All The Days of My Life (67 page)

“Eleven-thirty,” replied his new wife. “Are you all right?”

“As to that – I can't say,” he told her in a slurred voice. Then he added, “Sick,” and went unsteadily to the bathroom.

When he came out he said, “Been sick – sorry,” and sat down.

“I've ordered some coffee and sandwiches,” Molly told him. “Is that what you want?”

“Anything – anything,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh Lord – on our wedding night. Sorry, Molly. I'm not much of a man.”

“I'm looking forward to Framlingham,” Molly said. “Perhaps this hotel wasn't a good idea.”

Tom looked at her cautiously. “It's not exactly what it was,” he told her. She had the impression he thought he was being cunning. He had a sloppy, sly smile on his face, which he thought he was concealing.

“What do you mean?” asked Molly.

“The old place – not what it was. Death duties,” he said. “Never mind – we'll soon pull it all together.” He stared at her, still with the same silly expression on his face. The waiter brought in a trolley. When he had gone Molly said, “You'd better have some coffee and some food.” This she gave him. She was engulfed by a kind of despair. She knew everything was amiss – leaning, toppling, not to be relied on. She watched Tom eating the sandwiches. At one point he looked up and said, “We'd better have a chat,” and then went back to the plate. He then drank a cup of coffee and stared at her. “Death duties,” he said. “And one thing and another. These places don't keep themselves the way they used to – even in the old days they were generally financed from some rubber plantation or plenty of shares. Dad never got back to what he was before World War II – never had a business head anyway. Mother's the same, just carrying on in the same old way – no idea of reality. Same's true of me, I wouldn't wonder. Charlie says so –”

“What are you talking about?” Molly asked. “Do you mean the house has got to be sold?”

“Sold?” he said. “Sold? It's mortgaged to the hilt. Two mortgages. Never mind, Molly, we'll sort it out between us.” He shut his eyes and dozed.

Molly poured herself a cup of coffee and thought. At least, she thought, she had an explanation for Tom's behaviour. He was ashamed that he hadn't told her the facts about the situation she would meet at Framlingham. Well, all right, she decided. Perhaps she could get a job – Mrs Gates could mind the baby while she worked. They could work something out. In a way, it was a relief to have something to think about other than the uncertainties of this unhappy wedding night.

Tom opened his eyes. He muttered something at her just as she said, “Tom – I've been thinking –” Then she said, “Sorry – what did you say?”

“You first,” he said.

“I was thinking – if I got a job and Mrs Gates looked after the baby, that would help, wouldn't it?”

“What's this about jobs?” he demanded. “I asked you what you'd got.” He added, “Sorry to put it so bluntly – but we ought to talk about it now we're married. Pour me another cup of coffee, will you – there's a good girl.”

She got up and poured the coffee, took it to him and smoothed the hair back from his brow, saying, “Poor old Tom.” And then could not help imagining that he moved his head a fraction so as to shake off her hand. “Well?” he asked.

She sat down on the sofa, near his chair and told him, “I don't really know what you're talking about. If you mean, how much money have I got – well, a few hundred saved and Joe's insurance and the house, I suppose. Why do you want to know?”

“Because you're my wife. Because we have to make a few plans,” he said, as if stating the obvious. “Come along, Molly – you're behaving as if you're drunk yourself, and as it happens, you're not and neither am I now.”

Molly stared at him in horror. “This is shocking,” she declared. “We've only been married five minutes and you want to see my accounts – you're checking the money poor Joe left on his insurance. It wasn't much – only two thousand pounds. He planned to make it more after the baby was born –”

“Oh, my God,” Tom said in disgust. “Come off it, Molly. Where's old Endell's money?”

“What–?” said Molly and then understood suddenly. “He wouldn't take it,” she said. “He didn't like the source. He disapproved of inherited wealth, too, you see,” she explained. “That's why he couldn't take it.”

Tom was staring at her with an expression on his face which Molly, in a sudden moment of terror herself, recognized as fear. He said, slowly, “You're having me on –” and then, flinging himself back in his chair, “You're not! You're not! He refused to take the money – Endell refused it? That's true, isn't it?”

Molly felt exhausted. The constant repetition of Joe's name, the idea that his child was with Sid and Ivy, far away and the shocking knowledge which now came to her – that Tom had married her believing her to be a rich widow – made her feel weak. She passed her hand, now, across her own brow and told him, “Tom – I don't believe what's happening – I don't feel very well.”

But Tom, with a cry, jumped to his feet and swept the coffee pot, milk jug, cups – the whole tray – from the small table they stood on.
“Christ! This is a fine sod's opera for me!” And taking a few steps towards Molly he thrust his face down at her and said loudly, “You kept your secret well, I'll say that for you.”

The sheer menace of his behaviour revived her. She was outraged – although later, she was to look back on that moment, the last when, it seemed to her, Tom demonstrated any passion at all, with some nostalgia. In fact it is probable that if he had not shown such energy in his venom she would have left on the spot. However, she leaped to her feet and cried, “Don't be so bloody stupid, Tom. I never hid anything from you. I didn't know you thought I was rich. You never even mentioned Joe's grandfather. If you had I'd soon have put you right. I never deceived you into marriage – anyway, what a rotten way to want to marry. As it happened, I thought you loved me. And I thought I loved you. But if it's money you're after, you'll have to look elsewhere. I'll go home – you can divorce me – then you can start looking around again for another heiress – a real one, this time.”

Fully intending, at that moment, to leave, she ran into the bedroom and started pulling the few clothes she had brought with her from the hangers in the wardrobe.

Tom ran after her and grabbed her arm. “Molly – Molly,” he said urgently. “I'm sorry. We're good friends – we love each other. Nothing's lost.”

He put his arms round her. She moved back. “It's no good, Tom,” she said. “Let's face facts. You wanted my fortune to put the roof back on the house and a smile on Isabel's face. I wanted your house and your position for me and the child. We only wanted each other a little bit and now there's no money for you, and no house for me, unless I want a leaky roof in the country – let's call it a day. We've no one to blame but ourselves.” As she spoke she was cramming her wedding suit into the case. She turned round and looked at him. “Best to cut our losses,” she muttered. She moved over towards the bathroom door and said, “I'll leave now – and pay the bill, for evidence. We can get an annulment.”

Tom, standing in the bedroom, said, “I wanted the boy.”

“You what?” Molly asked, appearing in the bathroom door with her spongebag. “You wanted the boy, did you say?”

Tom nodded, looking embarrassed. He got his next words out with difficulty. “The place needs an heir.”

“What!” cried Molly. “My son! God, Tom, that's disgusting. Why couldn't you have an heir of your own, if you want one so badly?” She
paused, scarcely able to believe, even now, what he had said. She said finally, “It's so old-fashioned.”

“You said it was what you wanted,” he said. “You said it.”

“I wanted the fresh air,” Molly told him indignantly. “Not a falling-down house and a crummy title. I wanted him to have the childhood I had – in the fields and that –” She sniffed. Her rage was evaporating. It left behind a feeling of stale loss. She bit her lip and put her spongebag on top of the case. Very slowly, she knelt down and started to lock the catches. As she did so, a tear plopped on the blue surface.

“Don't cry, Molly,” Tom said behind her.

She turned round and stood up. They looked at each other. Both were wondering whether they might not be better off in a friendly alliance than alone.

Tom said, “Perhaps we can work something out.”

Molly said, “What's in it for you? Without me you can start hunting again.”

“I still need an heir,” he told her.

“What's stopping you from having one of your own?” she said bluntly.

“I don't think I'm the type,” he said.

She stared at him. “What on earth do you mean, Tom-?” She realized, then, what he must mean. “Oh, God,” she said. “Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't I guess?”

“It's not as bad as that,” he said.

“What about the girl you were engaged to?” she asked.

“What I say – it's not as bad as that,” he told her.

Molly walked into the other room and flung herself into a chair. Tom had thought – and she guessed that Charlie had reassured him – that Molly, the girl they had tormented in a semi-sexual way in childhood, would be able to stir Tom's frail manhood to life. She had not guessed what he was like, probably because the courtship and marriage had been overshadowed by her grief for Joe and her love for the new child. Now she saw that things were worse than she had imagined. But, she told herself, how do you expect Tom to want you, when you know you don't want him?

Tom had followed her in. He, too, sat down. She realized he was waiting for her decision. She said, “I should have known all this. Why did you propose, Tom?”

“It could have worked,” said Tom. “I just handled it badly.” He
seemed to be reproaching himself for manoeuvring wrongly.

“That wouldn't supply me with a vast fortune,” Molly told him. “So there we are – I've got no money but I've got the boy, which you want. You've got no money but you've got the house, which I want. Well, well.” Tom sat down, looking exhausted. He passed his hand over his brow. She asked, “Why don't you just sell the house? Even if it's mortgaged you'd get something.”

“No one wants to buy it,” Tom said.

“Turn it into a hotel – or flats,” Molly said.

“Bank won't fund it,” Tom said. “There's £5,000 a year from a trust fund we can't touch and on that we have to live and keep the place up. Mother can't bear the idea of what's happened –”

“She's going to be disappointed,” Molly told him unsympathetically.

Tom said, “Molly – I'm too tired to talk about all this any more.”

Molly suppressed her irritability. She thought they should decide what to do then and there. But he added, “I must get some sleep. You can have the bed if you like. We can discuss it in the morning.”

But Molly went back to Meakin Street, to the cold bed she had once shared with Joe Endell, and lay there awake all night, missing him sorely and trying to work out what to do. And thought, as she made herself a cup of tea at dawn and drank it in the room where she and Joe used to sit, that she did not want to stay in Meakin Street, with all its memories of old happiness, that, equally, she did not want a replacement for Joe but that she did want to bring her son up in the country, at Framlingham. She could rent Meakin Street, she thought, then she could get a part-time job and, who knew, perhaps she could work out some way of rescuing matters at Allaun Towers. As for Tom – she liked him. She could not expect to love him as she had loved Joe and did not want to. She lay on the sofa at Meakin Street and said to herself, “Joe – Joe. What am I going to do?”

And thought she heard him say, as if his voice were part of the thin, grey light coming through the windows, “Take the boy to Framlingham.”

On the road to Kent next morning she and Tom chatted in their old way, as if there had been no marriage, no revelations and no early morning reconciliation. Tom showed an intermittent desire to bring up the old issue but Molly refused to talk about it. Her mind was set on
the future. All she said was, “Let's give it a try, Tom. We've nothing to lose.”

He was not pleased when he discovered that she was reluctant to sell the house in Meakin Street.

“I don't want to sell and the rent will come in handy,” she told him.

“A drop in the bucket,” muttered Tom.

“Cheer up,” she said. “I've got £200 in my bag. When that runs out you can start complaining. Anyway,” she added, “I'm looking forward to seeing Mrs Gates again and showing her the baby.”

He said nothing. Into the silence Molly said, “Cheer up, Tom. Let's try for a fresh start.”

Even so, her heart sank as they drove through the rusting gates which were now, it seemed, permanently open. They went up the long drive under the overhanging, untrimmed boughs of the trees. It felt gloomy. Although it was not yet September Molly, spotting one brown leaf on a tree, was reminded that soon it would be autumn.

Their first sight of the house was not encouraging. In the fierce August sun it was possible to see the missing tiles on the lower parts of the roof. The guttering was broken in places and long stains, made by water, marred the brickwork of the house. Some of the attic windows were broken. The paint around the windows was cracked and old. In the bright light a long jagged crack could be seen running from the eaves to the top of the front door.

Isabel Allaun stood on the steps to greet them. Her face, in the bright light, looked drawn. She led them in. Here, too, the evidence of neglect was all too plain. In the hall the paintwork was dingy and the marble squares of the floor were not entirely clean. Mrs Gates, Molly remembered, had spent an hour, every week, on her hands and knees washing them with some special substance she made up – was it vinegar, or soda, she wondered vaguely. At any rate, it had smelled a lot and made Mrs Gates very irritable. The staircarpet running up the wooden stairs was threadbare. The dragons at the bottom of the banisters were undusted. They went along the passage into the sitting room, where sun streamed through the windows, exposing worn patches in the upholstery of the chairs.