All The Days of My Life

by Hilary Bailey

  “Oh, love,” said Johnnie Bridges, looking down at her and kissing her face.

  She smiled up at him. “You frightened me there, for a minute,” he told her. “What a noise. Have the neighbours rushing in.”

  “I nearly frightened myself,” she said.

  “Never happened before?” he said, unsurprised.

  “No,” she said.

  “Funny how often that happens,” he said. “Well, then – I’m your first.”

  “Seems like it,” she told him. “Oh, Johnnie, I love you so.”

  “Oh, gel,” he said. “You’re special. You’re something really special.”

  But the next day, after Johnnie had left to pick up some clothes from his mother’s house, Ivy was banging on the door heavily. Mary opened it with her coat over her nightdress and there stood her mother, in a flowered apron, with the pram. “For two pins,” she declared instantly, “I’d have left this outside your door whether you were in or out, and just walked away.”

  “Do you want to come in, Mum?” asked Mary, knowing that she would.

  “No, I don’t. But I will anyway,” Ivy declared.

  She dragged the pram in after her and said, “I don’t know where you think you were last night. I was running to the neighbours at eleven o’clock at night when you didn’t come back. From one I find out you’re not at the pub working. And, of course it’s Elizabeth Flanders who has to be the one to tell me she saw you get in a man’s car at eight o’clock at night when she’s coming back from some meeting at the church. Imagine what I felt! You’d better do some thinking, Mary – I’ve been awake all night worrying. What about the child?”

  In the meanwhile she was looking in the parlour, then in the kitchen.

  “Cup of tea, Mum?” asked Mary.

  “Might as well,” said Ivy, satisfied that there was no man on the premises. Then she said, “There’s nobody upstairs, is there?”

  “No,” Mary told her.

  “I don’t want to be unreasonable,” Ivy told her. “And you’d better give the baby her egg. I haven’t fed her any solids.”

  In the kitchen, where Mary put on the kettle and the water for Josephine’s egg, Ivy said, “I’d better warn you that Johnnie Bridges is a criminal. Where do you think he gets his money from? What do you think you’re up to?”

  “He asked me out. I went,” said Mary, feeling Johnnie’s hands warm on her body. She trembled a little, even then, as she stood watching the kettle, with the morning light coming through the kitchen and her little daughter banging her spoon on the empty shelf in front of her high chair.

  “Well, I hope you won’t go again, that’s all,” said Ivy. “Look, Mary – he’s not just a fellow with an ordinary job who gets his hand on a bit of stuff that fell off the back of a lorry from time to time. Johnnie Bridges is a professional. He’s tied up with Norman and Arnie Rose and you know what that means. You’d better get rid of him now, or you’ll rue it later on. As for tricking me by leaving Josie with me and acting as if you were going to work down at the pub, all so you could go out with him – well, I don’t believe it, Mary. I wouldn’t have believed you could do a thing like that. I can see what’s happening – you’re starting to go down. You’d better pull yourself together straight away or I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

  “I’m seeing him again today. Will you look after Josephine?” Mary asked.

  “Are you deaf?” demanded Ivy, putting the egg into the boiling water. “Haven’t you been listening at all to what I’ve been saying? I’m telling you – give him up now, before it’s too late. He’ll wind up in jail, I’m telling you. Do I have to say it twice – if you think I’m going to look after your baby so you can get involved with Johnnie Bridges you’ve got another think coming.”

  “Please, Mum,” said Mary, pleading. “Honestly – he’s not bad. He wants to get out of thieving. That’s true – he means it.”

  Ivy’s face sagged. She said in a defeated voice, “Mary – they all mean it. Sometimes. And then along comes another job, another chance to get rich quick. And they take it. I can understand what’s going through your head. You’re lonely, that’s natural –”

  “I’ll ask Lil Messiter, then,” Mary interrupted. “She’ll be glad of a few bob extra.”

  “So that’s it,” said Ivy, changing her tone. “You’ve got to have a feller at all costs. As long as he’s got looks and a bit of money to flash about you don’t ask any questions. You stupid little bitch. You’ll wind up as a gangster’s moll. First him, then somebody else – then God knows what – you’ll be chucking yourself in the river in ten years’ time and you’ll be one of the lucky ones. They don’t last long at that game, I can tell you, not them girls. They fetch up on the streets. Always. Only one way to go once you’ve started that game – down. You’ve seen them for yourself, hanging about on street corners and under arches in all weathers, looking for a pick-up. Worn out at thirty. He won’t marry you, Bridges, and after that no decent man will look at you. Who’d want a gangster’s leavings? And what about poor little Josephine?”

  Mary, feeling the chill of the street corner blowing about her said, “I like him.”

  “‘I like him,’” said Ivy, throwing back her head. “‘I like him.’ Oh, my Christ. What am I hearing?”

  Mary took the egg out of the boiling water with a spoon. She put it into an egg cup to cool.

  “I should have known when you took this bloody place what you had in mind,” cried Ivy. “I should have put a stop to it.”

  “I’ve had enough of this, Mum,” Mary shouted back. “You’ve got no rights over me. I’m a widow – remember. I’m a gangster’s widow already. You can’t come here as if I’m a little girl from a convent school who ran away with a big, bad man. And I’ll see who I like when I like and it hasn’t got anything to do with you.”

  Ivy looked her straight in the eye and said, “I’m leaving – and don’t come to me for any help when you’re in trouble because you won’t get it.”

  Josephine began to cry as her grandmother slammed the kitchen door behind her. Mary stood still for a moment, partly sobered. This was the first time Ivy had ever threatened to withdraw her support. Then she set her mouth and cracked the top of Josephine’s breakfast egg.

  It was a long, Indian summer for her. It seemed that the dark green trees would never turn brown, the air would remain perpetually full of golden light, as if the year would stay pitched between the end of summer and the start of autumn for ever and ever. She and Johnnie took Josephine to the seaside and dipped her toes in the waves. She screamed with delight and struggled to get from Mary’s arms. They shopped extravagantly, ate, went dancing and made love for long, warm nights in Mary’s big bed at Meakin Street.

  Meanwhile Johnnie maintained a home of some kind elsewhere. Mary was mildly curious about this unknown address, half-suspecting him of having a wife tucked away somewhere. How, otherwise, were his shirts always so immaculate, starched to exactly the right degree? How were his suits so beautifully pressed and his shoes so well-polished? Sometimes she saw a West End flat, filled with expensive furniture, presided over by a blonde mistress smelling strongly of scent – but it was hard to imagine this figure toiling over a washtub. Sometimes she saw a passive wife in the suburbs – but he did not give the impression of having that sort of domesticity in his life. And none of this vastly worried her. She was in a dream – what mattered was not where he might sometimes hang his hat or pick up his laundry but whether he loved her, and whether she loved him. And she knew she was so happy that nothing could be really wrong. She was content to see him disappear for a few days and then reappear.

  But Meakin Street, and especially the women, hated her. She, sad widow of their unjustly hanged Jim Flanders, was now flashing about in a white car with a fancy man. She dragged them down with her carryings-on. Yet she looked so bonny and happy that they could not help comparing their own position with hers. Mary was not paying the price of sin. It looked a
s if she were getting rewarded for it. Their hard eyes followed her as she wheeled her pram along the street. They whispered, their arms crossed on their breasts. “Tart – disgusting, isn’t it? Should’ve been her what got hung.”

  Strangely enough, Ivy’s attitude weakened. She could see her daughter was happy. She heard her grandchild shouting excitedly when Johnnie appeared in the doorway with an oversized teddy bear in his arms. She found the notorious gangster one day in his shirtsleeves in the kitchen, unstopping the sink.

  “He’s good to you, I will say that,” she said grudgingly to Mary, when her daughter showed her a new coat. In the end it was Sid who maintained his hostility to Johnnie. He told Mary bluntly that he did not want to meet Johnnie and that if he did come across him by chance he would say what he thought about him to his face.

  “You’re carried away, Ivy,” he said to his wife one evening, as they were having a cup of tea before going to bed. “Of course she’s happy now. What about later? This is the honeymoon but it won’t go on. What happens after? Suppose she has a kid – what then? That sort doesn’t hang about for long, even if they get the chance, which half the time they can’t. They’re in prison. Then our Mary’s left there, pale and peaky, maybe with another kid, or one on the way, waiting for him to come out. You’re not minding Josephine no more while Mary gads about with him.” Ivy had weakened over the question of minding the child after her first declarations.

  “Oh come on, Sid,” Ivy expostulated. “What’s she supposed to do – a widow of seventeen with a baby. She’s got to go out sometimes.”

  “Not with him,” Sid told her. “Let her look after her kid. It’ll bring her to her senses. Let her live quiet and get a little job and wait for a decent feller to turn up – that’ll do her more good than turning herself into a gangster’s moll before our eyes. She’s got to learn. If she doesn’t do it now she’ll do it the hard way later.” He put his cup into the saucer with a bang. “This is for your sake and mine as well as hers,” he said. “Because if it goes on, it’s us who’ll have to pick up the pieces. Say she has another kid and he gets caught – who’ll have to support the three of them while he’s inside? Us – that’s who.”

  Ivy picked a time when Johnnie was out and went round to Meakin Street. Mary, sitting in front of the fire with the baby on her knee, began to cry. “It’s not fair, Mum,” she said. “Why do I have to get stuck like this?”

  “That’s what happens to women,” Ivy told her unsympathetically. “Anyway – I can’t do nothing about it. I can’t defy your father. My life’d be a misery. And perhaps it’s for the best. It’ll give you a chance to look at it all clearly. He’s a crook, when all’s said and done. And where does he disappear to when he’s not here?”

  “I don’t care,” cried Mary. “All I know is Josephine’s spoiled my chances.”

  “Don’t sit there with that baby on your knee talking like that,” said Ivy. “Your own child – less than a year old.”

  “My child – oh yes,” Mary said bitterly. “What about Jim Flanders? Where’s her dad? Bloody dead, that’s all – went out and got himself hung, that’s all. Oh, mum – can’t you mind Josie for an hour while I go out and find Johnnie?”

  “If he had anything to him he’d be here with you, now,” her mother said implacably.

  “Yes – watching the telly,” Mary said.

  Mary sat with tears running down her face, imagining Johnnie, who had been gone for three days, with Susie or Jeanne. He would never come back – if he did he would not stay, not if she had Josephine with her night and day. She could not afford to pay someone to mind her child all the time. Even if she could, most of their outings were spontaneous. She would not be able to organize it. And now Ivy was against her. Just because she had a child the whole world wanted her to resign from life. She was supposed to live like a nun, tending an altar. And the altar was to be Josephine. It wasn’t fair. Not fair. Not fair.

  “It’s not fair,” she said.

  “Nothing is,” responded her mother.

  “I can’t put up with it,” she sobbed.

  “You’ll have to,” said her mother. “All the rest of us did.”

  “Oh – oh – oh,” cried Mary, sobbing and shouting with rage and pain. “I’ll kill myself. I will. I will.”

  Ivy took Josephine from her and said, “You’ll have to start watching what you say in front of this child. She’s clever. She understands more than you think. And it’s time she went to bed.”

  While Ivy was upstairs settling the baby Mary thought wildly of grabbing her coat and going round the clubs to find Johnnie. Ivy would have to look after Josephine if she had gone. But the thought of the rows to follow frightened her.

  She sat and bit her nails to the quick.

  Ten days later Johnnie still had not returned. Mary had lost seven pounds in weight and was pale as a ghost. She was sleeping only a few hours each night and, when she did, her dreams terrified her. She had had the same dreams before, in childhood, but not so regularly, or so frighteningly. There were burning buildings, crashes, which often woke her, and often a woman’s high voice sang over the sounds of destruction, in a foreign language. It was a voice full of loss and sadness, hopeless, forlorn.

  She was lying sleepless in bed, and dreading sleep, when the doorknocker was banged over and over again. It was one in the morning. Mary, her heart thudding, ran downstairs in her nightdress. There on the step stood Johnnie Bridges, red-eyed, his suit unpressed, his shirt open at the neck.

  “You’d better come in,” said Mary.

  Once the door was shut behind them he took her in his arms and began to kiss her. “Come on, girl,” he muttered. “Upstairs. I need you.”

  “Not so fast,” Mary said. “You haven’t been back for a fortnight.”

  Then he pulled her unresistingly up the stairs and made love to her like a starving man. “Oh, God. I’ve missed you,” he said.

  And this made up for everything. At that moment, Josie shouted. There was a bang. Mary jumped out of bed and ran into the bedroom next door. The child was standing on the floor in her nightdress. As Mary stared she walked towards her. Mary caught her as she fell down. “She got out of the cot,” Mary exclaimed. “She can walk!”

  “We’ll have to take her into bed with us,” said Johnnie. “She might do it again and hurt herself.”

  So the three slept cosily together that night. But next day, early, he was off again. “You can’t do this,” Mary cried out. “It’s not fair.”

  Bending to kiss her he said, “You’ll have to trust me. We’ll go out tonight. Pick you up at seven.”

  Mary, in bed, shed a tear on the baby’s dark curls. Then she lay back luxuriously and felt a lot better. The constant pain and the nightmares had gone. She had hope, now.

  As she left the house with Johnnie that evening Sid, coming home from work in his inspector’s uniform, spotted them from across the street as he trudged home. Johnnie was wearing an immaculate shirt and a new well-cut blue suit, just collected from the tailor. Mary wore a bell-skirted red dress and a white fur cape. Mary’s father looked away and walked on.

  “He’d have to speak to me at the wedding,” Johnnie remarked, opening the car door for her. Mary got in, holding the baby, saying nothing. There were times when she was dying to get married to Johnnie. On the other hand, she had seen what happened to you when you married – the whole world expected you to get out of bed with double pneumonia to get your husband’s tea or find his socks. As with a baby, a husband was expected to be something like a religion for a woman – down Meakin Street the menfolk were discussed as if they were gods, the sort of god which needed a lot of human sacrifice and tended to do nasty things for no reason. “I’ll have to go home and get His tea now,” the women would say. Or, “I’d like to do it but He’d make my life a misery.” Then, Mary thought, you had to put up with whatever they slung at you and get old before your time. Look at Lil Messiter, half dead from childbearing, the old man taking his spi
te out on her when he’d had one too many. It didn’t look like fun, even when the man was reasonable and the couple loved each other, as she supposed Sid and Ivy did. In Johnnie’s circles, she thought, the story was a bit different, but no better. The wives got tucked away in nice houses somewhere in the suburbs while the men went off to clubs, pubs and the races, taking pretty girls with them. She wouldn’t want to be one of the wives but the fate of the girls, like Jeanne and Susie, wasn’t much good in the long run as they got older and the presents got smaller and they changed hands more often. Once their freshness was gone – and it didn’t last long – they disappeared. But the wives looked strained when they appeared in public in their smart dresses, covered in diamanté, and the make-up heavy over faces which had once been as bright as Jeanne’s or Susie’s. The choices ahead of her were unappealing – hang around and maybe get jaded and start drinking too many gins; marry Johnnie and get tucked away in Ilford, or Dulwich, in a four-bedroomed suburban house with the kids. She sighed and then threw off the thoughts. She was happy now and that was enough. She squeezed Johnnie’s arm as they drove round Trafalgar Square and thought suddenly of the Kentish countryside where she had lived as a child. She thought of Allaun Towers and Mrs Gates. She saw the reeds growing by the unkempt lake, the red brick wall of the vegetable garden, the old green brocade chair in her room at the corner of the house. She saw the fields, and the swell of gorse-covered heath above them. She saw every leaf on the elms beside the drive, the gravel in front of the house, with little green tufts of weed growing among the stones. She saw the two pigeons which had nested in a chimney sitting on the lead guttering below her attic, cooing and fluffing out their feathers. She saw the brook, the watercress growing in the shallow water, the long grass along its sides. Then she realized that she and Johnnie were crossing Lambeth Bridge.