Coronation Summer

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Yer can’t arrest a woman!’ Charlie was saying in outrage to two overly keen young coppers as they laid hands on Ruth Giles. ‘An’ especially not this woman! She’s a vicar’s wife!’

  ‘And I’m Kublai Khan,’ one of the coppers said grimly. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Down the station with you.’

  ‘Blimey, this is a bit of all right, ain’t it?’ Nellie said gleefully to Hettie. ‘If we play our cards right, we’ll get a lift in a Black Maria! And a Black Maria’ll be far comfier than Albert’s fruit and veg lorry!’

  ‘Carrie! CARRIE!’ Danny bawled as, the towel around his neck proclaiming him one of the seconds and perhaps one of the fight organizers, the police made a bee-line for him. ‘I got to talk to yer!’

  For one split second, Carrie hesitated. To begin forcing a way through the mayhem to Danny’s side would mean being almost instantly apprehended by a policeman. No matter how utterly dreadful it made her feel, it was a risk she couldn’t take. Aware that she was now at absolute crisis point, feeling as if her heart were being wrenched from her chest, she began, instead, to push and pummel her way to the nearest exit.

  ‘The Greenland,’ she said breathlessly to the cabby who, once she had sprinted clear of the warren of cobbled streets around the warehouse, swerved to stop for her.

  ‘There ain’t a pub I know of by that name,’ he said helpfully as she scrambled into the rear of the cab. ‘Only a bleedin’ great dock.’

  ‘I want the dock. I want the dock entrance.’

  He looked at her through his driving mirror, his eyebrows rising. ‘Blimey, everyone else in London is makin’ for the Mall and Whitehall, and you want a bleedin’ dock! What do you know that no one else knows? Is the Coronation Procession goin’ to be sailing down the Thames?’

  Incredibly, despite the almost unbearable state of nervous and emotional tension she was in, a grin twitched at the corner of Carrie’s mouth. She’d forgotten completely about tomorrow being Coronation Day. As the cab veered off the main road and into cobbled streets similar to those that surrounded the warehouse, she was aware of the unusual number of people making their way to the centre of the city on foot. Most of them were carrying blankets or picnic rugs, intent, once they had found a suitable pitch from which they would be able to get a good view of things, on keeping warm throughout the night. Her mother and Hettie would no doubt soon be joining their ranks. Or they would if they didn’t end up spending the night in a police station.

  The cab swerved round a sharp corner on which a red-white-and-blue-festooned pub stood.

  ‘There’ll be fireworks down by the river soon, I shouldn’t wonder,’ the cab-driver said chattily. ‘You’ll get a good view of them from the Greenland.’

  Fireworks were the very last thing on Carrie’s mind. She sat back on the cracked leather seat, aware of the smell of stale exhaust fumes and Capstan full-strength tobacco. Her dad smoked Capstan full-strength. The smell was redolent of home, as was the familiar smell of the Thames when she opened the window. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what the scents and smells of New Zealand would be like.

  ‘You’re here, love,’ the cabby said, skidding to a halt with a screech of brakes. ‘But are you sure you want to be? The docks are no place for a woman, especially when it’s as black as pitch.’

  Carrie fumbled in the pocket of her swing-back coat for her purse. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Really I am.’

  The cabby shrugged. He’d given a word of warning, he couldn’t do more. ‘Take care,’ he said as she stepped out of the cab and proffered him his fare through his open window, adding for no real reason except that it was a piece of advice most people could do with, ‘And don’t do anything you might regret!’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It had been drizzling and the cobbles were sheened with damp. Pier 25. How on earth, in an area as vast as the Greenland, was she going to find pier 25? Panic bubbled up in her throat. What if the Orion sailed before she found it? What if she never saw Zac again?

  ‘Pier 25?’ a night-time dock-worker said in answer to her frantic query. ‘You’re nearly on top of it, Missis. You see that big black hulk over there? That’s the ship that’s just limped in. Engine trouble, I believe. It’ll be lucky to be unloaded now before Wednesday.’

  Carrie began to run. She wasn’t familiar with the docks and she didn’t like them. They were too vast; too lonely; too dark. Jumping over a pile of rope, narrowly avoiding a pile of barely visible crates, she neared the enormous cargo-ship, seeing with vast relief the name Orion on its prow.

  The gangplank was down and there were people about. ‘Vamos a tomar un trago, hombre,’ she heard a sailor who had obviously just disembarked saying wearily to his companion. She didn’t know what he was saying, and didn’t care. All that mattered was that she’d found the boat and that she was, surely, only seconds away from finding Zac.

  ‘Carrie!’ He was striding away from the knot of sailors standing at the far side of the gangplank, his hair as pale as barley in the moonlight.

  Somehow, between leaving the warehouse and arriving at the ship, he had managed to dress. His sweat-marked T-shirt was stretched across his magnificent chest and his American jeans were snug on his hips. He was at her side, his arms around her, his lips hard and hot on hers. She clung to him as if she were clinging to a life-raft in a stormy sea. She loved him. He’d walked into her life without the slightest warning and the chaos he had caused in it would reverberate life-long.

  ‘Carrie?’ He lifted his head from hers and was looking down at where she was standing. ‘Where’s your bag? Did you have to leave it behind at the warehouse?’

  ‘Si, esa es una buena idea,’ someone was saying close by them.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, drinking in the sight of him and the male scent of him so that she would be able to remember it forever. ‘I didn’t pack a bag, Zac. I’m not going, you see.’ Tears were streaming down her face. ‘I can’t go. I can’t leave Rose . . . or Danny. He loves me, even though he has a funny way of showing it at times. And he needs me—’

  ‘I need you!’

  Carrie felt as if she was literally fighting for breath. The gangplank was only a couple of feet away. Two steps, that was all that it would take. She didn’t see the young boy at the top of the gangplank; didn’t see him begin to stumble down it, relief and trepidation in every line of his body.

  ‘I love you, Carrie!’ Zac said with a ferocity that robbed her legs of all strength. ‘I love you as you ought to be loved! There’s a life waiting for us in New Zealand that you can’t even begin to imagine. I have mates there, money—’

  The slight figure stepped from the bottom of the gangplank on to the dockside. ‘Aunt Carrie?’ Matthew’s voice was filled with dazed disbelief. ‘Is that you, Aunt Carrie? How did you know I was on the Orion? Do Mum and Dad know as well? Are they here? Are—’

  ‘MATTHEW!’ Carrie spun to face him as if shot. ‘Matthew! It’s you? Really you?’ She darted towards him, seizing hold of him, sure she must be hallucinating.

  ‘Why are you here, Aunt Carrie?’ Matthew asked again, aware, now, that his mum and dad weren’t with her. That no one was with her except a man he had never seen before. ‘How did you know I was on the Orion if Mum and Dad didn’t know?’

  ‘Oh, Matthew!’ Carrie hugged him close. ‘I didn’t know you were on the Orion! No one did! Did you stow away? Your mum and dad have been frantic—’

  ‘I didn’t stow away.’ His face was wan with tiredness and stress. ‘It was all an accident, Aunt Carrie. Mum and Dad will believe me, won’t they? Are we going to go home now? Are we going to go home together?’

  With her arm still clasping his shoulders, Carrie lifted her head, her eyes holding Zac’s. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, Matthew, we’re going home together.’

  There was utter finality in her voice. Looking at her, as she stood with her coal-dark hair a drizzle-damp tangle of curls, her raspberry-pink coat almost luminous in the darkness, Zac k
new that nothing he could now say would change her mind. For the moment, he was beaten. But he wasn’t beaten for good. Once in New Zealand, and with the money waiting there for him safely in his possession, the world would be his oyster. He stepped towards her and, uncaring of Matthew Harvey’s presence, kissed her long and hard.

  ‘I shall be back for you, Carrie Collins,’ he said hoarsely when at last he raised his head from hers. ‘It isn’t over between us. By crikey it isn’t!’

  Carrie didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. With her arm still hugging Matthew’s shoulder, she turned and began walking away from him. Away from the ship. Away from the dock. She hadn’t said the word ‘goodbye’. It had been beyond her. And she hadn’t told him about the baby she was certain she was carrying. To have done so would have made what she was now doing impossible. And what she was now doing was walking back towards Magnolia Square, to everything that made up the fabric of her life – Rose, Danny, her mum and dad, her friends.

  ‘Look, Aunt Carrie!’ Matthew said suddenly. ‘Fireworks!’

  They blazed across the sky, cascading down over the Thames in a huge, golden shower. Carrie came to a halt for a moment, looking up at them. Somewhere, distantly, a civic clock began chiming midnight. It was Coronation Day and their families were waiting for them.

  ‘Let’s run, Matthew!’ she said with sudden urgency, letting go of his shoulder and seizing hold of his hand. ‘Let’s run all the way up Greenwich Hill and over the heath! Let’s run and run until we’re home!’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘She’s run off,’ Danny was saying in a cracked voice as he stood in stupefied anguish on the colourful rag-rug that graced the centre of the Emmersons’ roomy kitchen. ‘My Carrie’s left me. She’s gone off with that bastard ’Emingway and she ain’t never comin’ back. I know she ain’t.’ His voice broke completely, tears streaking his freckled face. ‘What am I goin’ ter do?’ His plea was addressed to Leon, his desperation total. ‘What are me and Rose goin’ ter do if Carrie don’t come ’ome?’

  Leon stared at his friend, too appalled for speech. It was after midnight and the two of them had not long returned from Greenwich police station where they had both been released on bail. Bob Giles was still down there, for Ruth was so outraged at the way she had been manhandled into a Black Maria, she was refusing to allow him to pay bail for her, declaring that she had every intention of remaining in a police cell until she received a written apology.

  ‘She’ll wait till Doomsday,’ Miriam said as, let off with a caution, she’d barrelled out of the police station, Hettie and Nellie on either side of her. ‘An her Fair Isle sweater’ll never be the same again,’ she added sagely, ‘not now it’s bin snagged to ’igh ’eaven by ’andcuffs!’

  Now, as if it wasn’t enough that Leon had to tell Kate that Ruth was still in a cell at Greenwich nick, Danny was now telling them all that Carrie had run off with Zac Hemingway! It was too preposterous to be true – though Danny obviously didn’t think it so. Danny looked like a man whose world had come to a very unexpected, cataclysmic end.

  ‘Just because Carrie isn’t home, and Zac isn’t at his digs, doesn’t mean . . .’ Leon began inadequately.

  ‘Is Mr Hemingway the gentleman who won the fight?’ Genevre Harvey interrupted with bright interest. ‘Because if he is, perhaps he’s being held in a police station? If his opponent is still being held in a police station somewhere, and if—’

  ‘The ape that glassed my mother is in ’ospital, not nick,’ Billy put in from where he was standing, leaning against the sink, one arm around Daisy’s shoulders.

  Leon groaned. Why the Harvey aunts were still in his home, privy to this domestic mayhem, he didn’t for the life of him know.

  ‘They want to spend Coronation Day in Magnolia Square,’ Kate said to him when he had arrived home from the police station to find them installed in the kitchen. ‘They’re going to stay the night in a local hotel. Or they are if the hotel is still open,’ she added, looking at the clock. ‘They’ve been too interested in everything that’s been going on to want to leave. First Lettie called by, telling us of how the fight had been raided, and then Queenie called in, full of how you, Danny, Nellie, Hettie, Ruth and goodness only knows who else, had been arrested.’

  ‘And Matthew’s Aunt Deborah and Nellie are friends,’ Jilly had said from where she was sitting on a pouffe in her dressing-gown and slippers, a bowl of warm, milky cornflakes on her knee. ‘And so she wasn’t going to leave, Daddy. Not until we heard if everyone was to be released from the police station for Coronation Day.’

  Aware of Jilly’s continuing presence, Leon groaned again. How was he going to explain away Danny’s announcement that Carrie had run off with Zac Hemingway? How, come to that, was he going to explain it to Luke and Johnny, both of whom had been woken by all the comings and goings and were sitting at the kitchen table in their pyjamas, Johnny still sleepy and not understanding too much; Luke understanding everything.

  ‘I’ll come home with you mate, and wait with you till Carrie shows up,’ he said now to Danny. ‘I’m sure things aren’t as bad as you think they are and—’

  ‘I love ’er, yer see.’ Danny ran a hand despairingly through spiky hair that had once been carrot-red and was now peppered with grey. ‘I’ve never ever loved anyone else. Only Carrie.’

  He looked so totally despairing, so bewildered and dazed, that even Deborah Harvey was moved to pity. ‘You must pull yourself together, young man,’ she said gruffly from the rocking-chair she had, as usual, appropriated. ‘There’s no sense in giving way before you’re even certain of the facts.’

  Johnny turned towards Kate, tugging at her skirt. ‘Wasser-matter, Mummy?’ he asked plaintively, his speech blurred by sleepiness. ‘Where’s Auntie Cawwie? Why has she gone away?’ Aware that something was very wrong, even though he didn’t understand what, he began to cry. ‘Want Aunt Cawwie back,’ he hiccuped through his tears. ‘Don’t want her gone away. Want her back.’

  ‘Sssh, sweetheart,’ Kate said comfortingly, hugging him close. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ Even to her own ears, her words lacked conviction. If Carrie had indeed run off with Zac Hemingway, then nothing would be all right ever again. At the knowledge that Carrie must have needed to confide in her for weeks past and, not wanting to burden her with even more worries, hadn’t done so, Kate felt so sick at heart that she couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy again. If Carrie were to disappear out of her life . . . She couldn’t bring the thought to a conclusion. It was too dreadful, too utterly unthinkable. Danny had to be wrong in his assumption that Carrie had run off with Zac Hemingway, because if he wasn’t . . . if he wasn’t, then life in Magnolia Square would never be the same again.

  ‘I think I should get Danny home,’ Leon said to her, not wanting there to be any further revelations about Carrie and Zac in front of the children.

  Kate nodded. There was, after all, nothing else anyone could do. As Leon compassionately took hold of Danny’s arm and began steering him out of the kitchen, she looked towards the clock. It was nearly one in the morning. Deborah and Genevre Harvey would never gain admittance to their hotel now. If Luke slept in Matthew’s room, and Johnny slept toe-to-toe with Jilly, then Deborah and Genevre could share Luke and Johnny’s twin-bedded room.

  Wondering if she had the energy to put fresh sheets on the beds, she followed Leon and Danny down the hallway, her family trailing in her wake. Somewhere, as Leon opened the front door and he and Danny stepped out into the rain-damp air, a church clock chimed the hour.

  ‘It’s an hour into Coronation Day,’ Daisy said to Billy as light from the open doorway spilled down the garden path, ‘and none of us are going to want to celebrate, are we? We don’t know where Matthew is, and now we don’t know where Carrie is, either.’

  Johnny who, unlike Jilly and Luke, had no dressing-gown on over his pyjamas, began shivering, and Billy hoisted him up into his arms. What his mum was going to say when she heard about Carrie�
�s disappearance, he dreaded to think. She’d been quite chipper when he and Daisy said good night to her at the hospital a few hours earlier. He remembered that his mum didn’t like Zac Hemingway overmuch, and wondered if it was because she knew there was something going on between him and Carrie.

  ‘I wonder if . . .’ he began to say to Daisy as Deborah and Genevre Harvey joined them on the doorstep and Leon began walking Danny down the short flight of steps that led to the path. It was a sentence he never finished.

  From the direction of Magnolia Terrace and the heath, there came the sound of running feet. More than one pair of feet. And one of the pairs sounded to be wearing high heels. Everyone stood still. Whoever the runners were, they would be in the square within another few seconds. A drizzle of rain misted the moonlight, and on Nibbo’s magnolia tree coronation flags and balloons bobbed and swayed, milkily pale. The runners rounded the corner. Though it was too dark to distinguish them clearly, it was obvious that one was a woman and that the other was a boy. A boy of about twelve years old.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Kate sucked in her breath. ‘Oh my DEAR God!’ Before realization had dawned on anyone else, she began running down the steps, pushing past Danny and Leon, sprinting for the gate.

  ‘Mum!’ Matthew shouted, running as he’d never run in his life before, ‘MUM!’ He cut the vicarage corner, making a bee-line across it for number four. He saw the flags and balloons. He saw his family crowded on his doorstep, all of them bathed in golden light; Billy Lomax standing close to Daisy, Johnny in his arms; Jilly and Luke and, incredibly, his Aunt Genevre and Great-Aunt Deborah! His dad was standing on the pathway with Danny Collins, and his mum . . . his mum was racing towards him as if she had wings on her heels.

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ With a strangled sob, he covered the rapidly diminishing distance between them, flying into her arms like an arrow entering the gold. He was home! Home!