The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  When at last he raised his head from hers he said huskily, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, my love,’ and then, uncaring of Charlie who was now rapidly drawing abreast of them, he said fiercely, ‘I’m in love with you – you know that.’

  ‘Evenin’ both,’ Charlie said pleasantly before Kate could even make an attempt at a reply. ‘Long time since I’ve seen anyone kissin’ and canoodlin’ in Magnolia Square. Thought it was Mavis and Jack Robson for a moment. Thank Gawd I was wrong. Ted would have bloody killed the pair of ’em and then what sort of a Christmas would we ’ave ’ad?’

  Kate had the best Christmas of her life. Apart from Christmas Day, which Toby dutifully spent with his grandfather and which she lovingly spent with her father, they were together every moment possible.

  When he returned to camp on the twenty-seventh of December and she went with him to the railway station to say goodbye to him, it was in the knowledge that something utterly wonderful and magical had occurred in their lives. They were in love with each other and always would be.

  In January, as letters flew fast and furious between them, Kate achieved a long-term ambition by introducing Miss Pierce to Miss Godfrey at a St Mark’s Church Sale of Work.

  In February, world news reached an all-time low. Franco swept victoriously into a bomb-blasted Barcelona and Hitler began quite openly casting covetous eyes on what remained of Czechoslovakia.

  In March, less than six months after he had declared that Germany had no more territorial demands in Europe, Hitler annexed the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia and marched victoriously into Prague. Toby had a weekend leave at the end of the month and though he still couldn’t persuade her to meet his grandfather, he and Kate and Carl spent a happy evening together in one of Blackheath Village’s many restaurants.

  In April, when the thirty-foot-high, thirty-foot-wide magnolia soulangeana in the vicarage garden was in full, creamy, heart-stopping flower, Toby wrote to her with the news that he had received his ‘wings’ and was now a fully fledged RAF officer.

  In May, when Hitler had begun to eye Poland in the same way he had previously eyed Czechoslovakia and when it became obvious even to Chamberlain that no further compromise was possible, the House of Commons endorsed the British Government’s decision to conscript men of twenty years of age for military service. Two days later Carrie gave birth to a daughter.

  ‘We’re going to call her Miriam Hester Margaret Rose,’ Carrie said proudly, sitting up in bed, the baby in her arms. ‘Miriam and Hester after my mother and Danny’s mother and Margaret Rose after Princess Margaret.’

  She looked down at the tiny, shawl-wrapped bundle in her arms with such fierce love that Kate’s breath caught in her throat.

  ‘I really like Princess Margaret’s second name better than her first name,’ Carrie confided, ‘and Danny and I have already decided that we’re not going to use the first three names, except officially, and that we’re going to call her Rose.’

  ‘I think Rose is a lovely name,’ Kate said, her voice thick with emotion. ‘She’s a beautiful baby, Carrie. Can I hold her for a moment? I’ll be really careful with her, I promise.’

  It was at the beginning of June, as she was waiting in almost unbearable excitement for Toby to come home on his first leave as a fully fledged officer, that it first dawned on her that although the cricket season was now in full swing, her father was still spending his weekends at home, pottering in the garden or reading.

  ‘What’s happened to the cricket team this year, Dad?’ she asked curiously one Saturday morning as she pegged washing out on the clothes-line and he was stringing cotton between the branches of redcurrant bushes in order to protect them against birds. ‘Haven’t you been able to raise a team?’

  He hesitated slightly and then said, without looking up from his task, ‘It’s no longer up to me to do so. There was a specially convened meeting of the Cricket Club Committee and the committee decided that I should be asked to resign my captaincy.’

  Kate stopped what she was doing and stared at him. ‘But why? If the committee thought it was time someone else had a shot at being captain why didn’t they say so at the end of last season? And why have you stopped playing altogether? Haven’t you been selected?’

  Even as she said the words she realized how ridiculous they were. The Swan’s Cricket Club was run on such an ad hoc basis that everyone who wanted to play was somehow incorporated on to the team and it had always been more a matter of scrambling around trying to make up a full quota of team members rather than having to disappoint people by not selecting them to play.

  Her father straightened up from his task and reluctantly turned and faced her. ‘No,’ he said, his face strained and tired. ‘I haven’t been selected to play.’

  She continued to stare at him, struggling for understanding. ‘But why not? You’ve always played for the team!’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, the pain in his usually gentle voice shocking her unutterably, ‘but I haven’t previously been seen as a potential enemy alien, have I?’

  Kate’s grief and fury on her father’s behalf knew no bounds. It wasn’t as if the men on the Cricket Club Committee were faceless strangers. They were men her father had always regarded as his friends: Nibbo and Albert and Daniel Collins.

  ‘I’m sure my dad wouldn’t have had anything to do with it,’ Carrie said in utter sincerity as she suckled Rose. ‘He’s always regarded your dad as one of his best mates.’

  ‘Mr Nibbs and Danny’s father were his mates too, but they were on the committee as well and they obviously didn’t speak out in Dad’s defence. If they’d done so, he wouldn’t have been excluded from the team,’ Kate said, the rage which had streamed through her in a dark, dizzy tide when her father had first told her of the committee’s decision still roaring through her veins.

  ‘I’ll speak to my dad,’ Carrie said, deeply troubled. ‘I’m sure there must be a mistake somewhere, Kate. Whatever the reason for your dad being dropped from the team it can’t be for the reason he thinks. Perhaps your dad’s eyesight is going a bit? They dropped Ted’s brother a couple of years ago for the same reason. He couldn’t see a ball coming at him from three yards, let alone twenty.’

  Kate might have been slightly convinced by Carrie’s argument if it hadn’t been that Danny was home on leave and, as she left the house, called out to her unthinkingly, ‘Have you seen the latest news, Kate? Hitler’s being hailed as a bloody hero in Berlin! Bloody Germans! I’ll be glad when war is finally declared and we can start shooting the buggers!’

  In July, Danny’s hopes came a step nearer to fruition. Government plans for the evacuation of London children to safe areas in the country, away from the dangers of German bombing, were made public.

  ‘Then it is going to be war,’ Miriam said agitatedly to Miss Godfrey in Kate’s hearing. ‘They wouldn’t be plannin’ to send the kids away otherwise, would they?’

  ‘It’s merely a precaution, Mrs Jennings,’ Miss Godfrey said, not believing for one moment that it was but not wanting to add to Miriam’s obvious panic.

  In August, as the Polish crisis deepened and London schoolchildren were summarily issued with a list of essential clothing and articles to be packed in a single suitcase and to report to their various school playgrounds, Miriam’s composure deserted her completely.

  ‘Beryl’s too young to be sent off into the country!’ she protested hysterically. ‘And what about Billy? ’E’s never been away from ’ome before! ’E’ll be cryin’ ’imself to sleep every night, poor lamb.’

  Knowing her son as she did, Mavis doubted it. Far from crying himself to sleep every night, Billy would most likely have the time of his life and she pitied the unknown and unsuspecting foster parents he was about to be foisted on.

  ‘As long as he and Beryl stay together, they’ll be right as rain,’ she said firmly. ‘Now for Gawd’s sake stop bawlin’, Mum, and ’elp me pack this bloomin’ case. Why the ’ell does this list say they need a toothbrush each?
They’re not goin’ to the blinkin’ Ritz, are they?’

  When the children had gone to their temporary homes of refuge in the countryside, the London streets were dismally silent.

  ‘When nasty Mr Hitler backs down and everything returns to normal I’ll never again complain about Billy Lomax and his friends swinging around the lamppost outside my gate,’ Miss Helliwell said to Kate dolefully. ‘It’s so quiet my telepathic contact with the dear departed has been quite disrupted. I tried to contact Mr Nibbs’s father for him but all I got was a Japanese gentleman from the twelfth century.’

  Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding her, Kate’s horror at what the political future held was mitigated by deep, personal joy. Toby had asked her to marry him and without a second’s hesitation, without even the very faintest of fleeting doubts, she had said that she would do so.

  A week later, little more than twenty-five years after her father had been conscripted into the Kaiser’s Army at the commencement of the last war, Europe was again plunged into wholesale bloodshed. The Prime Minister’s words as he broadcast to the nation were quite unequivocal: ‘This country is now at war with Germany,’ he said in his thin, reedy voice. ‘We are ready.’

  Someone, somewhere in Blackheath, was more than ready to show what his emotions were for all Germans, no matter what their personal allegiances or political sympathies. At five o’clock that afternoon, just as Carl Voigt was beginning to think of closing the bookshop for the day, someone threw a brick through the window. Tied to it was a piece of card bearing a message printed in gory red ink, GET THE HELL OUT GERMAN PIG BEFORE WE CHASE YOU OUT!

  Chapter Seven

  ‘You must call the police!’ Kate said to him as she faced him an hour later across their kitchen table, stunned disbelief, nausea and fury surging through her in such quick succession that she didn’t know which emotion was uppermost. ‘They’ll find out who did it. They’ll arrest them. They’ll . . .’

  ‘They’ll do nothing of the kind,’ Carl said with such weary passivity that Kate felt as if a fist had been slammed into her stomach. ‘This country is now at war with Germany and I’m a German. However polite the local police might be about the incident to my face, deep down there’s going to be empathy for whoever threw that brick, and for the message on it.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Kate said obstinately, staring across the table at him, sickeningly aware that her words held no ring of conviction.

  Carl passed a hand across his eyes and then said, ‘The time has come when you have to come down from that cloud you’ve been living on ever since you began your relationship with Toby and face facts, Kate. As far as the British Government is concerned I am now an enemy alien. And as an enemy alien I will, no doubt, be interned.’

  ‘Interned?’ Her eyes held his blankly. ‘What do you mean “interned”? Internment means being confined, imprisoned!’ There was rising hysteria in her voice. ‘You’ve lived in this country for twenty years, Dad! You can’t possibly imagine the British Government is going to imprison you!’

  ‘Why not?’ Carl said quietly, his eyes holding hers. ‘They did once before.’

  ‘But that was different!’ She rose from the table in such agitation that she overturned a cup of tea. The cup rocked sideways in its saucer, the hot liquid streaming over the tablecloth and dripping onto the floor. Neither of them took the slightest notice of it. ‘You were a prisoner of war then! You’d been a member of the German Army! You’re not a member of the German Army now! England is your home! You’ve become as English as Mr Nibbs or Mr Collins or Charlie Robson!’

  Despite the awfulness of what they were discussing, a wry smile touched the corners of Carl’s mouth. ‘That might be how you see me, Liebling, but it isn’t how our neighbours now see me or they wouldn’t have asked me to resign as captain of the cricket team. And it certainly isn’t how the government will see me.’ The faint smile died. ‘Reality has to be faced and we have to prepare for it. I’ve never interfered in your private life but I’m going to have to ask you a very personal question.’

  She stood quite still, unable to even imagine what he was going to ask her.

  With his eyes still holding hers unwaveringly, he said, ‘Is there any chance of you and Toby getting married?’

  The spilt tea continued to drip into a small pool by her feet. ‘I . . . we . . .’

  ‘I have to ask, Liebling. If the answer is yes, and if the two of you marry, then no matter how long the war continues, or how long I am interned, I won’t have to worry about you. I will know you are being taken care of. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gripped hold of the edge of the table. She understood perfectly. He was going to be taken away from her. Sometime in the next few weeks, perhaps even the next few days, he was going to be classified by the government as an enemy alien and he was going to be placed in an internment camp. And he was worrying about her because when that moment came, she would be alone in the house; alone and without any other family member to call on for support.

  ‘Toby has asked me to marry him,’ she said, trying to relieve his terrible anxiety. She was about to say that the reason they were not already engaged was that she had, until now, felt unable to face the prospect of meeting his grandfather. To do so, however, would mean having to explain why such a meeting would be so traumatic.

  As she saw her father’s shoulders sag with visible relief, she knew that she couldn’t burden him with the knowledge of Mr Harvey’s fervent prejudices. She was also faced with another realization that had not, until then, occurred to her. If, over the past few months, it would have been hard for Toby to have talked his grandfather into accepting her as a daughter-in-law, now it was going to be utterly impossible.

  ‘Then perhaps you could talk to Toby,’ her father was saying, rising from the table. ‘Explain to him what the situation is.’

  He picked up the upturned cup and its saucer and his own cup and saucer and began to carry them over to the sink. ‘Once he realizes the very high chances of you being left to live on your own, he’ll realize the sense of the two of you marrying sooner, rather than later.’

  He placed the crockery into the sink, ‘So that’s one problem solved, isn’t it?’ he said, his relief so vast there was no way on earth she could even partially disillusion him. ‘Now all we have to do is sit back and see what happens.’ He turned away from the sink, forcing a smile and saying jokingly, ‘With a bit of luck instead of the government interning me they might ask me to join the Home Guard!’

  They didn’t. On the same day that a buff envelope dropped through the Robsons’ letter-box informing Jack Robson when and where he should report for conscripted military service, a very similar envelope dropped through the Voigt letter-box.

  ‘I’m to go to Bow Street police station to register as an alien,’ Carl said to her as she waited in an agony of suspense to learn its contents.

  ‘Does it say anything about internment?’ she asked fearfully, the slice of toast she had been eating for her breakfast still in her hand.

  Carl shook his head. ‘No. Simply that I have to register.’ He looked up from the official letter. ‘All aliens have to register, even refugees. It might not be as bad as it seems, Liebling. Try not to worry.’

  All that day at work Kate worried herself sick. Mr Muff, under the mistaken assumption that her anxiety and tension were occasioned by fears of a German bombing raid on London or, even worse, imminent invasion, said with an unexpected show of bravado, ‘No situation is ever as black as it’s painted, Kate. In attacking the British Bulldog the Germans are going to find they’ve bitten off far more than they can chew! Onwards and upwards is the name of the game now!’

  Even Miss Pierce displayed a quite unexpectedly aggressive truculence. ‘Just let a German pilot bale out over my garden!’ she said fiercely to Kate when she joined her in the canteen at lunchtime. ‘I’ve got a pitch-fork at hand behind my front door and I’ll soon give him a suitable reception!’


  That evening, in her haste to be home and to find out what had happened to her father at Bow Street police station, Kate ran all the way across the Heath. When she burst into the house, her heart pumping as if it were going to give out any moment, the house was ominously empty.

  Drawing in great gulps of air, she turned around and hurried back outside. She needed to talk to someone and the only person she could possibly talk to was Carrie.

  Mr Nibbs and Daniel Collins were engaged in close conversation outside Miss Godfrey’s gate.

  Neither of them paid her any attention and she didn’t call out a greeting. Both of them had been members of the committee that had sat in such jingoistic judgement on her father and, ever since she had learned of the shameful way they had treated her father, she hadn’t spoken to any of the committee members involved.

  ‘Bloody war,’ she heard Mr Nibbs say. ‘It’s completely spoilt the end of the cricket season.’

  Savagely glad, she hurried down to the bottom end of the Square, passed Miss Helliwell’s, where a Union Jack bought to celebrate George VI’s coronation fluttered bravely from an upstairs window, and passed the Lomaxes’ where Mavis was leaning out of her bedroom window, her folded arms resting on the sill, viewing the world with philosophic calm.

  ‘Cooee!’ she shouted out cheerfully to gain Kate’s attention. ‘Everything’s a bit of a bugger, isn’t it? Christina’s had to register as an alien and Jack’s got his conscription papers. He says the government needn’t have bothered wasting money on a stamp because he volunteered for the Commandoes a week last Monday.’

  Kate was still too out of breath after her marathon run across the Heath and in too much of a hurry to share her anxieties about her father with Carrie to stop and chat. With nothing more than an acknowledging wave she whirled in through the Jennings’s open gateway and sprinted up the pathway.

  ‘Mercy me, bubbeleh,’ Leah said, so taken aback by Kate’s obviously distressed state that she fell back into her old habit of greeting Kate with affection. ‘What on earth has happened? Have the Germans invaded? Have . . .’