Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Coronation Summer

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Pemberton

  For my daughter, Polly.

  A gypsy at heart, but a world-travelling

  gypsy, who always returns to the green and

  grassy corner of south-east London

  which is home

  Chapter One

  ‘Blimey,’ Carrie Collins, née Jennings, said graphically to her best friend Kate Voigt as they escaped from the exuberant street party, paper Union Jacks on sticks still in their hands, ‘have you ever known a day like it?’

  ‘Never!’ With her eyes shining, her face radiant, Kate led the way into her sun-filled kitchen, making straight for the stove and the kettle that sat on the top of it. ‘The war is over, Carrie! Over!’

  As Carrie plumped her Junoesque figure exhaustedly into the rocking-chair that sat on top of a gaily coloured rag rug, Kate carried the kettle over to the sink. ‘Or it’s nearly over,’ she amended, turning on the tap, ‘because the war in the Far East can’t go on for much longer, surely?’

  Outside, in the Square, the VE party was going at full throttle with ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ being sung with gusto by all their friends and neighbours. Carrie beat time with her Union Jack, saying with unabashed frankness, ‘Bugger the Far East, Kate. All that matters to me is that no-one we know or love is still fighting. My Danny and your Leon are already home, thank God. And what’s more, they’re staying home!’ The muffled strains of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ merged into ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and she put her Union Jack down on the nearby kitchen table, the sunlight glinting on her wedding ring as she did so.

  Kate sat the kettle on the gas hob and then, leaning her slender weight against the stone sink, said musingly, ‘But what are they going to do for jobs, now they’re home? I know your Danny’s been working at the biscuit factory, but I don’t suppose he wants to stay there for ever. And I’m not sure Leon will be able to go back to working on the river. Every demobbed merchant seaman in London will be looking for work as a Thames lighterman.’

  Carrie didn’t know what the chances were of Leon being able to return to his pre-war job, but she did know what she felt about Danny’s future work prospects. ‘I don’t care what Danny does as long as we can be together,’ she said fiercely, the radiant vivacity in her sea-green eyes replaced by passionate intensity. ‘I don’t want us to live like we did before the war, when he was a professional soldier and always away at Catterick or somewhere even further north, and me and Rose were at home with my mum and dad and gran. This time, whatever he does and wherever he goes, me and Rose go too.’

  Kate’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘But you won’t be going anywhere, will you, Carrie? Even if Danny gets a better job, it will be a local job, won’t it?’ The thought of Carrie moving away from the Square they’d both been born and brought up in, horrified her. What would she do without being able to rely on her daily chats and giggles with Carrie? Ever since she could remember, Carrie’s noisy, boisterous, laughter-filled home at the bottom end of Magnolia Square had been a second home to her.

  Her own home had always been happy, but it had been quiet. Her widowed, German-born father was intellectual by inclination and introspective by nature, and in contrast to her own sedate home life, Carrie’s part-Jewish, market-trader family had been a revelation to her. Leah, Carrie’s gran, cooked like a dream and thrived on histrionics, indulging in them with relish. Bonzo, her dog, seemed to think barking and howling was a way of justifying his existence. Carrie’s big-hearted goy father, Albert, was so used to hollering out his wares down Lewisham Market that he no longer seemed to know what a normal speaking voice was. ‘Speak up a little louder, why don’t yer,’ Carrie’s mother, Miriam, was always saying to him in loving sarcasm after he had bellowed some comment to her, ‘they can’t ’ear yer in Purfleet!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carrie said starkly. ‘Danny’ll just have to take what he can get, and it might mean moving north of the river.’

  Despite her alarm at the thought of Carrie moving out of the Square, a smile twitched the corners of Kate’s generously shaped mouth. Like all south-east Londoners, Carrie spoke of the Thames as if it was a divide as great as the English Channel.

  Kate’s waist-length, wheat-gold braid of hair had fallen over her shoulder and she flicked it back, saying, ‘I can imagine a lot of things, but I can’t imagine living anywhere but in Magnolia Square. Where else in London is so near to both the river and high, open heathland?’

  Carrie, who much preferred the hustle and bustle of Lewisham’s High Street and market, to Blackheath’s nearby, gorse-covered Heath, said a little indifferently, ‘Nowhere, I s’pose. Are you going to brew that tea today, Kate, or wait until next week?’

  With a grin, Kate returned her attention to the kettle, lifting it off the hob and scalding out the waiting teapot. She was wearing a pre-war, ice-blue cotton dress which she had frugally renovated, but the original cap sleeves and full gathered skirt made her look more like a young girl fresh from the schoolroom than a woman in her mid-twenties: a woman who, though still unmarried, was mother to three young children.

  Amusement gleamed in Carrie’s eyes. As a child, she’d always been the careless, harum-scarum one, the one most likely to find herself in trouble. Yet it had been quiet, well-brought-up, well-spoken Kate who had found herself literally ‘in trouble’ within a couple of years of leaving school.

  As Kate put three caddy spoonfuls of tea into the warmed teapot, Carrie’s eyes flicked to the photograph propped high on the kitchen dresser against a little-used cream-jug. Toby Harvey had been handsome – and brave. Only twenty-three, he had died engaging his Spitfire in combat with a Messerschmitt above the bloody beaches of Dunkirk. The heroic circumstances of his death had protected Kate from too much censure when Matthew had been born eight months later, and there was certainly no censure when, the Blitz at its height, she had given a home to bombed-out, orphaned, lovable little Daisy. Carrie’s wry amusement deepened. No, it hadn’t been Matthew’s illegitimacy or her unofficial fostering of Daisy that had set the cat among Magnolia Square’s pigeons. It had been Kate’s subsequent love affair with Leon Emmerson that had sent shockwaves vibrating far and wide.

  ‘Do you want a ginger biscuit with your cup of tea, or have you stuffed yourself to sickness point on VE party jellies and cakes?’ Kate asked, breaking in on Carrie’s thoughts.

  ‘I only had one helping of jelly,’ Carrie said defensively, ‘and I never got near the cakes. Your kids and Rose and our Billy and Beryl saw to that!’

  Billy and Beryl Lomax were her niece and nephew and, because her happy-go-lucky, pleasure-loving older sister hardly ever bothered to reprimand them, or keep an eye on them, they were a constant source of despair to Carrie. She said now, helping herself to a biscuit as Kate set a tin in the middle of the scrubbed wooden table, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Billy’s latest acquisition to his personal ammunition dump, have you? He only dragged it home this morning. God knows where he found
it. It’s at least four feet long and has fins on it. One of these days he’s going to pilfer something that’s live and the whole bloomin’ Square will go up in the biggest bang since the Germans bombed the oil refineries down at Woolwich.’

  Laughter bubbled up in Kate’s throat. She had a soft spot for the Square’s acknowledged tearaway, and whenever he embarked on one of his escapades he often did so provisioned with her home-made scones and buns.

  ‘It’s all right you laughing,’ Carrie said darkly, dunking a ginger biscuit into her steaming cup of tea. ‘You don’t live next door to him. You’d think, now that he’s thirteen, he’d be starting to show a bit more sense, but instead he’s fast on the road to becoming an out and out hooligan, and it’s all Mavis’s fault. As a mum, that sister of mine’d make a perishin’ good bus driver . . .’

  ‘Hallooo! Anyone ’ome?’ a familiar voice carolled out in carrying tones from the front of the house and the open doorway.

  Carrie raised her eyes to heaven. She loved her mother dearly, but the tart repartee they so happily indulged in was based on the mutual pretence that they drove each other to distraction.

  Without bothering to wait for an answer, Miriam Jennings barrelled through into the kitchen. ‘What the bleedin’ ’ell are you two doin’ hidin’ away in ’ere when the biggest party of the century’s takin’ place in the Square?’ she demanded cheerily, her hair still in metal curlers even though the party was at its height, a gaily patterned wraparound pinafore tied securely around her ample figure. ‘Our Mavis is just about to let rip singin’ a bit o’ Boogie-Woogie an’ she wants all the audience she can get.’ She eyed the teapot with enthusiasm. ‘And is that tea fresh, because if it is I’ll ’ave a cuppa.’

  ‘Yes, it is, and no, I’m not coming out to watch Mavis make an exhibition of herself,’ Carrie said crossly as her mother pulled out a kitchen chair and plonked herself down on it.

  As Kate obligingly took another cup and saucer down from the dresser, Miriam looked around her. Satisfying herself that no-one else was in the kitchen, she said a trifle exasperatedly, ‘I thought I might have found Christina ’ere. Gawd knows where she’s ’ared off to. There’s been no sight or sign of ’er for the past hour.’

  ‘Christina’s a grown woman, Mum.’ Carrie’s hand hovered over the biscuit tin as she wondered whether, with her ever-expanding hips, she should treat herself to another biscuit. ‘And she’s never liked crowded get-togethers,’ she continued, deciding that one more couldn’t possibly make much difference. ‘She’s probably gone off for a walk and taken Bonzo with her.’

  ‘She ain’t taken Bonzo ’cos yer dad’s just ’ad to throw a bucket o’ water over ’im to stop him doing rudies to Charlie Robson’s Alsatian bitch.’

  Kate made a choking noise. Carrie said disbelievingly, ‘’Ow the hell could Bonzo try to copulate with Queenie? He’s only a whippet, for God’s sake!’

  ‘’E might be only a whippet, but ’e’s a game little bugger.’ Miriam heaved her bosoms up over the edge of the table so that she could reach the biscuit tin more easily. ‘An’ ’owever much Christina ’ates knees-ups, you’d think she’d be the ’eart and soul of this one, wouldn’t yer? She is both German and Jewish after all. If she doesn’t want to celebrate the Nazis being thrashed into surrenderin’, wot will she ever want to bloomin’ celebrate?’

  Neither Kate or Carrie attempted to answer her. Though they were each other’s best friend, Christina was their closest other friend and, despite being their close friend, she was an enigma neither of them truly understood.

  Miriam, aware that she had drawn a blank where Christina was concerned, blew on her tea to cool it, saying grudgingly, ‘It’s nice to ’ave five minutes’ peace and quiet after all the ruckus that’s goin’ on outside. I told the Vicar the church bells nearly deafened me when ’e rang ’em when peace was declared and that ’e’d no need to ring ’em again, but ’e said as ’ow as St Mark’s stood in the middle o’ the Square, it was only right St Mark’s bells should ring when the Square was ’avin’ its VE party.’

  One of Carrie’s two tortoiseshell combs had come adrift and she pushed an unruly mass of near-black hair away from her face, re-anchoring it. ‘Your eldest daughter will be doing her Billie Holiday impression by now,’ she said meaningfully as she did so, ‘and you did say she wanted all the audience she could get.’

  ‘Mebbe she does, but I’m comfy now.’ Miriam folded her beefy arms and rested them on the table. ‘There’s beer and shandy and lemonade runnin’ like rivers outside, but there ain’t no decent tea, not since the Vicar’s lady-friend accidentally dropped a washing-up cloth into the urn.’

  Carrie giggled. Her mother always knew just who had done what, when.

  ‘And Nellie Miller from number fifteen isn’t as ’appy as she could be,’ Miriam continued, getting into her stride. ‘She says it’s all right every bugger that’s been fighting in Europe and the Middle East coming ’ome, but her nephew ’Arold is a prisoner of the Japs, and she doesn’t know when the ’ell ’e’ll be on his way ’ome.’ She crunched into a ginger biscuit. ‘The Red Cross did tell ’er just after ’e was first captured that ’e was ’elping to build a railway. It always seemed rum to me.’ She flicked ginger biscuit crumbs from her chest, adding in explanation, ‘’Arold was a milkman before he was conscripted, an’ apart from going on an annual train ride to Margate, ’e knows nothin’ about railways, and certainly wouldn’t know ’ow to go about building one!’

  Kate felt a pang of guilt. She’d been so ecstatic about Leon’s release as a POW, and his return home, that she’d forgotten Nellie Miller wouldn’t be similarly celebrating. ‘Let’s go and have a word with her,’ she said to Carrie. ‘It can’t be very nice for her, everyone celebrating, when Harold’s still a POW.’

  Carrie, well aware that, if they didn’t return to the street party, they’d have her mother with them for the duration, rose to her feet. ‘You have a word with her. I need to make sure Danny’s still keeping an eye on Rose. He seems to think that now she’s started school she doesn’t need watching so much, but given half a chance she’ll be down by the river with Billy and getting into goodness knows what kinds of trouble.’

  ‘Rose never gets into trouble,’ Miriam said, staunchly defending her favourite grandchild. She heaved herself reluctantly to her feet. ‘The trouble with you, Carrie, is that yer like to keep tabs on everyone a little too much. It wouldn’t ’ave done Danny any ’arm to ’ave stayed in the Army an—’

  ‘Can you pass me that basket, Miriam, please,’ Kate interrupted hurriedly. ‘I expect all the party sandwiches are gone by now and I might as well begin gathering up all the plates I loaned.’

  With a full-scale shenanigans between Carrie and her mother avoided, Kate hurried them out of the house and into the flag-and-balloon-bedecked Square. Trestle tables graced the front of St Mark’s. The church stood on a grassy island in the centre of the Square and both the island and the narrow road that encompassed it were thick with partying Magnolia Square residents.

  A piano belonging to Carrie’s mother-in-law, Hettie Collins, had been trundled out on to the pavement. Carrie’s sister, Mavis Lomax, was seated on top of it, belting out a rip-roaring version of ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’. Her peroxide-blonde hair piled high, Betty Grable fashion, her silk-clad, provocatively crossed legs showing an indecent amount of stocking-top.

  Nellie Miller, whose enormous bulk would have made two of the ample Miriam, was sitting in the front of Mavis’s appreciative audience, wedged in an armchair that had been specially wheeled out of the vicarage for her. In one hand she held a piece of string which was attached to a buoyantly floating red balloon. In the other was a slab of home-made mint and currant pasty. Ignoring the discomfort to her elephantine legs, she was tapping a foot up and down in time to Hettie’s exuberant piano playing.

  With not much more than crumbs and an occasional cake left on the crêpe-paper-covered trestle tables, children were no longer seated at the
m but running and shrieking everywhere. There was no sign of Rose, however, or Danny.

  ‘If he’s sloped off for a quiet game of billiards and taken Rose with him I’ll blooming kill him!’ Carrie said, fending off a big black Labrador that had bounded up to greet them.

  The Labrador was Kate’s and she said admonishingly as he threatened to knock both her and Carrie off their feet, ‘Down, Hector! Down!’

  Hector obediently sat and as he did so Kate caught sight of Leon. He was talking to Daniel Collins, Carrie’s father-in-law. Their little son, Luke, was laughingly straddling his broad shoulders and clutching on to his tight, crinkly hair. Matthew was clinging to one of his hands and chattering away to him ten to the dozen, while Daisy was holding tightly on to his other hand. Kate felt her heart turn over in her chest. God, but she loved him! For nearly three years he had been a prisoner of the Germans, transported to a prison camp deep in captured Russian territory after his ship had been torpedoed and sunk in Arctic waters. Unlike Nellie where Harold was concerned, she had never had any communication from either the War Office or the Red Cross, informing her that he was alive and a POW. All she had had was deep, sure, unswerving inner certainty. And what if she had been wrong? The very thought made her dizzy with horror. How would she have been able to face life if Leon had not returned to her? How would she have been able to wake and face each new day without Leon’s cheery good humour; his compassion and tolerance; his tender, passionate love-making?

  As if sensing the intensity of her thoughts, Leon turned his head slightly, looking directly towards her, his gold-flecked, amber-brown eyes meeting hers, his vivid, loving smile splitting his chocolate-dark face. She knew that people would be eyeing them with covert, prurient curiosity, because people always did. ‘Nice’ girls didn’t consort with black sailors, and they certainly didn’t have babies with them. Radiantly she smiled back at him, her eyes ablaze with love. Soon the street party would be over; soon the children would be bathed and in bed; soon they would be alone together and in each other’s arms, loving each other as they had burned to do all through the long, lonely years of their separation.