The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Then who delivered the baby?’ Harriet demanded hoarsely, so fearful of the answer that she had to hold on to the doorjamb for support.

  ‘I did,’ Leon was barely able to keep his massive disappointment from showing in his voice. Why had Harriet Godfrey chosen this moment of all moments to call on Kate? Why couldn’t he and Kate and Matthew have been left alone for just a little longer? There was so much he wanted to say to her and it would have been so easy to say it now.

  He wanted to tell her that he loved her. He wanted to tell her that even if he’d been Matthew’s father it would be impossible for him to feel any closer a bond to Matthew. He had delivered, bathed and tended him and the wonderment and tenderness that had filled his heart as he had done so was one that had rocked him to the very centre of his being. He wanted to cherish and protect Matthew not only now, but through all the years of his childhood. And he wanted to cherish and protect Kate as long as he had breath in his body.

  In the doorway of the room Harriet Godfrey braced herself. It was no use being overcome with shock. There was a war on and Kate’s naval lodger had acted with commendable practicality. She took in a deep breath, smoothed the palms of her hands down the rough tweed of her sensible gored skirt and stepped towards the bed decisively.

  ‘I’ll take over now, Mr Emmerson,’ she said, as both Kate and Leon had known she would. ‘I think the best thing for you to do would be to contact Millie Bready, the local midwife, and ask her if she will make a visit as soon as possible. Doctor Roberts doesn’t make as much use of her as other local doctors, preferring to deliver his patients’ babies himself, but in the present circumstances I’m certain he would want us to contact her. She lives at number ninety-four St John’s Park.’

  Leon was well aware that it was sensible advice, but he wished that Harriet had volunteered to run the necessary errand herself, leaving him alone for a little longer with Kate and Matthew.

  ‘And I would very much appreciate it if you could get a message to Ellen Pierce,’ Harriet added as she adjusted Matthew’s shawl, allowing Kate to put him to her breast with more ease. ‘Between Ellen and myself we should be able to look after Kate until she’s on her feet again. And with luck Ellen will be able to find someone to look after her animals for a few days and not have to bring them with her.’

  Leon pulled down the still damp sleeves of his jersey. He had to be aboard ship within a few short hours and Ellen Pierce would very likely have complicated arrangements to make before she could return with him to Magnolia Square. Panic was something alien to his nature but he felt something akin to it as he realized how very little time there was before he would have to say goodbye to Kate.

  Reading his thoughts, sharing his sense of despair at the rapidly diminishing amount of time left to them, Kate lifted her eyes from the downy blond head at her breast, her eyes meeting his.

  ‘There’s no need to wait for Ellen if she has arrangements to make,’ she said, wondering how long it would take him to go first to the midwife’s and then to the far side of Greenwich; wondering when he would have to leave to report to his ship.

  ‘Returning without Ellen wouldn’t be very gallant,’ Harriet said forthrightly, busily putting scissors and cord and lint and bandages back into the wicker shopping-basket. ‘If I bring a bowl of warm water and soap in from the bathroom do you think you can manage to wash with it, Katherine? Or would you prefer to wait for Millie?’

  ‘I think I can manage to wash myself,’ Kate said, her voice thick with defeat, knowing that there was now not even the faintest chance of recapturing the joyous intimacy she and Leon had shared such a short while earlier.

  ‘Then I’ll go and fill a bowl with warm water.’ She turned her attention to Leon, saying briskly, ‘There’s no time to waste, Mr Emmerson. Millie Bready may very well be attending another confinement and may take some tracking down. And just in case Doctor Roberts doesn’t come straight here after leaving Point Hill Road, but returns to his surgery, a message should be left for him at the surgery informing him that Katherine’s baby has been born.’

  Well aware that if he delayed for even a second longer Harriet Godfrey would think of yet another task for him to accomplish en route to Greenwich, Leon gave one last look towards Kate and left the room, frustration raging within him.

  Millie Bready was a large, cheery, heavy-bosomed lady with a face as round as a currant-bun. ‘Dear Lord,’ she said, when Leon explained the situation to her as briefly as possible, ‘so you delivered the baby, did you?’ She eyed his naval jersey, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘It’s come to something when sailors are delivering babies as well as begetting them! I hope you didn’t tie the umbilical cord in a reef knot, young man!’

  Mrs Roberts was too concerned about her husband’s welfare to waste her breath being offensive. ‘I’ll pass the message on,’ she said brusquely, ‘when I see him.’

  She shut the door in his face and a little woman with curlers in her hair, scouring the surgery steps, said, ‘She’s got a lot on ’er mind. There’s been a right to-do dahn Point Hill Road. A woman an’ a kiddie trapped in a collapsed building. The doctor ’ad ’imself lowered dahn to ’em ’ours ago an’ ’e’s still with ’em. I ’ope e’s all right. ’E’s a nice man but ’e’s a lot to put up with, if you catch my meanin’.’

  ‘The baby’s here? Already?’ Ellen Pierce ushered him into her pin-neat sitting-room. ‘Of course I’ll come, but I’ll have to bring Macbeth and Hotspur and Coriolanus with me. My neighbour will put food out for the cats but the dogs can’t possibly look after themselves. Do you think Harriet will mind?

  Leon was certain that Harriet Godfrey would mind but he had no intention of saying so. He wanted to get back to Magnolia Square as speedily as possible, not spend precious time finding temporary dog-sitters for Ellen Pierce’s little band of strays.

  ‘Why the Shakespearean names?’ he asked as he followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Because I thought they deserved proper names,’ Ellen said as three dogs of assorted sizes leapt up from the comfy, blanket-lined baskets they had been snoozing in, joyfully expectant of a walk, ‘not silly names such as Rover and Patch and Fido.’

  A black Scottie threw itself yappingly at Leon’s legs and as he bent down and tickled it under its chin he said, ‘I presume this is Macbeth?’

  ‘That’s very perceptive of you, Mr Emmerson,’ Ellen said, wondering why it was she always felt so comfortable in Leon Emmerson’s company. ‘And though Hotspur is a mongrel he’s a mongrel with a lot of Welsh terrier in him. And Coriolanus is . . . well . . . shall we say a little combative?’

  Coriolanus didn’t look very combative to Leon. Large and ungainly and betraying no sign of even a particle of pedigree, he lolloped over and, with one ear erect and the other flopping over, he nuzzled lovingly against Ellen Pierce’s lisle-stockinged legs.

  ‘They were all abandoned and terrified when I took them in,’ Ellen said, threading stout lengths of garden twine through their collars to serve as leads. ‘I found Macbeth running loose during the dreadful night of the raid on the City. Hotspur was trapped in a bombed house for two days before firemen found him with his dead owners. It was my local Air Raid Warden who brought Coriolanus to me. The poor animal had been a guard-dog in a river-front factory and been left there all alone during weeks and weeks of bombing raids. How he wasn’t blasted or burnt to death I’ll never know.’

  As they walked through Greenwich and then up the hill that ran past Harvey’s and led to the Heath, Ellen continued to talk about her dogs. Leon didn’t try to turn the conversation to other subjects. He knew that behind her rather forbidding exterior was a shy woman who, until Kate had entered her life and introduced her to Harriet Godfrey, had enjoyed few close friendships. The dogs she had taken into her home had obviously filled an emotional void in her life and provided her with the subject matter to chat with ease to a near stranger.

  Though he made encouraging remarks every now and then, his thoughts were far fr
om the dogs padding at his heels. Kate. Even from the very first she had been far more than a landlady. He remembered how, soaked with rain and heavily pregnant, she had defiantly entered The Swan and, in front of neighbours already hostile to her, had offered him a room.

  Even if she hadn’t already been ostracized by the majority of the other inhabitants of Magnolia Square, she would have been ostracized after that action. As Charlie had said to him, not unkindly, ‘Darkies don’t usually room in Black’eath. People ’spect ’em to room in Bermondsey or Deptford. ’Aving a darky in Magnolia Square takes a bit o’ gettin’ used to.’

  Though Charlie had quickly got used to it and was amiably friendly, the majority of his neighbours still showed no signs of getting used to it and Leon could well imagine their reaction if he and Kate were to marry.

  He was holding Coriolanus on his makeshift lead with one hand and he dug his free hand deep into his trouser pocket. If that day ever dawned he wouldn’t give a damn what anyone thought.

  ‘And does the baby have a name?’ Ellen asked him as they crossed the Heath beneath the shadow of the elephant-like silver barrage balloons. ‘Is she going to name him after her father?’

  When they arrived back at the house Harriet Godfrey took one look at the dogs crowding around their heels and winced.

  ‘Really, Ellen! Couldn’t you have found someone to look after them for a few days? It’s difficult enough having Hector in the house. No-one told me he was in the bathroom and he nearly knocked me off my feet when I went in there to fill a bowl with warm water.’

  ‘There may not be room for them here, with Hector and a new baby, but there’s plenty of room in your house and rear garden,’ Ellen said, refusing to allow her friend to intimidate her. ‘They’ll stay in the kitchen, of course, as they do when they are at home.’

  Harriet Godfrey blanched. Leon grinned. He had enormous respect for Kate’s elderly friend but she could be annoyingly high-handed and it made a refreshing change to see someone getting the better of her.

  ‘Then take them round there now,’ Harriet said crossly. ‘And take them in the back way. I don’t want paw-prints all over my hall carpet. It was my mother’s and it’s Turkish.’

  Leon had begun to walk towards the bottom of the stairs and she turned towards him, saying, ‘The midwife is with Katherine at the moment, Mr Emmerson. Could you bring me some coal in, or do you have to leave now for your ship?’

  ‘I’ll bring some coal in,’ Leon said tightly, knowing that she wasn’t being intentionally cutting; knowing that it had never occurred to her that anything other than a formal landlady/lodger relationship existed between himself and Kate and that it certainly hadn’t occurred to her that they might want time alone together before he left for his ship.

  He walked tensely past the bottom of the stairs and his packed kit-bag and through the kitchen into the back garden, yanking the door of the coal bunker open with angry frustration. How on earth was he going to get any private time with Kate now? Harriet and Ellen certainly wouldn’t be leaving the house before he had to report to his ship and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Millie Bready wouldn’t be leaving it either.

  He shovelled a precious amount of Kate’s small stock of coal into a bucket. For all he knew, Kate was as oblivious as Harriet Godfrey of his need to talk with her in private. He tipped a second shovelful of coal into the bucket. If she was, then speaking to her would very likely jeopardize their entire relationship, for once she knew his feelings for her were not platonic, but deeply sexual, she could hardly invite him to return as a lodger when he next had leave.

  He dropped the shovel to the ground and picked up the bucket. His tending her while she had been giving birth had certainly forged a bond between them, but was it, on her part, merely a bond of gratitude? If Harriet Godfrey hadn’t arrived when she had, he would have known. A pulse began to beat at the comer of his jawline. Harriet had not only arrived, she showed no intention of leaving. And he had to leave first thing in the morning, probably before Kate even awoke.

  ‘She’s sleeping,’ Ellen said to him when he announced his attention of saying his goodbyes. ‘Harriet’s pacing the bedroom floor with Matthew in her arms trying to encourage him to sleep as well. I’ll tell them both you said goodbye.’

  Leon stared past her and up the stairs. If he barged up there, waking Kate in order to say goodbye to her, they would only have an outraged Harriet as an audience. The thought chilled him. It was better to leave without any goodbyes, secure in the knowledge that she wanted him to return; that she had promised to keep his room ready for him.

  He swung his kit-bag on his shoulder. All his life he had looked forward to the moment when leave came to an end and real life, life at sea, began. But that had been when his leaves had been spent in cheerless lodgings; before Kate; before he had been given a taste of what a home could be like.

  ‘Bye Ellen,’ he said, surprising and pleasing her by giving her an affectionate kiss on the cheek. ‘Take care.’

  ‘I will,’ Ellen said, her plain face flushing rosily. ‘Goodbye, God bless.’

  He turned and walked out of the house, still limping slightly. One day, God willing, he would be back. One day he might be able to truly call Magnolia Square his home.

  ‘He left just before eight o’clock,’ Ellen said, settling a late breakfast tray down on the bed. ‘He asked me to pass on his goodbyes to yourself and Harriet. There’s been a message from Doctor Roberts. He’s calling round sometime this morning and . . .’

  Kate was no longer listening to her. He’d gone. Although she had told him she would keep his room ready for him, she had no way of knowing if he would ever return; no way of knowing if he would even write to her. Beneath the bedcovers her fingers curled tightly into her palms. She was going to miss him. She was going to miss him so much she didn’t know how she was going to bear it.

  ‘. . . poor Doctor Roberts had a truly terrible time yesterday,’ Ellen said, busily collecting talcum powder and Vaseline and soap and towels ready for Matthew’s morning bath. ‘Apparently it was late evening before the rescue services managed to free the little girl and Doctor Roberts stayed with her, comforting her, right until the moment Albert Jennings lifted her clear of the wreckage.’

  ‘What about her mother?’ Kate asked, forcing her thoughts away from Leon until she had the privacy to indulge them, certain that when she did so she would give way to tears.

  Ellen hesitated. She hadn’t realized that Kate knew so much about the situation in Point Hill Road and hadn’t intended telling her of the fate of the little girl’s mother. Chiding herself for her carelessness, she said regretfully, ‘I’m afraid she died, Kate.’

  ‘So Albert and Miriam ’ave taken the kiddie in,’ Charlie said to her, his bulk perched incongruously on her dressing-table stool. ‘With ’er mum dead the poor little sod didn’t ’ave any family, ’er dad died fighting the Eyeties and her gran and grandad lived next door to New Cross tram depot and copped it when the depot received a direct ’it last Christmas.’

  ‘She does nowt but cry,’ her second visitor said, enlarging on the subject, ‘and she goes to school in Lewisham. It’s gran that’s goin’ to ’ave to take ’er to school an’ she says when Beryl starts school at Easter she’ll ’ave to go to Lewisham as well ’cos she ’ain’t trooping to two flippin’ schools every day.’

  Having relieved himself of the duty of a visitor by imparting up-to-the-minute gossip, Billy turned his attention to the present he had brought for the baby. ‘It’s liquorice-water,’ he said, referring to the grubby bottle he had placed on Kate’s dressing-table. ‘Me an’ Beryl made it ourselves. There’s two sticks of liquorice in it an’ it ’ain’t ’alf strong.’ He eyed the bottle, obviously reluctant to part with it. ‘Do yer think it might be a bit too strong for the baby?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Me an’ Beryl could allus make another one for when ’e’s older.’

  Kate hid a smile with difficulty, ‘Matthew is a little young for
liquorice-water,’ she said, enjoying Billy’s expression of vast relief. ‘Would you mind very much taking this one back and making another one for him when he’s a little older?’

  ‘Nah,’ Billy said, trying to sound regretful and failing utterly. ‘Liquorice-water doesn’t save so me an’ Beryl’ll just ’ave to drink this ourselves. It don’t ’alf make your teeth go black,’ he added confidingly, ‘though that doesn’t matter for babies, does it, ’cos they don’t ’ave any!’

  ‘Miss Helliwell gave me a card to give to you,’ Harriet said a day or two later, returning from a shopping trip that had entailed a thirty-minute queue for a loaf of fresh bread and an hour long queue for a dubious piece of brisket. She put her basket down on Kate’s kitchen table. ‘I think she’d like to come and see the baby but is a bit unsure as to whether she would be welcome.’

  Kate had long since forgiven Miss Helliwell for being one of the bystanders when her father had been escorted away to his internment camp. ‘I’d like to see her,’ she said, continuing with her task of lifting nappies from the pail in which they had been put to soak and dropping them into a wash-tub of steaming soapy water. ‘Did you know that she and Leon are friends? They have been ever since he rescued Faust from the jaws of a bull terrier.’

  Harriet Godfrey had not known. In twin-set, tweed suit, brogues and pearls she negotiated a way between the wash-tub and the mangle in order to reach the rocking-chair. ‘There are far too many dogs in Magnolia Square,’ she said grimly, sitting down with relief. ‘And their numbers haven’t been helped by Ellen’s strays adding to them. Coriolanus leapt the garden fence and was on the loose for the whole of yesterday afternoon. It was Charlie who brought him back.’

  Kate wiped her hands dry on a towel and opened Miss Helliwell’s card. It was home-made and gaudily decorated with moons and stars and astrological symbols.

  ‘I also managed to get some fruit at the Jennings’ market stall,’ Harriet continued, ‘Caroline was there, filling in time before her bus shift started. I told her you had had the baby.’