Read Soldier Girl for Free Online

see yer,’ Molly said, with a pang. She knew what store they set by her visits. Ever since Molly had run away from home as a child they had always offered her a haven away from Iris. If Iris hadn’t insisted that Molly return home, and Molly hadn’t felt that Jenny had enough problems already with an invalid husband, she would have happily stayed there.
    Jenny Button waddled along the narrow passage to the sound of her own rasping breaths and Wally’s nails tapping on the lino. They passed the little counter from where she sold her bread and buns on the way to the back room where she and Stanley lived, in one cramped room. The upper floor of the house was hardly used. Stanley had had his legs blown off by a shell in 1917 and could not move unassisted from bed or chair.
    ‘Stanley!’ Jenny announced at full volume. ‘You were right, it’s our Molly!’
    Molly heard his exclamation of pleasure and felt even more wretched about what she had come to tell them.
    They entered the back room, which was, as ever, stifling hot – ‘I’m not having my Stanley catching cold’ – with a fire in the grate and a single-bar electric fire pumping out heat as well. It was always very stuffy and rather smelly, but Molly was used to it. It felt like home. She immediately took off her coat, smiling at Stanley Button, who was sitting up in bed, bald as a baby now and beaming at her in delight.
    ‘ ’Ello, bab!’ he chirruped, happily. ‘Ooh, you’ve brought a cold wind in with yer, I can feel it billowing by! What’re you up to, young lady?’
    ‘I’ve come to see yer, that’s all,’ Molly said.
    ‘You’ll ’ave a cuppa tea won’t yer?’ Jenny said, disappearing out the back before Molly could say that she’d just had one at Em’s. It would have done no good anyway. When Jenny was determined to feed you, being fed was what happened and no arguments.
    ‘How’s the big wide world out there?’ Stanley wanted to know.
    ‘Much as usual,’ Molly said, as she always did. She perched on the chair opposite him, warming her hands at the fire.
    ‘Ooh, not these days.’ Stanley’s pink, kindly face looked troubled. His loose denture clicked as he spoke. ‘Never know what those Kraut bastards are going to’ve done for next. The Market Hall, the BSA . . .’ He sucked in his lips for a moment. ‘’Scuse my lingo, bab. Terrible about that cinema though.’ It had been playing on his mind ever since it had happened, a bomb landing on the Carlton cinema in Sparkbrook, while the show was on, at the end of October. ‘Terrible. Imagine it . . .’
    ‘But we still can’t get you to go into a shelter.’
    ‘I can’t get down into no shelter, bab,’ he said gently. Sometimes his watery blue eyes looked so little-boyish, he really touched Molly’s heart. ‘My Jenny says the same. We’ll take our chances together, the pair of us – in our own bed.’
    ‘There’s no telling you two, is there?’ Molly teased, gently.
    ‘I’m lucky to be alive as it is, bab. Always living on borrowed time.’
    Stanley gave her his sweetest of smiles and she knew not to say any more. Her heart lurched as his next question was usually what had she been up to, what was the news, and she didn’t feel ready to talk about that – not until Jenny was here. But instead, he looked reflective.
    ‘I don’t know why – I’ve been thinking a lot about the past – how it used to be . . .’ And he began to reminisce. Stanley was a local boy, had gone to another school in the area at Loxton Street. He loved to tell her about his childhood friends, many of whom had not survived the war, about their pranks and their games at the local playground known as Spion Kop. Before the Great War he had worked in a local metal-bashing company. Since the war maimed him, his working life – or much life at all, apart from Jenny pushing him along on rare outings in the wheelchair – had come to an end. Molly liked to listen to him, even though she’d heard