Eventually, the guests disappeared. Tom and Molly planned spending the night at the hotel and going to Framlingham in the morning. Sid and Ivy were to take care of the baby for a week and then drive to Kent.
Molly, left in the room with Tom and Charlie, said goodbye to the last of the guests and looked unhappily at the cake, with a section cut out of it, the confetti on the floor and the empty plates and glasses. She missed the baby already. It had seemed appropriate to settle in at Framlingham without the child, but now she regretted she had agreed to the plan. She swallowed, then smiled at Tom. “Happy?” she asked him.
He nodded and smiled back at her. It was a smile which came a fraction too late. Charlie said, “Don’t let’s stand here among the remains of the marriage feast. Come on – I’ll drink a toast to you in the bar.”
They spent the afternoon there. Tom got drunker and drunker. Molly found that she felt better if she was not sober. The scene disconcerted even Charlie, who bent towards Tom as he ordered yet another round of drinks and said something to him in a low voice. Molly, a bit drunk, did not see him muttering into his cousin’s ear. She did catch the expression of anger on Tom’s face, which disappeared as he said to Molly, “You must be feeling very tired. Shall we go upstairs so that you can rest?”
She nodded. She had the idea that, once upstairs, Tom would make love to her. She wanted, now, to feel a body close to hers. She wanted the passion, the intimacy, the release. But in the suite upstairs Tom led her past the huge arrangement of flowers on the table, the long window looking out on to the Thames and, dropping her hand in the bedroom doorway, said, “I’ll run you a bath, shall I?”
“No thank you,” Molly said. “I’ll just lie down.” Tom kissed her lightly on the lips and said, “Sleep well, then.”
He went out, shutting the bedroom door. Molly, slightly bewildered, full of champagne and brandy, decided that perhaps she should rest. She lay down and slept. She woke at six, alone, desperately missing Joe Endell. Tom was not in the other room. She fell on to the sofa and cried. “Is it a mistake?” she said to herself. Then aloud, “Is it a mistake?” But she thought of Allaun Towers, the red bricks glowing in the sunshine. She thought of the pasture-land, full of grazing cattle, the lake and the trees. “He’ll have all that, the way I did,” she thought, imagining her healthy boy learning to walk on the lawn in front of the house, pushing his way through corn taller than he was, learning to row on the lake. She thought that he, without a father, and she, without Joe, would have something for themselves. She told herself that Tom must have got bored, as he sat there, waiting for her to wake up. She told herself that he was over forty, that he had never been married before, that he was bound to feel strange and uncertain with her. She told herself that she should not have decided to sleep in the first place. And yet, said a voice inside her, he suggested it. He led you to the room and shut the door. Tact, said another voice. It was tact, kindness, good manners. Why should he want a drunken scramble on the bed in the middle of the afternoon as a consummation of the marriage?
Glumly, she ordered coffee, and later, whisky. She watched TV and quelled a strong impulse to leave. I must give this a chance, she whispered to herself. She remembered Tom helping, Tom being kind, and drank more. At ten Charlie Markham rang up, sounding embarrassed. “Sorry, Moll,” he said, “Tom’s here – turned up unexpectedly and joined a small party I’m having here.” He paused. “Trouble is,” he said, “Tom’s passed out now. I’m bringing him back.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” Molly said glumly.
“Case of a belated stag party, I think,” Charlie told her. “He would sit at home last night – well – I’m on my way, then.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” Molly said again. She bit her lip and tried to control her rage. Charlie’s effort at kindness made the whole matter seem worse. Together they put Tom to bed. Charlie looked at the defeated bride and the drunken groom with pity, which he tried to conceal. He accepted Molly’s offer of a drink and sat down saying, “Weddings are bloody awful things if you ask me. Best forgotten once they’re over.”
“Yes, Charlie,” Molly agreed, but she felt bewildered. She was alarmed by Charlie Markham’s sympathy. She had never known him to be kind before. “He’ll have a sore head for Framlingham tomorrow,” Charlie said. “Don’t be too hard on him in the morning.”
“No, I won’t,” Molly said. “Thanks again, Charlie. Come and visit us when we’re properly settled in.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said, getting up. “I haven’t been there for years. Good luck, Moll.” He kissed her on the cheek, and left.
After he had gone Molly sat and ached for Joe Endell. She pined for the baby. At the same time she felt very alarmed. She had a bath and leapt out of it quickly, as though responding to an emergency. She was half asleep in front of the television wearing the blue, embroidered dressing-gown she had bought before she married Tom, when at last he came in. He looked pale. He was carrying his jacket. He shut the door behind him with care and asked, “What’s the time.”
“Eleven-thirty,” replied his new wife. “Are you all right?”
“As to that – I can’t say,” he told her in a slurred voice. Then he added, “Sick,” and went unsteadily to the bathroom.
When he came out he said, “Been sick – sorry,” and sat down.
“I’ve ordered some coffee and sandwiches,” Molly told him. “Is that what you want?”
“Anything – anything,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh Lord – on our wedding night. Sorry, Molly. I’m not much of a man.”
“I’m looking forward to Framlingham,” Molly said. “Perhaps this hotel wasn’t a good idea.”
Tom looked at her cautiously. “It’s not exactly what it was,” he told her. She had the impression he thought he was being cunning. He had a sloppy, sly smile on his face, which he thought he was concealing.
“What do you mean?” asked Molly.
“The old place – not what it was. Death duties,” he said. “Never mind – we’ll soon pull it all together.” He stared at her, still with the same silly expression on his face. The waiter brought in a trolley. When he had gone Molly said, “You’d better have some coffee and some food.” This she gave him. She was engulfed by a kind of despair. She knew everything was amiss – leaning, toppling, not to be relied on. She watched Tom eating the sandwiches. At one point he looked up and said, “We’d better have a chat,” and then went back to the plate. He then drank a cup of coffee and stared at her. “Death duties,” he said. “And one thing and another. These places don’t keep themselves the way they used to – even in the old days they were generally financed from some rubber plantation or plenty of shares. Dad never got back to what he was before World War II – never had a business head anyway. Mother’s the same, just carrying on in the same old way – no idea of reality. Same’s true of me, I wouldn’t wonder. Charlie says so –”
“What are you talking about?” Molly asked. “Do you mean the house has got to be sold?”
“Sold?” he said. “Sold? It’s mortgaged to the hilt. Two mortgages. Never mind, Molly, we’ll sort it out between us.” He shut his eyes and dozed.
Molly poured herself a cup of coffee and thought. At least, she thought, she had an explanation for Tom’s behaviour. He was ashamed that he hadn’t told her the facts about the situation she would meet at Framlingham. Well, all right, she decided. Perhaps she could get a job – Mrs Gates could mind the baby while she worked. They could work something out. In a way, it was a relief to have something to think about other than the uncertainties of this unhappy wedding night.
Tom opened his eyes. He muttered something at her just as she said, “Tom – I’ve been thinking –” Then she said, “Sorry – what did you say?”
“You first,” he said.
“I was thinking – if I got a job and Mrs Gates looked after the baby, that would help, wouldn’t it?”
“What’s this about jobs?” he demanded. “I asked you what you
’d got.” He added, “Sorry to put it so bluntly – but we ought to talk about it now we’re married. Pour me another cup of coffee, will you – there’s a good girl.”
She got up and poured the coffee, took it to him and smoothed the hair back from his brow, saying, “Poor old Tom.” And then could not help imagining that he moved his head a fraction so as to shake off her hand. “Well?” he asked.
She sat down on the sofa, near his chair and told him, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about. If you mean, how much money have I got – well, a few hundred saved and Joe’s insurance and the house, I suppose. Why do you want to know?”
“Because you’re my wife. Because we have to make a few plans,” he said, as if stating the obvious. “Come along, Molly – you’re behaving as if you’re drunk yourself, and as it happens, you’re not and neither am I now.”
Molly stared at him in horror. “This is shocking,” she declared. “We’ve only been married five minutes and you want to see my accounts – you’re checking the money poor Joe left on his insurance. It wasn’t much – only two thousand pounds. He planned to make it more after the baby was born –”
“Oh, my God,” Tom said in disgust. “Come off it, Molly. Where’s old Endell’s money?”
“What–?” said Molly and then understood suddenly. “He wouldn’t take it,” she said. “He didn’t like the source. He disapproved of inherited wealth, too, you see,” she explained. “That’s why he couldn’t take it.”
Tom was staring at her with an expression on his face which Molly, in a sudden moment of terror herself, recognized as fear. He said, slowly, “You’re having me on –” and then, flinging himself back in his chair, “You’re not! You’re not! He refused to take the money – Endell refused it? That’s true, isn’t it?”
Molly felt exhausted. The constant repetition of Joe’s name, the idea that his child was with Sid and Ivy, far away and the shocking knowledge which now came to her – that Tom had married her believing her to be a rich widow – made her feel weak. She passed her hand, now, across her own brow and told him, “Tom – I don’t believe what’s happening – I don’t feel very well.”
But Tom, with a cry, jumped to his feet and swept the coffee pot, milk jug, cups – the whole tray – from the small table they stood on. “Christ! This is a fine sod’s opera for me!” And taking a few steps towards Molly he thrust his face down at her and said loudly, “You kept your secret well, I’ll say that for you.”
The sheer menace of his behaviour revived her. She was outraged – although later, she was to look back on that moment, the last when, it seemed to her, Tom demonstrated any passion at all, with some nostalgia. In fact it is probable that if he had not shown such energy in his venom she would have left on the spot. However, she leaped to her feet and cried, “Don’t be so bloody stupid, Tom. I never hid anything from you. I didn’t know you thought I was rich. You never even mentioned Joe’s grandfather. If you had I’d soon have put you right. I never deceived you into marriage – anyway, what a rotten way to want to marry. As it happened, I thought you loved me. And I thought I loved you. But if it’s money you’re after, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ll go home – you can divorce me – then you can start looking around again for another heiress – a real one, this time.”
Fully intending, at that moment, to leave, she ran into the bedroom and started pulling the few clothes she had brought with her from the hangers in the wardrobe.
Tom ran after her and grabbed her arm. “Molly – Molly,” he said urgently. “I’m sorry. We’re good friends – we love each other. Nothing’s lost.”
He put his arms round her. She moved back. “It’s no good, Tom,” she said. “Let’s face facts. You wanted my fortune to put the roof back on the house and a smile on Isabel’s face. I wanted your house and your position for me and the child. We only wanted each other a little bit and now there’s no money for you, and no house for me, unless I want a leaky roof in the country – let’s call it a day. We’ve no one to blame but ourselves.” As she spoke she was cramming her wedding suit into the case. She turned round and looked at him. “Best to cut our losses,” she muttered. She moved over towards the bathroom door and said, “I’ll leave now – and pay the bill, for evidence. We can get an annulment.”
Tom, standing in the bedroom, said, “I wanted the boy.”
“You what?” Molly asked, appearing in the bathroom door with her spongebag. “You wanted the boy, did you say?”
Tom nodded, looking embarrassed. He got his next words out with difficulty. “The place needs an heir.”
“What!” cried Molly. “My son! God, Tom, that’s disgusting. Why couldn’t you have an heir of your own, if you want one so badly?” She paused, scarcely able to believe, even now, what he had said. She said finally, “It’s so old-fashioned.”
“You said it was what you wanted,” he said. “You said it.”
“I wanted the fresh air,” Molly told him indignantly. “Not a falling-down house and a crummy title. I wanted him to have the childhood I had – in the fields and that –” She sniffed. Her rage was evaporating. It left behind a feeling of stale loss. She bit her lip and put her spongebag on top of the case. Very slowly, she knelt down and started to lock the catches. As she did so, a tear plopped on the blue surface.
“Don’t cry, Molly,” Tom said behind her.
She turned round and stood up. They looked at each other. Both were wondering whether they might not be better off in a friendly alliance than alone.
Tom said, “Perhaps we can work something out.”
Molly said, “What’s in it for you? Without me you can start hunting again.”
“I still need an heir,” he told her.
“What’s stopping you from having one of your own?” she said bluntly.
“I don’t think I’m the type,” he said.
She stared at him. “What on earth do you mean, Tom-?” She realized, then, what he must mean. “Oh, God,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I guess?”
“It’s not as bad as that,” he said.
“What about the girl you were engaged to?” she asked.
“What I say – it’s not as bad as that,” he told her.
Molly walked into the other room and flung herself into a chair. Tom had thought – and she guessed that Charlie had reassured him – that Molly, the girl they had tormented in a semi-sexual way in childhood, would be able to stir Tom’s frail manhood to life. She had not guessed what he was like, probably because the courtship and marriage had been overshadowed by her grief for Joe and her love for the new child. Now she saw that things were worse than she had imagined. But, she told herself, how do you expect Tom to want you, when you know you don’t want him?
Tom had followed her in. He, too, sat down. She realized he was waiting for her decision. She said, “I should have known all this. Why did you propose, Tom?”
“It could have worked,” said Tom. “I just handled it badly.” He seemed to be reproaching himself for manoeuvring wrongly.
“That wouldn’t supply me with a vast fortune,” Molly told him. “So there we are – I’ve got no money but I’ve got the boy, which you want. You’ve got no money but you’ve got the house, which I want. Well, well.” Tom sat down, looking exhausted. He passed his hand over his brow. She asked, “Why don’t you just sell the house? Even if it’s mortgaged you’d get something.”
“No one wants to buy it,” Tom said.
“Turn it into a hotel – or flats,” Molly said.
“Bank won’t fund it,” Tom said. “There’s £5,000 a year from a trust fund we can’t touch and on that we have to live and keep the place up. Mother can’t bear the idea of what’s happened –”
“She’s going to be disappointed,” Molly told him unsympathetically.
Tom said, “Molly – I’m too tired to talk about all this any more.”
Molly suppressed her irritability. She thought they should decide what to
do then and there. But he added, “I must get some sleep. You can have the bed if you like. We can discuss it in the morning.”
But Molly went back to Meakin Street, to the cold bed she had once shared with Joe Endell, and lay there awake all night, missing him sorely and trying to work out what to do. And thought, as she made herself a cup of tea at dawn and drank it in the room where she and Joe used to sit, that she did not want to stay in Meakin Street, with all its memories of old happiness, that, equally, she did not want a replacement for Joe but that she did want to bring her son up in the country, at Framlingham. She could rent Meakin Street, she thought, then she could get a part-time job and, who knew, perhaps she could work out some way of rescuing matters at Allaun Towers. As for Tom – she liked him. She could not expect to love him as she had loved Joe and did not want to. She lay on the sofa at Meakin Street and said to herself, “Joe – Joe. What am I going to do?”
And thought she heard him say, as if his voice were part of the thin, grey light coming through the windows, “Take the boy to Framlingham.”
On the road to Kent next morning she and Tom chatted in their old way, as if there had been no marriage, no revelations and no early morning reconciliation. Tom showed an intermittent desire to bring up the old issue but Molly refused to talk about it. Her mind was set on the future. All she said was, “Let’s give it a try, Tom. We’ve nothing to lose.”
He was not pleased when he discovered that she was reluctant to sell the house in Meakin Street.
“I don’t want to sell and the rent will come in handy,” she told him.
“A drop in the bucket,” muttered Tom.
“Cheer up,” she said. “I’ve got £200 in my bag. When that runs out you can start complaining. Anyway,” she added, “I’m looking forward to seeing Mrs Gates again and showing her the baby.”
All The Days of My Life Page 52
