All The Days of My Life (71 page)

“ ‘Abbé des Frères Chrétiens',” she read. “ ‘Poulaye-sur-Bois. Loire.' He writes a steady hand for an old gentleman – oh, well, perhaps he was a young gentleman when he made this deposition.”

“He was,” I said. “That was probably why he got mixed up in the affair in the first place.”

“Could still be alive,” she said.

“I doubt it,” I told her.

“A wedding photograph!” she exclaimed. “You didn't tell me there was a photograph.”

“I didn't tell you anything,” I pointed out.

“But a photograph!” she said again.

“Village photographer,” I explained. “My father went over a few years after it happened and got all the information, including the photograph. And the negative.”

“Where's that?” she asked.

“Handed over,” I told her.

“I wonder what they did with it?”

“I don't suppose they had an enlargement made for the family album,” I said.

“They look a happy couple,” she said, studying the old picture closely.

“I often thought that,” I said. “I doubt if either was really ever so happy again.” My wife looked at me sadly, and said, “What a tragedy.”

“A mess-up from start to finish,” I told her. “Lies, concealments – no justice done. It's damned depressing.”

Corrie, now sobered, went on reading. She looked up again and asked me sharply, “What happened to the other one?”

“Dead,” I told her.

“It doesn't say so here,” she said.

“Everybody else died,” I said. “Read the reports for yourself.”

“I have – there isn't any mention of a child.”

Meanwhile the wind came up stronger. Corrie read on and on. The wind howled round the house and down the chimney, making the fire flicker to and fro. I sat on for a while, watching Corrie read the records of the old crimes, lies, concealments and evasions to which I had made myself an accomplice in the name of service. It began to make me nervous. The wind seemed to be howling old screams at me, or old accusations, I didn't know which. As Corrie read, I also seemed to hear her own mental commentary on the whole affair. I suppose this may have been one of the reasons why I was not very pleased when she asked me to read the files – there is something about the attitude of a firm-minded and sensible woman which can throw a cold and unkind light on the activities of men working according to established precedents and moral standards. In the light of pragmatism many male activities look like folly. In the end, unable to sit and watch her any more, I retreated to the dining room where I sat looking at a film on the television and wishing there were someone in the house other than just the two of us.

She was silent as we ate our dinner. Finally I said, “What did you think about it all?”

She looked at me rather soberly and said, “In the end I wondered how they dared involve you so deeply. Or your father. Even after you left they've called you in for an opinion, or that's what it looks like now.”

“It's a long tradition,” I said. I thought the discussion was finished, but that night, in bed, she said, “Bert – I've got a feeling the matter hasn't ended. Do you think that boy could still be alive?” I imagine I responded as people do in such circumstances, by saying, “Let's go to sleep,” or “Can we talk about it in the morning?” But she persisted, “This could burst, like a boil, at any moment.” And here I remember saying, “Corrie – I don't think I appreciate your choice of words at this time of night. Shall we go to sleep now?” I distinctly remember her reply coming at me through a fog of sleep, “It seems to me that you've been asleep half your life.” At the time I thought she was just being unpleasant – in retrospect, I realize she was in some ways right.

At about the same time Molly Allaun and her other mother-in-law, Joe Endell's mother, were sitting on a rug by the lake with the pram containing the baby, who had been named Frederick, after his grandfather.

“Clouding over,” said Evelyn, looking up.

“It's nice of you to come all this way to see me and the baby. I could have come to you.”

“It's easier for me to come here,” Evelyn Endell said. “And it makes a break to come to Kent.”

She had probably wanted to see where and how her grandchild was being brought up. Molly said, “I'm sorry conditions are so rough. It's worse since Mrs Gates died. I don't think Isabel realized how much of the work she was doing.”

“I don't suppose she did,” Evelyn agreed drily.

“It might come down to going back to Meakin Street,” Molly said. She did not add that it might be a question of going there alone, without Tom.

“Pity, though,” her former mother-in-law said ruefully. “This is a lovely place. A child couldn't ask for a better spot to grow up in.” Then she opened her large buff handbag, which lay beside her on the bank and said, “I hope this won't upset you – I thought of sending it and decided to give it all to you myself.” She pulled out a big brown envelope and told Molly, “It's all Joe's papers. Everything. I've made copies. I thought you'd like to have them for the boy, when he's older. There's school reports and his first article for the local paper – oh – and all sorts.”

“Oh, thank you,” Molly said, taking the envelope. “Thank you,
Evelyn.” Overwhelmed for a moment by her own sorrow she remembered a little later that this was Joe's mother, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “At least I had his son – before he died. At least we've got that.”

Mrs Endell blew her nose and said, “That's right.”

“I'll never forget him,” Molly said. “I'll never get over it. I married too soon – mostly for the child's sake.” It was a confession she did not want to make but she thought she owed it to Joe's mother.

“I know that,” Evelyn Endell said. “No one who'd seen you and Joe together would think otherwise. I'll be honest – Fred was angry at first. I told him I was convinced you were doing it for the best. Now I hope you're happy. A child needs a happy home.”

“I'll do my best,” Molly said.

“I'm sure you will,” Evelyn said. “And if you have to bring Fred up in Meakin Street it won't hurt him. And it'll certainly be logical because I don't suppose you knew Joe was born near Meakin Street. I don't think I told you.”

“What – round there?” Molly said in astonishment. “I can't believe it. How did he come to drift so far north?”

“You read it – it's in the envelope,” Evelyn told her. “We adopted him from an orphanage in London. He was rescued from a bombed building. I don't know what can have happened to him before we got him but the account from the orphanage is heart-breaking.” She put her hand on Molly's arm. “I had it in mind to tell you more about all this when we were talking about it before. But I'd always known there was something locked up in Joe which had to come out in its own good time. I thought a happy marriage would release it in the end. I was afraid you'd press him too soon. I think if he'd lived to see his child it would have helped. When a child is born we relive the past. You see, what I didn't want was for Joe to have to face whatever it was he never thought about – what must have happened when he was a child – before he was ready. It's not as if he was miserable or unfulfilled.”

“Oh, no,” Molly said. “He wasn't that.”

The two women sat quietly side by side in the last sunshine of the year. Overhead, flocks of birds flew south. Then the baby cried in his pram and they wheeled him back to the house.

Molly did not open the brown envelope. She put it in a drawer in the bedroom and left it there. Indeed, for a while she almost forgot about it. It had been a hard time for her and she knew at heart that harder times lay ahead.

After Mrs Gates died Sid and Ivy had driven down with the child. Then came the funeral. The baby had been christened a week later. This had meant arranging two gatherings at the house, one for the mourners after Mrs Gates's funeral and one for the family after the christening. Molly had been relieved, although she felt guilty about it, that the Endells had not been able to come at that time. They would have stayed several days and been uncomfortable in the over-strained household.

After the christening she said grimly to Ivy, “I've spent the last month watching a woman die and her coffin lowered into the ground and my baby christened and I've spent the rest of the time cleaning this house and cooking. It's been a funny honeymoon.”

“I wouldn't call it funny,” remarked Ivy. They were standing, for some reason, in the library. She looked at the space on the ceiling where a piece of plaster moulding had fallen off and said, “This lot is going to take a bit of sorting out. Sid'll help you. It's no good asking Jack to do his storm trooper act on the premises – he's too busy these days.”

“He's still too annoyed about the marriage,” Molly said.

“He'll get over it,” Ivy said. She looked at Molly and added, seemingly irrelevantly, “Well, thank goodness you've still got Meakin Street.”

The next day Molly decided she had better sort out Mrs Gates's possessions. While the baby slept in his pram in the yard, she went sombrely through the orderly cupboards and drawers in the flat above the stable. Isabel and Tom had not offered their help with the task. Both had the useful knack of silence when situations demanding action arose. This meant that, on the whole, they were never seen to refuse responsibility while, on the other hand, they were seldom forced to accept it. It must have been this habit of keeping still in a crisis, thought Molly, which had enabled them to ignore so many warning voices. It was more explicable in Isabel's case – she had not been reared to expect change and action – but in Tom's it seemed more of a mystery. He had a degree in law, though a poor one, and had had a job in a stockbroking firm run by an old friend of Sir Frederick's. He had also been employed by a legal firm. Both jobs had ended mysteriously. Now Charlie Markham had secured him a place in a small firm of lawyers used occasionally by his companies.

Tom went to London on Tuesdays, returning to Framlingham on Friday nights. The salary was low but that Tom was employed at all
was a relief to Molly. So, unfortunately, was the fact that Tom so rarely shared her bed. The marriage was consummated now. On the night of the christening Tom, affectionate, and primed with champagne, had met a ready response in Molly, who felt that her child was now the child of the house. Tom, who had before been unable to sustain an erection, managed it at last. For a few moments, as they began to make love, Molly was filled with joy and relief, not so much with pleasure at the action, as with what it might mean for the future. But few genuine loves have begun on this desperate basis. Tom, above her, laboured effortfully, his face tormented. He came after a short time leaving Molly unsatisfied. Tom, evidently rather pleased, fell asleep. His attempt to make love to her the following night failed. Molly was left beside him with her uneasy thoughts telling herself that he had failed her and suspecting, in her heart of hearts, that she had failed him. She did not love Tom, she did not want him particularly, except as a physical release. But she knew that the marriage, a commercial transaction, could have been saved by sex and now she knew that, without a miracle, it would not be. A bleak life, involving much hard domestic work and loneliness, began. Only the baby, large, cheerful and thriving, consoled her.

Now it was autumn and, as she took Mrs Gates's clothes from the drawers, she saw a cloud of leaves blowing past the window and wondered how hard it would be to face the long, dark winter in Framlingham.

Her money was running down also. “Get out,” she told herself, “cut your losses and get out of here.” Abandoning the piles of blouses and brown stockings she stood up and went into the other room. She opened the small bureau which stood in the corner of the room, in case there was information in there about a relative of whom no one knew, or some matter of business which would have to be tackled by the Allauns. There were letters there – some apparently from Mrs Gates's husband, Andy, written while they were courting, some from her father, written from the front during the First World War. In an old envelope was a marriage certificate from Dover, dated 1927. A child's death certificate, dated three years later. In the cupboard at the bottom there was a biscuit tin containing old photographs. Women with bustles and men in frock coats stared out, straightfaced, from the pictures. Unknown babies lay in long robes in women's arms. Two bright girls in long white dresses and straw hats stood, arms entwined, on a beach. Apart from that there was little in the desk but some old
bills, newspaper cuttings about the end of the war, an envelope containing a lock of fair hair. Molly wondered whose it was – perhaps, she thought, it might even be her own. She could not face throwing away the relics of someone's life. She shut the desk and turned round as she heard voices on the stairs. Vera Harker came in with Elizabeth Twining. “Oh,” Molly said, “Mrs Twining. I'm so relieved to see you. I've been trying to sort everything out – I was hoping you'd be able to find a use for –” She gestured round her. “And the photographs – I don't know who they are.”

The two women looked at her without pity. Their glances seemed to tell her that they had faced this situation before and dealt with the realities following death. Vera Harker softened. She said, “At least you tried.” They stood in the room, full of little piles of clothing. She pulled an envelope out of her basket. She said, “She wanted you to have this. The day before you came she made me get a form from the Post Office. She had some savings – she wanted half to go to Elizabeth and half to you. Said you'd need it – to make sure you spent it on yourself or the boy. ‘Make sure she keeps it for herself, for her and the child,' she said.”