All The Days of My Life (79 page)

At the beginning of the following week the telephone rang as she was carefully beating the faded grey tracery of the upholstery of the drawing room chairs, which she dared not attack too vigorously for fear of damaging the old fabric. It was Shirley, at the station three miles away, asking for a car to be sent to pick her up.

“Are the children with you?” asked Molly.

Shirley, in a muffled voice, said, “Yes.”

“Oh, God,” said Molly, putting down the duster and going out to the yard to collect Fred.

Her sister was crying when she arrived. The boys, Brian and Kevin, were now ten and eight years old. They were still as pale, and as thin, as ever. The older looked bewildered and the younger truculent. Three suitcases stood beside Shirley on the steps of the station.

“You can stay a week,” Molly told her sister bluntly as they ate a scratch lunch of sandwiches and cups of tea in the kitchen. “You can see what it's like here – workmen everywhere, I'm in hock to get a business started. It's being done on a mortgage on Meakin Street-I've got a young child and a tricky mother-in-law.”

Shirley said, “I don't know where else to go – Ivy's ill, Jack's in a small flat and his girlfriend doesn't want the disturbance – but I couldn't stay, Molly. I've been on Valium for three years.”

“I've got six weeks before they bring the axe down on me,” Molly told her. “I'm right on the edge, Shirl, and that's a fact.”

“Ivy was always there to bale you out and take care of Josephine when you needed it,” Shirley went on as if she had not heard.

“I'm sorry,” Molly told her.

Brian staggered in with a bucket and said, “Which is the hot tap?”

“The one with the red nozzle,” Molly said. “Why can't you use the tap in the yard?”

“Allan wants hot,” said the boy. He added, as he heaved the bucket
into the sink, “He's giving Kev and me fifty pence a day to be helpers.”

“He's nice, Allan,” Molly told her sister as she closed the door behind the boy and his bucket.

Shirley began to cry. “It's a lovely place,” she said. “If only there was room. That family's ruined my boys – I want them to get healthy and normal.”

A worse incident then occurred. The telephone rang. Molly listened to what Charlie Markham had to say and then, wordlessly, put the phone back on the cradle. She ran out, through the front door into the yard. “Wayne!” she cried. “Wayne! I've got to talk to you.”

Wayne, up on the roof putting on tiles with the other workmen, looked down at her. Without saying anything he came down the ladder and said, “Is it about George?”

A watery sunshine filled the yard. She looked at him and said, “You knew?”

“Mr Markham rang up while you was out, once. He wanted to speak to George – make a date to see him. I told him not to go. But he went. I knew it was no good. So – what happened?”

“He bought him,” Molly said flatly. “He's signed him up. I suppose he's offered him a big salary and all the facilities he wants. Job as a designer, he says – that means he'll work for Charlie and whatever he develops he won't get a penny for. You know that, Wayne, don't you? It seems George is trying to get you on the team, too.”

“That Markham won't want me,” Wayne said. “To him I'm just the black guy, all muscle, no brain. Anyway, I don't want to work for him. Minute I heard about him I knew who he was. You shouldn't blame George, Molly,” he said earnestly. “He doesn't understand anything. He doesn't know who anybody is. All he wants is a workshop and the chance to get along with his work. About all the rest – he's like a kid. He believes what people tell him – like I told you, I said not to go and see that man.”

Molly stared up at the half-tiled roof above her and thought, they'll have to stop work at the end of the week. She said to Wayne, “Can you tell Allan and his mate to stop work at the end of the week. Tell them I'm laying them off with two weeks' pay. I can't face telling them.”

“You done your best,” Wayne said. Molly walked across the yard and back into the house telling herself that she was a fool. She'd been a fool to start the conversion without a proper financial basis. She'd been a fool not to have guessed what Charlie Markham, faced with an obstinate woman blocking his path, would do next. Her legs
weakened once she was inside. She sat down heavily at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands.

“What's the matter?” asked Shirley.

“Charlie Markham's sold me out,” her sister told her.

“What happened?” said Shirley.

Molly told her briefly in a flat voice, thinking that Shirley, blowing her nose on a sodden handkerchief, was not capable of taking much interest in what she said.

Wayne came in. “Told them?” she asked.

“No – I thought it over and I didn't tell them. I want you to come to London with me and talk to George.”

“What's the point-he's signed,” Molly said despondently. “He saw his chance – and took it.”

“That means nothing,” Wayne told her. “He's only signed a piece of paper – he's got no money. He's done no work. What will they do to him if he says he changed his mind? They can't kill him. What you going to do now? Just sit there and let that fat man trash you?”

Molly, seeing her choice as a day discharging the workers and staring at Shirley's tear-stained face, or a day in London taking some action, decided on the latter. At worst, she thought, she could go round to Charlie's flat and break his windows with a brick.

In the train she said, “Maybe George'll be better off with Charlie – he'll get everything he wants.”

“Man like George?” Wayne said sceptically. “He'll be a racehorse they feed till it starts losing – then –” and he made a gun out of his fingers and pulled an imaginary trigger. “Least we can do for him,” he said, “is go and see what kind of paper he signed.”

George was at the garage in West London, collecting up his things. Molly stood in the pale sunshine reading George's contract as she leaned against a crashed van. A little further off George was saying, “I'm talking to Mr Markham about a job for you, Wayne,” and Wayne was saying, “Forget it, man. I rather have the old job back here.”

As Molly read she couldn't help remembering poor bewildered George, youngest of a poor family, helping his drunken mother upstairs at night. This was the boy to whom Charlie Markham had offered seven thousand pounds a year and full facilities for two years, with no mention of a royalty fee on any innovations he might create. Molly felt angrier still. She took the contract back to George. She said, “I can't stop you but you ought to get this re-negotiated. If you come up with anything they just take it and exploit it. You get nothing. They
can milk you dry for two years and then throw you out on your ear. Can you see what I'm talking about, George?”

“Yes – course,” said George.

“He don't,” Wayne told her.

Wayne was quite relaxed. Molly had a feeling that in this situation, where George was too embarrassed to look at her and she was furious with George, Wayne was under control. And yet he had reason to be angry with George himself, since George had signed up with Charlie Markham without including him in the deal.

Molly shrugged. “Look, George,” she said, “I'm not complaining because you tried to do the best for yourself. I'm complaining because you didn't even warn me. And I'm complaining because what you've got here is a rotten deal. Charlie's skinning you – or he will if he gets the chance.”

“Cissie said to sign,” muttered George.

“Of course she bloody well did,” Molly said furiously. “Because your father and mother between them knocked all the stuffing out of both of you. So now all you can do is tuck yourself safely away under the wing of something called the Lauderdale Group of Companies because no matter how badly you get robbed, that way at least you feel safe. And all I can say is I hope it keeps fine for you. Because to people like that, George Messiter, you're just a bit of meat for their mincer.”

There was a silence. George, hearing nothing but her angry voice, looked at the ground. She said to Wayne, “Try to talk to him,” and walked out of the yard.

She got back in the car feeling exhausted and had to stop on the way back. She sat in a copse near a lay-by and tried to breathe steadily. She now had two mortgaged homes to her credit, a heap of bills she could pay, but only just, and a set of half-converted stables. She would have to cancel the order for one of the lathes. The other had arrived that morning and would have to be resold quickly, probably at a loss. She lay back on the damp earth and wished she could go to sleep, here, and not wake up for a long time. But, she thought sitting up, she had promised to be back before supper time to collect Fred from Vera Harker. It was no good, she thought. The toy business would never keep the place going. She would have to go back to London, get a job, take a room somewhere until Sam moved out of Meakin Street, put Fred in a nursery and go out to work to pay back her mortgage. She arrived at Framlingham exhausted, dreading Isabel, who would have returned and found out that Shirley was staying, dreading Tom's face
when she told him that Charlie had tricked her, dreading Shirley and her tears.

As she drew up in front of the house Shirley appeared on the steps, not weeping, as Molly expected, but pirouetting on the steps, one hand extending the skirt of a brightly-coloured dress.

Molly got out of the car and recognized the material. The green bodice of the dress was the scarecrow toy's trousers. The various colours in the skirt came from the doll, the fox and the parrot. She observed two other things – the dress was very stylish and Shirley had cut up the toy materials to make herself a dress. Oh God, thought Molly, there's no end to the selfishness and stupidity of these people – the Markhams, the Allauns and the Shirley-fucking Waterhouses. And this, in her tiredness and depression, she said, adding, “I'm going upstairs now, to put Fred to bed. When I come down I'll give you all one last, final pint of blood. Then I'll be off – that do for you?”

She walked past Shirley up the steps, holding the child. Shirley said behind her, “What's the matter, Moll? I thought you'd be pleased.”

“I'm not your husband,” Molly said flatly as she crossed the hall. “Though you seem to think I can double for him on a bad day. I'm not delighted when you show me you've made yourself a pretty dress out of stock.”

Shirley ran after her, up the stairs. “You stupid bitch,” she cried. “I've done all this out of the offcuts – stuff you couldn't use. I've looked through that rubbish in the desk in the library you call your accounts. You're overstocked and those women are still producing stuff you can't sell. You can sell these.”

Molly turned round. The bodice of the dress tucked loosely into the longish, brightly coloured skirt, which had a jagged hem. The effect was that of a jumble of expensive rags. Her mood was slow to yield but she said, “Maybe you're right. Come upstairs.”

As she put Fred in the bath she said, “I'm sorry, Shirley. I can see you're right. How many more can you get out of the offcuts?”

“Only a couple,” her sister said. “But unless you can get some more orders you might as well use the material you've got on these. It wouldn't be too hard to get some orders.”

“Think so?” asked Molly.

“It's worth a try,” Shirley told her. “I can sort out your accounts, too.”

“I'm grateful, Shirl,” Molly said. “But you can see Charlie's done for me. I've had to put Meakin Street in pawn to pay for these
conversions and all I can do now is pay my debts and clear off. You can stay till it's over, if it suits you, but remember, we're both homeless now.”

As she pulled Fred from the bath she heard Isabel behind her in the doorway. “I can't say this is any more than I expected.”

“What you expected, Isabel, was a small fortune brought by me, and an heir to the throne here, also brought by me. Well, I've done my best, and now I'm leaving, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“I imagine that in future you will not be using the name Allaun,” Isabel said. “After all, you've several others to choose from.”

“Don't worry about that,” Molly said. “I'll be forgetting all this as soon as I can.” She walked past Isabel and into her bedroom. She dressed the child for bed and put him in his cot in the room next to hers. There was a connecting door and, as she entered the other room, she could hear the low buzz of Shirley and Isabel, talking on the landing. She lay down on her own bed reflecting that if she had a flat, a room of her own, at least she and the child could live separate lives, away from the continual sense of feet on the stairs, chats on the landing, silences as one person entered a room occupied by others. And she slept, hearing the French song Madeleine, the whore, had sung to her in prison. She could pick out some of the words, although she did not know what they meant. The song went on, in her dream, making her feel warm and safe and at home. Then she saw the old Meakin Street, still with its gas lamps and the little, faded houses, and coming towards her in fog was a figure, Joe Endell. There was someone beside him. She could not see who it was but she knew she loved the person.

The fog swirled and she could see neither of them, although the song went on. She awoke, consoled, and looked up at the large, corniced ceiling above her head. She looked at the fading wallpaper of the room, at the dying light coming through her windows and at the trees beyond. And she knew then she was not safe, not safe at all and nor was her child.

Some hard times lay ahead, she guessed, though no worse than for many others and a good deal better than for some. The Allauns would spiral down until one person offered Tom another job and another presented Isabel with a cottage in the country. They would be looked after, in some way, but the chances were that she, Mary Waterhouse, would not. She hadn't got the right connections. Shirley came in with a
cup of tea. “You'd better stay where you are, Molly,” she said. “I'll bring your dinner up.”