All The Days of My Life (37 page)

We stood by the table in the long, empty room and he said, “Where do you live?” So I told him, and how I had to take a taxi back every night because the public transport was shut down at that time. And he offered me the spare room in the flat, to use during the week so I didn't have the bother and expense of going to and fro all the time. “I assure you it's a platonic offer I'm making you,” he said. “And I'm not the sort of man who says that hoping it will be untrue in the end, or even the sort who thinks that's what he means but just isn't admitting he hopes for an affair.”

I believed him. The Steven Greenes of this world know these things instinctively and, unlike many men, they don't lie to themselves or women. I just wondered why he made the offer.

“Just an impulse,” he told me. But later I worked it out that he didn't want the girls, Wendy and Carol, trying to move in, or spending night after night there, sleeping till all hours and leaving the kitchen in a mess. He was fussy, he liked his privacy and he didn't want involved parties to know everything that was going on. He was a man with secrets. He liked things in neat compartments. He thought that someone with another home and a job with regular hours, even if they were funny hours, was the best way of filling the space without complications.

I said “yes”, and that way got into quite a bit of trouble and found out a lot more about the world.

That evening Molly went to chat to Mrs Jones in the ladies' room after the club shut, a habit of long standing. It was a relief to put her feet up and have a cup of tea. It was useful to find out what the women had been talking about during the evening and often a good way of finding out about potential bad debtors. In the ladies' room, too, she was safe from demands from the rest of the staff and, above all, only there
would she never find Arnie Rose suddenly at her elbow.

Mrs Jones said, tactfully, “I was looking round the flat after you left and I found your earrings. I tucked them away for you safely.” And she handed Molly the earrings with the little emeralds set in them. Molly guessed that Johnnie had come back and cleared out her jewellery box before he went away.

She said, “Thanks, Mrs Jones,” and instantly put them on.

“He cracked up after you left,” Mrs Jones went on. “I was cleaning that morning and when I told him you'd gone with a suitcase he had to put his hand on the side of the door to steady himself. He looked ready to drop to the ground.”

“He had his chance to get respectable,” said Molly. “He couldn't take it when it came.”

“Looks, brains, a bit of charm – he had the lot,” said the woman. “All he lacked was character. There's thousands of them about these days. It must have been the war. They missed a father's hand.”

“Plenty like that among the clients,” remarked Molly.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “and one in the flat upstairs.”

“Here –” said Molly. “What is osteo-whatsisname?”

“Osteopathy,” said Mrs Jones. “It's backs and bones and things – like they use for runners and athletes when they get injured. But there's another name for what
he
does.”

“What is it?” asked Molly.

“I wouldn't care to say,” Mrs Jones told her.

“Oh,” said Molly. “And how did he get acquainted with the Roses?”

“He's been introducing them – people like Mr Arnold and Mr Norman like to meet people from other spheres of life,” said Mrs Jones delicately. “And those people like to meet gentlemen like Mr Arnold and Mr Norman. I think that Mr Greene helped with the introductions.”

It was true that Arnie and Norman Rose were becoming fashionable among the more daring intellectuals and with some of the upper classes. They enjoyed having gangsters at their parties and the Roses, especially Norman, took a pride in their connections with film directors and titled ladies.

“He helps a lot of people with a lot of things,” said Mrs Jones and, bending forward, added in a low voice, “I wouldn't have too much to do with it if I were you, dear.”

But Molly was tired of going back to her empty house by cab in the
early hours of the morning. After the night at the club it felt bleak and lonely. It made her miss Johnnie even more and she could hardly bear it.

That night, when she went upstairs, she found Steven Greene, in a maroon silk dressing-gown, shirt and trousers, sitting on the sofa, which had been re-covered, she noticed, in cream. Beside him sat a girl. When Molly came in he was looking into her eyes and telling her, “That's bad. I'll sort it out in the morning with a couple of phone calls.”

Then he looked up and said, “Hullo, Molly. Come in and have a drink. I hope you don't mind what I've done to the flat.” It had indeed changed. The walls were cream, the carpet a gentle fawn, the upholstery and curtains pale. There were watercolours of flowers on the wall. Molly, a bit nettled by the changes, had to admit it, the room was now more restful.

“I suppose it was a bit common, really,” she said. “The way I had it, I mean.”

“Come and sit down, take your shoes off and meet Wendy,” he said. “Wendy – this is Molly. I told you about her. Molly – Wendy Valentine.”

Molly sank into a chair, kicked off her shoes and studied the girl. She was pretty, with long, dark, hair and slightly protuberant front teeth, which made her look strangely defenceless. She wore a black sweater, a tight, black skirt and slightly scuffed black pumps. One of her stockings was laddered.

Greene gave her a drink and settled back on the sofa.

“Well, girls,” he said. “This is cosy.” He smiled at Molly and she was taken, again, by the warmth of the green eyes. He loves women, she thought placidly. He loves them in droves, the more the merrier. He's like a boy with a bag of juicy pears. But the truth was that she did not feel very cosy. The calm atmosphere masked a tension she did not recognize. She looked at the girl, who seemed to her like a poor cold kitten with all its bones showing, mewing against a closed front door hoping that someone would let it in. Her white mac lay flung over the back of a chair. The girl, Wendy Valentine, shut her eyes and seemed to go into a daze.

“Look – go off home now and see if you get a phone call,” Greene said. “And I'll speak to the man we were talking about in the morning. When I've done that I'll phone you and then you can tell me all the details.”

“All right, Steven,” said the girl, standing up. “But you won't forget?”

“Of course not – would I let you down?” he told her. He followed her to the door and Molly thought she heard the sound of paper money changing hands. “Thanks,” came the girl's voice. “You won't forget to phone?” He muttered something and closed the door.

Molly's eyes also were shutting. When he came back she opened them and said, “It's all right. I'm going to bed. Long night, you see.”

“I do see,” he said. “Don't worry about me – I'm a nightbird. I'm an early bird, too. I don't sleep well. I like to have someone to talk to. Another drink?”

She said she would for it was easy to sink into the undemanding comfort of the room.

“Down? Depressed? Blue?” suggested Greene. “Love – it usually is. What's a pretty girl like you doing without a host of suitors, consorts and victims? It's against nature.”

“The same old story,” Molly told him.

He asked her questions and Molly told him everything. She ended by saying, “I thought the club would be a fresh start but I think he saw it as an episode – just another jampot, like a bank job, to stick his fingers in and pull out as many strawberries as he liked. He's just dishonest, I suppose.”

“You're a capitalist at heart,” said Greene. “And he's a criminal – easy come, easy go – instant gratification.”

“My brother says I'm a latent bourgeois,” Molly said. “He doesn't like it.”

“Communist, is he?” said Greene, interested.

“His fiancee's the proper Communist,” Molly explained. “But Jack's very left wing. He's trying to go to college in Oxford. He was working down the docks – my mum's brother got him in – and now he's getting married to this girl Pat who's got five big docker brothers, all fiery Reds. So during Christmas we went over for a game of cards and you couldn't hear the bidding for the dictatorship of the proletariat. What's an educated man like you doing in a place like this anyway?” she demanded. “What are you doing now?” He was scribbling on a pad.

“I'm drawing you,” he said. “I like the shadows under your big, tired eyes.”

“You're a sod,” said Molly. “But what are you doing here?”

“Ever heard of Aleister Crowley – the Abbey of Thelema – Do What
Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law?”

Molly had not, so he told her. She was unimpressed. “Doesn't sound very close to what I know,” she told him.

But to her none of this seemed a very good explanation for Greene's presence at South Molton Street. He showed her the sketch. She exclaimed, “That's very good. Aren't you clever.”

“I'll get it framed,” he told her. She left him in the big, pale room, still drawing, and went to bed. She slept restlessly and, when she got up, was so drowsy that it took her a few moments to take in the fact that Wendy Valentine's white mac was back on the sofa. When she passed the open bedroom door she saw three heads on the pillows of the big bed she had shared with Johnnie. She stared in. There was Greene. There was another head she could not see and, facing her, a pale-faced, brown-haired girl, Wendy. Molly fled and on the stairs outside, shrugging into her dressing-gown, said to herself, “Oh, blimey – that's a bit thick.”

Mrs Jones came round the bend in the stairs, on her hands and knees with a stiff brush. She looked up at Molly, rushing downstairs with her dressing-gown open. “You on fire?” she asked.

“Out of milk,” Molly lied. “I'm going to make a cup of tea in the office.”

Simon Tate was in there, at the desk, paying bills. He said, “Honestly, Molly, we're going to have to check all these. While the cats have been away –” Then, looking up, he spotted the dressing-gown and said, “Look here – we can't have you roaming about like that. Go back and put some clothes on.”

“Not 'til I've had my breakfast,” said Molly firmly, going into the kitchenette and putting on the kettle. She put some bread under the grill.

“What's up?” called Simon.

“I'll tell you when I've had my breakfast,” she said. Then she put her head round the door and said, “Do you know, he's up there in bed with two women.
Two
,” she repeated.

Simon seemed unsurprised. “It's been known to happen,” he remarked.

“I know that,” she said. “I wasn't born yesterday. It's just I don't expect it when I know people. I mean – he's so nice, Steven Greene. He's a nice, kind man.”

“I don't suppose he's nasty to them,” Simon said. “I don't suppose they'd do it if he were. What are you going to do – move?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I'll have to see how it all works out. I mean – I've got a free room, and it's convenient and if you look at it like a sensible person – well, it doesn't matter to me if he gets into bed with a gorilla and a dwarf.”

“Just as long as you aren't with them,” Simon told her.

But for a month or so after that there were no more events of the same kind. When Molly came upstairs in the evenings Steven Greene was often out. When he was not he was alone, or with Wendy or another girl, Carol. She would hear them talking long after she had gone to bed. The phone often rang and he would have short conversations with the caller. There were parties Greene went to, people he met, services he agreed to render, but it all seemed casual and although she always had the sense that there was movement afoot she never found out exactly what was going on. His finances were erratic – sometimes there would be a brace of plover on the draining board of the kitchen when she went in, sometimes a can of beans stood half open on the top of the fridge. Bills would lie unopened on a table for months – then suddenly disappear. Mary was not particularly interested. She enjoyed chatting to Greene, early in the morning, when the club emptied. She dimly recognized that he was for her rather like her brother Jack. He saw things in a broader context than she was used to. He seemed to come to conclusions she had not been able to reach. He gave her advice. He said of Johnnie, “You'd have him back like a shot if he turned up here. And you will.” He also said, “I smelt bad debts when I came up the stairs tonight. You're over the limit. The clients are in too deep. I can feel the desperation.”

Molly thought about the dim rooms, where men and women stood and sat at the tables. Often it was a night out, like going to a dance or the cinema. But in a gaming club at least half the clients are serious gamblers, men with a kind of control in their movements as they gamble, like hunters stalking prey. And women with faces bearing little expression. It was late at night, or early the next morning, when the serious gamblers operated, quietly, at the tables where high stakes were the rule, where you could win or lose a few thousand pounds in a minute or two. Next night she studied the faces at her own table – John Farley, the only son of a steel manufacturer in the Midlands; Theo General, middle-aged son of a big landowner in Wiltshire, playing at banking and waiting for his father to die; Sally Weiss, bad daughter of a Swiss millionaire with her lover, Lord Coveney. They were too grim, some of them, she realized. Either they were playing too high or the
whole atmosphere of the club was, as Greene had told her, getting desperate.

She woke in the morning thinking, despairingly, of Johnnie. “Get yourself another bloke, Molly Waterhouse,” she told herself. But the bad, empty feeling persisted as she went downstairs. She made up the wage packets quickly and went to the safe to take out the money which ought to go to the bank as fast as possible. But on impulse she left the cash and cheques in the safe and took out only the cashbook and the markers, left by gamblers as IOUs for money they did not have at the time. There were £450,000 in outstanding debts. Most of the markers had been re-signed for larger and larger sums over the previous six weeks. She realized how often she had called Simon over to her table and asked him to sign markers for one of the clients, without considering whether she should ask him, instead, to caution the would-be creditor. If the other croupiers were doing the same a bad situation could have developed. Examining the receipts book she saw that she was due, today, to take only £10,000 in cheques and cash to the bank. April was plainly a bad time of year since so many people were away. Even so, the debts still amounted to six weeks' takings. You had to give credit at a gambling club but this was too much. When Simon came in, he looked at the pile of markers in front of her, then at her face and said, “I was going to check that today. How bad is it?” She told him.