All The Days of My Life

by Hilary Bailey

  “Ferenc –” Molly murmured.

  “I can see that, Molly,” he replied. “But you can’t go on mourning forever.” A couple of days would be nice, though, Molly thought to herself. Fortunately, at that moment Arnie declared, “Well, then, to business. We’d better get ourselves down the bank and see what they’ve got.”

  “Good heavens above,” he said later, as they sat in a shelter on the windy promenade, looking at the contents of the brown paper carrier bag in which Molly had put the jewellery. “Oh dear, oh dear – this wouldn’t improve the look of the Christmas tree much, would it?” He stared her in the eye and asked, “Are you sure you’ve been telling me the truth, Molly?”

  There was nobody about. Mist hung low over the promenade. Molly, knowing she had the ring tucked away in another bank, decided that she would not give it up. She launched into details of what Ferenc had given her and how she had later given it back. “By the time the mortgage had to be paid on Chepstow Villas there was nothing to pay it with – it was a private mortgage, from Arthur Simpkinson and he kept on ringing up. So bang went the diamond earrings – Ferenc kept trying to make me have them back. In the end I nipped down to Asprey’s myself and sold them, and a string of pearls, and gave him the money, in cash. After that,” she continued, “there we were with hundreds of houses and thousands of pounds of rent coming in and still nothing for Josie’s school fees – what could I do? Something else had to go – this time the bracelet –” Arnie interrupted her and shook his head, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said. “What a silly girl you’ve been. Didn’t Ivy teach you never to part with the jewellery?”

  “Can’t say she did,” Molly replied, pleased that he had not found out about the ring.

  “Well, take my word for it,” Arnie told her. “In hard times jewellery’s all a woman’s got. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” He patted her knee and told her, “We’ll have to see about replacing some of the tom, then, at a later date, won’t we? Let’s get out of this wind and have some lunch.”

  At a large restaurant on the front they ate oysters and drank champagne. Molly discovered she was quite enjoying herself. The past few days had been terrible. Now Arnie had taken the jewellery and left her the £200 in cash, which was a relief. He spoke well of Ferenc Nedermann so the occasion was respectful. She couldn’t help thinking that Arnie and his brother had helped to push Nedermann into his heart attack but it was consoling to be able to speak of him at all.

  He said, “Basically I liked Ferenc, very much. He was good company, Ferenc, and a clever businessman. All right, he made some mistakes but there’s nothing to say that he couldn’t have sorted all that out, if he hadn’t died so tragically early. How old was he?”

  “Forty-eight,” Molly said.

  “Forty-eight – I ask you. No age at all. In his prime,” Arnie said. “There it is – I suppose none of us knows when we’re going to be taken.” He put a large piece of steak into his mouth and chewed. “Course I’m sorry I had to go after him like that but I had no choice. I couldn’t let him get away with robbing my sister’s boy, could I? Course not. If he’d only come to me like a gentleman –” he mused. “Still, water under the bridge, Moll, that’s what it is.”

  Molly nodded and said, knowing he was about to start pressing her, “I can’t get over it. One minute he was all right – the next, there I was trying to wake him up. My one consolation is that he couldn’t have felt any pain. I don’t think he knew anything about it. I’m wondering when they’ll release the body after the autopsy –”

  “Don’t worry about all that, Moll,” Arnie said. “The firm’ll take care of the arrangements.”

  “He was a Jew,” Molly said.

  “That a fact?” Arnie said in surprise. “Should have guessed I suppose. Anyway,” he persisted, “that’s not what you should be thinking about just at this moment. You have to think of the future – you’ve got a kid to bring up. Now, I don’t want to offend you. You’re sensitive and at a time like this – never mind, some things have to be said – I want to tell you what I think about you, Molly. As I see it, you’ve got a lot of class, a lot of class – and a lot of personality. Now – I respect your grief, it’s only natural and right, but a woman can’t go on grieving forever and there you are, a good looker, a good dresser and all the rest – you need a man to protect you. What’s a woman without a man, when all’s said and done? And I could be good to you, Moll.”

  Molly smiled at him and said, “Arnie –”

  He went on, with some anger, “I’m good to women. Look at what I done for that slag Wendy Valentine – I don’t like speaking ill of women but, let’s face facts – she was a right little scrubber. But never mind that, while I was with her she had the best of everything – big cars, fur coats, plenty of sparklers – the lot. And that was for little Wendy, a real Blackwall Tunnel, to put it crudely – sorry, Molly, I’m not a crude man usually, but we all know about her. Not that there was any of that while I was about, of course, but before and after – oh, my God, what a careless girl. Gone right down now, I hear. Black, white or yellow, she doesn’t bother. On the skids, good and proper – but, like I say, if I done all that for her, you can imagine what I’d do for you. Because I respect you, Moll. You’ve had a hard time and done your best for the kid and that’s what a woman’s judged by in this world – how she treats her kid. And you’ve always done right by Josie.” He paused. “How about it, Moll?” he said. “I’ll treat you well. I guarantee it.”

  An idea shot into Molly’s head. She captured it rapidly and pinned it, like a butterfly to a board. She realized she was twenty-eight and wanted to do something for herself. She did not want another man, for the time being at any rate, having a hand in shaping her future. She saw that if she took up with Arnold Rose, or anyone else for that matter, she would never be able, as she put it, to call her soul her own. She was also horrified by the idea of Arnie Rose, the man and his life. On the other hand, she was afraid of offending him. She put her knife and fork together on the plate and told him, “I’m very shattered, Arnie. You’re right. I’m sensitive. Perhaps I’m oversensitive. But I do need some time, maybe even a month or two, to put my heart together again. You’re a fine man, but at a time like this, I haven’t anything to bring you.”

  Pouring some more wine into her glass, he said, “Fair enough, Molly. I thought you might say something like that. Only right – I respect your feelings.” He patted her hand with his own large one. There were black hairs growing on it. He had a diamond ring on his little finger. Molly squeezed the hand in reply and said, “That’s very understanding of you.”

  “How about some sweet?” he asked. “And – why not – a little drop of pink champagne to help it down.”

  “Thank you, Arnie,” Molly said, glad to be off the hook, but knowing that it was only a temporary escape. He drove her back to London and dropped her in Meakin Street.

  1964

  That night, in the now-neglected house at the end of the street Mary lay sleepless in the brass-knobbed bed where once she had lain in joy with her lover, Johnnie. She was thinking hard.

  She had two hundred pounds under the mattress and one hundred in the Post Office and, all too soon, Arnie Rose would be coming courting in Meakin Street. It was inadvisable to refuse either of the Rose brothers what they wanted. Arnie’s sentimentality could turn easily to violent rage, as if he were a child. She was reasonably safe for a time, while she kept up her pose as a grief-stricken widow under the protection of Sid and Ivy, whom Arnie and Norman’s system of loyalties forbade them to offend. Moreover she had, that afternoon, applied for a place for Josephine at the local grammar school. She would get in, Molly guessed, but more money would be needed to pay for the uniform.

  She lay there, with a tangle of financial and emotional ideas running round her head. Here was where she had first slept with Johnnie in the days when they had both been more innocent than either of them seemed to be today. Perhaps she should have married Ferenc and obtained
some legal right to anything left over when the confusion was sorted out. But then, she thought, would she feel justified in taking it? She had had his child aborted. He would have died a happier man if she had been a proper wife to him, and undertaken to bear him a child. And, she thought, she had known, by now, too much death – Jim, Steven Greene, even Ferenc, had died before their time.

  Finally, Molly slept and then awoke, from a nightmare about Ferenc’s death, where she could have brought him back to life but could not remember what to do. In the yard outside there was a funny noise. Inside her head a voice said, “Take a shorthand and typing course.” She got up to investigate the noise and, on the way down – stairs, saw the advantages of the scheme. Firstly, she would be qualified for a better job if she could do shorthand and typing. She saw herself in a white coat, in an office, acting as a doctor’s receptionist. Secondly, while she was taking the course she would be out a lot of the time. When she was in she would be studying. This, she thought, would deter Arnie Rose from making unexpected visits and put him off while he was in the house.

  By this time she had reached the bottom of the stairs and was opening the kitchen door cautiously. She saw herself, a severe figure in hornrimmed glasses, behind a pile of books. It was dark in the yard outside and she could not at first see where the squeaking sound was coming from. Then she jumped back with a scream – something had touched her foot. She looked back into the lighted kitchen. On the floor by the stove a skinny little black and white kitten sat, with its tail curled round it, mewing up at her. Mary bolted the kitchen door and gave it some milk. She watched its small pink tongue lapping at the milk and said, “All right, Tibbles. Stay if you like. Time I got a nice little cat to go with my nice new little life.” The cat, she reflected, as she went upstairs, would cheer Josephine, who had been whisked off to Ivy’s at a moment of crisis, which she plainly understood, and was now going to move into the humble and untended house. Nedermann, who had given her everything else, had refused to allow her any pets. Even goldfish, he had declared, were unhygienic. There would also be a percentage in turning her new life into something very ordinary and boring. In a small house, with a gangling twelve-year-old child, a secretarial course and, now, a common black and white cat, Molly felt she would be too unglamorous for Arnie Rose to bother with. She decided she would, to deter him further, make sure of a few nights’ work a week at the Marquis of Zetland. The money would help, too. So, imagining Josephine happy, a new career in view and Arnie Rose getting into his big, black car and saying farewell to Meakin Street, Molly, finally, went contentedly to sleep. The cat, dissatisfied with a cushion in the kitchen, came upstairs, nosed into the room and slept beside her, with its head on the pillow.

  In spite of the cat and in spite of paying a secretarial college more than half her store of money for a four-month course in shorthand and typing, Molly had not reckoned with the fact that, at twenty-eight, she was if anything better-looking by far than she had been at eighteen. Her face had lost its childish roundness, giving it more definition. Her blue eyes still sparkled and her wide mouth, even in repose, still smiled, but her carriage now expressed maturity. All this only intrigued Arnie Rose more. The pretty girl he had once made automatic advances to now had some distinction. “She can’t take up with rabble no more,” he reported gloomily to his brother Norman. “She’ll soon find that out. All I got to do is wait.” To this Norman replied, “So you say, Arnie. So you say. But I’m telling you – a bird’ll do anything, anything at all.”

  Arnie called at Meakin Street two or three times a week. Each time, Molly had to let him in. Any other contenders there might have been were soon warned off, by the landlord at the Marquis of Zetland, for example, who had only to mention that Molly was being courted by one of the Rose brothers to see the flirtatious customer immediately back off when Molly returned to the bar.

  “It’s hopeless, mum,” she wailed to Ivy Waterhouse one day. “I’m doing all I can to make it plain I’m trying to be independent. I even tell him I have to start my typing practice after Josie’s in bed. Nine o’clock I start rattling on the machine but he still hangs about with his bottles of champagne and I don’t know what. Then, I have to go out for a meal with him sometimes and the story’s wearing thin – about how I can’t get over Ferenc’s death. He turns up at the pub of a night and puts the customers off. Now Ginger’s beginning to complain – he says he’s turning away trade. The boozers can’t relax while he’s sitting there. And he’s going down to the school and bringing Josie home in the car. What am I going to do? I can’t refuse him outright but I’m scared if I don’t give in he’ll take it out on all of us.”

  “You’re cornered,” said Ivy. “That’s the trouble. I think in the end you might just have to tell him it’s no good.”

  “Even you don’t know what he’s like,” Molly told her mother. “Think of everything horrible anyone could do to anyone and then double it – then you’ve got Arnie.”

  “Sid and Jack’ll have to speak to him,” said Ivy.

  “Then Sid has an accident on the way to the depot and Jack falls off the dock,” Molly told her. She said glumly, “It’s your fault I was born so beautiful, mother.” For some reason, Ivy flinched.

  That evening Arnie called again and sat under the Christmas tree in the little parlour in Molly’s house. The cat prowled between the two motionless figures in the lamplight. Josephine was in the kitchen, doing her homework. Molly sat quite still, like a hunted animal, hoping its enemy will think it gone. Inwardly she was screaming the scream of a woman courted against her will by a man who will not go away.

  “I don’t know why you don’t get rid of that scruffy, nervy thing, Molly,” said Arnie, looking at the cat. “Why don’t I get you a nice poodle – a pedigree.”

  “I couldn’t look after a dog properly while I’m taking this course,” replied Molly. The cat sprang on her lap and began to purr. “Anyway,” she said discouragingly, “these houses are running with mice.”

  “You don’t have to live here if you don’t want to,” Arnie told her. “I thought I’d made that plain.” His tone carried some menace. He had come to the conclusion that grief for Ferenc must end. “I expect you let him in the bedroom at night.”

  “He’s company,” Molly remarked. It was the wrong remark.

  “No need to be alone, darling,” Arnie replied. “I can think of better answers than an unhygienic cat. They can give you diseases, you know.”

  “Opening time,” said Molly, getting to her feet. “I’d better go – Ginger’s complaining because I’m always late.”

  “Sit down, Molly,” Arnie ordered. Molly looked at him. His face was expressionless. Thinking of Josephine, still doing algebra in the kitchen with the oven door open to provide some heat, she sat down. “See here, Molly,” he said, “it upsets me to see a girl like you in a rathole like this when she could have something a lot better. It upsets me to see you mourning over Ferenc like this. It’s time you pulled yourself together and made a few decisions. I’ve made my offer and I’m beginning to think you’re keeping me on a string. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.”

  Molly stood up. She went close to him and made her eyes go very big. She kept her face very still. She said in a low voice, “I’m afraid of myself, Arnie. You might think I’m superstitious but I’m afraid I could be a bringer of bad luck. Look what’s happened to the men in my life – Jim Flanders – hanged. Steven Greene – suicide in a police cell. Ferenc Nedermann – dead in his forties with the coppers after him. What would you think if you were me? You might start to wonder if you didn’t carry something bad with you.” She dropped her voice even lower and said, “Like a kind of curse.”

  The room was lit only by one lamp. Arnie gazed up into Molly’s large, unblinking eyes. He looked away and said, “That’s nonsense, Molly. You’re brooding, that’s what you’re doing. It’s unhealthy. It’s just a coincidence, that’s all.”

  “I expect you’re right, Arnie,” Molly
said, in an unconvinced, melancholy voice, “but I can’t help thinking these things.”

  She knew that like many criminals Arnold Rose was superstitious. In a world where chance plays an important part, being lucky, or unlucky, mattered. He saw her to the door of the Marquis of Zetland with a thoughtful look on his face and did not come in for a drink, as he often did.

  So far, so good, thought Molly, going into the pub and taking her old shoes out of the cupboard below the bar. But it won’t work for long. Then what can I do? I’ll have to go, but what about Josephine? What about me? Whatever can I do?

  After the pub shut officially she was washing glasses in the sink behind the bar when Lil Messiter said, from her corner, “Not your usual smiling self tonight, Moll.” Her voice was slurred. Molly, seeing her glass was empty, filled a pint mug with Guinness and took it over to her. She set it in front of the half-drunk woman and said, “Here you are, Mrs Messiter.” Then she went back to the washing-up. The landlord often let Lil Messiter stay behind in the pub after closing time. He gave her a free drink, too. Everyone in Meakin Street knew that Lil had had a hard life. She was forty-eight and looked sixty. She had something wrong with her womb. Her husband, who had been a violent man, had died ten years before, leaving her with two children still at school and the other, George, still a toddler. Cissie was then a student nurse at St Thomas’s hospital, Edna had married and Phil had run away from home and was living in Scotland. There was no one to offer help or money. Lil had gone out to work as a charwoman to keep her children. Now two of the boys had joined the navy Lil lived alone with her youngest child. She was tired, much older than her years. The older children now sent her a little money. She worked when she was able, and was drunk as often as she could afford. A brutal husband, poverty and five children had broken her. Now she sat in the corner of the Marquis of Zetland with her pint, small and shrivelled up and as happy now as she would ever be.