“I didn’t expect him to be as dirty as that,” Molly said.
“In my experience,” remarked Isabel Allaun, “people change very little after they grow up. Charlie was quite a nasty little boy and he’s grown up to become quite a nasty man.” She sighed and said, “Molly – I wonder if you’d pour me another small whisky.” She said, as Molly did so, “I think matters would have been less serious if Fred had not died. He would have held things together a little better. Tom’s not had the experience–” Her voice trailed away. Molly handed her the whisky. Isabel was being friendly now that she was going, Molly thought. Not entirely truthful – when had she ever been? – but she was showing some candour. “I’ve always regretted the way you were bundled off at the end of the war,” she said. “It was largely my fault – I’ve had to admit that to myself. He wanted to adopt you – Fred – and I believe I was a bit jealous, for Tom’s sake of course. I expect we were all a bit mad, then. It had been a long war – we were all tired out.”
“All forgiven and forgotten now,” Molly said, hoping to cut her mother-in-law short. The apologies and explanations were too easy. Some of them had the ring of a rehearsed cadenza – as if Isabel had gone over the events, explaining them to herself many times in private.
“Frederick was so strange at the time,” she said. “The war had exhausted him. It was almost as if he could talk to no one but you. Looking back on what he must have been feeling, I can see now how natural that was, but it was hard, then, to understand. I may have acted hastily. I think perhaps I did.”
Molly helped herself to some more brandy. It was too late – it was all too late. Isabel’s attempts to explain the past, excuse herself from any guilt, work out where it all went wrong, were pointless now. She was relieved when Shirley came in saying, “Everyone’s in bed what ought to be in bed.”
“Please help yourself to a drink,” Isabel said. “We’re planted in our chairs, chatting. That song,” she said to Molly, “quite suddenly I’ve remembered it – every word. Isn’t it extraordinary how that sort of thing happens? You hear one phrase of a tune and half an hour later you’ve remembered the whole song and all the words.”
“How does it go?” Molly asked.
“Les plaisirs et les ennuis –
Sont évanouis,” Isabel sang in a clear voice, younger than her years.
“Comme les vents dans les champs
De mon pays
Then there’s some more, I’ve forgotten – then it goes something like,” – and she sang again, “Tous comme les vents dans les blés de mon pays. It’s just one of those cabaret songs of the thirties,” she explained. “You know, about lost love and how it’s all gone by like the wind across the fields in the singer’s native land, or region.”
“Well, well,” said Molly. “I wonder why I’d hear a song in my dreams in a language I don’t even understand.”
Isabel said, “Another mystery.”
“I suppose no one will ever want anything to eat?” Shirley asked.
Molly shrugged. Shirley said, “I’ll turn the oven down.”
By the time she returned Tom was back, saying, “I’ve been drowning my sorrows in the pub.”
“We’re discussing the future,” his mother told him.
“Well, I’ll join in,” said Tom, making a bold dash at the whisky.
“Seems to me we’ve all got different plans to discuss,” Molly observed. “You’ve got to think about turning the stables into flats, Shirley and I have to think about accommodation in London for ourselves and our children. I suppose we could share, Shirl?” she suggested.
“I don’t know why you don’t sell Meakin Street and settle here permanently,” said Isabel. “We’re a family, after all.” Molly giggled, although she realized immediately afterwards that she was drunker than she thought. The notion of Isabel, her homosexual son, herself and her child by Joe Endell constituting a family made her laugh.
Shirley said firmly, “I don’t know that that would be in Molly’s best interests, Lady Allaun.”
“And why not?” Isabel asked.
“Because from what I’ve seen, the money Molly got by selling the house would be soon gone in this household,” Shirley replied primly. Molly tried not to laugh again.
“I think you should hold your tongue,” Isabel said.
“I speak as a sister but also as a trained accountant,” Shirley said. “That’s if I’ve passed my exams, which I don’t know yet.”
“Are you a trained accountant?” asked Molly.
“That was why I ran away. I’d just finished the final exams when they made me man the bacon cutter eight hours a day, as well as do the housework and the children,” Shirley explained plaintively. “Then I nearly cut my finger off on it and they still made me go on doing it. Then Brian was complaining about the state of the house but every time I put my hand in hot water the cut opened again. So I might be a badly-treated wife or I might be a qualified accountant. It remains to be seen.”
“None of that excuses what you’ve just said, in my opinion,” Isabel said. “I think it’s time I went to bed.”
“Oh, no, stay, Isabel,” Molly said. She was beginning to enjoy the random nature of a conversation held by four such different people, in the middle of a collection of catastrophes.
“Thank you, but I’m going,” Isabel said. “I’m extremely tired. I don’t relish your sister’s presence in a family discussion and I think if she hadn’t the tact to leave the room she could at least have refrained from comment.”
“Phew,” said Shirley, after she had gone. Molly stared at the carpet and began to feel sour. She remembered dancing at the Dorchester till dawn, riding about in big cars and being given big jewels by men. She remembered rushing back from clubs in the darkness with Johnnie Bridges, falling into bed with him and making love till dawn. Wicked days, she thought, associating with gangsters, slumlords and villains of every kind. Now all she wanted to do was start a bicycle factory and this honest wish had been denied her. Who’s the idiot, she thought, Molly Waterhouse, gangster’s moll, or Lady Allaun, failed bike shop owner?
She looked at Tom nastily and said, “You’ll have to get another wife to help you out. This place is falling to pieces.”
“You should talk,” retorted Tom in the same tone. “You’ve lived off men all your life.”
“I’m a woman,” Molly pointed out. “It’s expected of me. They queued to do it. Anyway, you had better chances than I did. You could have been a famous barrister, or a doctor, or anything. It doesn’t matter anyway. Facts are facts. This place is falling to bits and I’m leaving and I don’t care.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Tom. “You don’t care. Live here when it’s easy, when you’re a kid. When it’s harder you bail out fast.”
“It was one of your lot – Charlie – sold out Molly,” Shirley said. “Not one of ours.”
“It was one of yours – George – who agreed to be bought,” Tom said. “Trust you to drag class hatred into it, as if things weren’t bad enough.”
“What does it all matter now?” Molly said wearily.
“I’m going up,” Tom said, yawning.
“What a shocking pair,” Shirley said, after he had left the room. “To think it’s us that’s supposed to be common.”
“I don’t care,” said Molly. “I’ve got a life to lead and a child to keep and I should never have got mixed up with all this in the first place. It hasn’t made me forget Joe – just remember him worse. I think if I can get out of here I’ll remember him more happily. I should never have tried to change things. I should have sat in Meakin Street crying my eyes out and occasionally trying to do myself in and getting stomach pumped. It was a dream – trying to get back in a dream. It’s been a half-dream all my life, this – the house, the countryside, the life you could lead. Like security. Then I got here by a trick, sort of, and it was real – all falling to pieces, Mrs Gates dying in the stables, not a dream, more like a nightmare. The house gone
rotten and the people inside gone rotten with it. I don’t care – I’ll be glad to get out of here.”
“You’re entitled to something – a divorce settlement –” Shirley said.
“I wouldn’t take a sodding, rotting brick from the wall,” Molly declared. “I should never have married Tom. It was part of the dream.”
“You going to bed?” asked Shirley.
“No. I’ll just sit here,” Molly told her.
“Never mind, Moll. Never mind,” said Shirley.
After Shirley had gone Molly sat on and saw the dawn come up over the lawn where the starlings still hopped as they had on those summer mornings when she had come there with her precious skipping rope to skip and skip and skip. Now, above her, she felt the whole house crack and groan under the weight of years of neglect. Then she went to bed, as the early light came in between the cracks of the faded curtains in her room.
The next day she began, wearily, to assemble her things in a corner of the bedroom. In the afternoon, as she drank tea in the drawing room with the bank manager, she was saying, “I shall have to ask you to keep the loan going for me while I make arrangements to pay it –” when she saw, past his head, through the long windows, a hunched figure coming up the drive with something on its back. And as the banker, James Davidson, said, “I shall try, Lady Allaun, but I can’t agree to do it entirely on my own responsibility,” Molly realized that the figure was Wayne and that he was carrying the bicycle frame.
“Excuse me,” she said, jumping up. “There’s something peculiar going on outside.” She crossed the room. “He’s got the whole bike on his back,” she said.
Davidson was at her side. “Oh – so that’s the bicycle,” he said. As she opened the window to go out she glimpsed Davidson’s face. He was fascinated.
“Come and have a look,” she said, stepping out. “Though it can’t be too good, if he’s carrying it, instead of it carrying him.”
Wayne dropped the bike on the grass and straightened up.
“Hullo,” Molly said. “What are you doing here, with that? Come inside and have some tea.”
“I’ll have a wash in the kitchen first,” he said. “I’ve walked seven, eight miles with it. Your phone’s out of order,” he told her.
“Did it break down?” asked Molly.
“No,” he said tiredly. “We had a democratic discussion and decided it was the bike’s turn to ride.”
He turned round and trudged off to the kitchen.
Davidson was still on the lawn. He had righted the cycle. “Nice and light,” he said. “Unless you have to carry it. Something’s happened to the back wheel.”
Molly knelt on the grass. “The engine’s about four pounds,” she said. “And it looks as if it slipped its pins and hit the back wheel. They were worrying about whether the pins were strong enough to hold it over roads.”
“Where’s the engine?” wondered Davidson.
“In that bag over his shoulder, I expect,” Molly said.
“Small as that?” Davidson said.
“That’s the whole point,” Molly told him. “When you want it you’ve got fifteen to twenty miles an hour – when you don’t you can put it on a shelf or in a suitcase, carry it about. If you look,” she pointed out, “you can see where the pins keeping it in place sheared through. I must need a bigger pin or a stronger alloy.” She bit her lip thoughtfully.
She stood up. “Never mind,” she said, “that’s not my problem now.”
“Well, well,” said Davidson, following her in reluctantly. “I can see now why your competitor wanted it. Very handy little item – it would suit all sorts of people. It’s got a rather attractive appearance too, if it had a coat of paint.”
“I had this dream of fleets of them, all painted gold, green and silver and purple, swooping up and down hills together,” Molly told him. “Like a fleet on the ocean. Would have made a lovely ad on TV.”
Davidson looked at her in surprise. He nodded.
“I’ll go and make a fresh pot,” she said. And to Wayne, as he came in, “Help yourself to cake. This gentleman’s Mr James Davidson, the bank manager – we’re just having an inquest – and this,” she said to Davidson, “is Wayne Edwards, my former business partner.”
“That’s what –” Wayne said as she went out to the kitchen. She did not hear the rest but as she boiled the kettle she had a sudden instinct he had brought good news. She stood impatiently, waiting for the kettle to boil, and wondering what had happened.
When she went back Wayne was talking about the Messiter to James Davidson. “The old engines on the old motorized bike had got too conventional,” he was saying. “There was no reason why they should be so heavy, and stuck on the side like that. It meant you had to have a heavy frame, and compensate for the weight on that side. With the new alloys you didn’t need all that. George just started thinking how to do it different – George can do that. He just looks at a problem and forgets how anyone else thought about it, or done it before.” He turned to Molly and said, “He’s on the train – George. We tried to phone.”
“I didn’t pay the bill,” Molly said frankly. “And I knew no one else would.”
“Better get it put back on, then,” Wayne said. “Because George tore up that agreement with Mr Markham. He wants to come back.”
Molly had been wondering if that was what had happened but now could not believe it. Wayne looked awkward. “All right, is it?”
Molly nodded. “It’s all right if Mr Davidson says it’s all right.”
“You’d better come in tomorrow with your costings and plans,” said Davidson. “How much would you plan to sell the machines for – have you thought about it?”
Still stunned, Molly said, “Not much. What do you think?” asked Molly. “As a potential customer?”
“Given that the reliability was proved, the petrol consumption reasonable and the length of life of the machine no less than ten years,” Davidson said, “I’d guess about one hundred and fifty pounds.”
“All that?” Wayne said in astonishment.
“What do they cost to make?” Davidson asked.
“About sixty-five,” Wayne told him.
“Add your labour, plant costs, distribution costs, advertising – you can’t afford to sell them for any less and make a profit enough to expand on,” Davidson said. “That’s guesswork, of course. It depends on how many you make. It’ll have to be worked out in detail.” He hesitated, “If you go forward,” he told Molly, “I foresee a difficult year or two for you. I should advise you to think deeply about whether you want to continue.”
Wayne, too, was looking at her. And Molly, as usual, said, “Yes. Yes-I’ll do it.”
“Well – there’s no point in going on with our other discussions,” said Davidson. “Goodbye, Lady Allaun. Shall we say three o’clock, at the bank?”
“Certainly, Mr Davidson,” she said.
When he had gone she fell into a chair and said, “He was thrilled, Davidson – you could tell. Pour yourself a cup of tea, Wayne. What’s been going on? Is George serious? Why’s he backed out?”
“I had a go at him. And it seems he told Cissie why you thought Mr Markham was on the fiddle. And Cissie said she changed her mind and you were right. Seems she said you’d be fair and she had confidence in the family you come from.”
“But can I rely on him to stand firm now?” Molly asked. “I mean, suppose we get finance and get started – then George is got at by somebody else?”
Wayne shrugged. “You better put him under contract,” he said.
“We’ll have to draw up an agreement,” Molly said. “But I’m not tying him up like a runaway slave.”
“He needs a nice, sensible woman,” Wayne said.
“Maybe Shirley’ll take a fancy to him,” Molly said. “And I’d better get her now. Whether she passed her exams or not she’s the only accountant we’ve got and we’re not going to find another one before three o’clock tomorrow. We’ve got to make this look go
od.” She paused. “Isabel’s going to be really fed up when she finds out she’s not going to be able to turn those stables into nice maisonettes.”
“Can she refuse to go along with it?” asked Wayne, in alarm.
“She won’t,” said Molly, convinced that the threat of her divorce from Tom, accompanied by a claim on the property, would persuade Isabel to accept the continuing of the work on the stables. She started to shout, “Shirley! Shirl! Get your calculator – we’re back in business!”
And so the career of Molly Waterhouse began again on that late spring afternoon.
In the summer of 1978 we had spent a week in the Loire with an old friend of my wife’s and it was as we were driving on after the visit that I noticed, on the long, dusty white road, a little French signpost reading Poulaye-sur-Bois. At first the name did not register. Then I remembered it but I drove on, faster, if anything, than before. Corrie, who was sitting beside me, said, “If you turn right and right again we can have lunch at Poulaye-sur-Bois.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Is there any point?”
“The Michelin,” she said, finding the pages, “describes it as a pretty village with a picturesque abbey, sited on a hill, among woods. Part of the abbey dates from the fourteenth century and the Hotel de Ville has one star.”
We had spent the past year dealing with the problems of a family of three teenage children. This had led, in the end, to a feeling between us, never expressed, that we, our marriage, our family, had all failed. All the love and efforts of the past had been futile and not worthwhile. I knew that these doubts are part of the business of bringing up a family. Nevertheless I had been very keen to get Corrie away from the scene and try to reunite our lives and feelings. Now, I did not want to argue with her about visiting Poulaye-sur-Bois. In fact, her desire to go there quite amused me. I knew, of course, that she had always disliked my involvement in the affair of Mary Waterhouse. She had never quite told me what it was that she most mistrusted about it but I had a clear impression that she saw me, in that context, as the equivalent of a doctor running an abortion clinic or the director of a not-quite-honest company. I thought this attitude unfair but, unfortunately, I also knew that she was usually right and just in her reactions. So, as I turned right, then right again, for Poulaye-sur-Bois I smiled privately at the idea that high-minded Corrie’s rejection of a situation she found thoroughly unsavoury had been subsumed by ordinary, common or garden feminine curiosity. I should have known better.
All The Days of My Life Page 63
