All The Days of My Life (25 page)

Ivy picked a time when Johnnie was out and went round to Meakin Street. Mary, sitting in front of the fire with the baby on her knee, began to cry. “It's not fair, Mum,” she said. “Why do I have to get stuck like this?”

“That's what happens to women,” Ivy told her unsympathetically. “Anyway – I can't do nothing about it. I can't defy your father. My life'd be a misery. And perhaps it's for the best. It'll give you a chance
to look at it all clearly. He's a crook, when all's said and done. And where does he disappear to when he's not here?”

“I don't care,” cried Mary. “All I know is Josephine's spoiled my chances.”

“Don't sit there with that baby on your knee talking like that,” said Ivy. “Your own child – less than a year old.”

“My child – oh yes,” Mary said bitterly. “What about Jim Flanders? Where's her dad? Bloody dead, that's all – went out and got himself hung, that's all. Oh, mum – can't you mind Josie for an hour while I go out and find Johnnie?”

“If he had anything to him he'd be here with you, now,” her mother said implacably.

“Yes – watching the telly,” Mary said.

Mary sat with tears running down her face, imagining Johnnie, who had been gone for three days, with Susie or Jeanne. He would never come back – if he did he would not stay, not if she had Josephine with her night and day. She could not afford to pay someone to mind her child all the time. Even if she could, most of their outings were spontaneous. She would not be able to organize it. And now Ivy was against her. Just because she had a child the whole world wanted her to resign from life. She was supposed to live like a nun, tending an altar. And the altar was to be Josephine. It wasn't fair. Not fair. Not fair.

“It's not fair,” she said.

“Nothing is,” responded her mother.

“I can't put up with it,” she sobbed.

“You'll have to,” said her mother. “All the rest of us did.”

“Oh – oh – oh,” cried Mary, sobbing and shouting with rage and pain. “I'll kill myself. I will. I will.”

Ivy took Josephine from her and said, “You'll have to start watching what you say in front of this child. She's clever. She understands more than you think. And it's time she went to bed.”

While Ivy was upstairs settling the baby Mary thought wildly of grabbing her coat and going round the clubs to find Johnnie. Ivy would have to look after Josephine if she had gone. But the thought of the rows to follow frightened her.

She sat and bit her nails to the quick.

Ten days later Johnnie still had not returned. Mary had lost seven pounds in weight and was pale as a ghost. She was sleeping only a few hours each night and, when she did, her dreams terrified her. She had had the same dreams before, in childhood, but not so regularly, or so
frighteningly. There were burning buildings, crashes, which often woke her, and often a woman's high voice sang over the sounds of destruction, in a foreign language. It was a voice full of loss and sadness, hopeless, forlorn.

She was lying sleepless in bed, and dreading sleep, when the doorknocker was banged over and over again. It was one in the morning. Mary, her heart thudding, ran downstairs in her nightdress. There on the step stood Johnnie Bridges, red-eyed, his suit unpressed, his shirt open at the neck.

“You'd better come in,” said Mary.

Once the door was shut behind them he took her in his arms and began to kiss her. “Come on, girl,” he muttered. “Upstairs. I need you.”

“Not so fast,” Mary said. “You haven't been back for a fortnight.”

Then he pulled her unresistingly up the stairs and made love to her like a starving man. “Oh, God. I've missed you,” he said.

And this made up for everything. At that moment, Josie shouted. There was a bang. Mary jumped out of bed and ran into the bedroom next door. The child was standing on the floor in her nightdress. As Mary stared she walked towards her. Mary caught her as she fell down. “She got out of the cot,” Mary exclaimed. “She can walk!”

“We'll have to take her into bed with us,” said Johnnie. “She might do it again and hurt herself.”

So the three slept cosily together that night. But next day, early, he was off again. “You can't do this,” Mary cried out. “It's not fair.”

Bending to kiss her he said, “You'll have to trust me. We'll go out tonight. Pick you up at seven.”

Mary, in bed, shed a tear on the baby's dark curls. Then she lay back luxuriously and felt a lot better. The constant pain and the nightmares had gone. She had hope, now.

As she left the house with Johnnie that evening Sid, coming home from work in his inspector's uniform, spotted them from across the street as he trudged home. Johnnie was wearing an immaculate shirt and a new well-cut blue suit, just collected from the tailor. Mary wore a bell-skirted red dress and a white fur cape. Mary's father looked away and walked on.

“He'd have to speak to me at the wedding,” Johnnie remarked, opening the car door for her. Mary got in, holding the baby, saying nothing. There were times when she was dying to get married to Johnnie. On the other hand, she had seen what happened to you when
you married – the whole world expected you to get out of bed with double pneumonia to get your husband's tea or find his socks. As with a baby, a husband was expected to be something like a religion for a woman – down Meakin Street the menfolk were discussed as if they were gods, the sort of god which needed a lot of human sacrifice and tended to do nasty things for no reason. “I'll have to go home and get His tea now,” the women would say. Or, “I'd like to do it but He'd make my life a misery.” Then, Mary thought, you had to put up with whatever they slung at you and get old before your time. Look at Lil Messiter, half dead from childbearing, the old man taking his spite out on her when he'd had one too many. It didn't look like fun, even when the man was reasonable and the couple loved each other, as she supposed Sid and Ivy did. In Johnnie's circles, she thought, the story was a bit different, but no better. The wives got tucked away in nice houses somewhere in the suburbs while the men went off to clubs, pubs and the races, taking pretty girls with them. She wouldn't want to be one of the wives but the fate of the girls, like Jeanne and Susie, wasn't much good in the long run as they got older and the presents got smaller and they changed hands more often. Once their freshness was gone – and it didn't last long – they disappeared. But the wives looked strained when they appeared in public in their smart dresses, covered in diamanté, and the make-up heavy over faces which had once been as bright as Jeanne's or Susie's. The choices ahead of her were unappealing – hang around and maybe get jaded and start drinking too many gins; marry Johnnie and get tucked away in Ilford, or Dulwich, in a four-bedroomed suburban house with the kids. She sighed and then threw off the thoughts. She was happy now and that was enough. She squeezed Johnnie's arm as they drove round Trafalgar Square and thought suddenly of the Kentish countryside where she had lived as a child. She thought of Allaun Towers and Mrs Gates. She saw the reeds growing by the unkempt lake, the red brick wall of the vegetable garden, the old green brocade chair in her room at the corner of the house. She saw the fields, and the swell of gorse-covered heath above them. She saw every leaf on the elms beside the drive, the gravel in front of the house, with little green tufts of weed growing among the stones. She saw the two pigeons which had nested in a chimney sitting on the lead guttering below her attic, cooing and fluffing out their feathers. She saw the brook, the watercress growing in the shallow water, the long grass along its sides. Then she realized that she and Johnnie were crossing Lambeth Bridge.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Ah – thought I'd satisfy your curiosity about my secret gaff,” he told her. “The horrible sordid place I creep into when I'm not with you.”

“Oh,” she said.

He took her hand as they swung round a corner. “You had a rough time while I was gone, didn't you?” he said.

“It was horrible, Johnnie,” she blurted out. “I thought you were never coming back. I was like a madwoman. I had dreadful dreams –”

“All right now?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I love you, Johnnie,” she said.

“I love you, Moll,” he said. He had never told her that before.

She felt empty, suddenly, and the memory, dimly, of those half-realized dreams, about crashes and fires, all overlaid with the sweet, sad voice of a woman singing, came back to her. “I must be going barmy,” she said to herself. In fact this ride seemed like another dream. They raced the streets. The baby slept on her lap. Where were they going?

“Is it far?” she asked him.

“No – few more miles,” he answered. “Anyway, Moll, I've got some plans. I want to change things. I think I'm going to be able to set myself up nicely.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked him.

“You know what they say – never tell a woman anything,” he told her.

“Why not?”

“It's an old motto in the business. Most of the time you're better off not knowing. Anyway, while I was away I managed to raise a little capital – which I'm thinking of investing and going legitimate.”

“Oh, Johnnie – what a relief,” she said. “You don't know what it's like, wondering what's happening.” Although she thought to herself that it had not been Johnnie's arrest she had dreaded over those recent awful days – it had been his desertion of her.

Then she realized, as they entered suburban, tree-lined streets full of houses built in the nineteenth century, each with a large garden at the front, that there must be some connection between this trip and his new plans. By the time they drew up in front of one of the houses she had become quite excited. They got out and looked at the front of the house. The garden was well tended. There were roses still blooming.

“Here we are,” he said. “The secret hide-away of arch-criminal
Johnnie Bridges.” Mary doubled up, hanging on to the baby, laughing fit to bust.

“I don't believe it,” she said. “You're having me on.”

A large tabby cat walked up to them as they stood on the pavement. It began to rub up against Johnnie's trouser leg.

“This your cat?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. Mary roared with laughter again.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” she cried. She bent over, holding the baby against her stomach like a bundle of laundry.

“Stand up,” he said, “you're making an exhibition of yourself.”

Mary pulled herself together, although a fresh look at the cat, now walking affrontedly up the garden path, made her start again.

“This is where my mum and dad live,” Johnnie said with some dignity. She glanced at him as they walked towards the front door. How handsome he was – how well set-up. He smiled down at her. She melted. She wished for a moment they were in bed in Meakin Street. She did not really want to meet his parents. She wanted him all to herself. A private world of whispering and bodies locked together. But there was a woman of about fifty, dressed in a dark pink woollen dress, standing already on the threshold. She held out her arms, “Johnnie.” He embraced her, said, “Hullo, Dad,” over her shoulder to an invisible person in the hall and then stood back, “Mum, Dad,” he said. “This is Mary.”

“Come in,” said Mrs Bridges. She was small and dark, with the same large, black eyes as her son. As they went inside she said, “You're very welcome. I was just taking some scones out of the oven. Why don't you bring the baby into the kitchen with me?”

In the large, very clean kitchen there was a smell of baking. Mrs Bridges put on a flowered apron and opened the oven door. She took out a tray of scones. “Just in time,” she remarked. Mary sat down at the kitchen table with the baby on her lap. Josephine struggled to get down.

“She's just learned to walk,” she said. “She wants to do it all the time.”

“Little love,” said Mrs Bridges. “What lovely curly hair. Put her down on the floor and we'll both watch her.” She unloaded the scones on to a wire rack. “I'll put the kettle on,” she said. “Is there anything you want for the baby?”

“She only wants some orange juice later, from her bottle,” Mary said. “I've got that. Can I do anything to help you? Butter the scones?”

“Here's the butter,” Mrs Bridges said. “You go ahead while I make some sandwiches.” Josephine toddled across the kitchen floor while the two women got on with their buttering. “Nice to have a baby about again,” Mrs Bridges said. “We haven't had a baby in the house since my niece came to stay over Christmas.”

In a way it felt to Mary like being back in the kitchen at Allaun Towers. It was peaceful. The clock ticked. It was unlike Ivy's mad scrambles around the tiny kitchen at Meakin Street. In another way she felt very uneasy. Why was she there and who did they think she was? Above all – did they know how their son made a living? How could they?

“John's never brought a girl back here before,” Mrs Bridges said. “Not since he was eighteen, anyway.”

Mary was searching for some answer to this when the tall, thin man she had passed in the hall put his head round the door. “Any signs of tea, yet, Mother?” he asked. “The beasts are getting restless.”

“Go and wash your hands, Edward,” Mrs Bridges remarked placidly. “Then you can help with the things.”

And so tea was loaded on to the trolley and the teapot was left on the kitchen table for Mr Bridges to carry in.

When they got into the front room Johnnie was half asleep in front of the fire, with his legs stretched out.

“Take no notice,” Mrs Bridges advised Mary. “He only comes here to sleep in front of the fire. He reminds me of the cat.”

“The cat's got more energy,” remarked Mr Bridges, coming in with the teapot in one hand and a fireguard in the other. He hooked the fireguard onto the sides of the fireplace, remarking, “Don't want any accidents, do we? John – your mother says do you want a scone?”