The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  When her pregnancy had begun to show, however, salacious gossip had soon followed. Though Doctor Roberts, whom she now had begun to visit for regular check-ups, and Ellen, had warned her of the kind of comments she would meet with when it became known that she was pregnant, she had been unprepared for just how coarse and hurtful some of the comments would be. And then her surname had become known and only one or two of her fellow workers were still speaking civilly to her.

  ‘You’ll have to take your ration book elsewhere,’ Mr Nibbs said to her brusquely a few days later when, after queuing for an interminable length of time, she finally reached his grocery counter.

  It was an ultimatum that Kate had long anticipated. She had registered her ration book with him before the hideousness of her father’s internment and, as ration books couldn’t be switched arbitrarily from one shopkeeper to another, it was a situation she had resigned herself to.

  She said now, tight-lipped, ‘You are my designated grocer, Mr Nibbs. I would like a packet of tea and my weekly sugar and margarine allowance, please.’

  Mr Nibbs placed her ration book squarely on the wooden counter between them. ‘You’ll get nothing from me. Your Jerry friends have blitzed Coventry. Going on for a thousand people have been killed. You want tea and sugar and margarine, you go somewhere else for it.’

  ‘Jerry-lover,’ a woman somewhere in the queue behind her said viciously. ‘And she’s pregnant and I don’t see a wedding-ring.’

  ‘She’s German,’ another voice said authoritatively. ‘Her father’s an internee. I don’t know why she isn’t. I thought all Germans had been interned.’

  Knowing that it would be useless to argue with Mr Nibbs; knowing that at any moment the verbal abuse she was being subjected to might turn to physical abuse, Kate picked up her ration book.

  ‘I don’t have any German friends,’ she said to Mr Nibbs through lips she could barely move. ‘I’m as loyal a citizen of this country as you are,’ and turning her back on him she walked out of the shop, past the long queue of muttering women, the words, ‘Shameful hussy’ and ‘No wonder she’s a slut if she’s German’, echoing in her ears.

  The first sight she saw as she stepped out on to the pavement was Carrie, walking down the hill that led from the Heath to the centre of Blackheath Village, Rose toddling along beside her in leading-reins.

  Kate’s first reaction was one of intense thankfulness. At least now she would be able to give vent to her feelings with someone who would be unconditionally supportive. Then she saw the expression on Carrie’s unusually cheery face.

  ‘Carrie! Carrie, what on earth has happened? What’s wrong?’

  For an unnerving second Carrie didn’t even seem to recognize her. Her eyes, red-rimmed from weeping, were curiously blank.

  Rose, a hand-knitted beret pulled low over her ears to protect them from the bitter November cold, her blue, velvet-collared coat buttoned tightly to her throat, said, not understanding the import of her words, ‘Daddy’s something called a POW and Mummy doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Kate immediately forgot all about her fury with Mr Nibbs and the anger and frustration she had felt towards the women in the queue behind her, anger and frustration common sense had prevented her from giving vent to. ‘Is it true, Carrie?’ she demanded, feeling physically sick. ‘Has Danny been taken prisoner by the Italians?’

  Carrie nodded, expression seeping back into her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said, her mental and emotional pain now naked. ‘This arrived an hour or so ago.’

  With a gauntletted-gloved hand she withdrew a crumpled telegram from her coat pocket.

  Kate took it from her silently, her eyes skimming over the block-typed words. REGRET TO INFORM YOU . . . YOUR HUSBAND SERGEANT DANIEL COLLINS . . . REPORTED CAPTURED . . . ENQUIRIES BEING MADE THROUGH INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS . . . ANY FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE IMMEDIATELY COMMUNICATED TO YOU . . . LETTER CONFIRMING THIS TELEGRAM FOLLOWS.

  With the telegram still in her hand she put her arms around Carrie, hugging her tight. ‘I’m sorry, Carrie,’ she said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Those bloody Eyeties,’ Carrie said indistinctly, tears once again beginning to course down her face. ‘What will they do with him, Kate? He was in Egypt, for Christ’s sake! Will they keep him there or will they ship him off to Italy? What will they do with him?’

  It was a question Kate couldn’t even begin to answer. She said, trying to be as comforting as possible, ‘The telegram mentions the Red Cross, Carrie. There are rules for the treatment of prisoners of war. Articles laid down in the Geneva Convention. The Italians will have to treat him decently and once the Red Cross establishes contact with Danny you’ll be able to communicate with him through them. You’ll be able to send him letters, maybe even food parcels.’

  Carrie stepped out of the circle of Kate’s arms. ‘Maybe,’ she said, a note in her voice so odd that Kate couldn’t tell what the emotion was that lay behind it. ‘But the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross haven’t done much for the Jews Hitler is rounding up and slaughtering in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Belgium and Holland, have they? And the Italians are Germany’s ally. If the Germans don’t give a hang about the Geneva Convention you can bet your sweet life that neither will the Eyeties.’

  There was an expression in Carrie’s sea-green eyes that Kate had never seen before; an expression that filled her with stupefied disbelief. It was as if Carrie was regarding her as a stranger; as if she had withdrawn from her utterly.

  ‘Christina’s right,’ Carrie said bleakly, confirming all Kate’s worst fears. ‘Italians, Germans, they’re all the same. They’re all Fascists. It’s in their blood.’ And giving Rose a gentle tug on the leading-reins she turned her back and walked away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate couldn’t move. She was paralysed by horror; suffocating in it; drowning in it. Carrie had turned against her. What Christina’s first-hand accounts of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis had failed to do, Danny’s capture by the Italians had succeeded in doing. Just like Mr Nibbs, Miss Helliwell, Hettie, Miriam, Leah and a host of others, Carrie now regarded her as a creature set apart; a person to be avoided; a person symbolic of Germany and, as such, symbolic of the cause of all their suffering.

  ‘Carrie!’ she called out after her, her voice strangling in her throat. ‘Carrie!’

  Only Rose turned her head, her little face beneath her knitted beret bewildered by both the events that had taken place a little earlier, when the man had knocked at the door with the piece of paper her grandad had referred to as a telegram, and the frightening tension she now sensed and couldn’t understand.

  Carrie’s back remained resolutely set against Kate as she continued to walk swiftly up Tranquil Vale, Rose struggling to keep up with her.

  With every fibre of her being Kate wanted to run after Carrie; to seize hold of her; to make her see the needless dreadfulness of what would now happen between them. She couldn’t do so. Every line of Carrie’s back was so rigid and hostile that she knew the kind of response she would receive if she ran after her. It was a response she couldn’t face. A response she wouldn’t be able to bear to live with.

  As she stood transfixed, scarcely able to believe that what had happened hadn’t been hallucination or nightmare, Charlie Robson heaved himself out of the Three Tuns public house and on to the broad tree-lined pavement only a few yards away from her.

  ‘You’ll catch your death of cold standin’ about in this weather, petal,’ he said, hiccupping as he did so.

  Queenie bounded down the steps of the pub behind him and made a bee-line for Kate, nearly knocking her off her feet in the exuberance of her greeting.

  Kate buried her hand in Queenie’s fur, her throat tight, her eyes overly bright.

  Charlie, never excessively observant at the best of times, merely said, ‘Are you goin’ over the ’eath, petal? Because if you are, I’ll come with you. I could do with a bit o’ company. I never see �
��arriet now she’s racketing around in that tin bus she calls an ambulance. Gawd knows what the injured think when they find ’arriet tendin’ ’em in her tweed suit and pearls. They must think it’s Queen Elizabeth doin’ her bit for the nation!’

  With Queenie’s cold nose nuzzling at her hand, Kate nodded assent to Charlie’s suggestion. Carrie was no longer in sight and a faint sprinkling of snow had begun to fall.

  ‘It’ll look a treat at Christmas if the snow stays,’ Charlie said as he weaved a little unsteadily at her side and they breasted the hill, looking out from the top corner of Tranquil Vale across to the chocolate-box prettiness of All Saints’ Church and the frosted expanse of the Heath beyond it. ‘I always like a bit o’ snow at Christmas. It makes it more festive like.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone is going to feel very festive this year, Charlie,’ Kate said, not even wanting to think about Christmas or how she would be spending it. ‘Half of the East End have been bombed out of their homes and the other half are living without water or gas or electricity. How can you make a Christmas dinner if you’ve no gas or electric to cook with?’

  ‘How can you make a Christmas puddin’ with food shortages and no dried fruit?’ Charlie asked glumly. ‘’Arriet says Lord Woolton ’as told ’ousewives to use carrots instead.’ He snorted in derision. ‘Carrots! Who the ’ell wants carrots in their Christmas puddin’?’

  Kate, well aware of the Minister of Food’s many suggestions for combatting the increasing food shortages, said not very convincingly, ‘It might not be too bad, Charlie. His “Woolton Pie” is just about bearable. Or at least it is if you like potatoes.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Charlie said as he bent down and picked up a twig, throwing it for Queenie to run after. ‘Leastways, I don’t like ’em when there’s nothing else with ’em. I like steak and kidney puddin’ and bacon and eggs and liver and dumplin’s. And,’ he added darkly, ‘I like Christmas puddin’ stuffed with currants and raisins and brandy and candied peel.’

  ‘Then you’re out of luck,’ Kate said starkly, looking across the barren Heath and wondering where Carrie and Rose had disappeared to. ‘All you’re likely to get plenty of, out of that little lot, are dumplings!’

  Even when they reached the far side of the Heath, and Kate looked back towards the Village, she could see no sign of Carrie or Rose.

  Heavy-hearted, she walked with Charlie into the Square. When they reached her gate he said with unusual perception, ‘’Ope you don’t mind me saying so, petal. But you look a bit down in the dumps. I’d have a snifter of the old medicinal if I was you. ’Ave you got some in? ’Cos if you ’aven’t, I could let you have a drop out of my store cupboard.’

  Not remotely surprised that Charlie had a plentiful supply of whisky secreted away, Kate shook her head. ‘No thanks, Charlie. Though I appreciate the offer.’

  Charlie looked relieved. ‘Then make yourself a cup of char,’ he said kindly. ‘A cup of char is a wonderful pick-me-up. ’Arriet swears by ’em.’

  Promising she would do so, she let herself into the house, deeply grateful for Hector’s storm of welcoming barking as he rushed to meet her. With Hector in the house, the house wasn’t as ringingly empty as it had been in the first few weeks after her father had been interned.

  ‘Have you missed me?’ she asked unnecessarily as she bent down to him, fondling his ears as he licked her face in a frenzy of delight.

  Ellen had told her that she would catch germs from Hector if she allowed him to demonstrate his affection in such a manner. She had been uncaring. Now, knowing herself robbed of Carrie’s friendship, she was even less caring about germs. What she needed was affection and Hector gave it.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to him, standing upright again. ‘I’ve cajoled some tripe out of the butcher for you.’

  As she walked into the kitchen, Hector charging enthusiastically ahead of her, she reflected that apart from Charlie, and possibly Mavis, the only friends she now had were Ellen Pierce and Harriet Godfrey.

  She began cutting the tripe into small pieces. Ellen Pierce was in her late forties and couldn’t be described as being anything other than middle-aged and the Lord alone knew how old Harriet Godfrey was. Despite her derring-do as a voluntary ambulance driver she had long been retired and had to be nearer to seventy than she was to fifty.

  She scooped the tripe into Hector’s bowl and set it down on the floor. Her relationship with Carrie had always been as close as if they had been sisters. Tears glittered on her eyelashes. Ever since she could remember she had always thought of Carrie as being her sister. Friendship had never seemed a strong enough word for the bond there had been between them ever since they had met at nursery school. And now, though Carrie had not said so specifically, Kate knew that deep, committed friendship on Carrie’s part had been withdrawn.

  Snow had begun to fall quite heavily against the kitchen window and she walked desultorily into the sitting-room, wondering if she dare deplete her small stock of coal by lighting a fire.

  On the mantelpiece, in the silver frame she had so carefully shopped for, Toby smiled across at her from her favourite photograph of him. It had been taken only a few weeks before he had died. He was leaning against the wing of his Hurricane, his hands casually in his pockets, one foot nonchalantly crossing the other at the ankle, just as he had stood at the door of her office the first time she had set eyes on him. He was in uniform, his sheep-lined flying jacket unzipped, his thick tumble of fair hair falling low across his forehead. And he was looking directly into the camera, his eyes full of laughter, his smile so dear and familiar that for a heart-stopping moment it was as if he were in the room with her.

  Icy fingers tightened on her heart. He wasn’t in the room with her. He would never be in the room with her again. Grief, so raw and deep it was beyond containment, convulsed her. She began to weep and as the snow-laden sky outside the window darkened into dusk, she continued to weep, her heart breaking, hugging her breast as though holding herself together against an inner disintegration.

  She was proved right in her assumption that when Carrie had turned her back on her and walked away from her in Tranquil Vale, she had been turning her back on all the years of friendship that had previously bonded them so closely.

  November gave way to December and Carrie didn’t knock on her door. Occasionally Kate would see her from a distance with Rose, and sometimes with Bonzo as well. Always, another figure was with them, companionably linking arms with Carrie. Always, that person was Christina Frank.

  As Christmas drew nearer, the air raids, which had once seemed as if they might be slackening off, increased yet again in intensity. They also differed from the earlier raids in their tactics. Incendiary bombs began to be dropped in far greater numbers than previously, sometimes as many as three thousand in a single raid. Fires raged throughout London and there were times when Kate could hardly remember what it was like to breathe in air unpolluted by smoke and the fumes of sulphur.

  Harriet Godfrey was on almost constant call and, far from the long hours and harrowing nature of her work proving to be too much for her, thrived on the danger, driving with panache through blacked-out, hazardously cratered streets strewn with glass and rubble, often doing so when a raid was in progress and bombs were falling.

  ‘I shall be on duty on Christmas Day, Katherine,’ she said to Kate a few days before Christmas. ‘So many of the other volunteer ambulance drivers have families and it seems only fair that, if possible, that day should be covered by those of us who live alone.’

  Kate envied her her busyness. She, too, would much have preferred driving an ambulance or a fire engine or helping to man the phones at an ARP centre. She had, over the last few weeks, volunteered her services everywhere possible and had been turned down as a driver due to her now obvious pregnancy and been rejected at the ARP centre due to the stigma of her surname.

  ‘And Ellen won’t be spending Christmas Day with us,’ she said to Hector as she surveyed the fake Christmas tree s
he had unearthed from the small spare bedroom where suitcases and other miscellaneous items were kept; ‘She’s looking after too many stray and frightened bombed-out animals to be able to leave them and spend the day with us.’

  She opened the ancient cardboard box that her father had kept the tree’s decorations in for as long as she could remember. ‘So we shall be on our own,’ she said, beginning to unwrap a bauble from the sheet of newspaper her father had carefully wrapped it in. ‘It’s going to be just you and me Hector.’

  Though her inner strength of character and defiant attitude towards life had enabled her to cope with her ostracism by neighbours and former friends, the prospect of a Christmas spent without human companionship was agonizingly dispiriting. Christmas was a time for families. She should have been spending it with her father, but her father had now been moved to an internment camp on the Isle of Wight. And she should have been spending it, mentally if not physically, with Toby. If he had still been alive they would now be married and even though the war situation would have ensured that their chances of spending Christmas Day together would have been remote, at least she would have known that, wherever he was, he would have been thinking of her.

  She hung the bauble on the tree and then, as always when longing and grief for Toby threatened to overpower her, she folded her arms over the comforting mound of her stomach. She had the baby to look forward to. Doctor Roberts had told her that, in his judgement, she would give birth during the last week of February or the first week of March.

  ‘Fortunately first babies give plenty of warning that they are on their way,’ he had said to her reassuringly. ‘I had to drive through a hail of incendiary bombs to one young mother last week. It was her third baby and didn’t have the manners to await my arrival. By the time I got there it was to find I’d risked life and limb for nothing. The baby was wrapped in a shawl in his mother’s arms looking, if I may so, extremely smug.’