“You ought to be learning shorthand,” he said, watching the bent curly head as she ran a finger down a column of figures, adding them almost as fast as he could himself.
She nodded without taking her eyes from the paper, said quietly, “I know. But I haven’t the time. Later, perhaps.”
She was painfully aware of the passing of time, of every penny spent and every moment wasted – as any time spent away from John Marsden and his typewriting machine seemed. She borrowed more books, devoured them, asked questions. Dining the second week she agreed with eager thanks to his suggestion that she might like an extra half hour’s practice at the machine each day.
“—though you must be nearly down to your knuckles already?” John Marsden allowed himself one of his rare, craggy smiles.
Molly conserved her money like a dying man his breath. She limited herself to one meal a day which she most often cooked for herself in the evening once Ellen and Sam had finished in the kitchen. On Wednesdays and Fridays there was a street market near the Marsden house through which she had to pass on her way home. On these days she bought hot pies for a penny and had bread and jam for supper. So absorbed was she in her enterprise that the Aldens rarely saw her. She paid an extra three ha’pence a day for the privilege of a fire early-lit as the evenings closed in and the weather grew colder; her time indoors was spent huddled around it, her face flaming, her back like ice, her nose in John Marsden’s books.
Her speed on the typewriting machine picked up considerably. Her nails broke, her fingers grew sore, then hardened.
Sometimes in the evening she heard Sam Alden’s cough; often he “happened” to be in the hallway as she passed in or out of the house. On these occasions she was contented to smile and greet him, but rarely stopped for more than a word. She was quiet in her room, tidy in the kitchen; an altogether well-behaved model of a lodger. Ellen Alden’s stiff dislike tempered a little and Molly found herself on odd occasions offered a cup of tea or a slice of her landlady’s excellent cake. But always, she noticed with a smile, when Sam Alden was away from the house. She had no objections to that; she could not but be aware of the way he looked at her, of the efforts he made to waylay her, for however brief a space of time – she simply hoped that his mother had not noticed also. She had herself no desire to encourage these attentions. It was not just that she was busy and often tired, nor that she had no wish to antagonize Sam’s formidable and protective mother. Almost without her being aware of it some part of her beneath the occupied exterior still mourned her dead. At the core of her there was still a wretched grief, hardly acknowledged except as a leaden weight to be carried with her, unabated as yet by time or distance or frantic activity. Against the death-sanctified image of dark and gentle Sean what chance had poor, stooping Sam with his weak, sensitive face and his stutter? She hardly noticed him. Set against his mother’s good will – for Molly had no illusions as to whom she had to please in that house – Sam’s feelings did not rate highly in Molly’s priorities. She worked and she planned and she pored over the situations vacant columns in the newspapers and the days raced on.
Halfway through November it became obvious that the weather was set for a cold, wet winter. Gas lights flickered wanly in the streaming streets as Molly hurried in her flimsy shoes through rain-shimmering, featureless avenues of houses to Linsey Grove and her fire. She steadfastly refused to spend money on omnibus fares and walked everywhere, though, as her fashionable shoes squelched soggily on her feet, she had to admit that this might be false economy. It wouldn’t be long before she would have to buy herself a new pair of shoes.
On the corner of the Grove, beneath the awning of the pie shop and outlined by the light that glowed through the steamy window, Molly came upon a swarthy man playing a barrel organ, the lilting, musical-box tune at odds with the driving rain and the wet, empty streets. A despondent monkey huddled, shivering, on top of the bright contraption, a tin cup in the tiny hand. Molly had not eaten all day – nor, to be honest, much the day before – and she was looking forward to a steaming-hot plate of pie and mash to eat before her fire. She looked at the barrel organ man, who looked no less thin and ill-fed than his monkey, and was struck by his dark face, knife-sharp and strangely proud in the gas light. She wished she had a penny to spare, but the smell from the pie shop was beckoning and she hunched beneath her umbrella and hurried past him into the warmth of the shop. She could not afford sympathy, she thought wryly, any more than he could afford pride. She stood for a moment, shaking her umbrella and stamping the worst of the water from her sodden shoes. Then she turned and cannoned straight into the waiting figure who had moved hesitantly up behind her.
“Oh! I’m sorry—” She stopped. “Mr Alden! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you—”
“It was my fault. Really, it doesn’t matter—” The usual painful flush of colour was lifting to his face.
Molly shook the rain from her skirt; the hem was sodden and dirty. “Wretched weather!” she muttered, more to herself than to him.
“Yes. Yes, it is.” He did not move but stood uncertainly beside her. She stepped towards the counter where stood half a dozen people waiting to be served. Sam followed her. She smiled at him absently, began hunting in her bag for her purse. Sam coughed; not his usual, breath-catching rasp but an embarrassed clearing of the throat She looked at him expectantly. He was scarlet to the roots of his sandy hair.
“I wondered – that is—” Molly waited politely. “—M-Mother’s out,” he said, starting again. “She’s gone to visit a friend in West Ham. I waited – well, I hoped – that perhaps y-you might – eat with me. Downstairs. In the kitchen.”
Excuses scrambled in Molly’s mind, none of them good enough. A satisfied customer moved off and the queue moved forward; as the door opened a wintry blast was let in and the barrel organ music lifted above the seated customers’ conversations, as the door shut again.
“I don’t think,” she said carefully, “that I should.”
“Why not?” He had the stubbornness of the weak; having made the initial, impossible effort he was not going to be brushed aside so easily.
Molly chose what seemed to be the incontrovertible answer. “Your mother wouldn’t like it.”
“She needn’t know.” The reply was too quick; he had had that one planned. The queue moved forward again.
“There wouldn’t be any harm in it. W-where’s the sense in you eating on your own upstairs and me downstairs? Please, M-Miss O’Dowd, I would like it if you w-would—”
She had her purse out now. “I really shouldn’t. I have a lot of work to do this evening—”
“Oh.” Something in his face forewarned her; she lifted questioning eyebrows. “Well, I should have t-told you. I’m afraid it won’t be very warm in your room yet. I haven’t lit the fire. I w-was going to do it when I got back—”
She looked at him in exasperation. He looked away like a child caught in a lie, afraid to find anger in her eyes.
“You needn’t pay your three ha’pence of course,” he muttered, and was surprised at her sudden shout of laughter.
“All right You win. I’ll eat in the kitchen. But you must light my fire first, and as soon as we’ve finished eating I must go up and do some work.”
His smile was marvellous to see. He bought the pie and mash, refusing absolutely her offer to pay for her share. As they left the warm shop and stepped into the November darkness the barrel organ still battled gallantly against the sound of a rising wind. Molly’s purse was in her hand; she hadn’t had to pay for her own supper.
“Here.” She held out a coaxing hand to the monkey. “Come here, then.” He scuttled forward. His master’s handsome face was stony. Molly dropped two pennies into the cup, smiled at the sound and was rewarded by the antics of the little creature as it leapt delightedly onto its master’s shoulder, shaking the tin. The dark face lit with the smile of a gypsy prince and the man bowed, courteously, from the waist.
“What made you do that?” Sam�
�s voice was serious; the question was not a casual one.
She shrugged. “I’m an idiot.” She only half-regretted the twopence squandered.
And Sam, who had never done anything on impulse in his whole life, turned quickly into the rain to prevent himself from reaching for her hand.
Molly sat in a small armchair by the range and toasted her wet toes. The bottom of her skirt steamed as it dried.
Sam laid the table, one eye on the small figure by the fire.
“How are your l-lessons going?”
She was staring into the glowing cave of coals, relaxed, her mind travelling its own road. “Well, thank you,” she answered absently.
“You’ll be looking for a job soon?”
“Yes.”
“Around here?”
She shook her head and leaned back in the chair. “No. In London, I think. That’s where I’d rather work. Mr Marsden said—” She paused. Sam looked at her in question, and she shrugged deprecatingly. “—He hinted that he might know of someone who would help me. An office in the City. But I’m not banking on it. ’Tis—” almost without thinking she corrected herself “—It’s by no means certain.”
Knives and forks clattered as Sam took them from the drawer. She went back to her still contemplation of the fire, unaware of his eyes upon her.
“You must be lonely in London? I m-mean, you must miss your home—?”
She jumped. He had come very quietly to her side; his blunt question cut unexpectedly into her reverie. For one second, had he been capable of seeing it, her face and her unguarded eyes answered with the truth before with a flashing smile she said, “Oh no, I like it here. I’m quite settled.”
“But your family? You must miss them sometimes?” He knew that she never received any letters, nor so far as he could tell did she ever write any. He knew, too, that his questions had gone further than good manners would allow; but his need to know more of this self-possessed girl with her pearly skin and wide, spacious eyes lent him an unusual courage. From the day that she had turned up on his doorstep in her pauper’s clothes, her eyes cool as spring water, the almost arrogant lift of her head in such sharp contrast to her rag-bag appearance, Molly O’Dowd had never been far from his thoughts. He woke in the morning simply happy to know that she was in the house. At work the thought of her hovered just beyond the daily drudgery of Uncle Thomas’s stock lists and takings, his profits and losses. At home he waited for her quick, light footsteps, listened for the sound of her unmistakable, lilting voice. The strange confusion of his feelings, the extraordinary effect that this unknown girl exerted upon, him were entirely new to Sam. In his over-protected twenty-five years of life his only relationships with the opposite sex had been with a mother who alternately bullied and indulged him and with his cousin Lucy whom, it had long been accepted in the family, he would one day marry. Plain, dull Lucy. She was her father’s only child; Uncle Thomas needed someone to take over the shops and if the brutal truth be told neither had any expectations elsewhere. It had until now seemed a satisfactory arrangement for all concerned. But in the past weeks Cousin Lucy’s company had grown more tedious; Sam found himself making awful comparisons. Molly’s bright, intelligent face, her swift and graceful movements, the impression she always gave him of being half a step ahead of the rest of the world made his cousin seem like stone to quicksilver. Now the spark that lit a dull world was here with him, hovering for a moment before she flew about her own affairs. She was looking at him composedly, his impertinent questioning about her family seeming not to have disconcerted her in the least.
“Family? I haven’t any. Only an old uncle in Dublin who was as glad to see my back as I was to see his. I doubt he’ll leave me any fortunes.” She did not exactly know why she had lied; except that to do so was easier. Anyway – she looked up to the mild, oddly innocent eyes above her, pale in the lamplight – what else should she do? Tell him of her family? Try to explain insupportable injustice and oppression and the blind and bloody hatred that it spawned?
Sam would not understand a word. How could he? What would he think, she wondered, had she said, “I have a brother shot dead by your soldiers, another in an English gaol, one who escaped by the seat of his breeches and a father who will no doubt one day hang, if he survives for it”?
She turned from his watching eyes towards the table, the subject closed, appalled to discover that she was having to battle an unexpected rise of crushing homesickness.
They ate almost in silence, Sam having questioned as much as he dared, Molly so wrapped in her own thoughts that she hardly spoke at all. When they had finished she left him sitting at the table and climbed the stairs. The fire, lit half an hour before, was burning brightly. She drew closed the curtains, dragged the chair towards the hearth, and picked up the book she had been studying, propping it upright on her knee to read it. Between her eyes and the page, insistently rose a vision of green hills, the quiet movement of water, laughing, volatile faces, quick to anger and as quick to tenderness. She moved the book a little further from her; it was John Marsden’s book. She would not give it back to him marked with tears.
* * *
The days flew by and her precious month was nearly gone; the day inevitably came when there were just two lessons left, and her purse was distressingly light. On the Thursday afternoon of her last week she was sitting in the tiny, cold room that John Marsden had allocated to her for typewriting practice, when he walked in, pipe in one hand, a letter in the other.
Molly looked up. He was taking his time. He opened the letter, laid it upon the desk, spread the creases with his fingers, looked at her from beneath lowered brows and puffed ferociously at his pipe.
“I trust you’re free next Monday morning?”
“Very,” she said drily, wrinkling her nose.
“Good. Then you will present yourself at precisely eight in the morning at the offices of Josiah Richmond and Company, Bishopsgate, for the propose of being interviewed and assessed by one—” he consulted the letter “—Mr Owen Jenkins. Who—” he added repressively, as delight lit her face “—does not, apparently, approve of employing young ladies.”
Her smile faded. “Then why?”
“Mr Josiah Richmond happens to be a good friend of mine. A very good friend. Oh, no,” he held up a hand as she opened her mouth, “you won’t get the job on the strength of that, I promise you. Josiah is a hard-headed businessman. You’ll have to prove your worth before he pays you a penny. And you’ve a task ahead of you there, my girl, because he relies almost entirely on his Mr Jenkins’ experience and advice. I’ve got you the chance. It’s up to you to make the most of it. And in the unlikely event of your satisfying the said Mr Jenkins—” only the twinkle in his eye belied the sternness of his words and tone “—you have a permanent position with Josiah Richmond and Co. at the princely – or should it be princessly? – sum of twelve and sixpence a week. Office hours are eight till six, and until one on Saturdays. Needless to say, Mr Jenkins absolutely insists on punctuality.”
“Oh, Mr Marsden, thank you! Thank you!” Molly wisely restrained herself from jumping up and throwing her arms about his neck. “I won’t let you down. I promise I won’t.”
He puffed at his pipe, smiled one of his rare, craggy smiles. “Between you, me and that typewriter, Miss O’Dowd, I didn’t for a moment think that you would.”
Chapter Eight
As was to be expected, Monday turned out to be both as bad as she had feared and much better than she had dared to hope. Having woken ridiculously early to the miserable, sulphurous yellow light of late November she was so anxious not to be late that she arrived at the office half an hour before anyone else and had to hang about in the clammy cold, her hair and clothes festooned with glimmering beads of moisture, until someone arrived to open the door.
Her first impression of her place of work somewhat dismayed her. Whatever she had expected (and she was not certain herself what that was) it had not been a series of gloomy and rathe
r dirty rooms lit constantly by the yellow glare of bare electric light bulbs, crammed with chipped and battered office furniture, the walls and ceilings painted a particularly depressing shade of mushroom, the few tiny windows opening onto a narrow, ill-lit alley. She was happily surprised, however, by the attitude of her fellow workers; she had been prepared for some hostility to the introduction of a female into their until-now exclusively masculine world, but on the whole her reception was very pleasant, the inevitable interested and curious glances reasonably well hidden. There was some little embarrassment about the toilet facilities; since there was only one lavatory, and since Mr Richmond had not yet come to a decision regarding the employment of other females and had no intention of squandering his money on further conveniences until he had, the arrangement had been made for Molly to use a toilet on the second floor of the building in an office that already employed several girls. She thanked the pink-faced lad who had been given the task of passing on these details and asked if he knew when she was to meet Mr Jenkins.
He pulled a fearsome and sympathetic face. “Right now, I’m afraid,” he said, and led her along another inevitably mushroom corridor to a door with the name “Owen Jenkins” emblazoned upon the frosted glass. Outside the door he stopped, his eyes on Molly, his hand poised to knock. “You’re sure you don’t want to change your mind?” he hissed below his breath. “People have come out of this room in pieces before now—” But before she could reply he brought his knuckles into sharp contact with the glass.
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