“What do you remember?” Evelyn Endell asked.
“Being on the train when I was evacuated,” Molly said. “Oh, no,” she suddenly recalled. “I remember Ivy giving me an egg, in an egg cup every day, after Jack went to school. We only had one egg cup. And it was a secret. That must be why I remember it. Ivy told me never to tell anybody I had that egg.”
“I should think so,” her mother-in-law said. “In wartime. Every day? Did you keep chickens?”
“In Meakin Street?” Molly exclaimed. “There was hardly room for a cat. What do you remember?”
“I think,” said Evelyn Endell, “it was being on my father’s horse, riding through the hills. The weather sometimes made the small roads impassable in those days – he must have had a call to an outlying farm and decided to take the horse across country. I remember the sky being very dark and a lot of wind. Then I remember being propped in a chair with a blanket over me, in front of the fire, drinking warm milk. My mother told me years later that she must have been in labour with my brother, which meant I was only about two and a half. Of course, it was typical of my father to leave my mother in the hands of a midwife while he went off to see another patient. Fred’s exactly the same. Doctor’s families always go short of medical attention. But I think that must be my earliest memory. People do vary – some people genuinely can’t recall much of their early years. Others can remember being two, or even younger.”
“It’s the odd things you remember, I suppose,” said Molly. “Out-of-the-ordinary things, like your ride – or my egg. But Joe must have had plenty of events – the orphanage, coming here – I don’t understand it.”
“Fred says it might be perfectly natural or it might be a buried trauma,” said Evelyn. “He says, let sleeping dogs lie. There was only one point where he did begin to worry and that was when Joe got so angry about his father’s money – Fred’s father, that is.” Seeing Molly’s blank expression she said, “The inheritance – you know.”
“I don’t,” Molly told her. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Oh,” said Evelyn Endell. “Well – it was years ago, when Fred’s father died. He was very rich, you see. He’d made his fortune in the ’20s and ’30s, running what started as a smallish firm making goods out of steel – light engineering – but he moved over to making arms. I agreed with Joe, really, or I could certainly see his point of view. Fred’s father was trading with anyone who wanted arms and in those days there were no restrictions – he was a good friend of Basil Zaharoff’s. I daresay if we knew the whole truth about who Fred’s father had dealt with and what the consequences had been we’d all be shocked.” She paused, “I suppose it might have looked different at the time, in the middle of the Depression.”
“I daresay,” said Molly. “Still – what happened with Joe?”
“Harold Endell, Fred’s father, died,” Evelyn told her. “He left half his money to Fred and the rest to be divided among the three grandchildren. This would have been almost twenty years ago. Joe’d just started work on the Yorkshire Post. And he refused the money, which was about £100,000, because he said he wouldn’t take money from that source. Guns, you see. That was when Fred began to wonder if this fierce reaction he had didn’t have something to do with rejecting the family because he couldn’t face the thought of being adopted – you know the sort of thing –”
“Sounds far more like Joe’s convictions than Joe’s traumas,” observed Molly. “Arms trading and big sums of capital – no wonder he went up in the air.”
“He was so young,” said Evelyn Endell. “We had no idea he was going to stick to his convictions. And I don’t think parents take their children’s political views all that seriously, do you? They always think they’re going to grow out of them. All Fred could see was a young fool, daft enough to turn his back on a fortune.” She looked at Molly. “Has he never mentioned any of this to you?” she asked.
“You know what he’s like,” Molly said. “What’s over’s over, where Joe’s concerned. It’s always tomorrow and the next day with him.”
“That’s why I think you shouldn’t encourage him to explore the past,” Evelyn Endell said bluntly. “I hope you don’t mind –?”
Molly shook her head. “ ‘Course not. You’re his mother. You’ve known him a long time.”
“It’s just that you’re so happy,” she said earnestly. “Could you ask for any more?”
Molly shook her head and smiled. “Not a thing,” she said. “Not a single thing. Leave the past in the past, that’s the best idea.”
The sea, out of sight, was rising. The sky, as they spoke, had darkened. “Oh dear,” Mrs Endell said, looking up. “It’s going to rain. Shall we go in?”
They walked back in silence to the house. Molly’s instinct told her all was not well. Joe had been uneasy since they came, although here everything was the same as always. The only difference was that before they arrived she had told him she might be expecting their child. He had been so happy that he had cried. He had hugged her and said, “That was all I needed. All I wanted.” And then came his nervousness. Molly told herself that it was probably quite normal for a man approaching forty, who had never been a father before, to feel strange about the event. And yet the explanation did not satisfy her.
By the time it came to leave Joe had a bad headache. He sat beside her in the passenger seat, looking white and strained. After the sedatives he had taken had put him to sleep, Mary clicked on the car radio. She turned it down and bowled along. She began to sing, in French, the tune which was playing, the sad, nostalgic little song she had learned first in her dreams and then in prison. As the song ended Joe woke up. Molly, glancing at him, saw that he looked drawn and quite wild-eyed. Turning her attention back to the road she said, in alarm, “Are you all right, Joe? Shall I find somewhere to pull up?”
He said, in a whisper, “It’s all right – I had a bad dream. It must be the stuff Dad gave me.”
Molly drove on anxiously until she saw that he had fallen into a relaxed sleep.
But only a few weeks later he had a nightmare which woke him, screaming and shouting. She sat up and stared down at the sweating face. His expression of terror faded. He tried to smile. “I dreamed that Edward Heath won the election,” he said.
As the election campaign got under way the nightmares ceased. They travelled up and down the country. Mary felt well and happy.
At four in the morning on 4th March 1974 Joe and Sam Needham, with Molly, left the house of another MP in Hampstead, sure of a Labour victory.
They decided to go to Transport House for a short while, to join in the celebration. Since Sam Needham had drunk several whiskies and Molly, in the sixth month of her pregnancy, was tired, Joe Endell, always enthusiastic about driving, volunteered to take the wheel. It occurred to Molly, as she got into the back seat, that Joe, who had just fought an election campaign, must be as tired as she was. Also, although she seldom liked to express the thought to herself, he was not a good driver. Nevertheless, as he drove off smoothly through the near-empty streets, she forgot her anxiety and even found herself dozing. She woke, briefly, thinking she heard a lion roar as they went past Regent’s Park and, later, glimpsed the trees on the other side of the broad street as they drove down Park Lane. Lying low in her seat she heard Sam say, “Great night – great night, eh, Joe?” As she gazed up at the glimmering street lights they were passing she thought contentedly that in a few months she and Joe would have their child. She was in a half-dream when she heard Sam cry, “Joe – look out!” and at the same moment the car skidded, juddered, then skidded again. She was still terrified by the speed of the skid when a huge crash sent her jolting forward. She found herself hanging breathlessly over the seat in front, feeling, at that moment, no pain, but only shock. Alas for her, she did not lose consciousness. She was able to hear Sam saying dizzily, “Joe – Molly – are you all right? Joe? Joe!” She could hear voices outside the car and the insistent blaring of a horn close by.
“Joe?” sh
e said. As her head cleared she saw his round head, with its reddish hair, slumped over the wheel. He was motionless.
Now, someone wrenched open the door in front. A man’s voice said, “Don’t move him – oh, God.” Sam Needham muttered, “Lady in the back – get her out first.” Another voice, more official-sounding, said, “How many in here? Are you hurt? Can you get out, madam?” Helped from the car, she was taken to stand on the pavement where she stood looking at the four crashed cars blocking the left-hand side of Piccadilly, thinking that she must go to find Joe. Sam, beside her, said, “Are you all right, Molly? An ambulance is coming.” Molly pulled away from the policeman’s supporting arm and started to go to the car. “Joe’s still in there,” she explained to him. “It’s better if you don’t,” said the policeman. “Wait for the ambulance.” As Sam said, “No, Molly,” she stepped off the kerb and walked to the car. Someone tried to stop her as she walked past the police cars, with their revolving lights. “It’s my husband,” she said.
She stood looking through the open car door at Joe Endell’s peaceful face, now back against the high seat rest. It was only when she looked down and took in the red patch on the unmoving front of his shirt that she began to think he might be dead. Even then she did not believe it.
Indeed, as she crouched over him in the ambulance on the short trip to St George’s Hospital asking, over and over again, “Is he dead? Tell me if he’s all right. Is he dead?” she still did not really believe the answer might be, “Yes. Your husband is dead.” And none of the ambulancemen, at that moment, dared tell her the truth.
She was released from hospital after three days, during which she behaved like a model patient. Her ribs were heavily bruised, but otherwise she was all right. She told Sid and Ivy, and everyone else, that she was going to be discharged a day later and went back to empty Meakin Street alone, in a taxi, having assured the hospital staff that her mother would be waiting for her. Her intention was quite clear. There was no point in living now that Joe was dead. She was going to kill herself.
As soon as she reached the house she went upstairs, without looking round, took a full bottle of codeine from the bathroom cabinet and, without a single tear, swallowed them all. She lay down on the bed, saying to herself, over and over, “Joe. Joe. Joe.” She knew that she would never be able to love anyone again so much. Pagan, as only the city bred can be, she still believed she would see Joe again after she died and that was all she wanted, even if it was only for a moment or two. She knew in any case that she could not go on without Joe. She did not for a second consider that Joe’s child made, or ever could make, any difference to all this. She was drifting, still tearless, towards her death, when Ivy foiled her.
At five that evening Ivy had telephoned the hospital, wanting to speak to Molly. Hearing she had left she immediately rang Meakin Street. Getting no reply she tried only once more before calling a cab. Sid, coming out of the living room, asked her what she was doing. “Our Mary’s left the hospital,” she told him, adding, with certainty, “I think she’s going to make away with herself.”
Sid looked at her, and said, “I’m coming with you.”
“I loved Joe Endell,” Ivy said to him in the cab. “He was like a son – he felt like a son to me.”
Sid kicked in the lock at 19 Meakin Street. Half an hour later Molly was back in hospital.
She had no notion of how she passed the next few months. Her grief after Joe’s death was absolute. She barely spoke or moved. She did eat, for the coming child was making its demands. Ivy looked after her at Beckenham, and grew more and more worried as the months passed and Molly lay motionless in bed, often moaning to herself, like an animal. The mound which was her child grew steadily under the bedclothes. Ivy became exhausted with anxiety and overwork.
This was the second time that her daughter had carried a child in terrible circumstances. It would be the second child born in tragedy, following the death of the father.
Two months after Joe’s death she was talking to Isabel Allaun, who had come to express her sympathy.
“I’m afraid for the baby after she has it,” Ivy told her. “It’s not just her health. I’m afraid the shock of labour may disturb her mind worse. The doctor says leave her alone and she’ll come out of it when the baby’s born. He says it’ll give her something to think about. The trouble is, all she says is she’ll never love anybody like she loved Joe – the trouble is, I daresay it’s true. I can’t quarrel with her about it.” She paused. “The doctor might be right,” she added. “She might pull herself together when the baby’s born – but there was a girl once, years ago, near where we used to live. She was like Molly. Her husband got killed on a building site before she had their baby. Three weeks after she had it she killed it – smothered it in the cradle. They let her off – said her mind was disturbed.” She paused and looked at Isabel, who nodded. Ivy thought that this fierce opponent, whom she had once seen as in competition with her for her child, seemed very much reduced. She was shrunken and lined. The hands on which her jewelled rings still glittered were wrinkled and clawlike.
She said, “My dear, I’m so worried – I was dreadfully shocked when I saw her. She’ll have to be made to get up – and very soon.”
“I can’t make her,” Ivy said. “We’ve all tried-we’ve threatened and cajoled and pleaded. Nothing makes any difference. I’ve felt downright cruel from time to time. In fact there’ve been times when I could have dragged her out of bed out of sheer fury. I’m getting another doctor. Let’s hope he can do something. Otherwise I’m afraid she’ll end up in a mental hospital.”
“In normal circumstances I’d invite her to stay,” Isabel Allaun said. “But, quite honestly, at the moment nothing is as it should be. She’s better here.” She leaned back and added, “How sad it is. Poor Mary. She was such a lovely child, so pretty and spirited. One would have predicted less ill fortune for her. And now – a widow for the second time.” She paused and then said, “Of course – the gypsy predicted it. Isn’t that curious?”
“What gypsy?” Ivy asked.
“She probably never told you – I expect she forgot all about it. When she was quite a small child, living with us at Framlingham, my housekeeper, Mrs Gates, took her to a fortune teller, a gypsy, at a fair they used to have on the common. The woman produced the usual jumble of rubbish but I’m sure she said something about two husbands. And – what was it? – strange blood?”
Ivy said, very quickly, “I’ve never been superstitious. It’s all rubbish and it does harm to those who listen.”
“Of course,” said Lady Allaun. “You’re perfectly right. It’s foolish of me to mention it. You have enough to worry about without nonsense like that.” She stood up and said, “I must go or I’ll miss the train. Thank you for letting me come. And I’m very sorry to find Mary as she is – I’ll try to think if there’s anything I can do to help.”
After the narrow figure had gone down the path Ivy went back into the house and sat down wearily. She wondered what Isabel had meant by saying that nothing was as it should be at Allaun Towers. Sir Frederick had died two years ago. And she had not once mentioned her son, Tom. But the defeat, if it was a defeat, of an ancient enemy did not please her. She just thought, “Who’d be a woman, getting on in years, with all these problems?”
So she took a cup of tea and a slice of cake up to the helpless invalid who was her daughter. Molly, sitting up in bed, seized the cup and drank the contents in two gulps. She gobbled the cake, holding it in both hands, close to her mouth, like a child. Some of the tea spilled on her nightdress. There were crumbs on the sheets and blankets. Then she howled, staring at Ivy all the while. Then, as Ivy took the cup from the bed, where it lay on its side, she ceased to moan and put her hand, in horror, over her mouth. “I’ll see you in a minute, Molly,” Ivy said and, holding the cup, went out. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, feeling that she had no strength left, that she might easily slide down the floor outside the bedroom and
stay there, unable to get up. She wondered how long she could go on coping with her mad daughter, whether what she was doing even helped Molly, whether Molly would be able to look after the child when it was born. The image of a mad mother killing her child came to her so strongly that, now, she gasped. Then she breathed deeply and went slowly downstairs with the cup. “Better if it died at birth,” she thought to herself. “I can’t take over another baby – not again.”
Downstairs, in the kitchen, she felt a fierce resentment of Molly, of Endell, who had fathered a child and killed himself, of Sid and the doctor who persisted, as if they could not bear to examine the truth, in saying everything would be all right with Molly and the baby after the birth. “Who’d be a woman,” she said to herself. “Men retire. But this lot is never-ending.”
But in the event Isabel Allaun did change things, although unintentionally.
Tom Allaun and Charlie Markham were at the tables at Frames a week later. “Heard anything of Molly?” Charlie asked his cousin. He leaned back in a chair, a bit drunk. The years had not treated him unkindly. His thickset frame, which tended to run to fat, was still reasonably firm. His cheeks were still ruddy and his blue eyes clear. He looked what he was – a self-indulgent, entrepreneurial businessman, not too scrupulous in his dealings with women or business associates, but still in control of his situation. He had now been divorced twice and was paying indifferent court to a wealthy divorcee who, in her turn, was hesitating about whether to marry him or not. His cousin Tom, however, was in better shape, for he exercised carefully, watched his diet and drank sparingly. Nevertheless, superficially he remained a less attractive character than Charlie. He had not Charlie’s expansive air. His eyes were less direct and his mouth had narrowed. Shaking his head at the croupier to indicate that they were not betting, he told Charlie, “Molly’s in a bad way. Got a bun in the oven, of course. Due in a few months. Ma went to see her and apparently she’s right off her trolley and may stay like it. Looks as if it may come down to head-shrinkers and loony bins.”
All The Days of My Life Page 50