Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  Jack was rounding the bed towards her in swift brief strides. For a split second she had a vision of the Heidelberg of her childhood. Of eating Schokoladenkuchen with her parents in the chandelier-hung splendour of the Hotel Ernst.

  ‘A tanner?’ Nellie Miller’s voice roared out indignantly. ‘A tanner? That wash-tub’s worth more than a tanner, mate! Melted down it’d go ’alf-way to making a battleship!’

  His arms were around her, his body hard against hers. ‘Forget Nellie,’ he said urgently, ‘forget everyone.’ It was the first time he had ever read her thoughts with such sensitive accuracy.

  She pressed against the roughness of his uniform with a sob of gratitude and relief, answering desire roaring through her like a rip-tide. This time everything was going to be all right. This time she wasn’t going to let him down. This time she was going to think of nothing and no-one but him. ‘I love you!’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I love you with all my heart, Jack. Now and forever.’

  His mouth came down on hers, hot and sweet, and then he was pressing her back on the yielding, creaking bed and the world spiralled down until all that existed was the passion uniting them.

  ‘Can I have a little garden of my own, Daddy?’ Luke asked, trotting at Leon’s heels as, with the back garden tended to his satisfaction, Leon led the way through the house towards the much smaller front garden.

  Leon stood on the top step and surveyed what had once been a handkerchief-sized lawn surrounded by flowers, enhanced by an aged magnolia tree. At the outbreak of war the Government had exhorted Britons to ‘dig for victory’ and to turn over their gardens to the growing of fruit and vegetables in order that they could be as self-supportive as possible. Kate had certainly followed the directive to the letter. Raspberry and gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes fought for space with lettuces and tomatoes and onions. Edging the broad, shallow stone steps leading down to the pathway were pots crammed with herbs: mint and parsley, basil and thyme, rosemary and tarragon.

  ‘You can, if we can find room for it,’ Leon said, the tender tone of his deep, rich voice leaving Luke in no doubt that room would be found. He walked musingly down the sun-dappled steps, helping Luke off the last one. ‘What about right here?’ he asked him. ‘At the foot of the steps? We’ll have to dig out this gooseberry bush and sacrifice a few lettuces, but there’ll be space here for you to grow whatever you want.’

  ‘Want to grow pretty flowers,’ Luke said confidingly. ‘Want to grow orangie flowers.’

  Leon nodded, in complete agreement with the beguiling little person who was his son. Orange flowers would certainly put the zip back into the garden. It was too late, though, to grow anything from seed, and a three-year-old couldn’t be expected to wait until next spring to see his garden in flower. What was needed was to transplant some established late-flowering marigolds and nasturtiums. He wondered if Daniel had any lurking in his garden. If he hadn’t, there was always the Helliwells’ bomb-site. There were more flowers rampaging over that than there were in Kew Gardens.

  Hettie interrupted his thoughts. She was on her way home from a lengthy shopping expedition in Blackheath Village. It had been lengthy, not because she had been happily browsing but because she had had to queue at the butcher’s, queue at the baker’s, queue at the greengrocer’s. ‘I didn’t mind queuing because of food shortages when old Hitler was making our lives a misery,’ she had said to Emily Helliwell, a black straw hat crammed on her iron-grey curls, ‘but it’s a bit of a liberty now the old bugger’s rotting in hell. When’s life going to get back to normal, that’s what I want to know? When are we going to be able to burn our ration books and put decent meals on the table?’

  She said now to Leon, ‘I suppose you’re not familiar with gooseberries. I suppose they don’t have them where you come from.’

  The words were guileless, without any intended offence, and Leon didn’t take any. Abandoning his study of the gooseberry bush, he said equably, ‘I come from Chatham, Hettie. There’s plenty of gooseberry bushes in Chatham.’

  Hettie pursed her lips. Leon might well have lived in Chatham before the war, but he didn’t come from Chatham, not in the way she came from south-east London. Her parents had been born in south-east London, as had her parents’ parents and her parents’ parents’ parents, and Lord alone knew how many generations before them. Leon came from Africa. All black people came from Africa. She wasn’t educated the way Harriet Godfrey and Ruth Fairbairn were, but she did at least know that. And she knew they ate funny food there because she’d seen pictures of an African market in the National Geographic when she’d been in Dr Roberts’s surgery.

  Two bright spots of colour burned her cheeks as she remembered something else. A lot of people in Africa didn’t wear many clothes, which was probably why Leon preferred her to think he came from Chatham. ‘Do you know Jack Robson’s home?’ she asked, not blaming him for his evasiveness and diplomatically changing the subject. ‘He’ll only have a weekend pass, I expect, but it won’t be long till he’s home for good. Not now the Yanks have put the kibosh on the Japanese.’

  ‘Kate told me.’

  Leon kept the conversation to local matters, not wanting to think of the significance of the atomic bombing of Japan, or the fact that for the first time in history Man had the power to put the kibosh on the entire planet. ‘I don’t know Jack myself,’ he said, wondering what Bob Giles thought of it all. ‘When I first came to Magnolia Square he was fighting in France, and we’ve never been home on leave at the same time. Nellie Miller tells me he’s the nearest thing to Clark Gable south-east London possesses.’

  Hettie sniffed, and the artificial rose on her hat wobbled. ‘I don’t know about Clark Gable,’ she said, safely assuming that Nellie wasn’t in the habit of saying the same thing about Danny, ‘but he is all damn-your-eyes and swagger. His brother was just the same. Went off to fight Franco and died in a Spanish bullring. If that isn’t exhibitionism, I don’t know what is.’

  Leon was saved from the difficulty of replying by Billy Lomax. After spending a happy couple of hours riding shot-gun with the rag-and-bone man, he was returning home for his tea, waving his arms like propellers as he did so and dive-bombing anyone and anything in his path.

  As the Misses Helliwell’s cat sprang to safety, Hettie said suddenly, ‘If Billy’s heading home it must be tea-time. Rose is coming to me for her tea today so I’d best be getting a move on.’ She squared her shoulders, preparing herself for the last lap home with her heavy shopping, adding confidingly, ‘You’d never hear me say a word wrong about her other gran, but Miriam isn’t a cook. It’s Leah does all the cooking in that house, and when all’s said and done, if it’s Jewish it must be foreign. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Cheerio for now. And you should try some gooseberries some time. They’re a rare treat with custard.’ Stepping off the kerb, she headed diagonally across the Square to number three, intent on making Rose a proper London tea of boiled bacon and pease pudding.

  Leon sat down on one of the sun-warmed steps, feeling quite exhausted. How on earth did Daniel Collins Senior cope? Presumably he just turned a deaf ear. Whatever he did, it was no wonder he put so much zest into being a churchwarden. Meetings with Bob Giles and Wilfred Sharkey must be havens of rest after long hours in Hettie’s company.

  ‘’Ello, Mr Emmerson!’ Billy shouted breezily from the far side of the Square. ‘Do you know Jack’s home? I’m goin’ to ask ’im to teach me to fight like a Commando! Did you know Commandos are taught to kill with their bare ’ands? I’m goin’ to ask ’im ’ow it’s done!’

  The very thought was enough to make a strong man quail, but Leon merely grinned. ‘I’ll teach you how to box, if you like!’ he shouted back. ‘Boxing might just be a little more useful.’

  ‘I’d rather kill with my bare ’ands,’ Billy responded sunnily and, arms going like windmills, he continued careening down the far side of the Square, a Spitfire intent on winning the Battle of Britain all over again.

  Leon once aga
in surveyed the tiny patch of ground that he had promised Luke would be his, and his alone. With the war in Europe over, food shortages would surely soon become a thing of the past, and when they did, even more of the garden could be Luke’s own. It didn’t have to be too big an area, just enough for him to be able to plant and sow, dig holes, puddle in, water, pull, pick and poke about, and tramp up and down in wellington boots, firming the earth.

  At the thought of all the time that stretched ahead of him – time with Kate and Daisy and Matthew, time with his little son – happiness coursed through him, bone-deep. Only short weeks ago, he had been in a German prison camp. Now he was home in Magnolia Square and he would never, ever, voluntarily leave it. There would be no more Navy for him. He was going to go back to his previous profession of Thames lighterman. He had been born by the river and he loved it far more than he loved any sea.

  As Luke scrambled on to his knee, one of the straps of his home-made dungarees slipped off a shoulder. Leon settled him comfortably and looked towards Magnolia Terrace and the great, open vistas of the Heath. Then, adjusting the straying strap, he looked in the opposite direction towards Magnolia Hill, as content as a king surveying his kingdom.

  This little area, bounded by the Thames and historical Greenwich to the north, genteel Blackheath Village to the east, and market-orientated Lewisham to the south, was where he belonged. It was where he and Kate were going to raise their children. It was where they were going to live, love, laugh and grow old together.

  ‘Did Great-Grandad really mean it when he said I could visit him?’ Matthew asked eagerly, skipping along at Kate’s side as they rounded the bottom corner of Magnolia Hill on their journey home. ‘Will Mr Hemmings come for me in Great-Grandad’s big car? Does Great-Grandad know the King and Queen? Why does he never visit us? Why does—’

  ‘No more questions, sweetheart,’ Kate said, struggling hard to keep anxiety from her voice. ‘I’m tired and I just want to get home and have a nice cup of tea.’

  Matthew looked up at her, bewildered. How could Mummy be tired when they had just had a lovely afternoon sitting with Great-Grandad in the café in Chiesemans department store? A café they only usually went into when it was for a special treat, such as his birthday, or because it was Christmas and they had been to visit Father Christmas in his grotto? And how could Mummy possibly be looking forward to another cup of tea when Great-Grandad had ordered a second pot of tea for her at the same time he had ordered the unbelievably wonderful ice-cream sundae? Sensing that she really was tired and that she wasn’t going to merrily chat with him as she usually did, he let go of her hand and began running up the hill in a vain effort to catch up with Hector.

  Kate watched him, her heart feeling as if it were being squeezed within her breast. Had she done the right thing in agreeing to talk with Joss Harvey? Had she compromised herself utterly by stepping into his ostentatious Bentley and having afternoon tea with him in Chiesemans? And what of the agreement she had come to with him? What was Leon going to think of it? Was he going to be hurt that she hadn’t consulted him first? And had she been wrong in not doing so?

  ‘’Ello there, petal!’ Charlie shouted amenably from the far side of the street as he ambled in the direction of The Swan. ‘Yer know it’s party-time tonight, don’t yer? Jack wants everyone in The Swan by seven o’clock, an’ ’e says the drinks are on ’im. I just ’ope the pub ’as a big enough barrel on tap.’

  Kate waved in acknowledgement. It would be nice to have a knees-up in The Swan. At one time, when Magnolia Square’s men had all been at home, knees-ups at The Swan had taken place every Saturday night. Boozy, noisy evenings had still continued all through the war, of course, but they had been different in character. Soldiers and sailors foreign to the district had squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder into both the saloon bar and the public, and the strictly neighbourly, cosy atmosphere had been lost.

  Ahead of her, Matthew and Hector disappeared around the top right-hand corner of Magnolia Hill, into the Square. Kate was unworried. Neither of them would come to any harm. Very little motorized traffic, apart from Dr Roberts’s Morris and Ted Lomax’s motor bike and side-car which, in Ted’s absence Mavis had appropriated, ever trundled through the Square. Far more common were horse-drawn vehicles. The milkman’s cart, the rag-and-bone man’s cart, the coalman’s cart, the old hearse Albert Jennings used for ferrying his fruit and vegetables from Covent Garden.

  Her full-lipped mouth tightened. It was no wonder that, on the rare occurrences when Joss Harvey’s Bentley entered Magnolia Square, it always caused such a stir. She wondered if anyone had seen the Bentley draw up beside her earlier on, and if they had seen her stepping into it. If so, Leon would most certainly already know whom she and Matthew had been with for the last hour or so. For the umpteenth time, she wondered what his reaction would be. She rounded the corner in the wake of Matthew and Hector, her clear blue eyes darkening unhappily. And how would he react when he learnt the vicious extent of Joss Harvey’s racial prejudice? So far, their life together had been untouched by such ignorant nastiness. It was going to be so no longer, for Joss Harvey was not a stranger whose existence could be ignored.

  Bob Giles walked out of the Sharkeys’ house and hurried across to the church. As she watched him, a biblical image sprang to her mind and a shiver ran down her spine. It was as if she and Leon and the children had been living in their own, very private Garden of Eden, and Joss Harvey’s racial viciousness was the serpent about to eject them from it into the brutal harshness of the real world. She drew in a deep, steadying breath. Letting her imagination run away with her in such a manner would neither do her, nor Leon, nor the children, any good whatsoever. What was needed was a little common sense, and surely, in her dealings with Joss Harvey that afternoon, she had shown a great deal of common sense?

  She fervently hoped so. She was abreast of the scented luxuriance of the Helliwells’ bomb-site now, and the riot of roses, running wild and intermingling with foxgloves and rose-bay willow-herb, cheered her as they always did. What on earth was she being so glum about? She had talked Joss Harvey out of taking court action in order to try and obtain guardianship of Matthew. A compromise, however uneasy, had been agreed between them. That evening there was going to be a welcome home knees-up for Jack in The Swan, and her dad, never a great party-going man, would baby-sit for her and Leon. Whatever Dr Roberts’s reason for visiting the vicarage, it hadn’t been occasioned by sickness, for Bob Giles had looked as fit as always as he had walked from the Sharkeys’ house across to the church.

  The bomb-site was behind her now and she walked past the Robsons’ house, wondering if Christina would move in there now that Jack was home. Way ahead of her, Matthew and Hector bundled through the gateway into the garden of number four. A smile touched her mouth. With a little luck, as well as laying a new strawberry bed, Leon and Luke would also have been picking strawberries, and they would be able to have them for tea with milk and a little sugar. With her earlier anxiety now firmly under control, she walked past the Sharkeys, wondering how long it would be before the church-owned, empty house next door to them would be occupied. As she did so, she looked towards the Sharkeys’ windows, half expecting to see Doris or Pru and giving them a cheery wave.

  Her eyes widened, shock stabbing through her. Though there were hours to go yet before dusk, every curtain was tightly drawn, as if there had been a death.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘We’ve picked stwabewwies for tea,’ Luke said, running to greet Kate with shining eyes. ‘An’ Daddy says we can have our tea in the back garden an’ that he’ll take us to the park afterwards!’

  ‘We’ve had ice-creams in Chiesemans,’ Matthew began importantly in brotherly one-upmanship. ‘We’ve been in a big, big car . . . a car so big.’ He held his arms as far apart as possible.

  Leon stopped what he was doing, which was rinsing strawberries, and looked across at Kate in bemused curiosity. Matthew loved to exaggerate, as all kiddies did, but he neve
r told out and out fibs. ‘Have you been in a big car?’ he asked, trying to think, if she had, who on earth it could have belonged to. The only person they knew with a car was Dr Roberts, and his little Morris couldn’t be called big, even by Matthew’s standards.

  ‘So big it had a horn like the Last Trump,’ she said wryly.

  ‘It was Great-Gra . . .’ Matthew began, about to tell his Daddy-Leon who the car had belonged to.

  Kate clapped her hand over his mouth. ‘That’s quite enough chatter from you for the moment. Off you go into the garden and when you’ve found a nice place for us to have our picnic tea, I want you to sit on it and count to a hundred.’

  The request didn’t seem too unreasonable to Matthew. He was always counting to a hundred when he played Blindman’s Buff or Tag with Rose and Daisy. With Luke toddling at his heels, he set off to find a picnic place, pretending he was doing so in the middle of a big, dangerous jungle.

  ‘Well, love?’ Leon asked, a frown beginning to crease his forehead. ‘Who did you run into while you were out shopping?’

  Kate crossed the kitchen and slid her arms around his waist, resting her head on his broad and comforting chest. ‘Our own personal Demon-King,’ she said with a heavy heart.

  His frown deepened as his arms closed round her. ‘Joss Harvey?’

  She nodded. The whole relationship between herself and Joss Harvey was so convoluted and fraught with so many contradictions that, even to Leon, she didn’t truly know how best to explain it.

  ‘And?’ he prompted. Though the word was said gently enough, she could sense his sudden inner tension.