All The Days of My Life (61 page)

“That's right,” agreed Ivy. “By the way, there's a photographer lurking about across the street. Is that anything to do with you, Molly?”

“No,” said Molly, looking questioningly at Endell. He shook his head. “I thought a flash went off when you came in,” Molly told him, remembering.

“Maybe Sam Needham fixed something up with the local paper and forgot to tell me,” Endell said.

In the street there was no sign of a photographer. “It looks as if my mother's started on a sort-out,” remarked Molly. “I don't give much for the boys' chances.”

“They look as if they could do with a little of granny's hand,” replied Endell. At that moment a photographer dashed round the corner of the pub. There was a flash. “Oi!” cried Molly. “What do you think you're doing!”

Joe Endell ran after him as he walked away. “Who are you from?” he demanded.

“
Mirror
” said the man.

“What's it all about?” asked Endell.

“Dunno, mate,” the photographer replied. “I was just told to come here.”

“Is it me, or him?” Molly asked, coming up. She had been photographed at sixteen, the stricken, pregnant widow of a man condemned to death, she had been photographed at Frames, in a low-slung dress, and at Nedermann's funeral – the flashing of cameras had bad associations for her.

“4 Meakin Street. Blonde lady – that's what they told me,” he said. “That's you, isn't it?”

“What for?” Molly asked indignantly.

“I've told you – I don't know. You'll have to take it up with the features editor,” he said, turning round.

“That's exactly what I will do,” Molly shouted after him. They went into the pub. “You look like a gin and tonic to me,” Endell said.

“How did you guess?” Molly replied.

“Hullo, Molly,” shouted Ginger. “I just saw Ivy going past – she didn't half look in a bad mood.”

“That's why I'm here,” replied Molly. “Hiding.”

“Any news of Sid?”

“He misses this place. Planning another pilgrimage.”

Endell handed her a glass of gin. He himself had a pint.

Molly said, “I'm speaking to that features editor first thing tomorrow morning. I know what they're doing. ‘Where are they now – the villains of yesteryear?' That sort of thing. Next thing, there'll be a picture of me in my dressing-gown, taking in the milk. It's not fair, just as I'm trying to get my life straight, get some qualifications, pay the rent –”

“Mm,” said Endell, keeping his own council in case his girlfriend Harriet had a hand in this. He remembered Harriet's odd reaction to his tale of how Sam Needham had found Molly. Her face had become guarded, and she had said, “I told you – that kind always survive,” and had then changed the subject. Endell, not a subtle man in such areas, did not quite understand. But he did know that she had again started talking of the future and was at least acute enough to know that she wanted to marry him. However, he was not sure whether she wanted him for himself or for the life-style he could provide as a young MP who was being watched by senior members of the party.

Harriet had abandoned a well-off family, professional soldiers in the main, because they were too stuffy and conservative for a young woman of the '60s. But he suspected that an innate craving to be top of the heap might be suggesting to her that the position of wife and hostess to a rising young Labour MP would satisfy her trendy radicalism and her social ambitions at the same time. Would she be pleased, he wondered, if they married and he lost his seat at the next General Election? Would she be happy if they went back to Yorkshire and she became wife of a writer on the
Yorkshire Post?
You never knew how much these things counted with women, thought Endell. In rare cases girls of eighteen
married repulsive old millionaires, or countesses ran off with gypsies – but elsewhere the edges were blurred and a man could never be sure whether it was his power, his money, his status, or just himself, to which the woman was attracted. Nevertheless, it would be annoying if Harriet had sent the photographer to Meakin Street and would get, tomorrow morning, a set of glossy 10 × 8s showing him walking into the pub with Molly Flanders. But – to hell with it, he thought, tired of the intricacies and uncertainties of private life. On impulse he said, “Look – I'm off to a meeting with the Borough Surveyor. Could you sit through an hour of housing plans and have dinner with me afterwards? We still haven't talked about the landlord.”

Molly said “Yes.” Of course.

They felt comfortable together, Joe Endell and Molly. It was as if, although they were excited by each other's presences, they had known each other for years.

Molly got interested by the housing plans. She said afterwards, in the cafe where they had gone for a meal, “Don't let him put up any more of those tower blocks – people won't want to live in them. They only suit single people with jobs who don't need gardens or somewhere for the kids to play. And they're not the people on the housing list.”

Endell said, “They save space.”

“They can't save much,” said Molly. “They have to put big spaces round them so they look landscaped. Ordinary people would rather have a little patch of grass and flowers to themselves than a great big bit of landscaping. And what happens when the lifts break down and people start throwing old prams away all over the landscaping?”

“They're comfortable, convenient and decent,” Endell said. “That's what people want.”

“That's what the people who make the plans want – and the councillors who think they're wonderful,” Molly said. “But half the councillors were brought up in places like Meakin Street and they hate them like my mum does. But there's worse ways to live. The other half just want the working classes tucked away on bits of old derelict ground where they won't interfere with the prices of the other property. Look at where they're building this lot – there's the railway lines on one side, the gasworks on the other and over to the north is the graveyard. Speaks for itself, doesn't it?”

Endell became annoyed. He believed in the destruction of the old slums, where many were still living without bathrooms. He believed in
good, modern housing for families. He saw in Molly an example of the kind of woman who held progress back. He as good as told her she was operating against her own class interests. Molly said staunchly, “Look, Joe Endell, I bet I've lived in more places than you have in the course of a short career. I bet you come from some nice, detached house in the suburbs, with an apple tree in the garden. You may have the information and the brains, but I've got the experience. My mum's just achieved her life's ambition and moved out to the suburbs to a little house with a bit of garden. If you offered a flat on the nineteenth floor for nothing with all the furniture thrown in free, she'd laugh at you. It's not what she wants. It's not what I want. I wouldn't go there if you paid me. Aren't you in the business of giving people what they want?”

Endell told her, “Not when they don't know what they want really.”

“Ooh,” said Molly. “What makes you think you know what they want better than they do? You're nothing but a – an élitist.” She was pleased to have found the word, which she had picked up over Christmas while listening to her relations.

Endell was still annoyed with her. He told her, “I don't think you know what you're talking about.”

“All right,” Molly said. “But I bet I'm right about your house with the garden, when you were a kid.”

He owned up to a comfortable middle-class childhood in the suburbs of Leeds. His father was a doctor. His mother was a local councillor and the governor of a school. In turn Molly summarized her life for Endell. She added, “I'm thinking now, at my age, that it's time to get a grip on things. Up to now I haven't done much of the steering – I've just hurtled from one crisis to another. I mean – take you. You've followed a steady course. Admittedly you had a lot on your side. A middle-class family – just being a man – but I can see not everybody's carried on like me. Take Cissie Messiter – she had a far worse home than me and now she's got a good job and everything. She's never got in all the messes I got into.”

“She probably doesn't look like you,” Endell said frankly.

“Classic, isn't it?” Molly said. “Golden hair – and she's ruined. Then ruined again – and again – and again. It won't do. That's why I can't stand the idea of the
Daily Mirror
dragging it all up.”

Endell, leaning forward over a plate of sponge pudding, said, “There's marriage. Ever thought of taking up with a steady, respectable chap – something like a Labour MP, for example?”

Molly laughed. “Nice for him,” she said. “Do wonders for a man in the public eye, wouldn't it? A jailbird for a wife? A woman with a record of consorting with known criminals. He wouldn't stay an MP for long. What I would like,” she continued, “is another pudding. The problem is, George Messiter has got the appetite of a wolf. So's Josephine. I haven't the heart to deny them because they're growing but I haven't seen seconds for a long time. I'm lucky to get firsts.”

Endell, who had spoken quickly, on impulse, was relieved that she had not taken his remark about marriage seriously. He did not know why he had made it. After he had done so, his first thought was of how angry Harriet would be. His second, how wonderful it would be to go and vote at the House of Commons and then go home with Molly Flanders.

I paid my half of the bill, dropped Joe off at the House of Commons and went home. But I knew it was all a technicality really. That's a thing you do know. I had to have Joe Endell. It was suddenly all I wanted. I wanted to feel his arms round me, I wanted to make love to him and, more than that, I wanted him to be there. I loved him, even his stupidity, even the fact that he talked about marriage without really knowing he loved me. But I had to try to get rid of him. For one thing, I really wanted – part of me really wanted – just to make it come out right for me by myself, without some Bridges getting me into trouble, without some Nedermann offering help, at a price, without threatening men like Arnie coming round – even without perfectly decent blokes, like Endell, changing things for me. But that was a dying impulse, really, and at the back of my mind I knew it. The real reason why I wanted to hold him off was what I'd told him – a woman with a record like mine could only be a handicap to a man in public life. Joe Endell had a clean sheet – no scandal, political or personal, unless you count an early marriage, which failed, no children and the ex-wife remarried and settled in New Zealand. If he got mixed up with me I'd be anything from a disadvantage to a disaster in his life. In short, to coin a phrase, I didn't want to leave him but I thought he ought to go. And I knew that if I didn't get rid of him fast I wouldn't be able to part with him later. My weakness is, I'm greedy. I knew I couldn't trust myself to say “no” forever.

When Molly got home that evening the house was quiet and Ivy was sitting in her coat on the sofa. She had her feet up. “I've done a bit of tidying,” she reported, “and I'm just waiting for my mini-cab. I can get the last train from Victoria. Help yourself to a cup of coffee if you want one – it's standing on the table.”

“Thanks, Mum,” Molly said, sitting down. “You've done wonders.”

“Josephine's staying round at her friend's. I've phoned to make sure she's really there and she is. Also, I've had a word with Shirley and I've told her she's got to make her own arrangements. I've told her she can't stop here with you any longer – it isn't fair. There isn't room. And I've told her Sid and me can't take her in either. There isn't room there, either. She said it wasn't fair because I spent all those years looking after Josephine. Well, she's right but Sid and me are getting older and there was only one of Josie. I didn't like to tell her straight but the idea of her drooping about the place while I get to grips with those two hooligans of boys is just like a nightmare.”

Molly said, “But what's she going to do?”

“I don't know,” said Ivy. “She's got to decide. I expect she'll go back to that Brian. She hasn't got a lot of choice. She'll have to work for her escape.”

“Oh, God,” said Molly.

“It's easier to get in than out,” declared Ivy. “Like prison. That's what women don't understand. She's either going to have to bolt and leave her children behind or set her lips and get on with it until she's formed a better plan for getting out than just turning up at her sister's and dumping herself and the kids on you. Like I say – it was better for you because I was younger and it only meant Josephine –”

“I don't know how to help her,” Molly said.

“You can't,” Ivy told her. “And even you've had your wings clipped,” Ivy observed, with mingled regret and satisfaction. “Anyway, while you're in the trade of getting respectable, the woman at the corner shop told me that snooty pair who bought our house are moving out. It's up for sale. Why don't you see if you can get a mortgage? Time you owned your own home.”

“I've got enough to cope with,” Molly said, “without putting a mortgage round my neck. I'd never get one anyway.”

“Sid'll probably back you,” Ivy told her. She stood up and went to the window. “Where's that cab?” she demanded. She was plainly in an impatient mood, brought on by once again, as she saw it, being hauled in to sort out her daughters' problems. “He'll offer Shirley a bit of help
if she gets herself organized. God knows, none of us want to see her stuck with that Brian. The wedding was bad enough – all that praying and them watching us to make sure we weren't drinking too much as if we were a bunch of alcoholics. I'll never forget them standing there with their faces as long as fiddles and these glasses of lemonade in their hands. They thought I was crying because of losing Shirley. It wasn't that – I suddenly saw what her life would be,” Ivy said. “What's all this about that MP?”