Again, the reality of the banker’s actions did not really strike her. That sort of thing happened at Frames. It meant nothing to her.
“Fancy a gin?” asked Arnie, turning away from the window.
“All right,” said Molly. “But I’d better be getting down there soon,” she said.
“Good girl,” he told her. He handed her the glass and asked, “What are you after, then?”
“After?” she asked.
“Yes – I mean to say, everybody’s after something, aren’t they? Stands to reason. Take your average bank clerk – he’s after security, isn’t he? Ask him to rob his bank and he won’t. He’d rather have his pension. But you tell him his pension’s threatened and he’ll do anything. Anything at all,” Arnie repeated. He looked hard at Molly. “Nobody’s honest,” he said, “not when it comes down to it. So there’s money, power, safety, excitement – what do you want? What would you do anything – anything at all – for?”
“It’s a bit depressing to think like that,” Molly told him.
“’Course – you’re a woman,” he said. “You’re not supposed to think.” She realized now that he was a bit drunk and became afraid. He stood swaying and peering at her intently. He came closer and put his arm round her. “Maybe with you it’s kids and security. You’ve had a rough time, poor little Molly.”
“I’d better get down there, Arnie,” she told him. “Celey’s looking at her watch. I told her I’d take over on the baccarat.”
“Good old Little Molly – always on the go,” said Arnie Rose. As she left he said, “Think about what I just said, though, gel. It’s kosher – everybody’s after something. Even you.”
Going fast downstairs on her spikey heels Molly thought, Phew. What was all that about? But the conversation had upset her. Perhaps it was true that everyone wanted something. Certainly, in Frames you saw how much it was possible to want something as silly as a couple of bits of pasteboard with the right pictures or numbers on them. But her real uneasiness was about Johnnie, who was out on unexplained business so much, who seemed not to love her as much as she loved him. And threatened love will take any conversation, any portent, any remark overheard in the street and try to make it a clue to the mystery. Fixing on her smile, she went to the baccarat table, greeted the people she knew and took up the cards.
Not long after, Simon Tate arrived and took over the table. He muttered, “Get up to the ladies’ room – fast.”
In the pink, scented atmosphere she found a woman of thirty in an expensive scarlet dress stretched out on the couch under the mirrors.
“Oh, Christ,” Molly said, looking at the pale face. “What’s the matter here? Just a minute – she’s Alexander Fraser’s wife, isn’t she? Oh, God, what’s the matter with her?”
“Not married,” said the other woman, Mrs Brown, plump and middle-aged in her pink uniform. “She’s married to Perry Elmond, Lord Antony’s son.”
She lowered her voice, “I think Mr Fraser ditched her tonight. She’s been taking pills to calm her down – probably phenobarbitone.”
“We should get an ambulance,” said Molly.
“No scandal,” Mrs Brown said firmly. “Get Mr Fraser.”
Molly had seen the woman earlier, leaning over Fraser’s shoulder, trying to attract him. She said, “I don’t know where he is. He dropped a packet tonight and left. What about her husband – or her mum?” She was desperate.
“Her mother never leaves Scotland,” said the woman. “We’ll get her into the Sloane Clinic. You stay here and I’ll phone them from the office.”
“Well, hurry up,” said Molly. “Because if there’s any delay I’m getting a hospital ambulance.”
“She’s not too bad. I’ve seen worse,” said the woman.
Molly sat by the woman, whose face was pale and sweating. She moaned and said, “Beattie. Beattie, come here.”
Her sister? A dog she had owned in childhood? A nanny? Molly bathed her face, wondered if she ought not to be walking her up and down as you saw people do in films. She prayed she would not die and that no one would try to come into the ladies’ room. Frames needed no high-class scandals for the Sunday papers Sid enjoyed after his dinner.
The woman came back into the room and said, “Here – help me carry her down to the front door. Try to smile a bit and make it look as if she’s drunk.”
And so the two women, with the semi-conscious one between them, half-dragged her rapidly down the stairs. Molly smiled a little in a well-we’re-all-human-aren’t-we way at anyone who looked anxious or curious. They held her between them on the pavement while they waited for the car from the clinic.
“She had everything,” muttered Mrs Brown.
“People always want more, don’t they?” Molly said. “If they didn’t we’d be out of business, for a start.” They bundled the sagging woman into the car and went back inside. “Someone should be told,” said Molly. “I wonder who?”
“Ask Mr Tate,” advised the woman.
Simon Tate was in the bar. When Molly told him what had happened he muttered, “Stupid bloody woman. I’ll go up and try to track down Fraser. After that, her father. Can you stay about and see everything’s all right? Johnnie should be here but he hasn’t turned up.”
By half past four the club had emptied and Simon and Molly were sitting in the office adding up the takings. The door of the safe stood open, ready for the money. Molly’s shoes lay thrown in a corner. She curled her aching toes under the table and checked a pile of notes. She jotted down the figure.
“No sign of Johnnie?” Simon asked.
Molly shook her head.
Downstairs the weary croupiers were packing up dice and cards, turning out the lights in the smoke-filled rooms. They were like actors after a performance. One by one the lights over the tables went out. The house was quiet. Molly and Simon finished counting the money. Simon clipped together a small pile of markers with the debtors’ signatures on them, shuffled the cheques together and clipped those together. He put the stacks of money and the other bundles in the safe, shut the door and swizzled the knob with the combination lock.
“Shall I make a cup of tea?” asked Molly. She was tired but she wanted company because Johnnie had not returned.
“I’d like one,” Simon said. As she made it he said firmly, “This is the second night this week that Johnnie hasn’t showed up. And last week he did it once. And the week before. I don’t mind covering for him sometimes but I’d like to be asked and I’d like it less often.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Molly said. But she already had and he had already promised to telephone if he got held up and could not come to work. When she asked him where he was he said “Went to a film” or “With some friends.” She dared not challenge him in case he lost his temper. Now, Simon said gently, “Is there anything wrong?”
She shook her head and put the tea tray on the table.
“There is though, isn’t there?” he told her. “And it’s not just another woman.”
“There must be one,” Molly said. “I rang his mum once when he didn’t turn up here. She sounded funny on the phone – sorry for me.”
“Look,” said Simon, leaning back in his chair, “I must know more.” He was long and lean and fair. He had big blue eyes. “I mean, I hope Johnnie isn’t having an affair with another woman but it isn’t just that, is it? You’ve been cooking the books. I was looking through the bank statements. Then I compared the evening figures we do together with what has been going to the bank the next morning. Sometimes you take in more than we collected the night before and sometimes less. I’m sorry to say I wondered if you were on the fiddle – perhaps you had a sick parent or, well, you know the sort of thing people get into trouble for – but when I added up the takings here and what was going into the bank over a period of a week to ten days there was no discrepancy. So what are you doing? Borrowing and putting it back again. If you want more wages why don’t you say so? I know you’re honest and you know you’re ho
nest but what happens when the Roses send round that shifty little man they call an accountant and he spots what you’ve been doing? You know what he’s like – if he finds anything fishy, he’ll start sniffing and sniffing until he tracks down what’s happened. I don’t want to be involved.”
“I’ll stop doing it,” muttered Molly.
After a pause Simon said, “Like to tell me why you were doing it in the first place? If you need some help –”
He got up, went into the kitchenette, took a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits from a wall cupboard and came back, eating them.
Meanwhile, Molly said nothing. He held the packet out to her saying, “Have a biscuit.” Molly shook her head. Simon took two and ate them both together. Then he said loudly, “Johnnie! – All this is something to do with Johnnie, isn’t it? He’s gambling – I mean, he’s gambling somewhere else, on the horses or something, and you’re covering his losses when he loses, and putting it back – No, doesn’t work – whoever heard of a punter who could put back his losses so systematically, borrow one day and pay back one, or at most, two days later? So what is it?” He walked to the window, looked down over the back of the house and ate another biscuit. He turned round. “Come on, Molly. I’m curious now. This must be something to do with Johnnie and it means you take, say a couple of hundred off tonight, hide it away somewhere and then, tomorrow or the next day, you pay it in. But, seriously, you must tell me. As I say, we’re all involved –” Then his face changed and he scowled. He said, “Ah. I think I’m beginning to see. Well, that’s not funny, Moll. Not funny at all. The sums have been getting bigger, too, you know that.”
He opened the safe and took out the red book in which they wrote down the night’s takings. From the bottom shelf of the safe he took the folder containing the bank statements. He carried both over to the rota on the wall which listed which of the staff were on duty each day. Molly watched him until she was sure what he was doing. Then she said wearily, “All right, you get your coconut – I’ll save you the sums.”
Simon faced her. “You’ve been evening up the takings so no one would notice they were lower when Johnnie was in? That’s right, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “He always carries it up the stairs himself on the nights we’re on together. That’ll be every other night or maybe every two nights. But I came to notice when he was on we were always down and never up – I asked him and he admitted it. He said he was a partner and he needed expenses. So I told him I’d even it up for him. All I had to do was take a bit off the top when I was on duty with you, or whoever, and just take the rest to the bank. Then when Johnnie was on I’d add it on to the money I was paying in at the bank next day.”
Simon blew out his breath. “Phew,” he said. “What a woman will do for the man she loves. Look here – you’ve been clever and you’ve been loyal to Johnnie. But you’re putting the rest of us in danger. If the Roses think we’ve all been helping you, or we knew about it, we’d not just get the sack – we’d get tied up in it and dumped in the Thames. My impulse is to grab my hat and run for it. It’s only because I like you that I’m not on the phone now to Arnie or Norman, telling them I’ve just caught you out in a fraud so they won’t blame it all on me. And I’m lucky, Molly Flanders, because I’ve got reasonably well-off and enquiring relations and the Roses know it. You’re in worse trouble. They could really take you for a one-way ride.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Mary said with assurance.
“Oh, why not, pray?” he enquired.
“Well, I’m a woman,” Mary explained, “and I did it for a man. They expect that kind of thing. And Arnie wants me. And” she concluded triumphantly, “my mum was at Wattenblath Road School with both of them.”
“Oh, well,” said Simon. “Congratulations.” He looked nervous. “Phew,” he said and stood up. “I need a drink. We must talk about this, Molly. I think we’d better go up to your flat and work out what to do. If Johnnie comes in, so much the better. I’d like a word with him. Very much so, in fact.”
And they went upstairs to the lavishly appointed flat, where Simon sat down with a glass and a bottle of brandy. He said, “All you have to do is stop covering up for Johnnie. If you just pay in the takings as they stand from now on you’re in the clear. If the accountant catches Johnnie out that’s his problem, not yours. And you must tell Johnnie he’ll get caught. I’ll do the same.”
“It’s his money,” said Molly. “He’s a partner.”
“He’s a third partner. A third of it’s his money. After the profits have been added up – he’s not entitled to help himself.”
“The trouble is, he’s taking more each time,” Molly said.
“Yes,” Simon said gravely, “that is the trouble. And that is why you have to stop covering up. You’re working in hundreds now. Soon it might be thousands.”
Molly sat there in silence. It was after five in the morning. Simon looked at her sadly. She might have been a tired child. She said, “He’s never stayed out all night before.”
“I’m sorry,” Simon said. “Perhaps if you talk to him – God, what a night. Fraser gone bust. Judy half-dead in the ladies’ on phenobarbs. Johnnie’s been pilfering and you’ve been fiddling the books – is it worth it? Is it really worth it?” He paused, then said, “You don’t think he’s run for it, do you? In case the Rose brothers find out.”
“I’ll look in the wardrobe,” Molly cried. She hoped desperately that Johnnie had really run away. It would be better if he feared the Roses than if he just did not love her. But each of his suits hung there and, in the chest of drawers, all his shirts, pants and socks lay in piles, exactly where she had laid them. It was while staring down at the pile of fifteen or twenty laundered shirts of all colours and kinds that she felt anger. Tears came to her eyes. She went back and said to Simon, “Everything’s there.”
“You’re sounding a bit better,” he said. “Grim.” He poured himself some more brandy. “Now start thinking. He’s been drinking champagne with debutantes while you’ve done the accounts and picked the dead bodies up in the ladies’ lavatory. Yet still, inspired by the spirit of the slums – let him black your eye on Saturday night and tell the neighbours you slipped downstairs – you’ve been covering up for him. Helping him diddle two of the most frightening men in London.”
He leaned forward. “I’ve decided what to do. There’s no point in your agreeing never to cover for Johnnie again. Maybe you’ll keep your word and maybe you won’t. Men like Johnnie can make women do plenty they don’t want to – I can’t afford the risk. If the Roses’ accountant finds out I could, without any warning at all, find myself in serious trouble. I’m sorry, Molly, but I’ve got to tell the Roses what’s going on.”
“No!” she cried out, but he continued, “I’ve got to. Of course I’ll tell them you didn’t benefit by what you did. And you’re right – they’ll forgive you because you’re a woman and your cunt is ruling your head – no offence, Molly dear, but it’s true – and then I’ll go out and join my brother in Kenya as fast as possible and the Roses will go out and get Johnnie. And I should advise you to disappear, too. Just go home, or wherever you do go, and keep your head well below the sandbags.”
“Why have you got to do this?” demanded Mary. “You said they wouldn’t hurt you.”
“They could,” he said, “if they wanted to.”
She looked at him contemptuously. He said earnestly, “Look, Moll – I’m a homosexual, a deviant, a nancy boy and to you, queer as a nine-bob note. If the Roses take against me they don’t need to lay a finger on me. They can get some of their friends in the police to discover me in flagrante, to put it politely. It doesn’t matter where I am, even if I’m at home in my own bed, I’m committing a crime I can get two years for. Do you understand why I’m afraid?”
“Oh, God,” groaned Molly, looking at him. “Oh, Simon. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I don’t advertise,” he said. “But now you see. I’ve no alternative.
I don’t want to be a martyr for Johnnie Bridges.”
“I must warn him,” Molly said instantly.
“All right,” said the tall, thin, young man. “I’ll ring them up in the morning. That’ll give you some time, so you’d better tell him now or by lunchtime they’ll be stamping all over his beautiful hands.”
“But how can I –?” she asked.
“Try Amanda Walton’s little house at 21 Bruton Mews,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s been going on for a long time. She’s a long cheap streak of spite, as it happens –”
But Molly was in her coat and at the door. She stared at him wildly. “Goodbye,” she said. “Good luck.”
“And to you, poor little thing,” said Simon Tate, behind her back.
She clattered through the streets on her high heels, her coat thrown over her shoulders. She passed a policeman and stared at him furiously. He would not stop her. Of course she had seen the women making up to him in the clubs, brushing their powdered shoulders against his jacket, kissing him on the cheek and calling him “Johnnie” in teasing voices. He had laughed at them for it and said these posh debutantes like a bit of rough trade. Perhaps there had been a little spite in his laughter. But he’d gone and got one now. “I can’t stand this. I’ll kill her,” Molly cried to herself, tearing through the narrow streets. And all the while she’d known nothing, while Simon knew – and how many of the others? And she’d been doing all the work for fifteen pounds a week and thinking she was so clever – while he’d had one hand in the till and the other up an upper-class tart’s skirt. She, Molly, had lain awake for him while he touched, kissed, covered the body of another woman. And lied to her later, about being with friends.
She arrived, sobbing, at the entrance to the mews and ran down under streetlamps beginning to pale as dawn came. She hammered, sobbing, on the brass door knocker of the white-painted front door. She banged and banged, unable to bear the thought that inside her lover lay asleep with another woman while she stood in the chilly dawn, on the step outside.
All The Days of My Life Page 24
