Doris had by now undressed, was moaning and panting, pushing the sheet down off the white dome of her belly.

      When Doris came back she was wearing an overall like the one she had given Molly, her hair forced back off her face by the starched cap she was wearing, her arms glowing pinkly from their scrubbing.

      Sally’s screams were getting louder, interspersed with sobs and pleas to God to spare her any more pain, but unlike Molly, Doris was unmoved by Sally’s travail. All the while the siren continued and Molly could hear people running and shouting in the street below.

      ‘She’ll forget all about this once her baby’s been born,’ Doris told Molly confidently as she lifted the sheet and proceeded to examine her patient.

      ‘By the looks of you, you’ve been in labour a good while,’ she announced disapprovingly to Sally when she had finished.

      ‘I was havin’ a lot of twinges all day yesterday,’ Sally panted. ‘And then me waters broke just before I left for church.’

      ‘Well, you are very foolish for not saying so,’ Doris rebuked her sharply.

      ‘Oh. Oh … oh Gawd, it hurts,’ Sally yelled, grabbing hold of Molly’s hand and holding on so tightly that it felt as though her nails were cutting into her flesh.

      Somewhere outside Molly heard a sound she guessed must be the all clear, but between them, Sally and Doris were keeping her too busy to pay any attention to it – Sally with her groans and protests, and Doris with her sharp instructions.

      ‘Eee. But I’m never gonna let that bugger near me again,’ Sally moaned, gasping for breath. ‘It’s fair killing me, this is.’

      ‘Push,’ Doris commanded her, ignoring her complaints.

      And then, so quickly that Molly could hardly believe it had happened, Sally’s baby slithered into the world and gave his first mewling cry.

      As soon as she had cut the birth cord, Doris handed the baby to Molly and told her crisply, ‘Wash him and then give him to Sally,’ before turning back to Sally and cleaning her up.

      The baby was so tiny and yet so vigorous, so full of life. Tears blurred Molly’s sight as she washed him carefully in the warm water Doris had told her to bring up earlier. He was bawling, his eyes screwed up and his little legs drawn up towards his distended belly, but then as she washed him he stopped crying and seemed to be trying to focus on her.

      A feeling like none she had ever experienced before gripped her. Her emotions were so intense that she wanted to both laugh and cry at the same time.

      ‘Give him to me, Molly,’ Sally demanded huskily.

      Molly looked at Doris, who nodded her head. Very gently she carried the baby over to his mother.

      An expression of intense joy flooded Sally’s face as she took hold of him and instinctively put him to her breast.

      ‘You’re lucky you’re the kind that can give birth as easy as shelling peas,’ Doris told Sally unemotionally, ‘otherwise you might not be smiling right now.’

      ‘I was frightened I’d be sent away, and I wanted to be here in case my Ronnie gets some leave,’ Sally protested.

      Someone was knocking on the door. Nodding to Molly, Doris told her, ‘Take these things down to the back kitchen for me, will you, whilst I go and answer the door.’

      The caller turned out to be Doris’s neighbour, come to see how Sally was and to explain that they’d heard that the air-raid siren had simply been a test.

      ‘Over an hour we was in that Anderson shelter,’ she complained after she had admired the baby, and accepted the offer of a cup of tea.

      After that the visitors came thick and fast, and Molly was kept busy making tea and washing up until, at five o’clock, Frank’s mother told her that she could go.

      ‘You’re not a nurse but at least you’ve got a bit of gumption about you, not like that sister of yours,’ she told Molly grudgingly. ‘What my lad sees in her I’ll never know.’

      ‘Frank loves our June and she loves him,’ Molly defended her sister heatedly. ‘She’s missing him so much,’ she added.

      Was that a small softening she could see in Doris Brookes’s eyes? Molly hoped so.

      ‘When will Sally be able to go home, only I thought when she does I could go round and give her a bit of a hand?’ she asked quietly, changing the subject.

      ‘She’ll be back in her own bed tomorrow night,’ Doris answered her.

      Why should she be feeling so tired, Molly wondered wearily as she walked home. It was Sally who had had the baby, not her.

      ‘You’re back, are you?’ June greeted her as she walked into the kitchen. ‘What took you so long? Elsie was round here hours back, saying as how Sally had had a little boy.’

      ‘People kept coming round to see them and I was making them cups of tea,’ Molly told her tiredly.

      ‘I don’t know why you wanted to go putting yourself forward like that anyway, offering to help. What do you know about nursing? You’ve changed since you got involved with that WVS lot,’ she accused Molly sharply. ‘Become a bloody do-gooder and helping others rather than your own.’

      Molly suddenly realised that June felt threatened by her voluntary work, scared she wouldn’t be there for her, especially now she was so lonely with Frank being away. It made her heart go out to her sister.

      ‘I didn’t offer; it was someone else who said—’

      ‘Mebbe not, but you didn’t refuse, did you? A lot of use you must have bin.’

      ‘I didn’t do anything really, only fetch and carry. Oh, June, the baby is so gorgeous.’ Molly burst into tears. ‘I wish you could have seen him.’

      ‘Aye, well, I shall have to wait until Sally goes back to her own place. I’m not going knocking on Frank’s mam’s door and begging to be let in.’

      ‘Why don’t you, June?’ Molly suggested impulsively, adding before June could say anything, ‘She must be feeling lonely without Frank, and worried about him too, just like you are. I know she always seems a bit standoffish, but I’m sure if you let her see how much Frank means to you and sort of, well, talked to her a bit about the wedding and things, make her feel involved—’

      ‘What?’ June put her hands on her hips and glowered. ‘Me go round there making up to her?

      Don’t make me laugh. I’m not