It was my wife, Corrie, who poured cold water on these illusions. She pointed out that bringing Molly’s son up as a landless peer might be worse than letting him grow up in the city and learn an honest job. And she added that, from what she knew of her, anyone who imagined that Molly Allaun was going to spend the rest of her life living quietly in the country as a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, married to a gentleman of no capacities and uncertain sexual orientation, must be stark, staring mad. I told her that Molly was now a woman of thirty-eight, not a girl of twenty. She had presumably seen enough trouble to make her want no more. And, in addition, she had a young child to bring up.
Corrie said, “You underestimate women, Bert. You always have. They’re capable of anything, you know – anything. It’s a crippling disadvantage men have got – not realizing that women are exactly like themselves – just as likely to be heroines or bank robbers, saints or hypocrites. You’ll all have to wake up one day. But if you want that woman to keep quiet the first thing to do is to get her some money. If she’s too poor she’ll get desperate. And you know what she’s like when she’s desperate. She’s been in a thousand situations where her most proper response would have been to have shouted ‘Alas, cruel world,’ and jumped off a bridge. Instead she thinks of something – she’s like a dreadful child left alone in a room for one minute – the kind who can always think of something to do like opening the bird-cage or cutting off all their own hair. Your job is to stop Molly Allaun from having any ideas at all. Can’t something financial be arranged?”
“I don’t see how,” I said. “And I don’t think they’d do it.”
“These things were better organized in the old days,” Corrie remarked. “There were pensions and grants. You might have to put up with spies in your household or even the slight prospect of an accident, but that wasn’t too big a price to pay for all the rest. Poor Molly,” she added, severely, “has only had the spies.”
We were sitting alone, over tea, in our house in the country. The fire had been lit. The winds of early autumn were hissing through the trees outside. I was annoyed by Corrie’s last remark. She had never overtly criticized my involvement with Molly Waterhouse. I think many of the charges she might have made about my part in the affair were bitten back because of her slight resentment of the ancient hold Molly had on my affections. Wise women do not even discuss these things. But this time, it seemed, her pity for the woman had overcome both a tiny jealousy and her feeling that it was not quite right for her to interfere. Corrie was indignant and her indignation stung me – all the more so, I suppose, because I was sensitive about the whole business.
“I did my duty,” I said, in my own defence. “I did what they asked.”
“Only obeying orders,” she said. “I’m sorry, Bert. I can’t stand being associated with this situation – where people pry and spy and worry about the consequences, but never do anything to help. It seems so wrong.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not sure what the alternative was, though.”
“Have you got the file still – the one upstairs?” she demanded suddenly. I was alarmed. It even seemed possible she was contemplating action.
“Of course not,” I told her. “That file was not mine to take.”
“But you took it, Bert, and copied every page,” she pointed out. “I found it all in a blue file in the attic when I was getting out the old christening dress for Laura’s child.”
“Well, yes,” I admitted, “I did copy it. I took it with me when I left.” For I had, a few years before, taken over my father-in-law’s firm after his death. And I must admit I was relieved to be able to go without fuss.
“You were angry,” she told me. “But why are you pretending you haven’t got the papers – do you think even I can’t be trusted?”
“It’s partly just a conditioned reaction,” I told her. “I inherited the secret from my father. I’ve kept it so long –”
“Then why did you copy the papers?” she asked. “I suppose you realize that if we were burgled they could end up on a dump, in a field – it’s almost asking for trouble –”
“I didn’t think of that,” I said.
She leaned back in her chair and said, “Bert – I believe your attitude is ambiguous. On the one hand you can’t even tell me, your wife, that you have the copies. On the other hand, you deliberately make another copy and leave it in a very unsecret secret place. An attic, for heaven’s sake, where any curious person, any burglar, looks first.” And she added cruelly, “It’s like some horrible case history where a man is trying to conceal and reveal his trauma to an analyst. In any case,” she went on, having crippled me with the observation in which I felt there was some justice, “I’d like to read the papers.”
“I can’t do that,” I protested.
“They’re in my attic. You put them there. I could have read them at any time during the last few years,” she pointed out.
I could not deny this. In a way I could not refuse to let her read the documents. And yet it disconcerted me to think of my wife, the mother of my three children, rummaging in the attic for my records, my memories of Mary Waterhouse, my past. It was almost as if she had coolly announced that she wanted to read my old love letters from another woman. And yet I realized that Corrie was a tactful and sensible woman, perfectly aware of my old tender feelings – the feelings which had begun when I was a silly young man, virtually an adolescent boy. And I knew she would not mock me about them. It seems strange, I imagine, for a grown man to make such a fuss about a pile of old documents. But, remember, the secrets considered important by one generation seem absurd to the next, which, in turn, is keeping secret the kind of information quite openly presented by the previous generation. And remember, too, the story those papers hid. I was putting highly confidential information which, strictly speaking, I should not have had available, into my wife’s hands. To be candid, at that moment I thought what a fool I’d been to copy the papers and store them.
Just how considerable the secret was I don’t think even I realized, as she sat down and said comfortably, “There’s a couple of hours till dinner time – and it’s a casserole, already in the oven.” She opened the cardboard cover of the file and began to read. Only minutes later she said, “Good Lord – I didn’t realize it gave chapter and verse to this extent.”
I had been looking into the fire and feeling slightly gloomy, like a child standing by while his father reads his school report. I reassessed the whole affair in my mind. There is something about the sudden production of old documents – letters, invitations, photographs – which does not always tend to pleasant nostalgia. Sometimes they can induce feelings of self-reproach – “To think I never saw him again before he died” – or just self-contempt – “What a fool I was.” And in nine cases out of ten it’s impossible to do anything about it – the past is gone, and that’s that. In this particular case the fact that half the revelations were not mine at all, but belonged to the main actors in the affair, seemed to make it worse, rather than better. So when Corrie remarked on how specific all the information was, I just agreed sourly. “Oh yes,” I said, “there isn’t anything there which wouldn’t stand up in court.”
“ ‘Abbé des Frères Chrétiens’,” she read. “ ‘Poulaye-sur-Bois. Loire.’ He writes a steady hand for an old gentleman – oh, well, perhaps he was a young gentleman when he made this deposition.”
“He was,” I said. “That was probably why he got mixed up in the affair in the first place.”
“Could still be alive,” she said.
“I doubt it,” I told her.
“A wedding photograph!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me there was a photograph.”
“I didn’t tell you anything,” I pointed out.
“But a photograph!” she said again.
“Village photographer,” I explained. “My father went over a few years after it happened and got all the information, including the photograph. And the negative.”
“Handed over,” I told her.
“I wonder what they did with it?”
“I don’t suppose they had an enlargement made for the family album,” I said.
“They look a happy couple,” she said, studying the old picture closely.
“I often thought that,” I said. “I doubt if either was really ever so happy again.” My wife looked at me sadly, and said, “What a tragedy.”
“A mess-up from start to finish,” I told her. “Lies, concealments – no justice done. It’s damned depressing.”
Corrie, now sobered, went on reading. She looked up again and asked me sharply, “What happened to the other one?”
“Dead,” I told her.
“It doesn’t say so here,” she said.
“Everybody else died,” I said. “Read the reports for yourself.”
“I have – there isn’t any mention of a child.”
Meanwhile the wind came up stronger. Corrie read on and on. The wind howled round the house and down the chimney, making the fire flicker to and fro. I sat on for a while, watching Corrie read the records of the old crimes, lies, concealments and evasions to which I had made myself an accomplice in the name of service. It began to make me nervous. The wind seemed to be howling old screams at me, or old accusations, I didn’t know which. As Corrie read, I also seemed to hear her own mental commentary on the whole affair. I suppose this may have been one of the reasons why I was not very pleased when she asked me to read the files – there is something about the attitude of a firm-minded and sensible woman which can throw a cold and unkind light on the activities of men working according to established precedents and moral standards. In the light of pragmatism many male activities look like folly. In the end, unable to sit and watch her any more, I retreated to the dining room where I sat looking at a film on the television and wishing there were someone in the house other than just the two of us.
She was silent as we ate our dinner. Finally I said, “What did you think about it all?”
She looked at me rather soberly and said, “In the end I wondered how they dared involve you so deeply. Or your father. Even after you left they’ve called you in for an opinion, or that’s what it looks like now.”
“It’s a long tradition,” I said. I thought the discussion was finished, but that night, in bed, she said, “Bert – I’ve got a feeling the matter hasn’t ended. Do you think that boy could still be alive?” I imagine I responded as people do in such circumstances, by saying, “Let’s go to sleep,” or “Can we talk about it in the morning?” But she persisted, “This could burst, like a boil, at any moment.” And here I remember saying, “Corrie – I don’t think I appreciate your choice of words at this time of night. Shall we go to sleep now?” I distinctly remember her reply coming at me through a fog of sleep, “It seems to me that you’ve been asleep half your life.” At the time I thought she was just being unpleasant – in retrospect, I realize she was in some ways right.
At about the same time Molly Allaun and her other mother-in-law, Joe Endell’s mother, were sitting on a rug by the lake with the pram containing the baby, who had been named Frederick, after his grandfather.
“Clouding over,” said Evelyn, looking up.
“It’s nice of you to come all this way to see me and the baby. I could have come to you.”
“It’s easier for me to come here,” Evelyn Endell said. “And it makes a break to come to Kent.”
She had probably wanted to see where and how her grandchild was being brought up. Molly said, “I’m sorry conditions are so rough. It’s worse since Mrs Gates died. I don’t think Isabel realized how much of the work she was doing.”
“I don’t suppose she did,” Evelyn agreed drily.
“It might come down to going back to Meakin Street,” Molly said. She did not add that it might be a question of going there alone, without Tom.
“Pity, though,” her former mother-in-law said ruefully. “This is a lovely place. A child couldn’t ask for a better spot to grow up in.” Then she opened her large buff handbag, which lay beside her on the bank and said, “I hope this won’t upset you – I thought of sending it and decided to give it all to you myself.” She pulled out a big brown envelope and told Molly, “It’s all Joe’s papers. Everything. I’ve made copies. I thought you’d like to have them for the boy, when he’s older. There’s school reports and his first article for the local paper – oh – and all sorts.”
“Oh, thank you,” Molly said, taking the envelope. “Thank you, Evelyn.” Overwhelmed for a moment by her own sorrow she remembered a little later that this was Joe’s mother, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “At least I had his son – before he died. At least we’ve got that.”
Mrs Endell blew her nose and said, “That’s right.”
“I’ll never forget him,” Molly said. “I’ll never get over it. I married too soon – mostly for the child’s sake.” It was a confession she did not want to make but she thought she owed it to Joe’s mother.
“I know that,” Evelyn Endell said. “No one who’d seen you and Joe together would think otherwise. I’ll be honest – Fred was angry at first. I told him I was convinced you were doing it for the best. Now I hope you’re happy. A child needs a happy home.”
“I’ll do my best,” Molly said.
“I’m sure you will,” Evelyn said. “And if you have to bring Fred up in Meakin Street it won’t hurt him. And it’ll certainly be logical because I don’t suppose you knew Joe was born near Meakin Street. I don’t think I told you.”
“What – round there?” Molly said in astonishment. “I can’t believe it. How did he come to drift so far north?”
“You read it – it’s in the envelope,” Evelyn told her. “We adopted him from an orphanage in London. He was rescued from a bombed building. I don’t know what can have happened to him before we got him but the account from the orphanage is heart-breaking.” She put her hand on Molly’s arm. “I had it in mind to tell you more about all this when we were talking about it before. But I’d always known there was something locked up in Joe which had to come out in its own good time. I thought a happy marriage would release it in the end. I was afraid you’d press him too soon. I think if he’d lived to see his child it would have helped. When a child is born we relive the past. You see, what I didn’t want was for Joe to have to face whatever it was he never thought about – what must have happened when he was a child – before he was ready. It’s not as if he was miserable or unfulfilled.”
“Oh, no,” Molly said. “He wasn’t that.”
The two women sat quietly side by side in the last sunshine of the year. Overhead, flocks of birds flew south. Then the baby cried in his pram and they wheeled him back to the house.
Molly did not open the brown envelope. She put it in a drawer in the bedroom and left it there. Indeed, for a while she almost forgot about it. It had been a hard time for her and she knew at heart that harder times lay ahead.
After Mrs Gates died Sid and Ivy had driven down with the child. Then came the funeral. The baby had been christened a week later. This had meant arranging two gatherings at the house, one for the mourners after Mrs Gates’s funeral and one for the family after the christening. Molly had been relieved, although she felt guilty about it, that the Endells had not been able to come at that time. They would have stayed several days and been uncomfortable in the over-strained household.
After the christening she said grimly to Ivy, “I’ve spent the last month watching a woman die and her coffin lowered into the ground and my baby christened and I’ve spent the rest of the time cleaning this house and cooking. It’s been a funny honeymoon.”
“I wouldn’t call it funny,” remarked Ivy. They were standing, for some reason, in the library. She looked at the space on the ceiling where a piece of plaster moulding had fallen off and said, “This lot is going to take a bit of sorting out. Sid’ll help you. It’s no good as
king Jack to do his storm trooper act on the premises – he’s too busy these days.”
“He’s still too annoyed about the marriage,” Molly said.
“He’ll get over it,” Ivy said. She looked at Molly and added, seemingly irrelevantly, “Well, thank goodness you’ve still got Meakin Street.”
The next day Molly decided she had better sort out Mrs Gates’s possessions. While the baby slept in his pram in the yard, she went sombrely through the orderly cupboards and drawers in the flat above the stable. Isabel and Tom had not offered their help with the task. Both had the useful knack of silence when situations demanding action arose. This meant that, on the whole, they were never seen to refuse responsibility while, on the other hand, they were seldom forced to accept it. It must have been this habit of keeping still in a crisis, thought Molly, which had enabled them to ignore so many warning voices. It was more explicable in Isabel’s case – she had not been reared to expect change and action – but in Tom’s it seemed more of a mystery. He had a degree in law, though a poor one, and had had a job in a stockbroking firm run by an old friend of Sir Frederick’s. He had also been employed by a legal firm. Both jobs had ended mysteriously. Now Charlie Markham had secured him a place in a small firm of lawyers used occasionally by his companies.
Tom went to London on Tuesdays, returning to Framlingham on Friday nights. The salary was low but that Tom was employed at all was a relief to Molly. So, unfortunately, was the fact that Tom so rarely shared her bed. The marriage was consummated now. On the night of the christening Tom, affectionate, and primed with champagne, had met a ready response in Molly, who felt that her child was now the child of the house. Tom, who had before been unable to sustain an erection, managed it at last. For a few moments, as they began to make love, Molly was filled with joy and relief, not so much with pleasure at the action, as with what it might mean for the future. But few genuine loves have begun on this desperate basis. Tom, above her, laboured effortfully, his face tormented. He came after a short time leaving Molly unsatisfied. Tom, evidently rather pleased, fell asleep. His attempt to make love to her the following night failed. Molly was left beside him with her uneasy thoughts telling herself that he had failed her and suspecting, in her heart of hearts, that she had failed him. She did not love Tom, she did not want him particularly, except as a physical release. But she knew that the marriage, a commercial transaction, could have been saved by sex and now she knew that, without a miracle, it would not be. A bleak life, involving much hard domestic work and loneliness, began. Only the baby, large, cheerful and thriving, consoled her.
All The Days of My Life Page 55
