‘Molly was sitting on a bench at the back of the rowdy pub, squeezed in beside George, the bloke she was walking out with and a bunch of others, nearly all men. She’d had so much to drink that all the faces were blurring into each other, like in a bad dream. Behind her, the windows were swathed in black. George was a pale, stringy man, his hair slicked back, eyes mean and glassy after all the drinking. His mood had turned ugly.
‘You’re not worth it. You’re no good, you ain’t,’ he snarled. ‘I want a proper woman, not a freak like you…’
Right, Molly thought. I’m off! She pulled herself up from the table, making it rock, the way her head was rocking inside.
‘Whoa – steady on, yer silly cow! You’ll ‘ave everything going over!’
‘You off, Moll?’ A kinder voice spoke among the crowd. ‘Mind ‘ow yer go: d’yer want someone to walk with yer?’
‘No,’ she managed to say. ‘Ta Fred.’
‘You don’t want to go with ‘er, ‘George sneered. ‘You don’t know what yer might catch!’
Cursing under her breath, Molly pushed past George, holding on to the backs of chairs, desperate to get out now. The mocking voices followed her.
‘Look at the state of ‘er!’
‘D’yer think ‘er’ll make it ‘ome?’
‘Crying shame ain’t it, with ‘er looks? Could be a beauty queen.’
Molly pushed the door too hard and almost fell outside, spilling light on to the pavement.
‘Get that door shut – we’ll ‘ave that sodding warden round else! Don’t you know there’s a war on…!’’
‘It’s a miracle the siren ain’t gone off yet tonight…’
The air was damp and shockingly cold after the sweaty fug of the pub. Molly rallied and kicked the door shut so that the frame shuddered.
‘Bugger the lot of yer!’ she tried to yell. She wanted to shout a whole lot of other things which boiled up inside her, but all that came out was a mumbled stream of rubbish.
She felt terrible suddenly, her insides heaving. Thinking she was about to be sick she leaned back against the pub wall groaning, breathing in gulps of air to try and stop it. After a few moments the nausea subsided, but the sickness in her belly was nothing compared to that in her heart. The mocking voices echoed in her head. Course, you only ‘ave to look at that mother of ‘ers. George’s face, twisted with contempt. She closed her eyes, leaning into the pub wall. Loathing filled her: for all of them in there, for the mean, bomb-damaged Birmingham streets, the mizzling rain, and most of all for herself. Filthy, fast, ugly little Molly Fox. For she did feel small out there, all alone under the night sky. All alone with what Iris had said to her, what she’d blurted out that evening…
‘Must get along… I’m not drunk…’ she insisted to an invisible audience.
The street was deserted. The others in the pub were waiting for Time to be called. Staggering, Molly felt her way along holding on to walls, rebounding off them and back as her legs took her in unexpected directions. A jittering finger of light passed by on the other side of the street and she realized it was a torch. For a second its light flickered over the white-painted edge of the pavement.
‘Hey you!’ she shouted. ‘You cowing well stop and listen to me!’ She wagged a finger furiously at the departing light. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted from them except that they should do what she ordered. But they were gone, ignoring her. Rage bubbled up in her, then seeped away, leaving her desolate. Thoughts came and went, but she couldn’t hold on to them.
It was too quiet. Houses were muffled in black. She caught the low sound of voices, the murmur of a wireless, then silence as she passed the deep darkness of the warehouses. More houses afterwards, where she grazed her knee on a jutting bit of wall, tearing her stocking. She yelped and cursed. Why was it so quiet? She’d better start singing, that was the thing. Forget. Forget everything.
‘When you wish upon a sta-a-ar!’ she bawled, lurchingly. ‘Makes no…’
Her foot went down into nothingness and her body followed, overbalancing and crashing down into the road. Her shoulder, then hip hit the ground hard.
‘Aaagh!’ Molly cried furiously. ‘What d’yer go and do that for?’ She let out a string of curses.
Rolling on to her back she examined the situation from this new angle. The ground was hard and wet, and something was digging into her, but it felt like a rest after trying to stay upright. She shifted, trying to get a bit more comfortable and looked up into the gloom. Up there were the bloated barrage balloons to keep the evil black planes away. Bombs bombs – but not tonight.
‘But there’ll be a raid – there will,’ she informed the street loudly. ‘Wipe us all out, punish us…’
Other stray thoughts popped out of her mouth and then more singing. There were things she had to say. Big things. Everyone had to know. She started singing ‘I’m gonna lock my heart and throw away the key,’ loud and clear. She knew all the words, and put her heart and soul into it, broadcasting to the street at the top of her voice. It sounded fantastic: better than Ella Fitzgerald or Joe Loss’s band. She sang her heart out, so much that she didn’t notice the shards of brick under her head and the hard road, sang away the shadows, sang fit to burst!
Her performance drowned out the footsteps hurrying towards her along the road until suddenly a face loomed over hers and she was so startled, she screamed.
‘For goodness sake – shut up Molly!’ the face said heatedly. ‘I could hear you a mile off. What the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’
The face came into focus as that of Molly’s old school pal Emma Brown who lived somewhere round here. The face was topped by a tin hat of the sort Molly was turning out in the factory where she worked.
‘Hullo Em!’ Molly cried amiably, at the top of her voice. She giggled. ‘What’re you doing ‘ere? And why’re you wearing one of them hats?’