All The Days of My Life (89 page)

“I'm sorry,” Molly said. She added, “I had a dream last night that they were soundless, sort of floating through the air.”

“What's that?” he asked, “wish fulfilment or woman's intuition?”

“I don't know,” she said. “What's your guess for the coming years – floating bikes?”

“Who knows?” he said and leaning across the table said, “Barnabas – what's your horoscope-Johnny give you as a prediction for the coming years? Lady Allaun would like to know.”

“Wouldn't we all?” said Jessica Monteith.

The man opposite drank from his claret glass and said jovially, “He advises me to make sure I'm wearing clean underwear in case I'm run over crossing Piccadilly Circus and taken to hospital. Listen, Keyes, I don't pay a man five hundred guineas a year to tell you the future – just me.

Colin Floyd said, “Good God – you give him that? Is he worth it?”

“He is to me,” he said.

“I just can't see you sitting in a flat in Cricklewood while some tatty character gazes into a crystal ball,” Keyes said.

“Cricklewood?” the man called Barnabas replied. “He lives in Belgravia.”

But Molly, drifting back into the dream where the room was filled with silent, watchful faces of the poor, began to think nothing was real, not the candles, the plates, the women's jewellery – nothing seemed substantial. Something's going to happen, said a voice in her head, and as she tried to contend with the expectation running through her, for no reason, she realized that Colin Floyd had broken off his sentence and that Jessica Monteith was standing at the table, trying to catch her eye while the other women had left and were drifting to the door. She realized that something Isabel had told her about was happening – the ladies were withdrawing.

In the drawing room Jessica told her, “It's absurd – we actually don't do it in London. Just while we're here. That's because half the time in London the guests are from America or other places where the custom died out, or never existed. The men are supposed to swap racing tips or whatever they do while we talk about our children and household management. I believe they sit there telling dirty jokes. I know we do, sometimes. Actually, it's rather fun, I think.”

Feeling bullied, Molly said, “It's like what professional criminals do when they're planning their next job. They say, ‘Why don't you girls step upstairs and try on each other's clothes while we talk some man's talk.' And the women all go out of the room.”

There was a silence, broken fairly quickly by Jessica, who said, “Well, actually I think it's rather a nice old custom being maintained.”

But she saw she had made the women feel gloomy and excluded, as if their dresses and jewels had suddenly become burkhas and leather nose pieces. Before she could make amends Jessica said into the small silence, “I was expecting Bert Precious, but he had to stay in London today. He's coming up by the shuttle tomorrow morning.”

Graham Keyes' wife asked, “Is Corrie coming, too?”

“Oh no,” Jessica said. “She's still in Canada.”

“Looking after her father?” enquired the other.

“I gather he died,” Jessica said. “But I think it was what happened to their son which drove them apart. So very sad.”

“There's no reason for it,” the other woman said. “Corrie and Bert
did everything parents could. It was exactly the same with the Fellowes family – devoted parents, a lovely, bright girl – such a useless tragedy.”

“I blame the pushers,” Mary Floyd said angrily. “They're responsible. And I just don't believe that enough's being done to track them down.”

Molly felt removed again. She still saw, outside these windows, which were curtained, the crowd on the hillside. As she sat in the room with the other women, who talked of their friends and places she had never been to, she felt the gulf between herself and the other women to be very great. How could it be otherwise? It was not even a matter of background but of how she now led her life. She must seem to them very tough, almost freakish, doing the job most of them left to husbands, brothers and fathers.

Jessica moved across the room and turned on a lamp. “So peaceful here, isn't it?” she said, smiling at the silent Molly.

“Oh yes,” she agreed, “very peaceful.”

“These old houses are unique,” Mary Floyd said. “It's partly the sense of one family having lived here for hundreds of years. Just imagine – one day, in due course, Willy will be living here with his wife and children.”

“Yes,” said Jessica, but Molly had the idea that small Mary Floyd's ebullience, born of what looked like a united marriage, did not strike all the women as being appropriate. Second wives themselves, some of them, they all knew that divorce and the birth of new children would result in their own evictions and the disinheriting of their children. Quite a nervy world, thought Molly, who in that sense had never had anything to lose.

And, again, came the sense of change coming, almost excitement which made it hard to concentrate, until, later, the men came in looking cheerful, and drunker than they had been at dinner. Jessica went over to her husband and put her arm through his. “You said not long,” she told him. “And look how you've kept us waiting.”

“We've bored each other sufficiently now,” he said. “We join you with great relief.” But Molly reflected that as they sat over the port they might well have been talking business. She badly wanted to talk to Jamieson about her bicycle engine but was beginning to realize that here was a world where men talked business and exchanged tips in clubs, changing rooms, after the ladies had left the dinner table – anywhere women were not admitted. But she was fighting, still,
through the strange, dreamy state she had entered. After chatting for about half an hour she declared herself to be rather tired and went up to bed.

Lying in the silence, between linen sheets, she soon went to sleep. She awoke with the clear voice singing to her in French – “Comme le vent dans les blés de mon pays.”

Next day she stood right at the top of the windy hill behind the house with Colin Floyd. On the other side of the hill the voices of the two boys came to them in gusts on the breeze.

“Phew,” she said, for it had been a somewhat steep scramble. “Isn't it lovely?”

Floyd, also breathing hard, said, “Yes – perfect.”

They sat on the grass in silence looking across the valley, where the house lay, and over the hills opposite. Down the valley, in a small plantation of firs, lay the waters of the loch.

“There must have been a farm here for hundreds of years, even before they built the house,” Floyd said. “It makes me think how much I'd like to own a country house – but, of course, you do.”

“I married into a collapse and turned it into a bicycle factory,” Molly told him. “I'm not the sort you can trust to respect the past. I couldn't afford it, for one thing.”

Floyd laughed. They sat watching the two boys, who were shooting at each other from behind hillocks.

Floyd stood up. “Bert!” he called, waving. “Bert! Is that you?”

The lean figure in a greenish tweed suit stopped on the path and waved. As he toiled up Molly saw he had a long, pale face and very large, hazel eyes. His eyebrows were strongly marked, although his hair was light brown. “Bert Precious,” explained Floyd as he came up. “An old friend. Do you know him?”

“No,” said Molly.

As he got to the top he grinned at Floyd and shook his hand. In some ways, she thought, it was a clown's face, long and mobile, expressing innocence. She felt she might have met him somewhere, but was not sure. He looked at her and smiled broadly as if, she thought, they really did know each other.

“Do you know Molly Allaun?” asked Floyd. “Molly – Herbert Precious.”

Bert Precious was getting his breath back. “Phew,” he said, “I'm out of condition. Is it wet on the ground?”

“Not very,” Floyd said.

“Then – excuse me,” he said, and sat down. He looked up at her. “I think we met once, at Frames Club,” he told her.

“Ah,” Molly said. “I met a lot of people then.”

“I expect you did,” he said drily.

She laughed and said, pointing upwards, “I know I'll never rest until I've got to the top of that higher hill, there.”

“Come on, then,” said Bert Precious, scrambling to his feet.

“Count me out,” said Colin Floyd, sitting down.

So together Molly and Bert scrambled over rocks and rough ground to the top of the windy hill. They found the two boys playing there.

Bert looked at Frederick Allaun consideringly and said, “He looks rather like you.”

Molly said, “I always think he looks like his father. Especially in the photographs when Joe was a boy.”

She had not thought for some time about Fred's parentage, or her own, or Joe's. Now she did, and the notion made her grave. At the same time she saw Bert's eyes appraising her son and herself. “Perhaps you and your husband were alike,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Molly said, trying to throw off serious thoughts. But she said to herself – “Liker than we should have been.” “Isn't it wonderful?” she said, taking in the large view and the huge, blue sky above them. When she looked at Bert, who was standing at her side, she noticed he was looking at her, and not at the view. Meanwhile the two boys, who had been playing a complicated game of cowboys and Indians, Scots and English, were shooting each other and falling over. Suddenly, with a cry, Fred fell over the edge of the hill. Molly and Bert both ran forward. The boy lay a few feet below, laughing into their alarmed faces.

“Ha, ha,” said Molly. “Very funny, I must say.”

She turned to Bert but his face was still. She had learned the day before that his eldest child, a son, had died of a drug overdose two years before. She said suddenly, “Come on. We'd better go. It's time for lunch.” They walked down the hill, with Colin Floyd. And Molly felt an internal stillness, as if there were a pause in time. She did not put it to herself that she was going to fall in love with this tall, long-faced man, whose features completely failed to conceal the movement of his thoughts and emotions. She did not tell herself this but part of her knew it was going to happen.

They walked across the formal garden, past the pool and the low
hedges surrounding geometrical flower beds. Looking at a tree shaped like a peacock Bert shook his head. “Funny notion,” he said, half to himself, “a French garden in Aberdeen.”

They sat together at lunch, which was an informal meal with no placings. Jessica Monteith was not far off, next to Fred, who sat by his mother.

As he and Jessica talked she discovered that he was short of money. He spoke of selling his house and moving to a cheaper one. She discovered that his two remaining children, a fifteen-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter, lived with him and that a daily housekeeper was in charge. She had the impression of a sad life which he accepted, barely knowing how sad it was, for he was not self-conscious. It also began to dawn on her that Jessica Monteith had her eye on him.

“The next time I'm in London, in a fortnight's time,” she said, “I shall arrive on your step and sort you out, just as I did the last time.”

“The last time you came the housekeeper resigned,” Bert protested. “I had to talk to her for an hour to persuade her to stay. I should be very pleased to see you, as indeed I always am, but I'd be equally pleased if you decided you didn't want to count the sheets or look in the refrigerator. Your company is always welcome and quite enough in itself, Jessica. Don't think me ungrateful.”

“Honestly, Bert,” protested Jessica. “I don't know how you manage at all. And with the children at day schools – As a woman who's brought up a daughter, don't you agree, Molly?”

“I'm afraid I didn't bring her up. My mother did,” Molly said. “I don't think I know enough about it.”

“Well, you must all come and stay with us, Bert,
en famille,
very soon. We'll be here for ages – what about Easter?” Jessica pressed.

“Simon and Anne are going to Canada at Easter,” Bert said.

“Come alone then,” Jessica said promptly. “Otherwise you'll be glooming about the house alone being bossed by that morbid woman you employ. Absolutely no good at all.”

Bert Precious said, consideringly, “Thank you, Jessica. I'll certainly think about it.” Then asked, “Donald! You think we can get a boat out and row to the island in the middle of the loch this afternoon?”

“If Ian'll let you,” his host said. “Whenever I want one it's laid up for repairs or being repainted. But if you can get one, then do.”

“I like rowing,” Bert said to Molly. “Do you feel like taking the boys for a row – you'll let Willy come, won't you, Jessica?”

“I'll come as well,” Jessica declared. “I hope you row well.”

“No,” he said. “Wear a mackintosh and gumboots.”

“I'll bail,” said Molly.

“You can swim, can't you?” Jessica asked her. “If you can't, it really isn't safe.”

Molly wondered if she was riding shotgun for her absent friend, Bert's wife, or if, as she supposed, Jessica had a fancy for him herself. She said, “I can swim.”

“I've got certificates,” Fred announced.

“All's well, then,” said Jessica.

Molly had suspected Bert's claim to be a poor rower was a gentlemanly stance but once they were in the boat she realized that he had spoken nothing but the truth. The water with which he spattered them was ice cold, straight down to the loch from the hills. The wind was chilly. She finally cried, “Blimey! I can't stand this. These boys are drenched, Bert. Why don't I row?”

“Come and take an oar,” he suggested.

Molly walked towards him across the lurching boat and sat down beside him. Sid, during their outings on the Serpentine and the occasional seaside holiday, had been a fussy oarsman, insisting on accuracy and correct strokes. They weaved across the loch until they arrived at the fir-fringed lochside. Fred jumped out in his gumboots to pull the boat in.