The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  Kate stood very still, her stomach muscles tightening. ‘What did Carrie say?’ she asked at last as Harriet proffered no further information.

  Harriet, well aware of the estrangement between Kate and Carrie and having a good idea as to its cause, said, ‘She didn’t say very much because Christina Frank was with her. She did ask me to give you her best wishes though.’

  Kate’s face whitened. Best wishes. Even near strangers offered best wishes when a baby was born. She remembered her own euphoria when Rose had been born; how she had been round at Carrie’s house the instant she heard the news; how she and Carrie had kissed and hugged and shared the joy of Rose’s birth.

  Harriet saw the stricken look on her face and said with unaccustomed gentleness, ‘I think Caroline is as unhappy about your broken friendship as you are, Katherine. Perhaps when you first take Matthew out in his pram it would be a good idea to walk down to the Jennings’. Everyone likes to see a newborn baby and babies make it very easy for people who have grown apart to become close again.’

  At the beginning of the following week, when Ellen had returned to her home in Greenwich and Harriet had returned to her full-time ambulance-driving duties, Kate laid a warmly dressed Matthew in his pram. She would call on Miss Helliwell and her sister and she would call at Carrie’s.

  It was a typically cold, blowy March day and there was a hint of rain in the air as, hampered by Hector, she manoeuvred the pram inexpertly down the short flight of stone steps to the front pathway.

  She was concentrating so hard on her task that she was oblivious of the chauffeur-driven Bentley parked at the far side of the road, opposite her gate.

  With the cumbersome pram safely on the level, she leaned forward and pulled its hood up. Heavy masculine footsteps crossed the road towards her and Hector began to bark. She raised her head, a smile on her face, expecting to see Charlie or perhaps even a mellowed Albert Jennings or Daniel Collins or Mr Nibbs.

  ‘I’d like to see my great-grandchild,’ Joss Harvey said unequivocally, the astrakhan collar of his overcoat pulled high against the inclement weather.

  She gripped the pram handle tightly, too taken by surprise to make any immediate reply. Why on earth hadn’t she realized Joss Harvey would seek her out when his great-grandchild was born? Why hadn’t she been expecting this confrontation and been prepared for it?

  ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ Joss asked, ignoring Hector and walking closer to the pram.

  ‘It’s a boy.’ Reluctantly she put on the pram’s brake and leaned forward, lowering the hood in order that he could see his great-grandchild more clearly. ‘I’ve named him Matthew. Matthew Tobias Leon Carl.’

  Joss Harvey made a snorting sound, presumably at the un-Englishness of his great-grandson’s last two names and the non-inclusion of his own name.

  He stood for a long moment staring down at the shawl-wrapped, blanketed baby. ‘Is he healthy?’ he asked gruffly.

  She nodded, tensing herself in case he again brought up the subject of adoption.

  He didn’t do so. He bent over the pram and with a leather-gloved forefinger pulled the shawl clear of Matthew’s face so that he could see him even more clearly. ‘You can’t keep him in London,’ he said at last, still feasting his eyes on him. ‘It isn’t safe. February may have been a light month for raids but the reprieve won’t last much longer. He needs moving with a nanny to Somerset or Dorset. I can make all the necessary arrangements . . .’

  ‘No!’ It took all Kate’s willpower not to snatch Matthew from the pram and hug him to her breast. ‘You’re only making that suggestion because you want Matthew for yourself! You want him as a replacement for Toby!’

  He straightened up, turning towards her, saying harshly, ‘I’m making the suggestion because I don’t want my great-grandson blasted to kingdom-come in a Jerry bombing raid! I lost my son to the bastards in 1918. I’ve lost my grandson to them and I’ll be damned to hell before I lose my great-grandson to them!’

  The passion and truth in his voice almost undid her. What if in the next air raid Magnolia Square was obliterated just as street after street in the East End and Deptford had been obliterated? What if Matthew died and she survived? How would she be able to live with herself, knowing that her selfishness had kept him in London when he could have been safe in Somerset or Dorset?

  ‘No,’ she said again, her voice strangled in her throat. ‘Other women are keeping their babies with them in London . . .’

  ‘Not if they’ve any choice they’re not!’ Joss said as Hector growled menacingly at him. ‘It’s about time you started thinking of what Toby would have wanted for his son, and what he would have wanted would be for his son to be safe!’

  She released the handbrake on the pram. She couldn’t stay and talk to him a second longer. He was so forceful and aggressive that if she did anything might happen.

  ‘I have an appointment,’ she lied stiffly. ‘Goodbye.’

  Joss snorted derisively. ‘I don’t believe you, young woman. You’re frightened of me because I’m telling you home truths you don’t want to hear. For as long as the Blitz on London lasts I can give Matthew a safe home. Think about it. And think about what the consequences may be if you come to the wrong decision.’

  She pushed the pram past him, down the path and out through the open gateway, consumed by fear and doubt. Joss Harvey was Matthew’s great-grandfather. He was entitled to visit Matthew and take an interest in his welfare. And remembering how devoted he had been to Toby, his interest was sincere, of that she was sure.

  Behind her, Hector was making rushing little darts towards Joss, barking noisily. Kate didn’t turn her head. Hector might threaten but he wouldn’t bite and eventually Joss Harvey would tire of staring fumingly after her and would return to his chauffeur-driven car.

  Knowing that she had a very big decision to make, she walked in a turmoil of emotion towards Miss Helliwell’s. She was almost there before Hector finally caught up with her. Dimly, behind her, she heard the sound of the Bentley heading out of the Square and down Magnolia Terrace.

  ‘It took you a long time to shoo him away,’ she said chidingly as Hector bounded around the pram, eager to be praised.

  ‘What was the matter? Did you know he was family?’

  Family. Incongruous as it seemed, where her son was concerned, Joss Harvey was family. And he was obviously going to ensure that Matthew grew up knowing it.

  ‘Oh, my dear, isn’t he just the most wonderful thing!’ Esther Helliwell cooed, sitting in her wheelchair in a room almost completely taken up by a Morrison shelter, holding Matthew in her arms with utmost care.

  ‘He’s a treasure, an absolute treasure,’ her sister said, her eyes suspiciously bright. ‘I must work out his astrological chart straight away. I’m sure it will be auspicious. I can feel in my bones that he’s a little chap destined for great things. Perhaps he will be a musician or a poet or even an explorer!’

  Later, as Kate was leaving the house, Emily said awkwardly, ‘We’ve missed you calling in, dear. You will call again, won’t you? Your lodger kept us in touch with how you were keeping. Such a nice young man. He’ll come home safe to you. I’ve read it in the stars and the stars never lie.’

  Once out in the Square again, Kate hugged Miss Helliwell’s words to her. Miss Helliwell had been right about so many things in the past. She had forecast Carrie and Danny’s marriage and she had quite obviously foreseen Toby’s death. That was why, when she had read her palm all those years ago, she had said that great heartache lay in store for her.

  She began to push the pram towards Carrie’s. Miss Helliwell had also said that after the heartache would come great happiness. Was Leon going to be the cause of that great happiness? With his companionship and sunny, easy-going nature he had already brought more happiness into her life than she had believed possible a few short months ago. Her hands tightened on the pram handle. She missed him terribly and the empty sensation wasn’t eased, as yet, by letters. But he would write
to her. She knew he would. And when he next had leave in England he would return to Magnolia Square.

  ‘You’re a bloody whore!’ a tortured masculine voice shouted, making her jump nearly out of her skin. ‘Bloody Commandoes! They all think they’re bloody Errol Flynn!’

  The Lomaxes’ battered front door had burst open and Ted Lomax, in army uniform and with his kit-bag over his shoulder, was striding down the path at a near run, his face contorted by rage and grief.

  Kate came to an abrupt halt. If she’d continued walking she would have run into him.

  From the open doorway came the sound of near-hysterical sobbing and then Billy shot out of the house, his face pinched and white. ‘Dad! Dad! Come back!’ he cried, tearing down the path and into the street. ‘Come back, Dad! Please come back!’

  Ted Lomax showed not the slightest sign of coming back. As startled neighbours came out on to their doorsteps, Ted stormed into Magnolia Hill, Billy desperately running in his wake.

  Kate’s eyes flew back to the doorway. There was no sign of Mavis, though her sobs were so loud they could probably have been heard in Lewisham High Street. Beryl was there, though. With her knickers hanging below the hem of her dress, her eyes frightened and bewildered, she was a pathetic little figure and Kate instinctively turned the pram in at the gate and put the brake on.

  ‘I haven’t seen him for nearly a year and he comes home and says he’s leaving me!’ Mavis sobbed as Kate walked into the house, holding Beryl’s hand. ‘And he hit me! Ted! My lovely, gentle Ted! He hit me!’

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, tears pouring down her face, a sodden handkerchief held tightly in one hand.

  ‘How could he be so stupid?’ she continued between shuddering gasps for breath. ‘I’ve always been friends with Jack. The whole bloody street knows I’ve always been friends with Jack!’

  Deciding that her best course of action was to make a restorative cup of tea, Kate began filling a kettle with water. Carrie had forecast long ago that trouble would come of Mavis’s friendship with Jack Robson. As she put the kettle on the gas hob she wondered who in Magnolia Square had been busybody enough to write to Ted informing him of the time Mavis and Jack spent together whenever Jack was home on leave.

  ‘And there’s never been anything in it,’ Mavis continued, her sobs subsiding, the ring of truth naked in her voice. ‘Jack’s in love with Christina Frank. He’s been in love with her for years.’

  She wiped mascara-smeared tears from her face with the backs of her hands. ‘Why the hell can’t men have brains,’ she demanded passionately. ‘If I’d wanted to have an affair with Jack I’d have had one years ago! I wouldn’t have waited till there was a bloody war on!’

  ‘Ted will be back,’ Kate said comfortingly, hoping to God her prediction would prove correct.

  ‘What’s the matter, bubbelah?’ Leah Singer’s voice enquired anxiously as she stepped into the house. ‘What’s the tummel?’

  As her grandmother walked down the hallway towards the kitchen, Mavis straightened her shoulders and wiped her nose on her handkerchief. ‘Now for the inquisition and the “I told you so’s.” Thank God Carrie’s bus shift doesn’t finish till eight tonight. If she’d been home I’d never have heard the end of it.’

  Miriam came into the house hard on Leah’s heels and Kate didn’t stay. Knowing now that Carrie was not at home or down the market, she didn’t bother knocking at the Jennings’ or walking into Lewisham. Instead, much to Hector’s delight, she pushed the pram up on to the Heath and walked across it and into Greenwich Park.

  Early that evening, just after seven o’ clock, the volume on the radio crackled and faded. Seconds later the air raid sirens moaned into life. It was the first time there had been an air raid since Matthew had been born and it was the first time, for a long time, that she had had to endure one without Leon for company.

  Wishing fervently that Harriet was home, or even that Mr Nibbs would call on her, Kate scooped up Matthew from his cot. ‘We’re just going to have to sit it out together, my darling,’ she said as he opened his eyes, his little fists flailing.

  The Anderson was far more comfortable than it had originally been. Leon had put a camp bed in it for her and an oil heater and a hurricane-lamp. With Hector whining in dread at her heels and with distant anti-aircraft guns already opening up at the enemy, she hurried down the dark path and down the roughly hewn steps into the shelter.

  It was a long, horrendous night. Occasionally she lifted back the heavy black-out curtain over the shelter’s open doorway and each time she did so it was to see a smoke-filled sky criss-crossed with beams of hundreds of searchlights, pin-pointing the attacking planes for the benefit of the anti-aircraft guns. From what she could see and hear it was obvious that this time the German planes were not directing their attack solely on the City and the docks. From the direction of Eltham, even further away from the river than Blackheath, loud explosions sent flames murderously across the night sky.

  Kate rocked Matthew tightly in her arms, knowing that family homes were being bombed. Their occupiers would presumably be in Anderson or Morrison or public shelters but no shelter was immune from a direct hit. A bomb dropped perilously close, far closer than Eltham, and the ground shuddered beneath her feet. For the first time ever she knew real fear. Not fear for herself, but for Matthew. If anything happened to him she would never forgive herself. Never. Never. Never.

  When the all-clear at last sounded and she stumbled out into the pale light of early dawn she did so exhausted. Matthew had cried almost incessantly the entire time they had been in the shelter. Hector had alternately whined and howled. She had been unable to sleep and the night had seemed endless.

  She was sitting in her father’s old-fashioned rocking-chair in the kitchen, breast-feeding Matthew, when Harriet tapped on the front door and walked into the house.

  At the sight of her elderly friend’s obvious weariness Kate’s heart contracted. ‘Were casualties very high, Harriet?’ she asked quietly.

  Very slowly Harriet unstrapped her tin hat and laid it on the kitchen table. ‘Horrendous,’ she said bleakly. ‘Eltham, Bromley, Orpington. I’ve never known so many private homes be hit so far south of the river.’

  Wearily she sat down. ‘A three-year-old girl and a canary were the only survivors in one house that was hit. Arrangements will be made for the child, of course, but the authorities are so overstretched that the local Home Guard officer asked me if I would take her in temporarily.’

  ‘And are you going to?’ Kate asked, deeply disturbed at the thought of the child’s plight.

  Harriet tucked a tendril of dishevelled grey hair back into her bun. ‘How can I? It would mean my giving up my ambulance-driving duties. I don’t want to sound immodest, Kate, but I’m now one of the depot’s most experienced drivers and they can’t afford to lose me.’

  Kate believed her. Harriet’s common sense and implacable calm were exactly the qualities needed when a bombing raid was at its height.

  ‘I did wonder about having a word with Hettie Collins. Despite all her ridiculous prejudices where you and your father are concerned, she’s basically kind-hearted.’ She rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘I would have approached Miriam, but Miriam has already taken one orphaned child into her home and she certainly couldn’t take in another one. I don’t know where everyone who lives in that house sleeps. Presumably Caroline shares a room with Rose and the child they’ve given a home to and . . .’

  ‘I’ll take her in,’ Kate said decisively, moving Matthew from her right breast to her left breast. ‘I’ve plenty of room here and the local billeting officer never makes any use of it.’ There was no need for her to add the reason. Harriet was as aware as she was herself that it was because of her German surname.

  Harriet’s ramrod-straight shoulders sagged with visible relief. ‘Will you, Kate? It will only be temporary, of course, but I’m sure the poor little thing will be better off with you than being passed from pillar to post by the auth
orities.’

  With one mission for the day successfully accomplished she perked up visibly. ‘Gossip reached me that Mr Harvey has been seen in Magnolia Square again,’ she said, unable to keep her voice completely free of curiosity. ‘I presume he came in order to see Matthew?’

  Kate hesitated. She hadn’t intended telling anyone of the true purpose of Joss Harvey’s visit, but Harriet Godfrey’s advice to her had always been sound, if at times unwelcome.

  ‘He came in order to see Matthew and to suggest that I allow him to be evacuated to Devon or Somerset with a nanny.’

  Harriet’s heavy, straight eyebrows rose. ‘With a nanny? Not yourself?’

  Kate shook her head, her long plait of hair swinging gently against the back of the rocking-chair. ‘No. He would never ask me to accompany Matthew. He wants Matthew to himself.’

  ‘It’s only natural that he wants time with him,’ Harriet said reasonably. ‘He’s an old man and he must be aware that he may not have very much time left in which to form a relationship with Matthew.’

  Kate remained silent and Harriet said promptingly, ‘From what you yourself have told me, he was a devoted grandfather to Toby. And Toby was devoted to him, was he not?’

  Kate nodded. It was the mutual devotion that had existed between Toby and his grandfather that was causing her so much mental anguish. If Toby had been alive, she knew beyond any shadow of doubt that he would have wanted his son to spend time with his grandfather. And she knew also that he would not have wanted his son to remain in a city being blitzed by the Luftwaffe.

  Harriet’s eyes were compassionate. ‘I know it must be a hard decision for you to make, Katherine. It can’t be easy facing the prospect of being separated from a two-week-old baby, but the separation may not be for very long. And Matthew would be safe. Or as safe as is humanly possible.’

  Kate bit her lip, tears glittering on her eyelashes as she looked down at her now contentedly sleeping son. In her heart of hearts she knew that Harriet’s advice was sound. It was what Toby would have wanted her to do and it was what common sense told her to do. It was going to be hard, though; it was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.