“I’ve got to, though,” Molly said. “She’s very nice-looking.”
“Not quite so nice-natured,” Charlie said. “She’s got a violent temper. The stuff I’ve seen her throw would surprise you. Even a television. She’s astonishingly strong.”
“Provoked, I daresay,” remarked Molly.
“All water under the bridge now,” said Charlie. “She was number 2. Now number 3’s left me. I expect she feels quite pleased about that.”
“Where did the last one go to?” enquired Molly.
“Rome – with a Roman,” said Charlie tersely. “A month ago.”
“She might come back,” Molly said.
“I don’t know if I want her to,” he said. “No – that’s a lie. I’d have her back like a shot. She wasn’t very old – had a French mother – I thought she’d keep me going in my old age with tisanes and showing me her new pairs of shoes. I gave her everything she said she wanted. Cost a packet, I can tell you. There’s no future in it – women prefer your Johnnie Bridges who knock them about and steal their handbags. I wonder why that is.”
“You’re free, in a way, when you don’t have to be nice all the time to your bread and butter,” reflected Molly. “At least it’s a voluntary association,” she said. “And it’s more interesting than sitting about being handed everything on a plate – boredom’s more powerful and dangerous than anyone thinks.”
“That Roman had a twelve-inch prick,” Charlie remarked. “I think that might have had something to do with it.”
“You could be right,” Molly said.
“A chap shouldn’t say this to another chap’s wife,” Charlie said, “particularly when that other chap is a close relative – but would you consider coming home tonight with a lonely old bachelor?”
“Last time you chased me round the room with a whip,” said Molly, who had been considering it.
“I was young and uncertain in those days,” said Charlie. “There won’t be any repetition.”
“You’re on,” said Molly.
“Better than sitting in Fitzcrumbling Towers, worrying about the mortgage,” Charlie said. “Waiter – bring some champagne.”
But Molly was not slow to see that the bedroom of the large flat opposite Hyde Park which Charlie occupied still carried the black and red colours and the vaguely sinister air of the room where he had terrorized her so many years ago. The effect was muted, but still present. Nevertheless, the two of them made love carefully and fell asleep feeling cheerful. In the morning Molly rang Sam Needham and said, “Sam – I’ve got a business arrangement I’d like Dick Richards to help me with –” and Sam cut her off quickly.
“Molly,” he said, “there’s bad news. Isabel rang last night in case you were here – couldn’t get any reply at your hotel –”
“What is it?” cried Molly, thinking of her child.
“It’s Ivy,” he said. “She’s very ill. Sid rang Framlingham to tell you.”
“What’s happened?”
“She collapsed – the news is very bad, Molly. She’ll pull round but–”
“What is it?” she said. “You’d better tell me, Sam.”
“Cancer,” he said.
“She was weakening – I told her to go to the doctor.”
“I’m sorry, Molly.”
“Thanks, Sam, I’ll go straight there,” she said.
She took a taxi to where her car was parked and drove to Beck-enham. She did not really believe, yet, in Ivy’s illness. As she pushed the doorbell she could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Ivy answered the door with her head tied up in a scarf and the nozzle of the cleaner in her hand.
“Mum!” cried Molly. “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be –”
“Where have you been?” Ivy said, opening the door more widely so that she could get in. She turned off the vacuum. “This is all Sid’s fault. I rang Isabel to tell you not to come.”
As they walked through the passageway she remarked, “You’ve had your hair done – nice.”
To this Molly, following her, replied, “You ought to have someone in to clean.”
They sat down in the sitting room, which smelt of fresh furniture polish. Molly looked at her mother’s pale, thin face and said, “What happened?”
“Where were you?” Ivy asked.
“Never mind – what happened?” Molly repeated.
“I’ve got it – all right?” Ivy said defiantly. “I’ve had the tests. I’m booked for an operation. I’ve had a small collapse, that’s all. The doctor said it was only to be expected.”
Sid came in saying, “Hullo, Molly. We’ve had a nice game trying to find you.”
Molly said, “Then I do a mercy dash and find her hoovering away at the floor.”
“They’re sending a woman – the Council,” he said. “That’s why she’s all over the place. She doesn’t want the cleaner to come in and find the place all dirty. She’s going to treat her like an honoured guest.”
“I’m still here,” Ivy said. “You don’t have to talk about me as if I was a dog just because I’m ill.”
“I’m going to make some coffee,” said Molly. Sid followed her out.
“She shouldn’t be up and doing,” Molly said.
“Tell her that,” Sid told her.
“What does the doctor say?” she demanded.
“It’s in her glands,” Sid said. “They’re going to cut it out. Then there’ll be treatment –”
But, as they stood staring at each other, each knew how doubtful the other felt.
“That’s good,” said Molly. She turned to make the coffee. As she did so she murmured, “Oh, Dad.”
“I’ll tell you what I told Jack and Shirley,” he said roughly as he put milk and sugar on a tea tray. “And that’s that I don’t want any long faces round here. It won’t help anybody if we all start moaning and groaning.”
“Is she frightened?” Molly asked.
“Sometimes – she doesn’t say much,” Sid said.
“She’s got to have some help here,” Molly told him.
“That’s where I wish we were back in Meakin Street,” he said. “The women there helped each other out more. We could do with Lil Messiter now. I’d do it, Molly, you know that. But she’s kept me out of the kitchen so long and now everything I do is wrong. It only irritates her.”
“Vi Hutton’d come for a fortnight – give her a rest,” Molly said. She was talking about Jack’s former mother-in-law.
“They’re in the middle of a divorce now,” Sid told her. “I don’t know what Vi thinks –”
So Molly rang up. “She’s coming,” Molly reported. “I said I’d go and pick her up. But she won’t leave unless you go and fix on her window locks. She doesn’t want to get broken into while she’s away. She says she’s had them six weeks and none of her sons will do it – they keep on saying they’ll get round to it later.”
“Fair enough,” Sid told her.
Ivy, now in her nightdress, said, “I can see I’m never to be consulted about anything.”
“No harm in Vi coming to stay,” Sid said placidly. “You two have been planning it for years. And she always makes you laugh. I’ll have to lay in a stock of vodka and tomato juice. Vi can’t half knock back the Bloody Marys.”
“She’s looking forward to it, really,” Sid said as they drove through the streets to East London.
Molly, in the passenger seat, was overcome with horror. She felt death all round her. Her courage fled.
“You all right, Molly?” asked her father.
“It’s a shock,” she said.
“It hit me very hard, at first,” he told her. “But I had to realize it didn’t help.”
Molly just nodded. “Hard, though,” she said, “being normal all the time.”
They stopped at a pub and ate sandwiches and drank beer, looking out over the wide, slow-moving river. Molly’s eyes followed a tug downriver.
“Do you remember how this river used to be?” asked Sid. “Fu
ll of traffic? And the docks, with ships queueing to unload, and the wharves covered in goods – it’s all gone now. I sometimes wonder what’s happening to this city. It’s all office blocks. There’s no real trade. I get depressed every time I come down here and see the gulls flying over the empty docks and the old warehouses falling to pieces. What do you do with a place where there’s no trade? It seems useless.”
“Better ask Jack,” Molly said. There was a silence. She said, “I’ve not been much of a daughter. I want her to see me make something of my life.”
“Never mind about that,” Sid said. “At least you’ve cheered her up. More than Shirley. In her heart of hearts she always thought you’d got out – got free. Not that she’d admit it.”
“Out of what?” asked Molly.
“Responsibility – a home, kids, struggling along. You know what women are like – always grumbling. To their way of thinking all women ought to be the Queen and it’s only the cruel hand of fate which gave them homes and husbands who take a drop too much and kids who get into trouble. One of them sods off and it’s ‘Good luck to her – wish I had the courage.’ If the man does it, it’s The rotten bastard.’ They’re all the same. Whatever you’ve done or not done, it’s Shirley who makes Ivy feel depressed. Course, now she’s worried about our Jack. He’s taken up with some woman who works for ITV. Ivy doesn’t like it.” He put his glass down. Molly went to the bar and got him another drink. When she came back he said, “On the other hand, if you’ve got any bad news for her I should keep it to yourself.”
So she told him about her meeting with Charlie Markham. He said doubtfully, “It sounds all right, Molly.” And added, “Don’t you forget I’ve still got a pair of hands and I’m used to engines. I wouldn’t mind having a go if you need a bit of help.”
“I’ll get in touch with you if I’m stuck,” promised Molly.
She began the conversion of the stables in the following week. She had raised the loan on Meakin Street house without difficulty. Tom remarked, as the workmen came in, that he would not spend too much on the strength of Charlie Markham’s promises if he were in charge of the business, but Molly, encouraged that Isabel was making no objections, took no notice. However, the following week Charlie was solidly unavailable when she telephoned and, when she finally ran him to earth, he told her that some problems had come up and that they should meet as soon as possible. Molly, nervously, got in the car and drove up to London. On the way she reflected that she was in debt now and if the other two backed out she would either have to find more financing or sell off the house in Meakin Street to cover her losses. In the restaurant that evening he told her, “Trelawney’s doubtful. He doesn’t really see himself putting up independent financing for a small company. For one thing, it’s too complicated. For another, it doesn’t help sufficiently with his tax problem. The whole idea was to absorb some of the profits from Lauderdale. He still wants a subsidiary company and not an independent one.”
Molly stared at him in discouragement. The evening had started badly for, as Charlie lifted his whisky to his lips at the bar, she had seen him, suddenly, as too heavy, too lined, too stale. He was, she thought, permanently depressed. He seemed to see no good in the world. He was all right when he was good-humoured and tolerant of his own despair but, when all that was stripped away, he was a sad, aggressive man whose battles with a world he mistrusted seemed to make it worse for him, rather than better. And after that it was no surprise to find out that he and Trelawney were still trying to get control of the business. She said as much. “Obviously,” she told him, “you want your share to be under the Lauderdale umbrella. That way, if it starts to rain you don’t get wet. You can probably write it all off. What about my bit?”
“We could arrange that for you,” Charlie said, but she was not sure if she believed him. “That’s not the point. You want to run a market stall here. Lauderdale gives you, eventually, the possibility of expansion, fresh financing when this lot comes to an end – can’t you see the advantages? You’ve got the mentality of a seaside landlady, Molly, and you can’t operate like that in business.”
“We’ve had this discussion before, Charlie,” she said. “There’s no point in going over it all again. I don’t trust large companies and I don’t trust people with money and no real responsibility –”
“Sit down and eat your dinner,” he said. “Here comes the wine.”
“No, thanks, Charlie,” she told him.
“I can’t sit here eating by myself,” he protested. “For God’s sake, just sit down and be civil, Molly. It won’t kill you.”
But she did not sit down. “Look, Charlie,” she said, “I’ll buy you some fish and chips or an Indian take-away and we can have it at your place. That’d be nice. As for the rest, if you won’t help, I’ll just push as hard as I can to get the prototype bike ready and then see what I can do elsewhere.”
As she spoke he was signalling to the waiter but she saw an expression of alarm cross his face. He soon controlled it but she realized that his idea had been to buy into the company cheaply and safely and he was worried now he saw his chance slipping away. Foolishly, she pressed her advantage, “George Messiter’s got another idea, too. My guess is he’s a natural inventor, like you used to get years ago, like George Stephenson and the kettle and Darwin and the apple and all that – with Wayne to do the practical stuff and steady him down generally he could do all sorts of things.”
Charlie said, “Well, of course, if that’s your attitude –” and waited for her reply.
And Molly said, “Well, it is, Charlie.”
He was not in a good mood as they ate curry by candlelight on his dining room table. It’s only a bike, thought Molly. He’s on the board of a company worth millions of pounds. He’s on the waiting list for a brand new Rolls Royce. So why is he so sulky? He got up when they had finished and came behind her chair. He pinched her breast and said, “Up to beddy-byes, then?”
“Ouch,” protested Molly. “That hurt.” As his arms went round her in bed she felt his body, chill and stiff against hers. It’s coming from his brain and his heart, she thought, and tried to warm him, console him.
“Molly,” he said afterwards. “You’re wonderful.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, but felt a reserve towards him she could not understand.
During the following week the trees grew greener and the new grass began to spring at Framlingham. The baby showed signs of being about to stand up and walk. He cried, “Ay, Ay,” at Wayne when he threatened to walk past him in the yard without noticing. Molly, paying a wage to Vera Harker and the other women, knew there was a shortage of orders for the toys for the summer and begrudged them the fifty percent of profits she had guaranteed. She was still paying George, Wayne and two other workmen for the conversion of the stables and ordering in the equipment they would need to get the prototype Messiter bicycle ready. Funds were low, and getting lower, while gracious living began at Allaun Towers. Isabel was improving their standard of living by putting in large orders for food and wine at the high-class grocer’s in the town. The arrival of their green van on two successive days made Molly’s heart sink. She wrote cheque after cheque and felt she was bleeding to death.
At the beginning of the following week the telephone rang as she was carefully beating the faded grey tracery of the upholstery of the drawing room chairs, which she dared not attack too vigorously for fear of damaging the old fabric. It was Shirley, at the station three miles away, asking for a car to be sent to pick her up.
“Are the children with you?” asked Molly.
Shirley, in a muffled voice, said, “Yes.”
“Oh, God,” said Molly, putting down the duster and going out to the yard to collect Fred.
Her sister was crying when she arrived. The boys, Brian and Kevin, were now ten and eight years old. They were still as pale, and as thin, as ever. The older looked bewildered and the younger truculent. Three suitcases stood beside Shirley on the steps
of the station.
“You can stay a week,” Molly told her sister bluntly as they ate a scratch lunch of sandwiches and cups of tea in the kitchen. “You can see what it’s like here – workmen everywhere, I’m in hock to get a business started. It’s being done on a mortgage on Meakin Street-I’ve got a young child and a tricky mother-in-law.”
Shirley said, “I don’t know where else to go – Ivy’s ill, Jack’s in a small flat and his girlfriend doesn’t want the disturbance – but I couldn’t stay, Molly. I’ve been on Valium for three years.”
“I’ve got six weeks before they bring the axe down on me,” Molly told her. “I’m right on the edge, Shirl, and that’s a fact.”
“Ivy was always there to bale you out and take care of Josephine when you needed it,” Shirley went on as if she had not heard.
“I’m sorry,” Molly told her.
Brian staggered in with a bucket and said, “Which is the hot tap?”
“The one with the red nozzle,” Molly said. “Why can’t you use the tap in the yard?”
“Allan wants hot,” said the boy. He added, as he heaved the bucket into the sink, “He’s giving Kev and me fifty pence a day to be helpers.”
“He’s nice, Allan,” Molly told her sister as she closed the door behind the boy and his bucket.
Shirley began to cry. “It’s a lovely place,” she said. “If only there was room. That family’s ruined my boys – I want them to get healthy and normal.”
A worse incident then occurred. The telephone rang. Molly listened to what Charlie Markham had to say and then, wordlessly, put the phone back on the cradle. She ran out, through the front door into the yard. “Wayne!” she cried. “Wayne! I’ve got to talk to you.”
Wayne, up on the roof putting on tiles with the other workmen, looked down at her. Without saying anything he came down the ladder and said, “Is it about George?”
A watery sunshine filled the yard. She looked at him and said, “You knew?”
“Mr Markham rang up while you was out, once. He wanted to speak to George – make a date to see him. I told him not to go. But he went. I knew it was no good. So – what happened?”
All The Days of My Life Page 61
