All The Days of My Life (35 page)

We came into a kind of lobby. The wallpaper was restrained and the lighting fairly low. Beyond this lay a bar where several men and some women stood drinking. My father spotted Tubby Atkinson with relief. Tubby bought us both a whisky and said glumly, “So this is to be our last night of pleasure, eh? Just as well. I dread the idea of getting carried away and staking my life on the turn of a card.”

My father, equally unenthusiastically, said, “Chemin de fer, then. Finish your drink.” A laugh went up from the other end of the bar where the group had thickened. Then one of them detached himself from the group and came towards me shouting, “Bert! Torn up your Band of Hope membership card?”

Embarrassed I saw his big form approaching me. I said, “Hullo, Charlie. Father – this is Charles Markham. Charlie – my father.”

“Oh,” said Charlie, unabashed. “Good evening, sir. And here
comes Tom –” Introductions were made. Tom Allaun was polite enough but I could tell my father disliked the pair of them. There was something about the combination of Charlie's large, ruddy-complexioned presence and Tom's pallor and slender body which together made each of them seem worse – as the bear pointing up the fox's cunning, so to speak, while the fox emphasized the brute strength of the bear. At college I would hear modern jazz coming from Tom's rooms. On the staircase I would meet friends of his going to visit him – they all tended to look like him, withdrawn, remote, sometimes older than the average undergraduate. He had a way of looking at me without expression as if waiting for me to commit myself to some foolish statement. I always felt he laughed at me behind my back. I have never quite known why I disliked Tom so much, but I did. Living in the same building with him I observed that he stayed up late and rose late, but that otherwise I had no idea of his habits. Charlie, on the other hand, was a celebrated university hooligan. This was no more endearing. His jokes often had a cruel side. Taken in combination Tom and Charlie gave the impression of being like the two Nazi interrogators – the pale Gestapo intellectual who trips you up in your mistakes and then hands you back to the big one for a spot more beating up or torture.

We all strolled up to the main room, which was very quiet and long, with reddish carpet and velvet curtains. And, of course, the green baize tables. And standing at one of them, croupier's rake in hand, there stood my princess, the girl I had seen at the Allauns' the Christmas before last. She was, in fact, just like a princess, in her pale satin dress, with her longish blonde hair falling round that spectacularly pretty face. The rake she held might well have been a mace. All she lacked was a crown.

She looked up and caught my eye. I went straight over to her.

“Mary,” I said. “It is you, isn't it?”

“The very same,” she told me. A tall young man in evening clothes walked up to her and she said something to him. He nodded and took the rake. The game continued and she came over to us.

I introduced her to my father and his friend. My father seemed surprised, which I thought was merely because he did not expect me to know a croupier in a London gaming house.

He was studying her deeply, and after we had chatted about the circumstances of our meeting he asked, “Will you come and have a drink with us at the bar? I don't feel like playing just at present.”

“Well –” she said. “I'm really supposed – but never mind. Yes – I'd like to.”

So we all trooped back to the bar again. My father turned his full attention on Mary and began to ask her about herself. I watched him in awe. To begin with, she evidently liked him and felt at ease with him, so much so that I began to think my father was starting a suspect middle-age phase and might now abandon a hitherto blameless life to take up gambling and go about with pretty girls. In spite of my horror at this prospect I was lost in admiration of his technique. If he asks her out to dinner, I thought, lost between jealousy and admiration, she'll accept. She'll go.

“No, I don't live here,” she was telling him. “I live in a little house in the same street as my mum and dad. I've got a small daughter who lives with my mother during the week and comes to me at weekends.”

“A respectable girl, really,” said Charlie Markham, who suddenly seemed rather drunk, and had his hand heavily clasped round the upper part of Molly's arm.

Molly flinched and a look of fear came into her eyes before she pulled away her arm and said, “Not really. Maybe a bit more respectable than you are, though.”

“No – I insist,” said Charlie, and he pushed his face close to hers. “You've got a heart of gold, Molly. A heart of gold, that's what you've got. Didn't I always say that, Tom?”

“You certainly did – and do,” responded Tom Allaun.

“Surely the tables are calling for you young men?” said my father. “Perhaps you should go upstairs and take the first bet of the evening. Are you going, too?” he asked turning to me. And I had no option but to leave, dragging Tom and Charlie reluctantly behind me. As I went upstairs Tom, from behind, said in a low voice, “Pater often take up with pretty girls in clubs, Bert?”

“Only when the moon's full,” I told him, itching for the moment when I could get away from them.

And finally, after losing fifty pounds I could not afford, while Charlie watched my face as I lost and Tom egged me on, hoping, no doubt, that I would start to gamble feverishly without caring what happened, I got out from between their elbows and left them to it. By then their faces had both taken on a steady stare as they watched the dice, the cards and the croupier's rake taking the chips. They barely said goodnight once I had told them I was leaving. But, “You must call your old man into the study before he goes to bed,” Tom remembered
to say. “You'd better have a serious talk to him about his life.”

I found my father in the bar alone, gloomily drinking a glass of whisky and dry ginger. There was no sign of Molly. “Tubby's gone,” he told me. “Have you had enough?”

“More than enough,” I told him.

In the taxi he asked, “Are they special friends of yours, Allaun and Markham?”

“Certainly not,” I said. “Tom lives on my staircase and Charlie's his cousin, that's all. I met them over Christmas when I was staying with Sebastian. They're neighbours, or rather Tom is. But as a matter of fact, I don't like either of them much.”

“I'm glad of that,” muttered my father.

“Did you enjoy your chat with Mary?” I asked him and he picked up my tone immediately.

“She's a very nice girl,” he reassured me, adding, “Although I'm sure I don't know how.” And after a pause he said, “Or for how much longer.”

For several months Molly Flanders went to work, took a cab back to Meakin Street in the early hours of the morning, slept late, did her household jobs and sometimes picked up Josephine from the bread-shop in the afternoons and took her to the park. For a time she was happy with this routine. She needed to recover from the shocks of the previous few months but, as spring came on and the evenings grew lighter, she became restless. There was nothing she particularly wanted to do but she was bored with what she was doing. So when Ferenc Nedermann turned up at the club one evening and invited her out to dinner she accepted, rather than say no to yet another invitation. She was too wise to do more than flirt with the more enterprising visitors to Frames and the truth was that she felt no interest in any of them. Johnnie had spoiled her for men. She did not trust them. She knew, too, that most of the men at Frames would see her as nothing more than fair game for them – something like an air hostess or a pretty nurse, not to be taken seriously. Nedermann, on the other hand, was middle-aged and sad. He did not want sex, or romance or a good time with a pretty girl – all the things she could no longer give. In the end he sent a big car for her to take her to the Savoy Grill. The driver of the car explained that Nedermann himself had been delayed. Molly,
full of childish pleasure, settled down against the leather upholstery and enjoyed the ride.

Nedermann was waiting for her outside. When they had settled in the restaurant he said, “How pretty you look tonight – the prettiest girl in this room. I feel proud to be seen with you.”

Molly smiled. She said, “Thank you.” But she thought that if Nedermann was going to court her she would have to tell him she was not interested. He, however, gazed at her with his narrow black eyes and said, “I know you are upset about Johnnie Bridges. I only wished to tell you that you looked nice. Few women object to that.”

“It's kind of you,” she told him. “I'm sorry – I still feel unhappy about the past. I'm sorry if I'm not much fun.”

“I don't ask you to be funny,” he said. “Do you want to hear how he is?”

“I suppose so,” she said.

“Then I'll tell you. I found him. I no longer needed my money so much but I became obstinate and I thought, I'll find you, Johnnie, because you evade me and you owe me money. So I thought, he'll be somewhere – I'll be the detective and find him. It was a challenge, you see, and I must say that I am like the Roses. I don't like to be cheated. If he had come to me and explained he could not pay I could have accepted it. To hide like a child – that was too much.”

Molly pulled a face and said, “I wonder if I want to hear any more.”

“Better to listen,” he advised. “Listen and learn. Shall I go on?”

Molly drank some wine and said, “All right. So – you pulled on your deerstalker and –”

“Deerstalker?” he enquired.

“Like Sherlock Holmes,” she told him.

It was quiet in the restaurant. There was no noise from the busy traffic outside in the Strand. “Yes. Like Sherlock Holmes,” he agreed. “As you know these people never go very far, in the end. They hide, then they drift back to the pubs, the clubs – so I looked around there but no one had seen him. And after that I thought, where else do these spoilt boys go when they're in trouble and want a bath and fresh clothes and a sympathetic face? Why – back to their mothers, I thought. And after a short search I found the big criminal at home in South London, in front of the fire, eating crumpets like a little prince. And outside, as I'd suspected, the big white car. These heroes will never get rid of the car, whatever they owe. Because how else will they impress women and keep self-respect? That car is them, as they see
themselves – fast, flashy and expensive. It broke his heart to part with that car. I had him away from the fireside and at the garage in no time. The man handed him the money in cash and I put my hand out straight away. His face was like at mother's funeral.”

Molly burst out laughing. Nedermann's sobriety as he spoke, and his oddly accented English, made the story even funnier. Seeing her laugh, Nedermann's face split into a wide, boyish smile.

“He should have known better than to take on an old Pole,” he told her. “And yet,” he said, “I envied him. No wonder women love men like that. They have all the cleverness and ingenuity and innocent selfishness of small boys. Yet they are men. They are irresistible. Later, of course, it will become plainer that he never intends to grow up. Peter Pan. It may seem less charming later.” He paused. “Better to grow up – in the end,” he said.

“You sound as if it's painful,” remarked Molly, intrigued in spite of herself, although she thought the conversation slightly odd.

“You know – you have made a beginning. You are older than Johnnie now.”

“Eat your dinner, Ferenc,” she said, pointing at the plate he had in front of him. “I'll talk about lovely subjects while you get on with it.”

“I don't mind about the dinner,” Nedermann said. “In such company, food is far from my thoughts.”

“Well, it shouldn't be,” she said firmly. And she told him anecdotes about the club – the Chinese who had taken £10,000 from a man and given it back to him on the pavement outside the same night; the midget who had been playing roulette standing on a chair at the table until they found he was leaning on it slightly in order to help the ball into the right hole; the contretemps in the ladies room when a man the attendant knew to be a celebrated transvestite tried to gain entry and use the lavatory. “She cries out,” reported Molly, “‘I know you well, Lord Brawn, and I hate to think what your mother would have to say at all this.' I was coming upstairs with Simon at the time and we couldn't believe our eyes. Simon caught on fastest – he just stepped forward and said, ‘Let the lady in just this one time, Mrs Jones.' He's very sophisticated – Simon.” But, she said, seeing that Nedermann had eaten part of his dinner, “What I don't understand is why you lent Johnnie that money in the first place. You're not a fool, you must have known what would happen.”

“It didn't matter to me at the time,” answered Nedermann. “And I
didn't want to see the Roses get him. They are dogs.”

“I thought you might have been trying to get him into a position where he had to sell you his part of the club,” she said bluntly.

“Oh no,” he said, surprised. “I don't want the club. I don't want the complications of pandering to the rich. A man in my position, an emigré, a refugee – it is simpler to deal with the poor.”

He's barmy, thought Molly suddenly. That's the answer – he's barmy. I'll eat up and go, that's the best thing to do.

Nedermann contemplated her placidly. “And I get what I want,” he said. “Johnnie's working for me now. That way he can pay back the remainder of the money he owes me.”

“What?” exclaimed Molly, too loudly. She lowered her voice. “He's dishonest – you know that. Why give him a job?”

“He's very capable,” Nedermann replied. “I need an assistant with some brains – the others – hooligans, stupid people. They ruin the business and rob me as well. I need a man to help me with the confusion. Johnnie can sort it out. If he robs me – well, he robs me. I can get rid of him.”