“Too heavily mortgaged. The bank won’t lend the money,” Molly said.
“I can’t believe that,” Ivy said.
“That’s what Tom tells me – maybe Allauns can’t face the risk –”
“Can’t face anything, it seems to me. No common sense. I should get out, Molly, before you get like them and just sit there on the sinking ship, not doing anything about it. You’ve got Fred to think of, after all.”
“Can’t see what difference it makes to him,” Molly told her mother sulkily. “I expect he’d rather be here than stuck in a nursery in London all day long.” She was developing a sense, as the months went by, that she did not want to leave. She kept the toy-making business moving, holding its own although there was no progress. Somehow she had the superstitious feeling that if she just clung on, the right answer would arrive without her looking for it.
Sid, Tom, George and Molly went down to the pub that night, leaving Ivy babysitting. The pub, which she remembered as being full of oak beams, with wooden tables and chairs and bare boards on the floor, was smarter now, carpeted, with a juke box. She recalled wandering home at twilight, as a child, hearing the sound of the piano, the men’s voices inside, coming out into the street.
Under the influence of a few ciders. George began to talk. “She reckons I spend too much time on my cycle, and trekking oil into the house,” he said of his sister. “She’s very houseproud, Cissie.”
“Riding a bike?” said Molly.
“No – it’s – it’s an invention, like,” he told her. “It’s lighter and stronger than other bikes and you can rig up a motor on it when you want it, and take it off when you don’t. It’s a little motor, so you can even take it with you.” He stopped, finding nothing else to say about it. “I’m just tinkering with it, really,” he said. “Trouble is, I’m in trouble with my boss.”
“Working on it in the firm’s time?” suggested Sid.
“A bit – and using a few spare bits and pieces – it’s that he resents the interest, really. One of my mates at the garage, Wayne, he got interested in it, too. The boss hates the garage, really, hates motors, hates his wife – Wayne reckons he just can’t stand anybody else having something they like doing.”
“I can’t see the use of it, frankly,” Tom said. “I mean – if you want a bike, you get a bike. If you want a motor scooter you get one of those.”
“Be cheaper than a moped,” Molly said. “And you could buy the bike first and then save up for the engine. Or you could have cycling holidays and just use the motor for really steep hills. Does it work?” she asked George.
“Me and Wayne are working on a few modifications,” he told her. “Maybe Tom’s right. I don’t reckon we could get the speed above fifteen miles an hour – not without making the engine heavier.” He stared in the direction of two labourers drinking beer in the corner. He said, “I’d like to use electricity.”
“Said the mad inventor,” added Sid.
“Can you go back to London at the weekend and get Wayne and the bike? If I pay your fares?” Molly asked.
George stared at her wonderingly – but she saw convoys of the bicycles, painted red, green, silver, gold, violet, climbing hills with their little engines chugging. “Wayne can stay the weekend,” she added. “I want to see the bike.”
“All right, Molly,” said George, who was accustomed to taking orders from women, who usually knew best.
Tom gaped at Molly and then looked furious. Sid looked at his daughter carefully. He looked at George. Then, discouraged, he looked into his beer.
That evening Tom came into Molly’s room and said, “What possessed you to ask that boy to get his friend down here? Without asking me or Isabel, either. It seems high-handed – and extremely odd. I’m wondering if you’re in your right mind?”
“I may not be,” Molly said, sitting wearily at the dressing table in her old dressing-gown. She glanced at Tom, standing in the doorway. “I want to do something, Tom,” she said. “I want you to lay off me for a bit. Will you?”
“Why should I if you don’t tell me what you’re up to?” he asked.
“Tom,” she said. “Is your job all right?”
“I’m quite touched at your showing an interest,” he said. “There hasn’t been much of that. The procedure’s up to now been to send me off in the morning to earn the money and let me in at night after I’ve done it – and, since you ask me, no, the job is not all right. I’m on the verge of resigning. The senior partner dislikes me and the other solicitor is an incompetent. I’ve asked for more money and been refused and I don’t think I can stand it any longer.”
Molly, without bothering to sift the story for the rights and wrongs of the situation, just said, “I thought so. If you don’t mind, Tom, I’m going to bed. I’m dog tired and Fred’s waking at six these days. Wayne’s only staying over the weekend and he’ll be on his way home by the time you get back with Isabel.” Tom, at a disadvantage because of his confession, went to bed and said nothing more about the visit until Saturday morning. Wayne had arrived on his motor bike earlier but Tom had not seen him. He was very big, and black. Molly secretly hoped he would not, by a mischance, run into Isabel.
That morning Wayne and George got up early and went to the stables. George was hammering some parts on to the prototype cycle while Wayne worked on the engine, which was standing on the old mounting block. A transistor radio on the wall played heavy rock – Fred was sitting in his pushchair, watching, with a chocolate biscuit in one hand and a spanner in the other. There was a smear of oil on his cheek.
Tom arrived and, seeing all this, turned round at the yard entrance and went straight back to the house, where Molly was rolling out pastry.
“What in God’s name’s going on?” he demanded. “Are you trying to convert this place into a slum?”
“Two lads fixing up a bike in the stables, hundreds of yards from the house?” she asked. “What’s wrong with that?”
She went on rolling the pastry, knowing perfectly well that this had nothing to do with the argument. It was the class, and in one case, the colour of the young men to which Tom was objecting. It was the fact that the household, that weekend, consisted of her mother, her father, a lad from Meakin Street and his black friend. Tom felt swamped – and ignored because he didn’t know what she was up to.
“It starts as a visit from your mother,” declared Tom, “and ends up with all the hooligans in London banging and shouting. And Fred’s out there with oil and chocolate all over his face. You’ll have to tell them to go.”
“Wayne’s going tomorrow anyway,” wheedled Molly. She did not want to reveal her plans to Tom before she had checked that they might work. But she needed his cooperation because otherwise she would not see the bike in action. And she did not want a confrontation, which she would win, proving what they both knew – that Tom Allaun was not master in his own home.
“Honestly, Tom,” she said. “They’re only young men – hardly more than boys. Don’t make me make them go. At least Isabel’s not being disturbed. Please let them stay, Tom.”
“All right,” he said, “but I’m going to Sebastian Hodges’ and when I come back after lunch tomorrow I expect to find George’s friend gone and the house at peace again.”
“Thank you, Tom,” Molly said humbly. So, she thought, after he had left, she had got her way with placatory behaviour. As she made a rabbit pie from two rabbits she wondered whether if she made Tom feel more powerful he would turn into a normal husband and father. After all, Charlie Markham had told her she was too domineering, energetic and forthright.
“Mum,” she said, as Ivy came into the kitchen. “Do you think I’m being fair to Tom? Do you think I’m too bossy and tough?”
“I suppose you could try to boost his ego a bit,” Ivy said without interest.
“It’d take a bit of doing,” Molly said. “And while I’m fainting and wheedling him into doing things I could be doing something myself –”
“W
ell. Try to see it as a challenge,” advised her mother. “Make making Tom more manly be your task in life.” Then she spoilt it by laughing.
“Quicker to get some wool and large needles and knit yourself another one,” Sid observed as he came in from the garden.
“Sid!” Ivy reproved. But Sid had just turned over about an eighth of an acre of kitchen garden. After lunch he was planning to patch up the wall behind the lavatory cistern upstairs. He was beginning to wish he had gone off on the angling party with his friends in Beckenham. Here he had not even found time to unpack his fishing tackle.
Nevertheless, the weekend passed happily enough. Sid did get out his fishing tackle in the end. Ivy tacked up some fresh rents in the curtains and gave the sitting room carpet a good clean while George and Wayne worked on the bike in the stable yard, continuing after dark by lighting some lanterns they found and put into order. In the end as twilight fell on Sunday evening they were ready for a test run. Molly knew that Isabel would be back shortly but was too excited to halt the experiment.
“It’ll have to be up and down the drive,” Wayne told her. She, Sid and Ivy assembled on the step in front of the house and watched.
“Will it work?” called Molly nervously to the two men who were bending over the bike in the half circle of gravel in front of the house.
As she spoke, George jumped, then went back to making adjustments. Wayne called back, “Might do.”
The cycle standing between the two of them was small, with an unpainted frame which was dented in places. The engine in the poor light was a bulge, rather like an udder, set on the frame just in front of the bicycle chain. The handlebars were rather wide in order, George said, to balance the machine.
In fact from the front it looked rather like a small longhorn steer. Molly wondered whether, even if it worked, purchasers would find the bike’s slightly odd appearance appealing. It certainly lacked streamlining.
Now George sat on the machine, one foot on the ground. He revved the little engine, which choked, and died. Molly set her teeth and told herself not to worry. Suddenly George was off, careering down the drive in the twilight. He disappeared under the trees. In the silence of the country evening they heard him cut the motor. He came back up the lawn, pedalling. He switched the motor on again and came towards them, ploughing up the turf. From the corner of her eye Molly saw a taxi coming up the drive beside him. Raising one hand above his head he shouted, “She made it!” Wayne, both arms raised, cried, “Yeah!” Then, as George got closer and closer he shouted, “Cut the engine, man.” George did. He braked and fell off in the gravel in front of the taxi.
Isabel Allaun got out. “What is this?” she asked Molly. “And where’s Tom? He was supposed to collect me at four.” Upstairs the baby began to wail. George got up, holding his arm. Molly said, “Didn’t Tom come?”
Isabel stared first at Wayne, then at George, and then back at Wayne again.
“This place is a bear garden,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me what’s happening, Molly – inside the house.” She took Molly by the arm and began to steer her through the front door past Sid and Ivy, whom she did not acknowledge. Molly resisted. “You’d better pay the taxi driver, Isabel,” she said. “And I’m going upstairs to see to Fred.”
“The taxi’s on account,” Isabel told her. “And I’m sure your mother will look after the baby.” The pressure on Molly’s arm continued. She withstood it. Turning to George and Wayne she said, “Why don’t you two go down to the pub for a celebratory drink?”
“And we’ll join you,” said Ivy, who was furious. Once inside, with the baby settled down, Molly poured Isabel a drink, apologized for the disorderly scene in front of the house and said nothing of her plans. She felt nervous, but assured. She considered she might get some capital from Charlie Markham for the development of the little bike. It worked. It used only a small amount of petrol. It offered the rider the choice of pedal power or motor power at will. It would be cheap to produce and, she suddenly thought, even its odd appearance would not necessarily count against it. If it was not smart it was, at least, original, almost as if it competed against, rather than trying to copy, the world of streamlining and excessive horse power. But she knew that if she revealed her plans to try and put it into production Isabel would, in her present mood, obstruct her. She needed the use of the stables and the yard in front of them.
She also needed to keep hold of any money Charlie could raise for her. If she told Isabel her plans there would be builders in the house renovating and restoring, clothes and furnishings would be purchased before she had even got George to plan the workshop. It would happen in the least blatant and nicest possible way – but it would happen and bills would start arriving before the money had been banked.
The lack of explanations made Isabel even angrier. Not long after Tom arrived, also in a temper. Isabel was accusing him of leaving Hove only fifteen minutes after he should have arrived to collect her. During the discussion which followed Molly set the table for supper in the dining room and cycled down to the pub to meet the others. She hoped that by the time they all trooped back for the meal some of the animus would have evaporated.
She sat down with a drink and told George and Wayne that she had a source of possible capital and that if she could get backing she would be happy to fund them to make a proper prototype of the bicycle and then put it into production.
“I’m sure there’s enough room to build another workshop on the other side of the yard,” she said. “Or use it for warehousing. It’d only be small at first but I’d like to try it. If it works, we could expand.”
George instinctively looked at Wayne. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I’d give it a go,” Wayne replied. “I’m sick of that garage.”
“It’d have to be a partnership,” Molly said. “Low wages and a share of the profits – all drawn up by lawyers.”
“You have to make the decision yourself,” Wayne said to George. “It’s your machine –”
“I don’t know where they’d live,” Ivy said. “They can’t live up there.”
“There’s a few people round here who could do with lodgers,” Molly said.
“Like me?” Wayne asked.
“The vicar’d take you in,” Molly grinned. “To provide an example of racial tolerance – there’s a couple of empty cottages to let, too – it’s not a problem.”
“George?” Wayne asked. “Listen – I don’t want to bully you into this –”
George, who had been staring dreamily in front of him said, “What? What, Wayne?”
“Do you want to do it, man?” Wayne said patiently.
“Of course I do,” George said, as if he were surprised to be asked. “If we get a cottage we can store some of the parts in one of the rooms. Storing enough frames’ll be a problem.”
“If I get the money,” Molly said. She bought a round of drinks and said, “Well – to the Messiter.”
They lifted their glasses to the grinning George and all repeated, “The Messiter.”
“You going to have some explaining to do to the people over there,” Wayne said, nodding in the direction of Allaun Towers.
Molly told him, “They’ll do it if there’s money in it.”
That evening, after supper had been eaten in a chilly atmosphere – Wayne had set off home on his motor bike before the meal – Molly telephoned Charlie Markham and arranged to see him in London in two days’ time. Then she put down the receiver and, reassured that no one in the house had overheard the call, went upstairs to lie down. It had been a long day. She was experiencing, now, the fatigue which accompanies a new venture.
The baby was asleep in his cot near a lighted lamp. She lay beside him in half-darkness, wondering whether she would get the money from Charlie and whether, if she did, the experiment stood any chance of success. She had now involved two other people, George and Wayne. She was moving in territory she did not understand. Charlie had been right about one thi
ng, though, she reflected – she had witnessed the manoeuvrings of men like Ferenc Nedermann, had observed the hard attitudes of professional criminals like the Roses and had learned from what she saw. She had watched Joe Endell at work, steering committees, looking at the problems of his constituents, making deals and she had learned from that, too. She knew a lot – but, she thought, had never done anything herself.
She must have drifted into a doze for suddenly she was back in the prison laundry, surrounded by huge, steaming drums, full of sheets and dresses. She had been hauling out long, boiling strips of sheets, all tangled together, when she saw, through the cloudy atmosphere, a familiar face. The woman standing beside the wardress walked into the middle of the room and greeted her in a low voice, “Hullo, Moll. I heard you was here.”
She recognized Peggy Jones, larger and fatter than she had been the last time she had seen her standing on a corner in Soho. Peggy started hauling at the sheets, in order to avoid the wardress’s eye. Obviously she had been here before.
“What are you in for?” asked Molly.
“The usual,” Peggy responded calmly. “Prostitution. Not the first time – don’t suppose it’s the last.”
“Come along, girls,” the wardress called. “Stop talking.”
In a way Molly almost resented the arrival of Peggy Jones. She had insulated herself as far as possible from the prison.
She went through her days, from the unlocking of the doors in the morning to the locking up at night, in a carefully maintained state of semi-consciousness. She took no notice of the insults of the other women or the occasional brutalities of the staff. She made no friends and tried to make no enemies. She looked no one in the eye and spoke only when she was spoken to. She did not know, at night, who screamed, or why. She kept herself from her own distress and that of the others. She was rewarded by relative peace and the maximum remission of sentence. She was punished by not being able to leave the state she had created when she walked from the prison door, free. But Peggy’s brief stay in the gaol took her, for a time, out of voluntary numbness. One day they were both sitting at the back of a large room where other women were watching TV and Peggy began to talk about her short spell as an evacuee at the Rectory in Framlingham. “Half of us should never have gone,” she told Molly. “Half of us were home a year later, Blitz or no Blitz. I wish my Mum had never sent me, though. That woman – Mrs Templeton – she still haunts me. Thank God I was with Cissie. I don’t know what would have happened to me if she hadn’t been like she was.” Her big, round face was suddenly sad as a child’s. “She wouldn’t have sent me, I don’t think, my mum, if it hadn’t have been for that house in Meakin Street going – the one next to Tom Totteridge’s stables, where we used to live. Course, Mum wanted me out of the way because she was making a fortune off the GIs. But I reckon that bombsite next door kept on nagging at her.”
All The Days of My Life Page 58
