All The Days of My Life (80 page)

“I've got to get up and talk to the bank manager,” Molly said.

“He's coming tomorrow afternoon,” said Shirley. “He phoned while you were away and I told him he'd better come here for a conference. Don't get up, Molly. Tom's home and he's heard the news. I dread you meeting him in this mood.”

“He's gloating, I suppose,” Molly said gloomily.

“No – no –” Shirley cried in alarm but Molly, jumping up and struggling into her skirt cried, “I'll see him in hell, first. I'll tell him what's what.”

“Don't be such a silly fool –” her sister called out as Molly went pounding down the stairs and into the drawing room, where Tom was sitting having a drink.

“I've heard the bad news –” he began lugubriously.

“Well, you can put that glass down while you're talking to me,” Molly said. “I doubt if it's your first drink and I expect I'll be paying for it too.”

“I was about to say I was sorry,” Tom told her, putting his glass on the table. “Suppose I pour you one and we sit down and talk rationally.”

“Rational conversation won't help now,” said Molly. “Some help and support might have done. You couldn't manage that, though, could you? Or even an opinion? Standing about making faces was all you could manage while I've been struggling.”

“Try to remember that you prevented me from coming to have lunch with you when you met Charlie,” Tom said. “You would try to manage it all alone.”

“Because I couldn't stand the idea of you hanging about having a free lunch while I did all the work,” said Molly. Isabel Allaun came into the room, tried to speak and then sat down as Molly rushed on. “If you'd come, Charlie wouldn't have offered anything. Because he mistrusts you. As it happens it would have been better if he hadn't offered anything – then he couldn't have gone behind my back and shopped me. But, Tom Allaun, if you were anything like a man – and I'm not talking about sex – he wouldn't have dared do all that. He wouldn't have dared buy up George like that – he did it because I'm a woman, and because there's no one to stand up for me except a man he despises. So don't you dare sit there pulling faces at me and condoling with me. I'll tell you this – at least I tried, which is a damn sight more
than you've ever done. I'm leaving you and you can go on sitting there like Cinderella and wait for another Princess Charming to bail you out.”

She slammed out of the room and went into the kitchen. Shirley was stirring salt into a dish in the oven. “Thank God I made a casserole,” she remarked, as Molly rummaged in the pantry. “At least it won't spoil while all this is going on.”

Molly, holding out the half bottle of brandy she had found on the kitchen shelf, said, “Have some?”

“No thanks,” said Shirley. “I'll stay sober and ready to catch Fred when he gets out of his cot and threatens to fall downstairs.”

“I'm sorry about this, Shirley,” Molly said.

“I dunno,” Shirley said. “It reminds me of Meakin Street. Anyway, you're, right. The Allauns haven't done anything but complain about the noise and the inconvenience – and those grocers' bills in the kitchen drawer are ridiculous.”

Tom came in saying, “I know you're upset, Molly –”

“Sod off, Tom,” she said. “Talking won't improve anything.”

He looked at her and stood for a moment. Then he went out. Molly sat down, drank some brandy, topped up her glass and jumped up again. “I've had an idea,” she said. Shirley sniffed and went to the back door to call for Brian and Kevin. They might as well have some supper before another row broke out, she thought.

In the meanwhile Molly was in the drawing room saying to Isabel, “So why don't you get planning permission, convert the stables into flats, use the foundations opposite to build more flats, or little maisonettes, sell the lot, and when you've done it you can pay me back for the work I've already done?”

“Would you pour me a small whisky and water?” asked Isabel. “I'm feeling remarkably tired.” She said, as Molly brought her the drink, “Yes – I think that's an excellent idea. And since the bank manager's coming tomorrow I think we should both put it to him and let him look at the stables. And if he agrees to lend me the money then I shall have you to thank for starting the work and indicating the possibilities. You may have been misguided to trust Charlie Markham and I confess I've always been dubious about the whole scheme. But you tried, and that's something. And I'm furious with Charles. I've telephoned his mother and explained what he's done and I've told her I'd be glad if she'd tell him he's no longer welcome here. You are, after all, Tom's wife and I think he's treated you unfairly.”

Molly was surprised and impressed. “Thanks, Isabel. I didn't expect you to stick up for me,” she said. “I'll be leaving shortly.”

At this point Isabel bowed her head a little, gracefully acknowledging the decision. Molly turned her head to conceal an involuntary smile. They must both know, she thought, that Molly, as Tom's wife, had a claim to the house – and Isabel must be hoping, discreetly, that the idea had not occurred to Molly. She said, “Isabel – do you know this tune?” And she hummed the song which had come, yet again, into her dream. Isabel said, “Yes – yes – I think I do. I can't remember what it is.” She hummed the tune to herself, faltering, then correcting it.

“That's right,” said Molly. “What is it? I hear it sometimes in my dreams.”

“In your dreams?” Isabel asked. “But where in the world – it's well before your time. It comes from the thirties.” She repeated, “In your dreams?” Then said, “It's cold, Molly, please put those two large logs on the fire.”

She stared at Molly, as if she were framing a question to ask her, then said, “I don't know – life's strange – who would have thought we two would be sitting here now, after all these years.” She paused, asking now, “You don't even know any French, do you?”

“No,” Molly said, and began to think of Peggy's story about Joe Endell's rescue from the bombed house. And what shall I do now, Joe? She interrupted her thought to herself. Isabel's cool voice was asking, “What are you thinking of doing?”

“Paying up, leaving here, putting Fred in a nursery and getting a job,” Molly said stoutly, resisting the temptation to assure Isabel that she would make no claims on Tom or the house. She wanted nothing but she felt she was not big-hearted enough to put Isabel out of her misery.

“You were trying to save an impossible situation,” Isabel said. “It
was
impossible, you know, once it became plain that you had no fortune.”

“It might have been possible, without Charlie Markham,” Molly said.

“Even so –” said Isabel. “In any case, you were optimistic if you expected Charlie to play fair.”

“I didn't expect him to be as dirty as that,” Molly said.

“In my experience,” remarked Isabel Allaun, “people change very little after they grow up. Charlie was quite a nasty little boy and he's grown up to become quite a nasty man.” She sighed and said, “Molly –
I wonder if you'd pour me another small whisky.” She said, as Molly did so, “I think matters would have been less serious if Fred had not died. He would have held things together a little better. Tom's not had the experience–” Her voice trailed away. Molly handed her the whisky. Isabel was being friendly now that she was going, Molly thought. Not entirely truthful – when had she ever been? – but she was showing some candour. “I've always regretted the way you were bundled off at the end of the war,” she said. “It was largely my fault – I've had to admit that to myself. He wanted to adopt you – Fred – and I believe I was a bit jealous, for Tom's sake of course. I expect we were all a bit mad, then. It had been a long war – we were all tired out.”

“All forgiven and forgotten now,” Molly said, hoping to cut her mother-in-law short. The apologies and explanations were too easy. Some of them had the ring of a rehearsed cadenza – as if Isabel had gone over the events, explaining them to herself many times in private.

“Frederick was so strange at the time,” she said. “The war had exhausted him. It was almost as if he could talk to no one but you. Looking back on what he must have been feeling, I can see now how natural that was, but it was hard, then, to understand. I may have acted hastily. I think perhaps I did.”

Molly helped herself to some more brandy. It was too late – it was all too late. Isabel's attempts to explain the past, excuse herself from any guilt, work out where it all went wrong, were pointless now. She was relieved when Shirley came in saying, “Everyone's in bed what ought to be in bed.”

“Please help yourself to a drink,” Isabel said. “We're planted in our chairs, chatting. That song,” she said to Molly, “quite suddenly I've remembered it – every word. Isn't it extraordinary how that sort of thing happens? You hear one phrase of a tune and half an hour later you've remembered the whole song and all the words.”

“How does it go?” Molly asked.

“Les plaisirs et les ennuis –

Sont évanouis,” Isabel sang in a clear voice, younger than her years.

“Comme les vents dans les champs

De mon pays

Then there's some more, I've forgotten – then it goes something like,” – and she sang again, “Tous comme les vents dans les blés de mon pays. It's just one of those cabaret songs of the thirties,” she explained.
“You know, about lost love and how it's all gone by like the wind across the fields in the singer's native land, or region.”

“Well, well,” said Molly. “I wonder why I'd hear a song in my dreams in a language I don't even understand.”

Isabel said, “Another mystery.”

“I suppose no one will ever want anything to eat?” Shirley asked.

Molly shrugged. Shirley said, “I'll turn the oven down.”

By the time she returned Tom was back, saying, “I've been drowning my sorrows in the pub.”

“We're discussing the future,” his mother told him.

“Well, I'll join in,” said Tom, making a bold dash at the whisky.

“Seems to me we've all got different plans to discuss,” Molly observed. “You've got to think about turning the stables into flats, Shirley and I have to think about accommodation in London for ourselves and our children. I suppose we could share, Shirl?” she suggested.

“I don't know why you don't sell Meakin Street and settle here permanently,” said Isabel. “We're a family, after all.” Molly giggled, although she realized immediately afterwards that she was drunker than she thought. The notion of Isabel, her homosexual son, herself and her child by Joe Endell constituting a family made her laugh.

Shirley said firmly, “I don't know that that would be in Molly's best interests, Lady Allaun.”

“And why not?” Isabel asked.

“Because from what I've seen, the money Molly got by selling the house would be soon gone in this household,” Shirley replied primly. Molly tried not to laugh again.

“I think you should hold your tongue,” Isabel said.

“I speak as a sister but also as a trained accountant,” Shirley said. “That's if I've passed my exams, which I don't know yet.”

“Are you a trained accountant?” asked Molly.

“That was why I ran away. I'd just finished the final exams when they made me man the bacon cutter eight hours a day, as well as do the housework and the children,” Shirley explained plaintively. “Then I nearly cut my finger off on it and they still made me go on doing it. Then Brian was complaining about the state of the house but every time I put my hand in hot water the cut opened again. So I might be a badly-treated wife or I might be a qualified accountant. It remains to be seen.”

“None of that excuses what you've just said, in my opinion,” Isabel said. “I think it's time I went to bed.”

“Oh, no, stay, Isabel,” Molly said. She was beginning to enjoy the random nature of a conversation held by four such different people, in the middle of a collection of catastrophes.

“Thank you, but I'm going,” Isabel said. “I'm extremely tired. I don't relish your sister's presence in a family discussion and I think if she hadn't the tact to leave the room she could at least have refrained from comment.”

“Phew,” said Shirley, after she had gone. Molly stared at the carpet and began to feel sour. She remembered dancing at the Dorchester till dawn, riding about in big cars and being given big jewels by men. She remembered rushing back from clubs in the darkness with Johnnie Bridges, falling into bed with him and making love till dawn. Wicked days, she thought, associating with gangsters, slumlords and villains of every kind. Now all she wanted to do was start a bicycle factory and this honest wish had been denied her. Who's the idiot, she thought, Molly Waterhouse, gangster's moll, or Lady Allaun, failed bike shop owner?

She looked at Tom nastily and said, “You'll have to get another wife to help you out. This place is falling to pieces.”

“You should talk,” retorted Tom in the same tone. “You've lived off men all your life.”

“I'm a woman,” Molly pointed out. “It's expected of me. They queued to do it. Anyway, you had better chances than I did. You could have been a famous barrister, or a doctor, or anything. It doesn't matter anyway. Facts are facts. This place is falling to bits and I'm leaving and I don't care.”

“That's the trouble,” said Tom. “You don't care. Live here when it's easy, when you're a kid. When it's harder you bail out fast.”

“It was one of your lot – Charlie – sold out Molly,” Shirley said. “Not one of ours.”

“It was one of yours – George – who agreed to be bought,” Tom said. “Trust you to drag class hatred into it, as if things weren't bad enough.”