All The Days of My Life

by Hilary Bailey

  “Oh, God,” Charlie said. “What a tragedy – she was a cracker in her time. What a goer she was.” He was not prepared to admit that Molly had rejected him. Nor that in many ways he had been thoroughly frightened of her.

  Tom, jealous of his cousin’s success with Molly, said, “Well – not any more.”

  But Simon Tate, who had come in to look after the club as a favour that evening because both managers were away, had been listening to the conversation. He turned round abruptly, went upstairs to the office and telephoned Ivy.

  He appeared in Beckenham next day. Ivy said, “I hope to God you can help.”

  “I’ll try,” he told her and went straight upstairs to the room where Molly lay. She lay on her side, a hump, under blankets, in the bed. Simon drew the curtains back. “I’ve got a lovely lunch waiting for you – all booked and champagne in a bucket. Just time to get dressed and get in the car.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Come on, Molly,” he told her. “I’ve driven a long way to collect you. Don’t disappoint me.” She responded by trembling and crying, saying, “I can’t. You can’t make me. I can’t.”

  He attacked her then, telling her, “Don’t you dare lie about there saying, ‘I can’t and I won’t.’ Have you looked at your mother recently? I don’t suppose so. You’re killing her – she looks ill. Ill with the work of looking after you, a healthy woman. Do you want to bury her, next?”

  Molly, to block out his voice, pulled the blankets over her head and moaned. Simon pulled back the covers, revealing the swollen face, pale with months of indoor life, the swollen body in an old blue nightdress, the pale, puffy legs. Molly screamed at seeing what Simon, a homosexual, could not help seeing – a swelling, termite queen. She tried to pull the covers over herself. Seizing a cruel advantage Simon said, “Not a pretty sight. Not pretty at all. I suppose you think Joe would have liked to see you in this condition? You don’t have to look as horrible as this.”

  “Leave me alone. Leave me alone,” she cried.

  Simon stepped back and stared down at her. “Damn you, Molly,” he said deliberately. “Damn you. You’ve tried to kill yourself and you failed. You haven’t tried again, I notice. I expect your poor mother and father have taken the razor blades and the aspirin out of the bathroom, but there are plenty of ways. I haven’t heard you’ve tried to jump out of the window or hang yourself with a dressing-gown cord – no, part of you wants to stay alive. So stay alive if that’s what you want. But don’t half-kill your parents and probably harm your child while you’re doing it. If you’re going to live – live, do it properly. Why do you think Joe loved you? Because you were alive, properly alive, alive and bloody kicking. Like he was – like the child will be, if you give it any chance at all. You’ve got to get up. You’ve got to go on. You’ve got to fight. You’ve no alternative, so you might as well put a good face on it – I’m going down now. If you’re not downstairs, and ready, in ten minutes I’m leaving.”

  Downstairs, he sat in the front room with Ivy. Because they were both timing Molly, and because the matter was critical, Ivy began to speak in the flat, sombre tones of someone with an important statement to make. She said, “There’s something I ought to tell her. Something I should have told her long ago. Perhaps it would make a difference. But I’m afraid. It could make it all worse.”

  Simon stared at her. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Ivy continued, sounding more normal now. “If she doesn’t come downstairs in ten minutes I’m going up to tell her. It’s the right time – I’ll do it.”

  “Are you sure?” said Simon, leaning forward. “Why don’t you tell me – perhaps I can help.”

  But Ivy, with her eyes on the hands of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece, just told him, “I’ve got a funny feeling. She ought to know now.”

  “I’ll make a cup of tea,” Simon declared. “Or would you like a drink?” He thought privately that the strain of looking after Molly was beginning to tell on her mother. They had coffee. They both sipped, tried to talk, with their eyes returning frequently to the clock. But before the ten minutes had elapsed Molly opened the door and came in. She was wearing a patterned dress in red and purple, with a yoke. She wore shoes and stockings. She had put lipstick on her pale mouth. She walked across the room shakily, saying to Simon, “I can’t walk very well.”

  “The car’s outside,” he said.

  He thought at first it was like having lunch with a ghost. Pale, speaking in a whisper, eating practically nothing, Molly sat opposite him. He began to be afraid that the effort of making her come was pointless, that she would just go home and sink back into the same state. She said, “I’m sorry, Simon. Sorry to be so strange. I just feel confused.”

  He nodded, “You’re going to need practice.”

  “I can’t forget Joe,” she told him. “It might be like being an amputee – you keep on thinking you’ve got a leg, or an arm. All the sensations are there. Then you have to remind yourself you really haven’t got a leg. Then you feel this terrible sadness. It goes on and on. It’s like a constant pain.” She added, “I know I’ll never feel like I did with Joe. I’ve known a few men but I never felt like that before and I don’t suppose many women ever do. This isn’t just widow’s talk – I wanted to live with him for a long time and die before he did, so I didn’t have to lose him. He’s gone, though, and that’s a fact. He’s dead and I have to go on.”

  “You’ll have his child,” Simon told her.

  “I don’t care about that,” Molly said. “People think I ought to – but I don’t. At the moment it’s just something that’s going to happen. I wish it wasn’t, that’s the truth.”

  “I expect you’ll feel different when it’s born,” Simon said encouragingly.

  Molly smiled at him, knowing he was out of his depth. “That’s what they tell me,” she said, “but I don’t know any more about this than you do. I tell you this – I hope I can feel something for the child because if I don’t, I don’t know what’ll happen to either of us.”

  She looked braver now. She put her hand on his and told him, “I’m grateful to you, Simon, for trying to help. I’ve been lucky. Ivy’s put up with me, and Sid, and people have been very kind. Maybe kinder than I deserved. I owe you all a lot.”

  “All we want is to see you on your feet again, Molly,” Simon said and then, glancing across the restaurant added, “Oh – bugger it!”

  Molly turned her head and saw Tom Allaun advancing across the carpet.

  “Surprise!” Tom said, coming to the table. “Molly – it’s lovely to see you. How are you?”

  “All right,” Molly told him. “Thank you for your note, Tom, after Joe died. It was thoughtful of you to write.”

  “I was very upset when I saw the news,” Tom said. Simon looked at him doubtfully. He had never trusted Tom but his sympathy and friendship for Molly seemed genuine. The coffee was brought and Simon had no alternative but to wave at a chair and say, unenthusiastically, “Why don’t you sit down?” And Tom did.

  “Mother wanted you to come to Framlingham,” he told Molly. “But Mrs Gates hasn’t been too good – and this and that – she said in the circumstances we couldn’t look after you properly. She felt your mother was the best person.”

  “Well – I won’t need looking after for too much longer,” Molly told him. “I’ll get back home and have the baby.” She looked tired as she spoke. Neither of the men was convinced when she said, trying to sound cheerful, “Fresh start.”

  “Forgive me, Molly,” Tom asked, “but we’ve known each other a long time – how’s the money? Will you be able to manage?”

  “I own the house – there’s a pension for MP’s widows,” Molly said. “I can get a part-time job later if I want to. Josephine’s independent – finished university and got herself a job. There aren’t any problems. Joe even left me some money and life insurance – I haven’t thought about that, yet.”

  “I’m glad there won’t be too many
practical problems,” Tom assured her.

  In the end he drove her home. He was kind, tactful and sympathetic. He asked her to go to the theatre with him later on in the week and Molly, surprised but pleased at his kindness, accepted. There were further outings. He helped her to move back to Meakin Street. He had, now, an easy manner. He was a gifted chatter about little things they saw, about films, about what they watched on TV. Mary, coming out of a long period of silence and depression, found him consoling. He was also quietly domesticated, a maker of cups of tea, a washer-up, a creator of snacks and small comforts. She was, however, surprised when he suggested that he should be present at the birth of the child.

  “In the labour ward?” she exclaimed. “Whatever for? You’d probably faint.”

  “I’m very cool in these situations,” he told her. “I’d love to be there. And you might be quite grateful in the end. And, of course, if you asked me to go at any point, naturally, I’d disappear.”

  “It’s gruesome,” Ivy declared roundly when Molly told her Tom’s plan. “In my opinion men have got no place in a situation like that. It’s just a fad and women’ll soon realize they’re better off alone when they’re having a baby. But Tom isn’t even the child’s father. He’s no relation at all – it’s revolting. Imagine how he’s going to see you, Molly, with your legs everywhere and sweat pouring down your face. I can’t think why he wants to come. It’s ghoulish, that’s what.”

  Simon, when she told him, said “What?” in a tone of horror. Then, looking at her sternly, he told her, “Look – you don’t know enough about Tom.”

  “I know he’s been kind to me,” Molly said. She was bending over painfully to put a casserole in the oven. “How could I have managed – sitting here on my own at night, thinking about Joe.”

  She thought of Tom, bending over her chair to wipe away the tears, comforting her, cheering her up. “He wants to do it,” she told him. “It’s not much to ask. I’d be glad of someone standing by when the nurses start to nag me. In any case,” she admitted, “I’m afraid. I’ve no one to turn to. Having a baby isn’t much fun at the best of times. If I start thinking about Joe being dead, how am I going to manage? The pain’ll be worse. I won’t be able to help myself.”

  “I suppose so,” Simon agreed grudgingly. “But it’s a bit weird, you must admit. I don’t understand it.”

  “You don’t have to,” Molly said.

  Thus it was Tom who stayed at Meakin Street as the time for the birth approached, Tom who drove her to the hospital and Tom who talked to her in the early stages of labour, who mopped her brow and wetted her lips as the pain grew intense, who stood beside her, holding her hand and encouraging her as her body stretched and contorted in its efforts to produce the child.

  It was Tom the doctor addressed first as he held up a large male baby. “What a whopper,” he said. “There must be giants in your family.”

  And Tom, disconcertingly, replied, “Future light heavyweight champion of Britain, there.” For some reason Molly was horrified by this exchange of remarks and cried, holding out her arms, “Give him to me.”

  For months she had seen the baby as an unpleasant physical problem and a source of future pain. Now she had him, he was real. He was half hers, half Joe’s, and she loved him. When she had Josephine she had been young, and stunned. This time she was able to understand what had happened, imagine a future with a child. The nurse had some difficulty in prising the baby away in order to wash him and cut the umbilical cord. She ignored Tom completely.

  Nevertheless, visitors who came to see Molly and the new baby at Meakin Street were surprised to find Tom in attendance. He did not help with the care of the child, but he did assist in other ways, although, it must be admitted, by that stage Molly was paying for everything and his attentions, though assiduous, confined themselves to the less serious forms of house-keeping. Cissie Messiter was severe when she arrived unexpectedly one morning and found Molly cleaning the bathroom, while Tom sat downstairs finishing his breakfast. Taking the cloth from Molly and finishing the cleaning of the bath she puffed philosophically, “I suppose he’s better than post-natal depression.”

  Six weeks later Tom was still in the house. “I don’t like it,” Sid told Sam Needham in the pub. “I don’t like the way he’s hanging about. What’s he waiting for?”

  “I reckon,” Sam said, “he’s waiting for what you and I think he’s waiting for.”

  “It makes me feel queasy,” Sid answered. “But what can I do – what can any of us do? He’s been very good to her. And she seems to need him.”

  “I just hope she doesn’t do anything stupid while she’s still in a state,” Sam replied.

  But Molly did.

  Molly Allaun

  Looking back I can see all those faces which were covered in smiles when Joe and me said we were tying the knot at last, going pinched when they heard the news about Tom and me. Then there’d be a sort of choking sound while the person bit back what they were going to say first, like “No!” or “For God’s sake think again.” Then would come the nearly polite remarks, like “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” “Isn’t it a bit soon?” All that.

  Tom won’t mind me saying it was madness. Hard to say who was the most stupid – him or me. To be honest, it was probably him, just because he hadn’t lost his husband and had a baby in the last six months, so he should have known better. I should have known better myself but I suppose I was in a desperate state, with no idea how to manage, or who I was, even. And I wanted the safety of Allaun Towers for the boy and even for Josephine to come to when she wanted. I thought I could learn to love Tom – after all, I knew I’d loved all the men I’d lived with, in different ways. So, I thought, why not Tom? I already depended on him for gentleness and comfort.

  I little knew, that’s all I can say – I little knew what I was letting myself in for. Of course, it might have been different if I’d once clapped eyes on Charlie Markham during the courtship. One glance at Charlie and memories would have come flooding back. More than that, once Charlie and Tom were together there was no doubt about what Tom was. But Charlie had been primed to stay out of the way – the cat and the fox split up so’s not to arouse Pinocchio’s suspicions. Seven months after Joe’s death, there I was at the altar again. What a wedding – what a reception – and, oh dear, what a honeymoon.

  The only truly cheerful face at the wedding breakfast at the Savoy was Isabel Allaun’s. Enjoying the pleasure of seeing her son married at last and the sense of being returned to an atmosphere she had long missed, where waiters in tailcoats presented silver trays on which stood shining glasses of champagne, she glittered.

  “Such a pity your son couldn’t come,” she said to Ivy. She had already met Shirley and Brian and their sons, but Shirley’s slightly depressed air and Brian’s obvious disapproval had not made a good impression on her. She privately thought that Jack Waterhouse, now an MP, even if a Labour MP, might be more socially poised and generally acceptable.

  “Jack had to go abroad,” Ivy told her new relative by marriage. She did not say that Jack had made sure he would be abroad, seeing the hasty marriage of his sister into the upper classes as a double betrayal of Joe Endell and everything he had stood for.

  “What a pity,” Isabel said. “Never mind. He’ll be able to see the photographs.” “And don’t bother to order any of the photographs for me, either,” Jack had told Ivy dourly.

  “Are you feeling all right, Ivy?” Simon Tate said, coming past. He saw she was very pale. “Shall I get Sid?” Simon was keeping an eye on Ivy. “He didn’t turn up at that restaurant by accident,” he had told her. “He phoned and my secretary said where I was and who I was with. He deliberately came along to pick her off.”

  “I’m fine,” Ivy said, standing there in the crush and feeling faint. Sam Needham, like Jack, had refused to attend. “I’ve got nothing against Molly,” he had said. “Only I think at the moment she’s out of her mind.”

  “Such
a happy outcome,” Isabel Allaun said to Ivy. And Ivy wondered why Isabel should be so delighted that her son had married working-class Mary Waterhouse. Feeling dizzier and dizzier she looked round for Sid, but saw his back going through the door, just as Charlie Markham, who had been best man, stood up to speak. “I was afraid my cousin Tom would never marry,” he said, “but now he has a wife, an old childhood friend, and with her he gains a child – wife and family, all in one –”

  Ivy looked at the door through which Sid had gone, hoping he would return soon. She turned her head, searching for a chair. Horror engulfed her, and blackness. Simon Tate put his arm round her in time and helped her to a chair.

  Molly, standing behind the cake, with Charlie, saw her mother start to collapse. She turned anxiously to Tom, who was laughing at one of Charlie’s jokes. Sid was supposed to have made a short speech, but he had disappeared. Charlie completed his remarks, there was clapping, cries of “Speech,” directed at Tom, who turned to Molly and brushed her lips with his. Together they cut the cake. As the steel went through the white icing Molly felt Tom’s hand over hers on the knife. His palm was cold as ice.

  I knew then, with Sid missing, and Ivy passing out and Charlie making his jovial, jolly-good-chap remarks, that I was done for. I should have turned and run but honestly I couldn’t believe I’d have made such a mistake. I was used to making mistakes about what to do but not to making mistakes about what I felt. If my instincts had told me Tom was generous, kind and loving, I knew they had to be right. I should have thought then of the small betraying details – that washer that was always going to be put on the dripping tap and never was, the way he’d never offered me more than a few caresses, which I thought was because he was shy about the fact I was a recent widow and I’d just had a baby. I might have been more curious if I hadn’t been hiding things myself, like how important it was to me to see my child grow up at Framlingham with a live father, and not a dead one, and how much I needed to get a new identity, now Joe was gone. In fact that was what I didn’t really understand myself. The trouble was we were both after things which mattered a lot to us, but which we weren’t telling each other about. What a start to a marriage.