Molly

by Molly (retail) (epub)

  The heartbroken sobs redoubled. “Why, Mr Jack did. Swore ’orrible, ’e did. An’ shouted. Oh, Missis, ’e’s in a terrible takin’, I can tell yer. All I did was to offer ’im a nice cup o’ tea. I thought it might do ’im some good! ’E ’ad no call to yell an’ shout like that. Gawd knows, I get enough of it at ’ome,” she added aggrievedly. “I don’t ’ave to put up with it ’ere.”

  “No, of course not, Effie” Molly said soothingly, “and I’m sure there’s been some mistake. I’ll find Mr Jack and sort it out for you. Where is he?”

  “In the parlour,” Effie sniffed, then lifted her head and added, repressively, “drinkin’.”

  Jack did not turn as she opened the parlour door, although he must have heard her. He stood at the sideboard, his back to the room. She heard the clink of glass on glass, saw his head thrown back as he emptied the tumbler in one go.

  “Jack? Is something the matter?”

  Still he did not turn, nor did he answer. He poured more whisky into the glass, stood staring down into it. He looked massive in the fashionably cluttered room and something in his stance, in the tension of the wide and powerful shoulders made Molly hesitate. He looked – she paused at the thought – dangerous. “Jack?” she said again, uncertainly.

  He turned very slowly. As composedly as she could she walked to him. “Jack, love, what is it? What’s happened?”

  “Why – didn’t – you – tell – me,” he said, spacing his words very carefully and slowly, his voice a little whisky-blurred, “That – the money – that you borrowed – was lent – not to Danbury’s – but – to your bloody agency?” The last words were roared, and he slammed a violent hand on the sideboard, making the glasses jump and tinkle.

  She clasped her hands before her. Patently there was no point in denial. “I didn’t think it necessary. What difference did it make? We needed the money, and that was the only way to get it.”

  “What difference does it make?” Jack laughed, harshly. “I’ll tell you, my girl, what difference it makes. It makes me look a bloody fool. It makes me look like a ninny who’s tied to his woman’s apron strings.” He glared at her, drained his glass again. “Happen that’s what I am, eh? Happen they’re right?”

  “Jack, for heaven’s sake, what’s this all about? Yes, I did borrow the money using the agency. What would you have had me do? Let Danbury’s go? I didn’t tell you because – because I thought you might be unreasonable about it. And I wasn’t far wrong, was I?” she could not resist adding. “But, Jack, no one knows. No one but Annie, and Nancy, and—” She stopped at the sudden worm of recollection that slithered through her mind.

  He turned on her savagely, his eyes lit bright with rage.

  “No one knows, eh? Well, let me put you right there, lass. Everyone knows. The whole bleeding world knows. Everyone, that is, except me.”

  “But—”

  “Let me tell you what my friend Bernie Langton thinks of it all.” He spoke in a venomously conversational tone. “My friend Bernie doesn’t care overmuch for a grown man who can’t manage his own affairs. Or his own woman. Who doesn’t know what’s going on behind his back. Who doesn’t wear the trousers in his own business, let alone his own home. He feels he can’t see his way clear to dealing with a woman. Doesn’t seem right somehow, he says, though he knows some might think it old-fashioned—”

  “Jack, stop it.”

  “—but since it’s obvious that you’re going to have a finger in the pie – any pie – he reckons ’appen he’d best take his custom elsewhere. He won’t deal, he says, with a concern run by a woman.”

  “More fool him,” she snapped, her control breaking. “The man’s an idiot. And what about words and bonds, Jack? Doesn’t this teach you something?”

  He muttered something. She turned away. “You’re drunk. I’m not going to stand here listening to you. I’ll speak to you when you can talk sensibly.”

  He had her by the arm before she could take a step. “Oh, no. You’ll bloody stay here and you’ll bloody listen.” His fingers curled, cruelly painful, around her wrist. “Danbury’s is finished. Do you hear me? Finished. Without this contract, we’re dead in a couple of months. We haven’t got the work. I hope you’re satisfied. If you’d told me, if you’d been straight with me, I might have been able to explain to Langton. I might have persuaded him—”

  Infuriated, she found herself shrieking back at him. “It has nothing to do with him where the money came from!”

  “Any road,” Jack ploughed on, ignoring her, “I wouldn’t have been left standing there like some wet-nosed school kid kept out of the grown-ups’ secrets.” He threw off her arm and reached for the bottle.

  Breathing hard she watched him for a moment, her mind racing, trying to gauge the extent of his anger, the unreason brought on by drink. “We don’t need Bernie Langton,” she said.

  “Hah!” He threw his great head back in scornful laughter, staggered a little as he turned and toasted her sarcastically with his full glass. “Happen we don’t. With Molly O’Dowd in charge, who needs anyone?” It was said brutally. He lifted the glass to his lips.

  She stepped forward, reached for his arm, “Jack, please, don’t drink any more. We have to talk reasonably about this.”

  “Let go of me!” She was no match for his strength and he flung her from him. Hampered by her skirt she could not keep her balance; she cannoned into a small table covered in ornaments, hit the wall with a bruising crash that knocked the breath from her body, and fell. Two tiny china figures flew from the fallen table and splintered on the floor, the other ornaments rolled and clattered amongst them. She huddled for a moment, head hanging, her hair in her eyes, her shoulder thumping with pain, trying to control the red mist of pure fury that threatened to envelop her. She was trembling violently with rage and reaction.

  “Molly—” Jack took a step towards her.

  She lifted a blazing face. “Stay away from me!”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Sobered a little, Jack slumped into an armchair, buried his head in his big hands.

  Very carefully, very slowly, Molly stood up. She shook the tiny coloured shards of china from her skirt, sucked her bloody finger briefly where one of the sharp pieces had slit the skin. Her shoulder and neck hurt.

  From outside the door Effie’s frightened voice called. “Missis? Mr Jack? You all right?”

  “Mum?” Kitty’s voice, high and strained.

  Molly walked to the door and opened it a little. ‘It’s all right,” she said steadily, only the faintest tremble of emotion in her voice. “There’s been a slight accident. Something got broken. Nothing to worry about.”

  Effie peered over her shoulder to where Jack sat, hunched in the chair. “Is Mr Jack all right?”

  “Perfectly.” The word was clipped. “He’s had a little too much to drink, that’s all.”

  Effie nodded and backed down the hall, dragging the worried-looking Kitty with her. Molly shut the door and leaned against it, looking at Jack. Something in his stance – his bowed head and shoulders silhouetted bright against the light, his strong fingers buried in his hair – reminded her of something, of someone she had seen just like this in the past. And then, with a shock, she had it. Harry had looked exactly so in that moment that she had flung open the bedroom door to confront him in fury. The day of Danny’s conception. Almost, now, as Jack moved she found herself half-expecting to meet the brilliance of his brother’s eyes, to see the painfully bleached, beautiful face. Her anger drained from her. In passion and in obstinacy she had almost destroyed her own and others’ lives that day. She would not let that happen again. The passing years must surely have taught her something? Giving him time to collect himself she righted the little table, went down on her knees to gather the broken ornaments.

  “Leave it.” His voice was hoarse. “Effie will do it.”

  She did not still her busy hands. “They might get trodden into the carpet.”

  “Molly—”

  She sat ba
ck on her heels, regarding him, her hands full of broken china resting in her lap.

  “—I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too. But, Jack, I did what I did for the best. Danbury’s desperately needed the money, and I had the means to get it.”

  He leaned back in the chair. “And now, with Langton backing out and the yard in trouble again the agency goes down the drain with it? Fat lot of sense that makes.”

  “It isn’t going to be like that, Jack.” She leaned forward, her face intent. “We aren’t going to let an unpleasant, prejudiced article like Bernie Langton do us down, are we?”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  She laid the shattered china carefully on the table and stood up, smoothing her shirt into her waistband, tidying her hair. “Oh yes. We have a choice.” She walked to where the bottle and glasses stood, splashed a very little into the bottom of two glasses, handed one to Jack and kept the other for herself. “Let me tell you about it.”

  * * *

  She deliberately put off going to see Adam for two days. If she saw him any earlier, she knew, she might incline to physical violence. She did not ring, made no appointment. When she got to the building that housed Forrest and Jefferson in such style it was to discover that Adam was not there.

  “He won’t be long, though, my dear.” Joseph Forrest was beaming at her. “He’s gone over to the store. He’ll be back in an hour or so. If you’d like to wait in his office I’m sure he’d have no objection – or you could stay, perhaps, and take a cup of coffee with me—?”

  But the two days of self-imposed waiting had strained her patience and her temper beyond endurance. The thought of another hour’s idleness was too much for her. “Thank you, no,” she said. “I’ll go and find him.”

  He was, the cold store manager respectfully told her, up on the roof where the cranes were unloading a cargo from a ship docked behind the store. A wheezing lift, its scrubbed wooden floors and sides stained and battered, took her up the five storeys to the wide expanse of the roof. She stepped into sunshine and a hive of activity. Stacks of crates littered the open space, brawny men in stained white aprons trundled great trolleys piled high with bales and carcasses. The twenty lifts that served the building and dispersed the newly-delivered cargo into the various cold-storage chambers that honeycombed the store below clashed and hummed with industry. Adam stood, talking animatedly, with two other men not far from the lift in which Molly had arrived. As she stepped from it he lifted his eyes and caught sight of her. She saw the slight stilling of his movements, the wary look that flickered across his face. She stood still, waiting for him, uncaring of the attention she was attracting. Adam said something to his companions and one of them guffawed loudly. Then, with his light, slightly unbalanced walk, Adam came towards her.

  He artlessly spread beautiful and absolutely clean hands. “Nemesis has found me.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “I rather thought you might.”

  “I want to know—”

  “But not here.”

  “Adam, I’m not playing games. I want to know—”

  Very firmly he caught her arm beneath the elbow. “But not here,” he repeated with tranquil insistence. “I may deserve castigation. Not surprisingly, I refuse to accept it in public. You should have waited for me at the office.”

  She blazed. “Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do!”

  He steered her to the lift, shut the doors behind them firmly, pressed the button, then turned to survey her furious face. “Oh dear,” he said.

  Her temper, finally, seemed to have slipped its leash altogether. “Do you know what you are?”

  He appeared to consider this as the lift crawled down the building. On each floor as they passed she could see activity as the newly arrived shipment was stowed away. “Yes, I think so,” he said at last.

  “You’re—” With a jolt that made her stagger they hit the bottom. Adam made no attempt to steady her. He was out of the car and striding away across the floor of the railway loading bay before she could recover. Infuriated, she hurried after him. He did not wait. At the dock gates he was a dozen yards ahead of her. The policeman touched his helmet. Adam nodded brusquely. Molly caught up with him as he stood waiting to cross the busy road.

  “Adam Jefferson!” she shrieked, over the roar of the traffic.

  He bent to her ear. “Fisticuffs in the street? I always suspected there might be a fishwife hidden in that pretty little frame of yours somewhere.” There was the slightest gap in the traffic. He caught her hand and almost dragged her through it. She clamped her mouth shut and followed him along the road, down the narrow alley and back into Forrest’s building. Once inside the busy foyer not even she had the face to stand and bawl at him in public. They went up to the fourth floor in frigid silence. Once there Adam led the way to his office, let them in, waved her to a chair, which she refused with an impatiently shaken head. He walked to a polished table where stood a decanter of sherry and some glasses, poured two, without asking, and offered one to Molly.

  “No, thank you,” she said, coldly.

  He shrugged, put the glass down near her on the desk, sat himself in his chair, placed his own glass, untouched, before him, steepled his fingers thoughtfully and looked up at her with not the slightest trace of penitence on his face.

  “Yes, it was I who told that boor Langton where the money came from to prop up Danbury’s. And yes, I knew very well what I was doing and what he would be likely to do. No, I do not apologize. Does that about cover it? May we talk about something important now?”

  “You re despicable.”

  “Probably. But practical, you must admit. Infinitely practical.”

  “Jack was shattered.”

  “More fool him.”

  “How dare you say that! You – he—”

  “You’re becoming inarticulate. Drink your sherry.”

  She took a deep breath. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do. You know you’re in the wrong so you goad me into losing my temper, because the only way you can win is to make me look a fool. Well it won’t work. Not this time.” She leaned over the desk towards him, her eyes blazing. “You’ll sit there, and you’ll listen to what I’ve got to say.”

  Something in his face subtly changed. The dark sweep of lashes flickered, the jaw hardened, yet, oddly, he said nothing. He was watching her intently, his eyes moving over her angry face feature by feature. But for once Molly was beyond observing the unpredictable shifts in this man’s moods.

  “You had no right – no right whatsoever – to do this. You have taken advantage of one man’s good and trusting nature to obtain information to which you had no right, and you have betrayed my confidence in telling others, against my clearly stated wish. You have acted dishonourably and in self-interest. You have brought embarrassment – humiliation – to a proud man who, of all people, doesn’t deserve it at your hands. Nor at mine.” Her voice was now trembling very slightly. “You are the most – the most unprincipled and – detestable person that I’ve ever met. If I thought you knew the meaning of the phrase I’d tell you that you should be ashamed of yourself.” She stopped, at a loss that he had allowed her such free flow of words.

  He sat still, elbows on desk, watching her. With a long, sharp thumbnail he traced the line of his mouth, back and forth. His face was deadly serious. “You’re very probably right,” he said.

  Into the silence she asked, “What game are you playing now?”

  He smiled, very slightly. “I hardly know myself.”

  “You mean that you aren’t going to offer some clever, twisted defence for what you did?”

  “Oh, come now, I didn’t say that exactly. It was simply that in a rare moment of honesty I was agreeing in general with your assessment of the situation. And of me.”

  Anger still sparked in her eyes. “It’s all very well to agree that what you did was wrong after the event. After the damage is done.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, but of course. I know that very well,” he agreed readily. “What’s more, I am not for one moment suggesting that if I could turn back the clock that I would act differently—”

  She stared at him in astonishment. “But you just said—”

  “I just said,” he spoke with equable patience, “that you were largely right in what you said. That’s all. The way I acted probably was, in some people’s eyes, both unprincipled and despicable. I happen to believe that the end justifies the means. And I,” he added quietly, his eyes hard upon her, “at least, am honest about that.”

  The inference of that was not lost on her. She flushed.

  “How many times have I said it?” His voice was gentle. “Make excuses to the world, to your family, to your friends, to God Himself if you must. But never, never make excuses to yourself. There is a danger that you might believe them. You told Jack about our plan.” It was not a question.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And?”

  She hesitated, nursing her cooling anger. Then she shrugged, accepting the change of subject. “I’m not sure. He wants to talk to you about it.”

  “Well, we’ll have to arrange a meeting, won’t we? And you and I will have to combine our persuasive powers to convince him. If we can’t do that, we don’t deserve anything. How about tomorrow afternoon?”

  “It sounds all right. I’ll telephone and let you know.”

  “Fine.” He picked up his glass. “A toast. To Jefferson and Benton.”

  She hesitated. “How about Jefferson, Benton and Forrest?” she asked.

  He sipped his drink, his eyes wary. “I told you that I didn’t particularly want Joseph in on this.”

  “Yes. But I do.”

  “Why?”

  She did not reply. She did not have to. She saw the beginnings of mirth in his face. Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed in genuine amusement.

  “Has poor Joseph been elected as shepherd to protect two little lambs from the big bad wolf?”

  “Something like that.”

  “He won’t side with you against me.”