Then Nancy came, Ellen Alden announcing her arrival late on a dark evening.
Molly had heard the knock on the front door, but had long ago given up listening for the sound of Harry’s voice. When the sharp rap on her own door came, she jumped.
“Yes?”
Ellen Alden stood there unsmiling, “A visitor for you.”
Her heart leapt to her throat and she half-stood. Nancy’s eyes as she came through the door took in the stance, the half-expectant excitement. “It’s me, Molly,” she said gently.
The door closed behind her and the girls were left in the flickering light of the gas mantle, looking at each other.
“Does Harry know you’re here?” One last chance – he might have sent his sister, asked her to come.
Nancy shook her head.
“Then why have you come?” The sharpness of misery; Nancy bit her lip.
“I’m here because I can’t bear to see you two doing this to each other. Molly, you can’t let him go like this, without a word—”
“Go?” Her heart had stopped beating entirely.
“He’s leaving the day after tomorrow. For South Africa.”
Nancy’s own face was drawn with a sense of loss. She said into the silence, “He loves you, Molly, you know it. Oh, I know he’s a bit – hasty sometimes, a bit selfish. Aren’t we all? But he loves you. And I was so sure you loved him—?”
Silence.
“I was hoping I could persuade you to come home with me. To see him before he leaves?”
The pain grew worse. “No.”
“Oh, you’re as bad as he is! Is your blessed pride worth—”
“Pride?” Molly turned on her, blazing. Nancy stepped back. “Is that what you think? You think pride is stopping me? Don’t you know that I’d go on my knees to him if I thought it would make any difference? Don’t look to my pride, Nancy, for the cause of this misery, look to his.” She measured the other girl with her eyes for a moment, then said more calmly, “I’ll tell you what stops me, what lies between me and any man, Harry or no, who of his own free will takes up arms against another. Two young men, dead in the street. No. More than that Dozens of young men. Hundreds. Thousands. And all with someone to love them. Those two were just my own, so it hurts more. I’ve lived through a war of sorts all of my life. I’ve seen—” She stopped, something close to panic moving in her eyes. “It is wrong to impose your law with a gun. Wrong!” She smashed a hand painfully on the table. “How will Harry do it?” she whispered painfully, “how?”
Nancy let the whisper die into the shadows. “I don’t know about such things,” she said quietly, “I only see two people apart who should be together. Come home with me. He leaves the day after tomorrow.”
“If he wants me he must come for me. But not while he wears that uniform.”
Nancy shook her head sadly. “Never, then,” she said with certainty. “Won’t you even write to him?”
Molly shook her head. Nancy turned and walked to the door; she stopped with her fingers on the handle. “When he’s gone – will you come and see us sometimes? Mam asked me specially to ask. We all miss you. Our kid’s always asking where you are.”
Molly cleared her throat. “I expect so. But not yet. Not just yet.”
Nancy nodded and left her.
In the end, against her own better judgement, Molly spent Christmas with them, but for her it was not a success. The sight of Charley and Annie, Nancy and Joe, turned a knife in her no matter how she tried to deny it. Harry had been gone for a fortnight; no one offered news of him and she did not ask. Pressed to join them for New Year she refused gently.
“But Moll, it’s special this year. A new century.” Nancy caught her hand. “I hate to think of you on your own.”
“I won’t be on my own,” she lied, “Sam and his mother have asked me to join them.”
Perhaps the wish was father to the thought: on the day before New Year’s Eve Sam accosted her in the hall.
“We – M-Mother and I – wondered if you’d like to s-see the New Year – century in with us?”
“Aren’t you going to your uncle’s?”
He shook his head, grinning suddenly. “N-not even Mother can stand Uncle Thomas twice in one week. We spent Christmas with them.”
She hesitated.
“Please,” he said, and she smiled.
“All right. What time shall I come down?”
And so it was Sam who kissed her shyly upon the cheek – after he had saluted his slightly less austere than usual mother first – and wished her with no sense of irony or foreboding a happy and peaceful new century. Around them the bells pealed wildly their oddly ambivalent message – for bells can ring warning as well as celebration – and as the last moment of 1899 died and the hand of the quietly ticking clock slipped past midnight and into another hundred years, the changes had already begun.
Chapter Fourteen
January was never a good month for Sam. The cold weather invariably aggravated his bad chest and the grey skies and the thought of the long months still to struggle through before spring relieved him of a little of the burden of his cough depressed him. January 1900, to begin with, was no different from any other. He suffered and tried to suppress his cough, suffered and knew no way of suppressing his mother’s overbearing ministrations. He took with meek patience his doses of the Grand Old Remedy recommended by Mr G. T. Congreve in his book on Chest Diseases and Consumption – Ellen Alden’s Bible at this time of the year, and Sam’s bane. He did as he was told as far as he was able, wrapped himself against the cold, tried to resist the drained tiredness that so often overcame him, and quietly bought a new handkerchief each time he had to throw one away because of the bright spattering of blood that was becoming noticeably more frequent. He found it difficult to eat; he knew he was getting thinner than ever. His mother bullied and cajoled him, demanding of his Uncle Thomas, to Sam’s mortification, that his duties in the shops be made lighter.
“It’s time he gave you an assistant. After all, you aren’t just any employee. One day—”
“Mother!”
“One day,” Ellen repeated sternly, “when you marry Lucy the shops will be yours. Maude was talking of it at Christmas. Though I must say that you didn’t seem to be doing much about it—”
“Mother, I don’t think I want to marry Lucy.” His voice was mild, uncertain; he hated the sound of it. “I don’t think I should.”
She ignored him. “I think it’s time we made some definite plans. I’ll talk to Maude about it.”
“Mother—” He broke off, coughing into his handkerchief.
His mother’s handsome face darkened, her clear, strong-marked brows came together in an expression he knew all too well, one work-hardened finger lifted, jabbing the air between them. “Now, you just listen to me, Sam Alden. Not a word – not a word – do you hear? Are you going to be a messenger boy all your life? Don’t you want to make something of yourself? You’re fond of Lucy, you know you are. A man should be married. What do you want – that Lucy should go off and find someone else for Thomas to hand the shops to? Over my dead body. She may be plain as a broomhandle, but if you dangle her much longer I warn you she’ll likely go looking – and her father’s money will make up for lack of other things, you may be sure of that. There’ll be plenty to take advantage of such opportunity—”
A wave of tiredness overcame Sam. He tilted back his head, his breath wheezed painfully. His mother’s voice rattled in his head like coins in a tin. He closed his eyes. “I’m going next door for a minute. That wretched boy has broken the fence. I warned that woman there’d be trouble if he did it again—” her voice faded down the hall.
Sam flinched as the door slammed, finding echoes in his aching body. He sat still for a moment, savouring the silence, letting thoughts of his mother, Aunt Maude, Lucy drain from him and calling up quietly that image he saved for his few private moments. He was worried about Molly. She had not been looking well lately; the unhappine
ss in her eyes hurt him when he saw it. He knew that her trouble had something to do with her young man, that gay and graceful Harry whom he had met last summer and in whom he had recognized ungrudgingly a fit mate for his beautiful Molly. He had seen the look in her eyes when Harry was near, heard her sing, watched her bloom through the summer, changing from the elfin waif who had first knocked on his door to an assured and lovely girl. But now the visits to the Bentons had almost stopped and she spent long hours upstairs on her own. She hardly spoke except when spoken to; dark shadows smudged her eyes. He was certain she was losing weight. Sam had seen the bright, glittering tears that had stood in her eyes at midnight on New Year’s Eve, had understood without rancour even as he had for the first time kissed her smooth, pearly cheek that his were not the lips she had been thinking of in that moment. He thought of Harry’s challenging laughter, the arrogant lift of his handsome head and admitted to himself that he could hardly blame her—
As if his thoughts had conjured her to him he heard the sound of a key in the lock and the street door opened. Not Ellen. She had barely had time to get started yet. He waited for the sound of light footsteps in the hall. None came. He walked to the kitchen door and opened it. Molly was standing by the front door, leaning upon it, her head back, her eyes closed. She looked exhausted and miserable, frail as thistledown. His already-sore chest tightened painfully. He stood and watched her for a moment. Her teeth were caught hard in her lower lip and her breathing was light and shallow. Remembering how ill she had been this time last year he started forward anxiously.
“Molly? Is something the matter?”
Her eyes flew open and she pushed herself from the door, straightening her body and coming to life in that split second that she realized she was observed.
She laughed. “Matter? Not much. I’ve lost my job, that’s all.” The bravado did not quite cover the distress.
“How on earth did that happen?”
She shrugged, walking slowly to the foot of the stairs. “My own fault; it was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose. I’m afraid I was extremely rude to one Owen Jenkins. A mistake that I have a strong feeling that my father would have been proud of. Mr Jenkins was only too pleased to point out, in front of the whole office, that he had always held women to be temperamentally unsuited to the responsibilities of office work, and that now I had so obligingly proved him to be right I might take myself off and never darken his office door again. Whereupon I gave him – also in front of the assembled staff, I’m pleased to say – my own opinion of himself, his office and his prejudices, and left.”
“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly.
“Oh, it wasn’t all bad.” The lightning grin that lit her eyes soon died. “Bits of it I quite enjoyed.”
“What will you do now?”
She shrugged tiredly. “Look for another job, I suppose.”
“In an office?”
“Perhaps. Or a shop. I don’t know.” She didn’t sound as if she greatly cared. Her hand was on the banister and she leaned her head upon it. The shadows were back in her eyes. “I’m a bloody idiot,” she said.
All the months she had put up with Jenkins’ sardonic dislike, and now, now of all times, she had lost control of tongue and temper and predictably harmed no one but herself.
“Come and have a cup of tea.”
“Thank you, but no. I’m very tired. I’ll go straight to bed, I think.”
He divined her need with sure instinct. “I’ll bring you a cup if you like; you don’t have to stay down here and talk. And we’ve some nice honey. Let me bring you a couple of slices of bread and honey – you must eat.”
Disconcertingly the wide lavender eyes clouded with tears. “You’re very kind.”
He felt strong, suddenly, and protective; never in his life before had he been anything but the recipient of help. He realized suddenly that he had not coughed, nor stuttered, since his mother had left the house.
“You go on up,” he said firmly, “the fire’s lit. I’ll bring you a tray.”
* * *
It was Sam who, a few days later, answered the summons of the doorbell to find Jack and Nancy Benton standing on the doorstep. One look at them told him that something very bad indeed had brought them here. Nancy’s thin face was swollen and patched red with crying, her dark eyes dulled with misery. The man’s strong face was drawn tight to the bone, his brilliant eyes, so like his brother’s and usually so calm, were fierce with pain. He wasted no time in greeting.
“Is Molly here?”
“Yes. She’s in her room. I’ll call her.”
Jack’s great frame pushed almost angrily past him, his eyes already lifting to the stairs. Nancy, gentler even in her distress, put a hand on Sam’s arm.
“I think it would be better if we went up.” Her voice was hoarse; crying had drained it.
“All right.” Sam closed the door, watched their heavy tread up the stairs. His own heart was pounding painfully.
His mother came from the kitchen, her sharp eyes going immediately to the stairs. “Who was that?”
“Friends of Molly’s.” He tensed himself to listen; the murmur of voices, Jack’s mostly.
“A man? You’ve let a man up there? Now you know the rules—” His mother made for the stairs.
“No.” Sam barred the way. “Something’s happened. Something really bad. It’s Harry Benton’s brother and his sister. She’d been crying.” He sucked nervously at his lower lip. “—I think he had, too.”
Jack and Nancy were upstairs for a very long time. Then, at last, Molly’s door opened and Sam heard footsteps on the stairs. Ignoring his mother’s warning glance – for no matter how curious Ellen Alden might be there were certain conventions to be observed – Sam leapt for the door, almost upsetting his chair as he went. He met the brother and sister at the foot of the stairs – Nancy was crying unrestrainedly, sobbing within the circle of Jack’s arm. Jack looked as if the hounds of hell were at his bones.
“She wouldn’t let us stay.” Jack’s voice was completely flat, worn out. ‘Wouldn’t come home with us either. Can’t say I blame her, there’s not much there for anyone at the moment.”
“What’s happened?”
“Harry’s dead. He volunteered for South Africa. Died on the ship on the way out. Fever.”
“Jesus.” Sam’s shocked word was almost a prayer.
Nancy said, trying to hold her sobs, “They had a fight before he went. She wouldn’t even see him to say goodbye. Oh, God, she looks awful. Please, Sam, take care of her; she won’t let us do anything—”
“I will.” Something in his tone drew Jack’s attention from his own grief. For a moment the inward-looking eyes regained awareness and he studied the thin, flushed face of the man who stood awkwardly before them, his sensitive mouth tightened to a pain not his own, his pale and usually indecisive eyes firm with a desire to help.
Jack nodded brusquely, hesitated for a moment, his eyes lifted to the door at the top of the stairs, then he shepherded his crying sister to the door.
Sam let instinct oust manners and let them see themselves out. He went up the stairs at a pace that left him gasping. He stood outside her door for a moment, regaining his breath, then, without knocking, entered the room.
Molly sat like a shadow in the chair by the fire, perched on the edge of the seat, her head down, her body bent over her crossed arms as if in dreadful pain. She was rocking very slightly, making no sound. At the opening of the door she lifted a face blind and bloodless with shock; her eyes were ash-grey, sightless and unfocussed. Sam had the awful feeling that she could not see him.
“Molly,” he whispered, stepping forward, “Molly, I’m so sorry.”
She stared at him as if she did not know him.
“He’s dead,” she said in an unrecognizable voice. “They said Harry’s dead. Harry. Harry. Harry.” She spoke his name to the rhythm of her rocking. Sam had never seen or heard anything so terrible.
“Molly,” he said
again, desperate to stop the awful movement, the dry, rhythmic voice. “Please don’t. Please, Moll—” He felt absolutely helpless.
He saw her shudder, felt in his own bones the effort she made; the rocking stopped and she fell silent. In the street outside flakes of snow were falling, the first of the winter. They drifted past the window in pretty, aimless, ever-changing patterns. She watched them with empty eyes.
“He never even got to South Africa,” she said at last, her voice a little closer to normal. “He never even got there.” – Harry, laughing, gleaming in sunlight – “He died of fever.”
“So his brother said.”
Harry, honey-gold and arrogant, kissing her with warm, hard mouth— “He would have hated that. Hated it,” she whispered, aware that she was rocking again but powerless to stop herself. Harry, blazing with anger, her own voice bitter; “Don’t come near me in your fancy red butcher’s uniform. I’ll spit on it…”
“Oh God,” she said, “oh, my God.” The tears she had believed would never come suddenly rose in a blinding, scalding flood. Death was for ever. For ever. She felt as if she were bleeding. She heard his name, over and over, did not realize that her own voice spoke it. She could not sit still, she stood up, moving her head blindly, trying to escape the insupportable knowledge that she would never see him again, never hear him—
“Molly.” Her own name pierced the blackness, the single word spoken as much in pain as she had uttered Harry’s.
“What shall I do without him?” she asked, lost. “What shall I do?”
She felt gentle arms around her, laid her face on the rough tweed of Sam’s jacket She was crying now, crying as if she would never stop.
Sam held her to him as if he could somehow will the pain from her.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said, the first time he had ever spoken those words to a soul. “Don’t worry, I will. I promise.”
But he knew that through her own wild sobbing she had not yet heard him.
Molly Page 16
