All The Days of My Life (53 page)

By this time she had reached the bottom of the stairs and was opening the kitchen door cautiously. She saw herself, a severe figure in hornrimmed glasses, behind a pile of books. It was dark in the yard outside and she could not at first see where the squeaking sound was coming from. Then she jumped back with a scream – something had touched her foot. She looked back into the lighted kitchen. On the floor by the stove a skinny little black and white kitten sat, with its tail curled round it, mewing up at her. Mary bolted the kitchen door and gave it some milk. She watched its small pink tongue lapping at the milk and said, “All right, Tibbles. Stay if you like. Time I got a nice little cat to go with my nice new little life.” The cat, she reflected, as she went upstairs, would cheer Josephine, who had been whisked off to Ivy's at a moment of crisis, which she plainly understood, and was now going to move into the humble and untended house. Nedermann, who had given her everything else, had refused to allow her any pets. Even goldfish, he had declared, were unhygienic. There would also be a percentage in turning her new life into something very ordinary and boring. In a small house, with a gangling twelve-year-old child, a secretarial course and, now, a common black and white cat, Molly felt she would be too unglamorous for Arnie Rose to bother with. She decided she would, to deter him further, make sure of a few nights' work a week at the Marquis of Zetland. The money would help, too. So, imagining Josephine happy, a new career in view and Arnie Rose getting into his big, black car and saying farewell to Meakin Street, Molly, finally, went contentedly to sleep. The cat, dissatisfied with a cushion in the kitchen, came upstairs, nosed into the room and slept beside her, with its head on the pillow.

In spite of the cat and in spite of paying a secretarial college more than half her store of money for a four-month course in shorthand and typing, Molly had not reckoned with the fact that, at twenty-eight, she was if anything better-looking by far than she had been at eighteen. Her face had lost its childish roundness, giving it more definition. Her blue eyes still sparkled and her wide mouth, even in repose, still smiled,
but her carriage now expressed maturity. All this only intrigued Arnie Rose more. The pretty girl he had once made automatic advances to now had some distinction. “She can't take up with rabble no more,” he reported gloomily to his brother Norman. “She'll soon find that out. All I got to do is wait.” To this Norman replied, “So you say, Arnie. So you say. But I'm telling you – a bird'll do anything, anything at all.”

Arnie called at Meakin Street two or three times a week. Each time, Molly had to let him in. Any other contenders there might have been were soon warned off, by the landlord at the Marquis of Zetland, for example, who had only to mention that Molly was being courted by one of the Rose brothers to see the flirtatious customer immediately back off when Molly returned to the bar.

“It's hopeless, mum,” she wailed to Ivy Waterhouse one day. “I'm doing all I can to make it plain I'm trying to be independent. I even tell him I have to start my typing practice after Josie's in bed. Nine o'clock I start rattling on the machine but he still hangs about with his bottles of champagne and I don't know what. Then, I have to go out for a meal with him sometimes and the story's wearing thin – about how I can't get over Ferenc's death. He turns up at the pub of a night and puts the customers off. Now Ginger's beginning to complain – he says he's turning away trade. The boozers can't relax while he's sitting there. And he's going down to the school and bringing Josie home in the car. What am I going to do? I can't refuse him outright but I'm scared if I don't give in he'll take it out on all of us.”

“You're cornered,” said Ivy. “That's the trouble. I think in the end you might just have to tell him it's no good.”

“Even you don't know what he's like,” Molly told her mother. “Think of everything horrible anyone could do to anyone and then double it – then you've got Arnie.”

“Sid and Jack'll have to speak to him,” said Ivy.

“Then Sid has an accident on the way to the depot and Jack falls off the dock,” Molly told her. She said glumly, “It's your fault I was born so beautiful, mother.” For some reason, Ivy flinched.

That evening Arnie called again and sat under the Christmas tree in the little parlour in Molly's house. The cat prowled between the two motionless figures in the lamplight. Josephine was in the kitchen, doing her homework. Molly sat quite still, like a hunted animal, hoping its enemy will think it gone. Inwardly she was screaming the scream of a woman courted against her will by a man who will not go away.

“I don't know why you don't get rid of that scruffy, nervy thing, Molly,” said Arnie, looking at the cat. “Why don't I get you a nice poodle – a pedigree.”

“I couldn't look after a dog properly while I'm taking this course,” replied Molly. The cat sprang on her lap and began to purr. “Anyway,” she said discouragingly, “these houses are running with mice.”

“You don't have to live here if you don't want to,” Arnie told her. “I thought I'd made that plain.” His tone carried some menace. He had come to the conclusion that grief for Ferenc must end. “I expect you let him in the bedroom at night.”

“He's company,” Molly remarked. It was the wrong remark.

“No need to be alone, darling,” Arnie replied. “I can think of better answers than an unhygienic cat. They can give you diseases, you know.”

“Opening time,” said Molly, getting to her feet. “I'd better go – Ginger's complaining because I'm always late.”

“Sit down, Molly,” Arnie ordered. Molly looked at him. His face was expressionless. Thinking of Josephine, still doing algebra in the kitchen with the oven door open to provide some heat, she sat down. “See here, Molly,” he said, “it upsets me to see a girl like you in a rathole like this when she could have something a lot better. It upsets me to see you mourning over Ferenc like this. It's time you pulled yourself together and made a few decisions. I've made my offer and I'm beginning to think you're keeping me on a string. I don't like that. I don't like it at all.”

Molly stood up. She went close to him and made her eyes go very big. She kept her face very still. She said in a low voice, “I'm afraid of myself, Arnie. You might think I'm superstitious but I'm afraid I could be a bringer of bad luck. Look what's happened to the men in my life – Jim Flanders – hanged. Steven Greene – suicide in a police cell. Ferenc Nedermann – dead in his forties with the coppers after him. What would you think if you were me? You might start to wonder if you didn't carry something bad with you.” She dropped her voice even lower and said, “Like a kind of curse.”

The room was lit only by one lamp. Arnie gazed up into Molly's large, unblinking eyes. He looked away and said, “That's nonsense, Molly. You're brooding, that's what you're doing. It's unhealthy. It's just a coincidence, that's all.”

“I expect you're right, Arnie,” Molly said, in an unconvinced, melancholy voice, “but I can't help thinking these things.”

She knew that like many criminals Arnold Rose was superstitious. In a world where chance plays an important part, being lucky, or unlucky, mattered. He saw her to the door of the Marquis of Zetland with a thoughtful look on his face and did not come in for a drink, as he often did.

So far, so good, thought Molly, going into the pub and taking her old shoes out of the cupboard below the bar. But it won't work for long. Then what can I do? I'll have to go, but what about Josephine? What about me? Whatever can I do?

After the pub shut officially she was washing glasses in the sink behind the bar when Lil Messiter said, from her corner, “Not your usual smiling self tonight, Moll.” Her voice was slurred. Molly, seeing her glass was empty, filled a pint mug with Guinness and took it over to her. She set it in front of the half-drunk woman and said, “Here you are, Mrs Messiter.” Then she went back to the washing-up. The landlord often let Lil Messiter stay behind in the pub after closing time. He gave her a free drink, too. Everyone in Meakin Street knew that Lil had had a hard life. She was forty-eight and looked sixty. She had something wrong with her womb. Her husband, who had been a violent man, had died ten years before, leaving her with two children still at school and the other, George, still a toddler. Cissie was then a student nurse at St Thomas's hospital, Edna had married and Phil had run away from home and was living in Scotland. There was no one to offer help or money. Lil had gone out to work as a charwoman to keep her children. Now two of the boys had joined the navy Lil lived alone with her youngest child. She was tired, much older than her years. The older children now sent her a little money. She worked when she was able, and was drunk as often as she could afford. A brutal husband, poverty and five children had broken her. Now she sat in the corner of the Marquis of Zetland with her pint, small and shrivelled up and as happy now as she would ever be.

Molly, still washing up vigorously, looked over at her and told her, “I don't seem to feel I've got a lot to smile about, Mrs Messiter. But we've all got our problems, eh?”

“Life's not easy for a woman on her own,” Lil said, shaking her head, “even if she has got lovely golden hair.”

“That can make it worse,” Molly told her as she wiped down the bar with long sweeps of her arm.

“Don't fancy Arnie, then?” asked Lil, looking automatically at the door of the pub, to make sure that it was shut. “It takes a man to get rid
of a man,” she added. “As long as you're there on your own he'll keep on prowling round.”

“Have another half, Mrs Messiter?” asked Mary. “It's all right – I can't go home till I've swept up.”

“I'll have another drop,” Lil replied. As Molly brought the glass over Lil looked up at her with bleary eyes. Her grey-brown hair was tangled. She put a skinny hand on Molly's arm as she picked up the used glass and said, “Get rid of him, Molly.”

Molly said in an undertone, “What can I do? He's dangerous.”

“Find someone who can tackle him,” said the woman.

“The Brigade of Guards couldn't do it,” Molly told her.

She went behind the bar, got the broom out of the cupboard and began to sweep the floor.

“You'll have to kill him then,” Lil said, beginning to laugh. “Take the carving knife to him.” She drank from her glass of beer and went on cackling.

“Keep your voice down, Mrs M,” Molly warned, as she swept.

“Drop something in his tea – murder him,” said Lil, enjoying it.

Molly hastily swept up the dirt and cigarette ends and went out to the dustbins at the back with her dustpan. She emptied it, rinsed out the drying-up cloths and hung them on the sink to dry.

“All finished, Mrs Messiter?” she asked. “Come on – I'll see you home.”

She took her by the arm and helped her up the street. It was eleven-thirty but her half-grown son, George, was still up.

“Put her to bed, there's a good lad,” she said. “She's had one over the eight tonight.” Then, studying his anxious face, she pulled out her purse and said, “Here's half a dollar for you – take it to please me.

He grasped his mother round the waist with one arm and took the money with the other. “Thanks,” he said. “Come on, Mum – time for Uncle Ned.”

What a fucking awful life for that boy, thought Molly, crossing Meakin Street in the drizzle. Not too good for any of us, at the moment. “Oh Christ!” she muttered when she spotted the figure in the darkness pressed up against her front door. Lamps made shiny patches in the puddles in the street. There was no one else about.

‘Hullo, Moll,” said the man in her doorway.

“Who's that?” she asked, approaching. But of course she knew.

“It's Johnnie, Moll,” he said.

Now she fished in her handbag for the doorkeys, saying, “What a surprise.”

He followed her in. In the passageway he took her round the waist and tried to turn her round and kiss her but she pulled away, saying, “What are you doing here?” She put out her hand and turned on the light. He smiled at her, almost as if he mimicked his old, carefree smile, but now he was thinner, his face sallower and the smile seemed more like a rictus. “Something wrong?” she said. “Is that why you're here?”

“You've got hard, Molly,” he could not resist saying.

“I'm older and wiser,” she warned him. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

“What sort of a welcome is that?” he asked.

“Best you'll get – better than you deserve,” she said. “I've been on my feet all evening at the pub and I'm tired.”

He stood too close to her in the kitchen as she put the kettle on and put out the cups. Trying, Mary thought angrily, to see if she would respond to him as once she had. Using the body with which he had controlled several whores, one less than sixteen years old. And she asked again, “What are you doing here – are you in trouble?”

“A little bit,” he admitted.

She poured him a cup of tea and told him, “Then you'd better take yourself and your trouble elsewhere.” She lit the oven to warm up the small kitchen and offered him a cigarette.

He wore a pale woollen suit and a black roll-necked sweater. There was a gold watch on his wrist. “The point is, Johnnie,” she said, “I'm busy at the moment, and tired, and I've got a girl of twelve. There isn't much room for trouble here.”

“I heard you were back here,” he told her, “and I was a bit surprised. I thought Ferenc would have left you in better nick. What happened to Orme Square? Didn't he put something aside for you so you'd be all right?”

“Things were in a right old state when he died,” Molly said. “And, after all, he wasn't expecting to die. He'd never had anything wrong with him.”