The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  Her announcement had the desired effect. The subject of her going to work in the market was immediately forgotten as Leah remonstrated long and loud on the insanity of putting chemicals onto perfectly healthy, God-given straight hair.

  Conversations between Leah and Carrie were always lovingly volatile and Kate let the ensuing argument wash over her, giving Bonzo, the whippet, an occasional pat as he nuzzled against her legs, hopeful of a tit-bit.

  As Carrie protested that it was only sense to improve on nature whenever possible and Leah declared that if Carrie had been meant to have curly hair, she would have been born with curly hair, Kate thought back to her conversation with Miss Godfrey. It really had been most peculiar, not least because of the intensity of Miss Godfrey’s manner. It had been almost as if she had been afraid of something, something she couldn’t quite bring herself to put into words.

  ‘. . . and then the next thing you’ll be doing is peroxiding it like Gloria Swansong,’ Leah was saying as she stacked the empty soup bowls and carried them across to the sink.

  ‘It’s Swanson, Gran. Not Swansong,’ Carrie said with a giggle, adding teasingly, ‘it’s a good idea though. What do you think, Kate? Should I peroxide it before I have it permed, or after?’

  Kate looked at Carrie’s mane of almost blue-black hair and said in amusement, ‘I doubt there’s enough peroxide in the world to lift your hair to blonde.’

  ‘We might be able to get it to go red, though,’ Carrie said, enjoying herself hugely. ‘Do you think it would make me look like Maureen O’Sullivan in A Connecticut Yankee? All wild and untameable?’

  Leah snorted in disgust. ‘A nebbish is what you would look,’ she said, putting plates of fried plaice in front of them. ‘Better you go bald than go red!’

  Carrie shrieked in horror and Kate laughed, slipping Bonzo a surreptitious piece of fish.

  Leah sat down again and this time it was her turn to do the teasing, ‘And bald is what you’ll go if you work down the market,’ she said, giving Kate a wink Carrie didn’t see. ‘For why do you think all those market women wear headscarves, bubbelah? It’s because all that fresh air makes them bald, that’s for why.’

  Kate and Carrie shouted in laughter and the laughter continued as the subject of home-perming and baldness gave way to a discussion as to whether Bonzo should be allowed on the Folkestone trip and, if he were, if he should go as an official member of the pub cricket team.

  At last Kate said regretfully, ‘It’s nearly six. I have to go. Thank you for a marvellous tea, Mrs Singer.’

  ‘I have to go as well, Gran,’ Carrie said, pushing her chair away from the table. ‘I’m babysitting for Mavis and I want to get round there early enough to make sure she’s bathed Billy and fed him.’

  As Kate followed Carrie out of the kitchen and down the hall towards the front door, she picked her blazer up off the cluttered clothes-horse and said, ‘Do you want me to call for you tomorrow at the usual time or are you going up to Covent Garden with your mum and dad?’

  Carrie gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘After a late night baby-sitting for Mavis? You must be joking! Eight o’clock will be quite early enough for me tomorrow, thank you very much.’

  They stepped out into Magnolia Square and looked towards Mavis’s top step. It was empty.

  ‘Which could mean she’s already getting Billy ready for bed,’ Kate suggested optimistically.

  ‘Or that she’s resting with a cup of tea and a ciggie after shelling the peas,’ Carrie said darkly. ‘Honestly, how Ted puts up with her I don’t know. Dad says the Pope should make him a saint.’

  Albert Jennings’s high opinion of his son-in-law was well known to Kate. Mavis had always been what Albert described as ‘a bit of a handful’ and he had been vastly relieved when Mavis had married a level-headed, even-tempered young man who brought home an enviable pay-packet as a docker.

  ‘See you tomorrow then,’ Kate said to Carrie as they reached Mavis’s front gate.

  Carrie nodded, ‘Dad says there’s a glut of cherries at the moment so don’t bother with breakfast, we’ll be able to stuff ourselves all day.’

  When they had been much younger, permission to help themselves to the produce had been one of the ways Albert Jennings had tempted them into spending long Saturdays helping out on the stall and even though he now gave them handsome wages for the hours they worked, it was a perk that still continued.

  As Carrie walked up the Lomaxes’ front path Kate hooked a thumb under the collar of her blazer and swung it over her shoulder. She liked the Square at this time of an evening. It possessed a mellow, friendly air. Men were coming home from work, the greater proportion of them walking into the Square from Magnolia Hill and the general direction of the river and the docks; children were making the most of the precious interim between teatime and bedtime, gathering around lampposts for games of chequers or hopscotch or long-rope skipping; women who had the leisure to do so, like Miss Godfrey, were trimming hedges and dead-heading flowers.

  From the garden of the house tucked into the south-west corner of the Square, a frail, apparently disembodied voice said pleasantly, ‘Isn’t it a lovely evening? The vibrations are perfect for contacting the dear departed.’

  Kate stopped walking and faced a head-high bush of frilled white roses. ‘It’s a lovely evening, Miss Helliwell,’ she agreed as two heavy trusses of blossom were parted by a pair of rheumatically afflicted, blue-veined hands.

  Miss Emily Helliwell, Palm-Reader and Clairvoyant, beamed at her. ‘I’ve been in touch with Chopin all afternoon. Such a dear, dear man and so sad there has never been a rose named after him. Something golden, I think, would be very suitable. A cross between Star of Persia and Gloire de Dijon perhaps?’

  Well used to Miss Helliwell’s eccentricities, Kate replied gravely that she thought a rose on the lines of Gloire de Dijon would suit Chopin very well.

  Miss Helliwell’s cat, an enormous creature even more well fed than Bonzo, darted out of the garden and began to brush himself sinuously against her legs. Kate bent down and scratched him gently beneath the chin and Miss Helliwell said, ‘I’m afraid Faust has been very naughty today. He will chase birds and it does so upset my sister.’

  Kate made a murmur of sympathy. Miss Esther Helliwell was bedridden and her great pleasure in life was to look out at the garden and its masses of roses.

  ‘Are you going to come in and have a few words with her?’ Miss Helliwell asked, her bright-eyed, wrinkled face hopeful. ‘Mr Nibbs called in this afternoon but I’m sure another visitor would be very welcome. I can make a pot of tea and . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Helliwell, I can’t,’ Kate said apologetically. ‘I’ll call in tomorrow, on my way home from the market.’

  ‘Evening, ladies,’ Daniel Collins senior said, striding towards them wearing an oil-spattered boiler-suit, a newspaper tucked beneath his arm. ‘Have you read what that bugger Hitler’s doing now? Only rounding up everyone he doesn’t like and flinging them into camps. Very odd race of people, the Germans. No sense of moderation.’

  ‘Hitler isn’t German, Mr Collins,’ Kate said, her voice sounding a little odd even to herself. ‘He’s Austrian.’

  ‘Whatever he is, he’s a blighter,’ Mr Collins said cheerfully. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you had those roses lopped down a bit, Miss Helliwell? They’re beginning to look like a perishin’ jungle.’

  As Miss Helliwell protested strongly at the very idea of having her roses tampered with, Kate walked away from them, continuing on her way home, wondering why everyone had Hitler on the brain.

  ‘First it was Miss Godfrey,’ she said to her father an hour later as she put a plate of sausage and mash on the table in front of him, ‘and then it was Mr Collins.’

  Carl Voigt smiled slightly and reached for a bottle of brown sauce. ‘It’s only to be expected,’ he said in a voice betraying only the merest hint of an accent. ‘Germany hasn’t been out of the news all month. First it was the news that Ge
rman citizenship had been declared conditional on Nazi membership and then there was the decree that the importing of banned books would be punishable by death. With Hitler instigating the passing into law of such obscenities, of course people are talking about him.’

  Kate sat down opposite him and sipped at a mug of tea. ‘It wasn’t Hitler being mentioned, it was the way he was mentioned, or at least the way Miss Godfrey mentioned him, that was odd.’ She hesitated and then said, troubled, ‘She made it sound as if people would assume, because you’re German, that you’re an admirer of what is now going on in Germany.’

  Carl Voigt’s eyebrows rose slightly over the top of his rimless spectacles. ‘Did she?’ he queried mildly. ‘Were those her exact words?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Kate admitted, adding defensively, ‘but that was definitely her implication.’

  Carl speared the end of a crisply fried sausage. ‘I think you misconstrued whatever it was she said to you,’ he said at last, ‘and I also think you’re being over-sensitive, Liebling. No-one who knows me would ever, in a million years, imagine I was an admirer of the present German government.’

  The idea was so preposterous that Kate’s sensation of uneasiness immediately began to ebb. ‘I know that,’ she said with a grin, ‘but all the same, her manner was odd.’

  ‘If it will make you any happier I’ll talk to her about it,’ Carl said, keeping his own suspicions as to what Miss Godfrey had been trying to convey to Kate to himself. There was no sense in anticipating unpleasantness, especially when it was unpleasantness that couldn’t possibly affect his English-born daughter.

  He speared the last piece of sausage with his fork and said appreciatively, ‘That was a wonderful dinner, Liebling.’

  She rose to her feet and picked up his plate, carrying it across to the sink. ‘Are you going to The Swan this evening?’ she asked, her thoughts no longer on her puzzling conversation with Miss Godfrey, but on the pub’s annual outing to Folkestone which her father always helped to arrange.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, there’s a meeting tonight to settle on the date of the trip. Daniel Collins thinks we should change it from August Bank Holiday weekend to an earlier date when Folkestone won’t be so crowded.’

  ‘It’s a good idea, but it’s a bit late to change this year’s date, isn’t it?’ Kate asked, plunging her father’s plate and knife and fork into a bowl of soapy hot water. ‘It’s July already.’

  ‘We could go the week beforehand.’ Carl pushed his chair away from the table. ‘The only person it will inconvenience will be Nibbo. He doesn’t mind closing shop on a Bank Holiday weekend but it’s going to half-kill him to put up the shutters on a normal weekend.’

  He picked up a large shabby briefcase and withdrew a pile of exercise-books from it, putting them on the table where he wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing them when he came home from his meeting at The Swan.

  ‘What on earth are those?’ Kate asked, her eyebrows rising. ‘School’s over until September.’

  ‘Not for teachers, it isn’t,’ Carl said dryly. He gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Cheerio, Liebling. I’ll be back by nine.’

  When he had gone she dried her hands on a tea towel and went into the living-room. A library edition of J. B. Priestley’s The Good Companions lay on the arm of a chair, a bookmark placed strategically at the end of chapter five. She picked it up and carried it outside, sitting on the scoured top step. Though it was now after seven the sun was still warm and the air was heavy with the fragrance of the flowers in her own, and her neighbours’, gardens.

  She read a few pages and was interrupted by Mr Nibbs calling out a greeting as he left his house intent on the same destination as her father and by Charlie Robson calling a greeting as he walked towards Magnolia Terrace, his alsatian, Queenie, at his heels.

  Kate put her book face down on her knee and watched man and dog until they were out of sight. Charlie Robson was obviously going to take Queenie for a walk on the Heath. On such a lovely summer evening there couldn’t be a nicer activity and she wished she had had the forethought to have asked Carrie’s grandmother if she could take Bonzo for a walk. It was too late now and she closed her eyes, enjoying the heavy, sweet smell of Miss Godfrey’s carnations and the rhythmic sound of a distant lawnmower.

  ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ Hettie Collins, Danny Collins’s mother, called out cheerily. She was on her way to arrange the flowers at St Mark’s Church and the shopping bag she was carrying was crammed with freshly cut sweet peas and lilies and columbines. ‘On an evening like this you know that God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world!’

  ‘You certainly do, Mrs Collins,’ Kate agreed, trying to remember where the quotation came from and flashing her a wide, sunny smile. ‘I finished school today and I start secretarial school in September.’

  ‘Good for you, dear. My Danny’s joined the army. He doesn’t half look a smasher in his uniform. I envy both of you. You’ve got your whole lives to look forward to. I must be getting on though, dear. I can’t stay talking. There’s a wedding tomorrow and there’s a lot of flowers to arrange. Toodle-doo.’

  ‘Toodle-doo,’ Kate rejoined exuberantly, suffused with sheer animal good spirits. She had remembered where the quotation about God being in his heaven had come from. It was from a poem by Robert Browning. She knew also that Mrs Collins was right and that the whole of her adult life lay before her; a huge adventure she couldn’t wait to begin.

  She closed her eyes again, day-dreaming of the wonderful things to come. When her father came home she was still there, her book face down on her knee, asleep in the blue-spangled dusk.

  Chapter Two

  AUGUST 1936

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a little beneath our dignity to go on the Folkestone trip this year?’ Carrie asked, looking at herself critically in the full-length dressing-table mirror in Kate’s bedroom. ‘I mean, it isn’t as if we can let our hair down, is it? Not when your dad is organizing it and my mum and dad and gran are going on it, not to mention Mavis and Ted and the kids.’

  ‘Mrs Collins told me Danny is hoping to be home on leave that weekend and that, if he is, he wants to be counted in for the trip,’ Kate said guilefully, continuing to paint her nails a devilish scarlet as Carrie surveyed the squared shoulders of the lavender crêpe dress Kate had helped her to make.

  Carrie raised an eyebrow in mock offence. ‘And just what is that remark supposed to mean?’ she asked, knowing very well what it meant. ‘If you’d said King Edward, I might have been tempted.’

  ‘You’re neither married or American so you stand no chance there,’ Kate said dryly, painting her last nail with care.

  Carrie returned her attention to her dress. ‘I’m not at all sure about these puff sleeves,’ she said doubtfully. ‘They make me feel top-heavy.’

  ‘You don’t look top-heavy,’ Kate said truthfully, ‘and the skirt hangs wonderfully.’

  Carrie did a pirouette, the cross-cut, mid-length skirt swirling around her legs. ‘Do you think the rumours are true?’ she asked, referring to King Edward. ‘Do you think the King really does want to marry Mrs Simpson?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘He can’t marry her, can he? I expect he’ll end up marrying Princess Frederica or Princess Alexandrine Louise.’

  Carrie turned away from the mirror. ‘And who are they, when they’re at home?’ she asked, flinging herself face down on the bed beside Kate.

  Kate waved her wet fingernails in the air in order to dry them. Ever since she had left secretarial school two years ago and begun work as a junior typist in a City office, Carrie had treated her as the fount of all wisdom. ‘Princess Frederica is the granddaughter of the Kaiser and Princess Alexandrine Louise is the third daughter of Prince Harald of Denmark,’ she said obligingly.

  ‘Blimey, we could do without a German queen at the moment. She might want Hitler to come to the wedding! And speaking of boring old Hitler, you’ll never guess my latest news.’

  She rolled over on to her s
ide, propping herself up on her arm. ‘We’re taking a Jewish refugee in. She’s the granddaughter of an old friend of Gran’s who went to live in Dresden when she was a young girl. Gran kept in touch with her for a little while but hasn’t heard from her for over forty years. Then, out of the blue, she received a letter via the Red Cross from something called an Auffanglager in Lucerne. Apparently it’s a humanitarian camp for Jewish refugees who have managed to cross the lake that forms the border between Germany and Switzerland. Her friend’s granddaughter is interned there, and she’d given the Red Cross Gran’s name in the hope Gran might be able to help her gain an entry visa into Britain.’

  Kate stared at her round-eyed. ‘And what did your gran do?’

  Carrie grinned. ‘She got Dad to write to the Home Office saying that if Christina Frank, her friend’s granddaughter, was given an entry visa into Britain he would both give her a home and employment. It’s taken quite a while to arrange and more letters than Dad’s ever written in his life before, but she’s finally been granted a visa.’

  ‘I think that’s . . .’ Kate sought for a suitable word and couldn’t find one that summed up her admiration sufficiently, ‘. . . magnificent,’ she said at last.

  ‘It ain’t bad, is it?’ Carrie agreed, enjoying the reflected glory. ‘She’ll have Mavis’s old room and now he’s going to have a third pair of hands helping down the market Dad’s going to take on an extra stall. Mum says he’s becoming quite a little empire-builder.’

  Kate giggled. ‘Mr Nibbs will have a pink fit. He was telling Dad last night that he thinks even Miss Helliwell is jaunting down to the market to do the bulk of her shopping.’

  ‘She is,’ Carrie said complacently. ‘And as Dad always slips her some bruised fruit for free, she’s likely to continue doing so.’

  Through the open window Miss Godfrey could be heard discussing a forthcoming church fête with Mrs Collins and Kate said musingly, ‘Miss Helliwell’s going to be doing palm-readings at the fête. Don’t you think it’s about time we asked her to read ours?’