All the Days of Our Lives (30 page)

On the way down again Sybil Routh showed her the bathroom at the back of the second floor, with a huge claw-footed bath. It was the best bathroom Katie had ever seen.

‘There’s a meter for the water – I know what you girls are like for baths; go easy on the lavatory flush – and no more than two squares of Izal at a time: the plumbing objects to it . . . Now, I’ll show you what’s what. That room – well, rooms – at the front, that’s the Gudgeons’.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. Katie had to strain to hear over Michael’s happy crooning. She had put him down and was having to hold on tight to his hand. ‘They’re a nice old couple, but very frail. She looks as if the wind would blow her down, and he’s quite devoted. Then there’s Mr Treace in the back room. He’ll be in any minute – works in Lloyds Bank – rather a dull fellow, I’m afraid, but of frugal habits, which is what we landladies like, of course! A modest bather. Now, I know you’ll need to bath the child . . . We’ll have to see what we can do.’ She led the way downstairs. Michael was wrapped up in the dog, playing with him along the hall.

‘The bottom floor is all mine. There’s a little parlour at the front, which I never really use and it’s cold as the grave in there. This room is where all life happens.’

She led the way along the lovely tiled hall and into a very large back room. Katie was aware immediately of moss-green walls beneath a picture rail, above which everything was creamy-white, and of a room crammed with intriguing things. At one end was a dining table and chairs and, beside it, a dark old sideboard on which rested a huge china soup-tureen and various silver jugs and salvers. There was a dresser, the top half of which had glass doors, crammed with leather-bound books, and beside it another set of deep shelves, which held a mixture of books and glass cases. In them Katie saw a variety of stuffed birds: pheasants and grouse and other game birds. Her eyes were drawn to the very top shelf, where she could see something with very big teeth.

‘Ah . . .’ Sybil saw where she was looking. ‘That is the Bengal tiger, or was once, poor fellow – skull of one.’ Its jaws were stretched wide open, the teeth curved like sabres. ‘It was my brother Anselm’s – he died in India, alas. And these others . . .’ A sweep of her hand took in the birds and various glass cases of coloured butterflies, which were attached to the wall by the door. ‘Those are Cuthbert’s: another brother, but he’s
gorn orf
, as they say, to Australia.’

Nearer the back end of the house, from which glass doors led out to the garden, there was a fireplace with a couple of comfy old chairs covered in green-and-white flowered chintz beside it and, against the wall behind, an upright piano.

‘Oh,’ Katie said, surprised. ‘It’s lovely! And a piano – can you play it?’

‘I was just about to ask you the same question. I live in hope!’

‘No, I’m afraid I never learned,’ Katie said.

‘It’s beyond me now,’ Sybil said. ‘My sister Cordelia is the real pianist and I used to play around a bit on it, before my wretched hands seized up.’ She held her hands out, swollen and gnarled-looking, and Katie felt for her. ‘Mr Treace can tinkle a bit, but nothing that you’d really want to listen to exactly, I’m afraid.’ She chuckled. ‘Yes, young man,’ she said and Michael came and peered curiously at it. ‘Have you seen a piano before?’ She opened the lid. ‘Look, I’ll show you something. That’s middle C – that’s right, you press it.’

Michael looked up at her, fascinated as the note sounded out.

‘You’ll have to learn to play, won’t you?’ Sybil smiled, closing the lid again. ‘Now, this room is where we all eat – breakfast and evening meal. Lunch is your affair, of course. I’ll have your ration books off you. I’ve a girl does some shopping for me and a few odd jobs. Better that we all share – I like my house to be a home, not a doss-house. I don’t hold with all this crouching in little rooms over a solitary electric ring. It’s wasteful and uncivilized. Now, we can arrange for you to feed the boy separately, if you wish him to have tea early, but otherwise food will be on the table at seven. You’ll hear the gong. In fact, I need to go and finish it off now. So – d’you want the room or not?’

Maudie laughed wholeheartedly when Katie told her where she had found new lodgings for the following month.

‘Old Sybil Routh? Oh yes, Mummy and I know her from the church. In fact I think her father was a clergyman, though not round here. There are quite a few Rouths scattered around somewhere – I think she was one of six or seven. She’s quite potty, but actually rather nice. Such odd clothes! But how funny that you should go there. I think she runs a bit of a home for waifs and strays, even though she tries to pretend she’s terribly businesslike about it. She’s an interesting lady – used to be some kind of social worker, I believe. Or was it a nurse? Well, that’s lovely, Katie – you’re not far away and you, little M, can come round and see me while your mummy’s at work, can’t you?’

In her sweet, spontaneous way, Maudie swept Michael up into her arms and kissed him and Katie laughed, suddenly amazed by how good life felt.

Em had sent a plain white postcard on which she had got Robbie to do a drawing. It was only in two colours. Molly looked at the square, red house with swirls of angry black smoke pouring from the chimney. And there was a dullness to Em’s message and, reading between the lines, a lot of things not said. At times Molly envied Em’s staid, family life, never far from her mom and dad and her sisters, husband home from the war, a child. All the things Molly didn’t have, could never even imagine having now. Once she had, for a time, with Tony, during those sunlit, dreamlike days in 1942 before he was killed. She still tried to imagine that it might have worked for them, had he lived. But not now. None of that was for her. But for all that, she didn’t think Em sounded especially full of the joys, either.

She did not hear from Em often. To her surprise the person who kept in touch with her very faithfully was Ruth Chambers. Every couple of weeks a blue envelope would slip through the door, addressed in Ruth’s neat, sloping hand. Molly found she had started to look forward to the letters very much, even though she had a little smile at some of Ruth’s expressions.

Molly and Ruth had begun their basic training in the ATS together and immediately loathed each other. Molly thought back with shame and embarrassment on her first weeks in the army. Feeling very unsure of herself, and inferior to a lot of the other girls in every way, she had played up and been loud and rude, and got a lot of people’s backs up. Ruth, a staid, studious girl from a sheltered middle-class background, had been about to start studying natural sciences at Cambridge. Ruth was rather buck-toothed and awkward, and had absolutely no idea how to cope with someone like Molly, whose behaviour had been mostly noisy and as crude as possible. They had hoped never to set eyes on each other again after basic training, but had met up several times – including at Clacton. Ruth had been trained in technical work as a kiné-theodolite operator and Molly ended up in ack-ack. The very last time she had come across Ruth, the girl had been badly frightened by unwanted advances from a man and had confided in Molly. The two had managed to get past some of the barriers of prejudice that separated them and form an unlikely friendship.

Molly realized to her astonishment that Ruth was genuinely fond of her and was missing her. She wrote letters about adjusting to Cambridge. She was enjoying the work, but finding it hard to settle to such a quiet life.

‘As soon as term ends I’ll be down to see you,’ she wrote. ‘I do hope that’s all right? I can come and stay in your guesthouse and we can go on the beach. How funny it will be to be in Clacton again. I suppose you’ve got used to it in peacetime now, but I can only think of it with all those guns going off all the time and the beach closed off. Actually I remember Clacton awfully fondly.’

‘
Aw
fully fondly,’ Molly murmured, grinning affectionately as she slipped the letter back in the envelope and laid it with her other letters from Ruth. They felt like something to hold onto, because the truth was, soon after her excitement at escaping Birmingham and arriving back in Clacton, her spirits had plummeted.

She had in fact got used quite quickly to the routine at The Laurels. They had their evening ‘praise meeting’, as they called it, in the house, which the guests could join in or not as they pleased. Ten or eleven people would start to appear at eight o’clock, all of them drably dressed and wearing expressions of anxious enthusiasm. Molly longed to wrap colourful feather boas round each of their necks and paint the women with lipstick. The sounds of hymn-singing interspersed with silences sometimes filtered up to the attic. And every Sunday evening the Lesters attended church.

And, of course, there were the mornings. Molly had gained some respect for Mr Lester, even though he was clearly a fanatic. She appreciated his courage and felt almost protective of him. She had also realized that she had a good strong singing voice, so she belted out the hymns and, she thought, if people laughed, they laughed – that was up to them. Most people just joined in the hymns and were polite; there was just the odd one now and again who would collapse into incredulous laughter. Molly had thought about leaving and moving on, but to what? She’d only have to find some other boarding house. And she knew Mrs Lester would find it hard to cope without her.

It also would not make any difference. She felt herself sinking, day after day. The army had given her life a structure: the day organized for her, the orders, the tasks, the ready-made company and chances of approval and promotion. It had contained her and made her feel safe and purposeful. Ever since she had taken off her uniform, with her Corporal’s chevrons worn proudly on the sleeves, it was as if she had lost a part of herself – her better self, who had a place to be in the world. It was a world that had a shape. Now, though, she felt as if she had been let out into a wide, bleak plain and did not know where she belonged, or which way to turn. She could keep on forever with the drudgery of The Laurels. That at least was a routine. But, all the time, all that kept coming to her was the hurt and grief of the past, dragging her further and further down.

On one of her afternoons off she walked along the front at Clacton. It was quite a nice day, hazy but warm, the sea calm and flat, but Molly’s spirits would not even lift with the weather. Her head ached slightly, and she felt heavy in herself, ambling along in the shapeless afternoon. She made her way along to where there were fewer people about, found a bench looking out to sea and sat down to have a smoke. All the stark facts of her life began to crowd in, reported in her head like newspaper headlines: Molly Fox, child of a Birmingham back yard, mother a drunkard, father . . . ? Well, that was a hard one. Father a broken casualty of war. Real father? Her grandfather – a filthy old man who had molested her and spawned her with his own daughter. Brothers? One vanished, one a vile crook, hanged for murder. The one chance of real love, Tony, dead from a delayed-action bomb in London . . .

Stinky little Molly Fox
. . . All her childhood she had been the outsider. The poorest, the smelly one, with problems – she realized now – stemming from her grandfather’s attentions, so that she could not always hold her water. Thinking back on her past self, she was filled with an anguished fury. What a family! Round and round in her head it all went, until she could stand no more. She pushed herself up and, walking as if propelled by a will stronger than her own, went up a side street and found the nearest pub.

‘I’ll have a whisky,’ she said abruptly.

The landlord gave her a look, but served her anyway.

She sat in a dark corner while a row of men nursed pints along the bar. She saw them eyeing her and turned away, looking as unfriendly as she could. Men always paid her attention: her figure, her blonde hair. It was as if they couldn’t help themselves, had some picture in their minds, ready-made, that was really nothing to do with her.

Molly drank quickly, going to the bar for another, turning away from their comments. The drink reached down into her, warm and numbing. It was a long time since she had drunk. In the army she had made a fresh start. She was going to make something of herself, break away. The very last thing she was going to do was turn out like Iris. But now . . .

Not wanting to go back to the bar for a third drink, she went to another pub, then another. By the time she weaved her way back to The Laurels she couldn’t walk straight. She climbed up to her room and flung herself on the bed. Thoughts battered her, despite the drink. Tony, and Len, with whom she had had a desperate love affair after Tony’s death – Len who had been promised to someone else, and she had ruined it, all of it . . . And she had lain with them and coupled with them: Len and others. And she had taken no care, yet there had been no child – not ever.

I can’t even do that, she thought, sinking into a despairing sleep. Can’t do men, can’t do children: barren. When she woke it was dark and her head was pounding. She just made it down to the bathroom and was sick, her body heaving painfully. She drank some water and sat groggily on the toilet trying to pull herself together.