Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Welcome home, Jack!’ Daniel Collins cried, pushing his bedroom window up and hanging half out of it, his braces dangling. ‘Has Beryl told you Leon Emmerson’s come marching home as well? Smashing news, isn’t it?’

  Other windows were also being opened. Doors were being thrown wide. Despite his consternation as to whether Beryl’s news was genuine or not, Jack couldn’t help being vastly amused by the shouts of welcome being hurled at him from all sides. There had been a time, before the war, when he and his twin brother had been the local bad boys. Then Jerry had died, fighting the Fascists in Spain, and everyone had immediately forgotten their previous opinion of him and had eulogized him instead. Now, it seemed, it was his turn to come in for a bit of the same treatment.

  As Billy noisily led the way past the Voigts’ house, the door was tugged open and Kate burst out of the house, a dark-skinned, curly headed toddler at her heels, Hector charging in front of her.

  ‘Jack! How wonderful!’ she cried, running down to her gate, her eyes shining, her long braid of flaxen hair swinging like a schoolgirl’s.

  For Kate, he paused. There had been a time, long ago, when he had wondered if she might one day become his sister-in-law. Then news had come of Jerry’s death and he had never known if his assumptions about their relationship had been correct or not. He kissed her warmly on the cheek, saying, ‘I’ve heard the news about Leon,’ adding teasingly, ‘I’m glad to know he’s made an honest woman of you at last. Wasn’t before time though, was it?’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t,’ she agreed with full-throated laughter.

  Luke tugged at her skirts. ‘Who that man, Mummy?’ he demanded, not liking the disconcerting familiarity between his mother and the big, dark-haired stranger.

  ‘He’s a friend and neighbour, sweetheart.’ She bent down and scooped him up in her arms so that he could say hello to Jack face to face. ‘And his name is Jack.’

  As if to corroborate her words, there were cries of ‘Jack! Jack!’ and half a dozen of Billy’s mates came dashing up the street, eager to give their local hero a royal welcome.

  ‘You’d best be on your way,’ Kate said to him as Luke put his thumb in his mouth and leaned his head against her shoulder, and Nellie Miller steamed into the Square from the direction of Magnolia Terrace. ‘Nellie’s a one-man welcoming band. If she gets you in her clutches you won’t be reunited with Christina until Christmas!’

  Well aware of the truth of her words Jack gave Nellie a cheery wave and then, a growing entourage of children and dogs at his heels, set off at a brisk pace towards the bottom end of the Square.

  Swiftly he strode past number six and number eight and then past the Sharkeys’ house. Net curtains twitched to one side but whether it was Wilfred Sharkey or his wife taking a surreptitious look-see, he neither knew nor cared. His own house was next, but he didn’t even pause by its gate. Christina wouldn’t be there. She would be at the Jennings’s. Or she would be if she wasn’t down the market, helping Albert out at his fruit and veg stall.

  Excitement and anticipation knotted his stomach muscles into painful knots. ‘Please God,’ he prayed inwardly, ‘don’t let her be down the market. Let her be in the house. Let the waiting be nearly at an end!’

  With Billy still leading the way, and clanging his filched dustbin lids together as if they were giant cymbals, he strode past the overgrown bomb-site that had once been the Misses Helliwells’ house. The roses of medieval France and Persia that Emily Helliwell had once so lovingly tended ran riot over the rubble. Uncaring of their beauty and scent, he turned the corner on to the bottom end of the Square.

  The Lomax’s front door was slammed back on its hinges so hard a slate fell off the roof. ‘Jack!’ Mavis shrieked, rocketing down her pot-holed pathway at suicidal speed. ‘For the love of God! What ’ave you got with you? A bloody brass band?’

  Next door, at the Jennings’s, an upstairs window was shuttered open and Miriam leaned out, metal hair curlers bristling hedgehog-like all over her head. ‘Jack’s home!’ she shouted over her shoulder to the household at large. ‘Someone tell Christina to get to the front door sharpish!’

  Leah was already at the door, Carrie was running down the stairs to join her. Danny, in the kitchen mending a pair of working boots on Albert’s last, put down his hammer and decided to have a cigarette. In his opinion too much fuss had always been made over the fact that Jack Robson was a Commando. Being a Commando didn’t automatically make a man a hero.

  Through the open window, he could see Christina pegging washing on the clothes-line. ‘Your old man’s ’ome,’ he shouted to her laconically. ‘And at this rate you’re goin’ to be the last person in the Square to give ’im a welcome!’

  Christina stared at him for a moment in disbelief then, as the sound of Billy’s clanging dustbin lids impinged on her consciousness, she dropped the towel she had been about to peg on the line, running, running, running. Up the back garden path and into the house, through the kitchen, down the littered hallway to the open front door. And there he was, as devastatingly handsome as ever, swinging a squealing Mavis round and round in his arms.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Nevertheless, I do feel Moshambo has let me down very badly,’ Emily Helliwell said to her wheelchair-bound sister and to Nellie Miller, who had called in on them to tell them the news of Jack Robson’s homecoming. ‘If only he had communicated with me and told me when Jack was coming home, we could have organized a proper welcome party for him.’

  Moshambo was Emily’s spirit-guide, and both her sister and Nellie were well accustomed to hearing her speak of him as if he were a tangible presence.

  ‘It ain’t old Moshambo’s fault,’ Nellie said fairly. ‘Jack’s only ’ome on leave after all.’

  Though they were in the living-room, she was sitting on a straight-backed kitchen chair as it was the only type of chair she could rise from without the help of three strong men.

  Esther Helliwell’s wheelchair was stationed near the window. From this viewpoint she could watch all her neighbours’ comings and goings and also see the bomb-site of what had once been the home she and Emily shared. The church, unfortunately, obliterated her view of the opposite top end of the Square, but its Christmas-card prettiness and its magnolia tree were ample compensations.

  She dragged her eyes away from the sight of Doris Sharkey scurrying home from the direction of Lewisham as if her life depended on it, saying helpfully, ‘Perhaps you could communicate with Moshambo and ask him when dear Jack will be demobbed?’

  ‘An’ if you do communicate with ’im, ask ’im when my Arthur’s goin’ to be released by the Japs,’ Nellie said, not wanting her nephew’s plight to be forgotten in the euphoria of Jack Robson’s home-coming.

  Emily’s liver-spotted hands fiddled a little nervously with one of the several bead necklaces draped around her neck. It was all right Esther and Nellie suggesting she communicate with Moshambo, but it wasn’t as easy as they seemed to think. Moshambo was an American-Indian spirit-guide and didn’t take kindly to being summoned as if he were a civil servant at the Public Information Bureau.

  ‘We could ring the Public Information Bureau,’ Daniel was saying to his fellow deputy churchwarden as they met with Bob Giles for their weekly meeting.

  ‘To find out if, and when, local authorities are going to be given the power to requisition empty houses?’ Wilfred Sharkey asked deridingly.

  Daniel was unabashed. As far as he was concerned, a public information service was empowered to give the public information. And he wanted to know what was going to happen to number seventeen now the Binns family were moving out of it. He wanted to know, because Carrie and Danny were anxious to move into it.

  ‘I’ll speak to Housing and find out what I can,’ Bob Giles said, uncomfortably aware that if he hadn’t agreed to number eight, a church property, being set aside to accommodate a Polish displaced person, the young Collinses could have moved in there and enjoyed a peppercorn rent. ‘And now I’d li
ke to ask your opinion on something I intend doing, but which might be a little controversial,’ he said, changing the subject.

  His two churchwardens, arraigned at the far side of his desk, waited, Daniel trustingly, Wilfred suspiciously. Bob Giles gave himself an extra minute’s grace by tamping tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. At last, after lighting it, and sucking it into life, he said, ‘Monday’s news, about the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was terrible enough, but today’s news, that a second A-bomb has been dropped on Nagasaki, is terrible, truly terrible.’

  Daniel bit the corner of his lip. It was terrible, there was no doubt about that, but it was also bound to result in the Japs surrendering and so, as he saw it, out of a terrible event would come a mercy. Wilfred Sharkey’s thin mouth tightened until it virtually disappeared. If the Vicar was going to suggest what he thought he was going to suggest . . .

  ‘I intend offering prayers at tonight’s evening service for the victims,’ Bob Giles continued, fulfilling Wilfred’s expectations. ‘I shall also, of course, be offering prayers for the safe return of men still being held prisoner in the Far East and—’

  ‘I protest!’ Wilfred’s nostrils were pinched and white. ‘The Japanese are in league with the devil. The rain of ruin now descending on their cities is just and righteous punishment! The—’

  ‘Hey, steady on, old chap,’ Daniel said in consternation as Wilfred’s limbs began to jerk like a marionette’s. ‘There’s no need to take on so, you’ll make yourself ill.’

  Wilfred took no heed of him. He’d had a headache all day and now his head felt as if it were in a vice. The Vicar didn’t understand about the Japanese. He didn’t understand how all evil was pre-ordained. He didn’t understand the cleansing power of fire and blood. ‘“And I saw the seven angels which stood before God,”’ he declaimed suddenly, falling back on to the sturdy rock of Revelations, ‘“and to them were given seven trumpets and the first angel sounded and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood . . .”’

  ‘I think you should sit down for a few minutes, Wilfred,’ Bob Giles said, rising to his feet, deeply concerned.

  ‘“. . . and they were cast upon the earth, and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up . . .”’ Wilfred continued, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth, ‘“and the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood. . .”’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Daniel said unhappily. ‘I think you need a dose of salts, Wilfred. A glassful of Epsoms would soon put you to rights.’

  ‘I think we need a pot of hot, strong tea,’ Bob Giles said, aware that he had a serious problem on his hands and wondering how best to deal with it. ‘And then I think it would be a good idea if you knocked at the Sharkeys’, Daniel, and asked Doris to come over here.’

  ‘“. . . and the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and a day,”’ Wilfred continued, eyes glazed and oblivious of the concern he was arousing, ‘“. . . and thus I saw the horses in the vision and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone . . .”’

  Bob took hold of one of Wilfred’s twitching arms. ‘That’s enough, old chap,’ he said gently, ‘sit down and have a rest—’

  ‘“. . . and the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of holy angels and the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever . . .”’

  Daniel, about to leave the study in order to make the suggested pot of tea, paused at the doorway, his eyes meeting Bob’s. ‘Oh dear,’ he said again, graphically, ‘oh dear, oh dear.’

  Seconds later Bob heard him enter the kitchen and say to someone, presumably Ruth, ‘Poor old Wilfred. I do believe he’s finally lost his marbles.’

  Though he wouldn’t have expressed himself in quite the same way, Bob Giles thought Daniel had summed the situation up pretty accurately. Through the stress and strain of the war years, he had been a witness to many such breakdowns, though why Wilfred should suffer a mental collapse now, when the war in Europe was over and the war in the Far East was all but over, he couldn’t quite fathom.

  ‘“And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways,”’ Wilfred said, his eyes still glazed and unfocused, but the frenzied passion beginning to drain from his voice, ‘“and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth . . .”’

  Hopeful that the worst was now over, Bob said to him again, ‘Sit down, old chap. Today’s news has been too much for you. Doris will be here in a minute, and she’ll take you home and put you to bed so that you can have a proper rest.’

  It was like setting a match to blue touch-paper. ‘Whore!’ Wilfred spat, springing back into full throttle with renewed vigour. ‘“The great whore that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication!”’

  Aware that, instead of making things better, he had somehow made them worse, Bob glanced towards his wall-clock. It was 11.15 a.m. He wondered if Dr Roberts would still be taking his surgery and, more to the point, if the Sharkeys were his panel patients. If they were, he would suggest to Doris that she allow him to telephone the surgery and ask Roberts to visit Wilfred as soon as possible.

  ‘“. . . and I saw the woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns . . .”’

  Daniel pushed the door open with his elbow. He was carrying a tray bearing a pot of tea, milk-jug, sugar-bowl, three cups and saucers and three teaspoons.

  ‘Ruth’s gone to give Doris a knock,’ he said, setting the tray down on Bob’s cluttered desk. ‘She’s going to tell Doris that Wilfred’s had a bit of a funny turn—’

  ‘Whore!’ Wilfred spat again. ‘Mother of all harlots!’

  ‘We’ve moved from fire and brimstone to the great whore of Babylon,’ Bob said in answer to Daniel’s startled expression.

  ‘Blimey!’ Daniel was impressed. Rambling on about whores in front of the Vicar was really going it. He began to pour the tea, wondering what Doris Sharkey would make of it all. Unlike everyone else in Magnolia Square, the Sharkeys didn’t mix much with their neighbours. They kept themselves to themselves. Or they had until now. They certainly wouldn’t be able to continue doing so with Wilfred spouting at the top of his voice about fire and brimstone and the great whore of Babylon.

  Bob frowned, a very unnerving thought suddenly occurring to him. It had been mention of the Japanese that had first set Wilfred off on his fire-and-brimstone diatribe, but what was it that had caused him to change tack to the great whore of Babylon? Surely it couldn’t have been mention of Doris? And if it had been . . . There came the sound of the vicarage door being opened in haste.

  ‘Hopefully that’s Ruth with Doris,’ Daniel said as the door slammed shut and two pairs of hurrying footsteps reached as far as the kitchen and paused.

  Bob knew very well why they had paused. In order to spare the Sharkeys embarrassment, Ruth was refusing to accompany Doris any further. That way she wouldn’t be another witness to Wilfred’s breakdown. It was exactly the sort of sensitivity his late wife, Constance, would have shown. In a moment of overpowering certainty, he knew that Constance would have approved of Ruth; that his marriage to Ruth would have had her whole-hearted blessing. Love and gratitude, both for the wife he had lost and the wife he was soon to gain, roared through him.

  It was a moment quickly curtailed as Doris Sharkey knocked apprehensively on his study door and then, even more apprehensively, edged into the room. She had obviously been interrupted by Ruth whilst doing her weekly laundry. Soap suds still clung to her cherry-red pinafore, and the sleeves of her violet wool cardigan were pushed high, her damp hands and forearms flushed and mottled from the heat of the water in her copper.


  ‘Miss Fairbairn said as how Wilfred had been taken badly—’ she began nervously.

  ‘Whore!’ Wilfred roared, bounding to his feet and confirming all Bob Giles’s worst suspicions. ‘“Arrayed in purple and scarlet colour!”’

  ‘Telephone for Dr Roberts!’ Bob shouted to Daniel and then, to a terrified Doris, ‘And take your apron and cardigan off, for the Lord’s sake!’

  ‘What’s goin’ on at the vicarage?’ Mavis said to Kate as they paused for a chat by the Helliwells’ bomb-site, Mavis en route for the main road flanking the Heath and a bus to central London, Kate heading in the opposite direction, towards Lewisham. ‘Ten minutes ago Ruth Fairbairn came runnin’ out, sprintin’ like a gym mistress for the Sharkeys. Then she ’ared back with Doris in tow. Now Dr Roberts’s Morris Ten is parked outside.’

  As Matthew, Hector at his heels, ran on ahead of her, Kate looked towards the top left-hand corner of the Square and the vicarage. The car was certainly Dr Roberts’s. She frowned. ‘I don’t know. I hope Mr Giles hasn’t been taken ill. I won’t call in now, whilst Dr Roberts is there, but I’ll call in when I get back from Lewisham. What’s happening at number eighteen? Is a welcome-home party for Jack in full flow?’

  Mavis shrugged, her magnificent bosom straining against a frilly white organza blouse. ‘If there is, I ’aven’t been invited. And knowin’ Christina, I bet no-one else ’as either.’

  Kate tried to hide her amusement. Like almost every other resident of Magnolia Square, she had seen the whole-hearted way Mavis had greeted Jack. That Christina now wanted Jack to herself for a little while would come as no great surprise to anyone. ‘I expect he’ll be having a knees-up tonight in The Swan,’ she said consolingly. ‘I’ll have to be on my way, Mavis. I don’t want Matthew and Hector running loose in Lewisham High Street.’