All The Days of My Life

by Hilary Bailey

  Molly sat on the beach, looking at the cold waves and recalling that it was two years since she had last been here. That was when she had deposited the ring. That was before the combination of Arnie Rose and Johnnie Bridges had got her sent to prison. She ought to have been worried about not getting the ring back but she was not.

  “Everything seems in order,” the manager told her, when she went back to the bank in the afternoon. “In any case,” he remarked, giving her the documents to sign, “I recognized you. I never forget a face.”

  Molly said, “I don’t look the same now.”

  “No,” he said, “but I never forget a face.”

  “Congratulations,” Mary replied and, seizing her ring, rushed off to find a jeweller who would buy the ring. After a call to the bank manager he offered her three thousand pounds. She took some in cash and the rest as a cheque. Along the front she threw her bags into the gutter. She raced on. Then she turned back and gazed at the newspapers, old clothing, scarves and the battered hairbrush which lay by the kerb in a heap. She bought some jeans, a sweater and a coat, some soap, shampoo and a toothbrush and managed, with some difficulty and by paying in advance, to book herself into a hotel. Next day she returned to Meakin Street, to find Sid, Ivy and Josephine.

  Back at the House of Commons, in his office, Joe Endell was getting a surprise.

  “Waterhouse,” said Sam Needham, his agent. “Course I know them. Sid Waterhouse was a paid-up member for twenty years. His son’s a big union man down in dockland. He’s a councillor – chairman of the housing committee – Poplar, I think. I don’t know why the Waterhouses aren’t on the register. They must have moved out.” He pulled down an old copy of the electoral register from a shelf, as he spoke. “One of the daughters was a naughty girl – ah – that’s right – Mary.” He turned over a page. “There you are – three years back – and – Sid and Ivy Waterhouse, no 19 and – no 4 – Flanders, Mrs Mary. Oh, blimey, that’s it, of course. Mary Flanders. Her husband was hanged for murder. Did in a nightwatchman during a factory robbery. He was only a kid. No criminal record but the judge decided to make an example of him. And this girl, his wife, was Sid and Ivy’s daughter. It’s all coming back to me now. She had a kid just after her husband got topped. After that, she got into trouble.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Endell. “I turned her away. I’d better try and find her.”

  “Don’t do it,” Sam Needham said firmly. “And don’t reproach yourself. You can’t go handing out money to every tramp who comes asking for it. Mind you, she was a lovely kid. I can remember her round the polling station with Sid when she was about ten or eleven. She was like an angel. I bet she’s changed now.”

  “She has,” said Endell.

  “Better take that wistful look off your face, Joe Endell,” warned Needham. “She’s the sort that means trouble. I mean – what happened after her husband died was she took up with God knows who. I think she was working in a club. It had something to do with Norman and Arnie Rose, I do know that. And Ivy had to look after the little girl she had. And finally she fetched up with that property racketeer, Nedermann, you know – the one who was rack-renting half your constituency, the one at the back of half your housing cases, even though he’s been dead for two years. That lady you’re so sorry for lived high, wide and handsome on the profits of his slums and his brothels. That’s where the famous jewellery comes from. Don’t you bother with her – save your sympathy for those that need it more.”

  Endell grinned, “All right, Sam.”

  “I reckon,” said Sam, “that little bleeder can still turn the trick, even covered in flea bites and carrying all her worldly wealth in an old carrier bag.”

  “Sam – I was sorry for her,” Endell said.

  “I hope that’s all you were,” Sam told him. “You should get married and suffer like the rest of us.”

  “I’ve been married,” Endell said. “Now – perhaps we can get back to the sewers in Treadwell Street.”

  Nevertheless, dining with his girlfriend, Harriet Summers, he could not help mentioning the matter of Molly’s appeal to him for help and how he had not been able to prevent her from leaving without it. “She’s muddled and despairing,” he said. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She might have been on the point of restoring herself – I might have been the man who prevented that.”

  Harriet, like Sam Needham, told him that he had no need to worry. She added sharply that a woman like Molly Flanders always knew how to look after herself. But, like Sam, she felt an undercurrent of suspicion about Endell’s attitude to Molly. The next day, at the Daily Mirror, where she worked, she set to work on the files. The information she obtained, together with the memories of the reporters in the newsroom, and in the pub at lunchtime, made up a useful profile of Molly Flanders. She told no one why she was looking in case an enterprising feature writer decided that this gangland heroine turned down-and-out might make a useful piece of copy for the paper. And, being no fool, she did not tell Endell. She just went on burrowing away.

  In the meanwhile Molly, who had found a dentist in Brighton prepared to replace the broken end of her tooth at short notice, was on her way, cleaned up and respectable, back to Meakin Street.

  In the afternoon she knocked on the door of number 19. She was already disconcerted when the door opened. The brass knocker in the shape of a fish did not look like Sid and Ivy’s doing. Nor did the brown paint on the front door. Nor did the ivy-trailing window boxes on the ledges outside the front window. Meakin Street was going up in the world. But where were Sid, Ivy and Josephine?

  The woman who opened the door was wearing jeans and carried a small baby. Behind her, in the passageway, stood a red tricycle. The woman looked at Molly cautiously. She must still have carried some smell of the streets. She said, “Waterhouse? – Of course. Mrs Water-house left an address. She was very insistent – now – where did I put it? Wait there.”

  Molly waited. She came back with an address book and read out, “20 Abbot’s Close, Beckenham.”

  “Thanks,” said Molly and walked back down Meakin Street through the rain. She grinned. Ivy had got her wish at last. The Waterhouses of narrow, poor Meakin Street had become the Water-houses of suburbia. Then she saw two large, black cars stopping outside number 4, the house which had once been hers. People got out and started to go inside. A tall boy in a black suit stood by the car, staring at the house. Molly ran across the street shouting, “George! Georgie!” The boy, a gangling teenager, with pale brown hair and a long, pale face, stared at her. He looked very drawn.

  “Oh, George,” she said, realizing the cars were from the undertaker’s and Lil Messiter must be dead.

  “Molly!” said a surprised voice. “Molly! What are you doing here?”

  Molly looked towards the doorway and there stood Cissie, Lil’s daughter, short and thin, wearing a good grey suit and well-polished black court shoes.

  She said, “I was just coming past. Is it –”

  Cissie nodded. “Mum,” she said briefly. “Pneumonia. She left it too long. We’ve just had the funeral. Would you like to come in?”

  Molly nodded. She put her arm round George and drew him in with her.

  Two children stood in the hall. Inside Mary noticed, with astonishment, her own sofa, her own blue carpet, now stained and gritty, and even her own net curtains hanging dirtily at the window. Cissie, pouring her a glass of whisky, said, “I couldn’t do very much – I was at a conference when it happened. We thought a quiet funeral – just family –”

  Molly saw only three adults in the room.

  “Very strange – you being in the street at the very moment –” Cissie said, handing her the glass. “I’d better go back in the kitchen. I’ve made a few sandwiches and there’s a cake – it’s not been done right,” she added, violently, “I know that.”

  ‘I’ll come and give you a hand,” Molly said, rising. Cissie’s brother-in-law, Ron, also got to his feet, went over and poured himself a whisky
from the bottle on the table. The two children ran upstairs. Soon their feet began to sound overhead.

  In the kitchen Cissie tutted. “Useless lot,” she said, referring to the trio in the other room. “They’ve left it all to me. Poor old mum – Phil and Artie couldn’t even come, worse luck. Phil’s the best of them all but he’s on a ship to New Zealand. Artie’s up in the Firth of Forth, on a nuclear sub.” She sniffed. A tear fell on the plate she was picking up. “She had a rotten life,” she said.

  “I know,” Molly said. “I can’t understand why Mum and Dad aren’t here. Didn’t you tell them?”

  “Your dad’s got flu – didn’t you know?” Cissie asked.

  “I’ve been away,” Molly said.

  “But I thought –” Cissie said.

  “No – not that kind of away. Prison – I got out months ago,” Molly said bluntly.

  “Oh, God,” said Cissie. “What’s it all about?”

  “Well, you’re doing well, Cis,” Molly told her. “Conferences and so forth. Your mum must have been pleased.”

  “That’s right,” said Cissie. “I’ve avoided what she got.”

  Molly thought that she was not happy, not at this moment. She had organized her life so as to evade her mother’s fate – the poverty, the bad husband, the large family – and now the sufferer was dead. Cissie sniffed again and carried in two plates of sandwiches. Mary followed with more.

  They were back in the kitchen again. Molly washed the jug and filled it with water. She took it in. The others, halfway down the whisky bottle, were talking about Lil Messiter. “She should have stood up to him more,” Ron’s sister said in a blurry voice.

  “Not easy in those days,” said the bearded brother-in-law.

  “I’d lie there at night,” Cissie’s sister murmured. “Hearing it go on and dreaming of killing him.”

  Back in the kitchen Molly said, “I forgot to ask – why did she move here – your mum?”

  “Old Soames, the landlord, died. His children wanted to sell off some of the houses. They reckoned Mum’s was so horrible they’d better get it fixed up before worse occurred. So they offered her this and did the old one up and sold it. There’s a TV producer living there now.”

  “Get away,” Molly said, impressed.

  “In Meakin Street,” said Cissie. “A TV producer. We used to think that Mr Fainlight was posh because he had a desk job at the Gas Board.”

  “I think I’ll go and get your nephew and niece from upstairs,” Molly said. “I bet they’re rummaging through your mum’s things.”

  “You’re an angel, Molly,” said Cissie. “I suppose they’ll want a cup of tea in there.”

  “Tell them to get it themselves,” Molly said. “As a matter of fact, they’re my cups and it’s my furniture they’re sitting on.” And she went upstairs and found the boy and girl, who were both about nine, in a litter of Lil Messiter’s old cardigans and tired dresses. They were dressed in two of her old slips and tottering about on high-heeled shoes.

  “Take that lot off and get downstairs,” Molly said unceremoniously. She stood threateningly over them as they struggled out of Lil’s old petticoats and kicked off her battered shoes. It seemed like a final outrage. As she followed them sadly downstairs, she noticed the stains on the carpet Lil must have made as she slopped wearily up to bed with her glass still in her hand. What could you say about Lil Messiter’s life – that she had six children, never hurt a fly, died as uncomplainingly as she had lived?

  Re-entering the front room Molly sat down next to Cissie. Ron had his arm round his sister, a pale girl who giggled. Molly thought she was probably stoned. Cissie’s sister, Edna, looked at her sternly. George, Lil’s youngest child, sat in a corner, reading a magazine with a dismantled bicycle on the front.

  “What’s happening to George, now?” she asked Cissie.

  “Going to live in Wimbledon with Ron and Edna,” Cissie told her. “Luckily they’ve got a spare room. It’s the only answer. Phil and Artie are at sea, I live half my life in the hospital.” Cissie added in an undertone, “The trouble is that George’s school wants to put him on a special engineering course, part-time. He’s good at it, you see. But if he has to go to Wimbledon he’ll have to change schools.”

  “Oh dear,” Molly said.

  “Where are you, now?” Cissie asked curiously. “Must take a bit of sorting out when you’ve been in prison.”

  Molly grinned. “Say that for old friends,” she remarked. “They don’t mince words. Well, Cis, I’m nowhere. I’ve just pulled round after a long time on the tramp. I broke in pieces while I was in Holloway. So now I’m going to go back to the secretarial course I was taking before it all happened.”

  “You’ll be able to get a good job,” Cissie said. Molly nodded.

  “I just sold a ring I got from Ferenc Nedermann, the property developer,” she said candidly. “That’ll pay for a place to live. When I’ve finished the secretarial course I’ll get a job and save the rest. Nest egg.”

  There was a roar of laughter from Ron. His sister looked embarrassed as a whisky stain spread on the sofa.

  “I’d better go,” Molly said.

  “Have another drink,” Cissie said. “I want to talk to you.” Molly looked at her back. It was straight and energetic. She knew instinctively, because she had known Cissie as a battling, determined child, that she had made her mind up about something. In the meanwhile Cissie’s sister Edna came and sat beside her.

  “Molly, isn’t it?” she said in a high, plangent voice. “It must be years since we’ve met. But I’m always hearing about you.”

  “Well, I expect you are,” Molly said, knowing that Edna must have enjoyed the details of her scandalous life.

  “No wonder, really, is it? I mean, they all say, when Mary Waterhouse is about, something always happens,” Edna told her with satisfaction. Molly sensed an attack. She changed the subject, “I hear George is moving in with you,” she said.

  Edna told her, “Ronnie’s being very good about it. He says, all in all, blood’s thicker than water.” But Molly reflected that Edna herself sounded unhappy about the prospect of having her young brother in the house. She felt sorry for George, who was exchanging life in Meakin Street with his poor, wrecked mother for what looked like a cold home with his sister. The boy, in his corner, reading, looked weak, overgrown and incapable of bearing very much more.

  Cissie, standing in front of Molly and Edna, said unceremoniously, “Come in the kitchen, Molly. I want to talk to you.” Her sister, as Molly stood up, looked at Cissie with dislike.

  In the kitchen Molly stared at Cissie, standing, small and straight, with her back to the door which led into the yard. “What’s on your mind, Cis?” she asked.

  “It’s like this, Molly,” Cissie said. “You can see what a bitch Edna is. And her husband’s not just narrow-minded, like she is. I think he’s brutal, as well. I think he hits Edna.” For a moment she seemed to lose her firmness. Her small face sagged and she sighed, “I don’t suppose she’s got over her childhood, any more than any of us have.”

  “You’re all right,” Molly told her reassuringly.

  “Almost,” Cissie said. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, I can’t take George and nor can the others and we’re the only ones who’d help him. What I’m asking you is – if I give you this place to live in, will you have him as a lodger? That way he can go on and take his engineering classes.”

  “Phew,” Molly said. “The problem is, if Josie comes here where will everybody sleep? There’s only two bedrooms.”

  “George can sleep in the front room, if he has to,” Cissie said firmly. “I’ll pay for one of those settees that turns into a bed. I can fix up a grant for you, for looking after him. We’ll pay for his clothes. I don’t want you to think I’m asking you to keep him – but I want him taken care of properly. He’s had a rotten childhood. I don’t want him in Edna’s house, getting bullied by that man. I don’t want him to lose his chance to do
his engineering, either. He’s amazing, Molly, he really is. He can fix anything, make anything –”

  “I need somewhere to live,” Molly said.

  “Give it a try, that’s all I’m asking,” Cissie pleaded, with all the desperation of the oldest child of an uncertain family. “I’m saving to get my own house and I’m trying to change my job so I’m not on call all the time. It wouldn’t be for too long. All I want is for George to go on with his course until I can take him. The thing is,” she said, as if she were suddenly weary, “I can’t say I approve of everything you’ve done but you’re trying and at least you’re goodhearted. I’ve got confidence in you. Otherwise off goes George, like a homeless dog, and God knows what’ll happen to him. I’ve got the tenancy here. They’d have a job getting you out, especially if George was here with you –”

  Molly made up her mind. “Done,” she said.

  “Thank God,” said Cissie, suddenly drinking from the glass she had poured out for Molly. “That’s a big weight off my mind.”

  Molly smiled. “Well – I’m back, it seems,” she said, looking round. “Same old gas stove – same old sink.”

  Cissie said, “About the rent –”

  Molly told her, “Can you take care of George till I’ve seen Sid and Ivy, got things straight here, and all that? Supposing I give you a ring tomorrow evening –”

  “All right, Molly,” Cissie said.

  “Leave it to you to break the news to the family –” Molly told her, disappearing through the door.

  The decision to take over the house in Meakin Street and its occupant seemed to clarify Molly’s thoughts. As she walked from Beckenham Station she reflected that yes, she had failed as a daughter, and yes, she had been a terrible mother, and that having got herself stupidly trapped by Johnnie Bridges she should at least have had the decency to come straight out of prison and try to reclaim herself. Nevertheless, she wanted no more shame and guilt. Sid and Ivy might not like her when she turned up but she would just face them, offer her daughter a home and, if the reception was too bad, just turn round and go away again.