Goodnight Sweetheart. Annie Groves

make any mistakes the pay wasn’t good, but it was no worse than the girls would have earned anywhere else, and as June often said, at least the small factory was clean, and warm in winter as Mr Harding was well aware that cold fingers didn’t work as nimbly and made mistakes – expensive mistakes for him if his customers rejected the work as not good enough. The other girls were a jolly bunch and, whilst they were all older than Molly, their company meant that there was always someone for her to have a laugh with.

      The factory’s main business came from a distributor who provided them with both pattern and fabric and who supplied clothes to the big Lewis’s store in the centre of the city. Sometimes the girls were allowed to buy leftover pieces of cloth to make things for themselves. Two or three times a year, a very important dark-suited gentleman from Lewis’s came up to the long sewing machine-filled room where the girls worked, to inspect their sewing. Molly was happy working there, even if June sometimes grumbled and complained.

      Molly started to brush her hair again. Both girls had thick, naturally curly hair. June’s was a mid-brown, but Molly’s was much darker and richer, with a warm chestnut hue.

      Pensively, Molly stared into the mirror, her cornflower-blue eyes clouding. Her mouth trembled and she blinked away tears.

      ‘Now what’s up?’ June demanded, pinching her younger sister’s arm almost crossly.

      ‘Nothing,’ Molly fibbed.

      ‘I should jolly well think there isn’t. You don’t know how lucky you are, our Molly. There’s a lot of girls in Liverpool would give their right arms to be in your shoes and engaged to a handsome lad like Johnny. And besides …’

      Molly could see that June was looking very determined, and her heart sank. She had been hoping that June would understand her feelings but now she could tell that she wasn’t going to get very much sympathy from her.

      ‘Besides what?’ she pressed her anxiously.

      ‘Well, the way I see it, Molly, is that this engagement of yours is a good thing for everyone. Frank has already hinted to me as how his mam will be on her own after we get married and that he feels it’s his duty to have her come and live with us. Well, there’s no way I’m going to have that, but Frank can be that stubborn when he really wants something, and his mam has brought him up to think she’s got a right to tell him what to do with his life! Anyway, like I’ve said to him, with you marrying Johnny that’d leave our dad on his own, and that’d mean that we would have to have both of them to live with us and we can’t do that.’

      ‘But why would Dad have to live with you? He’s got Uncle Joe at number 63,’ Molly objected. ‘And, anyway, he’s always saying as how, once he’s got us off his hands, Auntie Violet has said as how he’s welcome to go and live with them in Cheshire.’ Their father’s elder sister was married to a farmer who lived near Nantwich.

      ‘Well, yes, but there’s no call for you to go saying any of that to Frank,’ June warned her sharply. ‘So far as he’s concerned, you marrying Johnny means that our dad will need to come and live with us, because he’ll be on his own just like Frank’s mam. And since we won’t have room for both of them we can’t have either of them,’ she announced triumphantly.

      ‘You mean you want me to marry Johnny so that you won’t have to have Frank’s mam to live with you?’ Molly protested.

      ‘Oh, don’t go looking at me like that. Just think how lucky you are to be engaged,’ June told her firmly. ‘And if war does break out, you’ll know you’ll be sending your Johnny off to war knowing he’s got someone of his own here at home waiting for him. That means a lot to a lad, our Molly, and don’t you forget that.’

       TWO

      ‘Oh Gawd, I’ve gone and laddered my stocking. Here, Molly, you put the roast in, will you – I’ve turned on the gas ready – whilst I go and change them, otherwise we’ll be late for church.’

      The girls’ father worked on the railway sidings at Edge Hill station – ‘the gridiron’, as it was called locally – as a track maintenance man employed by the railway company. The work was back-breakingly hard and often dirty, but he never complained. Like many of the generation who had lived through the depression, he simply considered himself lucky to be in work.

      Although he didn’t earn much, with June and Molly’s wages, they had enough coming in to be able to afford a joint of meat on a Sunday, to be eaten with the potatoes and vegetables Albert grew on his allotment.

      Molly slid the roasting tin into the gas oven and then dashed upstairs to get her hat and gloves.

      ‘Come on, you two,’ Albert bawled up the stairs, ‘otherwise we’re gonna be late.’

      Chestnut Close was a Protestant street, with all its inhabitants attending the parish church of St Michael and all the Angels.

      The custom was that everyone filed into church in silence, merely exchanging nods of acknowledgement, and then got together for a good gossip after the service. So although the Deardens could see Frank and his mother walking down the street up ahead of them, June made no attempt to catch up with her fiancé.

      ‘Look at her!’ she muttered to Molly. ‘Hanging on to Frank’s arm for dear life, acting like he belongs to her. Well, if she thinks that Frank’s going to be taking her to church every Sunday once he’s married to me, then she’s got another think coming. Of course, she thinks that I’m not good enough for him. That’s why she’s been sucking up to that friend of hers who lives on Carlton Avenue, in Wavertree – you know, them as has the laundry on the Scotland Road? Boasting all up and down the cul-de-sac she was at one time about how her Frank and their Angela would be perfect for one another.’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘Maybe she would have been, an’ all, if she hadn’t got buck teeth and no bust.’

      To Molly’s relief, she couldn’t see any sign of Johnny, although she spotted his mother and two sisters.

      ‘There’s your ma-in-law-to-be,’ June told her, nudging her in the ribs. ‘You’re going to have to watch those sisters of his: always on the cadge, so I’ve heard. Don’t you go letting them boss you around, Molly.’

      Despite herself, Molly smiled a little at the prospect of swapping a bossy sister for an equally overbearing sister-in-law.

      As they walked to their pew, it struck Molly that the church seemed much fuller than usual, and when they stood up to sing ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’, it was obvious that Sally Walker in the pew in front of them, next to her soldier husband, Ronnie, in his uniform, was crying quietly. They’d only been married a year and their first baby was due in September.

      Once the service was over, small groups of people started to congregate outside the church.

      ‘You and Dad wait here. I’m going to find Frank so as we can have a word with the vicar,’ June announced determinedly.

      ‘His mam won’t be happy about you wanting to bring the wedding forward,’ Molly pointed out. ‘She wasn’t too keen on the pair of you getting engaged.’

      ‘Well, she’s going to have to lump it, isn’t she, because me and Frank are going to be wed no matter what she thinks,’ June responded, tossing her head before turning to disappear into the crowd. June usually got what she wanted, Molly thought, but wondered if perhaps she’d met her match in Doris Brookes.

      All around her, Molly could see anxious faces, as families clung together, the men looking serious and grim-faced, many of the women crying and those with grown-up sons clinging desperately to their boys. It was easy to pick out Frank’s tall, broad-shouldered frame as he stood with his arm around his mother.

      Molly could see that several of the younger men had already gone over to talk to Sally Walker’s husband, Ronnie, who was in the regular army and could tell them what life in the Forces was like.

      ‘What’s