All The Days of My Life (58 page)

“Oh, George,” she said, realizing the cars were from the undertaker's and Lil Messiter must be dead.

“Molly!” said a surprised voice. “Molly! What are you doing here?”

Molly looked towards the doorway and there stood Cissie, Lil's daughter, short and thin, wearing a good grey suit and well-polished black court shoes.

She said, “I was just coming past. Is it –”

Cissie nodded. “Mum,” she said briefly. “Pneumonia. She left it too long. We've just had the funeral. Would you like to come in?”

Molly nodded. She put her arm round George and drew him in with her.

Two children stood in the hall. Inside Mary noticed, with astonishment, her own sofa, her own blue carpet, now stained and gritty, and even her own net curtains hanging dirtily at the window. Cissie, pouring her a glass of whisky, said, “I couldn't do very much – I was at a conference when it happened. We thought a quiet funeral – just family –”

Molly saw only three adults in the room.

“Very strange – you being in the street at the very moment –” Cissie said, handing her the glass. “I'd better go back in the kitchen. I've made a few sandwiches and there's a cake – it's not been done right,” she added, violently, “I know that.”

‘I'll come and give you a hand,” Molly said, rising. Cissie's brother-in-law, Ron, also got to his feet, went over and poured himself a whisky from the bottle on the table. The two children ran upstairs. Soon their feet began to sound overhead.

In the kitchen Cissie tutted. “Useless lot,” she said, referring to the trio in the other room. “They've left it all to me. Poor old mum – Phil and Artie couldn't even come, worse luck. Phil's the best of them all but he's on a ship to New Zealand. Artie's up in the Firth of Forth, on a nuclear sub.” She sniffed. A tear fell on the plate she was picking up. “She had a rotten life,” she said.

“I know,” Molly said. “I can't understand why Mum and Dad aren't here. Didn't you tell them?”

“Your dad's got flu – didn't you know?” Cissie asked.

“I've been away,” Molly said.

“But I thought –” Cissie said.

“No – not that kind of away. Prison – I got out months ago,” Molly said bluntly.

“Oh, God,” said Cissie. “What's it all about?”

“Well, you're doing well, Cis,” Molly told her. “Conferences and so forth. Your mum must have been pleased.”

“That's right,” said Cissie. “I've avoided what she got.”

Molly thought that she was not happy, not at this moment. She had organized her life so as to evade her mother's fate – the poverty, the bad husband, the large family – and now the sufferer was dead. Cissie sniffed again and carried in two plates of sandwiches. Mary followed with more.

They were back in the kitchen again. Molly washed the jug and filled it with water. She took it in. The others, halfway down the whisky bottle, were talking about Lil Messiter. “She should have stood up to him more,” Ron's sister said in a blurry voice.

“Not easy in those days,” said the bearded brother-in-law.

“I'd lie there at night,” Cissie's sister murmured. “Hearing it go on and dreaming of killing him.”

Back in the kitchen Molly said, “I forgot to ask – why did she move here – your mum?”

“Old Soames, the landlord, died. His children wanted to sell off some of the houses. They reckoned Mum's was so horrible they'd better get it fixed up before worse occurred. So they offered her this and did the old one up and sold it. There's a TV producer living there now.”

“Get away,” Molly said, impressed.

“In Meakin Street,” said Cissie. “A TV producer. We used to think that Mr Fainlight was posh because he had a desk job at the Gas Board.”

“I think I'll go and get your nephew and niece from upstairs,” Molly said. “I bet they're rummaging through your mum's things.”

“You're an angel, Molly,” said Cissie. “I suppose they'll want a cup of tea in there.”

“Tell them to get it themselves,” Molly said. “As a matter of fact, they're my cups and it's my furniture they're sitting on.” And she went upstairs and found the boy and girl, who were both about nine, in a litter of Lil Messiter's old cardigans and tired dresses. They were dressed in two of her old slips and tottering about on high-heeled shoes.

“Take that lot off and get downstairs,” Molly said unceremoniously. She stood threateningly over them as they struggled out of Lil's old petticoats and kicked off her battered shoes. It seemed like a final outrage. As she followed them sadly downstairs, she noticed the stains on the carpet Lil must have made as she slopped wearily up to bed with her glass still in her hand. What could you say about Lil Messiter's life
– that she had six children, never hurt a fly, died as uncomplainingly as she had lived?

Re-entering the front room Molly sat down next to Cissie. Ron had his arm round his sister, a pale girl who giggled. Molly thought she was probably stoned. Cissie's sister, Edna, looked at her sternly. George, Lil's youngest child, sat in a corner, reading a magazine with a dismantled bicycle on the front.

“What's happening to George, now?” she asked Cissie.

“Going to live in Wimbledon with Ron and Edna,” Cissie told her. “Luckily they've got a spare room. It's the only answer. Phil and Artie are at sea, I live half my life in the hospital.” Cissie added in an undertone, “The trouble is that George's school wants to put him on a special engineering course, part-time. He's good at it, you see. But if he has to go to Wimbledon he'll have to change schools.”

“Oh dear,” Molly said.

“Where are you, now?” Cissie asked curiously. “Must take a bit of sorting out when you've been in prison.”

Molly grinned. “Say that for old friends,” she remarked. “They don't mince words. Well, Cis, I'm nowhere. I've just pulled round after a long time on the tramp. I broke in pieces while I was in Holloway. So now I'm going to go back to the secretarial course I was taking before it all happened.”

“You'll be able to get a good job,” Cissie said. Molly nodded.

“I just sold a ring I got from Ferenc Nedermann, the property developer,” she said candidly. “That'll pay for a place to live. When I've finished the secretarial course I'll get a job and save the rest. Nest egg.”

There was a roar of laughter from Ron. His sister looked embarrassed as a whisky stain spread on the sofa.

“I'd better go,” Molly said.

“Have another drink,” Cissie said. “I want to talk to you.” Molly looked at her back. It was straight and energetic. She knew instinctively, because she had known Cissie as a battling, determined child, that she had made her mind up about something. In the meanwhile Cissie's sister Edna came and sat beside her.

“Molly, isn't it?” she said in a high, plangent voice. “It must be years since we've met. But I'm always hearing about you.”

“Well, I expect you are,” Molly said, knowing that Edna must have enjoyed the details of her scandalous life.

“No wonder, really, is it? I mean, they all say, when Mary Waterhouse
is about, something always happens,” Edna told her with satisfaction. Molly sensed an attack. She changed the subject, “I hear George is moving in with you,” she said.

Edna told her, “Ronnie's being very good about it. He says, all in all, blood's thicker than water.” But Molly reflected that Edna herself sounded unhappy about the prospect of having her young brother in the house. She felt sorry for George, who was exchanging life in Meakin Street with his poor, wrecked mother for what looked like a cold home with his sister. The boy, in his corner, reading, looked weak, overgrown and incapable of bearing very much more.

Cissie, standing in front of Molly and Edna, said unceremoniously, “Come in the kitchen, Molly. I want to talk to you.” Her sister, as Molly stood up, looked at Cissie with dislike.

In the kitchen Molly stared at Cissie, standing, small and straight, with her back to the door which led into the yard. “What's on your mind, Cis?” she asked.

“It's like this, Molly,” Cissie said. “You can see what a bitch Edna is. And her husband's not just narrow-minded, like she is. I think he's brutal, as well. I think he hits Edna.” For a moment she seemed to lose her firmness. Her small face sagged and she sighed, “I don't suppose she's got over her childhood, any more than any of us have.”

“You're all right,” Molly told her reassuringly.

“Almost,” Cissie said. “Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I can't take George and nor can the others and we're the only ones who'd help him. What I'm asking you is – if I give you this place to live in, will you have him as a lodger? That way he can go on and take his engineering classes.”

“Phew,” Molly said. “The problem is, if Josie comes here where will everybody sleep? There's only two bedrooms.”

“George can sleep in the front room, if he has to,” Cissie said firmly. “I'll pay for one of those settees that turns into a bed. I can fix up a grant for you, for looking after him. We'll pay for his clothes. I don't want you to think I'm asking you to keep him – but I want him taken care of properly. He's had a rotten childhood. I don't want him in Edna's house, getting bullied by that man. I don't want him to lose his chance to do his engineering, either. He's amazing, Molly, he really is. He can fix anything, make anything –”

“I need somewhere to live,” Molly said.

“Give it a try, that's all I'm asking,” Cissie pleaded, with all the desperation of the oldest child of an uncertain family. “I'm saving to
get my own house and I'm trying to change my job so I'm not on call all the time. It wouldn't be for too long. All I want is for George to go on with his course until I can take him. The thing is,” she said, as if she were suddenly weary, “I can't say I approve of everything you've done but you're trying and at least you're goodhearted. I've got confidence in you. Otherwise off goes George, like a homeless dog, and God knows what'll happen to him. I've got the tenancy here. They'd have a job getting you out, especially if George was here with you –”

Molly made up her mind. “Done,” she said.

“Thank God,” said Cissie, suddenly drinking from the glass she had poured out for Molly. “That's a big weight off my mind.”

Molly smiled. “Well – I'm back, it seems,” she said, looking round. “Same old gas stove – same old sink.”

Cissie said, “About the rent –”

Molly told her, “Can you take care of George till I've seen Sid and Ivy, got things straight here, and all that? Supposing I give you a ring tomorrow evening –”

“All right, Molly,” Cissie said.

“Leave it to you to break the news to the family –” Molly told her, disappearing through the door.

The decision to take over the house in Meakin Street and its occupant seemed to clarify Molly's thoughts. As she walked from Beckenham Station she reflected that yes, she had failed as a daughter, and yes, she had been a terrible mother, and that having got herself stupidly trapped by Johnnie Bridges she should at least have had the decency to come straight out of prison and try to reclaim herself. Nevertheless, she wanted no more shame and guilt. Sid and Ivy might not like her when she turned up but she would just face them, offer her daughter a home and, if the reception was too bad, just turn round and go away again.

Despite everything, as she walked up Abbot's Close, she could not help smiling. With its trees planted in little squares of earth in the pavement, its neat little houses, built in the '30s, its tidy gardens and wooden fences, here was everything Ivy had always wanted. In the long years at Meakin Street, where window panes rattled, where the kitchen was dark and inconvenient and where you could put your fingers into the big crack running down the back wall, Ivy had talked about her dream home passionately, inventively and obsessively.
“There's nothing like owning your own place – nothing,” she had declared. “Look at this place. Do you know when they put it up – to house the men who built the Albert Hall, that's who! It's a hundred years old. What I want is my own home, with a modern kitchen, easy to run, a bit of garden, some fresh air, not like this stuffy atmosphere. This place is making an old woman of me – I've given half my life to it. A thankless bloody task if ever there was one –”

Twenty, Abbot's Close was semi-detached, with a bow window covered by net curtains. There was a garden, with chrysanthemums in the borders and a neat lawn. Roses had been pruned neatly. Molly, now very nervous, yet delighted at the prospect of at last seeing her parents and daughter, rang the doorbell. Chimes inside the house reproduced the sound of Big Ben.

Ivy answered the door in a smart navy blue two-piece. Her hair had been set recently. She fell back, clutching her heart. “Mary! Oh Mary!” she cried. Molly stepped forward and hugged her. Her decision to face the family out, let them accept her or reject her as they willed, fell apart immediately. “Oh, Mum,” she wailed, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I stayed away so long.”

“We've been sick with worry,” Ivy said, “sick.” Drawing away she shouted, “Sid! Josie! Come and see what the cat dragged in! Hurry up!”

Turning back to Molly she said, “You could at least have sent us a postcard, Molly, saying you were all right. It's been terrible.”

“I was all washed up, mum,” sniffed Molly.

Sid stood in tears, unable to move, outside the living room door. A fat girl with brown curly hair rushed past him and pulled up short a few paces in front of Molly. “Mum!” she shouted.

“Sorry I stayed away so long, Josie,” Molly said to her daughter. Josie gave her a kiss and said, “Well – you're back now.”