All The Days of My Life (96 page)

“You do realize, Molly, you need never have any more anxieties about money,” he told her.

“Nice, Bert – nice,” she said wearily. “Hold out the bribe when the victim begins to cry with tiredness. What happens? I sign – then I'm allowed on the payroll with the others? Look, Bert, in all this confusion one thing stands out – I don't want anything to do with it. Not a thing. I have to keep quiet for Fred's sake. A boy in his teens doesn't want incest thrown in his face. I've got no ambitions to queen it over this ramshackle place – four million out of work – country sold off to greedy men and foreigners – the shame'd kill me. I don't fancy driving through Brixton, or Corby or Leeds or Glasgow, thinking, Goody, goody. These slums and this misery are mine, all mine. Aren't I lucky? I tell you this – if you'd sat there and asked me, as if it was just an idle question, whether I'd rather be who you say I am or just be Sid and Ivy Waterhouse's daughter and Joe Endell's widow I'd soon've told you where you could stuff your crown and orb. No,” she said, staring at him intently, “you can't believe it, can you? You and your family were born with flexible knees and a dutiful smile on your faces. Your greatest pleasure is respecting your betters, isn't it? Well – you have, Bert, you have, but just think – while you've been respecting them you haven't respected me. You've kept me in ignorance of who my parents were for over forty years. I've struggled and I've suffered and I've been to prison. You let me marry Joe Endell, which I doubt if I'd've done if I'd had the information you've been keeping from me. And you've been spying on me, Bert, and writing things down. And you've been
watching me like a hawk, I bet, in case I got in too much disgrace or in case I found out what I should have been told in the first place. That's your respect, Bert. Respect for them – not for me, not even for yourself. No wonder you think I ought to feel honoured to be included. They've made you feel so inferior so, naturally, I'm even more inferior. I ought to feel pleased about getting elevated. I'm not. It's disgusting.”

He came to life and said, “Molly, I can't listen to any more of this rubbish. I've tried to be reasonable. You have to understand that all this arose because no one knew what to do – it all happened at the wrong time-” Then he sighed and said, “This is insupportable. You're right – my position's ridiculous. I'd better go. Before I do, will you give me your promise that you won't do anything until we've had a chance to talk again?”

“The old racket,” she said tiredly. “Don't move till I tell you to – then I find out you've used the time to get organized.”

“Why do you take this attitude?” he asked. “No one wants to trap you.”

All Molly said, wearily, was, “Get out, Bert. I can't stand any more.”

After he had gone she sat still for a few moments, trying to work out what had happened. She telephoned her brother, Jack, at the House of Commons and told him what Herbert Precious had said. He listened, without interrupting and then said, “Molly – you sound ill – I'm coming round.”

“Don't come, Jack,” she told him. “I'm too tired. I never felt so tired. I want to get some sleep.”

“Phone me if you need me,” he said. “Don't do anything yet. Let me think about it, too.” He was sounding more and more shaken as he took in what had happened. “What a bloody mess,” he said. “How could they do it? How?”

“I don't know,” she said wearily. “I don't know anything.” And then said, “There's a bit more.” She told him, then, about George Messiter's discovery. Jack said, “Oh, my God, Molly. It's all too much. Look – get some sleep and I'll be round first thing. Are you all right?”

She told him she was, then put all the telephones on to record messages and went to bed. As she slept she could hear the first ringing of phones in the flat and downstairs in the offices. She woke at one o'clock in the morning and lay awake, realizing she could not go back to Framlingham next day. Richard would have recovered from his fit of sensibility about the presence of the guards and both he and Isabel
would be waiting, half-flattered by the importance of living in a guarded camp, excited by the secret discovery which made it necessary and able to indulge in princely sulks about the inconveniences of the situation. Any hint of her dealings with Herbert Precious would interest them more and she, exhausted as she was, felt she could not face the need to make decisions surrounded by curious witnesses looking for information. Any hint of a coming industrial fortune, or of royal connections, would lead Richard to abandon the actress she was fairly sure he saw in London and take over the position of the bookish young squire of Framlingham in dead earnest. Meanwhile Isabel would start the cellar-to-attic search for her missing pearls.

She usually conducted this when a particularly grandiose fit overtook her. Molly, who knew the pearls had probably been stolen at Josephine's wedding, had ceased to be sorry about the loss and now dreaded the hunt.

No, she thought, as she lay on the big, brass-knobbed bed that night, she could not go to Framlingham next day. She felt as if she were in a great sea, where the waters were slowly being sucked back and back, forming a huge tidal wave in the distance which would soon speed towards her, break and engulf her completely.

In the short while before she slept again she was blackberrying in the lanes and down the hedges of the fields in Framlingham.

Jack was beside her in his thick boots, pushing back the pungent brambles under a hot sun. She could feel the heat, the stickiness of the fruit on her purple fingers, the itch of the scratches on her legs and arms and the little prickings of the bramble spikes in her fingers.

Then, there she was, dancing at the Roxy Ballroom with Jim Flanders, while the coloured lights went round and round, feeling the rough material of his jacket against her bare shoulders and arms, smelling her own heavily scented face powder and the sickly spray which they sometimes wafted into the ballroom on crowded nights. The band played as she swung round and round in Jim's arms. Then out, shivering into the wet city streets, eating chips from the bag as they walked home together, arms right round each other, dizzy with the lights and the music.

There was fog in all the windows the day Jim was hanged, Johnnie Bridges was kissing her on the canal bank where the greenish water lay sluggish under the wall overhung by trees, she was sitting on the sofa talking quietly to Steven Greene at night, Ferenc Nedermann lay on the bed, dead, with his eyes open, Joe Endell was bounding up Meakin
Street towards her with a big file held across his chest and, on top, a bunch of chrysanthemums. Josephine lay like a goblin, screaming in her cot, Mrs Gates trickled golden syrup on to her porridge in the shape of a wobbling M, George Messiter lay asleep with his head on the bench, next to the silver globe which was his new engine, corks popped, a baby cried, Ivy said, “You can't have everything.”

The film went on running. At one moment she was making love to Johnnie Bridges in the bed she now lay on, then standing cold by Steven Greene's grave. There were flames everywhere, the woman's voice sang in French, the nurse in the gleaming corridor said, “It won't be long, now,” and she was searching Sid's pockets for sweets on Friday night when he came in from work, the boughs on the trees above the canal wall swayed. Am I dreaming or dying, she wondered, before she fell asleep.

She woke again quite early and could not think of anything but evading the return to Framlingham. She rang her office manager at home and told him not to come to work – she asked him to tell the others. She rang Framlingham and spoke, guiltily, to Fred. She told him that she would be back fairly soon, but could not say when. Exhausted by the effort of seeming to be in charge she lay down, quite frightened by her own behaviour, but giving way to an animal sense of needing to lie low and undisturbed. And so she sat in the little sitting room at Meakin Street, doing nothing. She lay on her bed watching the sparrows fly in and out of the bare branches of the sycamore tree which was growing, unwanted and unencouraged, in the yard at the back of the house. The doorbell rang and she did not answer it. She had forgotten Jack was supposed to be coming. The telephones rang and cut off as messages were put on the recording machine. Molly was not happy as the telephones rang more frequently. She was nagged by the thought that she had decisions to make, and constantly pushed the thoughts to the back of her head. On the second day of all this she thought, “I'm going mad” and did not care. She slept, had uneasy dreams, sat remembering the clang of the doors in Holloway, the popping of the corks at the Dorchester and the sound of Lord Clover's voice, taking her through Cabinet meetings while she lay, naked and unmoving, on a fur cover on the bed in Highgate. During this time she did not bathe, dress or comb her hair. She ate very little and never felt hungry. Sometimes she muttered to herself, “Too much has happened.” On the third day, as the ringing of the doorbell grew insistent and the telephones took more and more messages, Molly, making
herself a cup of tea and hearing all the bells thought, “No – no – shut up.” But something inside her told her that it was over. That evening someone put a thumb on the bell and left it there and from above she heard Shirley shouting, “Molly! I know you're in there! Answer the door! If you don't I'm calling the others and we're going to break it in. Come on – don't be a stupid bitch. Open up now or we'll smash the lock.”

Her sister surveyed her dressing-gown and tousled hair as she stood in the doorway. She looked carefully at her face, decided all was well and walked in. “Are you all right?” she asked. Molly nodded.

“Jack told me,” Shirley said. “We thought we'd leave you alone for a bit, if it was what you wanted. But then they started telling me you'd done yourself in,” she said. “Wanted to get the police to break in – I said you weren't the type. But I thought I'd come and take a look at you.”

“I wish you hadn't,” muttered Molly.

“I wish I hadn't,” Shirley said. “I don't like what I see. But you've picked a silly way to try and have a holiday. Want a cup of tea?”

Upstairs, looking at the unwashed dishes and packets open in the kitchen, she said, “What a rats' nest.” Turning round from filling the kettle she said, “You've been pushing yourself too hard for years. Now it's all this royal family carry-on. And George Messiter's discovery which is probably a lot more important. That's why you came here and fell to pieces. Personally I don't think Jack's a lot of use. He doesn't seem to know what he thinks. Still –” she said, with the air of a person staying away from worrying subjects during a visit to a patient in hospital, “Never mind all that. What are you taking the aspirin for?” She looked at the open bottle on the kitchen counter.

“Headache,” said Molly. “Everybody gets them.” She added, “No need to treat me like a mental patient, Shirl.”

“You might as well let me,” Shirley said. “You know it's all waiting for you out there.” As she poured out the tea she said, “Look – do you really want to go away for a bit? On a holiday – even a week or two's rest at a clinic – whatever you want. We can keep everything going. No one's indispensable, you know.”

Molly was conscious, although she did not want to be, that Shirley and the others had decided they would take over for her if they had to. But she knew she could not accept the offer. With an effort she said, “I think I'm going to have to keep on going.” And put her hand to her brow, where she felt a stab of pain. “Headache?” Shirley said. “That's
your body threatening you, Molly. I'm going to get a doctor.”

“Shut up, Shirley,” Molly said, knowing that Ivy Waterhouse had taken over her sister's mind and was now in complete control. That being so, there was nothing she, Molly, could do to stop her.

“Might as well give in,” Shirley told her, with the telephone in her hand. All she said on the telephone was, “Dr Bleasdale – she'll see you.” A plan had been made beforehand.

“Well, then, Shirley,” Molly said encouragingly. “That's settled–I'll let him in when he comes. You can go now.”

Shirley shook her head grimly. “I'm here – and I'm stopping,” she said.

“I only want to be left alone,” Molly said in a tired voice.

“Treat me as a buffer between you and the rest of the world,” Shirley said. “Get into bed and have a sleep till Dr Bleasdale comes.”

Molly could hear her downstairs, running through the recorded messages and making return calls. A little later she was upstairs again, asking what she wanted for supper. The doctor, she thought, could not be any worse than her sister, with her energetic and bossy air. But he was. He appeared disappointed to find the capable industrialist laid low. After examining her he said, with an air of mild reproach, “The problem appears to be that you've been overdoing it. I'll make an appointment for you to have a thorough overhaul, but for now I'll leave a prescription for some tablets.”

After he had gone Molly screwed up the prescription and threw it across the room. “Overhaul,” she said. “What does he think I am – an old car? Where did you dig him up from?”

“He's my own doctor,” Shirley said.

“I don't need someone about who expects me to be well so they can feel better about life,” she said.

Shirley shrugged patiently. Molly went to sleep. Next day she sent for another doctor. Molly refused to see him. “Even an animal's allowed to lie down in a bit of straw on its own when it wants to,” she told her sister. “Why don't you piss off – get the district nurse to look in on me from time to time.”

She heard the doctor, in the hall, use the words, “nursing home”. Later she listened to Shirley arguing with Herbert Precious, who was evidently on the doorstep. “It's you and your crooked tricks which've triggered all this, that's what I think,” she was saying. “And now you come bothering her – you're the last person she needs at this time.”