All the Days of Our Lives

by Annie Murray

  ‘Oh, Ruth!’ Molly was overcome. ‘For me? That’s ever so kind of you . . .’ Unwrapping it, she found a cream silk scarf with a red border and Parisian scenes drawn on it in dark-blue ink and coloured with patches of turquoise. ‘That’s beautiful – is that the Eiffel Tower?’

  ‘Yes, and the Arc de Triomphe and NotreDame – I thought the colours would suit you. There . . .’ She snaked it round Molly’s neck. ‘It looks lovely!’

  Molly was delighted. ‘It’ll dress up anything, that will – oh, thank you!’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Now, why don’t you show me around?’

  Molly had made sure she had a day off while Ruth was staying, though it was the busiest holiday season and she was working hard a lot of the time.

  ‘Bloody cooking again!’ she groaned as she and Ruth at last got some time to relax together on Saturday afternoon. They sat at the edge of the little boating pool, dangling their feet in the water and drinking in the sunshine. ‘I never get away from it, do I? Course, once you’ve done it before – like I did at Butlin’s last year – they just want you to do it again. Breakfast’s the worst: two shifts, so you’re always trying to hurry the first lot to get out, so that the next lot can get in. It’s bedlam!’

  ‘Sounds it! Rather you than me. A boiled egg is still about the most complicated thing I can cook!’ Ruth, her neat figure dressed in navy slacks rolled to the knee, with a white short-sleeved blouse, was also looking tanned and well. She put her head back and closed her eyes. ‘Ah, this is bliss – at least it will be, if those children keep their distance. I don’t want to get splashed!’

  Molly screwed up her eyes against the sunlight dazzling her from the water. The lake was busy with little blue-and-yellow pedaloes. The water felt silky as she moved her feet in it.

  ‘Have you seen Win?’

  ‘No – not for ages. I had a card from her, though, from Rome. It all sounded very cultural – you know Win. She’s going into her final year now, like me.’

  ‘What’ll she do then?’

  ‘Oh,’ Ruth smiled mischievously. ‘Something frightfully sensible, I expect.’

  ‘And what will you do?’ Molly could scarcely imagine their lives. A university degree was hard enough to picture, but then what? ‘Will you be a teacher or summat like that?’

  Ruth straightened up, eyes open. ‘I don’t know. More and more I think I’d like to stay on and do research – if I get a good enough degree. Otherwise, I suppose I’ll go and work for some firm – or hospital laboratory . . . I have no desire to be a teacher. They’d run rings around me—’

  ‘Hello, Molly!’ a male voice cut in, making them both jump. A lively, sandy-haired young man planted himself beside Molly.

  ‘All right, Trevor?’ Molly said. ‘This is my mate Ruth – she’s come for a long weekend.’

  ‘’Ello, Ruth!’ Trevor held his hand out, grinning. ‘Are you the brainy one?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about—’ Ruth began.

  ‘Yes,’ Molly said, proudly. ‘She’s doing a degree at Cambridge University.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Trevor said. ‘Most of us are stuck with the university of life, eh?’ He seemed put off and got to his feet. ‘See you later, Molly?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Molly said.

  ‘Bye, then – bye, Ruth.’

  He went off cheerfully.

  ‘That was Trevor,’ Molly said.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Ruth could be very direct.

  Molly blushed. ‘Sort of. For now, I s’pose.’

  ‘Not a great romance then,’ Ruth said drily. In all the time Molly had known Ruth, so far as she knew Ruth had never had a boyfriend. She just didn’t seem to be the type.

  ‘Nah. Not me.’ Molly made a splash with her toes.

  Ruth looked curiously at her. ‘But you’re such a honeypot! Don’t you want marriage and babies, things like that, Molly?’

  Molly looked down at the bright water. Abruptly she said, ‘I can’t have babies, Ruth.’

  ‘What? Whatever makes you think that?’

  Molly was really blushing now. It was the first time she had ever said it, admitted it properly, even to herself. It was one of the things that tied her to Ruth – the fact that they could both say things to each other: there was that kind of bond.

  ‘Put it this way,’ she said, still not looking round at her friend. ‘If I was going to have a babby, it would’ve happened by now.’

  Ruth was silent for a while. Then, quietly, she just said, ‘I see.’

  ‘I haven’t been a good girl. You know I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know for sure . . .’

  ‘So now you do. I could’ve had Tony’s baby.’ Tony, the one man she had truly loved. ‘But it never happened. Then the others. There’s summat wrong, Ruth, it doesn’t happen for me. Not that I’ve wanted it to – it’s the last thing I’ve needed. But I’ve taken that many risks, usually when I’d had too much to drink, and I never thought about it. But I started thinking about it a while ago. I put two and two together and – I knew.’

  ‘Surely there are tests . . . ?’

  Molly shook her head. ‘There’s no point. I just know that’s how it is.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruth began.

  ‘No. I’m not. Best not pass on my family’s seed, that’s my way of looking at it.’ Her voice was bitter now. Had her grandfather ruined her, somehow? All those infections she’d had? She would never know. It was just the way things were.

  She turned her head now. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh – me! I don’t know. I can’t really imagine it at all. I think I’m too much of a bluestocking for most men.’

  Molly smiled. ‘We can be old maids together then.’

  ‘That’s about it, I think!’

  ‘Talking of old maids – have you seen the Gorgon?’

  ‘No, but Win has. I think they meet for a coffee every month or two. She’s a rather lonely soul, I think. Win says she seems ever so pleased to see her when they meet up – still smokes like a chimney. There’s another one for our club, I reckon!’

  Molly laughed, though she felt sad for Phoebe Morrison. She had never seemed a very happy person.

  ‘Not Win, though,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m sure she’ll marry someone very decent and sensible, and they’ll live in a nice little house and have two children called Janet and John!’

  ‘Yes!’ Molly laughed. ‘She will – like Honor!’ Honor, another of the ATS they had done basic training with, had married someone very rich and was now leading a graceful country life near Oxford.

  ‘Oh, I think for Honor it’s more of a mansion!’ Ruth laughed.

  ‘She was all right though, she was,’ Molly said. ‘Hey – fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘Now you mention it,’ Ruth said, ‘there’s nothing I’d like more.’

  Forty-Five

  That October day when Molly had stumbled into the public toilets at Clacton and saw in the mirror her shambling, dishevelled reflection, another horrifying premonition of ending up like her mother, she promised herself that she was never going to drink again. The way she had sunk so low, waking half naked on the beach, unable to remember much about the night before, had frightened her badly.

  She managed to pull herself together enough to work out that winter in Clacton, staying on at the Lesters’ boarding house, keeping rigidly away from the bottle. But she had to go out sometimes, or she would have gone mad. Once or twice a week she met Liza, who was at first very confused by Molly’s sudden turnaround.

  ‘I’m no good to myself on it,’ Molly told her. She made herself tell Liza about waking on the beach. She knew she mustn’t pretend. ‘If I go on like that, there’s no knowing how I might end up. If I start, I can’t stop.’

  ‘Oh, go on, one quick half won’t hurt yer,’ Liza would say at first. It seemed to make her uncomfortable going out with someone who didn’t drink alcohol. ‘You’re not turning into one of them Holy Joes yourself, are yer?’

 
‘Look,’ Molly said one night when Liza had been on at her. ‘My mom’s a drunk. I’ve seen the way it goes, and I don’t want to end up in her shoes – got it? So don’t keep on, or I shan’t bother coming out with you.’

  ‘Ooh, so-rry!’ Liza said huffily. But she got the message. She also craved company in these deadly winter months and didn’t want Molly to forsake her. They often found themselves the centre of attention from some lads. Molly’s looks always drew admiring glances, and Liza was curvaceous with a brunette bob, full lipsticked lips and a come-hither expression. And it was nice to have some young company. But Molly stuck to lemonade, acted as prim as she could manage and made sure the lads walked her home, quite early on in the night.

  On their own, the girls laughed about the fellas they’d met, moaned about their jobs and gradually began hatching plans.

  ‘I’m sick to death of working in a hotel,’ Liza said. ‘I like to be outside more. Come the summer, I’m going to go and work at the camp – Butlin’s. You coming with me?’

  Molly thought uneasily for a moment of all the memories she had of the Clacton camp. Did she really want to stay around here? But it seemed the best thing on offer, and as the winter passed she and Liza had begun to see themselves as beginning an adventure.

  ‘There’s more camps, aren’t there?’ Molly said. ‘We could get work at one, then another.’

  ‘There’s Skeggy and Filey. And there’s other ones, not just Butlin’s,’ Liza said.

  Possibility seemed to open up in front of Molly. She liked the idea of keeping on moving, on and on, not stopping long in one place.

  In the spring she had said goodbye to the Lesters, despite Jane imploring her to stay.

  ‘I feel if you were to stay on, I should get better,’ she said desperately.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Molly lied. In the circumstances it seemed better than the truth, which was how stifling she found it living there. ‘But I’ve got to go home for a while. My mom’s ill and I’ve got to look after her.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Jane said stoically. ‘Well, of course, family must come first.’

  Soon she had a job in the kitchen at Butlin’s and Liza was a chalet maid. About halfway through the summer they moved to the Skegness camp and worked there. Molly liked the freedom of this, the way it indulged her sense of restlessness. And in the main she liked camp life. Some of the staff were local women who came to work in the kitchens or as cleaners, but many – the Jaffas in the dining halls in their orange coats, the Redcoats and all the others – were like themselves: single and young and looking for a job and a bit of fun. There was a sense of camaraderie – in that respect Ruth was right, it was a bit like the army, and Molly liked it for that. There were also a good many fights and fallings-out among the staff, and filching and cheating, but it was nothing that life hadn’t prepared Molly for and she was quite able to cope. Camp life gave her some security. It was much less lonely than life at The Laurels.

  What was harder was the constant attention of men – both other staff and, quite often, the campers themselves. But Molly was learning gradually that she could put up a barrier: be friendly, but distant. It was a discovery to her that she wasn’t obliged to please any man who came along.

  Life in the camp was very busy, and it would have been quite easy to forget about anyone outside. She sent Em a card from the Skegness camp, remembering guiltily that it was a long time since she’d written. But she was better at keeping in touch with Ruth. For all that their lives were so different, they somehow needed each other, and so long as Molly let Ruth know where she was, sooner or later a letter or card would arrive, addressed in blue ink in Ruth’s neat, sloping hand.

  Sometime last summer a card had arrived saying:

  Any chance of your getting into London for a day? I’ll be there for a few days – thought I’d meet Win. It would be fun if you could come too.

  They’d gathered on a warm day, in a cafe in one of the streets leading off Trafalgar Square. Ruth had met Molly’s train, and they rattled round the Circle Line on the Tube. Molly enjoyed walking the streets of London again, trying not to dwell on the last time she had made her way round here in a light cotton frock – the days she had stayed with Tony and his family. London, to her, meant both acute pleasure and agonizing grief.

  ‘They’re coming at half past eleven,’ Ruth said, as they ambled past the fountains in the square.

  ‘They?’

  ‘Ah – I didn’t tell you. I think she’s bringing the Gorgon along with her!’

  Molly’s pulse quickened. Why? She asked herself. Why should I be nervous now? She regarded Phoebe with a mixture of awe and affection – and still saw her as a superior officer. It was hard to imagine her as anything else.

  ‘It’ll be funny seeing her.’ Molly was trying to get used to the idea.

  ‘In Civvy Street? Yes, it will. It’s been a long time for me, of course.’

  Ruth had not been in the battery that went to Belgium – she had returned to England and been demobbed sooner than Molly.

  They sat at a sunny window table in the cafe, where they could see the street, and ordered cups of coffee.

  ‘Ah,’ Ruth said, after a few minutes. ‘There they are – bang on time, of course!’

  Through the window Molly saw a slender, elegant young woman in a pastel green shirt-waister, wearing a white cardigan on top and white low-heeled sandals. Her dark-brown hair was still much as she had always worn it, cut into a neat collar-length bob and caught behind one ear. It was unmistakably Win Leighton. And in those seconds Molly took in that Win had, in a kind, subtle way, established a protective relationship with the dumpy, awkward-looking woman walking beside her, dressed in a belted suit of brown-and-tan tweed, which looked too heavy for the weather. Once more it wouldn’t have been possible to mistake Phoebe Morrison for anyone else – there was the black hair scraped up in a bun now, the solid, busty figure and the strong, determined face. Yet she looked smaller, as if, Molly sensed, she too had been diminished by civilian life.

  They were all saying hello then. Molly was taken aback to be kissed on the cheek first by Win and then, as if following her example, by Phoebe Morrison. She caught the old smell of stale cigarettes as they were close together for a second.

  ‘Ruth, Molly – how absolutely wonderful to see you!’ Win gazed, beaming from one to the other of them, and Molly realized she was genuinely moved to be back with them again.

  ‘Hello,’ Molly said, nodding and smiling at them both shyly, realizing that she had no idea what to call Phoebe Morrison now. She couldn’t keep calling her ‘Ma’am’, could she?

  Win did a very good job of making everyone feel comfortable and at ease, while they sat and drinks were brought. And Molly, who had Phoebe Morrison to her left at the little round table, saw her draw her cigarettes gratefully from her bag and light up.

  ‘For you?’ She held out the packet to Molly.

  ‘Thanks very much.’ She accepted a light as well, glad to have something to do with her hands.

  ‘So . . .’ Win beamed round the table, taking charge as she always had done. ‘We must catch up. Do let’s share what we’ve all be up to!’

  Win seemed exactly the same, Molly thought, as during that first week in the ATS, when she had been self-appointed head of dorm and had taken charge of switching off the lights. She felt a warm gratitude towards her. Back then, when she had no idea how to fit in, Molly had resented this automatic public-school authority. Now, she just felt fond. She knew from experience about Win’s considerable good side.

  As they sipped their drinks, Win and Ruth talked about university life and, having most in common, soon fell into conversation. Molly found herself being looked at closely from the left by Phoebe Morrison.

  ‘So,’ she puffed out smoke. ‘Did you say you’re working in camps?’

  ‘Yes, Miss, er . . . Morrison . . .’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, do call me Phoebe. We’re not in the army now.’

  ‘I�
��m at Butlin’s,’ Molly said, thinking it sounded silly. ‘Skegness at the moment – but I’ve been at Clacton. Before that I was in a boarding house.’

  ‘Ah yes, I think I’d heard that. Clacton – fancy that. Has it changed much?’

  She asked her questions in a clipped way, seeming ill at ease.

  ‘Well, yes a bit. The beach is open – the hotels have all opened up as well . . . And the camps are very busy. There are lots of holidaymakers now.’

  ‘Ah yes. Well, no doubt you have a lot of fun and are kept busy.’

  ‘Busy enough,’ Molly agreed. She sipped some more of her cooling coffee. ‘You should come – have a holiday yourself.’

  Phoebe Morrison gave a snort of laughter. ‘Ah well, perhaps!’

  There was a pause, so Molly asked, ‘And where are you working, er . . . Phoebe?’

  ‘Oh, Civil Service: roads and transport. Very dull. Well, I say that – it has its moments of course. There is at least some purpose in it.’ Abruptly she asked, ‘What shall you do in the winter? Presumably the camps don’t stay open all the year?’ She pulled out another cigarette and lit up. Molly heard Win laugh at something Ruth had said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll just have to think of something.’

  Win, who was looking at her now, leaned across the table. ‘Perhaps we should all come down in the summer and work at Butlin’s too? They take students, don’t they?’

  ‘Er – yes,’ Molly said. She thought about some of the behaviour of the other staff, the fights and rivalries, the state of some of the kitchens. ‘I’m not sure you’d like it really, Win.’

  Win laughed. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

  They sat talking for an hour or so, before Win said they would really have to be going. Molly was relieved. She had found it hard going with Phoebe Morrison, despite being very pleased to see her. All in all, the meeting had made her feel sad. Phoebe’s crustiness seemed to stand out more now than it had in the army, where it merged with her commanding role. And apart from her work, she had very little to talk about.