V

MOLLY

Thirty-Three

10th July ’46

Hello, Molly,

Norm is home. We’re living at his mom’s now. All going all right, though Robbie not very settled. We’re going along. Are you ever coming up this way to see us? Please write.

Love Em x

PS Robbie drew this for you.

Em had sent a plain white postcard on which she had got Robbie to do a drawing. It was only in two colours. Molly looked at the square, red house with swirls of angry black smoke pouring from the chimney. And there was a dullness to Em’s message and, reading between the lines, a lot of things not said. At times Molly envied Em’s staid, family life, never far from her mom and dad and her sisters, husband home from the war, a child. All the things Molly didn’t have, could never even imagine having now. Once she had, for a time, with Tony, during those sunlit, dreamlike days in 1942 before he was killed. She still tried to imagine that it might have worked for them, had he lived. But not now. None of that was for her. But for all that, she didn’t think Em sounded especially full of the joys, either.

She did not hear from Em often. To her surprise the person who kept in touch with her very faithfully was Ruth Chambers. Every couple of weeks a blue envelope would slip through the door, addressed in Ruth’s neat, sloping hand. Molly found she had started to look forward to the letters very much, even though she had a little smile at some of Ruth’s expressions.

Molly and Ruth had begun their basic training in the ATS together and immediately loathed each other. Molly thought back with shame and embarrassment on her first weeks in the army. Feeling very unsure of herself, and inferior to a lot of the other girls in every way, she had played up and been loud and rude, and got a lot of people’s backs up. Ruth, a staid, studious girl from a sheltered middle-class background, had been about to start studying natural sciences at Cambridge. Ruth was rather buck-toothed and awkward, and had absolutely no idea how to cope with someone like Molly, whose behaviour had been mostly noisy and as crude as possible. They had hoped never to set eyes on each other again after basic training, but had met up several times – including at Clacton. Ruth had been trained in technical work as a kiné-theodolite operator and Molly ended up in ack-ack. The very last time she had come across Ruth, the girl had been badly frightened by unwanted advances from a man and had confided in Molly. The two had managed to get past some of the barriers of prejudice that separated them and form an unlikely friendship.

Molly realized to her astonishment that Ruth was genuinely fond of her and was missing her. She wrote letters about adjusting to Cambridge. She was enjoying the work, but finding it hard to settle to such a quiet life.