The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  Her head was against his chest and she was glad that she couldn’t see into his eyes for she knew that he was lying to her in the hope of comforting her. No matter what the outcome of the battles now being waged life would never be the same again, not for them and not for anyone else.

  ‘Mr Voigt?’ an unfamiliar voice called from the foot of the stairs. ‘Are you ready, sir? Time’s passing and we have to be on our way.’

  ‘Goodbye, Liebling.’ He kissed her tenderly on the top of her head. ‘God Bless.’

  As he reluctantly turned away from her and picked up his suitcase she said thickly, ‘I’m coming downstairs with you.’

  He merely nodded, the constriction in his throat too tight for speech. Silently he walked down the stairs towards the waiting policeman. The front door was open, as it had been ever since he had answered it to the unmistakably officious knock. As he stepped outside with his escort, Kate, a step or so behind him, could see a knot of curious onlookers standing on the pavement outside Miss Godfrey’s.

  Christina was there, her exquisitely boned face impassive, only the dark pools of her eyes betraying the deep pleasure she felt at the sight of an Aryan German being forcibly removed from his home and family. Miriam and Albert were with her, Albert having the grace to look slightly uncomfortable, Miriam displaying no such emotion. It was a warm day and she wore no cardigan over her sleeveless, flower-printed, cotton overall. Her plump arms were folded aggressively across her ample chest, her grim expression a clear announcement of her belief that the authorities wouldn’t be interning Carl Voigt unless they were certain he was a secret Nazi.

  Kate, remembering the long, happy years during which she had been made as welcome in Miriam’s home as if it had been her own, stared at the hostile figure in sick disbelief. Miriam’s eyes refused to meet hers.

  ‘Bloody Hun!’ a voice from the crowd that had gathered called out. ‘Pity you’re only being interned and not hung, drawn and quartered!’

  There was a shocked intake of breath from many members of the crowd but no-one spoke out in protest. Kate’s eyes flew in the direction the voice had come from. Though there were many faces she recognized: Miss Helliwell’s, Leah Singer’s, Nibbo’s, there were also many faces she didn’t recognize. She wondered where they had come from; how they had come by the news that a German living locally was to be arrested and interned.

  As her father stepped out on to the pavement he carefully closed the gate behind him, doing so before she could possibly follow him any further. Her hands tightened on its wrought-iron scrollwork. He didn’t want her to follow him any further. He didn’t want her to be witness to any more viciousness and hatred.

  As he and his escort strode briskly out of Magnolia Square and down Magnolia Terrace, the small crowd began to disperse. The faces she had been unable to recognize headed down towards Magnolia Hill and Lewisham. Albert put a work-gnarled hand beneath Miriam’s elbow and steered her away in the direction of their home. Leah Singer followed them. Miss Helliwell looked at Kate in almost pathetic bewilderment and then, without speaking to her, turned her back, hurrying after the Jennings, not wanting to be the last to leave the scene.

  That honour was Charlie’s. He stood on the pavement, his shirtsleeves rolled high, his shabby trousers held up around his paunch by a broad leather belt, Queenie at his heels.

  Kate’s knuckles were white as she tightened her hold on the gate. ‘What about you, Charlie?’ she demanded, her voice as taut as tightly strung wire. ‘Do you think my father should be hung, drawn and quartered as well?’

  Charlie, who had watched Carl Voigt’s figure until it had walked out of sight, was still staring after him. Slowly he turned and faced her.

  ‘I fink there’s bin a mistake,’ he said steadily. ‘I fink the bloody authorities ’ave taken leave of their senses.’ And in deep puzzlement he began to walk away from her and towards the Heath, Queenie trotting at his side.

  For a fleeting moment a dark, dizzy tide engulfed her. She didn’t know whether it was a supreme relief that at least Charlie had not metamorphosed into a hostile stranger or whether it was reaction to the knowledge that her father was no longer in sight, that he had gone and that she had no way of knowing when she would see him again.

  As the threat of fainting receded she became aware of someone’s presence by her side. ‘You need a cup of tea, my dear,’ Miss Godfrey said, her face nearly as white and strained as Kate’s own. ‘I’ve put the kettle on and I don’t want any arguments. You need a breathing space in which to adjust to what has just happened and in which to recover from the shock you must feel. Where that dreadful man who shouted at your father came from I can’t imagine. Lewisham, I suspect. Or possibly Catford.’

  Kate didn’t know, nor did she care. Wherever he came from the ugly sentiments he had expressed had not been shouted down by people her father had once regarded as friends; people who did not come from Lewisham or Catford but were his neighbours in Magnolia Square.

  Very slowly she released her hold of the gate. ‘Thank you very much for your offer, Miss Godfrey,’ she said, deeply appreciative of Miss Godfrey’s motivations, ‘but I would prefer to be on my own for a little while.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s at all wise, my dear,’ Miss Godfrey began, deeply perturbed. ‘I’ve put some lapsang souchong in the teapot and . . .’

  Kate was no longer listening to her. With a heart that physically hurt her, she was walking back down the short garden path towards a ringingly empty house.

  Chapter Nine

  The door closed behind her with a soft thud. Even when her father had been working at the bookshop his hours were such that he was invariably the first one of them home. After the brick incident, the owner of the bookshop had awkwardly suggested that it might be better, under the circumstances, if his employment there was terminated. Her father had had no option but to agree with him and since that date his days had been spent pottering about in the house, reading widely and following the war news avidly. Now his chair in the sitting-room was empty; in the kitchen, the atlas on the table, in which he did his best to plot the latest German and Allied troop movements, was closed.

  She sat down and pressed her fingers to her aching temples. It had all been so sudden and unexpected. After the first scare about the internment of foreign enemy nationals when her father had registered as required, both of them had been happily convinced that he did not fall into the category of aliens to be interned and that as long as he reported regularly to his local police station, as had been demanded of him, all would be well. They had been wrong. With Hitler blitzkrieging his way across Europe in the direction of Britain, the British government was taking no chances where German-born aliens were concerned. Despite her father having been resident in the country for twenty years, having married an English girl and having a daughter who had been born in England and had never left it, he had been categorized as an enemy subversive. And there was nothing either of them could do about it.

  Bleakly she rose to her feet and walked across to the bread bin, taking a loaf out of it for some toast. Even though there had been distressing reactions to his German nationality from some of their neighbours, his being dropped from the cricket team for instance and the Jennings’ request that she no longer visit their home, the number of people who had gathered hostilely on the pavement to see her father being taken away to an internment camp had been just as unexpected. And deeply shocking.

  As she put the bread she had sliced under the grill she struggled to remember just which of her neighbours had been part of the small crowd. Not Carrie, thank God. Nor Miss Godfrey. And Charlie Robson, though one of the onlookers, had been bewildered and disturbed by what was taking place and had not been hostile. Who else had been there? Carrie’s mother and father had most certainly been there. And Carrie’s grandmother. And Christina Frank.

  She lifted a butter dish containing margarine out of a cupboard. With Christina as a long-term house-guest it was not surprising that the Je
nnings family, with the exception of Carrie, had reacted as they had. Living so closely with someone whose family had suffered so terribly at the hands of the Nazis it was no wonder that they now felt animosity towards all Germans.

  She turned the bread over under the grill. Miss Helliwell had been there and her father’s former closest friend, Mr Nibbs. What about the Collins’? She wasn’t sure but she could almost swear she had seen Hettie’s distinctive black hat amongst the crowd. And Mavis? Had Mavis been there as well?

  Whoever had been there, no-one had called out a word of commiseration to her father; no-one had bade him a friendly goodbye; no-one had called out ‘Shame!’ when one of their number had shouted the desire that her father be hung, drawn and quartered.

  She stared out through the kitchen window at the rear garden her father had so lovingly tended. Which of her neighbours still bore neighbourly sentiments towards her? Miss Godfrey, obviously, and for that she was grateful. The knowledge eased the sense of isolation that was pressing in on her like a physical burden. She wanted, very badly, to see Carrie. Since Carrie’s family had requested she no longer visit their home, and as she now wouldn’t choose to visit it even if such a request had never been made, all she could do was wait until Carrie visited her.

  With a heavy heart she removed the toast from beneath the grill and began to spread it with the margarine. She would visit Shooters Hill Police Station later in the day to find out where her father had been sent and then she would write to him. She poured scalding tea into the cup. And she would write to Toby. Though the world around her seemed to have taken leave of its senses two things at least remained constant. The deeply loving bond between herself and her father and the knowledge that Toby loved her just as much as she loved him.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when Mavis told me,’ Carrie said as Rose sat on a home-made rag rug, playing with an assortment of teaspoons and a tin mug. ‘I thought all that was going to happen to your father was that he would have to continue reporting regularly to the local nick. Where has he been sent? Do you know?’

  ‘Not specifically,’ Kate said, not trying to keep the bitterness she felt from her voice. ‘The policeman who came to the house for him escorted him to the police station and from there he was taken to a collection point for enemy aliens in central London. According to the policeman who spoke to me at the station, they were then taken by coach to Kings Cross Railway Station, their destination “somewhere in the north of England”.’

  ‘Crikey,’ Carrie said expressively as Rose tried to noisily ram every spoon that had been given her into the mug, ‘it’s a bit bloody grim, isn’t it? I’ve known your dad ever since I can remember and until this war started it never occurred to me once to think of him as being German. I’ve never even heard him speak German!’

  ‘He calls me Liebling,’ Kate said, pain in her eyes. ‘It’s a term of affection. And sometimes, very rarely, he swears in German.’ She managed a small smile. ‘He says German is the best language in the world in which to swear.’

  ‘Old Hitler obviously thinks so as well,’ Carrie said with a grin. ‘I went to the cinema with Mum last night and he was on the Pathé news, ranting and raving and looking like a bloomin’ idiot.’

  She bent down from where she was sitting and took the spoons out of Rose’s tin mug, spilling them on to the rag rug so that Rose could again embark on the enjoyable task of picking them all up and stowing them all away.

  ‘It was Mum’s idea we go to the cinema,’ she continued chattily. ‘Dad had called her a silly cow and she’d taken umbrage.’

  Kate, remembering Albert and Miriam’s hostile presence as her father had been led away, had not the slightest interest in their domestic squabbles but rather than risk a difficult situation between herself and Carrie by telling Carrie so, she said merely, ‘Why? What had she done?’

  ‘It wasn’t over anything she’d done, it was over something she’d said.’ Carrie began to giggle. ‘As soon as the news was broadcast over the wireless that the Prime Minister had resigned and that Winston Churchill was to be the new Prime Minister, Mum said, “What? That old termagant? Why has he been made Prime Minister? He’s nothing but a war-monger!” And Dad said, “Don’t be such a silly cow! It’s because he’s a war-monger that he’s been made Prime Minister! We are at war, or hadn’t you noticed?” And from there on it was all downhill and in the end Mum grabbed her hat and coat and said she was off to the cinema. We went to see Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney in Boys Town. I’d have preferred a musical or Gone With The Wind but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  Well aware at how deftly Carrie had steered the subject of conversation away from internment camps, Kate made no effort to return to it. Constant talking about it could do no good and no matter how sympathetic Carrie might be, she couldn’t possibly understand the depth of hurt and disillusionment her father’s internment had caused her; or him.

  ‘I heard what had happened from Miss Godfrey,’ Miss Pierce said to her a few days later as they sat together in the canteen at lunchtime. ‘What a terrible experience for you, and for your father, too, of course. I remember the 1914–1918 war and the senselessly brutish anti-German feeling against Germans long resident in this country. Perhaps when you have an address at which to write to your father you would ask him if he would mind my writing to him occasionally. I should think letters, even from strangers, would be very welcome to him in the conditions in which he must be living.’

  As she walked home from work that evening, Kate mused on how odd it was that Miss Godfrey and Miss Pierce, two people she had never thought of as being anything other than in one instance a neighbour and in the other a work acquaintance, should prove to be two of her staunchest friends.

  ‘Cooee!’ a familiar voice shouted from the far side of the road. ‘I knocked to see if you wanted me to take any of your pots and pans but as you weren’t in, I couldn’t. If you see what I mean.’

  Kate stared in bemusement at the sight of Mavis, her peroxide-blonde hair no longer worn in a Victory roll but piled high on top of her head and over her forehead in thick, sausage-like curls. She was pushing a pram piled high with kettles, saucepans, frying-pans and aluminium baking-trays and roasting-trays.

  ‘What on earth . . .’ Kate began in mystification, starting to cross the road towards her. ‘You don’t have a child beneath that lot, do you?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Mavis said equably, her chiffon, heavily flounced blouse recklessly low-necked, her fingernails painted a roaring scarlet. ‘I’m doin’ my bit for king and country and answering Lord Beaverbrook’s demand that the ’ousewives of Britain send ’im their pots and pans and aluminium so that ’e can melt ’em all down and make aeroplanes out of ’em.’

  Kate regarded the contents of Mavis’s pram with amusement intermingled with horror. ‘I hope to God Toby doesn’t end up flying any plane made out of that lot!’

  Mavis regarded her cargo wryly, ‘Can’t say I’d fancy the thought myself. And God knows what I’m going to cook in from now on. We’ll have to live on sandwiches.’

  Rumour in Magnolia Square was that sandwiches, varied occasionally by fish and chips, had long been the Lomax family’s staple diet and Kate tactfully refrained from making any comment to Mavis’s last remark.

  ‘I’m thinking of volunteering as an ambulance driver,’ Mavis continued cheerfully. ‘If that old bat Miss Godfrey can racket around London at night at the wheel of an ambulance I’m damned sure I can.’

  ‘I didn’t know Miss Godfrey was driving ambulances,’ Kate said, wondering what on earth else was happening that she knew nothing about. ‘And I didn’t know that you could drive.’

  ‘I can’t, but I can ride Ted’s motor bike and an ambulance can’t be all that much different.’ She grinned and, for the first time ever, Kate was aware of a family resemblance between Mavis and Carrie. ‘Must be on my way,’ Mavis said while she was still recovering from the surprise of the discovery. ‘Ta-ra for now.’

  In p
erilously high peep-toed shoes she continued on her way, proudly pushing her mountainous collection of pots and pans towards Greenwich and the advertised collection centre.

  Cheered by the encounter and in better spirits than she had been for several days, Kate continued on her way up the hill towards the Heath. She had read the news that Churchill had appointed the newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook as Minister for Aircraft Production, but Beaverbrook’s typically flamboyant request that the housewives of Britain help him build aircraft by donating their pots and pans and aluminium had passed her by. In her misery since her father had been interned she had neither bought a newspaper nor listened to the BBC news. Resolving to mend her ways, she began to cross the Heath, wondering if there would be a letter from Toby waiting for her on the mat when she arrived home; wondering if he would have news as to when he would next be home on leave.

  As she turned into Magnolia Square the late afternoon sunshine was still hot. Hettie, her all-purpose black felt hat jauntily decorated with a bunch of imitation cherries and serving now as a rather bizarre sun-hat, was hurrying up the opposite side of the Square but she firmly avoided catching Kate’s eye and Kate didn’t force the issue by calling out a greeting. If Hettie no longer wished to acknowledge her then she most certainly had no intention of acknowledging Hettie.

  Mr Nibbs, mowing his front lawn, ensured that as she drew near he was mowing it in the direction of his house and so had his back towards her. Kate deliberately slowed her pace, determined to cause him as much embarrassment as possible. Mr Nibbs also walked slower, so slowly that the blades of his lawnmower barely revolved. When he reached the point where his small lawn finished beneath his front window he paused and, aware of his quandary, Kate felt a spasm of near-amusement. Resourcefully, Mr Nibbs began to inspect the framework of his window, scrutinizing the putty work with close interest.