Coronation Summer

by Margaret Pemberton

  Certainly, as far as he was able to tell, it never occurred to Christina that her engagement ring was in any way exceptional – and nor did he want it to. Wheeling and dealing in order to buy it for her had been his pleasure. He wanted her to have the best of everything. It was why, over and above his many other business interests, he was now carving himself a niche as a boxing promoter, why he had bought The 21. He wanted to make money, big money, in order to spoil and cosset her and to somehow compensate her for all she had suffered when, as a young girl, she had endured the nightmare of being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany.

  He gritted his teeth, hardly able to contain his physical disappointment. She was breathing rhythmically and deeply now, but he didn’t believe she was asleep. She was simply pretending. Reluctantly, admitting defeat, he removed his hand from her breast, rolling away from her onto his back, staring up bleakly into the darkness. On the increasingly rare occasions when they did now make love, did she pretend then as well? Had she, where lovemaking was concerned, always pretended? It was a crucifying thought.

  As he sensed her falling into genuine sleep he folded his hands behind his head. Sex had never been a problem for him. Ever since he was in his teens there’d always been more than enough girls willing and eager to accommodate him, and he knew enough about himself to know that now, in his mid-thirties, he was both an accomplished and a considerate lover. He also knew that no one who knew him would believe he was going short where sexual satisfaction was concerned. But he was going short, and had been for a long time.

  Not for the first time, it occurred to him that his present level of physical frustration was totally unnecessary, especially when he knew from experience that nearly every girl he gave the wink to would be interested. And then there was Mavis. He and Mavis went back a long way. For a man enduring the kinds of problems in his marriage that he was, Mavis was a serious temptation. He sighed heavily, longing for a smoke. Knowing that if he lit a cigarette he would disturb Christina he tried, instead, to sleep. But sleep was a long, long time in coming.

  The next morning, as soon as he felt he could decently wake Bob Giles, Leon Emmerson strode swiftly across the top right-hand corner of Magnolia Square towards the vicarage. It wasn’t long after dawn, and the sky was a rich, ripe apricot, promising a day of glorious sun. In the wide shallow garden of the double-fronted vicarage, a pair of blue tits, bright as butterflies, flew wrangling into a bush of golden broom. Ruth Giles, the vicar’s wife, was a passionate gardener, and there were deep drowned-purple pansies and vivid-eyed pale pink phlox massed next to the broom and, nearby, clusters of late-flowering, sharply yellow tulips.

  Oblivious of the garden’s dew-wet beauty and of the jogging figure who had just entered the square from the short terrace that led from it on to Blackheath’s heath, Leon turned swiftly in at the gate, sprinting the last few yards up the pathway to the front door, knocking on its pristine paintwork with tense urgency.

  Zac came to a halt, standing with his hands on his hips, breathing deeply. He was on his way back to his lodgings after a six-mile circuit over the heath. He always followed the same routine when it came to roadwork, walking fast for half a mile, jogging for a mile, sprinting at full belt for a good half mile and then walking once again.

  The heath was splendidly close for such workouts, and there was also nearby Royal Greenwich Park for when he wanted to ring the changes. All in all, he was well satisfied with his new digs and their location. Though the steeply sloping street opening out of the bottom end of Magnolia Square led down to Lewisham and its busy street market, the tree-shaded top end of the square, and the heath and nearby Blackheath Village, were pretty enough to be almost rural, which made the sight of a man obviously West Indian, or of West Indian extraction, even more unexpected than it would normally have been.

  He watched with interest as a dressing-gown-clad male figure opened the vicarage door and, without preamble, ushered the early morning visitor inside. He continued on down the uneven numbered side of the square. The man was obviously known to whoever had opened the door to him, and Zac wondered if he was a local. If he were he would be used to people being taken by surprise when they first saw him, for Lewisham and Blackheath were too far from the docks for there to be many black sailors about, and the days when black GIs had been a novel sight on the streets were long past.

  He slowed to a saunter as he neared his lodgings. There were only another three houses before the bottom corner of the square, and the house on the bottom side of the square was the Collins’s. If Carrie Collins worked on a stall in Lewisham market she would surely be up and about by now. He halted at Queenie Tillet’s gateway. Though the Collins’s downstairs curtains were drawn back, the curtains at the bedroom windows were still drawn. Was that because Danny liked as much shut-eye as he could possibly get in the mornings? Or was Carrie, too, still in bed?

  ‘Morning,’ a cheery female voice with a northern intonation called out to him from the other side of the square. ‘Are you Queenie’s new lodger? She usually only takes in theatricals. If you don’t watch your step you’ll find yourself calling everyone “Ducky” and mincing like a nancy-boy!’

  Zac grinned. ‘That’ll be the day,’ he rejoindered good-temperedly.

  Yorkshire-born Lettie Deakin went on her way, chuckling, her dog enjoying its early morning walk, gambolling happily at her heels. Lettie liked a well set-up young man, especially when he had a pleasant disposition. She wondered if Mavis Lomax had laid eyes on their new neighbour yet. It’d be cradle-snatching, of course, for Queenie’s lodger could only be in his mid-twenties, but if everything she’d heard about Mavis was true, Mavis wouldn’t let that deter her. And the young man in question was a lovely-looking young man. As they would say in her home town of Bradford, he was a reet bit o’ right!

  *

  ‘Who was it at the door?’ Ruth Giles asked, scrambling into sensible underclothes.

  ‘Leon.’ Bob Giles paused at their bedroom door. ‘There’s no need for you to come downstairs, dear. He’s making a telephone call to Matthew’s school. He seems to think Matthew may be at the home of one of his Harvey relations, and that, if they’d been informed he was there, the school might have been lax in letting him and Kate know.’

  Ruth, nearly twenty years her husband’s junior, stepped into a tweed skirt and zipped it up over still slim hips. ‘But why on earth should he think a thing like that?’ she asked, keeping her voice low so that it wouldn’t carry down the stairs and into the hall where Leon was, presumably, now speaking to either the secretary or the headmaster of St Osyth’s school. ‘He’s Matthew’s father. If the school had any information about Matthew, he’s the first person they would contact.’

  ‘He’s Matthew’s adoptive father,’ Bob said, his voice as low as hers as he tried to keep half an ear on what was happening in the hall. If there was good news he would surely be able to tell by the tone of Leon’s voice. ‘And though that shouldn’t make an iota of difference, in the case of Matthew and Leon it does. Or it does where Matthew’s school is concerned.’

  Ruth pulled a raspberry-coloured jumper over her head and stared at him, her curly brown hair framing her face like a tumbled halo. ‘Because Leon’s a lovely dusky dark shade and Matthew isn’t?’

  Despite the gravity of the situation a smile twitched at the corners of Bob’s mouth. ‘Because it is so patently obvious that Leon isn’t Matthew’s natural father, and couldn’t possibly be his natural father, yes,’ he said, overcome by a rush of love for her. ‘And because St Osyth’s is one of the oldest public schools in the country and distinctly snobbish.’ He paused, listening to see if Leon was still on the telephone or not. He was, and sounded as if he might be for some time.

  ‘If Matthew were Leon’s natural son, and Leon were an African king or prince, I shouldn’t think Leon’s colour would matter an iota to Matthew’s headmaster,’ he continued, deciding he probably had time to dress hurriedly before going back downstairs to commiserate with Leon, or to
advise him. ‘But he’s not. He’s a Thames waterman.’

  ‘Thames watermen are princes of the Thames. Matthew’s headmaster should think himself lucky he has a waterman amongst his pupils’ parents!’

  Bob clipped his dog-collar around his neck. Ruth was spot-on, as always. He shrugged himself into a dark jacket, sending a mental prayer heavenwards in gratitude for her love and for her endearing way of seeing things. ‘I think Leon has come off the telephone,’ he said, instinct telling him that whatever Leon had been told, the news wasn’t good.

  She read his mind with practised ease. ‘I’ll come downstairs with you and make a cup of tea for us all. How long is it now that Matthew has been missing?’

  ‘Thirty-six hours.’

  Silently she followed him from the bedroom. Thirty-six hours! Where on earth could Matthew be? Her heart felt tight within her chest. When Matthew was a tiny baby and temporarily in his Great-Grandfather Harvey’s care, she had been his nanny. Indirectly it was because of Matthew, and her consequent friendship with Kate and the visits she then made to Magnolia Square, that she had met Bob. He was a widower and, over tea and ginger biscuits in the Jennings’s kitchen, she fell in love with him almost at first sight.

  ‘Matthew isn’t with either of his aunts,’ Leon said abruptly, standing near the hall table, despair in his voice. ‘The school notified them of Matthew’s disappearance even before they notified us via the police, and they’ve kept in constant touch with them.’

  Ruth, who never intruded when her husband was acting in his professional capacity as shepherd of his flock, slipped into the kitchen. It was so out of character for Matthew to be behaving in a way that would cause his parents such anxiety. He wasn’t remotely a young tearaway. No matter what the personal faults of St Osyth’s headmaster, the school itself was one which inculcated the virtues of good manners and courtesy and, unlike some boys his age she could mention, Matthew was a courteous and sensitive child.

  She filled the kettle at the sink. Out in her back garden a blackbird was happily rooting for worms. If Matthew wasn’t with either of his Harvey aunts, and he hadn’t returned home, where else would he have gone? She put the kettle on the gas stove, waiting for it to boil, thinking as hard as she could.

  ‘There isn’t anywhere else,’ Leon was saying to Bob. ‘The only other family Matthew has, apart from his aunts, is his Grandad Voigt, and Kate walked down to Greenwich yesterday afternoon to break the news to him. He and Ellen haven’t seen Matthew, or heard from him.’

  Ellen was Kate’s stepmother, a kindly, chronically shy woman, who had never had children of her own and who adored all five of her step-grandchildren.

  ‘Was it the headmaster you spoke to, or the school secretary?’

  ‘The headmaster.’ A spasm of bitter frustration passed across Leon’s usually good-humoured face. The headmaster had spoken to him as he always did, as if he’d just emerged from a jungle thicket and was way too inferior to be spoken to civilly.

  Bob registered the expression and was able to make an accurate guess as to what had caused it. Long ago, when he talked to Leon and Kate before marrying them, he warned them that not everyone would look with favour on their mixed-race marriage and that they would have to be prepared not only for the difficulties that beset every marriage but for other, more specific, difficulties, also.

  He said now, ‘Was the headmaster able to throw any light as to why Matthew should have run away? Has he spoken to Matthew’s friends? To his various teachers?’

  Leon ran a hand over his crinkly hair. ‘Yes, he has, but Matthew doesn’t seem to have confided in anyone. According to his teachers he seemed perfectly normal on the day he disappeared. There was a games lesson in the morning followed by a double period of history. His games master said Matthew had bowled beautifully and that he was looking forward to playing in an inter-school match scheduled for the end of next week.’ He paused as Ruth came out of the kitchen, a mug of steaming tea in either hand. ‘His history master said Matthew’s class were studying Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and that Matthew, as usual, showed lively interest,’ he continued, taking one of the mugs from her as Bob relieved her of the other one. ‘In the afternoon he had a music lesson, which isn’t one of his favourite lessons, but which he doesn’t dislike enough to explain his running away that evening, then he had an English class and then the school’s career officer gave a talk on careers the boys might like to consider.’

  Bob raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘A careers talk is a little premature for a class of twelve-year-olds, isn’t it?’

  Leon shrugged. St Osyth’s was a public school so many worlds removed from his own state schooling that nothing in its curriculum surprised him. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said truthfully. ‘All I know is that it doesn’t account for Matthew’s running away from school some time that evening, or, if he didn’t go that evening, running away early next morning.’ He sipped at his tea, not really tasting it, dreading the thought of returning home. Kate had such fierce hopes where Matthew’s aunts were concerned. When he told her Matthew wasn’t with either of them she was going to be devastated. ‘I suppose,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I suppose I should telephone the aunts and speak to them myself, shouldn’t I?’

  Bob nodded.

  Leon sighed. Speaking to Matthew’s aunts was going to be even more of a nightmare than speaking to his headmaster. They both spoke with such plummy accents it was nearly impossible for him to understand what they were saying, and he knew that both of them would somehow blame him for Matthew’s disappearance.

  ‘I’ll be in the kitchen with Ruth,’ Bob said, knowing that though one of Matthew’s aunts lived in London, in Kensington, the other lived in Somerset. It would take quite some time for the telephone connection to be made between London and Somerset and, when it finally was made, Leon would want to be able to talk in privacy. ‘I’ll have a fresh cup of tea waiting for you when you come off the telephone,’ he added, aware that the day ahead was going to be both long and fraught, ‘and I think we’d better have some toast with it. Kate won’t be wanting to make you a breakfast this morning. She’s going to have too much on her mind.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Kate must be worried out of her mind,’ Christina said, appalled.

  Billy, who was pretty appalled himself when he woke up that morning to the realization that he still hadn’t told Jack about Matthew’s disappearance, said, ‘She doesn’t look to be in a flap about it, but then Kate never flaps, does she?’ He was seated at the table in the Robson’s roomy kitchen, his hands around a pint mug of steaming tea.

  Jack, who’d been in the middle of shaving when Billy’s early morning knock had rudely disturbed him, was still only half-dressed, his trousers sitting low on his hips, his belt buckle glinting against firm, olive-toned flesh. ‘What are the police doing about it?’ he asked, a frown furrowing his brow.

  Billy shrugged. ‘I dunno. I ’spect they’ll be keeping a lookout for him, but what else can they do? It isn’t as if he’s only a nipper, is it? He’s twelve years old. When I was twelve I was always making myself scarce. Whenever the circus moved off from its bank holiday pitch on the heath, I always went with it for a few days. I know Rochester and Gravesend even better than I do Woolwich and Greenwich. Mum must have gone spare with worry but it would’ve never occurred to her to put the coppers on to me.’

  This was undoubtedly the truth, but Jack was well aware that now, with Christina present, was not the time to reminisce about Mavis’s slapdash attitude to the responsibilities of mother-hood. Billy wasn’t to know it, but in the Robson house any mention of Mavis was strictly verboten.

  ‘Me neither.’ There was more than an edge of irony in his voice. When he was young Matthew’s age, his dad, Charlie, had been a gelly-man, blowing bank safes open the length and breadth of the country. There’d have been as much chance of Charlie walking into a police station to report him missing as there would have been of pigs flying.

  Chr
istina turned the light down under a pan of tomatoes and mushrooms and poured tea into a china cup with forget-me-nots painted on its rim and, after placing it on a matching saucer, carried it to the table. Despite his having Mavis for a mother, she had a soft spot for Billy. In many ways he was a younger, less tough, less blatantly sexual, version of Jack, the Jack of pre-war, pre-Commando days. The Jack that Mavis had known, and she had not.

  ‘As soon as we’ve had breakfast I’ll go and see Kate, and see if there’s anything I can do to help,’ she said, her voice and face betraying no hint of her turbulent thoughts. ‘Perhaps I’ll be able to look after Johnny for her, or take Jilly to school.’

  ‘I reckon Daisy’ll be taking Jilly to school,’ Billy said, wondering if he might be lucky enough to accidentally-on-purpose bump into her as she did so. By the time Daisy usually walked across the heath to Blackheath Village and her own school – posh Blackheath High School for Girls – where she and his cousin Rose were scholarship girls, he’d been at his scrap-metal yard in Greenwich for a good hour. This morning was different, though. This morning he’d had to pass Leon’s now-belated message on to Jack.

  Christina suppressed a spasm of disappointment. She would have liked to take seven-year-old Jilly to school. As Jilly trotted along at her side, her hand in hers, she could have pretended that Jilly was her little girl – hers and Jack’s – and that the walk was one the two of them took every day. She could have pretended that her days weren’t empty and pointless but were, instead, filled with the deeply satisfying tasks of mothering and cherishing.