All The Days of My Life (74 page)

“Well, you look like a man,” her mother told her. “Those terrible trousers and that sweater – you've got to do something.”

“I'll go and boil an egg for Fred,” declared Molly, getting up.

In the kitchen, putting water into a saucepan, Molly stared at the flooding tap and thought about the days in Meakin Street with Joe. She heard the thump, thump, thump as Fred approached down the hall, heard Ivy saying from the sitting room door, “That's right, Freddie. Keep on going. Find Mum.”

The door opened and the boy's head came through, a little above floor level. His broad mouth smiled and his blue eyes shone.

“He's a lovely little boy,” said Ivy, coming in after him.

Molly put the egg into boiling water and felt a wave of sadness flood over her. “I wish Joe could have seen him,” she said.

Her mother did not reply. She only said, “Well – you need a dress – that's what. Life must go on.”

But Molly, for some reason, could not find a dress to buy. “What do I wear,” she demanded of her mother, “if I'm going to dress up as a mother, housekeeper, gardener, cottage industry promoter and sole support of two decayed aristocrats? Because,” she added, voicing her greatest fear, “I think Tom's losing his job.”

“Those bastards,” said Ivy, startling the girl who was bringing up another dress for them to look at. “Are they mad, or what? You're too weak with them, Molly.”

“It was only my greed,” said Molly. “And wanting too much for Fred.”

“Well then, nothing's too good for Freddie, is it, then?” said the indulgent grandmother, leaning over the child's pushchair.

“Yes,” said the rosy child, looking up at her.

Ivy stared at him. “Am I hearing things?” she said, amazed.

“I heard it,” Molly told her. “Yes, Fred – yes,” she said encouragingly.

“Are you wanting anything?” asked the girl.

“Yes,” Fred said.

“I don't believe it,” exclaimed Ivy. She said to the girl, “He's nine months old.”

“Maybe he's just mumbling,” the girl said. “You don't want a dress, really, do you?”

“No – we'd better go home,” said Molly. “I'm sorry.”

Ivy said, “Fred's made our day anyway. Clever boy,” she told him. “Say 'yes' for your granny –”

“Come on, Mum,” Molly urged. “We're blocking the place up here and my feet ache. Let's go.”

“Yes,” remarked the clever boy.

Isabel Allaun was not very pleased at the prospect of an Easter visit from Sid and Ivy Waterhouse and the son of their old friend. She could, however, put up no real objection. In the end she decided to take up a long-standing invitation of a friend who lived in Hove. After insisting that Tom should take a day off work to drive her there, since it was more impressive to drive up with an attentive son than a weary-looking daughter-in-law, she left just before Sid, Ivy and George arrived.

“You can tell she was brought up a lady,” Ivy remarked dourly in the kitchen, as she unwrapped the fish she had brought, “because she's so polite.”

“Sid says where do you keep the spades and stuff?” said George. “He reckons we can get started on the garden before dinner.”

“There's a shed over there,” Molly said, pointing in the direction of the kitchen door. George, now twenty-two, had grown to the height of six feet two but he was very thin and pale. He now wore glasses.

After they had gone out Ivy said, “I doubt if George is going to be much help. He's so vague – he never seems to know where he is. The only time he seems to come to life is if you give him some mechanical problem to solve. He did wonders with our central heating. He's a car mechanic now. Here – I never had time for a proper look round the house at the christening – show me.”

Molly and her mother toured the house, from the cellars, where pools of water lay on the floor, through the big, high, faded rooms on the ground floor, where plaster came down to powder the carpets all the time, and on to the upper floors, where faint squares of old wallpapers showed where pictures once hung. Glancing at the aging carpets, patchy velvet curtains and neglected furniture Ivy said, “This was a handsome place, once.”

Upstairs in the attics there were large patches of damp on the ceilings, and on the floors below. There were mildewed trunks, a rusting train set and heaps of mouldering books. A black silk umbrella, now in rags, lay across an upholstered stool covered in white pock-marks. A starling, when they came in, fluttered up from a pile of clothing with a strip of material in its mouth.

“Collecting for a nest,” said Ivy. “Comes in here and then flies out the window. Clever birds, starlings. But what a shocking waste.” She
was burrowing into the clothes. “Look at this,” she exclaimed. “Molyneux – look at that label. Criminal, isn't it – you could sell this today if it hadn't been left to moulder.” She straightened up and looked round. “What a pity – to have had so much – and now look at it.” She stared at Molly. “It'll cost a bloody fortune to get all this back into repair again. Why don't they turn it into flats?”

“Too heavily mortgaged. The bank won't lend the money,” Molly said.

“I can't believe that,” Ivy said.

“That's what Tom tells me – maybe Allauns can't face the risk –”

“Can't face anything, it seems to me. No common sense. I should get out, Molly, before you get like them and just sit there on the sinking ship, not doing anything about it. You've got Fred to think of, after all.”

“Can't see what difference it makes to him,” Molly told her mother sulkily. “I expect he'd rather be here than stuck in a nursery in London all day long.” She was developing a sense, as the months went by, that she did not want to leave. She kept the toy-making business moving, holding its own although there was no progress. Somehow she had the superstitious feeling that if she just clung on, the right answer would arrive without her looking for it.

Sid, Tom, George and Molly went down to the pub that night, leaving Ivy babysitting. The pub, which she remembered as being full of oak beams, with wooden tables and chairs and bare boards on the floor, was smarter now, carpeted, with a juke box. She recalled wandering home at twilight, as a child, hearing the sound of the piano, the men's voices inside, coming out into the street.

Under the influence of a few ciders. George began to talk. “She reckons I spend too much time on my cycle, and trekking oil into the house,” he said of his sister. “She's very houseproud, Cissie.”

“Riding a bike?” said Molly.

“No – it's – it's an invention, like,” he told her. “It's lighter and stronger than other bikes and you can rig up a motor on it when you want it, and take it off when you don't. It's a little motor, so you can even take it with you.” He stopped, finding nothing else to say about it. “I'm just tinkering with it, really,” he said. “Trouble is, I'm in trouble with my boss.”

“Working on it in the firm's time?” suggested Sid.

“A bit – and using a few spare bits and pieces – it's that he resents the interest, really. One of my mates at the garage, Wayne, he got
interested in it, too. The boss hates the garage, really, hates motors, hates his wife – Wayne reckons he just can't stand anybody else having something they like doing.”

“I can't see the use of it, frankly,” Tom said. “I mean – if you want a bike, you get a bike. If you want a motor scooter you get one of those.”

“Be cheaper than a moped,” Molly said. “And you could buy the bike first and then save up for the engine. Or you could have cycling holidays and just use the motor for really steep hills. Does it work?” she asked George.

“Me and Wayne are working on a few modifications,” he told her. “Maybe Tom's right. I don't reckon we could get the speed above fifteen miles an hour – not without making the engine heavier.” He stared in the direction of two labourers drinking beer in the corner. He said, “I'd like to use electricity.”

“Said the mad inventor,” added Sid.

“Can you go back to London at the weekend and get Wayne and the bike? If I pay your fares?” Molly asked.

George stared at her wonderingly – but she saw convoys of the bicycles, painted red, green, silver, gold, violet, climbing hills with their little engines chugging. “Wayne can stay the weekend,” she added. “I want to see the bike.”

“All right, Molly,” said George, who was accustomed to taking orders from women, who usually knew best.

Tom gaped at Molly and then looked furious. Sid looked at his daughter carefully. He looked at George. Then, discouraged, he looked into his beer.

That evening Tom came into Molly's room and said, “What possessed you to ask that boy to get his friend down here? Without asking me or Isabel, either. It seems high-handed – and extremely odd. I'm wondering if you're in your right mind?”

“I may not be,” Molly said, sitting wearily at the dressing table in her old dressing-gown. She glanced at Tom, standing in the doorway. “I want to do something, Tom,” she said. “I want you to lay off me for a bit. Will you?”

“Why should I if you don't tell me what you're up to?” he asked.

“Tom,” she said. “Is your job all right?”

“I'm quite touched at your showing an interest,” he said. “There hasn't been much of that. The procedure's up to now been to send me off in the morning to earn the money and let me in at night after I've done it – and, since you ask me, no, the job is not all right. I'm on the
verge of resigning. The senior partner dislikes me and the other solicitor is an incompetent. I've asked for more money and been refused and I don't think I can stand it any longer.”

Molly, without bothering to sift the story for the rights and wrongs of the situation, just said, “I thought so. If you don't mind, Tom, I'm going to bed. I'm dog tired and Fred's waking at six these days. Wayne's only staying over the weekend and he'll be on his way home by the time you get back with Isabel.” Tom, at a disadvantage because of his confession, went to bed and said nothing more about the visit until Saturday morning. Wayne had arrived on his motor bike earlier but Tom had not seen him. He was very big, and black. Molly secretly hoped he would not, by a mischance, run into Isabel.

That morning Wayne and George got up early and went to the stables. George was hammering some parts on to the prototype cycle while Wayne worked on the engine, which was standing on the old mounting block. A transistor radio on the wall played heavy rock – Fred was sitting in his pushchair, watching, with a chocolate biscuit in one hand and a spanner in the other. There was a smear of oil on his cheek.

Tom arrived and, seeing all this, turned round at the yard entrance and went straight back to the house, where Molly was rolling out pastry.

“What in God's name's going on?” he demanded. “Are you trying to convert this place into a slum?”

“Two lads fixing up a bike in the stables, hundreds of yards from the house?” she asked. “What's wrong with that?”

She went on rolling the pastry, knowing perfectly well that this had nothing to do with the argument. It was the class, and in one case, the colour of the young men to which Tom was objecting. It was the fact that the household, that weekend, consisted of her mother, her father, a lad from Meakin Street and his black friend. Tom felt swamped – and ignored because he didn't know what she was up to.

“It starts as a visit from your mother,” declared Tom, “and ends up with all the hooligans in London banging and shouting. And Fred's out there with oil and chocolate all over his face. You'll have to tell them to go.”

“Wayne's going tomorrow anyway,” wheedled Molly. She did not want to reveal her plans to Tom before she had checked that they might work. But she needed his cooperation because otherwise she would not see the bike in action. And she did not want a confrontation,
which she would win, proving what they both knew – that Tom Allaun was not master in his own home.

“Honestly, Tom,” she said. “They're only young men – hardly more than boys. Don't make me make them go. At least Isabel's not being disturbed. Please let them stay, Tom.”

“All right,” he said, “but I'm going to Sebastian Hodges' and when I come back after lunch tomorrow I expect to find George's friend gone and the house at peace again.”

“Thank you, Tom,” Molly said humbly. So, she thought, after he had left, she had got her way with placatory behaviour. As she made a rabbit pie from two rabbits she wondered whether if she made Tom feel more powerful he would turn into a normal husband and father. After all, Charlie Markham had told her she was too domineering, energetic and forthright.

“Mum,” she said, as Ivy came into the kitchen. “Do you think I'm being fair to Tom? Do you think I'm too bossy and tough?”

“I suppose you could try to boost his ego a bit,” Ivy said without interest.

“It'd take a bit of doing,” Molly said. “And while I'm fainting and wheedling him into doing things I could be doing something myself –”

“Well. Try to see it as a challenge,” advised her mother. “Make making Tom more manly be your task in life.” Then she spoilt it by laughing.

“Quicker to get some wool and large needles and knit yourself another one,” Sid observed as he came in from the garden.

“Sid!” Ivy reproved. But Sid had just turned over about an eighth of an acre of kitchen garden. After lunch he was planning to patch up the wall behind the lavatory cistern upstairs. He was beginning to wish he had gone off on the angling party with his friends in Beckenham. Here he had not even found time to unpack his fishing tackle.

Nevertheless, the weekend passed happily enough. Sid did get out his fishing tackle in the end. Ivy tacked up some fresh rents in the curtains and gave the sitting room carpet a good clean while George and Wayne worked on the bike in the stable yard, continuing after dark by lighting some lanterns they found and put into order. In the end as twilight fell on Sunday evening they were ready for a test run. Molly knew that Isabel would be back shortly but was too excited to halt the experiment.