Molly burst out laughing. Nedermann’s sobriety as he spoke, and his oddly accented English, made the story even funnier. Seeing her laugh, Nedermann’s face split into a wide, boyish smile.
“He should have known better than to take on an old Pole,” he told her. “And yet,” he said, “I envied him. No wonder women love men like that. They have all the cleverness and ingenuity and innocent selfishness of small boys. Yet they are men. They are irresistible. Later, of course, it will become plainer that he never intends to grow up. Peter Pan. It may seem less charming later.” He paused. “Better to grow up – in the end,” he said.
“You sound as if it’s painful,” remarked Molly, intrigued in spite of herself, although she thought the conversation slightly odd.
“You know – you have made a beginning. You are older than Johnnie now.”
“Eat your dinner, Ferenc,” she said, pointing at the plate he had in front of him. “I’ll talk about lovely subjects while you get on with it.”
“I don’t mind about the dinner,” Nedermann said. “In such company, food is far from my thoughts.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be,” she said firmly. And she told him anecdotes about the club – the Chinese who had taken £10,000 from a man and given it back to him on the pavement outside the same night; the midget who had been playing roulette standing on a chair at the table until they found he was leaning on it slightly in order to help the ball into the right hole; the contretemps in the ladies room when a man the attendant knew to be a celebrated transvestite tried to gain entry and use the lavatory. “She cries out,” reported Molly, “‘I know you well, Lord Brawn, and I hate to think what your mother would have to say at all this.’ I was coming upstairs with Simon at the time and we couldn’t believe our eyes. Simon caught on fastest – he just stepped forward and said, ‘Let the lady in just this one time, Mrs Jones.’ He’s very sophisticated – Simon.” But, she said, seeing that Nedermann had eaten part of his dinner, “What I don’t understand is why you lent Johnnie that money in the first place. You’re not a fool, you must have known what would happen.”
“It didn’t matter to me at the time,” answered Nedermann. “And I didn’t want to see the Roses get him. They are dogs.”
“I thought you might have been trying to get him into a position where he had to sell you his part of the club,” she said bluntly.
“Oh no,” he said, surprised. “I don’t want the club. I don’t want the complications of pandering to the rich. A man in my position, an emigré, a refugee – it is simpler to deal with the poor.”
He’s barmy, thought Molly suddenly. That’s the answer – he’s barmy. I’ll eat up and go, that’s the best thing to do.
Nedermann contemplated her placidly. “And I get what I want,” he said. “Johnnie’s working for me now. That way he can pay back the remainder of the money he owes me.”
“What?” exclaimed Molly, too loudly. She lowered her voice. “He’s dishonest – you know that. Why give him a job?”
“He’s very capable,” Nedermann replied. “I need an assistant with some brains – the others – hooligans, stupid people. They ruin the business and rob me as well. I need a man to help me with the confusion. Johnnie can sort it out. If he robs me – well, he robs me. I can get rid of him.”
He poured more wine for Molly, who suddenly realized that he had barely had any of his, while she had swigged off three or four glasses. He stared at her and then, as the plates were removed said, “Would you like this?” and took a box from his pocket. Molly looked at it. She took it wordlessly, dreading what she would find inside. She realized that Nedermann had been assessing her throughout the meal. She opened it. He watched her, rather as Sid used to when he took something in a bag for her out of his pocket on Friday night. Inside the box was a watch, the face surrounded by small stones, probably diamonds. The strap was made of platinum. Instinctively she knew that if she even took the watch from its box the deal would be struck. And knew he knew. She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s too expensive.”
“Are you sure?” he asked her, seeing that her eyes were still on the pretty watch.
“Oh, yes,” she said. Unobtrusively he took the box from the table, closed it and put it back in his pocket.
“I was hoping,” he said, “that you and the little girl would come and live with me. Sometimes I dislike my house when it is full of people. Sometimes I dislike it when it is empty. Sometimes I think I was richer before the war, when I was a poor man.”
“I – I – don’t want to make any changes just at present,” Molly told him with embarrassment. “For the time being – I want to bring up my child, earn my living. Do you understand?”
“More than you do,” Nedermann said. “Now then, you have a menu in your hand and at your age, no matter what middle-aged refugees say to you at dinnertime you should still be able to enjoy a nice dessert – chocolate mousse, perhaps?”
And Molly, a little piqued by his placid acceptance of her refusal, had to admit that she wanted some chocolate mousse.
He ate a pear, looked a little sad and told her some jokes about a firm of builders he employed. Molly laughed, even though she knew his builders were hired to patch up decaying houses cheaply so that Nedermann could get high rents from people with no alternatives. Afterwards he put her into the big car and told the driver to take her home. He walked off coolly down the Strand, alone, in his big, black coat.
Back at Meakin Street she thought, “Platinum straps on diamond watches – he’s like Rabbity Jim with his pocketful of snares.” But the odd thing was that she fell asleep like a baby and woke cheerful.
But proposals, like troubles, never come singly. On Saturday Ivy arrived early in the morning with Josephine. They were having a cup of tea in the kitchen when there came a loud banging on the front door. “Postman,” muttered Ivy and went to answer the door, coming back into the kitchen with a black look on her face, followed by Johnnie.
Molly had not seen him now for nearly six months. She had thought about him often but had actually partly forgotten what he was like. Now he seemed to fill the room.
She had, for months, loved and hated him by herself. Now she was confused.
“Hullo, Molly,” he said. “I wanted to find out how you were.”
“Cup of tea?” she offered.
Ivy stood up straight and said, “Don’t give him anything, Molly.”
“Oh, come on, mum,” Molly said quietly.
Ivy sniffed and said, “Do as you please. But I sincerely hope you’ll be gone when I get back from work, Johnnie Bridges.”
“It’s all right, mum,” she said.
After Ivy went he gained more confidence. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at her, saying, “I had to see how you were. And Josephine. Ferenc said he’d gone out to dinner with you. I’ve been worrying about you.”
“Not a word for six months and then you arrive at eight in the morning,” she said. “I’m all right, as you can see. How are you?”
“I’m working for Ferenc. Reason I’m here at this hour is because I’ve got an early call to make a mile away. I had to see you, Molly, but I was afraid –” He pulled a box out from his pocket and held it out to her. Molly thought the situation was becoming ridiculous. She opened the morocco case and saw a gold bracelet, with a green stone in it.
She passed it back to him saying mockingly, “I can’t take it, I’m afraid. It’s too expensive. A lady can only accept chocolates and flowers.”
“Please, Molly,” he said, “I want to make it up to you for everything that happened.”
“Nothing to make up for,” she told him. “Or anything there is can’t be paid for in bracelets.”
She stood looking out of the kitchen window. She had put some tubs of earth out in the yard. The crocuses were already out. The daffodils were on the point of blooming.
He came up behind her, put his arms round her waist and pressed against her. That move, which had alw
ays meant her turning and going into his arms, and then to bed, made her want him again. She felt very weak, as if she might fall down if he did not go on holding her. But she moved away and said, “It’s no good, Johnnie. I’ve had enough. You let me down.” She sat down at the table and put her head in her hands. “You can get out of here with your smiles and your bent jewellery. I don’t want any more pain and suffering.”
“Molly – Molly,” he said, bending over her. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. Things will be different, I swear it. I’m out of trouble now, can’t you see that?”
“I’m not going back to all that,” she said, sniffing. Still staring at the grain on the table she said fiercely, “You had your chance and you were too bleeding greedy. Greedy as a kid. Now leave me alone.”
With his arms around her shoulders he said, “Look at me, Molly, look at me. I’ve changed –”
“Yes – for five minutes. Soon as you’ve got what you want you’ll change back.”
“I want to marry you, Molly,” he cried.
Now she looked up at him and, her voice trembling, said, “Bugger off, Johnnie.”
“Where there’s two gifts there’s bound to be three,” she said to herself later that day. It was no surprise when a man outside Woolworth’s that afternoon pressed half a crown into Josephine’s hand and disappeared into the crowd of shoppers on the pavement. “Watches, bracelets and half crowns,” said Molly to herself as the child stared at the money in her palm. “He did it because he’s a kind gentleman who likes little girls,” she said, in answer to Josephine’s dazzled, “Why?” In spite of her depression about having to send Johnnie packing, for she knew she still loved him in a disastrous way, she could not help grinning. “What are you going to spend it on, then?” she asked.
“Chocolate,” Josephine said, dragging her into the sweet shop.
It’s my idea nobody’s going to want to hear about me until I get to the juicy bits. Not that I care. I’m doing this for myself but the real row on the landing is going to come when I get to how my private affairs collided with public affairs. That’s why I’ve kept very quiet about doing these memoirs at all. I don’t want the death threats and subtle bribes to start before I’ve finished the story. So here’s the bit where the Official Secrets Act has to come out and good old Bert Precious (who’s bound to get dragged into it somehow) will have absolutely nothing to fear – for a while, anyway. What I’m coming to is the story of Steven Greene, and Wendy Valentine and Carol Rogers and a full supporting caste of peers, Shakespearian actors, High Court judges and cardinals, all caught with their knickers round their knees.
What I remember about meeting Steven Greene for the first time was just walking down South Molton Street with Simon Tate on a chilly evening in late winter, early spring, or whatever. We’d had a bite to eat before I did my first night back at Frames, to set me up, so to speak, and I was droning on about Ivy, how she’d got niggled when Jack’s fiancée, Pat, told her that she and Jack were saving for their own house and how I was certain that Ivy would take all the money I gave her for Josephine, feed the child on scraps, pawn her boots and put every penny towards the deposit on her own semi-detached in the suburbs. So I’m carrying on in this working-class way, partly to hide my nerves, and just as we’re going into Frames I’m saying, to Simon, “Her only fear is I’ll take up with some geezer and give him the money. It’s not my welfare she’s thinking of, or the morals of the thing, just the cash. Not that there’s much chance of that – I’m right off it –” when out booms Norman Rose’s voice from the bar, “Sorry to hear you’ve given up sex, Moll. You’ll be a sad loss to the intitootion,” and there he was, bounding towards me with a bottle of champagne in his hand, looking affable. Both the brothers were standing there, bulging out of their Savile Row suits. There was only one other person in the bar, a man. And before I knew where I was, I was quaffing champagne with the Roses, grateful but wary, because they suffered from mood changes, like bad dogs – it was like a coming-out party and God knows they were used to giving them. Still, it was a nice gesture, even if I had the idea we all thought I’d done a lot of porridge. In the meanwhile the quiet man at the end of the bar, who was dressed in a grey suit, a striped shirt and a blue silk tie, came up to us, smiling. He was tall and thin, and fairly insignificant, really. He had mouse brown hair and a shyish sort of manner and it was only when he got up close that I realized he had amazing eyes – large and green, with hazel flecks in them. They were fascinating – the moment you saw them you forgot his ordinary-looking face, and his sort of characterless nose – it was like being hypnotized. I really doubt if Steven Greene ever realized what a difference those eyes made. Mind you, he knew about the results of having them.
“Come on, Steve,” said Arnie. “Have a glass and meet Molly. She’s just come back to us after an absence.” (You can see what I mean about all of us vaguely thinking I’d been doing time.)
“Not what you think,” I said to him, to set the record straight.
“You look far too fresh for me to think that,” he said, in his middle-class voice. So – what was he doing here as a boon companion of the Roses? Clap doctor, was what I thought.
“Meet Steven Greene,” said Arnie to me. “Celebrated osteopath – ai, ai – to the famous, internationally celebrated artist, and fortune teller – get him to read your stars sometime – and the man who cured Arnie Rose of his dodgy shoulder. That was the one I got off Randolph Turpin in the Black Cat down in Sunningdales.” This story of the fight between himself and the black boxer was one of Arnie’s favourites – Steven told me later the bad shoulder was a touch of arthritis. And incidentally, added Arnie, “He lives upstairs.”
“How do you do,” said Steven Greene. Oh, God, there was a cool but amorous eye, and green as an apple as well – “I’ve taken over your old flat. You must visit me when you feel like it.”
“Don’t go,” advised Norman. “He’s like Rasputin. Goes round to say a few prayers with the Duchess and before you know it – Bob’s your uncle. He’s a danger to all women, aren’t you, Steve?” And he nudged him.
Steven took it well and just said, “Take no notice of him. But if you feel like a drink or a cup of tea –”
“I’d be delighted,” I said. I said it in a posh voice because in those days I used to talk the way I thought the person I was with wanted me to talk. In any case, I couldn’t have worked at that club if I was effing and blinding and dropping my aitches all over the place. It was only later I thought, “Sod it. I’ll talk the way I want to.” So Arnie slops a lot more champagne in the glass I held and says, “Take no notice of Lady Muck. She’s only one of the locals from the low-class area I come from.”
“An area,” Steven said, with a kind of bow to me, “from which all seemed destined to rise.”
I couldn’t help laughing at him. The truth was he was a devil with women, and he knew it and he knew I knew it. Not that I was interested, because what I’d told Simon was right – I hated the idea of love and sex, and all that. Johnnie Bridges had taught me my lesson. But by this time we had to open the club. The barman appeared and the Roses prepared to leave. But before he went Norman turned to me and said, “I want it clear I don’t want to see Bridges in here ever – not if he’s dying.”
“I doubt if he’d come here if he was dying,” said I. “He knows you don’t like him.”
“I want your promise,” Norman said bluntly. “I know what you slags are like – no disrespect, Moll, but you can’t trust a woman when there’s a man in the case. They’ll go back to any bloke, even if he beats them, even if he drinks away all the money – they’ll do anything for him. The worse he is the more they love him. Honest to God,” he said to Steven Greene. “They’re not like us. Not like us at all.”
“I’ll give you my promise, though you don’t need it,” was what I said. Well, I thought it was true. And Arnie said, in a sentimental way, “He done you wrong, Molly, and that’s a fact.”
I put on a soupy e
xpression, as if I appreciated the thought, but inside I had the creeps. It was Arnie’s girl Sally who had died of septicaemia caused by an abortion she had after Arnie threw her out. He never went to see her once in hospital when she was dying. And why? Because the night he threw her out she was drunk and Arnie Rose, as he said, “couldn’t stand to see a woman drunk.” And the Roses were making a small fortune out of prostitution all the time. And here was Arnie making out I was the Virgin Mary – it was sinister. With all their horrible brutality they had to believe in “good” women. And I was one of them, like some kind of pet. Woe betide you, Molly Flanders, if you ever destroy their illusions, I thought to myself. They’ll have you for breakfast if you ruin their dream by stepping down off the top of the Christmas tree.
So I said, “Well, let’s get going, Steven. Do you fancy coming upstairs for a minute and pretending to be a crowd playing chemmy – encourage the paying customers?” He agreed but as we went upstairs I couldn’t help wondering why the Roses wanted to have him about. Arnie’s shoulder couldn’t be the only reason.
We stood by the table in the long, empty room and he said, “Where do you live?” So I told him, and how I had to take a taxi back every night because the public transport was shut down at that time. And he offered me the spare room in the flat, to use during the week so I didn’t have the bother and expense of going to and fro all the time. “I assure you it’s a platonic offer I’m making you,” he said. “And I’m not the sort of man who says that hoping it will be untrue in the end, or even the sort who thinks that’s what he means but just isn’t admitting he hopes for an affair.”
All The Days of My Life Page 28
