All The Days of My Life (84 page)

“Well, Charlie – this is Richard Mayhew – Charles Markham, an old and unsuccessful business competitor –” Molly explained as they
walked away. “I see Lauderdale's taking a dive.”

“I was lucky enough to get out in time,” Charlie said. “Severed my connection a year ago.”

“Typical,” remarked Molly.

“I've been sneaking round the premises,” Charlie said, stopping at the table and helping himself to a drink. “Looks very promising. Mind you, this is the second shock I've had today –”

“What?” asked Molly in alarm.

“Well, the first is coming across Arnie and Norman Rose. Now, secondly, I find this isn't champagne. You want to have a word in the kitchen.”

“Oh – the buggers,” cried Molly. Richard Mayhew followed her to the kitchen.

“Did he say Arnie
and
Norman?” enquired Molly.

She picked up a bottle and examined it. “Thought only Arnie was here,” she said to herself.

“If this is a Bollinger,” Richard Mayhew said to the head waiter, “then I'm a Dutchman.”

“A terrible mistake,” said the head waiter.

Outside Frederick Endell, Sid Waterhouse and their five-year-old grandson, Frederick Allaun, were walking by the lake. From the edge of the lawn Molly saw his bright face.

In the drawing room, Isabel looked into the eyes of her old friend and enemy, Ivy Waterhouse, and said, “You should tell her.”

“I mean to,” Ivy said.

“You're ill, you know,” Isabel said.

“Why do you think I'm thinking about it now?” Ivy said.

Isabel looked up sharply and said, “Tom – will you get us some more wine?”

Tom, near the sofa talking to a friend of the groom's, said, “Yes, Mother,” and turned back to the other man.

“Now,” said Isabel sharply.

Tom, sulky, took the empty glasses.

Simon Tate surveyed the marquee, the guests, the waiters in their black coats and said, “What a success story, Molly. Marquees on the lawn. I say this – you never cease to surprise me.”

“All right if it doesn't come on to rain,” Molly replied. “And all that glitters, Simon, is not gold. Here,” she said, struck by the thought, “why is Norman here? You only brought Arnie.”

“He came under his own steam,” Simon said. “And, between
ourselves, you'd better hope he and Arnie leave under it.”

“Why –?” Molly said. “But if the cops are after them what are they doing here? Why aren't they in South America?”

“Because they think they're all right,” Simon said. “The people prepared to give evidence against them haven't told them yet.” He looked alarmed and said, “For God's sake don't tell them I told you. Or anybody.”

“Hope they don't catch them here,” Molly said. “It'll spoil the day.”

Josephine, in the library, was telling her old friend Barbara, “I think I'm going to Latin America for three months.”

“You're not,” exclaimed Barbara. “Just as you've got married.”

“Too good to turn down,” Josephine said.

“What does James say?” asked her friend.

“He doesn't know,” said the bride.

On the marbled tiles of the hall, under the portrait of Sir Joshua Biggs, Simon Tate said to Jack Waterhouse, “Who's that fellow Tom Allaun's been chatting to all afternoon?”

“Actor friend of the groom's,” Jack said. “There's another who's been trailing my sister about.”

As Tom Allaun and the other man came through the hall they heard Tom say, “I'll show you the lake.”

“I think it's love,” said Simon.

“Does Molly know?” asked her brother.

“Just as well if he gets on with it,” Simon said.

While in London policemen were staking out the homes of Arnold and Norman Rose, waiting for them to return. Arnie, at Framlingham, was puffing on a cigar and saying, “Good luck to you, Josie. And what are your plans now?”

“I'm going to Latin America,” Josephine told him.

“Nice place for a honeymoon,” Arnie Rose told her.

Josephine nodded.

By six o'clock Josephine and her new husband were on their way back to Kensington. Arnold and Norman Rose, in two limousines, were driving home into the hands of the police. Jack Waterhouse was sitting beside his wife, who was driving, thinking regretfully about his ex-wife and their two adopted children. His wife, Helena, knew what he was thinking and felt sad and angry.

And, as they travelled away from the wedding, Tom Allaun and his actor were together on Framlingham Station, waiting for the train. Beside the lake they had looked from the water to each other. The actor, Donald, had suddenly grasped Tom's upper arm and, as the other man started and trembled slightly, said, “I want you to come back to London with me.” And Tom had said nothing but merely nodded.

So an hour later, at five, just as Molly was waving off some departing guests, he had come up to her and, standing close, said awkwardly in a low voice, “I'm going to London. With Donald Jacobson. I'm sorry. It means you'll have to clear up without my help.” Molly, who had retained the fixed smile on her face which she had adopted for the farewells, turned, suddenly sober, and told him, “All right, Tom. I can't say I blame you.”

Tom had noticed her with Richard Mayhew so for a little while the couple stared, wearily charitable, perhaps even wishing each other happiness, until their gazes broke and Tom said, “I'll just go up and get my bag, then.”

“All right, Tom,” Molly said. “Do you mind going out the back way?”

He was surprised for a moment, until he saw another knot of people approaching to say goodbye. He nodded, then, saying, “Quite right. Might as well preserve the amenities.”

“Story of our marriage, isn't it?” remarked Molly.

In the meanwhile, as the newly-married couple, the other guests, and even the bride's stepfather departed, Ivy Waterhouse lay resting on the specially prepared couch in the library. She looked out on to the piece of grass beyond the kitchen, watching the odd guests drift to and fro. Evelyn Endell brought her some tea and bread and butter, saying, “They're all going now. Why don't I take your shoes off?” As she did so she asked, “Shall I stay while you have your tea? Or are you too tired for company?”

“Can I tell you something?” Ivy asked. “I want you to tell me what Molly will think.”

“Of course,” Evelyn said, drawing a chair close to the couch so that she could hear Ivy's weary voice. To give her a little time she said, “It's been a lovely day. And so nice to see that Josephine's grown into such a lovely woman. And Fred – oh, isn't he lovely? So handsome – whoever would have thought he would be like that?”

Ivy drank some tea. Her eyes rested on the round and sensible face of
Joe Endell's mother. “It was Isabel said I should tell you,” she remarked.

Evelyn looked at her. “Are you sure,” she asked, “that you should be talking and not just resting?”

“I'm weak, Evelyn,” Ivy pointed out, “but I'm not rambling. I'm in my right mind.”

The sun was low outside the window. Ivy said, “It's so nice here – the sun behind those trees far away. Just coming into bud.” Then she said, “This concerns you in a way, Evelyn, with Molly being Fred's mother. You see,” and she paused, “it's a hard thing to say because I've kept it locked up so long. She's not my daughter – Molly. She's sort of adopted.”

“What are you saying!” cried Evelyn. “Where did she come from?” Ivy, still looking out into the trees, said, “I'll tell you.”

Fragments of the day continued. Sid Waterhouse and Fred Endell were gratefully drinking glasses of foaming beer in the kitchen while their grandson ate scrambled eggs at the kitchen table. Molly and Simon Tate were eating plates of chicken in the dining room while George Messiter, who had no head for strong drink, lay on the settle under the window with his eyes closed. On the lawn men were packing up the marquee. And Molly, with her feet on a chair, said, “It's better if Tom goes. It's been a dog's life here for him.” Richard Mayhew came in and said, “I'd advise you to count the undrunk bottles of champagne. They're hauling the stuff out at great speed.” And Sam Needham came in, saying, “It's on the news – the police have picked up Norman and Arnie Rose.”

But in the library Evelyn Endell was staring in horror at her friend Ivy.

Molly was never told about the conversation between the two women. She was very busy, from then on, with the production of the Messiter. She was, moreover, in love with Richard Mayhew. And perhaps the main reason why she heard nothing about what had taken place in the library on Josephine's wedding day, was that from then on everything was overshadowed by the fact of her mother's approaching death.

Ivy no longer lived in the neat little house in Beckenham. Her home was now one room at a hospice which stood in wooded grounds a few
miles away. The room, at an angle in the building, had windows on two sides which looked out into trees, now shedding their leaves. Ivy, very thin now, was afflicted, not by pain but by the incessant struggle of a body being fought down into death by an internal enemy. She was a country in civil war, where heroic last-ditch battles were staving off inevitable defeat. There were times when they all, even Sid, wished that she could die peacefully without the battles her own body was putting up and the reinforcements of trying medical treatment. But they recognized that as long as Ivy needed to maintain the fiction, which she did not herself really believe, that she was in hospital receiving treatment and not in a clinic, waiting to die, all these routines must go on.

Molly was sitting by her mother as she slept one afternoon, sadly remembering the old energetic set of the heavily-lipsticked lips, the heap of bleached hair and the often-terrifying vigour she had injected into her life when she was younger. And it was as she recalled the vicious tongue, the sharp blows about the head, the sudden, erratic kindnesses of hard-pressed Ivy in her slum, that her mother opened her faded eyes and said quietly, “Mary – I'm very ill.”

“I know, Mum,” Molly said, looking down at the gaunt face, which seemed to have no flesh on it. Ivy's eyes roamed the ceiling, then turned on her daughter. “Is Sid here?” she asked.

“He'll be here in a little while,” she said. “Half an hour.”

“He said I ought to tell you,” she said. “Or he would himself. He wanted to – years ago – but I wouldn't let him. I'd been keeping it a secret so long –”

“Never mind, Mum,” Molly said, wondering if perhaps the drugs her mother was being given were affecting her brain. “Never mind –”

A nurse put her head round the door. “Bedsores,” she said boldly, willing Molly out of the room.

“Not now,” Ivy said faintly.

“Five minutes,” said the nurse, setting her pan on the bedside table.

“I'll come back, Mum,” Molly said. Her mother's eyes followed her to the door.

Downstairs she rather guiltily got out her calculator and started doing some figures. She did not need the calculator for the sums were engraved on her brain. She had to expand again and she had to do it more legitimately this time. She must have a proper factory on the Atlantic coast. There were orders, now, from the USA. As they produced more Messiters the repairs, spare part business and distribution
grew more complicated. They were outgrowing the premises in London and Framlingham. And she knew it would be impossible to stand still – they must either grow, or fade. And she had over five hundred people working for her now. She had found a factory, near Liverpool, and because it had gone out in a recent shower of bankruptcies the price was not high. But, again, she would have to pledge everything, borrow everything she possibly could, to start up. Would there be housing for the workers, if they decided to move with the business? Could they make enough in the first year even to cover the interest payments? And enough in the second to bite into the loan? And enough in the third and fourth to see the business profitable? And even if they could, was the venture worthwhile? Sometimes she thought she would rather leave things as they were or just persuade the other major shareholders – George, Wayne, her sister, Tom and Isabel Allaun – to sell up, take their money and run. The now-familiar figures jolted in front of her eyes. In the end, she thought, it was not an exclusively financial decision she was making – it was personal. The others wanted her to go ahead. Shirley was cautiously optimistic. But she alone had to decide whether she was prepared for further struggle.

She stood up and went back to Ivy. Slowly taking the stairs she thought, “And then there's the dress shops down in Covent Garden – the little brass and clockshop –” “If you hadn't this to do you'd be taking in stray kittens,” Tom Allaun had said to her sourly while they were having coffee in a coffee shop in the West End after their visit to the lawyer. He was talking about the clockshop with the little brass foundry at the back, where she had installed an apprentice to the proprietor, who was an old man. “Oh,” she said, “it looks stupid now. This ramshackle collection of businesses – outworkers, old clockmenders. But look at the alternatives – great big companies with top-heavy managements, shareholders, union interventions – they're like dinosaurs most of them. They eat too much, their brains are too small and they won't survive the hard times. I'm flexible – maybe that'll save us in the end. You don't have to worry, Tom. You're a lawyer and crime's one thing we won't be short of in the years to come.”

Tom nodded. He and Molly were getting a divorce. He was living with his lover in a small flat in Lambeth. He was applying himself to the new job he had obtained. The couple had a large Airedale dog called Mr Brown – sometimes Molly envied them their happiness and quietude. Her own life sometimes seemed like a badly-tied parcel going through the post with a label on it bearing an address
no one could quite make out. She asked Tom, “Is it all right if I go on using the name after the divorce? It's good for the export trade. The Americans love a lord.”