All The Days of My Life (45 page)

She had replied automatically, “Don't mention that man's name to me –” when she broke off, recognizing the neutral tone of someone looking for a reaction and said quickly, “What accident? What's happened to him?”

“Got beaten up by some fellers,” said Lil's cousin. “Thought you'd have heard about it.”

He was asking if she knew who was responsible and Ivy, immediately suspecting the perpetrator was her son Jack, said, “No – no – I had no idea. Was he badly hurt?”

“It didn't do him any good,” said the man.

“Here, Sid,” Ivy called to Sid, who was coming back from the bar with some drinks. “What's all this about Johnnie Bridges? Have you heard anything about it?”

“I heard something about him getting his nose broken,” Sid remarked, putting the drinks down on the table. “Not surprising, I suppose. A man like that's always got a lot of enemies.”

Ivy knew immediately that Sid had known about the attack on Johnnie and that Jack had been involved. She took a drink from her glass of gin and lime and said, “Been mixed up with all kinds of people, Johnnie Bridges.” And Lil's cousin knew better than to say any more.

Molly's hopes that Johnnie would come to see her in hospital gradually dwindled. It was Ferenc Nedermann who came to see her several times, bringing flowers, after she was over the worst of her illness. When she asked he said that Johnnie was away on business. Still hoping he would be back when she arrived home, she was brought from the hospital by Nedermann. Ivy opened the door and bustled her off to bed. There were roses in a vase in the room but, by now, she was too wise to imagine they had been bought by Johnnie. Ivy came in with a tray of tea and demanded efficiently, “Do you want to sit up?” Then she plumped up the pillows behind her daughter, poured out her tea and said, “You'd better thank Mr Nedermann, Molly. While you were in hospital he paid the rent. He said not to tell you but I said you'd want to know so you could pay it back.”

Molly, still weak and shocked by having had a serious illness, replied, “What? The rent? I don't understand. Where's Johnnie?”

“I'm sorry, love,” Ivy said. “I'm really sorry.” She looked pityingly at Molly.

“Well – what happened? Where is he?” asked Molly. Her head was spinning now. She thought she could not bear any more.

“He's scarpered,” Ivy told her. “He's done a bunk. I'm really sorry, love. His clothes aren't here any more – I've looked. Jack and his wife's brothers gave him a good drubbing before he went.”

“Oh, Mum,” moaned Molly. “Who asked them to interfere? I could kill Jack, I really could.”

“You could have died, Molly,” said her mother. “And all the time Johnnie was living with a woman in Shepherd's Bush – some kind of a tart, calls herself a model. You'd been in that hospital a week and he never came near you. Jack found out what was going on and lost his temper. What Jack did made no difference – but you knew what he was. You'd had plenty of experience of it before,” she added remorselessly. “Now – you drink your tea and thank Mr Nedermann when he comes in. He's been really helpful.”

Molly, who had been preparing herself, although she did not realize it, for this moment, hauled herself up on her pillows and said, “My God – I'm penniless. What am I going to do now?”

Ivy sat down on the edge of the bed, looking approvingly at Molly.
She said, “I'm relieved you're thinking like that. What we thought was that you'd better move back into number 4. Permanently. You'll have to take Josephine on yourself. You can get a little job. I can't go on working and looking after her forever and, anyway, me and your dad are saving up to move to a nicer place – Beckenham, or Bromley, we were thinking. It'll be easier for you now Josie's going to school. And it's time you took on some of your own responsibilities.”

Molly looked at her mother and nodded, wearily. She would have to do what Ivy suggested. Ivy had mothered her child because she had been too young to mother Josephine herself. Ivy had given her a good run. And now Ivy was tired of it. And she, Molly, was broke and had to do something.

“You might as well stop here,” her mother told her. “You're all paid up until the end of the month and the landlord's putting in a bathroom. He'll be finished in a fortnight.”

“Make a change from bathing in the sink,” Molly said gloomily.

“It seems hard at the moment,” Ivy said. “But it's swings and roundabouts, isn't it? You have to take the rough with the smooth.”

Molly shut her eyes and nodded. She thought resentfully that all her life Ivy had been dedicated to proving that there was no way but hers – husband, children, Meakin Street and poverty. Here she lay, weak, abandoned and broke, the daughter who had tried to escape and failed. She had lost. Ivy had won. A few angry tears crept down her cheeks.

Nedermann knocked at the door and came in. Seeing the tears he said, “Come on, Molly. None of this. So the future looks bleak – it sometimes does. At these times we need courage.”

Molly tried not to show how angry she was about all these pieces of philosophy. Instead she sniffed and said, with as much gratitude as she could muster, “I hear you paid the rent. It was very kind of you – I'll pay you back, of course.” And bang goes Sir Christopher Wylie's Victorian ring, she thought, hoping that the stones in it were rubies and not garnets.

“You don't need to,” Nedermann told her. “I took the money from Johnnie's wages when I fired him last week.”

Molly stared at him. “His old tricks,” Nedermann explained. “I knew it was happening but he had sorted out a lot of problems – income tax, trouble with councils. He even straightened out some of the accounts. I had to thank him for that. So I let it go on. Maybe when the right time came I would have warned him and kept him on. But
then he got careless about coming to do his work –” He looked round questioningly at Ivy, who said, “She knows all about it.”

“Well, then,” Nedermann said, “I'm sorry but you know the reason – the woman was paying – Johnnie relaxed. Next thing – Johnnie's here on Wednesday but where is he on Thursday? I can't stand that. Also – he got a little greedy. A few hundreds – yes. But thousands of pounds and always increasing – I can't do the sums but I can feel the blood leaving my body like any man can. A coloured woman came to me and told me that Johnnie was all set to get me to pay £6,500 for a house worth £4,000 and then split the difference with the owner. That way they would both make over a thousand pounds from me.”

“Was that Pilsutski's house?” asked Molly.

“That's right,” Nedermann said. “What do you know about this?” For a moment she knew he suspected she was involved in the fraud.

“I went there with Johnnie one day. I met the woman,” Molly said. “Did you reward her?”

“I gave her a bigger flat in the house,” Nedermann said. “Two rooms – own toilet on the landing – the same rent. That's my policy – I can be generous to people who are loyal. The rest – let them run for a little while, then –” He made a chopping gesture with one of his big, stubby hands. Mary hoped that the black woman's reward had not been the flat of the two old sisters. “The trouble with Johnnie is,” Nedermann went on, “that he betrayed me for so little. I paid him well. If he had been honest I would have given him more than he could ever have taken. They're all the same, these soft boys. But,” he said, looking at Molly's face, “you're tired – and I think you still have a little weakness for him – yes? You should be careful of that. He has hurt you twice – how many times? – now? Once is an accident – twice, it looks like masochism.” Molly did not recognize his heavy foreign pronunciation of the word, which she had seldom heard anyway. She said fiercely, “I hate his guts, now.”

“Be careful of that, too,” he said.

After he had gone Ivy cooked some lunch for Molly. She told her where everything was and added that the woman in the flat across the hall would help her if she needed it. As she left she said, “I don't like leaving you but you can't live at number 4, with half the walls out, and there isn't much room with Sid and me. I think you're better off here. It's quieter. I'll be back tomorrow.” And she put her coat on and left. “Shall I get you a paper and drop it in?” she called from the hall.

“No, thanks, mum,” called Molly, wondering why her mother thought she would want a newspaper.

She lay back on her pillows unhappily. Back to Meakin Street – again, she thought. It was like a nightmare – every time you thought you'd escaped, there you were, back again. But if Ivy was handing back Josephine she had no choice. She'd have to live narrowly and get an ordinary badly paid job with short hours, and bring up her child. Without Johnnie. It should have been a relief that he'd gone but, somehow, it wasn't. You're like some stupid tart, she told herself, pining after some pimp who mistreats her and lives off her money. Not only that, but he'd wanted to marry her and she'd hesitated – probably just as well he's gone, she thought. Probably just as well you have to get back to Meakin Street. Like a butterfly when the summer's over. And with that thought she went to sleep. She heard a high clear voice singing in what she now knew was French. She heard birds singing. There was an old, grey stone building and, somewhere, a clump of willows with grey branches hanging down, like long hair.

The phone rang in the other room and she got up and went to it. She thought it was Johnnie. It was not. It was Wendy Valentine.

“He's dead, you bitch. He's dead,” she cried, through her sobs. “Why didn't you help him like you said?”

“What? Wendy?” Molly said in confusion. “Wendy – who's dead?”

“You're a cold bitch, aren't you, Molly Flanders,” Wendy said. “When it comes down to it you aren't there, are you. Now he's dead – poor Steven – poor Steve.” Her voice broke again.

“Oh my God,” Molly cried. “What's been happening! Are you sure he's dead? I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. There wasn't anything wrong with him.”

“Didn't have to be, did there,” Wendy shouted. “He killed himself, that's what he did. Killed himself.” There was a long silence. Wendy, horrified at the meaning of the words, just cried. Molly stood on the carpet in the living room, holding the phone. It must be true. Wendy must be telling her the truth. Then Wendy said, more calmly, “I just want you to know I'll never forget this, Molly – never. You said all these things about turning up in court to speak for him and you never did, did you? And when I ring the flat, over and over again, there isn't anybody there, is there? Left town, hadn't you? Not getting involved. Who paid you, that's what I'd like to know? And I hope you spend the rest of your life wondering if it was worth it.”

“You'll have to tell me, Wendy,” Molly said desperately. “You'll
have to tell me. I've been in hospital. Wendy, I don't know –” Her voice broke and she said, in a low voice, “I can't – if only I'd known –”

But Wendy was too full of rage and pain to listen. “‘I've been in hospital, Wendy. If only I'd known, Wendy,'” she mimicked. “You just shut your trap now, Molly Flanders. You've got nothing to say any more. But if I ever see you again I'll see you don't forget it. That's a promise, Molly. You just wait.” And the phone went down.

Molly rang Frames and asked if Arnie Rose was there. She still did not quite believe what Wendy had said. She might be hysterical, mad, on drugs – anything. Arnie Rose came on the line, sounding friendly. It seemed he had decided to overlook his grudge about the night when he had caught her with Johnnie and thrown her out of the club. “Hallo, Molly,” he said expansively. “Heard you hadn't been well. Glad to see you're back in action again.”

“It's Steven,” Molly burst out. “Wendy Valentine rang up and said he was dead. She blamed me.”

“Stupid cow,” Arnie said. “What could you have had to do with it?” All Molly knew was that his words confirmed that Steven was dead. She said, “He is dead, then? What happened?”

“Topped himself in his cell,” Arnie told her. “Nasty tragedy. He didn't have to do that. He'll be a bad loss. Shocking thing, though, isn't it?”

“Why?” Molly half-cried. “Why did he do it?”

“He was started on a two-year sentence for poncing, wasn't he?” Arnie said. “He couldn't face the thought of it, a man like him. So while he was still in Brixton, waiting for transfer, he hung himself. I'm sorry, Moll. I know you were fond of him. We all were. But I still think it was a stupid thing to do. Two years, with remission – he'd have been out in eighteen months. Not as if it was fifteen or twenty years, is it? I mean, if a man's faced with that you can understand him doing something desperate.”

“He felt everybody had let him down,” Molly said sadly. “Even me. I didn't stand up for him in court. I was in hospital. I didn't know anything about it.”

“Doubt if you could have done anything, Moll,” Arnie said. “This whole business wasn't normal. Cases like this, police evidence is everything – who the coppers saw going in and out of a certain address and how often – who gave what to who on a corner – that's the form. Practically all they had here was Wendy and Carol trying to remember
if one of them lent Steve his rent or he lent it to them. It was ridiculous – a travesty. Somebody somewhere wanted Steven Greene done, so they did him. You or I or the Archangel Gabriel couldn't have saved him.”

“Didn't they ask you anything?” Molly said.

“No – that's the other thing. First thing you do with a case like that is ask the landlord what he thinks is going on. Landlord here's a friend of mine – you know – but they never come near him. Not that it would have been nice if they had, but the fact is, nobody asked him to dance. Not a whisper. Same with you – no papers, no subpoena, no nothing. Because” – he paused – “they didn't want to know what we had to say. We knew he hadn't done it, that's why. Or, if he had, not a lot of it, so to speak. See what I'm getting at, Molly darling. If you'd known about it and you hadn't been in hospital gravely ill, you'd have had a hell of a job getting anyone to listen to you. They had to smear him, that's my opinion. He had to be shown up a real swine, living off women. Because why? Because then, whatever he said, nobody would be listening. Take the word of a convicted ponce? Good heavens, my dear,” mimicked Arnie, “who could believe a man like that?”