As the first flakes of snow floated down on to the shabby grass and leafless trees of the park, Josephine’s round eyes glittered and her little round face was transfigured. She ran across the thin coating of snow on the grass and studied her footprints, she held out her palm and caught the flakes.
Molly watched her, shivering slightly. Back to Frames, she thought. Well, why not? Back to number 4 Meakin Street – again, why not?
In the deserted park, where Josephine was now scraping thin snow together to make a little snowman, she found a man beside her.
“She’s a nice child,” said Ferenc Nedermann.
Molly looked at him, startled. What was he doing here again?
“She’s never seen snow before,” she told him.
“It reminds me of winters in my own country,” he said.
“Where’s that?” she asked.
“Poland,” he said. “On the German border.”
“That can’t have been nice,” she said and moved away. She stood by Josephine saying, “There’s not a lot of snow here, Josie. Not really enough for a snowman.” But the child had seen pictures of snowmen in books, with pipes in their mouths and lumps of coal for eyes.
“A little one – I have a little one,” insisted the child. Molly knelt down on the snow to help her. She called back at Nedermann, “If you’re still looking for Johnnie I can’t help you. I’m not hiding him.”
“I know where he is,” Nedermann said. “The Roses found him.”
“Oh, God,” Molly said, squeezing the tiny snowman near the top, to make a head. She sat back on her sopping knees and said to Josie, “Run and get two very little stones for his eyes.” The child trotted off. “What did they do to him?” she called.
“They made him pay up – then they beat him up a little bit,” he told her.
“What about the money he owes you?” she asked.
“I didn’t get all of it.”
She looked at the stones Josephine held out. “They’re a bit big,” she said. Nedermann was beside her. In his leather palm were some small pieces of gravel.
“Thanks,” she said, taking them as he crouched beside her. Very carefully, she put them on to the snowman’s tiny face. They stuck. Josephine laughed. Then she wandered off, kicking up the snow as she went. Molly put a little piece of brown twig into the snowman’s face. “There’s his pipe,” she said with satisfaction.
Then she looked Nedermann in the face and asked, “Well – you found him. What do you want now?”
“Oh,” he said calmly. “I was near here and I wondered if you’d be back. I have to go now. I’ve got the car. Do you want a lift home?”
“Not a chance,” said Molly, who saw that Josephine’s friend Sally had arrived in the care of her big sister. “That’s her friend,” she said. “She’ll want to stay until it gets dark now.”
“Children should enjoy as much as they can,” he told her. “There is no such thing as too much pleasure for a child. Childhood is short.”
“You’re right,” said Molly. She felt uneasy and wished he would go away. She did not know what he wanted. His face was always expressionless and his voice flat. It was the voice of a man in despair. And she wondered what the children of his tenants were doing now. Playing round dangerous oil heaters in their crowded flats? Lying on mattresses damp with the moisture coming into the rooms from leaky roofs and running walls?
“I expect we’ll meet again,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re a gambler – I’m getting back my old job as a croupier at Frames, in South Molton Street.”
“I shall come and see you,” he said, and left her courteously.
Watching the little girls play she wondered if they had marked pretty Johnnie’s face. It would make a big difference to him if they’d scarred him, she thought. He would mind that more than anything.
The next time I saw Molly it was with my father. At Frames. The affair began in a peculiar way, with my mother coming to me in a great distress, almost as soon as I entered the house. I was going to spend the weekend at home and go back to Oxford on Sunday. But, no, she said, if the occasion demanded it, I would have to stay.
Matters must be sorted out. She was, in fact, dreadfully upset. She had discovered a bill from Frames in my father’s suit when she was emptying the pockets before giving it to the cleaners. Worse than that, this was the second bill she had found. The first he had left on the dressing-table one night and she had come across it in the morning. I’m sure she would not have been nearly so upset by this evidence of a new interest in gambling and fast living by my father if she had not been the youngest daughter of the famous Arthur Udall, “Flash” Udall, who travelled with the fast set surrounding King Edward VII and had, before my mother’s childish eyes, brought a family of five daughters to ruin before the First World War. He’d done this by the old means of wine and women but the chief cause of his downfall had been a readiness to bet on anything, anywhere, at any time, from a racehorse to relative speeds of two flies crawling up the wallpaper. So my poor mother had seen her mother’s tears and half the property sold off before the old reprobate eventually died in his sins, keeling over on Derby Day just as the horse he backed crossed the finishing line in front. He left his wife nearly penniless with five daughters, four unmarried. Small wonder the little Udalls were forbidden to play cards, or wager over their Racing Demon even with matchsticks or hairpins. Small wonder my mother looked on gambling as man’s worst form of weakness. She was naturally even more upset that my father had not confided in her. This secrecy seemed to make his visits to a gaming club more sinister still. So, in a state of great agitation, she asked me, the eldest son, to discuss the matter with my father. And I, feeling the whole thing was rather Victorian and ridiculous, agreed to do so.
The old-fashioned scene took place in his study after dinner. My father burst out laughing and then sobered a little when I told him how genuinely upset my mother had been. “Well,” he said, “there are several reasons why I didn’t tell your mother what I have been doing, one of them being her sensitivity on the subject. But I assure you none of those reasons involved a sudden excess of gambling fever. In fact, I’ve spent two dull evenings at Frames in the last month and tonight I shall spend another one – piously hoping I shall never have to cross the threshold again. In fact, partly to cheer me while I’m there, and partly to impress on you the fact that of all men’s ways of passing the time gambling is the dullest and least profitable, I now invite you to join me in an outing after dinner. Personally I’d rather go to King’s Cross and watch the trains go in and out.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said, rather excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to go to somewhere like Frames. But what shall I tell Mother? She’ll think I’ve been bitten by the bug, too, and we’ll both be dragged down into hell together. Anyway, what are you doing, going time after time to a place you hate?”
“Part of the job, my boy, that’s all,” said my father. “I’d better not tell you any more. I’ll speak to your mother – at least I can tell her that after tonight I’m giving it up for good. I can blame Tubby Atkinson. I always make him come with me.” And at this my father chuckled and went out of the room to find mother. I, who lived on the same staircase as Tom Allaun, had often heard from him and his cousin Charlie wild tales of high stakes, perilous games and fortunes won and lost at Frames. I was excited – although I sincerely hoped not to run into either of them. But even as we walked through the discreet front door in the quiet West End street I was still wondering what on earth my father was coming here for.
We came into a kind of lobby. The wallpaper was restrained and the lighting fairly low. Beyond this lay a bar where several men and some women stood drinking. My father spotted Tubby Atkinson with relief. Tubby bought us both a whisky and said glumly, “So this is to be our last night of pleasure, eh? Just as well. I dread the idea of getting carried away and staking my life on the turn of a card.”
My father, equally unenthusiastically, said, “Ch
emin de fer, then. Finish your drink.” A laugh went up from the other end of the bar where the group had thickened. Then one of them detached himself from the group and came towards me shouting, “Bert! Torn up your Band of Hope membership card?”
Embarrassed I saw his big form approaching me. I said, “Hullo, Charlie. Father – this is Charles Markham. Charlie – my father.”
“Oh,” said Charlie, unabashed. “Good evening, sir. And here comes Tom –” Introductions were made. Tom Allaun was polite enough but I could tell my father disliked the pair of them. There was something about the combination of Charlie’s large, ruddy-complexioned presence and Tom’s pallor and slender body which together made each of them seem worse – as the bear pointing up the fox’s cunning, so to speak, while the fox emphasized the brute strength of the bear. At college I would hear modern jazz coming from Tom’s rooms. On the staircase I would meet friends of his going to visit him – they all tended to look like him, withdrawn, remote, sometimes older than the average undergraduate. He had a way of looking at me without expression as if waiting for me to commit myself to some foolish statement. I always felt he laughed at me behind my back. I have never quite known why I disliked Tom so much, but I did. Living in the same building with him I observed that he stayed up late and rose late, but that otherwise I had no idea of his habits. Charlie, on the other hand, was a celebrated university hooligan. This was no more endearing. His jokes often had a cruel side. Taken in combination Tom and Charlie gave the impression of being like the two Nazi interrogators – the pale Gestapo intellectual who trips you up in your mistakes and then hands you back to the big one for a spot more beating up or torture.
We all strolled up to the main room, which was very quiet and long, with reddish carpet and velvet curtains. And, of course, the green baize tables. And standing at one of them, croupier’s rake in hand, there stood my princess, the girl I had seen at the Allauns’ the Christmas before last. She was, in fact, just like a princess, in her pale satin dress, with her longish blonde hair falling round that spectacularly pretty face. The rake she held might well have been a mace. All she lacked was a crown.
She looked up and caught my eye. I went straight over to her.
“Mary,” I said. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“The very same,” she told me. A tall young man in evening clothes walked up to her and she said something to him. He nodded and took the rake. The game continued and she came over to us.
I introduced her to my father and his friend. My father seemed surprised, which I thought was merely because he did not expect me to know a croupier in a London gaming house.
He was studying her deeply, and after we had chatted about the circumstances of our meeting he asked, “Will you come and have a drink with us at the bar? I don’t feel like playing just at present.”
“Well –” she said. “I’m really supposed – but never mind. Yes – I’d like to.”
So we all trooped back to the bar again. My father turned his full attention on Mary and began to ask her about herself. I watched him in awe. To begin with, she evidently liked him and felt at ease with him, so much so that I began to think my father was starting a suspect middle-age phase and might now abandon a hitherto blameless life to take up gambling and go about with pretty girls. In spite of my horror at this prospect I was lost in admiration of his technique. If he asks her out to dinner, I thought, lost between jealousy and admiration, she’ll accept. She’ll go.
“No, I don’t live here,” she was telling him. “I live in a little house in the same street as my mum and dad. I’ve got a small daughter who lives with my mother during the week and comes to me at weekends.”
“A respectable girl, really,” said Charlie Markham, who suddenly seemed rather drunk, and had his hand heavily clasped round the upper part of Molly’s arm.
Molly flinched and a look of fear came into her eyes before she pulled away her arm and said, “Not really. Maybe a bit more respectable than you are, though.”
“No – I insist,” said Charlie, and he pushed his face close to hers. “You’ve got a heart of gold, Molly. A heart of gold, that’s what you’ve got. Didn’t I always say that, Tom?”
“You certainly did – and do,” responded Tom Allaun.
“Surely the tables are calling for you young men?” said my father. “Perhaps you should go upstairs and take the first bet of the evening. Are you going, too?” he asked turning to me. And I had no option but to leave, dragging Tom and Charlie reluctantly behind me. As I went upstairs Tom, from behind, said in a low voice, “Pater often take up with pretty girls in clubs, Bert?”
“Only when the moon’s full,” I told him, itching for the moment when I could get away from them.
And finally, after losing fifty pounds I could not afford, while Charlie watched my face as I lost and Tom egged me on, hoping, no doubt, that I would start to gamble feverishly without caring what happened, I got out from between their elbows and left them to it. By then their faces had both taken on a steady stare as they watched the dice, the cards and the croupier’s rake taking the chips. They barely said goodnight once I had told them I was leaving. But, “You must call your old man into the study before he goes to bed,” Tom remembered to say. “You’d better have a serious talk to him about his life.”
I found my father in the bar alone, gloomily drinking a glass of whisky and dry ginger. There was no sign of Molly. “Tubby’s gone,” he told me. “Have you had enough?”
“More than enough,” I told him.
In the taxi he asked, “Are they special friends of yours, Allaun and Markham?”
“Certainly not,” I said. “Tom lives on my staircase and Charlie’s his cousin, that’s all. I met them over Christmas when I was staying with Sebastian. They’re neighbours, or rather Tom is. But as a matter of fact, I don’t like either of them much.”
“I’m glad of that,” muttered my father.
“Did you enjoy your chat with Mary?” I asked him and he picked up my tone immediately.
“She’s a very nice girl,” he reassured me, adding, “Although I’m sure I don’t know how.” And after a pause he said, “Or for how much longer.”
For several months Molly Flanders went to work, took a cab back to Meakin Street in the early hours of the morning, slept late, did her household jobs and sometimes picked up Josephine from the bread-shop in the afternoons and took her to the park. For a time she was happy with this routine. She needed to recover from the shocks of the previous few months but, as spring came on and the evenings grew lighter, she became restless. There was nothing she particularly wanted to do but she was bored with what she was doing. So when Ferenc Nedermann turned up at the club one evening and invited her out to dinner she accepted, rather than say no to yet another invitation. She was too wise to do more than flirt with the more enterprising visitors to Frames and the truth was that she felt no interest in any of them. Johnnie had spoiled her for men. She did not trust them. She knew, too, that most of the men at Frames would see her as nothing more than fair game for them – something like an air hostess or a pretty nurse, not to be taken seriously. Nedermann, on the other hand, was middle-aged and sad. He did not want sex, or romance or a good time with a pretty girl – all the things she could no longer give. In the end he sent a big car for her to take her to the Savoy Grill. The driver of the car explained that Nedermann himself had been delayed. Molly, full of childish pleasure, settled down against the leather upholstery and enjoyed the ride.
Nedermann was waiting for her outside. When they had settled in the restaurant he said, “How pretty you look tonight – the prettiest girl in this room. I feel proud to be seen with you.”
Molly smiled. She said, “Thank you.” But she thought that if Nedermann was going to court her she would have to tell him she was not interested. He, however, gazed at her with his narrow black eyes and said, “I know you are upset about Johnnie Bridges. I only wished to tell you that you looked nice. Few women object to that.”
“It’s kind of you,” she told him. “I’m sorry – I still feel unhappy about the past. I’m sorry if I’m not much fun.”
“I don’t ask you to be funny,” he said. “Do you want to hear how he is?”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“Then I’ll tell you. I found him. I no longer needed my money so much but I became obstinate and I thought, I’ll find you, Johnnie, because you evade me and you owe me money. So I thought, he’ll be somewhere – I’ll be the detective and find him. It was a challenge, you see, and I must say that I am like the Roses. I don’t like to be cheated. If he had come to me and explained he could not pay I could have accepted it. To hide like a child – that was too much.”
Molly pulled a face and said, “I wonder if I want to hear any more.”
“Better to listen,” he advised. “Listen and learn. Shall I go on?”
Molly drank some wine and said, “All right. So – you pulled on your deerstalker and –”
“Deerstalker?” he enquired.
“Like Sherlock Holmes,” she told him.
It was quiet in the restaurant. There was no noise from the busy traffic outside in the Strand. “Yes. Like Sherlock Holmes,” he agreed. “As you know these people never go very far, in the end. They hide, then they drift back to the pubs, the clubs – so I looked around there but no one had seen him. And after that I thought, where else do these spoilt boys go when they’re in trouble and want a bath and fresh clothes and a sympathetic face? Why – back to their mothers, I thought. And after a short search I found the big criminal at home in South London, in front of the fire, eating crumpets like a little prince. And outside, as I’d suspected, the big white car. These heroes will never get rid of the car, whatever they owe. Because how else will they impress women and keep self-respect? That car is them, as they see themselves – fast, flashy and expensive. It broke his heart to part with that car. I had him away from the fireside and at the garage in no time. The man handed him the money in cash and I put my hand out straight away. His face was like at mother’s funeral.”
All The Days of My Life Page 27
