All The Days of My Life (34 page)

Simon Tate walked down Meakin Street that evening, finding it narrow and depressing. A thin and malignant dog barked at him through mist laden with drizzle. A woman walked past, heavy-legged and bowed down with shopping. He knocked on the door of number 19. It was opened by a tired woman in her late thirties, with coarsely dyed blonde hair tied back and held with a black velvet bow at the nape of her neck. She looked at him with the alert, slightly sceptical
expression which he recognized as Molly Flanders'. Behind her a pretty two-year-old with round, brown eyes and curly hair stood clutching a grubby doll.

“I'm a friend of Molly's,” he said, “from Frames. I brought these.” He presented the bunch of roses he had in his hand. The woman looked at him and said, “Come in, then. She's in the front room.”

In the small parlour Molly sat with her feet on a stool, smoking and watching TV. She looked up apathetically and then her expression brightened. “Simon!” she cried.

“Here you are, Molly,” said Simon. “Hope you're feeling a lot better.”

“Excuse me,” said Ivy, now satisfied that the visitor was welcome, “we're just eating our tea. Fancy a cup of tea, later?”

“Thank you,” said Simon. “I'm just back from Kenya – thought I'd look in.”

Simon sat down and said, “That's what it's all about. I've come with a proposition from the Roses. They called me back – found out where I was from the man I used to share the flat with. They've offered me extra wages and they want you back too. They've been trying to run the place with other staff but it hasn't worked out. I'm here to say, how about it?”

“All right for you,” said Molly. “They want you because you do your job well. But my worry is that Arnie Rose wants me for other reasons. I mean, I could do with the work but I don't want it on condition I take on Arnie Rose.”

“Well, it was Norman who asked me to ask you,” he said. “He told me you were attractive, confident and efficient and honest, and you knew the job. Arnie didn't come into it, as far as I know. You'd get more money.”

“The other problem is, who would look after Josephine?” Molly told him.

“What about your mother –” Simon suggested.

“She's got a responsible job managing a breadshop. And she likes it,” Molly said. “Why should she have to give it up?”

“Up the ante on the Roses. They've offered you twenty a week,” Simon responded. “Say you'll do it for twenty-five. With your tips you could afford to make it worth your mother's while.”

“Why shouldn't she have a life of her own?” Mary said impatiently.

“Who?” demanded Ivy, coming into the room.

“You, if you want to know,” her daughter told her.

“I thought I had one,” said Ivy. “Too much of it, most of the time.”

Simon looked at Ivy and decided that she was the sort of woman who made up her own mind. So he put the matter to her. And Ivy said that she would take Josephine over during the week, that she would book her in to a state nursery in the mornings and take her to work with her in the afternoons. She added that Mary had to collect Josephine every Friday night and return her at a decent hour on Sundays. She added that all this was subject to Sid's approval but it seemed to Simon this was only a nod to convention.

“Done, then,” said Simon, standing up. “It'll be good to have you back. But do you think you're fit enough?”

“Fit for anything,” declared Molly. “But is the flat still going? I've got to find somewhere to live. No point in you having the weekend off without Josephine, Mum, if I come here with her. And she won't know what's going on.”

“Flat's gone,” Simon said laconically. “Arnie let it to a bloke called Greene. He's a slightly dubious doctor – unqualified, specializes in looking after society gentlemen and ladies' bad backs – and other things, too. He also draws their pets – dogs and horses and the like. He's the kind of versatile chap they used to keep about the courts of Europe in the old days – could be relied on to produce a love philtre, play a few relaxing songs on the guitar when the king felt out of sorts, and generally help out on any and every occasion.” Mary thought there might be more to Greene's talents than he was prepared to say in front of Ivy, but at that moment she was more concerned with her own predicament.

“I'll have to go to an agency and find a flat,” she said despondently.

“I think Sid told me the Tomkinsons were moving out of number 4, where you used to live,” Ivy said. “He works at the garage but they've got the deposit for a house, now.”

“Oh, Christ, Mum,” Molly said. “Not there. I can't go there.” In that house she had weathered out the time after Jim Flanders was hanged. In that house her romance with Johnnie Bridges had begun.

“The rent's low, if the landlord'll let you have it. If you go to an agency you'll get some tiny rathole for twenty guineas a week – and it won't disturb Josie so much –”

Molly groaned. “Have a word with him, then,” she told her mother. “Tell him I'll pay half the price of having a bathroom installed if he'll pay the other half. That'll convince the mean sod. I can't be running up
here for a bath all the time like I used to and Josie's too big to bathe in the sink any more. All right, Tate,” she said, rounding on him. “Now you can go home with a Balkan Sobranie drooping out of your mouth after a nice evening witnessing the problems of the poor.”

“I was admiring your velocity,” remarked Simon. “Goodbye, Mrs Waterhouse. Goodbye, Molly. Monday night at eight?”

And he was gone. “Nice man,” Ivy said. “That's the sort you should be setting your cap at from now on, Mary.”

“Thanks a lot, mum,” said her daughter drily.

The next day Molly put on her old fur coat, mittens and a woolly hat and took a heavily bundled up Josephine out to the scruffy little park.

The sky overhead was livid and dark as they arrived. “It might snow,” she told Josephine, who jumped up and down, crying “Snow! Snow!” Molly looked down at her. She was a tartar, and no mistake, she thought. Half the time she clung wordlessly to Ivy's skirts, or sheltered behind Sid. Seconds later she'd be rattling away, nineteen to the dozen, getting hold of a neglected can of paint and painting the back of the house red, sternly counting the milk bottles in front of the milkman, as if checking the delivery, rushing and tearing everywhere. There were times when Mary looked into the bright, huge brown eyes and feared for a child of such emphatic character.

As the first flakes of snow floated down on to the shabby grass and leafless trees of the park, Josephine's round eyes glittered and her little round face was transfigured. She ran across the thin coating of snow on the grass and studied her footprints, she held out her palm and caught the flakes.

Molly watched her, shivering slightly. Back to Frames, she thought. Well, why not? Back to number 4 Meakin Street – again, why not?

In the deserted park, where Josephine was now scraping thin snow together to make a little snowman, she found a man beside her.

“She's a nice child,” said Ferenc Nedermann.

Molly looked at him, startled. What was he doing here again?

“She's never seen snow before,” she told him.

“It reminds me of winters in my own country,” he said.

“Where's that?” she asked.

“Poland,” he said. “On the German border.”

“That can't have been nice,” she said and moved away. She stood by Josephine saying, “There's not a lot of snow here, Josie. Not really enough for a snowman.” But the child had seen pictures of snowmen in books, with pipes in their mouths and lumps of coal for eyes.

“A little one – I have a little one,” insisted the child. Molly knelt down on the snow to help her. She called back at Nedermann, “If you're still looking for Johnnie I can't help you. I'm not hiding him.”

“I know where he is,” Nedermann said. “The Roses found him.”

“Oh, God,” Molly said, squeezing the tiny snowman near the top, to make a head. She sat back on her sopping knees and said to Josie, “Run and get two very little stones for his eyes.” The child trotted off. “What did they do to him?” she called.

“They made him pay up – then they beat him up a little bit,” he told her.

“What about the money he owes you?” she asked.

“I didn't get all of it.”

She looked at the stones Josephine held out. “They're a bit big,” she said. Nedermann was beside her. In his leather palm were some small pieces of gravel.

“Thanks,” she said, taking them as he crouched beside her. Very carefully, she put them on to the snowman's tiny face. They stuck. Josephine laughed. Then she wandered off, kicking up the snow as she went. Molly put a little piece of brown twig into the snowman's face. “There's his pipe,” she said with satisfaction.

Then she looked Nedermann in the face and asked, “Well – you found him. What do you want now?”

“Oh,” he said calmly. “I was near here and I wondered if you'd be back. I have to go now. I've got the car. Do you want a lift home?”

“Not a chance,” said Molly, who saw that Josephine's friend Sally had arrived in the care of her big sister. “That's her friend,” she said. “She'll want to stay until it gets dark now.”

“Children should enjoy as much as they can,” he told her. “There is no such thing as too much pleasure for a child. Childhood is short.”

“You're right,” said Molly. She felt uneasy and wished he would go away. She did not know what he wanted. His face was always expressionless and his voice flat. It was the voice of a man in despair. And she wondered what the children of his tenants were doing now. Playing round dangerous oil heaters in their crowded flats? Lying on mattresses damp with the moisture coming into the rooms from leaky roofs and running walls?

“I expect we'll meet again,” she said. “I don't know if you're a gambler – I'm getting back my old job as a croupier at Frames, in South Molton Street.”

“I shall come and see you,” he said, and left her courteously.

Watching the little girls play she wondered if they had marked pretty Johnnie's face. It would make a big difference to him if they'd scarred him, she thought. He would mind that more than anything.

The next time I saw Molly it was with my father. At Frames. The affair began in a peculiar way, with my mother coming to me in a great distress, almost as soon as I entered the house. I was going to spend the weekend at home and go back to Oxford on Sunday. But, no, she said, if the occasion demanded it, I would have to stay.

Matters must be sorted out. She was, in fact, dreadfully upset. She had discovered a bill from Frames in my father's suit when she was emptying the pockets before giving it to the cleaners. Worse than that, this was the second bill she had found. The first he had left on the dressing-table one night and she had come across it in the morning. I'm sure she would not have been nearly so upset by this evidence of a new interest in gambling and fast living by my father if she had not been the youngest daughter of the famous Arthur Udall, “Flash” Udall, who travelled with the fast set surrounding King Edward VII and had, before my mother's childish eyes, brought a family of five daughters to ruin before the First World War. He'd done this by the old means of wine and women but the chief cause of his downfall had been a readiness to bet on anything, anywhere, at any time, from a racehorse to relative speeds of two flies crawling up the wallpaper. So my poor mother had seen her mother's tears and half the property sold off before the old reprobate eventually died in his sins, keeling over on Derby Day just as the horse he backed crossed the finishing line in front. He left his wife nearly penniless with five daughters, four unmarried. Small wonder the little Udalls were forbidden to play cards, or wager over their Racing Demon even with matchsticks or hairpins. Small wonder my mother looked on gambling as man's worst form of weakness. She was naturally even more upset that my father had not confided in her. This secrecy seemed to make his visits to a gaming club more sinister still. So, in a state of great agitation, she asked me, the eldest son, to discuss the matter with my father. And I, feeling the whole thing was rather Victorian and ridiculous, agreed to do so.

The old-fashioned scene took place in his study after dinner. My father burst out laughing and then sobered a little when I told him how genuinely upset my mother had been. “Well,” he said, “there are
several reasons why I didn't tell your mother what I have been doing, one of them being her sensitivity on the subject. But I assure you none of those reasons involved a sudden excess of gambling fever. In fact, I've spent two dull evenings at Frames in the last month and tonight I shall spend another one – piously hoping I shall never have to cross the threshold again. In fact, partly to cheer me while I'm there, and partly to impress on you the fact that of all men's ways of passing the time gambling is the dullest and least profitable, I now invite you to join me in an outing after dinner. Personally I'd rather go to King's Cross and watch the trains go in and out.”

“I wouldn't mind,” I said, rather excitedly. “I've always wanted to go to somewhere like Frames. But what shall I tell Mother? She'll think I've been bitten by the bug, too, and we'll both be dragged down into hell together. Anyway, what are you doing, going time after time to a place you hate?”

“Part of the job, my boy, that's all,” said my father. “I'd better not tell you any more. I'll speak to your mother – at least I can tell her that after tonight I'm giving it up for good. I can blame Tubby Atkinson. I always make him come with me.” And at this my father chuckled and went out of the room to find mother. I, who lived on the same staircase as Tom Allaun, had often heard from him and his cousin Charlie wild tales of high stakes, perilous games and fortunes won and lost at Frames. I was excited – although I sincerely hoped not to run into either of them. But even as we walked through the discreet front door in the quiet West End street I was still wondering what on earth my father was coming here for.