A year passed before official proof of Nedermann’s wife’s death arrived.
The photographs of the old documents, with their crumples and their bent-back corners dark on the page, lay between them on the table one morning seeming, somehow, like the proof of their own crime. There was something accusatory about the old typewritten Gothic script, the alterations in a spikey foreign hand, the sheet of paper recording the deaths of thirty-seven people.
Nedermann stood up and picked up the evidence. He left the room silently. A few seconds later Molly heard the door of the safe close. And that evening he handed her the deeds of two houses, numbers 11 and 13 Baldry Place, in Notting Dale. She took the deeds, wondering if she could do something to rescue the houses and their tenants from decay. As she did so, Nedermann remarked gloomily, “Take care of them. My affairs are becoming complicated. It will be all right but these houses are for you, in case anything goes wrong.”
Nedermann now owned more than fifty houses in London, half a bingo hall in Leeds (given in payment of a debt) and half a row of back-to-backs in Middlesborough, a swap as part of a deal involving three houses in Edgware. In London most of his houses were Victorian slums, some having been slums since they were built and others having been formerly substantial, now decayed. He had been buying up these properties since the end of World War II, and the post-war shortage of housing and the waves of immigrants coming into Britain in the 1950s had made them highly profitable. Indeed, as he told Molly, the profits on his smart block of flats in Mayfair, inhabited by colonels’ widows, rising young barristers and single girls whose well-to-do parents paid the rent, were no more than those he drew from his collapsing houses in Notting Hill, Kilburn and Shepherd’s Bush. In these buildings, with their unsafe staircases, leaking roofs and poor sanitation, tenants lived crowded together, afraid to complain about the condition of the houses in case they were turned out.
Nedermann himself operated from a couple of ramshackle offices in Bayswater, with a staff of about ten men, ranging from bright young men in smart suits to thugs whose heavy bodies and battered faces indicated to the tenants what they could expect if they made a fuss. They collected their rents accompanied by Alsatian dogs. They were not above showing Nedermann’s tenants a glimpse of a revolver if they proved awkward in their complaints or slow with the rent. And yet, like many tyrants, Nedermann was capable of acts of kindness. He had the child of one of his tenants driven in his own car regularly to and from a hospital for treatment. He could give a flat at rock-bottom prices to a homeless stranger he took a liking to. But when Molly complained about the rats in the basement of one of his houses he only said, “What can I do about it? The people who live there – they should kill the rats. Am I ratkiller? No, I’m a businessman. I run my business. I work hard so I don’t end up like some of the human vermin living in my property. If they worked like I do they would be living next door to me in Orme Square. Instead they sit and whine about the rats. They are weak. Let them kill their own rats or move out – it’s their choice.” Molly found all this chilling, but she said nothing. She was having a hard time keeping up with Nedermann’s demands on her. She had to be the perfect cook, hostess and mother – three roles in which she had not had much experience – as well as a bright, well-dressed and gay companion when they were at parties and clubs together. But while he wanted her to cause envy in other men he became furious if she drank too much or flirted more than he thought right. On one occasion, at a party at the house of a Member of Parliament, he had told her firmly that they were leaving and, when she hesitated, had dragged her out of the room by her wrist. He had forced her into the car and, slamming the window which separated them from the burly chauffeur, who also acted as a rent-collector, he shouted, “Can’t you control yourself? Do you think I can take you to decent places with decent people when you behave like a whore off the streets?” Molly, who had been flirting with a racing driver and given him a little kiss, shouted back, “At least he was paying me some attention. What am I supposed to do? Stand around all evening while you talk about the Leasehold Reform Bill? I keep house all day long and in the evenings I dress up and stand beside you while you talk business. You talk business, you think business – I bet you even dream business. What do you want?”
“A little love – a little loyalty,” he replied shortly.
“Like him,” she said, nodding at the figure in the driver’s seat. “Someone who says yes sir, no sir, three bags full because you’re paying him to do it.”
“I don’t know what you mean with your three bags full,” Nedermann said. “I know a woman who has everything she wants should support her husband and not act like a street woman.”
“I’m not married to you yet,” she reminded him. Underneath his frenzy she could sense the chronic anxiety of the refugee who arrives with nothing but the knowledge of how terrible life can be. It was the fear of being hauled back into the world of deportation, exile and poverty which drove Nedermann. This was also the source of his callous attitude to his tenants – he had suffered once as they did now, he reasoned. If they didn’t like it they should do what he had done – escape.
Molly sighed. “I’m like a horse,” she complained. “No wonder I feel like a bit of fun from time to time. How many are coming tomorrow?”
“Ten,” he told her.
“Oh, Christ,” Molly said. “What did you do before you had me? Why can’t you get a caterer in? You need six women, not one.”
“A woman should look after her man,” he told her. “Only the lazy ones complain.”
Molly had been bred in the old tradition of women who stand in the street in curlers and slippers, grumbling to each other about their demanding husbands and disorderly children as if these chains were all that prevented them from following their true vocations as film stars or the matrons of London teaching hospitals. She said sourly, “So only the lazy ones complain, eh? What do the good ones do – die at the age of thirty-two with grateful smiles on their faces?”
“My mother has been up at six o’clock every morning of her life,” he told her stiffly. “And she is alive and in good health and respected by her children.”
Molly groaned. “Bet she wishes she was bloody dead, though,” she muttered.
Ivy, who had, again in the traditions of Meakin Street, spent many years calling her daughter a slut, was shocked when she visited Orme Square. “Spit and polish everywhere,” she remarked disapprovingly, looking round the sitting room. “It looks lovely, I don’t deny it – I don’t mind hygiene but you feel you ought to clean your shoes and have a bath before you come in. Who keeps it like this?”
Molly, pouring tea from a silver teapot into bone china cups said, “I do.”
Ivy was astonished. “You do?” she said. “I used to have to scream for a week to get you to make your bed. You do all this?”
“Every bleeding bit of it,” said Molly. “From washing the tins before I put them in the dustbin to hoovering under Josie’s bed – every day.”
“Oh, my good God,” said Ivy. “Well – hand us that cup, unless you think I’ll break it.” She got up and wandered to the window. “Nice view,” she said, looking over the pretty square beyond. “Pity about the main road.”
“Park’s opposite – that’s a compensation,” Molly said.
“Oh, it’s very nice, you can’t deny it. And our Josie looks as if she’d been washed, starched and hung out to dry.”
Josephine was sitting on the rug, reading a book. Her socks were clean, her shoes brightly polished and her brown curls had been pulled back to form a neat bunch at the back of her head.
“She’s quietened down,” observed her grandmother. “She used to be a real handful. Off in a flash and all over the place. I used to tell her I was going to buy a chain and chain her up.” Josephine flashed her grandmother a saucy grin and turned over a page.
“Ferenc says a little girl should behave like a little girl,” Molly said.
“I could never see much
difference,” Ivy observed. “It’s hard work to make a normal little girl into a nice little girl. I never had much success at it. I suppose he thinks a woman should behave like a woman, too. All this charring and so forth. Still,” she observed in a more rational tone, “I must say he’s looking after you well.”
“That’s a fact, mum,” Molly told her.
“Be married soon, I daresay?” questioned Ivy.
“That’s right,” Molly agreed.
The only other visitor of whom Nedermann approved was Simon Tate. Simon always refused invitations to meals, pleading that his work at the club kept him busy at those hours, but he frequently dropped in during the afternoons to see Molly when she was alone. He insisted on having drinks. As he gazed around one day he observed, “Well, Molly Flanders, you’re doing very well. Very tasteful. Nice clean modern lines and just enough of the traditional to add solidity and hint at some links with the past. Who’s this?” he asked, gesturing at a portrait in the alcove. “Would that be Graf von Nedermann, member of Bismarck’s cabinet? Or could it be the ninth Lord Water-house?”
“Oh – don’t be such a snob,” Molly said.
“Sorry,” Simon told her. “It all looks very nice and I’m enjoying it. Did you arrange the flowers?”
“Who else?” said Molly. She was trying to be lighthearted but Simon noticed she was gulping her gin. She stood up to get another one.
“The only thing baffling me is the reading material,” he told her, pointing to the books on the floor.
“Better get rid of them,” Molly said, scooping them up. As she bundled them into a sideboard and turned the key on the cupboard door she added, “Ferenc can’t stand me sitting about with a book in my hand.”
“So you spend the afternoons secretly reading Graham Greene and the collected works of Bernard Shaw?” asked Simon, who had spotted the titles.
“Not bloody likely,” grinned Molly, still knocking back the gin.
“What’s it all about?” Simon asked.
“Well, if you really want to know,” Molly told him, “I remembered what Steven said about how I should take an interest in things and improve my mind. He said once without that I’d end up nothing but a burden to everybody. I started getting bored in the afternoons. There’s only so much haute cuisine and going to the hairdressers you can do without going mad. To tell you the honest truth I thought I was getting depressed. So I thought, well, if I read one book and understand it Steven will know, wherever he is, if he’s anywhere, that somebody once took him seriously. So I got this book, about a highwayman and a girl in a low-cut dress, and I read it. But it was rubbish – I mean, all that can’t have been that different from what I’ve seen, even if it was years ago, and I never noticed anybody like Arnie Rose in that book and you can be sure that whenever it all happened there’d be an Arnie Rose in it somewhere. Anyway, I knew really that kind of book wasn’t what Steven meant. So I joined the library and I took out a few books and I got quite interested in reading, I’ve been reading these thrillers by Graham Greene – they’re good. The Shaw book’s just a joke. Steven use to tell me about Professor Higgins while he was trying to turn me into a lady. He even took me to the play, so I thought I’d read it – Pygmalion. But plays are too hard to read.”
“You’ll stand for Parliament next,” Simon said.
“You shouldn’t laugh at me,” Molly said seriously. “It’s people like you laughing at people like me that holds us back. Well, you go and laugh at Ivy and Sid – that’s all right because they’re used to it and they know they can’t do anything. But don’t try it on with Jack or Shirley, because they’ve had more chances and they’re always passing exams. That’s how I know I can’t be that stupid – because of Jack and Shirley being bright. That’s the difference between you and Steven Greene – whatever else he did, he had a bit of respect for other people.”
“Ferenc wouldn’t like it if he heard you talking like that,” Simon said.
Molly shrugged and stood up again. “Another drink?” she asked.
“You’re knocking back the gin a bit this afternoon,” he said. “It’s not like you.”
“Bored housewife, aren’t I?” Molly said shortly. “Are you having a drink or not?”
“Thanks,” Simon said, holding out his glass. “Actually, Moll, if I’m spiteful it’s because I’m embarrassed. I’m getting on badly with Norman and Arnie and I’m bored to death with the Club. Could you put in a good word for me with Ferenc? I fancy joining the organization.”
“Oh Christ,” exclaimed Molly, turning round with the drinks in her hand. “You wouldn’t last five minutes. You’d throw up if you had to work for Ferenc. It’s a rotten game – all rats and evictions and rotten bloody fires through overturned oil heaters. You couldn’t stomach it, not for a second.”
Simon looked round, at the copper bowl of flowers on the elegant table under the oil painting, the watercolours on the walls, the thick-pile carpet. He stared at the crystal glass in his hand and put it down.
“That’s where all this comes from?” he asked.
“Where did you think? We haven’t got a private gold mine in the back garden,” snapped Molly. She added, “You might as well finish that drink. It’s poured out now and if you don’t have it it’ll only go down the sink.” She hesitated. “Look,” she said, “I know I’m a kept woman, living on dirty money. And when we get married it won’t be better. It’ll be worse because I’ll have agreed legally that I don’t mind.” Pausing again, she said, “Change the subject – what happened to Johnnie?”
“He got two years – it might have been less but one of the girls was under age. I don’t think he knew that, though.”
“I don’t envy him in jail,” Molly said.
“That’s right,” Simon agreed. He added, “Well, I’m sorry to have asked you, Molly. If what you say’s true, it’s obvious I’d better stay put. I’ll think about something else. I just can’t stand the Club, the punters or anything about them. Also, I’d like to see daylight more often and get weekends off like normal people. Tom Allaun and Charlie Mark-ham are back – they dropped a thousand each last Saturday night and Sunday morning. While other people are out at parties I’m having to absorb spite from men like that – it isn’t good enough. They’re rotten winners and even worse losers. And Charlie can call on the family firm to make good his loss but I don’t know what Tom’s going to do.”
“His father’ll sell off another farm,” said Molly, whose connection with the property market had taught her a good deal. Then she stood up, swayed, murmured something about Mrs Gates and a gypsy – and fell down.
Simon rushed over and picked her up just as she regained consciousness. “Molly,” he said in a concerned voice. “Are you all right? When did you start drinking?”
“Not the gin,” she said weakly, as he ladled her into a chair and went to get her a glass of water. “Not the gin – I’m in the club.”
“What about the club?” he said, returning and handing her the water.
“Not that club,” she moaned. “The other club – I’m pregnant. I thought as much. I can’t get stuck like this.” She drank the water, while Simon stared at her in bewilderment. “I can’t get stuck like this,” she said more emphatically. “I won’t have it. I won’t have this baby.”
Simon stared at her. “You’d better think it over,” he advised.
“How long for?” demanded Molly. “Nine months? This isn’t anything you can afford time to think about. You’ll have to help me.”
“What? How?” asked Simon, still startled.
“Ask around,” Molly said desperately. “Find out who women go to and how much it costs. I want a posh abortionist and no fuss. And Ferenc mustn’t find out.”
“Do you think this is quite fair on him?” Simon asked. “He’d be a devoted father –”
“Fair on him?” Molly half-shouted. “What about fair on me? I’m not even bloody married. I’ve had one fatherless kid. I’m in the running, now, for an
other. Do you think I want to go through all that again?” Her voice dropped to a threatening whisper. “You just ask around, Simon, and find out what to do. Is Mrs Jones still in charge of the ladies’?”
“Yes,” Simon said gloomily.
“Then you ask her,” Molly demanded. “She’s the one to ask – she’s bound to know. Say it’s your sister. Do it today.” She was nearly shouting again. Simon was alarmed. He said, in a low voice, “All right, Moll. I’ll do it.” He added, on an inspiration, “I’ll do it now.” He was looking for a chance to leave immediately. An embarrassing conversation with Mrs Jones seemed a small price to pay to get away from this hysterical woman who, it seemed, might do anything at any time – throw a glass at a mirror, faint again or begin to scream.
Molly spotted his game and said sulkily, “You do that, then. Go now.”
Simon went to the door. “All right,” he said. “Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own? Would you like me to get Josephine from school for you?”
“I’ll get Josephine,” Molly said grimly. “You just find Mrs Jones. Then ring me.”
“All right,” he said.
“But listen,” she told him, springing upright in her chair. “If you ring and I say – what shall I say? – yes, if I say “I’ll drop in tomorrow and collect it from the club,” you shut up. That’ll mean Ferenc’s here.”
All The Days of My Life Page 38