All The Days of My Life

by Hilary Bailey

  “She told me after, one marriage to end at a rope’s end.”

  “Good God,” Molly exclaimed.

  “For children – a girl and a boy – unnatural fruit – a wrong deed but not done wrongly. Close to a fortune, close to a kingdom –” She said a little more but her voice was too faint to catch the words.

  “Never mind all that,” said Molly, impressed in spite of herself by the gypsy’s warning about a husband dying by hanging. “You rest, now. I want you fresh for your lunch or you won’t eat it.” But dull prickles went up and down her spine. Unnatural fruit? A kingdom? She felt uneasy. As the latch on the door went up she left the room. Vera Harker said, “I brought some fish – the fishman came today. And there’s a calf’s foot here. I’ll make a broth.”

  Molly hurried back to the house, deciding that if Tom had not told Isabel she was poor then she must do it, if only to work out who was paying Vera Harker. But as soon as she entered the sitting room she realized the bad news had already been delivered. Isabel was sitting, reading a book. When Molly came in she looked up stonily and then went back to her reading.

  “Isabel,” Molly said, sitting down. “How much are you paying Mrs Harker for what she’s doing?”

  “I hardly think that that’s any affair of yours,” said her mother-in-law.

  “I thought you might like me to pay her,” Molly said mildly.

  “I don’t see any necessity for that,” Isabel said coldly.

  “It’s obvious there are difficulties,” Molly said, trying to tailor her remarks to suit Isabel. “I’m living here now – I’d like to help.” Then, dropping any effort at diplomacy she said, “I know both of you thought I was rich – and now you know I’m not. But if we all pull together I’m sure we can get out of the mess.”

  In response to this Isabel simply put her book down on the table next to her and said, “I find this a disturbing conversation, Molly. Tom’s wife is Tom’s wife. You need not enquire about the wages of people I have asked to help us. You need not discuss your resources, or lack of them, with me. I must go and see about lunch.”

  Snubbed, Molly stood there in the middle of the sitting room, for a moment almost convinced that she had been rude and vulgar in attempting to discuss money with her mother-in-law. Then she looked at the cracked paint around the window panes. Money had to be discussed. Then she realized that Isabel had not asked about Mrs Gates. She made a face at the door through which Isabel had gone, as if she were still a child. Then she went upstairs, had a bath, changed her clothes and took a basket down to the village. She bought some food for the evening and packets of seeds at the village stores. She left an order for more supplies and said that she would drive down for them next day. She knew quite well that the old woman behind the counter was the aunt of a girl she had been at school with. She did not acknowledge the fact and, by acting briskly, like someone in a hurry, prevented the woman from starting to chat. She walked the long lane back to the house with her basket, wishing now that she had taken the car. When she arrived there was no sound in the house. Isabel must be resting. She had not seen Tom all day. She made a cup of tea in the kitchen and carried it outside. Then she went back to the stables. Vera Harker was sitting in a chair, reading a women’s magazine. A small pile of material lay on the floor at her feet. She put the magazine down when Molly came in. “There’s not much I can do,” she explained. “I don’t want to wake her.”

  “Did she eat any lunch?” Molly asked.

  “I can’t even get her to drink anything,” Mrs Harker said.

  “I think she ought to be in hospital,” said Molly, the urban woman. Mrs Harker, country bred and still in the tradition of people dying in their own beds, said, “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “Well,” said Molly, “can you drop a note in at the doctor’s this afternoon? I think he should come again. I’ll stay here.”

  The other woman got up. “I’ll get the doctor to run me back in the evening,” she said. She tucked the half-made-up material into a large chintz bag and then waited while Molly wrote a note to the doctor and left.

  The afternoon was hotter than the morning. Molly sat, sometimes beside Mrs Gates and sometimes in the room outside. As she watched the motionless face of the sleeping woman it seemed, somehow, to be sinking in. She studied the movements of her chest as she breathed in and out. It was like watching a newborn child, but at the same time she seemed to be waiting for something. Nothing in the room changed. Nothing changed in the condition of the sick woman but, gradually, she felt the room filling with an atmosphere which frightened her. She shooed a fly out of the window. Then she went into the other room and found, in a chest under the window, a small collection of books. Among them was the old copy of Perrault’s fairy tales she had been given as a child. In the flyleaf she read her own name, written in careful printing. Mary Waterhouse, Allaun Towers, Framlingham, Kent. She sat, reading the book, by the bed.

  At about six o’clock she became alarmed. Mrs Gates had hardly stirred all afternoon. When she bathed her face she muttered something, said “Mary” and then seemed to fall asleep again. Molly wondered if she should not ask the doctor to call sooner or even get an ambulance to collect Mrs Gates and take her to hospital. She thought of consulting Isabel, but decided she would not be helpful. Instead she decided to leave the flat for a little while. She walked, thinking, down to the neglected verge of the lake and sat on the dried-up bank in a cloud of midges, watching two dragonflies swoop over the water. The five or six large oaks which had stood on the opposite bank had been felled. Only the stumps stood there. There had been an effort to plant some saplings to replace them but only three or four had survived. The others stood with their leaves brown and drooping in the still-hot air. The lake, which had once been so fresh, was low, now, and scummy. The verges around it, which had once been green, were dried-up and neglected. It seemed like a place where bad deeds, acts born of anger and misery, might be done. This was the place to which she had been going to lead her son on his early toddles, would have shown him the wild ducks which alighted there in autumn. This place had been going to nourish him. She had lost Joe, the only man with whom she had shared a love based on gaiety, equality and hope. The house, the lake, the grounds where she had been a child, were supposed to compensate her son for the loss. Now everything seemed irredeemably corrupted, and that, in some way, took Joe further and further from her. Already she felt the house and its occupants, which she had seen as a present she could give her child, to be burdens settling on her shoulders. What a bargain, she thought wryly, to swap mourning a dead husband for nursing a dying woman and sleeping in a collapsing house with an impotent man.

  The birds were beginning to roost in the clumps of trees beyond the lake. She had still not decided whether to call the doctor or an ambulance to Mrs Gates but, she thought, when she entered the room again she would see, with fresh eyes, exactly what she looked like.

  When she went back into the room Mrs Gates was trying to struggle up into a sitting position.

  “Here – here,” Molly cried in alarm. “Let me help you.” She pulled her up against a pile of pillows. She put a glass of water to her lips. Mrs Gates drank some.

  “I was looking for you,” she said, leaning back on her pillows.

  “You were asleep. I just stepped out for a breath of air,” Molly said. “Would you like a cup of tea, now?”

  But she could see from the grey face and the distanced look that Mrs Gates did not want anything. The strange, heavy atmosphere in the room was stronger but now it was not fear Molly felt. It was more like awe. She said, “I don’t suppose I ever thanked you enough for taking care of me when I was a child. You have to be older to appreciate properly the sacrifice it is. It can’t have been easy, being landed with a small child, right in the middle of a war.”

  “It made me young again,” Mrs Gates said, with an effort. “I never felt young after you left. I didn’t feel old – I just didn’t feel young.”

  “It did
a lot for me,” Molly said. “You did a lot for me.”

  “Everything’s sadly altered here,” Mrs Gates said. “You’ll put the place on its feet again.”

  Molly could not reveal that she had not yet decided to stay. She said, “I’ll do my best,” and wished it did not sound so much like a pledge. Mrs Gates’s face had tightened. She was in pain.

  “My chest’s very tight,” she told Molly.

  “I’ll lie you down,” Molly said, in a panic.

  “Better – propped up,” the old woman said. Molly did not know what to do. She did not want to leave her alone but she could see now that she ought to get help. She thought desperately, too, that Tom or Isabel ought to be here with her.

  “The doctor’ll be here soon,” she said, studying Mrs Gates closely. “Then he might say we should get you into hospital where they’ll make you more comfortable.”

  “It’s a bit better now,” said Mrs Gates. Her face had relaxed and she seemed to be breathing easily. Molly took her hand and, trying to conceal her anxiety, told her, “I’ll stay with you all the time until the doctor comes.”

  “I’d like to lie down,” Mrs Gates murmured. Molly took away the pillows and helped her to lie down. She sat beside her, holding her hand.

  “Take – my things – bits and pieces,” she whispered. “There’s no one else.”

  Molly swallowed and said, “Not yet, please God.”

  Then Mrs Gates’s breathing got worse and Molly held her hand and said, “Don’t be frightened. The doctor will be here soon.”

  Mrs Gates looked at her and relaxed. She closed her eyes. The breathing got worse until rasping breaths were filling the room. But still Molly did not dare to leave her to call for help. Her breath stopped, then started again. Molly hauled her up, propped her against the pillows and bathed the sweat from her face. She gave her sips of water.

  Finally she said, “I must go – I’ve got to get an ambulance.”

  “Don’t leave me,” Mrs Gates said. She spoke with difficulty but her tone was assured. Molly thought she knew how close she was to death. She knew Molly would not leave her and so, as one corner of Molly’s brain protested, what a mess, what a mess, where is someone to help me? yet another concentrated on the laboured breathing and the livid face and prompted her to speak phrases she scarcely knew she had in her. “I remember when you used to let me help you hang out the washing on windy days. Do you remember how I used to hold on to the bottom of the sheets while you pegged the tops on the line? Then we’d stand back and watch the wind take them and say they looked like the sails of ships. In a way I was happier then than I’ve ever been.” Then an instinct would urge her to be silent, to let Mrs Gates rest. Then she would say, “I’m looking forward to having the baby here. Perhaps you’ll be well enough, then, to hold him. It must be a long time since there’s been a baby in this house. It’ll be nice.” Mrs Gates said, in a very low voice, “I – hope – so.” The heaviness of the atmosphere grew in the room. It began to darken. And then, finally, the old woman gave two great, convulsive gasps – and was still. Her head lay at an odd angle on the pillow, looking towards Molly. Molly heard herself groaning aloud into the empty room. As she did so she settled, with calm hands, the grey head on the pillows. Even then she was not sure that Mrs Gates was dead. She only knew that a crisis had come. But as the doctor came in, followed closely by Vera Harker, she was saying, “Oh – my God. Oh – my God.”

  “Molly?” came Vera Harker’s voice behind her. She stood up. “I think she might be dead,” Molly heard herself saying.

  “Go with Mrs Harker, Lady Allaun,” said the doctor.

  In the other room, Vera Harker stooped down and took a bottle of brandy from the sideboard. Molly’s teeth rattled against the glass as she drank. She sat down suddenly in a chair. “Do you think she’s dead?” she asked the other woman.

  “It might be a mercy,” Mrs Harker said. “I don’t think she’d ever have got out of that bed again. She was an active woman. She wouldn’t have wanted to end up bedridden.” She paused and said, “And she hasn’t been alone.”

  “It’s peculiar, isn’t it?” Molly said. “She told me a creepy story about how a gypsy foretold I’d be there when she died – years ago, during the war.”

  “She told me that,” Vera Harker said. “Before you came.”

  The doctor came into the room and said, “Lady Allaun –” and paused.

  “She’s dead?” Molly said.

  He nodded. “I expect Sir Thomas will be making the arrangements?” he asked.

  Molly found herself, even at that moment, wondering if Tom could, or would, ring the undertaker. But she said, “Of course.”

  There was a silence. “You’d better go up to the house,” Vera Harker said.

  She obviously knew the proper thing to do. Molly said, “Yes. We’ll go up to the house.”

  They went in through the open kitchen door to find Isabel peeling potatoes with determination but little expertise.

  Molly said, “Isabel-”

  At the same moment she had asked, “How’s Mrs Gates-?” but broke off when she saw from the faces of the others that the news was serious.

  “Isabel – I’m afraid she’s dead,” Molly told her. She went to her mother-in-law and took her arm. “It was quite peaceful. I was there all the time.”

  Isabel said, “Oh, my dear. If only I’d known how serious it was –”

  “Is Tom in the house?” Molly asked.

  “Poor Mrs Gates,” continued Isabel. “Her loyalty – she was above praise.”

  “I think we’d better find Tom,” Molly insisted.

  “He’s gone to London,” Isabel said. “Surely he told you – really, he’s so forgetful. And now, when we need him –”

  “Never mind,” the doctor said. “It’s a pity but he’s not indispensable. I’m afraid I need to make out the death certificate –”

  “I suppose we’d better go into the library,” Molly said. She turned to Vera Harker, “Do we need a nurse?”

  “I think Mrs Twining would like to come. She was away on a visit but she should be back now,” Mrs Harker said. “I’ll phone her.”

  Molly said to the doctor, “Follow me.”

  “You must sit down, Lady Allaun,” Mrs Harker said to Isabel, taking her arm. “Let me help you.” Molly felt grateful. When Joe had died she had made none of the arrangements. Now she was glad of the presence of Vera Harker, who knew what was appropriate and sensible.

  The library was musty. The books were in bad condition. The doctor, looking at the fading spines said, “Are you interested in books, Lady Allaun?”

  “I can’t say I am,” Molly told him. “But I suppose we shall have to do something about all this.”

  “Well – if you decide to get rid of any I’d like to look at them,” he told her. “I’m a bit of a collector. In fact, if you need any advice –”

  “I’ll remember,” Molly said, clearing a space on the dusty desk. He opened his bag and took out a form. “I’m putting the cause of death down as a coronary attack,” he said. “Her heart had been giving anxiety for several years.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said.

  He looked at her shrewdly and completed the form. “There we are,” he said.

  When he had gone Molly wandered into the kitchen where she found Vera Harker with the teapot in front of her. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m waiting for Elizabeth Twining.”

  “Of course not,” Molly responded. “I’ll help myself, if you don’t mind.” Looking round the kitchen, and finding the ranks of old saucepans still gleaming, the flagstones on the floor impeccable, she uttered that old valedictory for the working-class woman, “She worked hard all her life.”

  “All her life,” Vera Harker said. “They don’t make them like that anymore.”

  “Good job, too,” Molly said, spoiling the tribute. In fact, she thought in grief and rage, this place had gobbled Mrs Gates up. No husband, child dead – an
d the Allauns. She had washed the ugly chandelier in the sitting room, piece by clinking piece, she had scrubbed the kitchen flags on her hands and knees, laundered the heavy sheets and pegged them out on the line. She had ironed, washed and cooked but nothing was her own, only the little pink porcelain lady, the clocks and the bed she slept in. And what of the children she had tended – Tom, weak, absent when she died, Charlie, bluff and brutal, and she, who had stepped so often and so heedlessly into the street without looking that her life had come to resemble one huge traffic accident? Had all that been worthwhile? All that work?

  “She saw it as duty and self-respect,” Mrs Harker continued.

  Molly said bitterly, looking at the scrubbed surface of the big pine kitchen table, “They should put this up as her tombstone.” And thought to herself, “I can beat this house. I’ll do it for her sake, to prevent all her work from going to waste.” And she stared fiercely at Vera Harker, who, already disconcerted by the turn the conversation had taken, dropped her eyes, wondering what new follies were about to begin at Allaun Towers under the aegis of this new and inappropriate mistress.

  But there is a point, after a death, when people feel a kind of energy, a determination to get back at death and make it concede that its victory over life is, after all, only a draw. As the months wore on at Allaun Towers and summer gave way to autumn Molly, if she looked back at that moment of resolution at all, felt only slightly ashamed and embarrassed. Nevertheless, as events later proved, the moment had not been completely meaningless.

  There was a sudden flurry of interest in the fate of Mary Waterhouse around the time of her marriage. Those who needed to know what was happening to her had their own family problems and this for some reason seemed to focus attention on her. There was only moderate enthusiasm for her marriage to Joe Endell because although it settled her it did put her into the hands of a notable radical, and a man living in areas where he might hear gossip – a dangerous combination. When he died it was rather a relief but, of course, it meant she was on the loose again. Then came the marriage to Tom Allaun and it was felt that all concerned could breath normally again. A decent future for Molly and the child lay ahead. And although no one stated it, one of the greatest advantages of her new position was that it would keep her away from London. No more prison sentences, vagrancy or taking up with shady characters. It is embedded deeply in the English psyche – this notion that life in the country is purer and more wholesome than life in the town. The country is like a kind of lay monastery to which people go to redeem themselves and avoid the temptations of the world.