Nancy put down her work. “Yes?”
The door opened a little way and a head appeared, surprisingly close to the top of the door; more dark blond hair crowned a broad and ruddy face. “It’s me. Can we come and see the invalid? Mam says she’s woken up.”
Nancy looked at Molly. “This is Charley. Can you stand it?”
“Of course.”
Molly’s eyes widened as the two came into the room. They were giants; two pairs of wide shoulders, six-foot dockers’ frames that seemed to fill the small room. Jack in particular gave the impression of a rocklike strength. They both stood a little awkwardly at the foot of the couch.
Charley grinned. “You’re looking better than you did.”
“And a sight better than I’d have been if you’d not found me. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was Jack realized you were bad. He brought you home. Mam and Nancy did the rest.”
The luminous eyes transferred their gaze to Jack. “Thank you,” she said again.
“Don’t mention it, lass.” His voice was deep and quiet and had in it something of his mother’s calm authority. “Mam says you’ve some errands for us to run?” He was smiling. He had neither Harry’s startling beauty nor Charley’s merry expression, but the blue eyes were there, an inheritance, apparently, from a dead father, more peaceful in his face than in either of his brothers’, and it seemed to Molly that though this one had less of beauty he had more of strength.
“I don’t want to put you to more trouble.”
“It’s no trouble.”
Molly let her head drop back into the pillows and smiled. The thought had occurred to her that Saint Patrick might well have been somewhere in the streets of West Ham last Friday night.
Chapter Ten
It was two weeks before she was strong enough to get up, and during that time she became an unquestionably accepted part of the Benton family, her couch the centre of the social life of the household. No one passed the door without popping in to speak to her, to bring a book or a magazine, to tell of the day’s incidents. As her strength returned she was happier than she had been for months. Nancy, quite openly delighted to have a girl of her own age in the house, became her special companion and would make a point of hurrying home from her work at a nearby dress factory to be with Molly. The boys, each in their own way, did their best to make the little stranger feel at home: Harry teased her and made her laugh; Charley treated her with the same easy and open friendliness that he apparently showed to the rest of the world; and Jack, though a little more reserved than the others, was kind, considerate and above all practical. It was he who wrote the letter explaining to Mr Vassal what had happened. He, too, who visited Linsey Grove, told the Aldens what had happened, paid the rent and brought back their good wishes, which he relayed with just enough of Ellen’s repressive lack of enthusiasm to make Molly smile. When she talked worriedly of repaying the money, both for the rent and for the doctor’s bills, he waved her aside.
“Not now, lass. Later’ll do. When you’re back on your feet. We’re not short of a penny or two at the moment, with us all working. Settle with us later, when you’re ready.”
She had another friend, too, the biggest charmer of the whole family, as she discovered the day after her awakening. Edward, the baby of the family, known to one and all as “our kid”, had eyes of velvet brown like his mother’s, which sparkled with the mischief of an indulged and loving child. His smooth, still-baby cheeks were peaches and cream, his hair a mass of fair curls that would, no doubt as his big brothers’ had, darken as he grew up, but that at present had the glint of new-minted coins. He soon discovered that the interesting stranger who was occupying his mother’s front room was not the kind of grown-up who objected to pet spiders in matchboxes, or bullseye-sticky fingers, and became Molly’s fast friend. After the quiet daytime hours with Sarah, Molly came to look forward to the slam of the door that told of Edward’s return from his lessons, though there could be no denying that his company could be tiring; he would ask a question, answer it himself and change the subject all in one breath. Often, when the child was occupied at the table or stretched on his stomach on the hearth rug turning the pages of a book, her lids would close and she would drowse.
One evening in the second week of her recovery she did just this, to awaken later to find Harry in the chair and no sign of Edward. Harry was watching her with vivid, smiling eyes. In his hand he held a small bunch of violets.
She blinked, still half asleep, “Where’s Edward?”
“I threatened him.” He grinned at her suddenly wide eyes, “With twopence.”
Molly laughed. She must have slept for some time; from the room next door came the sounds of the family, home for the evening. There appeared to be some kind of heated discussion in progress; she heard Jack’s voice, and Charley’s, rather louder than usual, raised and vehement.
Harry leaned forward and laid the small bunch of flowers into her hand. They were cool and soft and full of the gentle promise of spring. She lifted them to her face, for a moment unable to speak. Then she said in a whisper, “I’m always saying thank you.”
“That must be why we do things for you. Because you say thank you so nicely.”
The raised voices lifted again: Charley’s, Jack’s somewhat quieter, then Nancy’s, sharp and irritated. The door opened, and Nancy marched in, still speaking over her shoulder to the others, “—and if I have to listen to another word about Keir Hardie or the blessed Labour Party I shall break something. Over your thick head, probably. I’m sick of – oh, hello, Harry. Didn’t know you were home.” Her eyes moved to Molly and the violets. “Oh, aren’t they sweet!” Her laughing eyes flitted back to her brother. “Did you bring some for me?”
“As a matter of fact I did,” Harry said. “But I met Nelly Morris down the road, so I gave them to her instead. One of these days, my girl,” he added sternly, “the wind’ll change and you’ll stay like that.”
Nancy rearranged her face into a more normal expression and dropped into the vacated chair. “Why don’t you go out and practise your razor wit on them?” She jerked her head towards the open door. “Charley’s on his soap box again. Been down to the King’s Head, I should think.”
Harry put together pious hands and lifted his eyes to heaven. “The Lord preserve us from Charley, Keir Hardie, Will Thorne, the trade unions, organized labour, the minimum wage—” He stopped, running out of steam and looking at Nancy. “What else?”
“You,” she said succinctly, and Molly giggled.
“—He’ll be back—” said Charley’s voice through the door “—Hardie’ll be back, you’ll see, and then West Ham’ll know what it is again to have a Labour Member of Parliament.”
“Charley Benton.” Mam’s voice, quiet and cutting. Harry and Nancy looked at each other, recognizing that tone, hilarity rising in their eyes. Charley would be for it now. “That’s enough. If you can’t behave in a civilized manner at my table I’ll thank you to leave it.”
“But Mam—”
“But nothing.” The voice had become even quieter. There was sudden silence. Nancy stifled a giggle.
Then Jack said, his voice level, “I’ve nothing against Hardie, you know it. If he did decide to stand for us he’d have my support. It’s the others, Charley, that worry me. That bunch of lunatics you meet at the King’s Head. Talking revolution. Talking blood. It makes no sense, lad, can’t you see that? It can only mean trouble. It’ll be bad enough if there’s war in South Africa – there’ll be real blood spilled then – but as for those bloody silly hot-heads you’ve got yourself in with—”
“—If you ask me war in South Africa’d be a godsend to the working classes of this country! I hope the bloody Boers do have a go! Because every gun and every soldier that’s sent to South Africa’s one less to send to Liverpool and Wales!”
“Think on, lad! You’re talking civil war—”
“Well happen I damn well am, yes. Happen a bit of spilled bl
ood’s what this country needs! We sure as hell aren’t getting anything for the asking—”
“That – is – enough.” Sarah’s tone this time was not to be ignored.
There was a small silence, then muttered apologies, the movement of feet and chairs. A moment later came the fierce clatter of crockery, the sharp, decisive sounds of a woman wreaking her displeasure upon the inanimate objects around her.
“I’d better help Mam.” Nancy stood up, lifting exasperated eyes to heaven. “Men!”
Molly lay back wearily on her pillows. Charley’s angry violence had stirred unhappy memories.
“Something wrong?” asked Harry from the fireside.
She shook her head, slowly and tiredly. “It’s just that I hate to hear Charley talk so easily of spilling blood. Ireland has known enough of that to last the world a hundred years. If Charley had ever seen what bullets and bayonets can do to flesh and bone—” sickeningly clearly in her mind rose a vision of a wet and bloody street, of her young brother lifted from his feet and slammed against a cottage wall by a hail of machine-gun fire “—I don’t think he’d speak so.”
“You make it sound—" Harry paused “—as if you’d seen it?”
“I have.”
In the silence the glowing cave of embers in the fireplace collapsed, sending up a shower of sparks. Molly turned her head from the sudden glare of light and found Harry’s brilliant eyes fixed upon her, wide, glittering, oddly intense.
“Daft thing,” he said, leaning forward to retrieve the crushed violets from her fingers, “you’ve spoiled your flowers. Perhaps I should have given yours to Nelly Morris too?” and with one long finger he gently wiped the tears from her cheeks.
In her time with the Bentons that discussion in the kitchen was the closest thing Molly heard to a row; and at that there was no noticeable rift between the brothers once they had got over their tempers. They were a close family. Charley’s bout of unfortunate revolutionary tendencies was treated in the same way as “our kid’s” mischief or Harry’s apparent refusal to take anything seriously; the other Bentons tutted and shrugged and hoped that sooner or later he would grow out of it.
Soon Molly began to spend part of each day out of bed and on the Saturday following the argument was sitting in front of the fire, a rug over her knees and a letter in her hand, when Harry came in carrying a tray on which was balanced precariously a teapot that slurped hot tea from its spout every time he moved, two cups, milk and sugar.
“There,” he said pulling a small table forward and laying the tray upon it. “Mam said to tell you she’d be in later with some cakes. The others are out. Except for Nance, and she’s in the bath, so I’m to keep out of the scullery.” His eyes lit on the letter and he smiled, “Reading it again?”
A faint colour rose in her cheeks. “It was so good of him to write and reassure me. He’s such a nice man.” Mr Vassal’s letter rustled in her fingers. The relief of knowing that her job was safe had done almost as much for her as the last bottle of Doctor Adams’ undrinkably awful medicine. The fleshless, insubstantial look had left her; the elfin face was alive again; the tangled, matted hair had regained some of its gloss.
Harry poured the tea. Molly sensed that beneath the long sweep of lashes he was watching her. For her own part she had neither tried to deny nor to analyze the enjoyment that simply looking at him gave her; the smooth dark skin, the jewel-bright eyes, made such pleasure seem natural.
He laughed. “I wish I could say as much for my chief clerk, the old so-and-so.” Harry worked in the offices of a sugar factory in Canning Town. “Miserable old—” he pulled an expressive face.
“You shouldn’t lead him such a dance…” Molly had heard enough to guess that Harry was not, despite his agile brain, the perfect employee.
Harry snorted. “What else is there to do? What a life! Up at six, off to work, scribble, scribble, scribble; home again. Christ! Sorry—” the apology was automatic, the expression, for Harry, sour. “There’s got to be something more than that, hasn’t there? I sometimes wonder if our Charley’s new friends aren’t right. At least they’ve got something to fight for, something they believe in. What the hell do I believe in? Nothing, that’s what. I sometimes wish—” His voice trailed into silence. Molly sipped her tea; there was a pause.
“Molly?” His voice had changed; it was soft, oddly coaxing.
She lifted her head. “Hmm?” He was not looking at her; his narrow fingers played abstractedly with the fringe on the cushion of the chair.
“What you said the other evening.”
“Yes?”
“What happened?” The straightforward question caught her off guard. She stared at him, her face a white flame of distress. She turned her head.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He put his cup down with a clatter, stood and strode to the window, standing with his back to her, looking through the heavy cream lace of his mother’s curtains to the street outside. He took a deep, sighing breath, as if he could not get enough air into his lungs. “At least, obviously, something happened—” He threw back his head, flexing the muscles of his neck and shoulders. She watched the straight, graceful back, unblinking. “—Something apart from scrawling stupid, meaningless things on damned bits of paper all day and every day.” He paused, then said abruptly, “We had an Irishman in the factory last year. I liked him a lot. We got quite friendly, though he didn’t stay for long. He was a Fenian. He’d been hunted for a year through all of Ireland by the police and the soldiers before he got away and came to England. They were still after him, I think.” His voice had in it such a sudden wild tension of longing that Molly’s blood ran cold.
“And you found that – exciting, did you? And romantic, perhaps?”
He turned, his head set arrogantly, his face defensive at her tone.
“Not entirely. But I can’t deny that I’d like to know what it feels like to feel so strongly about something that you’d lay down your life for it…”
“Other people’s lives.”
She saw his mouth tighten, but he said nothing.
“People who feel that strongly,” she said bitterly, “and talk about it, tend to lay down lives other than their own. Don’t be fooled, Harry. Jack was right about that. You want to know how I know about such things? I’ll tell you. My brother Danny, who was like you in many ways I think, went out on just such an exciting adventure—” the lit blue eyes blinked at the violence embedded in the words “—and died, terrified, on an Irish street, smashed to pieces by the bullets of the soldiers who lay in wait for him. My Sean—” how could it still hurt so? “—Sean lasted perhaps three seconds longer. The bullets pinned him to the wall like knives. I know. I was there. When we found that the soldiers were waiting I tried to warn them – and only got there in time to see them die…”
“Don’t.” Harry was across the room and kneeling by her side. “God, Molly, stop it. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—” He took her hand; she had clamped her teeth into her lower lip and was sitting curled into herself, remembered agony in her eyes. He lifted her hand and laid it to his cheek. “I’m sorry, lass.” His fingers were hard about hers, the skin of his face warm and smooth; his breath on her hand, despite her misery, sent a wave of physical pleasure through her.
She snatched her hand away. “It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t.” He looked exactly like Edward, the penitence in his eyes mixed with the certainty that she could not stay angry with him for long. The bloody visions in her head receded, the tension draining from her in the warmth of those eyes.
“You’d better get up, my lad,” she said “You’re going to look some kind of fool if your mother comes in and finds you on your knees. She’ll think you’re—” Her tongue had run ahead of her; she stopped abruptly as she realized what she had been about to say.
He picked up the thought with delight. “—That I’m proposing?” He jumped to his feet with an easy and relieved change of mood. “Ah,
but she knows me better than that, lass. She knows that if I were ever daft enough to pop the question it would be with champagne, not a cup of tea! She also knows that, at the moment—”
“—the world’s too full of pretty girls,” Molly said, finishing the sentence for him, laughing now, the pain almost gone, “I was right. You’re just like Danny.”
He looked at her smiling, “Except that he was your brother,” he said softly, “and I’m not.” And before Molly had the chance to weigh the significance of that he had thrown open the door to his mother and her plate of cakes.
A week later Molly was up, her recovery almost complete, and gradually she began to pick up the threads of life again. It was not without regret that she said goodbye to her couch at the Bentons’ and prepared to go back to her room in Linsey Grove, yet neither was she entirely sorry to be on her own again, to have time to think, to assess the change that had overtaken her life; for change there had certainly been. She was no longer alone; now she had friends. At the Bentons’ urging she had happily promised to spend her Sundays with them, so there would be no more long and lonely days to be filled only with reading. Outings had been promised for the spring and summer – Epping Forest, the seaside; and Nancy, unusually demonstrative, had hugged her as she had left the house, saying, “Don’t make it just Sundays, Moll. Come and see us whenever you like.” When quiet Nancy made a friend, it was for life.
“That would be lovely.”
The undisguised pleasure in the light, clear eyes made more of the words than the simple polite response sounded; and Molly, too, was aware that Nancy was her first friend since Mary Livingstone.
Molly Page 11