Molly sat at a long table in a big, institutional room, green-painted to knee height, and dull white above that. She was eating her bowl of soup in the company of tramps, vagabonds, unemployed labourers looking for work, and a couple of blank-eyed hippies in jeans and bright shirts.
Two men entered the silent room, with two others behind them. In front came the vicar of St Botolph’s, whose mission this was. Beside him stood a stocky man of medium height, wearing a black suit and a red tie. His stance implied energy. His bright, blue eyes went round the room quickly, taking in what was to be seen.
Molly, sitting between an old lady with bird’s-nest grey hair and no teeth and a young boy who had evidently been thrown out by his parents, took no notice of the party, which was in charge of investigating the extent to which private charities supporting the poor should be subsidized from public funds. Very few of the eaters looked up from their plates, in fact. Some two months earlier a man had been thrown down the stairs of a doss house nearby and kicked to death. The coroner had called it murder. The culprits were either the inmates of the hostel or the staff in charge. Witnesses had scattered fast after the event but the dead man had, it turned out, not been so detached from society as many others – two brothers, one a bank manager, and two sisters, both married to policemen, were keeping the subject of their brother’s death on the boil. In consequence the arrival of the vicar and three men in suits was taken to mean further investigation and no one in the room wanted to be involved.
So even when Molly noticed the group in the doorway she pretended to take no notice. She went on eating her bread, which was hard, and ignoring the pain when she bit down on her damaged front tooth.
The man in the black suit and the red tie habitually moved fast. He was at Molly’s side very quickly, holding out a large hand and saying, “Hullo. I’m Joe Endell. Who are you?” Molly paused before she realized she was meant to take the outstretched hand. Formal introductions had not been part of her experience for a long time.
“Mary Flanders,” she said, taking the hand.
“Are you here often?” he asked.
Molly looked into the bright, blue eyes and told him, “Quite often. The floor’s not too good but the band’s terrific.”
Joe Endell’s eyes glittered a little but, short of time and spotting someone who could respond quickly, he merely asked in an undertone, “Have they done it up recently?”
“Cleaned it up a bit – changed the knives and forks,” Molly told him in a low voice. In a few seconds she seemed to have left the daze of poverty, fatigue and depression she had been walking through for months. It could have been a spontaneous remission. It could have been the lively glint in Endell’s eyes. And so, resuming, more loudly, her mendicant’s whine, she said to him, “It’s lovely here. One of the best cribs in London.” Then, on a lower register, “There’s a funny room upstairs where they put blokes who get out of control. I don’t think the vicar knows too much – back room, third floor.”
She startled herself by her own responses. Fighting them off she looked down at her plate again.
“Thank you very much for talking to me,” Endell told her. He moved away to talk to some of the others while she picked up her hard bread, stood up and walked out. She ate it under a big tree in Hyde Park, later, and then fell asleep. In the meanwhile Endell was persecuting the staff at the mission mercilessly, looking into every room and asking questions, while his assistants chafed to get away, thinking they had seen all they needed. On the third floor, since he had seen every room, every lavatory and every bathroom, he could not be refused permission to see inside the small room at the back. The vicar was surprised to find the door locked and the key apparently missing.
“Must be somebody here who can pick a lock,” Endell suggested boldly.
At this point a key was hastily produced and the door opened. The party gazed at concrete walls, mysteriously stained, a tiled floor, a mattressless bed. They smelled disinfectant and vomit. Under that, the scent no one can plainly smell but all can detect – fear. The vicar turned to a subordinate to ask a question. Endell made a note in his pocket-book and said, “What’s this room for?”
“I shall be finding out,” the vicar said firmly.
“I shall be interested to know,” said Endell. Endell’s companions, now seeing the point of the exhaustive survey of the mission, indicated agreement. Then the party broke up, the barrister to return to his chambers and the civil servant to his ministry, Endell himself to stroll on foot, back to the House of Commons. As he walked beside the river the picture of Molly’s frowsled blonde hair, her wide pale mouth, with the chipped tooth, and her weary blue eyes came back to him. “The band’s terrific,” he said to himself with a grin. He realized that what made her memorable was the way she had spoken to him as an equal. In places such as that, as in many other places, a man such as himself would seldom be spoken to informally. Nor, because of that constraint, would he hear about the little rooms of various kinds on various third floors throughout the country. The people elected you as their representative, thought Joseph Endell, MP, walking through the gloomy high halls of the House of Commons, and then, half the time, they respected you too much to tell you anything they thought unsuitable for you to hear. If the saucy young vagrant had not spoken up, he and the others would never have discovered that sinister room at the mission where the staff must treat awkward customers in any way they saw fit.
Meanwhile Molly, beneath her tree, dreamed of Endell buying eggs in the corner shop in Meakin Street. Then her dreams took on the confusion of the homeless, rootless, lost.
A week later, Joe Endell left the House of Commons at midnight. As he walked along by the river in the intense, late heat which follows a hot, close day in the town he saw a woman sitting at the base of one of the pineapple-topped columns of Lambeth Bridge. She looked, in fact, as if she had been standing against it until she had suddenly slid to the ground. Nice to be in the country, Molly was thinking, as she sat on the pavement. Perhaps, she dreams, she will go to Framlingham and talk to Mrs Gates. In fact she was really heading towards a quiet, cool bed in the vetch and long grass of an old graveyard in the City of London.
As she rose to her feet she came nose to nose with Joe Endell. “Oh,” he said, and, a true politician, remembered her name, “Mary Flanders.”
Molly was kicking herself for having given him her real name. She said muzzily, “Can’t remember yours – what is it?”
“Endell,” he told her. On impulse he said, “Can I buy you a meal somewhere?” He told his agent, Sam Needham, later, that he wanted to ask her more about the workings of the hostels, soup kitchens, shelters, even the social services as they might be seen by a homeless person. This was the point at which Sam started to laugh.
However, Endell indeed began to question her as they walked up wide, empty Victoria Street under a full moon.
“How long have you been living rough?”
“Since the spring,” Molly told him.
“This spring?” said Endell, thinking that she had not yet been reduced by trying to live rough through the winter.
“That’s right,” said Molly. “What do you do?”
“I’m an MP,” Endell told her.
“Oh,” said Molly. “Where for?”
“Kilburn West,” said Endell.
Molly hesitated. The constituency he named included Meakin Street. She did not want to think about Sid or Ivy or her daughter and she knew that if she told Endell she knew the area he might start trying to arrange something for her. She was probably a responsibility of his. In fact, he probably knew her brother Jack. Endell noticed the silence and filled it. He told her, “I’m Labour. I do some journalism, too. I’m from Yorkshire.”
“Labour got in, didn’t they?” Molly asked vaguely.
“That’s right,” Endell said. “This’ll do, won’t it?” He led her into a small cafe down a side street. They sat down at a Formica table.
“This is nice of you,”
Molly said. “Why?”
“You did me a good turn,” he told her. “If you hadn’t tipped me off about that little room at the mission I wouldn’t have believed it. There were clues in the reports I was reading but I needed to see the real thing. It was pretty horrible.”
“Sausage, tomato and chips,” said Molly to the man who came up in a stained white apron. “And I’ll have a cup of tea.”
At a nearby table some lads were lounging, making a noise. Then one of them got up and put some money in a jukebox. The sound of the Rolling Stones beat into the hot atmosphere.
“We’ll be watching for that sort of thing in future,” Endell told her.
“Good,” Molly replied. Through the blur she was conscious of a man sitting opposite her who did not want anything. In the life she was leading nearly everyone wanted something – little evanescent desires, for a cigarette, or a few bob or a pair of shoes, flowed like a current between one and another. And here was someone who was not wondering if she had any money or pills, or a few cigarettes, on her. She took it for granted that he would not want from her what men want from women. She was tired and dirty. She was wearing plimsolls and an old coat. She wore a brown beret over her hair and, as a final touch, she lacked half a front tooth. She was well disguised. She had given up being a woman, perhaps because it had given her too much trouble and pain.
Endell, naturally polite, did not question her about how she came to her present situation but, as they ate, told her about himself. “I’m lucky – they couldn’t give me a constituency up North but I was selected for the one in London. There’s no travelling so I can spend more time there – in fact, I live there. I’ve got a lot to learn about the constituency and the people. I couldn’t manage without the agent there. He’s local and he knows everything and everybody. My parents still live up North, though. My father’s a doctor and my mother’s a teacher. I’ve got a brother and sister, too. Have you any brothers and sisters?”
He had delivered all this information in a fast, flat voice with a slight Yorkshire accent. Molly, in the daze of the rough-sleeper and rough-eater, lulled by the food and the heat in the cafe, barely took in what he said. But dimly she recognized in Endell’s voice something which was not dulled, like the people she spoke to normally, nor full of masked impatience, like the officials with whom she had to deal.
“I’ve got a brother and sister, too,” she told him.
“Another cup of tea?” he suggested.
“I’ll have coffee,” she surprised herself by saying. He went to the counter to get it and she became suspicious. Perhaps he was after her – some kind of pervert who picked up tatty women in the street. He could be a murderer. It was not unheard of for men to lure people on the tramp, men or women, to bits of waste ground and kill them. When he came back he carried two coffees. As he drank his he said, “That’s better – I had one too many at the bar before I left. It’s a hazard.”
“Easy to get separated from the kind of people you’re meant to be talking about,” observed Molly.
“That’s right,” Endell agreed. “And you – where are you going now? Any plans?”
“Me? I’m just staying out of trouble,” Molly replied. It was no use trying to explain. Her life had been too much for her and she could not even find the words to express this. She did not want to. She was done up and glad of it. She could not try any more. She felt a sort of rage against Endell because he could not understand. He might even be trying to draw her back into the world she had left.
He was trying. He looked at her closely. To evade his keen eyes and his friendly expression Molly stood up. “Thanks for the grub,” she said. He could still be a murderer, she thought. Better get out. She said to him airily, “I might be going down to Kent. I’ve got friends there who’ll help me.”
He nodded at her gravely. After she had gone he sat on. The man in the apron, drying cups behind the bar, said humorously, “Girlfriend gone and left you, then? Better run after her – she could take up with some other bloke.”
Endell looked at him. “Ever seen her before?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “Not round here,” he told him and went back to his cups.
The months wore on. September was warm but in October the pavements began to cool under Molly’s feet. Sleeping rough became a matter of tossing under sacks and blankets in corners, sleep was thin and wakeful and her body was stiff in the cold dawns. Then it began to rain. She was obliged to sleep in shelters every night, which cost money. One morning a thought came into her head and she set off from the hostel, without thinking, for the House of Commons. By now it was November, dank and chill. When Endell arrived in the Central Lobby to see her he was shocked. She was in a worse condition than when he had last seen her. She wore old shoes and no stockings. Her face was not clean. Her legs were grimy. The hem of her old earth-coloured coat was coming down. There was a big scab on her hand. He sat beside her on a bench under the eye of a policeman. As she spoke, pouring out the words, he became more and more depressed.
“I need twenty pounds,” was what she said. “I can’t go home like this. My mum would die if she saw me. I’ve got a little girl, well, she’s a big girl now but I can’t go on like this. It’s getting colder and wetter. I want to change my life and look after my little girl. And I’ve got the means, see. I’ve got this valuable diamond at a bank in Brighton. Worth thousands. If I can only get it but I haven’t got the fare. And they wouldn’t believe it was mine, not looking like this. I have to have the fare and a decent coat and shoes. I can’t go home. I’ve got nobody to turn to – will you help me?”
Endell, horrified by this whining scene, played out publicly in the visitors’ hall at the House of Commons, regretted, as the honest citizen will, that he had ever extended the hand of friendship to this down-and-out. He told her firmly, “Look here. I’m not green – you can’t expect me to hand over twenty pounds on the strength of a story like that.”
Realizing that she was in a public place, talking to a man who had some connection with the outside world, pulled Molly round. She said, “I’m not a liar. I’ll ring up the bank and you can talk to them.” She took a deep breath. “And you’ll find my family at 19 Meakin Street. That’s in your constituency. I’m a constituent of yours and that’s why I’m here. Name of Flanders, born Waterhouse. You check up – you’ll find I’m telling the truth.”
Endell reflected that it was this trick of turning from the mendicant to the sane and, indeed, quick-thinking person which baffled him. Deciding quickly to trust her a little he told her, “All right. There’s no point in ringing the bank. They wouldn’t give me information over the telephone. But if your family are constituents of mine I’ll try to help you. If I give you some paper and a stamp will you write to the bank to get confirmation of your story? Get it sent here, care of me. And I’ll check –”
“Oh – just give me the money,” said Molly impatiently. Her life had conditioned her to getting small items quickly, or not at all. “Just give it to me and I swear, as God’s my witness, I’ll never trouble you again.”
“It’s a funny story,” Endell said doggedly. “You know that as well as I do. I must look into it and I will. Now – let me give you a few bob for paper and a stamp –”
Molly began to cry, whining, “I don’t know what I’m going to do – I don’t know which way to turn.”
Endell, spotting the falsity, said, “Shut up. Don’t let yourself down like this. Take this money, write off and come back next week.”
Molly, suddenly bitter as the grave, stood up, ignoring the money he held out, and left the House of Commons.
It was this gesture which made Endell begin to believe she might be telling the truth. But when he looked in the electoral register there was no Waterhouse and no Flanders. “You nearly got taken there,” he said to himself.
Molly went on the tramp in November, when most dossers were coming back to the city for the warmth and the extra facilities. She walked straight out o
f the House of Commons and headed, furiously, over the nearest bridge. She crossed the Thames and started walking south, towards the coast.
She walked doggedly through South London on that rainy morning, still clutching her two carrier bags. She walked through the affluent suburbs with their long lawns and large, neat houses. By afternoon, as the dark was coming down, she was on a long road, under trees with ferny common land on either side. She might have picked up a lift from one of the cars or lorries which swept past her on the road but a kind of obstinacy made her trudge on without stopping. She slept, when she felt she would drop down if she walked any further, beside a tractor in a farm building. She got up at dawn, when she heard a cock crow in the farmyard, and walked on. Later in the morning she bought some rolls in a small bakery in a little place she passed through. She spent the next night in a large park on the outskirts of Brighton. It rained. She was sitting, damp and filthy, on the steps of the bank in Brighton when it opened in the morning. The cashier, reluctantly, called the manager when she explained what she wanted. The manager was calm. She had only the papers they had given her when she left prison to prove her identity. Nevertheless he listened to her story, took several specimens of her signature and asked her to come back later in the day.
All The Days of My Life Page 44
