The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  Kate giggled and Carrie said in sudden solemnity, ‘I can’t believe it’s really going to happen.’ She stroked the heavy satin skirt of her wedding dress lovingly. ‘I’ve looked forward to it for so long, ever since the day Miss Helliwell read our palms, and now it’s actually going to happen. By this time tomorrow I’ll be Mrs Danny Collins.’

  Kate’s giggles subsided. ‘It is what you still want, isn’t it?’ she asked gently.

  Carrie sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Yes,’ she said unhesitatingly. ‘I can’t describe it in clever words like you would be able to Kate, but when I’m with Danny I’m happy, it’s as simple as that. We suit each other. He may be a bit of a rough diamond and I’m not so love-struck that I think he’s the handsomest man in the world, or the brainiest, but he’s the one person in the world right for me.’ She took hold of Kate’s hand and squeezed it tight. ‘He knows what I want out of life and I know what he wants out of life, and what we want is the same thing. Someone to love and laugh with; someone who’ll be a friend as well as a lover; a home of our own; kids.’

  Kate felt her throat tighten. It all sounded so simple and straightforward and, for Carrie, it was. ‘I’m glad you’re so happy,’ she said thickly, ‘I think Danny is very, very lucky.’

  ‘His mother doesn’t think he is,’ Carrie said with dry humour, her moment of seriousness over. ‘She seems to think that the minute he’s married to me he’s going to begin starving to death!’

  Later, as she returned home, Miss Godfrey called out from her garden, ‘Katherine! Could you do me a favour? Could you help me carry some boxes of crockery and cutlery down to the church hall?’

  Kate nodded and opened Miss Godfrey’s immaculately painted gate.

  ‘Mrs Jennings has asked me to lend her whatever I have for tomorrow’s wedding reception,’ Miss Godfrey said in relief as Kate walked up the short front path, ‘and if you gave me a hand it would mean my making only one trip, not two.’

  She led the way into the house, saying as she did so, ‘Is everything under control at Carrie’s? I did offer to go down there and give Mrs Jennings any help she might need but she said she thought she could manage. Apparently her mother is doing all the catering and Mavis and her friends are setting out the tables in the hall.’

  It had been a long time since Kate had been inside Miss Godfrey’s home and she couldn’t help being aware of how strikingly different the furnishings and decor were from the Jennings’ house and even from her own home. A bordered red and brown patterned carpet runner graced the passageway leading towards the kitchen and Kate suspected it was no ordinary carpet but was probably Turkish or Indian. Through the open door leading into the sitting-room she glimpsed a highly polished glass-fronted bookcase and a walnut-framed easy-chair. Watercolours framed in gold hung on the cream papered walls and she remembered her father saying that Miss Godfrey possessed an exceptionally fine landscape by an English nineteenth-century artist he much admired, John Sell Cotman.

  ‘Here we are,’ Miss Godfrey said as she walked into her kitchen. ‘Two cardboard boxes and a carrier-bag. Do you think we can manage them between us?’

  ‘Is the crockery valuable?’ Kate asked nervously. Everything Miss Godfrey owned seemed to be genuine this or genuine that and if the boxes contained precious china she knew it would be just her luck to trip and fall and smash the lot.

  ‘No,’ Miss Godfrey said, picking up one of the boxes and placing it in Kate’s arms. ‘I do have some good china, left to me by my mother, but I wouldn’t dream of lending it out.’ An edge of rare humour entered her voice. ‘And certainly not for a wedding thrash in the church hall!’

  She slipped the carrier-bag’s string handles over her wrist and picked up the second box. ‘I do enjoy weddings,’ she said confidingly, ‘especially summer weddings. I was so pleased when I received an invitation to this particular wedding and I was more than a little surprised. Caroline and I have had our differences of opinion in the past as I’m sure you must be aware.’

  Kate made a polite, non-committal murmur and wondered whether, if Carrie’s vowels were less than perfect when she made her wedding vows, Miss Godfrey would speak up from wherever she was sitting in the church and publicly correct her.

  As Miss Godfrey led the way back down the hall to the front door, Kate had a glimpse into the sitting-room from another angle. This time as well as the glass-fronted bookcase and the armchair she could see the corner of a distinguished-looking fireplace and, sitting by the corner of a highly-polished brass fender, a teddy bear.

  Kate’s eyes widened. It was a teddy bear she recognized. It was the teddy bear Charlie Robson had won in the church fête raffle two years ago.

  Highly bemused and feeling a surge of empathy for Miss Godfrey, she followed her out of the house.

  ‘I last loaned out my china when the vicar celebrated his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,’ Miss Godfrey said as they began to walk across the grass towards the church. ‘That was a very decorous occasion. I have a feeling tomorrow’s festivities might be a little more . . . lively.’

  Kate thought of Mavis and her children and of Bonzo in his blue satin bow and of the many market traders who would be there and thought Miss Godfrey was probably underestimating things a little.

  The minute they entered the hall adjoining the church, Miriam Jennings, dressed in a flowered overall and with her hair in curlers and bound up in a headscarf tied turban-fashion, hurried towards them.

  ‘Is that the china?’ she asked. ‘Lovely. We can make a start and get the tables laid.’

  ‘I see you’ve got them set out already,’ Miss Godfrey said, looking around at the dozen wooden trestle tables that served St Mark’s for every event from fête to funeral wakes.

  ‘Well, we couldn’t ’ang about, could we?’ Miriam said practically. ‘It’s goin’ to be enough of a rush in the mornin’. ’Ave you brought fruit bowls as well as plates? ’Ettie’s done enough fruit trifle to feed an army.’

  ‘I’ve brought a dozen glass dessert dishes,’ Miss Godfrey said, anxious to please. ‘They won’t go very far I’m afraid, but it’s the best I can do.’

  ‘They’ll be a great help,’ Miriam said, taking the box from Miss Godfrey’s arms. ‘Come and ’ave a look at the cake. ’Ettie made it and it’s a smasher.’

  Deciding she might as well stay for a little while and help with the laying of the tables, Kate followed Miriam and Miss Godfrey to the far end of the hall where the cake stood in three-tiered magnificence on a table all to itself.

  ‘Ain’t it grand?’ Miriam said proudly, adjusting the two little figures symbolizing the bride and groom on the top tier.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Miss Godfrey said, wisely not commenting on Mrs Collins’s rather disastrous efforts to stain the imitation groom’s night-black hair to a dull red with cochineal.

  ‘How are you doing, ladies?’ Albert Jennings called out to them cheerily as he struggled past carrying several folding chairs, a similarly laden Charlie Robson in his wake. ‘Have you got your glad-rags ready for tomorrer?’

  ‘I have indeed, Mr Jennings,’ Miss Godfrey said, guessing correctly that he was referring to the outfit she intended wearing.

  The church hall doors were kicked open with such a clatter that Miriam nearly jumped out of her skin and Charlie dropped one of the chairs he was carrying.

  It was Mavis, a heavy carrier-bag in either hand. ‘You need to wedge this bloomin’ door open so we can get in and out a bit easier,’ she said to no-one in particular. Crossing the wood-boarded floor towards her mother and Miss Godfrey and Kate, she dumped her cargo on the nearest table. ‘’As anyone seen our Billy? I ’ad a bobby at the door five minutes ago. ’E said Billy ’ad fired a broom handle from the roof of Nibbo’s shed and it ’ad landed in a front garden in Magnolia ’ill.’

  ‘Then ’e’s talkin’ out of the back of ’is ’ead,’ Miriam said, opening one of the carrier-bags Mavis had put on the table. ’E’d ’ave ’ad to fire it over the fl
ippin’ rooftops for it to reach a front garden in Magnolia ’ill from Nibbo’s tool shed.’ She lifted a stack of crockery from the carrier-bag. ‘These blue and white plates do look nice, don’t they? They’ll match the bridesmaids’ dresses a treat.’

  ‘Accordin’ to the bobby it did go over the rooftops,’ Mavis said, parental pride in her voice. ‘Apparently Billy pinched a plank of wood from the shed and bent it into a giant-sized bow. With that and the ’elp of a clothes-line, he could probably have fired the broom ’andle into the Thames. Only trouble was, ’e’d sharpened one end of it into a point and it nearly impaled a poor old codger doin’ ’is garden.’

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ Miriam said philosophically. ‘’ave you brought any trifle dishes? We’re runnin’ low on trifle dishes.’

  With laughter choking in her throat, Kate said, ‘I’m going now. I’ll see you all tomorrow.’

  ‘And I must be going too,’ Miss Godfrey said hastily.

  Very briskly she led the way to the door, efficiently propping it open with the nearest chair to hand and then, when they were safely some distance away, she said to a still laughing Kate, ‘A broom handle over the rooftops for goodness sake! Billy Lomax is more of a death threat than Hitler’s army! It could quite easily have killed someone and yet neither his mother nor his grandmother seemed to think it at all reprehensible.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘That family really is quite extraordinary. I wouldn’t put it past them to have Bonzo in church tomorrow, a ribbon round his neck.’

  Containing a fresh surge of laughter only with the greatest difficulty, Kate said as demurely as possible, ‘Neither would I, Miss Godfrey.’

  Miss Godfrey looked across at her suspiciously, about to ask if she knew things about the wedding arrangements that she wasn’t revealing and then, deciding she might sleep easier if she was left in ignorance, she said dryly, ‘Life isn’t dull in Magnolia Square, is it? I thought I’d heard everything when Miss Helliwell told me she’d asked Mr Nibbs to adapt a child’s gas mask in order that it could be worn by her cat.’

  ‘Did he succeed?’ Kate asked, knowing that if he had done Mrs Singer would want a similarly adapted gas mask for Bonzo.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Miss Godfrey said as they reached her gate. ‘I certainly haven’t seen Faust rigged and accoutred, nor do I particularly want to. In comparison, however, the Jennings’ family’s antics make Miss Helliwell’s flights of fancy seem quite rational.’

  Kate felt laughter again begin to bubble up in her throat. ‘Goodbye Miss Godfrey,’ she said, looking forward to seeing Miss Godfrey’s face when she saw Bonzo in his bow, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, in church.’

  ‘Goodbye, Katherine,’ Miss Godfrey said, looking forward to a little peace and quiet and a nice cup of tea. ‘Sleep well.’

  Later, freshly bathed and with her heavy waist-length hair shampooed and hanging loose, Kate sat dressed in a white terry dressing gown near the open window of her bedroom. It was nearly nine o’clock and the hot summer evening was pleasantly cool as dusk approached. She rested her chin in her hands, her elbows on the windowsill, looking out over Magnolia Square.

  Charlie Robson was walking Queenie across the grass surrounding the church. Miss Godfrey was watering her sweet peas, Mr Nibbs was sitting in a deck-chair, his head slumped a little to one side as if he had fallen asleep and Miss Helliwell was anxiously calling Faust in for his supper. In nearly every garden that she could see, magnolia shrubs and trees were in flower. On the far side of the Square, the Collins’s magnolia grandiflora was heavy with creamy-white blossom. Yards away from the church porch a magnolia parviflora was thick with pendants of white petals starred by wine-coloured stamens.

  Smiling again at the thought of the gas mask Mr Nibbs had adapted for Faust, she wondered how Carrie would now be feeling. After tomorrow, the rest of her life would be irrevocably different. She wondered how she herself would feel if she were about to be married. Would she be nervous? Would she have any last minute doubts? And where, at this precise moment in time, was the man she would one day marry? Was he half a world away or only a few miles away? Would she fall in love with him the instant she set eyes on him or would it be a long, slow, gradual process?

  Her hair was dry now and she turned away from the window and began to brush it. Normally she would also have braided it but tomorrow she was going to wear it in an elegant Grecian knot and she wanted it to be smooth and kink-free. Twisting its long length as if it were a skein of heavy wool, she secured the end with a piece of cotton and then took off her dressing gown and climbed into bed.

  There was a tap on her door and without opening it her father said, ‘Goodnight, Liebling,’ as he did every night.

  She smiled lovingly. There were some advantages to not being in love and engaged. She wasn’t having to face the prospect of moving far away from Magnolia Square as Carrie might have to do in order to remain near to Danny.

  ‘Goodnight, Dad,’ she said, nestling down against her pillows, unable to even imagine living anywhere else but the house in which she had been born. ‘God Bless.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘And did everything go off without a hitch?’ Miss Pierce asked Kate on Monday lunchtime as they sat together in the small canteen that catered for the needs of Harvey’s office staff.

  Kate thought of Carrie looking almost regal in her sumptuous satin wedding-gown, her face aglow with happiness as she walked down St Mark’s aisle on her father’s arm; of Miss Helliwell, draped in chiffon and triumphantly announcing to everyone that she had foreseen the wedding two years ago; of Miss Godfrey almost unrecognizable in a silk dress instead of her customary tweed suit; of the sentimental tears shed by Mrs Collins and Carrie’s mother and of the gales of laughter that had rocked the church hall during the reception and the long evening of dancing that had followed.

  There had been one incident that had marred the day, but only for herself, and she had no intention of discussing the incident with Miss Pierce.

  ‘Everything went off beautifully,’ she said, putting to the back of her mind the moment during the evening celebrations when Mr Nibbs and Daniel Collins and Charlie Robson had been grouped together nearby her, speculating as to the likelihood of war with Germany. Her father had approached them carrying a tray of drinks and as he did so the subject under discussion had abruptly swung from speculation about German intent to the latest cricket scores.

  Her father had been happily unaware that the conversation had been doctored for his benefit but she had been acutely aware of it. She had also been uncertain as to how she felt about it. The most sensible way would have been to view it as being merely over-tactful, but the more she thought about her father’s friends feeling that such tact was necessary, the less she liked it. It raised the suspicion that they were afraid of his taking Germany’s part, of perhaps even speaking in Hitler’s defence. It certainly meant they no longer thought of him as being one of themselves.

  ‘And what about the little bridesmaid the bride was so worried about?’ Miss Pierce asked with genuine interest. ‘Did she behave herself?’

  Kate grinned. ‘At the precise moment Carrie was promising to love, honour and obey, Beryl asked the vicar if she could have an orange. Before she could be silenced she explained to him that she’d been promised one if she was a good little girl and that she’d been a good little girl and was now hungry. It threw the vicar off his stroke rather and I’m sure the bride could have murdered her, but it was the only time she put a foot wrong.’

  ‘And did she get her orange?’ Miss Pierce asked, highly entertained.

  ‘Her grandad gave her one the minute we all left the church. Neither her mother or grandmother were very pleased as she insisted on sucking at it all the time the photographs were being taken.’

  Miss Pierce’s smile of amusement deepened. The stiff demeanour that her colleagues found so intimidating masked shyness and she had never before come so near to forming a friendship with another member of staff. T
hat she was now doing so with a young woman twenty years her junior both surprised and pleased her.

  ‘What a wonderful day you must all have had,’ she said, carefully folding the greaseproof paper that had wrapped her home-made sandwiches and sliding it into the outer pocket of her capacious handbag. ‘I almost feel as if I know some of your neighbours, especially Miss Helliwell, Miss Godfrey and Mrs Lomax.’

  ‘Mrs Lomax?’ For a brief second Kate didn’t know to whom Miss Pierce was referring.

  ‘The bride’s elder sister. You did say her name was Lomax, didn’t you? The young lady you described as looking rather like Betty Grable.’

  ‘Mavis?’ Kate asked incredulously, wondering what on earth she had said that could possibly have prompted Miss Pierce to think of Mavis in troika with Miss Helliwell and Miss Godfrey.

  ‘Yes. Mavis. She sounds delightful.’

  Kate was completely nonplussed, unable to think of anything she had said that could possibly warrant such an opinion. Certainly at the wedding Mavis had looked amazing. Her peroxide-blonde hair had been piled high on top of her head and over her forehead in sausage-thick curls. A wisp of turquoise net, the same colour as her figure-hugging two-piece costume, had served as a hat and been worn at a rakish angle. Her shoes had been high and peep-toed; her stockings silk; her nails scarlet.

  Jack Robson, who had long since abandoned hope of making any headway with Christina, had given a wolf-whistle when he had seen her walking across the grass towards the church and Mavis had spent a large part of the subsequent evening flirting shamelessly with him.

  ‘I’ve told her she’s asking for trouble,’ Carrie had said to Kate when there had been a lull in the dancing and they had managed to have a few quiet words together. ‘Ted may be long-suffering, but he’s not so long-suffering that he’ll put up with her playing away from home.’

  ‘Mavis wouldn’t do anything so silly,’ Kate had said, deeply shocked, adding uncertainly as she caught a sudden glimpse of Mavis and Jack laughing uproariously together, ‘would she?’