The Londoners
Page 9
‘Toby Harvey,’ Toby said, aware that Kate had been rendered temporarily speechless and stretching his hand across the table towards Charlie. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’
‘And I’m very pleased to meet you,’ Charlie responded as Queenie settled herself comfortably at Toby’s feet. ‘The only Harvey I know of is old man Harvey who owns the construction company in Greenwich. You wouldn’t be a relation by any chance, would you?’
There was a hair’s breadth of hesitation and then Toby said, an edge of reluctance in his voice, ‘I’m his grandson.’
Charlie’s bushy eyebrows rose high and Kate understood why Toby had been reluctant to admit to the relationship. It was because, once he had done so, there was no knowing quite what reaction he would meet with.
Charlie was impressed but not overawed. ‘Blimey!’ he said graphically. ‘I didn’t know I was in such ’igh-flyin’ company. What are you doin’ boozin’ ’ere? Why aren’t you at the Ritz?’
Toby grinned. ‘The beer’s better here,’ he said with the easy friendliness which Kate found so attractive.
Charlie chortled appreciatively. ‘Is that a fact?’ He took another deep drink of his pint of mild ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again and said with an air of profound wisdom, ‘You learn something new every day, don’t you?’ Another thought occurred to him and transferring his attention to Kate he said, ‘Does your dad know the kind of company you’re keepin’?’
Kate was just about to tell Charlie that whether her father knew or not was none of Charlie’s business but as she drew in breath to do so Toby said quickly, ‘We’re going to Kate’s home when we leave here so that she can introduce me to Mr Voigt.’
‘Then that’s all right then,’ Charlie said, happy that the proprieties were being observed. He drained his glass of beer and to Kate’s vast relief rose to his feet. ‘Seein’ you two are obviously courtin’ I’ll take meself off,’ he said, happily oblivious of the flush of embarrassed colour his words had brought to Kate’s cheeks. He nudged the recumbent Queenie with a hob-nailed boot. ‘Come on, Queenie girl. Two’s company, three’s a crowd and we’re intrudin’. Let’s pay a visit to The Three Tuns and see what the beer’s like there.’
Queenie lumbered to her feet, Toby gave her a final affectionate pat and together, man and dog ambled off in the direction of the pub situated more centrally in the Village.
The moment Charlie was safely out of ear-shot Kate said awkwardly, still burning with embarrassment, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what gave him the idea that we were courting . . .’
‘Probably because we are,’ Toby said, taking hold of her hand and squeezing it tight. ‘At least, I hope we are. And as Charlie so properly pointed out, under the circumstances it’s about time I met your father.’
All her embarrassment fled. Happiness so deep she couldn’t in a hundred years have found the words to describe it suffused her.
As they rose from the table and began to walk back towards his car, their hands still tightly clasped, she wondered how Carrie could have been so prosaic about her feelings for Danny. The sensation Toby engendered in her was far more than one of his merely ‘suiting’ her. It was heart-stoppingly wonderful; utterly magical.
Although dusk was now fast approaching, Carl was taking advantage of the last hour of daylight and was dividing and re-planting large clumps of campanulas in the front garden when Toby’s MG roared spectacularly into Magnolia Square and slowed to a halt only yards away from him. He looked up from his task, startled.
So, too, to Kate’s chagrin, did Miss Godfrey, busy dead-heading the last of her roses; Mr Nibbs, who was trimming his hedge; and Jack Robson who was cleaning and polishing his motor cycle.
As Toby walked around the car to the passenger-seat door and opened it for Kate, Carl put down his gardening fork and with a slight frown of puzzlement walked down the short garden pathway to the gate.
Wishing he hadn’t done so, wishing he hadn’t been in the garden at all, Kate stepped out of the MG well aware that not only had she and Toby become a focus of interest for Miss Godfrey, Mr Nibbs and Jack Robson, but that Hettie Collins had twitched her net curtains back for a clearer view and that an avidly interested Mavis was fast approaching, Beryl skipping in her wake.
‘Hello Dad,’ Kate said, wishing her father would show some signs of turning away from the gate and leading the way into the house. ‘I hope you haven’t been worrying about me.’
‘No,’ Carl said truthfully, ‘I thought perhaps you were with Carrie.’
With slightly troubled eyes he looked from her to Toby, to the sports car, and back to Toby again.
Aware that he was patiently waiting for both an introduction and an explanation and that he was not going to invite Toby into the garden, let alone the house, until he had received both, Kate resigned herself to performing the introductions in full view of her curious neighbours.
‘I’d like you to meet Toby Harvey, Dad. He’s been working at Harvey’s but today was his last day. He’s joined the RAF and leaves for training camp tomorrow.’
As Toby and Carl shook hands Mavis drew abreast of them.
‘Nice weather we’re ’aving for October ’ain’t it, Mr Voigt?’ she called out cheerfully, her magnificent bosoms straining against an excessively frilled and flounced blouse, her skirt tight across her hips.
Carl transferred his attention temporarily from Toby and replied with courtesy that it was indeed exceptional weather for early October.
Mavis had slowed down nearly to a standstill and Kate, knowing very well that Mavis was hoping she would now be introduced to Toby, remained obstructively silent. Enough was enough. Toby had already been introduced to the least respectable resident of Magnolia Square without being introduced to its most flamboyant resident, all on the same day.
Cheated of her objective, Mavis continued hipswingingly to where Jack Robson was making a show of applying polish to his motor cycle but was, in reality, watching the scene taking place at the Voigts’ gate with just as much interest as Miss Godfrey and Hettie Collins.
‘Would you like to join us for supper?’ Carl asked Toby. ‘I don’t think the menu is going to be anything special. Ham and chips perhaps, but you’re very welcome to join us.’
Toby shook his head regretfully. ‘I’d love to accept the invitation Mr Voigt, but I can’t. As it’s my last night at home I’m dining out with my grandfather tonight.’
He didn’t add that it had not been his intention to do so, that his intention had been to take Kate out to dinner and to embark on the delicious task of getting to know her better. His plan of action had been foiled at breakfast time when his grandfather had announced that, to mark his last night at home, he had arranged for them to dine in town that evening at Ketners in Soho.
‘Have you time to come in for a cup of tea?’ Carl asked, well aware that, as it was the first time Kate had ever brought a young man home, the young man in question was obviously of importance to her and that in meeting them at the gate he had made a grave tactical error. Mavis and Jack were now both lounging against Jack’s motor cycle and regarding the three of them with prurient curiosity. Miss Godfrey was taking an unconscionable long time to dead-head the flowers nearest to their mutual garden fence. Nibbo was ostensibly trimming his hedge but was certainly not giving his full attention to the task and Daniel Collins had now joined Hettie at the window in order to share her grandstand view.
Well aware that his grandfather would already be wondering where the hell he was and that they were going to be horrendously late for their table reservation at Ketners, Toby again regretfully shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid I must be going.’ He looked towards Kate. ‘I’ll write,’ he said, ‘I promise.’
As their eyes held, Kate knew that he would always keep his promises to her, the solemn as well as the not-so-solemn.
‘Goodbye,’ she said huskily, uncaring now of their rapt audience. ‘Take care of yourself.’
‘I will.’ W
ith immense effort he dragged his eyes away from hers. ‘Goodbye, Mr Voigt,’ he said to a deeply disconcerted Carl. ‘It’s been nice meeting you.’
‘Goodbye,’ Carl said, knowing that he had seriously underestimated the kind of relationship that existed between his daughter and Toby Harvey and wondering just when it had been formed and why, until now, Kate had given him not the faintest inkling of it.
Toby strode across the pavement to the MG and seconds later, watched by a growing number of Magnolia Square residents, gunned the engine into life. He gave one last look towards the Voigt garden gate, waved, and then put the car into gear and pressed his foot down on the accelerator, sweeping southwards out of the Square and into Magnolia Hill at a speed Jack Robson deeply envied.
‘Well!’ Carl said expressively as the sports car disappeared from view, ‘it would seem there’s been a lot going on in your life you haven’t been telling me about, Liebling.’
‘No,’ Kate said as Miss Godfrey and Mr Nibbs put an end to their pretence of gardening in the deepening gloom and returned indoors and the Collins’s net curtains fell once again into place. ‘I first met Toby some weeks ago when he met with Mr Muff in Mr Muff’s office, but we haven’t talked together since. Not until today.’
Above his frameless spectacles Carl’s eyebrows rose slightly. He didn’t for one minute doubt what she was telling him but it didn’t explain the depth of feeling he had sensed between them, instead it made that depth of feeling even odder.
‘You can tell me more about Toby Harvey while we make something to eat,’ he said, turning at last away from the gate and leading the way up the path towards the stone steps leading to their front door. ‘What did he do at Harvey’s? Was he an engineer? An architect? He must have had a responsible position if he can afford to drive a sports car.’
‘He might be an engineer,’ Kate said a little doubtfully, ‘or he might even be a qualified architect. He wasn’t actually working as either, though.’
‘Then what was he working as?’ Carl asked as they entered the house, his curiosity about Kate’s new friend deepening even further.
Realizing that her father hadn’t, unlike Charlie, immediately made a connection between Toby’s surname and Harvey Construction Ltd and suddenly wondering what his reaction would be when she told him of it, she said a little hesitatingly, ‘Toby was working his way through all the offices, Sales, Marketing, Export, spending a week or so in each so that he would have a grasp of the way they are run.’
‘So he was a management trainee?’ Carl asked, taking the chip-pan out of a cupboard beneath the sink and placing it on one of the oven’s gas rings.
‘Ye-ess.’
At the uncertainty in her voice Carl said patiently, ‘Well either he was or he wasn’t, Liebling.’
‘It isn’t quite so simple, Dad.’ She lifted a couple of large potatoes from out of the vegetable rack and put them on a wooden chopping board next to the sink. ‘Although I suppose you could describe what he was doing as trainee management it wasn’t straightforward trainee management.’ She took a potato peeler from out of the cutlery drawer. ‘Mr Harvey who owns Harvey Construction Ltd is Toby’s grandfather and so he wants Toby to have a full understanding of what is involved in the day-to-day running of the company.’
As she began to peel the potatoes Carl’s eyebrows rose once again above the edge of his spectacles, ‘Wirklich?’ he said, unsure as to how he felt about Kate’s first prospective boyfriend being from a world so far removed from their own world. ‘Really?’
Kate paused in her task to turn and face him, understanding what it was that was troubling her father.
‘He’s very nice, Dad. In fact he’s so nice that at first I thought he was a little odd! He has absolutely no side whatsoever.’
‘Side?’
Kate’s mouth tugged into a smile. Despite her father’s many years of living in England there were still some informal English expressions which defeated him. ‘By “side” I mean that he’s not at all pretentious or snobbish or full of his own importance.’
‘No,’ Carl said as she again continued with her task of peeling the potatoes. ‘Even though I only spoke to him for a few minutes, that much was obvious. It just seems a little strange, though, his not actually making time to get to know you until the day before he leaves London for what will obviously be many months.’ He didn’t add ‘for good’, though that was what he was thinking. As an RAF serviceman, Toby Harvey was certainly not going to find himself stationed in the Blackheath vicinity.
Kate began to slice the peeled potatoes into chips. ‘He told me that he wanted to get to know me better immediately after first meeting me, but that he knew the kind of gossip that would have begun to spread if he had done so and he didn’t want to subject me to it. As it is, we can now write to each other while he’s at training camp.’
‘And see each other when he has leave?’
‘Yes,’ Kate said, keeping her eyes very firmly on the potatoes she was slicing and acutely aware that a flush of colour was again warming her cheeks.
There were many more questions Carl would have liked to ask but he knew that to do so would be an invasion of Kate’s privacy. She wasn’t a child any more, she was a twenty-year-old woman and she was entitled to form friendships and emotional relationships without undue interference from him.
He scooped a handful of the sliced potatoes and dropped them into the, now, hot fat of the chip-pan. Toby Harvey had seemed to be an exceptionally pleasant young man and he had had the good manners to introduce himself to the father of the girl he intended corresponding with. Many young men would not have troubled to do so and the action indicated that Toby Harvey’s intentions towards Kate were honourable.
Hoping fervently that his assumption would prove to be correct, and changing the subject, he said, ‘I saw Miriam Jennings this evening as I was locking up the bookshop. She says Carrie has some news for you. When you were late home I thought you must have already got the message and gone straight down to see her.’
Kate passed the last of the chips over to him. ‘I’ll go down and see her after we’ve eaten. Perhaps Danny is being posted nearer to London. She’s hardly seen him since he’s been stationed at Catterick. Did I tell you that Toby took me for a drink to The Princess of Wales and that Charlie Robson joined us? He referred to Miss Godfrey as “Harriet” and they must sometimes go to The Princess of Wales for a drink together because Charlie says Miss Godfrey told him it was unhygienic for Queenie to drink from a glass and so he keeps a bowl there for her. I can’t imagine the two of them out together, can you? They must look very odd.’
With a smile of amusement, Carl agreed with her and for the next hour their conversation remained strictly on unimportant tit-bits of gossip. Nibbo’s disguising of the roof of his Anderson shelter with gooseberry bushes; the gas mask Daniel Collins had adapted for Miss Helliwell’s cat; the cricket team’s decision to have a night out with wives and girlfriends in October and to go up town and see a show at the London Palladium. Toby Harvey wasn’t mentioned again, nor was the current political situation.
‘I’ll do the washing-up tonight,’ Carl said when they had finished their meal. ‘You go and see Carrie and find out what her piece of news is.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ She rose from the table, gave him a kiss on his forehead and pausing long enough to pick up her jacket, hurried from the house.
It was nearly dark now and apart from Billy Lomax and his mates, the Square was deserted. Billy had secured a piece of rope high up around the lamppost outside Miss Helliwell’s and the length left dangling was now serving him and his friends as a makeshift swing.
‘’Ello!’ he called familiarly to her as he pushed his wellington-booted feet against the post to give himself more momentum for his next spin around it. ‘Mum says she saw you with your boyfriend and his posh car this afternoon. She says if you’re not careful you’ll be gettin’ so lad-di-dah we’ll ’ave to pay tuppence to say ’ello to you!’
‘Like a wot?’ Billy yelled out as he swung himself around the lamppost again, clutching tight hold of the end of the rope. ‘A dervish? Wot the ’eck’s a dervish? A German aeroplane?’
Giving Billy up as a lost cause and not deigning to reply, Kate turned in at the Jennings’s gateway, eager for a chat with Carrie. Her fear that the time they had always spent together would be severely curtailed once Carrie had married had proved groundless. With Danny stationed two hundred and fifty miles away in Yorkshire, Carrie’s lifestyle had changed very little. Nearly every evening they met up for an hour or two to chat and giggle together and every Saturday night, unless Danny was home on a forty-eight hour pass, they went to the local cinema together.
Leah opened the door to her and as she did so Carrie shouted down the stairs, ‘Is that you, Kate? Come on up. I’m painting my nails.’
As Kate carried out Carrie’s instructions and began to climb the stairs leading from the narrow hallway to the bedrooms, Leah returned to the kitchen and through the open kitchen door Kate caught a glimpse of Christina and Miriam and Albert sitting around the kitchen table in deep and grave discussion. A newspaper was spread open on the table and though Kate couldn’t see its headlines or photographs she knew what their subject matter would be. The new peace accord that Prime Minister Chamberlain had signed in Munich with Hitler.
Well aware that no-one in the Jennings’ household would have the slightest belief in Chamberlain’s assertion that by signing the accord he had achieved ‘peace in our time’ she continued up the stairs wondering if it was her family’s reaction to the news of the peace agreement that Carrie wanted to talk to her about.