An Ordinary Life

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Mom!’ Joe called loudly from the garden and it was almost automatic the way David and Clara looked at Molly.

  ‘Coming!’ Joyce called, and went outside.

  There was a moment of quiet hesitation as the family navigated these new and uncharted waters. It was Clara who spoke first.

  ‘You know, Molly’ – she paused – ‘you really are quite a remarkable woman.’

  ‘She is,’ Albert concurred, and they continued to drink their tea in silence.

  Molly felt a lump rise in her throat and gave Albert a wide-eyed stare, warning him not to cry again, and they both laughed.

  SEVENTEEN

  London

  1968

  Aged 43

  Molly sat alone on the train, smiling broadly, despite the man in the seat opposite blowing cigarette smoke that hit her full in the face and which she knew would cling to her hair. This happened on occasion, this secret burst of inner happiness, when a thought or memory from the weekend just spent filled her with such joy that she was able to live off it for days to come. Yesterday, the family had celebrated Joe’s twenty-fourth birthday. It was an odd thought that he was now older than she was when she had given birth to him and yet, when she looked at him, fresh out of university with the ink on his civil engineering degree still wet, he still seemed to her like a child in many ways. She had arrived at the house in Tonbridge, admired the new addition of a kitchen-cum-dining room, very American and open-plan and with all mod cons: a recessed stainless-steel sink with a drainer and Formica worktops in a faux-marble pattern. Joyce was terribly happy with it and Albert, as ever, stood quietly in the background, enjoying his wife’s delight at the fruits of his labours. A cupboard with a sliding glass door was suspended from the ceiling on chrome rods, holding all of Joyce’s fancy crystal, to which Molly had to pay especial attention as her sister demonstrated the sliding mechanism.

  ‘Isn’t it clever?’

  ‘Very,’ Molly offered in her subdued manner, and would never have confessed to preferring the soft lines of her own cottage kitchen, the pale wood and mismatched shelves that housed her equally mismatched cups and saucers. ‘What on earth is all this?’ She laughed at the strips of blue crêpe paper fashioned into streamers and strung around the room as though Joe was still a child. Joyce had suddenly grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the downstairs cloakroom. Molly was a little taken by the urgency of it.

  ‘Right, just quickly, I’ve sent David, Clara, Clementine, Hetty and the gang up to the top of the garden . . . Oh goodness, I’m all of a dither!’

  ‘Calm down, Joyce, what’s wrong? It’s only a birthday party!’ she reminded, her words belying the whoosh of excitement in her gut at the prospect of seeing her boy.

  ‘You’re right, of course, but here’s the thing . . . Joe will be here any minute with his new girlfriend, Estelle – he seems quite keen.’ She fanned her face, still pretty despite the lines that criss-crossed around her eyes and puckered her top lip.

  ‘Yes, so you said on the phone.’

  ‘Please promise me you won’t laugh, Moll.’

  ‘At Estelle?’ She wrinkled her nose, trying to figure out why Joyce might think she would laugh at the poor girl on their first meeting. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘No! Good heavens, not at Estelle – at the birthday cake! Clara insisted on doing the honours, and you know I can’t say no to her because she can be so terribly sensitive.’

  Molly rolled her eyes at the complete ridiculousness of it all, especially as Joyce could be very persuasive but didn’t seem to recognise the fact.

  Joyce continued to witter. ‘Anyhow, it’s a disaster – a complete disaster – and everyone’s being polite, and because David is so wary of upsetting his wife, we all have to smile and pretend it’s a work of art, but it’s hopeless! It’s supposed to be a chocolate sponge, but heaven only knows . . . Just don’t laugh!’

  ‘I won’t laugh.’ Molly drew a cross over her heart.

  ‘Well, that makes me feel a bit better. Do you think I should brief Joe?’

  ‘No, for goodness’ sake! You’ll make it a much bigger deal than it needs to be. It can’t be that bad.’

  ‘You haven’t seen it—’ Joyce whispered in horror.

  The doorbell rang and both women smiled.

  ‘That’ll be our boy.’ Joyce kissed her sister warmly on the cheek. ‘You doing okay?’

  ‘I am! Stop fussing and open that door!’

  Joyce hurried from the cloakroom and Molly took a minute to compose herself. She gazed at herself in the looking glass over the basin and tucked her straight hair behind her ears, then ran a finger over the edges of her mouth to neaten her pale lipstick. She thought for the first time in an age of Geertruida, who had always favoured the reddest lips. Even after all these years she still felt the pang of lost friendship in her belly.

  ‘Mom!’ And there it was. The word that drew her from her memories, sending a jolt of current through her bones, still with the power to make her gut knot.

  ‘Come in, come in! Happy birthday!’ Joyce called.

  Molly came out of the cloakroom and raised her hand in a wave.

  ‘Auntie M!’ Joe, her sweet, sweet boy, walked towards her, with a gait and expression so much like his father’s it almost took her breath away.

  ‘Happy birthday, darling.’ She let him envelop her in a hug, feeling the delicious warmth of his skin against hers and breathing in his scent. Molly closed her eyes briefly within his arms and remembered the moment twenty-four years ago when she had felt him slip from her and held him close on the bathroom floor: all arms and legs and surely the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  ‘So what do you think, Auntie M – do you like the beard?’ He called her M, she didn’t know why. He always had and it meant more than she could ever possibly explain.

  ‘. . . I shall call you M – and everyone will think it’s short for Molly, but you and I will know differently. M for “marvellous” . . .’

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ She reached out and used the excuse to touch his chin softly. ‘I can’t say I’m that enamoured, but what do I know?’ she said with a shrug. ‘And your hair is very long!’

  ‘Thanks!’ He took it as a compliment she had not intended. She and Joyce chuckled.

  ‘So where’s the girlfriend?’ Joyce asked, closing the front door.

  ‘Ah, change of plan. She’s travelling from Oxford so I said I’d meet her here.’

  ‘Ah, lovely,’ Joyce said, clapping her hands in delight.

  ‘Joe!’ Clementine and Hetty came through the back door and were keen to greet their cousin. Their own children, three in all now, plodded along behind. Clementine’s twin boys – Arthur and Lindsey, named after their great-grandfather – were both fretful. They garbled at the same time some convoluted tale of how their cousin, Hetty’s daughter, Frances, had been mean to them, and somehow involving stolen sweets.

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t mean it.’ Clementine’s husband, Giles, removed his pipe and tried to console his boys. Molly saw him exchange an understanding look with David, his father-in-law, suggesting that actually Frances might well have meant it, whatever it was she had done this time. Not that Clementine would hear a word against her sons, the apples of her eye and suitably spoiled.

  David came over and put his arm over her shoulder. ‘Hello, Moll – twenty-four, eh?’ She knew this was her brother’s subtle way of acknowledging the significance of this day for her and quietly thanked him for it.

  ‘I know, all grown-up and beardy.’

  ‘Yes.’ David clicked his tongue. ‘Very beardy. Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in my regiment looking like that!’ He chuckled and Molly once more silently gave thanks – the very reason she had stepped forward to help make the world a better place, free of war, so that her beloved child would never have to.

  ‘Okay, everyone! Here we go! Ta-dah!’ Clara could be heard from the kitchen, and suddenly there she was i
n the hallway, dressed in an ornate beaded kaftan and holding a wooden breadboard on top of which sat a monstrosity of a cake.

  ‘Good Lord!’ Joe gasped at the brown, misshapen boulder, which had five candles stuck in at odd angles on the top. ‘Did the kids make it?’ he laughed, as if wanting in on the joke.

  ‘No! No, they did not! I made it!’ Clara tutted loudly. Molly and Joyce stared at each other and Molly bit the inside of her mouth to keep her promise.

  ‘It looks like poo-poo!’ Frances announced, and the boys forgot their beef with their cousin and laughed loudly.

  ‘Frances!’ Hetty called out. ‘It does not look like poo-poo!’

  ‘It does!’ the twins giggled, jumping up and down. ‘It looks like poo-poo!’

  ‘It’s chocolate!’ Clara shouted loudly, as if this might calm things.

  Molly wasn’t sure who laughed first, but would have said Joyce, until they were all howling, all, that was, except Clara, who stormed off to the kitchen with the offending article.

  ‘Well, that’s my evening ruined – you think she’ll let this go?’ David laughed, in spite of his dire prediction.

  Molly looked around with a feeling of warmth at the family – her family – and remembered what her sister had said all those years ago . . . ‘We are one family, Molly, all of us. He might call me Mama right now, but never forget I am your sister who loves you very much and we are raising him in that family. We are all one family . . .’

  In the midst of the mayhem the front doorbell rang. Joyce wiped the tears of laughter from her lashes with the edge of her tea towel and opened the front door. In walked a pale girl with very long hair. Molly, however, was not looking at her but at Joe, who was staring at the girl, his eyes wide and an enormous smile on his face, as if seeing her felt like coming home. Molly might have been forty-three, but just like that she was nineteen again and her stomach folded with longing for the man she had loved and lost, yearning to dance in his arms one more time.

  Estelle. Molly had liked the girl, with her confident, easy manner and intelligent conversation. She thought about her now, still smiling as the train pulled into Liverpool Street Station.

  It was undoubtedly her favourite time of the working day, that twenty-five minutes before the department opened to the rest of the hospital for what was always a busy day. She drew in the scent of the room, not dissimilar to that of a library, a mixture of dust, thumbed pages and the energy recognisable to anyone who has searched for or read the written word while standing. These precious minutes felt like her thinking time as she prepared for what lay ahead, organising and checking the files for St Bartholomew’s Hospital, or Barts, as it was affectionately known, where she had been working in the records department for nearly sixteen years now, first as a clerk, but now running the department with an assistant. Going to meet her brother there for lunch all those years ago, she had spotted an advertisement looking for administrative staff and had wandered in. She had been neat, smart and had assured them of the very best references from the Ministry of Defence, thinking she would circumnavigate the vile Mr Allan. David had teased her afterwards that a quick mention of her brother working on-site as a senior consultant would have done her chances no harm.

  Molly recalled a time when she had flirted with the idea of a career in diplomacy or the Foreign Office, but that was before her life had changed in ways she could not have imagined. And now, with one foot in middle age, she found the sorting of paper and cardboard folders for patients entering the wards or leaving their care to be absolutely reward enough. There was something comforting about the organising and bundling of stacks of paper, the placing of files into alphabetical order and the auditing of the large metal filing cabinets that stood in proud banks along the rear wall of the large office. It was a job with rhythm, routine and order, and it helped calm her sometimes less than ordered thoughts. At the end of the day she found it most satisfying to know that patients A–C had been neatly filed or handed over to the relevant departments and drew motivation from doing the same thing the next day and the day after that . . . It was a role that helped oil the machinery of the glorious National Health Service now providing health care to all those in need, regardless of their ability to pay: a truly wondrous thing.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Collway!’

  Mr Kendall, who also worked in the administration department, offered his customary greeting across the large foyer. He had been one of the first staff members to welcome her when she took up the role all those years ago.

  ‘But there must be some mistake!’ he had shouted on her first day, so loudly it had caused everyone to look in their direction and a blush to spread over her cheeks. ‘The records office is traditionally the spinster department – it’s where the women in tweed hide!’ She had pictured her very own tweed skirt and vowed never to wear it to work. ‘Surely to goodness, dear, you need to be somewhere where the pretty girls go, such as the maternity reception or podiatry!’

  At the time it had felt like a lovely compliment and Molly smiled to think of it now.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Kendall.’

  She also now hated the word ‘spinster’ – detested it like no other. It irked her that the word ‘bachelor’ implied naughtiness, a cad, someone who maybe liked to play the field, refusing to be shackled for life! And yet ‘spinster’ was in her experience a state to be pitied. She had remarked as much to Mr Kendall some years back, who had simply clasped her hand and told her, ‘You worry too much, Miss Collway, and fret not – for the times they are a-changin’!’

  Molly had removed her hand quickly. ‘Not for me, Mr Kendall. I am quite happy with my lot, thank you very much. And why does everyone assume I need a man?’

  And this was her truth. Her cottage in Chelmsford was her haven, her work satisfying and her garden a joy, while the love of her family sustained her and she saw her son with a regularity that gave a warm dimension to her single life. And as for the lack of romance, well, as someone had once remarked to her, no one gets all the gifts!

  ‘Well, aren’t we a bundle of sparkle-dipped sunbeams today!’ he had teased, and she had laughed.

  Janice, Molly’s young assistant, spent the few minutes before the office officially opened scratching her peroxide roots and studying her face in a compact mirror, trying to ascertain whether the black butterfly flicks of eyeliner that ran along her lids and up at the corners of her eyes towards her temples were as even as she hoped. Fascinated by the girl’s make-up, Molly stared at the clogged and tarry eyelashes overwhelming her pretty eyes and the panstick foundation which stopped abruptly in an unfortunate line below her chin and left orange-toned licks on every scarf or collar. Her choice of clothing was equally intriguing. Aware it was now the height of fashion, it was still quite shocking for the demurely dressed Molly that Janice and many of her peers wore skirts, often in various shades of suede, that barely covered their modesty. Estelle, she had been pleased to notice, had been wearing some rather attractively patterned trousers. Once or twice Janice had bent over to retrieve something from a lower drawer of a filing cabinet and Molly and any nursing staff who happened to be browsing were given a full flash of Janice’s own lower drawers. Molly hadn’t known where to look and ridiculously took the embarrassment Janice herself lacked and made it her own. It took all her restraint not to whip off her cardigan and rush forward to shield all and sundry from the sight. She knew the action alone would have been worth performing just to make Joyce laugh in the retelling.

  Janice inhabited an unfamiliar world where sex, multiple boyfriends, wardrobes stuffed with clothes and even drugs were discussed freely and enjoyed openly. It wasn’t that Molly liked the life Janice lived per se – heck, she could barely comprehend it – but envy her she did. Not necessarily her choices, but that she had a choice at all. Joe, she knew, enjoyed similar freedoms; he had travelled a little, often visiting countries once considered as the enemy. Hearing him talk fondly about a visit to Germany was hard for her to comprehend – even
in his own lifetime she had been forced to black out the windows and hide in a flimsy shelter, while bombs from low-flying aircraft sent by that very country did their best to destroy the city she loved. His view was soberingly balanced: ‘You should see the pictures of Dresden just after the war, Auntie M. It really makes you think . . .’

  It played on her mind sometimes, the fact that for the want of a couple of measly decades and the societal change that came with ‘the pill’ and the rising awareness of women’s liberation, Molly might have been free to keep her baby boy and work for her own keep. She knew her mother’s harsh views had been largely dictated by what the neighbours might think, tragic as that was. While it still wasn’t common, she knew that in this day and age to have a baby out of wedlock was not the dark stain of shame it once had been.

  It seemed that Molly’s fascination for a life lived differently was mutual. She thought back to the day when Janice was lifting the ordered bundle of files for day surgery, ready for collection by the junior nurses, and had asked her outright, ‘Where were you before this?’

  ‘Where was I before what?’ Molly was only half listening.

  ‘Where did you work before you came here?’

  ‘Well, I worked for various ministries before and after the war and I was ill for a spell and then I came here.’ She gave the potted version.

  ‘Various ministries? God, that sounds boring!’ The corners of Janice’s mouth drooped in distaste.

  ‘It was. Very. It was boring and I was boringly safe.’

  Run run run!

  ‘Why were you ill?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ Molly gave by way of response, thinking of that morning over twenty years ago now when she had clung to the floor as she unravelled. Sweet Telsie. She could still see her pretty face smiling as she waved goodbye and sense the pain of losing Joe like a fresh and painful wound.