All The Days of My Life (91 page)

He stared at her, opened his mouth to speak and then said, “I think I have.”

“Oh,” said Molly. “I suddenly had the feeling there was something you weren't telling me.” And of course there was and he knew it – the fact that he had witnessed her history over the past forty-five years, that he knew in some respects more about her than she did herself. She stared at both their feet, hers in tights and his ending in shiny black shoes. She said, “I don't want anything from you. Just what you can spare. To be honest, I even wondered if I had time to fit you in.”

“Oh, I'll fit in all right,” he said, deliberately mistaking her meaning. As he pushed her backwards on to the bed she muttered “– late for dinner.”

“Plenty of time,” murmured Sir Herbert, unbuttoning her black pearl buttons.

“It wouldn't be easy to let you go,” Molly said seriously, as they lay in disorder among their clothes.

Equally sombrely he said, “It wouldn't be easy to go.”

Molly managed to arrive in time to join the others as they went into the dining room. Bert took his place after they were all sitting down, murmuring to Jessica, “Terribly sorry – lost cuff-link, as usual.”

“And where did you eventually find it, Bert?” enquired Jessica, who was sitting beside him.

“Under the bed,” he replied.

“Of course – where else?” Jessica said in the same even tone. Molly, who was far away on the other side of the table, did not see or hear what passed but she caught a glance from Jessica. As she looked at Bert she felt a little weak. A silly smile spread over her face, which she tried to remove as she turned her eyes on Mary Floyd, who was speaking.

There were twenty at dinner that night and she watched Mrs Mooney handing the dishes round, still with the same air of contentment. What's it all about, thought Molly to herself – these factories, that white elephant of a house in the country, Isabel – the whole lot? Why don't I go and live a small life, with Fred, with Bert, in peace? But then she wondered if Mrs Mooney's placid manner was really all it seemed or just the expression her employers liked her to wear. And reflected that a lot of people relied on her to keep going. And thought that perhaps even if she had a simple life she would not be plump, contented and placid but bored and fed up. Jamieson turned to her and said, “You're smiling.”

“I was just wishing for love in a cottage – me,” she said.

Jamieson did not laugh. “I don't suppose you're the only one here thinking that. But not many of us would last more than six months.”

Even by candlelight she saw that the healthy and generally good-looking faces were closed. Mouths opened in laughter, expressions were attentive, amused, interested. Molly, taking meat from the platter Mrs Mooney offered her, watched her go on to the next guest. Even if her placid good cheer was partly assumed when dealing with employers, it was still an honest face. She wondered if she, Molly, looked like the others – as if she were thinking too many thoughts at once, as if her face had been marked by the complicated life she led. And she looked across at Bert again. He was listening to something Jessica was saying and she could read kindness, attention, and discomfort on his face. That discomfort would be because Jessica was probably saying something spiteful or hinting at a secret and it was embarrassing for him to sense her misery and anger. I think he's too good for me, thought Molly. I'm afraid that's what'll ruin everything between us. Suddenly she remembered the letter she had received from Pentonville a week earlier. “Write to me, Molly dear,” Arnie Rose had written. “It's a dump but I can have as many letters as I like. Or a tape. Be nice to hear
how you're getting along.” It was funny, she thought, that terrible man, Arnie Rose, suddenly wanting a penfriend. She had tried to make a tape but the memory of having been tricked and sent to gaol by Arnie made her tone less than friendly. In the end she had dictated a cheerful-sounding letter to her secretary and sent off a food hamper and some fresh blank tapes, hoping that if Arnie started the conversational ball rolling she would be able to follow it up. There was no point in holding a grudge now the man was faced with dragging out the rest of his life in a top security prison wing. She said to Mary Floyd, “You won't believe this but I've only been abroad once – to Paris. My son's been all over the world, virtually – but I've been rooted here.” It had been with Johnnie, she remembered, recalling an unexpected snowfall over the Jardins de Luxembourg, the big bed with the big bolster at the hotel, the oysters, the wine, she'd been dizzy with love. She pulled herself back from memory, saying, “I know everybody needs a break from time to time,” she said. “I don't know why I never get one. That's why it's so marvellous being here –” She'd been in love then, she thought, and now she was again. She stole one of her rationed glances at Bert. She was waiting for evening, when she and Bert would go upstairs separately and then be together again. She had been drinking too fast and felt muzzy. Dinner seemed to have gone on for ever and even now, she noticed with horror, they were only just getting to the dessert. She refused some mousse, drank water and thought that it would be hours before they could go to bed.

She was relieved to be called from the drawing room after dinner. “What's up?” she asked her sister Shirley.

“Sorry to disturb your posh weekend,” Shirley said. “Thought I'd better tell you – the Liverpool transport men are starting a wildcat strike and the electricians up the factory have come out in sympathy. Wayne's talking to them now – that's why he asked me to ring you. He wants ideas, instructions from you. If you've got any,” her sister added. “You know the position – we've got a week to polish off the consignment and get it to the docks. We can't do either of those things with no electricians and no transport.”

“Tell him to do practically nothing,” Molly said. “Tell the whole factory we're coming in on Monday and I want a meeting – with everybody.”

“Listen,” said Shirley, “Wong wants us to line up some blackleg labour and work at night, with heavy security round the factory in case anyone sneaks in.”

“I don't want to do that,” Molly said.

“Well, I really don't think that you're going to get very far appealing to our electricians,” Shirley said. “I'll come up on Monday then, shall I?”

“And Wong too,” said Molly. “I'll see you both in the office about twelve.”

“What's happening?” said Shirley acutely. “You sound very – I don't know what. Love – that's it. You've met a bloke.”

“Mind your own business, Shirl,” Molly said affectionately.

Because she and Bert had spent the night talking and making love, Molly after breakfast retreated to the stone balcony outside the library. Here, in the sharp air, sitting in the pale April sunshine, and looking over the garden and on to the moors beyond, she fell into a doze, through which the voices of men in the library came to her only dimly. “Never could stand the woman – Maria Johnson, poor girl – incredible, I don't believe it – talking of abdication – Maria Johnson.”

But all the time Molly was feeling, through her doze, the mixture of languor and suspense lovers know at the beginning of a happy love affair. She wondered if it would be possible to live with Bert. The contrast between this new life, and the old one, with its fierce concentration on business, its responsibilities for so many others, was too great – she could never, surely, lead both lives at the same time. But would he want her? And would his wife return? And she sighed, and drifted into a deeper doze, hearing somehow, “Maria Johnson, Maria Johnson,” in her ears until some lover's instinct awoke her. She heard the library door open and Bert Precious's voice saying, “Is the front part of an
Observer
in here? Jessica wants it.”

Then came Donald Monteith's voice, “Bert's the man who'll know all about this. Here, Bert, tell us all about Maria Johnson. Did she ever exist?”

There was a silence, interrupted by another man. “Leave him alone, Donald. His lips are sealed.”

Bert said stiffly, “It's really not my story to tell.”

“Good God, Bert,” came Monteith's voice, sounding impatient. “It's all old history now. Better to get it all out in the open.”

And Molly, only wanting to spare Bert what sounded like an embarrassing moment, got up and walked in, saying, “I've just woken up – did you say something about an
Observer?
I've got one.”

Bert was looking at her in amazement but said, “Come with me
then, and give it to Jessica. I told her you wanted to see the pictures and she said she'd take you round.”

Later she and Bert were sitting on the hill above the loch. “I love you, Molly,” he told her. “But I've little to give.” He seemed, she thought, too sad.

“What do I want?” she asked him. “If you mean marriage – don't you think I know I've done that too often? As long as we can be happy –” and she gazed at him, but his expression did not lighten. He said slowly, “Perhaps there's something I should tell you –” and she hated his reluctance and the sense that he was carrying some kind of shame. She took his arm and said, “Tell me nothing. I don't need to know anything.” But she thought perhaps he wanted a confession forced from him while she just wanted to be happy. They might have very little time together, she thought, and she did not want to spoil it. She was too old, now, to believe that she, or he, could live for very long in a world of permanence.

As they lay back on the grass she said, “I'm afraid I've got to start very early tomorrow for Liverpool.”

“Ah,” he said sadly. “Will you still want to see me when you get back to London?”

She turned her head to look at him. “Do you think I wouldn't?”

“I thought perhaps I might be just a holiday romance,” he said, looking pleased with himself.

“I thought I might be,” she said.

“I'm not that kind,” he told her.

“Well, neither am I,” she said. “Just because I've got a bad reputation – it always seems much worse than I am.” She paused, “I suppose everybody thinks that. We all think we're innocent.”

“Fates are made partly by circumstances,” he said.

“And partly by choice,” she said.

“Choices are made by circumstances too,” he said. He was looking at the pale blue sky. His mood had again darkened.

“Oh,” she said, feeling impatient about the whole, sad discussion. “Who you are depends on what you choose. No point in denying it. Anyway, if people couldn't believe that, they'd hang themselves. There'd be no point in carrying on.”

“You're an optimist,” he said.

“Where would I be if I wasn't?” she asked. “People whose lives are all mapped out like yours can afford a little bit of gloom and melancholy. It'd be a luxury for me.” She knew positively that he was
talking about a subject which had nothing to do with her. She thought she had better ask him what he had been about to tell her earlier. “Is this to do with what you were going to tell me just now?” she asked.

“In a way,” he said. “There's a pub in the village. They open up for you if they know you. It's a few miles – can you walk it?”

“I'd go ten,” Molly said. “On the way you tell me what you were going to tell me.”

“I don't think I can,” he said.

Molly, bewildered, shrugged and stood up. “I'll tell you about my strike, then,” she said. She was beginning to feel very gloomy. She had not expected a lifetime of careless happiness but she was disconcerted by Bert's sudden withdrawal, so much like the attitude of a man who does not want to break the news that he is leaving one woman for another. She wished now she had listened at first, when he was prepared to speak. They kissed by the big trunk of a pine tree and she thought it was all right again.

“A drink, then lunch, then a screw in the afternoon,” she told him.

“That's known as a siesta,” he told her.

“Not where I come from,” said she.

They were let into the little dark pub opposite the church, where the door was promptly bolted behind them. In the dim light created because the shutters had been closed Molly sipped her beer, tried not to make a face and said, “What was all that about in the library? You sounded upset when Donald Monteith asked you about that woman – Maria somebody.”

He glanced at two men sitting at the bar, drinking their illicit Sunday beer and told her, “I can't really talk about it, Molly.” He paused. “I really can't. Not now.”

“Somebody else's secret?” suggested Molly.

He sighed and said, “That's right – somebody else's secret.” But he seemed so depressed by what he was thinking that Molly said, “I expect it's all over and done with now. Not your fault, is it? Come on – don't let it play on your mind – don't spoil the day. Drink up your horrible beer and I'll get you another one.”

The sensations of an adulterous husband, facing a cheerful and unsuspecting wife, must be nothing compared with the shame I felt, as Molly tried to cheer me up, and I sat in that dark pub wondering what on earth to do. If I didn't tell her what I knew of her, that I'd been
following her almost all her life, I'd be deceiving her in a terrifying way. If I did tell her, what would she do? She might cause a massive scandal. She would certainly believe I had betrayed her. Like many a man in my position, I didn't want to be truthful because I couldn't face her rage or her rejection. Basically I was just going on, hoping we could go on loving each other, hoping that the deception in which I was involved would somehow make no difference. It was pathetic and, looking back, I'm still horrified by my own stupidity. Naturally, after that, things changed between us. Chiefly because of my own feelings – I may have been a villain, but I can't say I was an effective one. I lost a lot more than I gained, that day, because of my dutiful, cowardly silence.