All The Days of My Life (95 page)

“You can spare me the history lessons, Bert,” said Molly grimly. “I can see the poor girl for myself – silly young man, girl's pregnant, hole-in-corner ceremony he's not man enough to stand by when it comes to it. Just take me on to the bit where I come in.”

But Herbert Precious proceeded firmly as if, and this was true, he had often planned how to tell her the story. “The girl, Maria Johnson, continued to live in France in retirement. Perhaps she hoped that one day her husband would acknowledge her. Perhaps she was just
resigned. But France fell and at this point her parents took a hand. They went to the King and asked for help in getting their daughter and her children away from the Germans. Apparently they'd been urging her to leave for some time, but she'd refused to leave because of the undertaking she'd given that she would never go back to England and never let anyone know her secret. She was a very honourable girl – she'd only been in France, where she met the Prince of Wales, because she'd refused to be present at Court and told her family she had a vocation. They'd sent her away to live with an aunt to think it over.”

Herbert Precious glanced at Molly, who was sitting very straight in her chair. Her face was calm and stern and he felt, at that moment, somewhat afraid of her. He continued, “The whole thing must have come as a terrible shock to a young king, who had never expected to become a king, and who now ruled a country at war and threatened with invasion. But he rallied quickly – almost straight away an expeditionary force of eight men was put together. They landed in France at night and made their way to Poulaye-sur-Bois. And they found that Maria and the children had just gone. The maid told them that she had made her own arrangements for escape and left a few days earlier with a manservant. And she said that the man could fly a plane. Obviously there was no point in eight men blundering round occupied France, especially with the story they might tell if they were captured and tortured. So they returned. Then a fortnight later there was a report that a light plane had been seen to land in Kent, at dusk, and been found by a labourer empty next morning in a field. Naturally, the fear was that the plane had landed Germans. It was the Queen who sent my father to Kent to see what he could find out. And he discovered that a strange man and woman, with two children, had bought tickets to London on the morning the plane had been discovered. It was a small country station. They had attracted attention. But they were gone. There was no trace of them – the Johnsons were frantic. They couldn't understand why their daughter, if the woman at the station was their daughter, hadn't got in touch with them.”

“They didn't give her much protection, did they?” said Molly calmly. “Not after they'd got her married off.”

Sir Herbert said, “I don't know why she didn't go to them. In any case, they put her on the wanted list, along with the spies and aliens who hadn't turned up at the police station to register – and a month later an intelligent policeman spotted a woman and her children in a
London street. The hunt was up. They found out that documents and ration books had been issued to a Maria Lavalle, née Johnson, who had escaped from France to England in a plane. She'd been interviewed, naturally, but the men who saw her were quite convinced by her story and the whole matter got lost in the bureaucratic confusion of the times – she got her ration books and went off. So my father went to the address she'd given.”

“Guess where?” Molly said, in the same flat tone she had used all along. She was beginning to frighten Herbert Precious more and more. What was she thinking? How could she sit there so calmly, as if showing no interest in the story? And what, in God's name, would she do when he got to the end, when it became plain her mother was probably still alive?

He said, “He got to Meakin Street too late. It was a ruin. He found out where the ambulance had taken the woman but she was gone. He even found out what had happened to one of the children – you.” He paused, waiting for her to do or say something, but all she said was, “Joe had been taken to the orphanage.”

Herbert Precious said, “So it seems. A pity no one thought to make enquiries.”

“Would have saved some incest,” Molly said. “If anyone had liked to interfere. In case their names got into it.”

“Be reasonable, Molly,” said Bert. “At first you were a lot better off in Meakin Street. The country was expecting an invasion. You stood a chance of surviving in Meakin Street – what do you think would have happened to the Royal Family if Hitler had taken over? And they didn't need a royal scandal at that moment-bad for national morale.”

“Didn't need it then and didn't need it afterwards,” Molly told him.

“The longer a secret's kept the harder it becomes to tell it,” he said.

“Good reason for not keeping them in the first place, isn't it?” she said. Now she leaned back in her chair. “That's it then, is it? That's the lot. You've been told you can say your piece and you've said it and it's over?”

“One more thing,” he said uncomfortably.

“I thought there would be,” she remarked.

He stared at her, almost as if he was trying to pacify her. “Your mother's probably alive, in France, at the place where you were born. She was alive and well three months ago. She survived the bombing, thinking you were both dead, I suppose, you and Joe, or so unnerved she wasn't able to think at all. At some point she must have gone back
to France.” He paused and said, “I still don't understand why she never asked anyone for help. Both her parents were dead by the end of the war, of course. Her father was on a corvette on the Russian convoys. Her mother died of pneumonia in 1944.”

“Does she know I'm alive?” asked Molly.

Bert Precious said, “No. You see, we – I, didn't know she was alive herself until a few years ago.”

Molly's neutrality began, now, to melt. She found she was angry. “You could have sent us all a telegram,” she said. “I don't understand how you could keep this under your hat for so long and now, suddenly, for no reason –” She broke off. She felt bitter – bitter that so much information about her own life had been kept from her for so long, while others watched and watched, spying on her all the time. She felt bitter that while she had loved Bert he had been keeping this secret.

She asked, “While we were together, in Scotland, you knew all this, didn't you? Even that my own mother was alive. And you never told me. You never told me.”

She became angrier and angrier. She stood up saying, “God – it's disgusting! The whole bloody thing's disgusting!” She was choking now. “It's the worst – the worst bloody bit of treachery I've ever heard of. The whole situation's been false from beginning to end. I've known gangsters, pimps – I thought I'd seen everything. But it's what they say, isn't it, the worst crimes are done by people in clean collars. That's you, isn't it, Bert, the dirty man in the clean collar.”

He sat silently under her reproaches. “I don't like it,” she said in a calmer voice, “I don't like you being a spy – that's treachery if you like – and it's worse because you got into bed with a woman you've been watching on the sly since she was – what – fifteen, twenty – and your father before you. I've been part of your family's living, Bert, practically from when I was born. Me, Mary Waterhouse, from Meakin Street, a nice little earner for the Precious family of gentlemen. There's no difference between you and Arnie Rose, or Charlie Markham. They thrive by getting to the top of the heap and standing on people not as determined and crafty as they are – so do you, only you do it in white breeches. I don't know how you can sit there, Bert. You should be dropping through the floor with shame.” She frowned. “And why now, that's what I ask myself? Why, after all these years, have you decided to come clean? It didn't trouble you before – what's new? Course, now no one can point the finger at the guilty father – that's one thing. Then again, it wouldn't be nice to leave a nasty mess for the next
generation. That's right, isn't it? The scandal's just about old enough to be like history – some king's mistress or some secret treaty signed hundreds of years ago – so it doesn't matter if it comes out.” She paused, “Ah – you've got the contract in your pocket, haven't you, Bert? I sign it, swearing eternal secrecy out of patriotism. You carry it back and get the grateful thanks of your monarch. Arise, Duke of Banana and Lord Warden of the Swamps. Thanks,” she added, “I'm signing nothing.”

Even in her anger she was able to think of Joe Endell. He would have laughed, she decided, but thinking of Joe and what he would have said and thought introduced another set of propositions. She looked at Bert Precious who sat there, she decided, rather like a spider waiting for a fly he felt too embarrassed to catch, and then stood up, walked up to him, pushed her face in his and said, “You bastard. You're sitting there, hoping I'll sign quickly without realizing what this is all about. My Fred's legitimate – Joe and me were legitimate. We're not bastards – I'll leave that to you. We're more than a bleeding scandal – we're contenders. That's right, isn't it, Bert? You don't want a pledge of secrecy – you want an abdication.” She looked at him. “They should have sent somebody else, Bert. You're not a dealer – you've let me think for too long. A real fixer would have had all this sewn up by now. Been in a taxi on the way back to the palace. You're too slow and too scrupulous. That's one good thing – maybe you aren't quite as bad as Arnie Rose, after all.”

“Molly,” he said with some difficulty. “Fred is not a legitimate child. You and Joe were not entitled to marry, any more than you would have been if one of you were already married.”

“Try that one, Bert,” Molly said. “Just try it. And if you do we'll see what the courts have to say about it. Years ago, when I didn't know nothing from nothing, I might have fallen for all this stuff. But I've been around too long and you try to turn my son into a bastard and I'll take the whole Weeding thing to the European Courts of Justice if I have to –”

“That wasn't what I meant,” he told her.

“I know what you meant – I know what you're doing. Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. You've been involved in a racket for years – you know it – it shows on your face, the way you're sitting – I'm embarrassed for you, Bert.”

“Molly,” he said, leaning forward. “It's quite true that this situation ought to be regularized. It'd only be a formality. No one is going to try
to make your son a bastard. No one has any malice against you. Everyone, not just myself, regrets the pain and muddle.”

“But only one of us is going through the bloody mincer – that's right, isn't it?” she said. “And only one of us is having the wool pulled over their eyes – that's right, too, isn't it? I'm asking myself all the time what Joe Endell would have thought – how he'd have seen this. I can't work out the rights and wrongs of it all but I know he'd have been disgusted. I don't think he'd have stayed in this room to argue.” She stood up. “I wouldn't have stayed if I hadn't've had some feeling for you. You say my real mother's at this place in France – where did you say?”

“Poulaye-sur-Bois,” he told her. “Please don't go there until something's resolved, Molly.”

“Blood's thicker than water when it comes to rights, isn't it? Not when it comes to feelings?” she said.

“I'm suggesting a meeting,” he said, “with some advisers –”

“Plan One fails,” she said. “The punter won't sign. Try Plan Two – call a meeting and blind her with science. Experts, generals and law lords. What it boils down to,” she said slowly, “is that I'm legitimate. I suppose I put the monarchy in a funny position. I could make a claim.”

She felt dreadful. She paced the room now. “Hundreds of years ago you'd have jumped me in Meakin Street on a dark night and bludgeoned me to death. As it is, I'm alive. When was the abdication?” she asked.

“At the end of 1936,” he told her.

“Ah – so he still had his rights when I was born. Also Joe,” she said.

“You're a Catholic,” he said. “You were christened.”

“So what?” she said. “What difference does that make?” He was silent. She thought. “Catholics can't come to the throne?” she suggested. Bert Precious nodded.

“So that's the area we're in,” she said slowly. “You lot are actually wondering, aren't you?” She ceased her wandering up and down and said, “Oh, Bert, Bert. What a rotten business. That poor woman, always hoping he'd come back – she must've done or she wouldn't have been mad enough to have me, after he took up with the other woman, Mrs Simpson, if that was her name. Then having to escape to England and there's a bomb and she thinks her children are dead–why didn't she get some help? She must've been in a shocking state for years, always waiting for him to turn up, never making any claims, even though she was the real wife – oh, my God, it makes you ill to
think of it. For two pins I'd fight, if only because of that. See some justice done.”

“You must take time to think,” he advised.

“It's all coming up – past, present, future,” Molly said. “I don't understand anything. I've got a mother alive, but Ivy was my real mother. My father was some kind of ex-King but Sid Waterhouse is my real father. What do I want with these others? Even my children don't feel like my children any more. They're like claimants to a throne – do people like that have to live like this – half like people and half like some kind of function, ninth in line and hereditary guardian of the Welsh Marches – all that? I came in here as Molly Allaun, woman, mother and bike factory proprietor – and now who am I? Somebody you never told me about – somebody else's daughter – oh, God, Bert – I'm so tired. On the way up to London I was working out I'd been tired for years –”