Goodnight Sweetheart. Annie Groves

Чтение книги онлайн.

       FIVE

      The bright morning sun blazed down from a cloud-lessly 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 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 face. He had never told his daughters of the horrors he had witnessed in the trenches of France: of how he’d had to drink filthy, muddy water just to stay alive; of how he’d had to strip a dead soldier of his ammunition while he was still warm; of how he’d seen his best friend blown to pieces right beside him. ‘A load of cardboard coffins we had shipped in on one of t’trains this week. There was talk as how the ice rink is going to be used as a morgue, if’n Hitler drops his bombs on us. Lorra rubbish. If’n he does it won’t be whole bodies as they’ll be buryin’.’

      Molly shivered, her eyes widening in fear. ‘Don’t talk like that, Dad,’ she begged him.

      When he looked at her Molly realised that he had momentarily forgotten her and that he had been back in the past and his dreadful experiences of the last war. He squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head, just like he had done when she was a child and had fallen over and scraped her knee.

      ‘Don’t you worry, love. With lads like Frank and Johnny to look out for us, we’ll be just fine,’ he assured her, although in his heart he felt mounting anxiety.

      Sombrely the three of them made their way along the familiar footpath until they came to Rosie’s grave. For once, even June was silent. The grave was marked with just a simple headstone, but at least she was with those she had loved and who had loved her, and as a child Molly had taken comfort from that knowledge.

      One by one they kneeled down and offered up their flowers and their prayers. Molly could see that their father was trying not to cry.

      Afterwards, though, when they made their way home, it was the sight of that empty land waiting to receive the bodies of those who were still alive that occupied Molly’s thoughts and tore at her heart. For the first time she knew properly what it was to be afraid of war and death. So many graves; so many people who were going to die. She looked at her father and her sister, anguish inside her. It wasn’t just the men abroad. What if one of them …?

      She could taste dust in the August heat when they got off the bus and walked up the cul-de-sac.

      ‘I thought we’d make a start on turning out the attic tonight,’ she heard June telling her once they were back home, briskly back to business.

      Numbly Molly looked at her.

      ‘What’s up with you?’ June asked her.

      ‘All those graves, June, so many of them …’ Molly’s voice shook.

      Immediately June’s expression softened. ‘Aye … I thought like that meself when I knew that my Frank would be joining up, but we’ve got to keep our chins up, Molly. Don’t you worry about Johnny – he’s a tough one.’

      The two sisters looked at one another, both fighting against tears. Molly felt guilty that she was not thinking of Johnny but of every man fighting.

      The door opened to admit their father, who had been upstairs to remove his collar. His shoulders were bowed, his expression drawn and sad.

      Giving Molly a warning look, June said briskly, ‘I expect you’ll be off down the allotment, won’t you, Dad, after you’ve checked on them blummin’ chickens of yours. All over the kitchen, they are.’

      June was so strong, Molly thought admiringly, as she watched their father respond visibly to her goading.

      The chickens had escaped from their box and greeted their owners’ return home with excited cheeps as they hopped and jumped all over the place. Their antics broke the sombre mood, and Molly couldn’t help but laugh at them as she gave them their feed.

      ‘Come on,’ June instructed Molly, once their father had gone out. ‘We’d better go up and make a start on that ruddy attic. Otherwise we’ll be having that fusspot Alf Davies round.’

      Molly nodded her head, determinedly putting her earlier despair firmly behind her.

      ‘I could do with getting meself some new stockings before tonight, seeing as how Irene’s set us all up to go dancing at the Grafton,’ June commented. She and Molly clambered into the loft space and stood looking at the dusty boxes, illuminated by the bare bulb. ‘Gawd, look at all this stuff! Just how long is it since we last came up here? We’ll never get it all sorted out.’

      But Molly wasn’t listening. Instead, she was on her knees, examining the contents of a box she had found behind the pile of cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other, labelled ‘Christmas Decorations’.

      ‘June, come and look at this,’ she begged her sister. ‘This box has got all my exercise books from Neville Road Junior School, right back to me first year, in Miss Brown’s class, and here’s yours next to it.’

      Molly could feel tears prickling her eyes as she saw the careful way their father had written their names on the boxes.

      ‘Well, they can’t stay up here. Everything that might catch fire has got to be got rid of – that’s what the Government has said – and any glass taped up or removed in case we get hit by a bomb. Mind you, Jerry would have to be daft to be bombing us instead of aiming for the docks,’ June added prosaically.

      Reluctantly abandoning her school books, СКАЧАТЬ