The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  Wishing him joy of his task, Kate tried hard not to remember previous summer evenings when every few yards one or other of her neighbours would have shouted out a cheery hello to her or engaged her in a few moments of friendly conversation. She opened her garden gate, wryly aware that if it wasn’t for her continuing friendship with Carrie and the fierce support of Miss Godfrey and Miss Pierce, her disillusionment with the human race would have been total.

  The instant she opened the front door her eyes flew to the mat and with a leap of joy she saw that there was a letter for her from Toby. She scooped it up eagerly, opening it with a singing heart.

  Dearest love,

  Thank you for forwarding me the address you received for your father. I’ve written him and sent him a parcel of books. Another Steinbeck, a J. B. Priestley, an Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. All pretty lightweight but then I imagine that is what he’s in need of at the present moment. All the information I’ve been able to dig up indicates the conditions he’s living under are pretty easy-going, which I hope will comfort you a little. The internment camp was actually built as a model housing estate and within its confines there is complete freedom of movement for everyone. No doubt you will have heard from your father by now and hopefully you will not be worrying quite so much about his welfare. Things could be a lot worse for him, but then you know that and don’t need me pointing it out. I have a forty-eight hour pass this weekend coming. After that, it might be an age before I again have two days leave. Things are hotting up where Herr Hitler is concerned, God damn him. I love you like crazy and miss you like the very devil.

  Be with you soonest. Toby.

  She smoothed the letter lovingly and re-read it. He had made no mention of where they should meet because such arrangements were no longer necessary between them. As soon as he arrived home he spent a courteous and minimum amount of time with his grandfather and then drove immediately over to Magnolia Square where he usually spent an equally courteous amount of time chatting to her father before whizzing her off for a drink at The Princess of Wales and then up to the West End for a show and a meal, or perhaps to the Hammersmith Palais where they could dance the night away cheek-to-cheek.

  She gazed through the kitchen window, deep in thought. She and Toby loved each other deeply but they were not yet lovers in the true, physical sense of the word. Though he had suggested on more than one occasion that they spend one of his leaves in the country or at the seaside together, she had always resisted the temptation. She knew that he wanted to marry her and that once his grandfather was recovered sufficiently from his heart attack for him to be told of their intentions, he would marry her. Until now it had never seriously occurred to her that when they did so she would be anything other than a virgin. Now, nursing her mug of freshly made tea, she wondered why such a notion had been so important to her and realized, with a stab of shock, that it was important no longer.

  Hard on the heels of her momentous realization came another realization. Though she now had complete privacy in her home and there was nothing whatsoever to prevent the two of them from taking sexual advantage of that privacy, Toby would not wish to do so. He would see such an action as taking advantage of her father’s enforced absence and the magic would be tarnished for them both.

  A small smile touched her lips. It was because Toby was so innately honourable that she loved him so much. He would want the occasion when they first made love to be as perfect and as romantic as she wanted it to be and although when he arrived home on leave they could immediately drive down to Brighton or somewhere similar, and book into a hotel, precious hours of his leave would be wasted whilst they did so.

  She mentally created a map of south-east England in her mind’s eye. Toby’s RAF camp was at Hornchurch, in Essex. Essex wasn’t so far from London and there would no doubt be lots of pretty villages nearby. It would make far more sense for her to take the train and to meet him at the camp gates than for him to travel all the way into London and then for the two of them to travel out of it again.

  Utterly sure of the decision she had just made, she went hurriedly in search of pen and paper. If she wrote to him immediately and posted her letter that evening, he would receive it in time. The coming weekend would be the most wonderful weekend of their lives. A weekend they would never, ever forget.

  As she packed a small overnight bag on Friday night someone knocked on the front door. Certain it must be Carrie, Kate hurried to open it, flinging it wide, only to find herself staring into the rather bemused face of St Mark’s Church vicar, Bob Giles.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you Katherine, only I have what I imagine is a rather important message for you,’ he said kindly. ‘A Flight Lieutenant Toby Harvey has just telephoned the vicarage and asked me if I would tell you that he has received your letter and that he will be at Hornchurch this weekend.’ There was no surprise at being used as a glorified messenger-boy in Bob Giles’ voice. The vicarage was the only house in Magnolia Square with a telephone and he was accustomed to taking emergency messages for his neighbours. ‘He said you would understand and that there was no need for any reply.’

  Kate’s cheeks flushed scarlet. She could understand that Toby had been anxious to let her know that he had received her letter and that their paths weren’t going to cross by his travelling up to London as she was travelling out to Essex, but having the vicar act as unwitting intermediary for a rendezvous that he would, if he knew of its nature, undoubtedly disapprove of, embarrassed her deeply.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, grateful that she hadn’t already placed her overnight bag by the door, making the true meaning of the message he had just relayed glaringly apparent.

  Bob Giles turned to leave and then hesitated, saying as an afterthought, ‘The gentleman in question wouldn’t be a relative of Mr Joss Harvey of Harvey Construction Ltd, would he?’

  Kate felt the colour in her cheeks burn even deeper. ‘Yes,’ she said, certain that the true import of the message he had been asked to deliver would dawn on Mr Giles at any moment, ‘Flight Lieutenant Harvey is his grandson.’

  ‘Is he, indeed? Well, well. I’d heard he’d joined the RAF and was now a fighter pilot. Those boys are certainly in the thick of it at the moment, aren’t they? Without them I’m afraid we’d be something of a walkover for Herr Hitler. With them, we’ll remain inviolate. Quite remarkable when you think about it, a mere handful of young boys defending our little island from the might of Hitler’s bombers.’

  With a cheery goodbye wave he walked down the stone steps leading from Kate’s front door to her pathway, still musing over the poetic heroism of the RAF. ‘Reminiscent of Agincourt,’ Kate heard him say to himself as he walked towards the gate. ‘Quite awe-inspiring. Utterly British. I shall take it as my theme for Sunday’s sermon.’

  Kate thankfully closed the door on him and returned to her interrupted task. Her toilet things were packed but she hadn’t yet packed a nightdress. All the ones she possessed were on the sofa waiting for her to make her choice. She looked at them in something approaching despair. None of them were spectacularly pretty. Her newest, made of serviceably warm winceyette, wasn’t even remotely pretty.

  Decisively she scooped them up in her arms and went back upstairs with them, pushing them away in one of her dressing-table drawers. She would buy herself a new nightdress in the morning, before leaving for Hornchurch, and the nightdress she bought wouldn’t be sensible or made of winceyette. It would be the prettiest and the most frivolous that clothing coupons could buy.

  Sitting in the train next day as it pulled out of Liverpool Street Station, two thoughts occurred to her almost simultaneously. The first, the fact that Toby’s RAF camp would, in all likelihood, be a considerable distance from the centre of Hornchurch and that she might find difficulty in reaching it on public transport; the second, that she hadn’t seen Carrie since she had made her momentous decision to spend Toby’s leave with him in Essex and that Carrie would have no idea where she was.
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  From the train window she looked out on to suburban gardens, all scarred by the tell-tale hump of half-buried, Anderson shelters. Finding Toby’s RAF camp would not be such a difficult task and if Carrie knocked for her over the weekend she wouldn’t worry overmuch at receiving no reply. Knowing Carrie, she might even guess the reason for the house being empty.

  Her excitement at the thought of her coming reunion with Toby intensified as the train chugged its way via Ilford towards Hornchurch. With the war news where Belgium, Holland and France were concerned worsening every hour, it was a miracle he was being granted any leave at all and she was well aware that if France fell and Hitler turned his full might against Britain, it might be many months before they would be able to share another such weekend leave.

  The train was packed with young airmen returning to camp and she remembered Mr Giles’s remarks of the previous evening. The excitement she had been feeling spiralled into cold terror. It was a terror all too familiar; a terror she always experienced whenever she thought of Toby, strapped into the cockpit of his Hurricane, engaging high above the clouds in personal and deadly battle with a German fighter plane or launching an attack on an enemy bomber.

  ‘Hornchurch!’ a guard called out loudly. ‘Hornchurch!’

  Picking up her overnight bag and wishing it didn’t look so obviously what it was, she squeezed her way with other alighting passengers onto the platform. A newspaper placard was displayed prominently bearing the headlines ‘Paris raided!’ ‘Brussels bombed’ ‘Many killed in Lyon’. As she made her way to the barrier she prayed that Toby’s leave hadn’t been cancelled and that he wasn’t, right at that very moment, at the controls of his plane, searching out the enemy over France or the Low Countries.

  ‘Kate! Kate!’

  At the sound of his voice her relief was so great that she almost stumbled.

  ‘Kate!’ he shouted again, vaulting the ticket barrier to the disconcertion of the ticket collector and striding towards her, magnificent in his RAF uniform, his flight lieutenant’s stripes prominently emblazoned on his jacket sleeves.

  Seconds later she was safe within the circle of his arms, crushed against the comforting broadness of his chest and then, as she turned her radiant face up to his, he lowered his head to hers, kissing her long and lingeringly, utterly uncaring of the crowd of arriving and departing passengers seething around them.

  When at last he reluctantly lifted his mouth from hers she said breathlessly, ‘I’ve just seen the news headlines and I was terrified your leave would have been cancelled!’

  He grinned down at her, his shock of fair hair bleached almost wheat-colour by the sun, ‘It very nearly was and I’m going to have to stay pretty close to camp.’ With his arm firmly around her waist he began to walk with her towards the irate ticket-collector. ‘It isn’t going to spoil our time together though. My Group Captain rents a house a quarter of a mile or so away from camp and as his wife has had to scoot up to Yorkshire to tend an ailing parent he’s living on base and the house is temporarily up for grabs.’ His grin widened. ‘We’re the lucky twosome who have temporarily grabbed it.’

  With her arm hugging his, her head resting comfortably against his shoulder, they walked out of the station and into the street.

  ‘Have things been tough for you since your father was interned?’ he asked gently as he led the way towards his parked MG.

  She thought of the hostile crowd that had gathered to see her father being led away and the ugly, verbally expressed desire of a member of that crowd and said, ‘Not in relation to what thousands of other people are suffering, but it’s been disillusioning.’

  ‘Your neighbours?’

  She nodded. ‘Not Miss Godfrey or Carrie, of course. And not Charlie. But people I never dreamed would ever turn against my father have done so. Leastways, they didn’t speak out in his defence when they should have spoken out.’

  ‘War does strange things to people,’ he said wryly, able to imagine all too easily the kind of confrontation that had taken place when Carl Voigt had been removed from his home. ‘In Norway people are being divided into two camps, those prepared to kowtow to the invaders of their country and those determined to continue resisting. And those who opt for continued resistance will have a harsh lesson finding out who they can trust.’

  Kate remained silent, knowing only too well the truth of his words. If Britain was invaded, her neighbours in Magnolia Square would no doubt divide into two similar camps. And the unexpected resistance heroes would be people like Miss Pierce and Miss Godfrey and Charlie Robson.

  Sensing the darkness of her thoughts, his arm tightened around her waist. ‘I’ve told you the good news about the weekend,’ he said, his voice full of teasing amusement, ‘but not the bad.’

  ‘The bad?’ Apprehension seized her. ‘What’s the bad news? What . . .’

  ‘We won’t be alone together at the cottage,’ he said, keeping his face straight with difficulty. ‘We shall be sharing it with a friend of mine, Hector.’

  Her eyes widened in dismayed disbelief. ‘But I’d thought . . . I’d hoped . . .’

  ‘He’s waiting for us in the car. I don’t think you’ll find his presence a problem this weekend. In fact, I think you’re going to rather like him.’

  Her dismay deepened into embarrassed despair. The significance of her joining him at Hornchurch had been lost on him. He hadn’t understood.

  ‘Toby, I . . .’ she began awkwardly and then stopped. The MG was parked prominently in the High Street and sitting in it was an impatient-looking, very large, very black, dog.

  Laughter and relief surged through her.

  ‘He’s a Labrador,’ Toby said as they neared the car and the dog stood up, his powerful tail wagging in joyous welcome. ‘He belonged to a chum of mine who was shot down over Maastricht. I promised Rory that if he bought it I’d look after Hector for him. He’s rather magnificent, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, glad that in fussing and petting Hector she was able to disguise the new set of feelings sweeping over her. ‘Bought it’. Was that how Toby and his friends described a fiery and horrendous death? Was that the way they coped with the ever-present nightmare each and every one of them lived with? By coining a slang and trivializing expression for it?

  ‘We’ve become pretty inseparable these last few weeks,’ Toby said as he opened the car door for her. ‘I explained to him that I had an important visitor coming this weekend and that we wanted some privacy but he refused to take the hint.’

  He walked around to the far side of the MG and slid into the driving seat beside her, shooting her a down-slanting, heart-stopping smile, the expression in his eyes making her damp with longing. ‘And I’ve told him that if he expects to be taken for a long walk he can forget it. Once that cottage door closes behind us we’re not emerging again for anyone. Not even him. This next forty-eight hours are going to be spent in one place and one place only. Bed!’

  The cottage stood by itself at the end of a long, winding lane. It was a small, traditional two-up and two-down, set amidst a garden crammed with hollyhocks, delphiniums and Canterbury bells. Inside, in the wood-beamed living-room, was a shabby leather sofa and winged chair and a large, purposeful-looking desk. On it stood a blue pottery jug filled with flowers. She didn’t have to ask him if he had picked the flowers himself. She knew he had. And his motivation had been the same as hers when she had shopped for her broderie anglaise trimmed nightdress. Even though they weren’t yet married he regarded the time they were now spending together as being their honeymoon, and despite all the difficult circumstances, he wanted it to be as romantic and as perfect as possible.

  With her heart banging against her ribs and Hector pushing and shoving at her heels, she followed Toby up the narrow, uneven staircase to the bedrooms.

  ‘What used to be the small bedroom has mercifully been converted into a bathroom,’ Toby said, leading the way into a sun-filled, lemon and white decorated bedroom. He dropped her overnig
ht case onto a chintz upholstered button-backed chair. ‘You can also see the airfield from here. If Ops want me they’ll ring. I’m praying to God they won’t.’

  ‘Ops?’ she asked, suddenly nervous, playing for time.

  ‘The Operations Room.’ There was an edge of tautness in his voice which she knew had nothing to do with their personal situation. ‘Disaster is staring France in the face at the moment. The entire base is on stand-by.’

  She hadn’t walked as far into the room as he had and now, as their eyes held, he made no move towards her. Sensing her apprehension, loving her so much it was a physical pain, he said gently, ‘If you’ve changed your mind, Kate, I’ll understand. I know how low and lonely you must have felt when you wrote to me. I know how ghastly it must be for you living at home without your father, but I also know how you’ve always felt about sex before marriage and . . .’

  ‘It is lonely at home,’ she said huskily. ‘And I was low and in need of comfort when I wrote to you. But that isn’t the reason I decided to come down here this weekend.’

  The bed lay between them, its white jacquard bedspread and plump, white, cotton-cased pillows spotlessly bridal.

  ‘I came because I realized how foolish I’d been in clinging to a romantic notion that has nothing whatsoever to do with the life we’re now living,’ she said, apprehensive no longer, utterly sure of the commitment she was about to give. ‘The values I was trying to cling to belong to a world that doesn’t exist any longer.’

  She thought of Rory, and of Toby facing the same risks, and the very idea of denying herself and Toby the joy and comfort of lovemaking in order that she could walk down the aisle a virgin seemed no longer only anachronistic, but obscene.

  A small smile touched the corners of her mouth. ‘I came down here this weekend because I love you,’ she said, well aware that he had asked her if she was having second thoughts only because his love for her was completely unselfish; because her happiness, mental as well as emotional, mattered to him far more than his own and that if she had changed her mind he would, out of love for her, have contained his savage disappointment.