All The Days of My Life (60 page)

“Try to stop your brother fiddling with the TV,” she said. “Look – I'll turn it on.”

“We don't like TV,” he said.

Shirley was sitting in a chair, looking into space. Molly poured out the tea. She gave a cup to George. She gave one to Shirley.

“We want something to drink,” Brian told his mother. Shirley looked helpless. George said, “I'll get you some water out of the tap.”

“Don't like water,” said Kevin.

“I'll get you a biscuit, too,” George said. Molly stared at him gratefully. For once he seemed to have assessed a situation and worked out how to cope with it. “Come with me,” he said.

“Mind their hands on all those broken crocks,” warned Molly. When they had gone she turned to her sister. “So you've left,” she announced.

“Who wouldn't,” Shirley asked. “They're awful, Molly. You can't imagine. His dad was trying to corner me in the kitchen – my own father-in-law – can you believe it?”

“Yes,” Molly told her. “I can easily believe it.”

“And mean!” Shirley exclaimed. “I was getting seven pounds a week housekeeping – and that was to cover everything, including the boys' clothes and shoes. And they're making a fortune from those shops. And muggins here is doing all their accounts for nothing, and for all their creeping Jesus act they're not above a false declaration to the Inland Revenue, just as long as they won't get found out.”

“Straight out of Queen Victoria's time, that lot,” said Molly. “All hard work, thrift and tabernacles and underneath they're working orphans to death, and putting their hands up the scullery maid's skirt. Honestly, Shirl, I don't know how you stuck it. A month of that and I'd've been off in my bare feet if I had to.”

“It's the children,” said Shirley. “And then I believed it, you see, for a long time. I was committed. But the nastiness underneath – you wouldn't believe. Brian ended up wanting me to dress up – and him. Are you shocked?”

“Dress up as what?” Molly asked, ignoring the question.

“Well, I had to dress up as a tart – you know, corsets and high-heeled shoes,” Shirley said, in an undertone. “And he – he –” She paused and said, “He had to dress up as me, in my clothes. That's Saturday night and on Sunday we're in the chapel, singing hymns as usual.”

“Oh, dear, oh dear,” Molly said. “In Greenford, too.”

“And that horrible dad of his – having a go at me, all hands and quoting the Bible to prove it's all right. They're mad, Molly. I think they've driven me mad, too.”

“It'll soon wear off,” her sister said.

“And it's these pills,” sobbed Shirley. “I got them for depression. Brian sent me to the doctor. But I'm crying more. And I think they only make me feel more confused. I asked the doctor but he said to keep on taking them, they'd work in the end. I think I'll give them up.”

“You'd better,” Molly said. There came another crash, this time from upstairs. She ran up. George said, surveying the mess in the bath, “The big one, Brian, said he wanted to go to the toilet. He must've climbed up.”

“There'll be nothing left of this place by Monday,” Molly said, turning on the taps and flushing the mixture of shampoo, bath salts and cologne down the drain. She was fishing the broken glass out of the bath and throwing it in the waste bin when George said, “I'm sorry for them really. They're disturbed.”

“I'm sure you're right,” Molly told him, cutting her hand on a piece of glass, “and so are we now. You're being very nice about this,
George. I'll sort something out in a minute. Can you watch them a bit longer?”

She went downstairs and told Shirley, “A few bottles in the bathroom.”

“Oh,” said Shirley apathetically.

Molly said, “Shirley – I'm sympathetic. But you can see for yourself there isn't much room here. And I'm taking my final tests for my diploma in a fortnight. This place isn't even mine. I've moved in because Cissie Messiter's got rights over the place. But I don't want to attract the landlord's attention. So stay a little while till you get fixed up but you can see the problem.”

“Oh, thank you, Molly,” her sister said. “I didn't know where to turn.”

That night Shirley slept in George's room, with the boys on a borrowed mattress beside her. George slept on the sofa in the front room. This was his usual bed when Josephine came to stay. “Just for a few days,” she told George.

At the end of ten days she was desperate. There was too little room at Meakin Street for herself, George, Shirley and the boys. Shirley remained lethargic. An effort to give up the tablets the doctor had given her failed. The more removed she became, the worse her children behaved. Molly would come home from the college tired, and hoping to practise for her tests, to find Shirley watching the TV and expecting her to cook supper for the five of them. Her drawers would have been turned out on to the floor, the kitchen would be in confusion and the cat hiding in the yard behind a tub of flowers which had all been torn up by the roots. Molly began to realize what had turned Ivy into the demonic figure from her childhood, and why she now clung so passionately to the featureless little house in the dull suburb. Waves of fatigue and irritability washed over her. She became obsessed with the importance of passing her tests and getting her diploma, even though she could take the tests again, even though without them she could still secure a good job. She worried about money. Shirley and the boys were costing a lot to keep. But she had not the heart to be too hard on her sister – she was so evidently bemused, trying to understand what had happened to her, trying to fight off the effects of the pills she was taking and lacking any money at all. Nevertheless Molly, coming back from college one day with a shopping basket full of food and the knowledge that she was down to her last fifty pounds, was resolved that she would speak seriously to her sister.

Inside the house Shirley lay comatose on the sofa. She could hear the two boys making an uproar in the yard. It was raining and Molly wondered if they were even wearing coats. George, at the kitchen table, was eating a cheese sandwich and blotting out the noise by reading an engineering magazine. Glancing out of the window Molly saw the two boys coatless, pulling bricks from the garden wall. Kevin still had his bedroom slippers on. She could have screamed.

George went on reading. The doorbell went. Answering it she found Josephine, wearing a lot of black make-up round her eyes, on the step with a small bag. “Josie,” she said, “we agreed you weren't coming this weekend –”

“It's my friend's birthday party,” Josephine told her. “You and Ivy didn't listen to me.”

“There's nowhere for you to sleep –” Molly said.

“I'll go on the kitchen floor –”

She came in with the bag, but before Molly had shut the door the bell rang again. Harold Soames, the old landlord's heir, stood on the step in his navy suit and blue striped shirt and white collar.

“I'd like to see Miss Messiter,” he said.

“She's out,” said Molly, just as the two boys raced up the stairs, leaving a trail of muddy footprints. Molly saw eviction looming. She had no proper rights as a tenant. “Can I give her a message?” she offered doggedly as one of the boys fell over the cat, who was sneaking downstairs because he could hear them coming up. “I'll give it to her when she gets back.”

Shirley came groggily out of the front room and, ignoring Molly and Soames, plodded upstairs after her children, who were now doing something noisy on the landing.

Soames stood staring at Molly, waiting for an explanation. When none came he said, “I don't like what I see.” The noise continued upstairs, while Josephine stood staring in the passageway with the make-up standing out on her childish face. The cat streaked along the passageway with what Molly recognized as a chop in its mouth. Brian, coming down, fell down the last two stairs. As he opened his mouth to yell, Joe Endell stepped past the landlord and handed the chop to Molly. At that instant, although no one noticed, a flashlight went off in the street. He said, “I hope I'm not interfering with your way of feeding your pets.”

Molly took the chop automatically, failed, for a moment, to recognize him, and then seeing the point of humour said with relief, “Oh,
Mr Endell. Mr Endell – let me introduce Mr Soames, my landlord. Mr Soames – this is Mr Endell, our local member of Parliament.”

Soames took a deep breath and said, “Well – how do you do, Mr Endell – well, I must be running along. Perhaps you'd tell Miss Messiter to get in touch with me Mrs – er. We landlords have our duty to do,” he said to Endell. Endell nodded.

Molly, seizing the advantage, said, “I think perhaps it'd be a good idea to write to her suggesting an appointment.”

He smiled at her uneasily, said goodbye and left.

“Do you want to come in?” Molly asked.

Once Endell was inside she began to laugh.

“What's happening?” Shirley said, coming downstairs.

“Eviction, that's what,” she said with some relish. “Looks as if we'll all have to find somewhere else to live. A drink, Mr Endell? I think I need one anyway.”

She pushed open the door of the front room with difficulty, for at some point the boys had moved the sofa close to it. There were toys, bits of puzzle and a half-made model of a plastic dinosaur lying on the carpet. She handed the chop to Josephine and said, “Put that under the tap and then back in the fridge.”

“Shall I make some coffee?” asked Josephine, alarmed by her mother's grim good humour.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Endell told her. He had the idea he should say what he had come to say and leave. Sam Needham, who had resolved not to mention Molly Flanders to him, had succumbed to his great weakness – the love of gossip – and had blurted out the story. He had said, to satisfy his conscience about the lapse, “Better stay away, though – that sort means nothing but trouble. She's got a track record, Joe.” And Endell, visiting a block of Council flats a mile from Meakin Street, had found himself, nevertheless, driving there.

“Sorry about the mess,” Molly said, putting on the electric fire and stooping to pick up some of the litter on the floor. “My sister and her two boys are here temporarily and we're a bit overcrowded.”

Shirley came in and sat down. “Josephine said she'd give the boys some baked beans,” she said. “You can't mean you're going to be turned out.”

“Well, Shirley,” explained her sister. “That man was the landlord, Soames. Now I'm here because Cissie said that she'd let me have the place to help me out – also because she didn't want George to have
to leave school and go to live with his sister. But that means she's subletting the house to me, which she isn't entitled to do. And I don't think Soames, after what he saw today, is going to believe that I'm not living here. Or everybody else in London. Awkward questions are going to be asked,” she said firmly to Shirley. Almost immediately she felt sorry about her pleasure in giving her sister a shock. She remembered the cheerful schoolgirl, singing “She Was Poor But She Was Honest” at her in the kitchen in Ivy's house. She remembered the day they had celebrated her gaining the coveted place at Imperial College. She even remembered, suddenly, the dirty little girl who had offered her squashed chocolate at the station when she first came back from Framlingham. Shirley had never been like this before – she had been warped into the wrong shape and Molly knew she need not stay like it. She said, “Never mind, Shirley. I'll think of something. It could even work out for the best.”

Josephine came in with the coffee. “My daughter, Josie,” explained Molly. “And Shirley – this is Mr Endell.”

“Call me Joe,” said Endell to them. ‘I'll call you the same,” he said to Josephine. The doorbell went again.

“Don't let anybody in,” ordered Molly. But after Josephine opened the door there were voices in the hall. “What did I just tell her?” murmured Molly.

“I thought,” Ivy said aggressively as she came through the door, “that if my old family except for Jack and his wife were all crowding back to Meakin Street I might as well come and see what was going on. As for you, miss,” she said, turning to Josephine, “I don't suppose you told your mother I told you not to come here.”

“I haven't exactly had the chance so far,” Josephine told her sulkily.

“Well,” Ivy began angrily. Her voice trailed off as she saw Endell.

“This is Joe Endell,” explained Molly.

“Oh,” Ivy said flatly. Then, realizing who he was she said, “Oh – that's right. The MP. I think I've heard my son Jack mention you. My husband, too.”

“You're Jack's mother?” Endell said. “Pleased to meet you at last, Mrs Waterhouse.”

At that moment the two boys came into the room, holding cakes in their hands. They began to charge about. A toy gave way on the carpet with a crunch. Kevin, the younger, dropped his cake on the floor. His brother ran over it. Ivy, who had begun to look more agreeable,
narrowed her eyes. She glanced at Shirley, who was standing by the window. Her back straightened.

Joe Endell, the tactician, suggested to Molly, “I'm wondering, if we're going to discuss this matter of the tenancy, whether we shouldn't go over the road to the pub and talk?”

Molly hesitated. Ivy said, “If you've got any problems with that ruthless Soames, take advantage of Mr Endell's offer. And,” she added, “I could do with the room while I lend Shirley a hand.”

“All right,” said Molly, glad of the chance to get away. “Will you be all right, Josie?”

“I've got a bone to pick with her, as well,” Ivy said.

Endell took Molly by the arm and said, “It seems to me that with Mrs Waterhouse in charge you need feel no anxiety. In fact we might be better off if she was running the country.”