Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  It was already getting dark and it was bitingly cold. Kate held her cherry-red coat close to her throat and wished she hadn’t left the house in such a hurry that she’d left without putting a scarf on. Where might Jack be? Bob Giles had said he had last seen him striding away across the Heath in the general direction of Greenwich. She thought of all the pubs in Greenwich and felt a surge of despair. Her search could well take her all night and even then might not be successful.

  ‘Perhaps you should wait to talk to him until he comes home,’ Harriet had suggested when she had explained the problem and asked her if she would look after the children for her.

  Kate had shaken her head. She knew Jack. And she knew from what Bob Giles had told her of his encounter with him that Jack would now be in a pub somewhere. Once he was drunk, talking to him would be an impossibility, and she had to talk to him. She had to tell him all the things Christina had longed to tell him and had never succeeded in telling him. As she reached the foot of Maze Hill, at the bottom right-hand corner of Greenwich Park, she hesitated. Opposite her was Greenwich Park Street, which would take her into the heart of old Greenwich and the cluster of pubs around Greenwich Pier. To her left was Park Vista, a narrow road which faced the bottom wall of the park and which boasted a pub, The Plume and Feathers. It wasn’t a pub anyone in Magnolia Square ever patronized in the winter, being a little too far to walk in bad weather, but they did patronize it in the summer, calling in for an early evening drink after a picnic or a cricket match in the park. If Jack were going to drink anywhere in Greenwich, he would very likely do so in The Plume.

  Three minutes later, she was pushing open The Plume’s door. The minute she stepped inside the low-beamed saloon bar, relief swamped her. He was sitting alone in an inglenook, a half-drunk glass of brandy on the table before him, tension in every line of his hard-muscled body. He looked up at her approach, surprise flaring in his eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, Jack, I’m not out on the loose,’ she said, sitting down beside him. ‘Mr Giles said you’d headed off in the direction of Greenwich, and I thought you might be here.’

  ‘Don’t try and commiserate,’ he said abruptly. ‘There’s nothing you can say that can help make sense of what Tina’s done.’

  ‘Oh yes there is,’ she unbuttoned her coat, knowing very well all the false assumptions he had come to, ‘but it’s going to take me quite some time to say it.’

  ‘And is it going to make any difference?’ There was sarcasm as well as raw bitterness in his voice.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said with quiet confidence, grateful for the heat of the inglenook’s fire, ‘it’s going to make all the difference in the world.’

  ‘Emily’s here again,’ Ruth was saying to her harassed husband. ‘I know you have a lot on your mind at the moment, darling, but I really do think you should talk to her. She says it’s very, very urgent.’

  Jack pushed his brandy to the far side of the small table. Christ, what a fool he’d been! Christina had tried to tell him all the things Kate had just told him. He remembered her words to him after they had made love on the last morning of his leave; she had said there were things she wanted to say to him, things that wouldn’t be easy for her to put into words, and then she had told him how, ever since the war had ended, she had been thinking more and more about her mother and grandmother. And how had he responded? He groaned, running his fingers through his thick shock of curly hair. Crassly, that was how. It had never even occurred to him she was hoping and praying her mother and grandmother were still alive. He had told her that that particular nightmare was over and that she had no need ever to think of it again. And then, whilst she had been struggling to tell him of the guilt and misery she was feeling at having denied her religion and culture, he had breezily told her she was now a south-London girl.

  ‘I’m not,’ she had said, ‘I’m a German. A German Jew.’ And even then he hadn’t realized the enormity of what she had been trying to convey to him. Thinking he was reassuring her, unwittingly making the situation far, far worse, he had glibly told her he no more thought of her as being Jewish than he thought of her as being German. He groaned again. Dear God in heaven! It was no wonder she’d given up on the attempt to make him understand, especially as he had then left her alone with her mental torment and had gone downstairs to eat a kipper breakfast!

  He looked at his watch, his mind racing. The sooner he set off after her, the better. He’d have to fiddle some travel papers and get hold of some cash. The cash bit was easy enough as he had all his demob money, as to travel papers – he’d fiddled far more than travel papers in his time. Adrenalin began to race through his veins. With luck, he’d be across the Channel by midnight and in Heidelberg even before she was.

  ‘Don’t bother walking me back to Magnolia Square,’ Kate said, reading his thoughts. ‘Christina will probably be in Cologne tonight, with Miss Marshall. After that she’ll be on her own. The sooner you meet up with her, the better.’

  He rose speedily to his feet, flashing her his down-slanting smile. ‘You’re an angel, Kate Emmerson. Has anyone ever told you?’

  ‘Not this last half-hour or so,’ Kate said with a wry smile, her thoughts already skeetering back to her own problems. Would Leon be waiting for her at home? Would he have succeeded in waylaying Joss Harvey, and what would have been the outcome if he had done so?

  Jack leaned forward, kissed her on the cheek and then turned on his heel, striding for the door. Kate reached for his undrunk brandy. How would he get down to Dover? Hitch a lift? Borrow Ted’s motor bike? And once there, how would he get across the Channel? She sipped at the brandy. Jack had been in the Commandos for six years. He wouldn’t let a little thing like crossing the Channel perturb him. If necessary, he’d steal a boat and sail it across single-handedly.

  Wondering what Charlie was going to say when she broke the news to him that his demobbed son was en route for Germany, she finished the brandy and buttoned up her coat. By the time she had walked back to Magnolia Square, he and Harriet would no longer be baby-sitting for her. Leon would be home and his news could well be nothing more dire than that Joss Harvey had refused to speak to him. She stepped out of The Plume and Feathers’ cosy warmth into the biting December cold, grateful for the warming inner comfort of the brandy. One thing, at least, had gone right, and that had been Jack’s reaction when she told him of all the feelings Christina had been keeping from him.

  ‘I can’t help being a goy, but if I’d known how Christina was going to feel about marrying in an Anglican church, I’d have happily settled for Lewisham Registry Office,’ he had said passionately, ‘and if she’d wanted to celebrate Friday nights like the Jews in Whitechapel and Stepney do, having a special meal and candles and all that, then that would have been fine by me!’

  Kate increased her speed as she turned out of Park Vista and into Maze Hill. She didn’t want Leon to begin worrying about her, and she certainly didn’t want him to set off looking for her. If it had been daylight she could have cut through the park. As it was, it was going to take her a good twenty minutes to get back home, even walking quickly.

  By the time she was on home turf, walking briskly down Magnolia Terrace into the Square, she felt quite out of breath. How far on in her pregnancy was she now? Fourteen weeks? Fifteen? The baby hadn’t started moving yet, but it would be doing so any day now. She loved those first, fluttery movements and the inexpressible feelings of tenderness they aroused in her. She turned the corner leading into the Square and immediately, in the yellow light of the gas-lamps, saw the black taxi cab parked outside her house and the looming overcoated figure standing beside it.

  ‘What on earth . . .’ she whispered, her heart beginning to slam in hard, heavy strokes.

  ‘Kate?’ It was a long, long time since he had called her Kate; not since the early days of the war when she had agreed to Matthew being evacuated to his Somerset home and a semblance of friendly politeness had existed between them. Why was he doing so now? Why was he
outside her home, and why had he travelled by taxi? Where was his Bentley? She broke into a run, engulfed by fear. Something had happened to Matthew! Why else would Joss Harvey be waiting for her with a face as sombre as that of an Old Testament prophet?

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded, distress cracking her voice as she ran towards him. ‘Why are you here? What’s happened to Matthew?’

  ‘Nothing’s happen to Matthew,’ Joss said bluntly. ‘He’s tucked up in bed and being baby-sat by the most efficient-looking woman it’s ever been my privilege to meet.’

  ‘Then what . . .’ She came to a halt before him, the light of a hissing gas-lamp gleaming on the wheat-gold braid of her hair, her breath coming in harsh rasps, her bewilderment and fear increasing.

  ‘It’s your husband,’ Joss said, taking her by the elbow and steering her towards the taxi cab. ‘He’s in Guy’s Hospital. He’s not seriously hurt. A broken wrist, crushed ribs. But I knew you’d want to see him.’

  ‘Leon? But how . . .? Why . . .?’ She stumbled as he bundled her into the cab.

  ‘How?’ Joss said as he stepped into it after her, slamming the door behind him. ‘He saved Hemmings’s life by lifting what must have been a ten ton weight off him, that’s how. As for why I’m here . . .’

  The cab was already speeding past St Mark’s Church. From the adjoining church hall came the sound of Malcolm Lewis’s scouts practising carols ready for the Christmas Carol Service.

  ‘. . . I’m here because I’m a man who respects courage, that’s why. Your husband may be a darkie, but he’s a brave man. Without him, I’d be looking for another chauffeur.’

  ‘And he isn’t seriously hurt?’ Her voice was urgent, her heart hammering painfully.

  ‘No.’ Something suspiciously like a chuckle entered Joss Harvey’s gravel-rough voice. ‘He was fit enough to be able to ask me if I’d light a gasper for him!’

  As Kate sank back against the cracked leather of the taxi’s rear seat, weak with relief, a chorus of ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ echoed out of the lamp-lit Square and followed them all the way down Magnolia Hill and into Lewisham.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The train rolled relentlessly on, through a plundered countryside crawling with the hungry and the homeless, bypassing ravaged, near-obliterated towns. Christina sat on a musty-smelling seat, wedged between Miss Marshall and an over-friendly American GI.

  ‘Wanna smoke?’ the GI proffered, shaking open a packet of cigarettes.

  Christina shook her head. In the rest of the railway carriage a dozen pairs of eyes, naked with longing, watched as he slipped the packet back into the top pocket of his Army jacket. Her head ached. She had known her journey was going to be traumatic, but already, even before they had reached Cologne, it was painful almost beyond bearing. Everywhere she looked there was not only devastation, there was hunger. On crowded railway platforms, weary women with skinny arms and gaunt faces clutched hold of hollow-cheeked children and pathetic bundles of belongings. London and Londoners had suffered in the war but, heavily rationed though they had been, they had not suffered the kind of hunger the people now crammed into the railway carriage with her were suffering. Slim and petite as she was, in contrast to them Christina felt overweight and indecently overfed.

  ‘Köln!’ a railway guard shouted through the carriages. ‘Bitte aussteigen!’

  Köln not Cologne. Bitte, not please. Aussteigen, not ‘Please prepare to leave the train.’ The familiar language reverberated against her ears like waves on a beach. Because it was the language of Nazis, she had, for all the years she had lived in London, barely even thought in it, much less spoken it. Yet the language was her language as well. It was part of her heritage, just as Yiddish was part of it; just as the English her Bermondsey-born grandmother had taught her from her cradle, was part of it.

  As all around her people gathered pathetically shabby suitcases and shawl-wrapped bundles, Christina stared out of the grimy windows at a city so destroyed by bombing it seemed impossible that train tracks should still be running into it.

  ‘We’re here,’ Miss Marshall said unnecessarily. ‘Are you quite sure you’re going to be all right, travelling down to Heidelberg unaccompanied?’

  Christina nodded, uncomfortably aware that the GI had registered with interest Miss Marshall’s words. As Heidelberg was under American occupation it was quite possible he was also en route there. If he were, once she was no longer in Miss Marshall’s brisk and no-nonsense company, he might make a serious nuisance of himself. Not for the first time, her heart lurched as she thought of Jack. Where was he now? She couldn’t possibly write to him whilst she was still in Germany. What would he think when her letters stopped arriving? Someone would write to him, telling him of where she was – Charlie or Mavis, or maybe even Bob Giles.

  ‘Köln!’ Someone shouted again, as if there could possibly be any mistake about which ravaged, carpet-bomb-blitzed city they had just entered.

  ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ It was the GI. His smile revealed perfect dentistry. He was young, fit, well fed and hopeful.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said firmly. ‘Nein danke. Es geht schon.’

  His eyebrows rose. The conversation he had overheard between her and her Red Cross uniformed companion had been in English. And in accentless English as far as he could tell. The easy, familiar way she spoke the German words was a giveaway, though. They hadn’t been learned parrot-fashion as his smattering of German had been learned. She wasn’t English. She was a Kraut and, if the blue-black darkness of her shoulder-length hair and the hint of olive in her skin was anything to go by, she was a Jewish Kraut.

  She picked up a canvas travelling-bag and followed her companion off the train. He followed a little distance behind her, still watching her. Christ, she was pretty. Her softly swinging hair had a sheen to it, as if it had been polished. He wondered where she had spent the war years. Certainly not in Germany. There was scarcely a living Jew left in the whole damned country, and those that were, were skin and bone, the expression in their sunken eyes revealing a brutalization which words couldn’t even begin to describe. Perhaps she wasn’t German but Swiss, and travelling south via Heidelberg to Basle or Berne. He wondered who was awaiting her arrival. Whoever he was, he was a lucky guy.

  Christina stepped down on to the platform, the cold so intense she sucked in her breath, reaching hurriedly into the pocket of her navy coat for her beret.

  ‘If you think this is bad, can you imagine what it’s going to be like further east, in Berlin?’ Miss Marshall asked, grateful for her bulky hand-knitted woollen socks and thickly soled English brogues. Brogues that, in Germany, would have brought her a fortune on the black market.

  ‘Now this is where we’d better say goodbye,’ she said practically as they were jostled on all sides by civilians and French and American soldiers. ‘Amidst all this chaos there just might be a train heading in the direction you want. You’ve got all your identity papers and travel permits with you? Good. Then all that remains is for me to wish you good luck and God Bless.’ Seconds later she was gone, swallowed up in the throng, far more important matters on her mind.

  Christina put her bag down for a moment and pulled her vibrant kingfisher-blue beret low over her ears to protect them from the stinging cold, then, picking up the bag, she set off alone on the next stage of her journey.

  It took her three days to travel the near one hundred miles between Cologne and Heidelberg. The bridges that had spanned the Rhine had all been bombed. Hastily erected pontoon bridges rocked in their place. There were American soldiers and American jeeps everywhere. Trains were derailed; were commandeered by occupying troops; didn’t run. Breezily confident GIs, accustomed to carrying all before them, attempted to pick her up at every turn. At night, she slept in freezing cold station waiting-rooms. By day, she inched her way nearer and nearer to her destination.

  Were her mother and grandmother enduring the rigours of the winter in a similar manner? And if they were, how we
re they managing to survive? Her mother would now be in her early fifties; her grandmother nearly eighty. Time and again she tried to blot out her last memories of them. The Storm Troopers herding them on to the back of the open truck as if they were cattle. Her grandmother stumbling and falling, her mother sobbing. One of the Storm Troopers had grabbed at her grandmother’s hair, dragging her to her feet. No-one who was a witness believed Jacoba Berger and Eva Frank would be seen alive again. And she hadn’t believed it – not for a long, long time.

  In the corner of yet another rank-smelling railway carriage, as the last few miles separating her from Heidelberg disappeared beneath its wheels, Christina stared unseeingly out at a landscape now familiar and wondered what it was that had so changed her mind. Had it been the sight of Leon Emmerson, striding into Magnolia Square when, for three long years, there had been not a word or a line to indicate he was still alive? She didn’t know, but she did know that once the belief had been born, it had refused to die.

  Heidelberg’s ruined castle came into view. Standing high on its wooded hill, it looked unnervingly unchanged. Had it really been ten years since she had lived beneath its shadow? Her breath caught in her throat. Then, it had signalled home. It did so no longer, for never, as long as she lived, would she think of an inch of German soil as being home. She wasn’t home then but she was back in her past, and her mother and grandmother would surely be there as well, waiting and praying for their reunion with her.

  ‘Heidelberg! Bitte aussteigen!’

  With savage, urgent hope, she heaved her canvas bag from the luggage-rack. She had reached her destination. All she had to do now was to search.

  She began in a narrow twisting street in the old part of the town. The road was cobbled, the houses on either side high and decoratively gabled. Her chest was tight, so tight she could hardly breathe. This was the street of her childhood. It was the street she had played in as a toddler. It was the street she had run down when she had gone to school, her satchel banging against her legs. There, on the right, had been Levy’s bakery. It was still a bakery, but the name Levy had long gone from above its door and there were no bagels or bialys on the half-empty trays in its window. On the left was the room facing the street where Emmanuel Cohen had sat at his shoe-last, nails held between his teeth as he hammered and cobbled, his leather apron reaching almost to his ankles.