The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘No, Mrs Singer. Nothing like that. I need to see Carrie. Is she in?’

  ‘She’s upstairs, bathing Rose.’

  ‘Thanks.’ With no further ado Kate began to take the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Arrested? Interned?’ Carrie was kneeling by the side of the peeling white-enamelled bath, supporting Rose’s head with one hand, and splashing shallow water over her with the other. ‘You’re not making sense, Kate.’

  Very gently she lifted a protesting Rose from the water and wrapped her kicking little body in a bath towel. Only then was she able to turn and face Kate and to give her her full attention. ‘All non-British subjects have had to register. Christina’s had to do so. It’s a formality, that’s all.’

  ‘But Dad went early this morning and he hasn’t come back! And it isn’t the same for dad as it is for Christina! Christina’s Jewish! She’s a refugee! She’s hardly going to be classed as being a danger to national security, is she?’

  ‘But neither is your dad,’ Carrie said in a voice of sweet reason, leading the way out of the bathroom and along the landing to her bedroom. ‘How could he possibly be classed as being a threat to our national security? He’s hardly Mata Hari, is he? No-one in their right mind could imagine he was a German Secret Service agent or a spy!’

  At any other time Kate would have giggled in agreement at the very ludicrousness of the suggestion. Now she said, not remotely convinced by Carrie’s argument, ‘But people aren’t in their right minds any longer! The war has unhinged them! Think of Dad being dropped from the cricket team! And by people who have been his friends for years! You can’t tell me that was rational! And think of the brick someone threw through his shop window! That wasn’t only irrational, it was criminal!’

  Carrie laid Rose on the bed on the towel and began to sprinkle her with baby-powder, for once unable to think of a reply that would reassure and comfort.

  Kate stood by her side, watching her as, with a piece of cotton-wool, Carrie patted powder into the tiny wrinkled crevices beneath Rose’s arm-pits and into the little plump creases in her groin.

  ‘I’m beginning to feel like Alice when she tumbled down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland,’ she said bleakly. ‘Everything I’ve always accepted as being normal is normal no longer. The most unbelievable things are now real possibilities; that people Dad has always regarded as friends will now turn into enemies; that even though he is a law-abiding citizen and hates Hitler just as much as the most dyed-in-the-wool Englishman, he might be imprisoned.’

  Under the force of the stress she was feeling, her voice had a break in it as she said, ‘Nothing is certain any more. Nothing even feels the same any more!’

  ‘Nothing is the same anymore,’ Carrie said practically as she folded a napkin into a triangle, ‘not for anyone.’ She laid Rose on the napkin and began to fold it neatly over her chubby thighs and between her legs. ‘Danny’s being shipped off to France as a member of the British Expeditionary Force. Ted’s agonizing over whether to volunteer now or wait until conscription is extended to men of his age group – and he doesn’t have the slightest doubt that it soon will be.’ She pinned the neat muslin pleat she had made with a large safety pin. ‘And Dad’s joined the Home Guard. What use he’s going to be I can’t imagine. He hasn’t been issued with a rifle or anything remotely resembling a rifle. If he ever comes face to face with a German all he’ll be able to do is lob apples and oranges at him!’

  Kate felt a wash of shame. Other people beside herself were mentally suffering over what the future might hold. ‘I didn’t know about Danny,’ she said, wondering how she could have been so preoccupied with her own concerns not to have even thought to have asked Carrie where Danny had been posted. ‘Do you know where he is going in France?’

  ‘No,’ Carrie said, the unusual brevity in her voice an indication of how very near she was to tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Carrie,’ Kate said remorsefully. ‘Truly. It was crass of me to come barging in here as if me and Dad are the only people whose lives are being disrupted. It’s just that he went to Bow Street police station to register as an alien this morning and he still isn’t back . . .’

  ‘He might be by now,’ Carrie said sensibly, lifting a gurgling Rose from the bed and laying her in an expert manner against the comfort of her shoulder. ‘I bet there were queues miles long at Bow Street. Just think of all the foreigners who will have had to register. The queue probably stretched as far as Buckingham Palace!’

  She gave a giggle, suddenly the old Carrie again despite all her anxieties about Danny. ‘Come to think of it, shouldn’t King George be registering as an alien? His mother was German, wasn’t she? And the Royal House of Windsor has only existed since the last war. Before that it was the very German House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha!’ The laughter in her voice was thick and rich. ‘If the truth were known, I bet King George has more German blood in his veins than that trumped-up Austrian house-painter Hitler!’

  ‘Carrie’s probably right,’ Carl said an hour later as Kate put a plate of sausage and mash down on the table in front of him. ‘Puts things in perspective a little bit, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Kate said, refusing to be comforted so easily. ‘Even if King George were one hundred per cent German he wouldn’t have to register as an alien. What happened at Bow Street? Why did it take so long? Did anyone mention the word internment to you?’

  He poured brown sauce on his sausages and then said, ‘It took so long because the queue seemed to stretch for miles. As for internment . . .’ he paused and in the ensuing silence Kate could hear her heart slamming against her breast-bone. ‘As for internment,’ he said again, his voice calm and steady, ‘aliens considered to be a threat to national security were told they were to be sent to an internment camp for the duration of the war. Those not considered to be potential enemy agents were told they would be required to report regularly to their local police station.’

  He speared a sausage with his fork, looked up at her and smiled his slow, gentle smile. ‘I fell into the latter category.’

  She sat down weakly, overwhelmed by relief. ‘Thank God! I’ve been imagining all sorts of things! That they had sent you away without allowing you to come home for your things and say goodbye to me! That . . .’

  He laid down his fork and covered her hand with his. ‘There’s no need to worry any more, Liebling,’ he said, praying that it was the truth, not telling her that his case would come under regular review and that his assessment could be altered at any time. ‘Are you going to have some sausage and mash as well? Did Carrie say where Danny was being posted?’

  All through the next few terrible months of the war, though Carrie never knew where on earth Danny was, Kate at least had the benefit of knowing that Toby was still in Great Britain.

  My darling Kate,

  God, this posting is awful! I can’t tell you where we are but it’s cold enough to freeze hell over. Winter has already set in with a vengeance and winds are at hurricane force. Last night two of our aircraft were literally wrenched from their pickets by the strength of it. When it freezes we have to slice ice off the wings and when it thaws we have to scoop mud from the radiators! There’s absolutely no winning!

  In all the ways that mattered, however, she knew that he was winning and, thank God, that he was still alive and uninjured.

  In January he wrote to her with the news that he was hopeful of being transferred to 54 Squadron operating from Hornchurch in Essex. That was the good news. The bad news was that his grandfather had suffered a heart attack which, although their family doctor had described it as having been a relatively mild attack, excluded any immediate possibility of their visiting him together on his first leave after transferring to Hornchurch in order to inform him of their feelings for each other and of their intention of marrying.

  Kate received the news with mixed feelings. After her conversation with her father, and knowing now how happy her father would be if she and Toby married, she had psyched
herself up for the inevitable meeting with Mr Harvey. Now, because of his health, that meeting was indefinitely postponed and she couldn’t help experiencing a feeling of relief. It wasn’t as if the matter of her and Toby marrying was one of urgency. Her father was not going to be interned and so he wasn’t going to be suffering untold anxieties at the thought of her living and managing on her own in a war-torn London.

  She felt sorry for Toby, knowing how he would be worrying about his grandfather’s health and she felt sorry for Mr Harvey whose health had, in all probability, been adversely affected by anxiety for Toby’s safety. Over and above those feelings, however, she received the news with equanimity. Too much was happening in her own daily life in Magnolia Square for her to lay awake at night fretting over the health of a man she had never met.

  Ever since the incident months earlier, when her father had been so summarily asked to resign as captain of The Swan’s cricket team, she had ceased giving cheery greetings to any of the members of that committee and that included people she had always been on exceedingly friendly terms with, such as Mr Nibbs and Carrie’s father-in-law, Daniel Collins.

  It was with quite a shock that she realized that she had probably never snubbed them by not speaking to them because they had obviously decided, at the same point in time, not to exchange any more friendly greetings with her. Even though she didn’t want to be on friendly terms with them any more, the realization was surprisingly unpleasant. Was she, too, to be classed by some of her neighbours as a German and an enemy? She dismissed the idea almost the minute it came to her as being too ridiculous to be true. It was Carrie who made her change her mind.

  She stood on the doorstep in the weak February sunshine, Rose warmly wrapped and in a perambulator parked by the gate. ‘I need to speak to you, Kate,’ she said, her normally rose-cheeked face pale and strained, her shoulder-length tangle of dark curls constrained beneath a serviceable headscarf.

  Kate’s heart plummeted. ‘What is it?’ she asked as Carrie walked into the hallway. ‘Is it Danny? Has something happened to Danny?’

  Carrie unloosened the knot securing her headscarf and dragged it from her hair. ‘No. It’s not Danny. Though God knows where he is except that he’s somewhere in France. It’s something else, Kate. Something I’ve no idea how to say.’

  Seeing Carrie’s obvious distress, Kate said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on. You can tell me over a cup of tea. Is Rose all right out there? I know it’s sunny, but it’s still cold.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Carrie said, following Kate unhappily into the kitchen. ‘She’s wrapped up snug as a bug in a rug and I’ve faced the pram out of the wind.’

  Kate turned on the tap and filled the kettle. ‘Tell me,’ she said, lighting a gas ring on the stove and putting the kettle on top of it. ‘If Danny’s all right, your news can’t be that bad, surely?’

  Carrie sat down at the kitchen table, her square-jawed face so strained she looked almost middle-aged. ‘It’s Mum and Dad and Gran and Christina. There was a kind of family council last night and they’ve sent me up to see you to ask you not to call at the house any more.’

  ‘Not call at the house?’ For a moment Kate couldn’t imagine what on earth Carrie meant. She had been calling at Carrie’s house and treating it as her second home ever since she had been able to walk. ‘I’m sorry, Carrie. I don’t understand. Is your gran ill? Is . . .’

  Carrie shook her head. A tumble of smoke-dark hair fell across her eyes and she pushed it back with a hand red from the constant washing of Rose’s nappies. ‘No, Gran’s fine. It’s . . .’ she hesitated, her cat-green eyes agonized. ‘It’s because of the war and because of all the hideous things the Germans are doing to Poles and Czechs and anyone else they feel like massacring.’

  Kate remained where she was, her back to the stove, waiting.

  ‘Christina has made friends with a lot of fellow refugees,’ Carrie said, her chocolate-brown coat still buttoned up to her throat, her headscarf in her hands. ‘You wouldn’t believe some of their stories. One Polish friend of Christina’s told Mum and Dad how all the schoolteachers in her village were rounded up and locked inside the village school and how the Gestapo then set it on fire and watched, laughing and drinking, while the schoolteachers inside it were burnt to a cinder. It upset Mum so much she vomited in the sink and Dad said the entire German race were obviously sick and perverted and that he’d no intention of speaking to another German as long as he lived.’

  ‘And that includes my dad?’ Kate asked stiltedly, through frozen lips.

  Carrie nodded. ‘Apparently he saw your dad in the street yesterday and told him to his face how he felt. Didn’t your dad tell you?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said, feeling almost as sick as Miriam had done when told of the atrocity that had taken place in Poland. The kettle had begun to steam but she ignored it. She wondered what else had been said to her father that he had never disclosed to her and she wondered which of their neighbours would be the next to follow the Jennings’ example.

  ‘What about you, Carrie?’ she asked, when she could bring herself to speak again. ‘Do you feel like your mum and dad and gran and Christina? Do you think my dad is sick and perverted and capable of burning people alive?’

  Carrie flinched as though Kate had physically slapped her across the face. ‘No!’ she protested vehemently, pushing her chair away from the table and stumbling to her feet, a strangled sob in her voice, ‘Of course I don’t think that! And neither do my mum and dad and gran! They just don’t know how else to express their feelings about what is happening! Can’t you see how difficult it is for them to be friends with someone who is German when they hear such first-hand reports of what Germans are capable of? They can’t cope with it, Kate, and you can hardly blame them!’

  The kettle began to puff great clouds of steam towards the kitchen ceiling. Numbly Kate turned her back on Carrie and picking up a kettle-holder she had made years ago in a junior school sewing-class, she removed the kettle from the stove.

  ‘I hate the way people’s attitudes to your dad are changing just as much as you do,’ Carrie said, her passion spent, her voice weary. ‘He’s been everyone’s friend and neighbour for twenty years and no-one seriously believes he’s a Nazi or a spy but he is German and they don’t know how to come to terms with it.’

  Kate poured boiling water into a teapot. ‘And I’m half-German,’ she said tautly, ‘and your family quite obviously can’t come to terms with that either.’

  Carrie pushed the thick fall of her hair away from her face. ‘Forget the tea, Kate,’ she said, her voice drained of all emotion. ‘I’d better be getting back to Rose.’

  Kate nodded. She no longer felt in the mood for a cup of tea either. She felt more in the mood for a neat double whisky.

  When Carrie had left the house, pushing the perambulator back down to the bottom end of the Square, Kate put on her cherry-red coat and, with a scarf around her throat and a beret crammed on her hair, set off in the opposite direction, towards the Heath.

  She was acutely aware of how much she missed being able to borrow Bonzo from Carrie’s grandmother and have him trotting at her heels; of how much she would miss, if she met Mr Nibbs or Mr Collins, the cheerful repartee that had once existed between them; of how much she missed a friendly neighbourhood world that she had always taken for granted and which now was fast crumbling into oblivion.

  Once on the Heath she headed across it diagonally, having no destination in mind, wanting only the release of energetic physical exercise. Britain had now been at war with Germany for six months. Millions of other lives had been disrupted out of all recognition; some destroyed for ever. Common sense told her that by comparison with what millions of civilians and soldiers were suffering on mainland Europe, her own and her father’s situation was so negligible as to be non-existent. The knowledge didn’t stop the shock she was feeling, or the hurt.

  Christina. If it hadn’t been for Christina’s arrival in the Jennings’ household none of
this would have happened.

  She strode savagely over the frost-tipped grass. The Cricket Club committee members hadn’t behaved as they had because of Christina’s influence. They had behaved as they had because of a common bond and that common bond was the primaeval, instinctive closing of ranks against a member of another tribe when danger from that tribe threatened.

  She crossed one of the narrow roads bisecting the Heath, gravel scrunching beneath her feet. Despite having regarded Britain as his home for twenty years and of having lived for all that time in Magnolia Square, when the chips were down, as they were now between Britain and Germany, then her father was no longer perceived by their neighbours as being a member of their close-knit community. He was an outsider. A misfit.

  She stepped once again on to frost-tipped turf, the church of All Saints’, which sat squatly on the edge of the Heath at the upper end of Blackheath Village, only fifty yards or so distant. If her father was an outsider and a misfit, what did that make her? Was she, too, going to suffer the same kind of blinkered ostracism? Was she going to become a misfit amongst the community she had been born and brought up in?

  She came to a halt, her hands deep in her coat pockets, staring up at All Saints’ slender spire, her face pinched with cold, her eyes resolute. If that was what the future held then she would face it with the dignity that was so integral a part of her father’s nature. To react in any other way would be to let him down and she would never do that. Not for anyone. Not even for Toby.

  Chapter Eight

  When she finally returned to Magnolia Square dusk was beginning to fall and as she crossed the road from the Heath she was at first uncertain of the identity of the two little figures trailing wearily towards it from the top end of the Park from the Old Dover Road direction.