A Mother’s Blessing. Annie Groves
learning to drive.
‘Yes, you can,’ Anne overruled her. ‘Besides, it’s our duty to do as much as we can.’ She added more seriously, ‘It’s like Mrs Wesley just said: we’ve all got to remember that our help could make the difference between life and death.’
Molly looked at her uncertainly, uncomfortably aware of how June was likely to react to the news that she was planning to learn to drive.
‘I won’t take no for an answer,’ Anne warned her. ‘It would be marvellous if both of us could drive, and much more fun than unravelling old jumpers and making sandbags.’ Anne pulled a face, and suddenly Molly found herself relaxing and laughing whilst her new friend dragged her over to sign up for driving lessons.
‘I’m dreading this evacuation business we’ve got to help out with,’ she admitted to Anne later.
‘It will be a bit like jumping into one of the docks at the deep end,’ Anne agreed, ‘but it’s got to be done. We can’t have all those little ones at risk of being bombed, can we?’
The meeting had gone on longer than Molly had expected, and she hurried past the scout hut and across the main road after saying goodbye to Anne, who had explained that she lived in Wavertree. The garden suburb was considered ‘posher’ than Edge Hill, and it was obvious to Molly that Anne came from a better-off family than her own, and that she had had more experience of life. Anne’s father, Anne had told her, had an office job at the town hall, and her mother did not go out to work. Her family home was semidetached, and she had mentioned that she was a member of Wavertree’s tennis club. Molly knew that June would have said she was too pushy, but although she felt slightly awed by Anne, Molly couldn’t help but like her open friendly manner.
Thinking of her sister made Molly wish all over again that June had agreed to come with her. It would help keep her mind off worrying about her Frank. She knew June was a kind person, deep down, but she came across as abrasive to many, especially those who didn’t know her well. Maybe she would be able to persuade her to change her mind when she told her all she had learned, she decided hopefully.
The men were still working their allotments as she cut down the footpath alongside them, the scent of freshly watered earth mingling with that of their Woodbine cigarettes. Molly looked to see if she could see her father, but didn’t stop walking. She was mentally rehearsing what she was going to say to June to persuade her to change her mind about the WVS.
When she got in there was no sign of her sister downstairs; even the radio had been turned off, and the table had been laid for breakfast, a task the girls always did last thing before they went to bed.
‘June?’ she called uncertainly from the bottom of the stairs, and then when there was no reply she hurried up, her initial surprise at finding her sister already in bed giving way to anxiety.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘What’s it to you?’ June demanded truculently. ‘Hours, you’ve been gone, and me here on me own. And me monthlies are giving me a right pain in me belly.’
‘Oh, June, I’m sorry,’ Molly sympathised. Of the two of them, June had always been the one who had suffered more each month. ‘Would you like a hot-water bottle?’
June shook her head, thawing slightly. ‘I’m feeling a bit better now. I’ll come down and ’ave a cuppa, I think. It sounds like Dad’s just come in – you’d better go down otherwise he’ll want to know what’s up.’
Her father was standing in the kitchen, holding a large cardboard box, which he placed almost tenderly on the kitchen floor.
‘What’s in there?’ Molly asked curiously.
‘Tek the lid off and have a look.’
Molly exclaimed in astonishment, as the moment she lifted the lid the kitchen was filled with the sound of cheeping.
‘Day-old chicks, a gross of them, and our Joe’s got another gross as well, and there’s a gross for Pete – seeing as how he’s promised to let us have his horse muck for the allotments. They’re from your aunt’s farm.’
‘What are?’ June asked, coming into the kitchen, her eyes widening as she saw the answer to her question.
‘We’ve clubbed together at the allotments to buy them. With a hundred and forty-four of them we should get a fair few fresh eggs. Only thing is, we need to keep them warm and properly fed for the next few days. I’ve got some mash, to start ’em off, like.’
‘But where will you keep them?’ Molly asked him.
‘We’re going to build a coop for them – I’ve got a bit of wood put by down at the railway yard.’ He winked meaningfully at them and then added, ‘Pete is going to pick it up for us, and once the chicks have grown they can scratch around down the allotments.’ He picked the lid up and placed it over the boxful of chicks, immediately silencing them. ‘And that’s not all,’ he told the girls enthusiastically. ‘We’ve put in to have a pig as well.’
‘A pig?’
‘Aye, it’s a scheme the Government is doing – them as keeps a pig gets ter keep a fair bit of the meat from it, so mek sure you don’t go throwing away any scraps. Oh, and by the way, your Aunt Violet has sent a message to say they’ve got plenty of work down at the farm, if you fancy leaving that factory after all.’
June shuddered. ‘Not likely – remember that time Dad took us there on the train, Molly, and them blinkin’ cows? No, ta! You can keep the country. I’m staying here, even with that Miss Jenner at my throat.’
It was only later, when she was finally in bed and almost asleep, that Molly realised that she hadn’t talked to June about joining the WVS. Oh, well, there was always tomorrow, she decided as she closed her eyes.
The bright morning sun blazed down from a cloudlessly blue sky. It was far too hot to wear winter clothes but, nevertheless, the three of them had put on their darkest things and their father was even wearing a collar and tie. People looked curiously at them when they got on the bus but they ignored their sideways looks. They had made this journey five times a year since Rosie’s death: on Mothering Sunday, on the anniversaries of her birth, her marriage and her death, and at Christmas. Now their coming here had gathered its own small rituals: the flowers they brought – daffodils on Mothering Sunday, the roses that bore her name and which she had carried in her wedding bouquet on her birthday and the anniversary of her marriage, violets in February, when she had died, and at Christmas a home-made wreath of holly and ivy to lay on the cold stone – their visit to their own church before they left; their silence like the silence of the cemetery where their wife and mother was buried close to her parents and to her parents-in-law.
This morning, though, the cemetery wasn’t silent. Instead, a group of men were moving and extending its boundary, whilst others were excavating the hard-packed earth.
Molly looked questioningly at her father. ‘Are they going to turn it into allotments, do you think, Dad?’
‘I don’t think so, love. More like they’re getting ready for a different kind of crop,’ he told her heavily. ‘Just in case, like …’
All the colour left her face as she realised what he meant. She looked from him to the bare stretch of land and then at the cemetery, visually measuring the grave-covered earth to the land that lay beyond it – land she now realised was being set aside for new graves.
A mixture of shock, fear and pain filled her insides. It was something she had not allowed herself to think of – the human cost of war. Tales of the Great War seemed from a different age.
‘Surely there won’t be so many,’ she whispered.
Her father’s mouth twisted. ‘This is nowt to them as died last time.’ His haunted expression aged his