The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  Something in the easy tone of his voice banished all her remembered slights and hurts. She had come to terms with them all long ago. There was no point in reliving them now, especially on Christmas Eve.

  Her mouth tugged into a self-deprecating smile. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound quite so burningly resentful. It’s just that for twenty years my father believed himself to be part and parcel of the local community. And then, almost overnight, he became an outcast. Instead of being Carl Voigt or Mr Voigt, he became a Jerry; a Kraut; a Boche. As I have. And though common sense tells me I should shrug off the name-calling, it’s not so easy to do. It’s too hurtful. It’s too . . .’ she sought for the word that summed up all the loneliness the name-calling had caused her. ‘It’s too isolating.’

  He was still standing, looking down at her, deep understanding in his dark brown eyes. ‘I know,’ he said simply.

  Her eyes held his, the most peculiar sensation surging through her. He wasn’t just being politely sympathetic. He really did know.

  She remembered the conversation she had overheard between Miss Helliwell and Miriam. ‘Though how a billeting officer could be so insensitive as to give a Magnolia Square address to a black man, I really don’t know,’ Miss Helliwell had said, genuine bewilderment in her voice. ‘There must be plenty of his own kind down near the docks. Why doesn’t he try there?’ And in The Swan, as the two of them had left together, Albert had said disbelievingly, ‘If that don’t beat the band. Wait till I tell them at home that Kate Voigt’s taken a darky in as a lodger.’

  The isolating phrase ‘his own kind’ and the word ‘darky’ were expressions he was quite obviously all too familiar with. And no doubt he was familiar with other, even more derogatory expressions; ‘a touch of the tar brush’, ‘half-caste’ and ‘half-breed’.

  It was a strange realization, knowing that she was in the company of someone who quite genuinely knew the depth of hurt and isolation such prejudiced and insulting name-calling occasioned. Harriet Godfrey and Ellen Pierce were sincere in their deep outrage whenever they heard either herself or her father referred to in disparagingly racialist terms, but no matter how genuine their indignation and sympathy, they didn’t know how it felt to be at the receiving end of such abuse. The young man now standing on her hearthrug and looking down at her with empathy in his gold-flecked eyes most certainly did know.

  ‘Does one ever get used to it?’ she asked quietly, knowing that he was well aware of the realization she had come to; that she knew how he suffered in a similar, though far worse, way.

  ‘No, Miss Voigt,’ he said candidly, his eyes continuing to hold hers. ‘You learn how to cope with it, but you never get used to it.’

  It was odd to hear someone she felt she already knew so well addressing her so formally. ‘Please call me Kate,’ she said, knowing instinctively that, even if she hadn’t been so heavily pregnant, he wouldn’t mistake her friendliness for forwardness and take it as licence to make a sexual pass at her. ‘Being referred to as Miss Voigt makes me feel as middle-aged as a couple of friends of mine, Harriet and Ellen. Because they are so much older than I am it was years before I began calling Harriet anything other than Miss Godfrey and it was months before I began using Ellen’s christian name.’

  He grinned, his crutch still propped under one arm, the mug in his free hand. ‘I don’t think the same situation applies here, does it? I’m twenty-six and I’m pretty sure I must be at least four or five years older than you.’

  A smile quirked the corners of her mouth. ‘I’m twenty-three. Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to sit down? Or do you want to see the rooms and choose one before you sit down?’

  ‘If it’s all right with you, I think I’d like to see the rooms. It’s a long time since I sat down in comfort in front of a fire and when I do, I don’t think I’m going to want to move again in a hurry. Not unless we’re unlucky enough to have a raid.’

  Kate put her mug of tea back down on the tray and, hampered by the bulk that was the baby, rose a little lumberingly to her feet. ‘I’ll show you the rooms and when we come back downstairs I’ll put the wireless on. It’s a better warning than the sirens of an approaching raid. As soon as enemy aircraft cross the Kent coastline the volume reduces to next to nothing.’

  ‘And what do you do then?’ he asked as, Hector still at his heels, he began to follow her from the room.

  ‘I make a Thermos of tea, grab a blanket, cushion, book, gas-canister and tin helmet and sit it out in the Anderson.’

  ‘Alone?’ he asked, as they reached the hall and he picked up his kit-bag.

  ‘No.’ She flashed him a sunny grin. ‘With Hector. When it comes to air raids he’s the biggest coward going. He’s always first in and last out!’

  Chuckling, he followed her up the stairs, negotiating them with admirable dexterity considering his handicaps of a heavy kit-bag and crutch.

  ‘This is my father’s room,’ she said, opening a door to reveal a bed fully made-up, snowy linen sheets turned back over a crisp, white bedspread. There was a bedside table with a bookstand and books on it, an alarm-clock and lamp. The wardrobe, tallboy and dressing-table were walnut; the carpet was imitation Persian, patterned in deep wines and sea blues. It was a room polished and dusted as if its occupant had only just vacated it and was due to return at any moment. Knowing how long it had been since her father had last slept in it, knowing that she had no idea of how long it would be before he returned, he found the housewifely care she still lavished on the room deeply moving.

  ‘I think I’d be happiest not moving into your dad’s room,’ he said, wondering what it would be like to have a daughter or a wife or a mother who cared so much for him that she would keep his room in such a constant state of readiness for his homecoming. ‘You said you had another two rooms free. Either of them would suit.’

  ‘One is used as a lumber-room,’ Kate said, moving further down the pleasantly wide landing. ‘Though I don’t suppose that will cut much ice with the council billeting officer when he comes to call!’

  Moving past a bathroom, she opened another door. ‘This is the other spare room. It isn’t quite as comfortably furnished as Dad’s room but you can see the Heath from the window.’

  Leon, accustomed since early childhood to the barrack-like dormitory of an orphanage and then in later years, before he joined the Navy, to a string of soulless, cheerless lodging-rooms, thought it looked exceedingly comfortably furnished. In fact, he thought it looked like a little corner of paradise.

  There was a larger than average-sized single bed covered with a plump blue eiderdown. There was a comfortable-looking armchair near the window. There was a wickerwork bedside table and a table-lamp with a sunflower-yellow shade. There were colourful rag rugs scattered on the floor. A white-painted wardrobe stood against one wall, a matching dressing-table against another. There were shelves in an alcove laden with books and a bowl of pot-pourri on the window-ledge.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a little spartan,’ Kate said doubtfully. ‘There isn’t a heater in here and there’s not much drawer-room.’

  ‘I’m a sailor,’ he reminded her with his easy, infectious grin, vastly amused by her concept of spartan. ‘I’m used to keeping all my belongings ship-shape and tidy in less space than a mouse could turn in. This is the most drawer-space I’ve had in years.’

  He swung his kit-bag to the floor. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be here,’ he said, aware that she hadn’t thought to ask. ‘As soon as I’m declared fit for active service I’ll be off. It might be two months. It might be longer.’

  ‘Two months?’ Her eyes widened. ‘How can you possibly imagine you’ll be fit for active service in two months? You can only walk with the help of a crutch!’

  ‘I can only walk now with the help of a crutch,’ he said, a note of steel-hard determination entering his voice. ‘Give me another two weeks and I’ll have thrown it on the wood-pile. And another few weeks after that and I’ll be almost as
good as new.’

  Without knowing exactly how he had been injured Kate could hardly contradict him but she privately thought he was being highly optimistic. She was also suddenly aware of how closely they were standing together; of how small the bedroom was.

  ‘I’ll go back downstairs and put the wireless on,’ she said, not wanting him to think she was being deliberately provocative; not wanting anything to spoil the easy friendliness that had sprung up so naturally and quickly between them. ‘As it’s Christmas Eve I might be able to tune in to a carol service.’

  As if, again, sensing her thoughts he took a step or two further into the bedroom, increasing the distance between them. ‘I’ll be stowing my gear away,’ he said with an easiness that robbed the moment of even the slightest hint of tension. ‘I have some rum if you want to add it to your Christmas pudding.’ His wide smile once again split his dusky face. ‘Or, as it’s Christmas, you can pour a tot into your next cup of tea!’

  Instead of being the loneliest Christmas of her life, it turned out to be a Christmas full of teasing and laughter. Pretending to be appalled that she hadn’t troubled to put up any Christmas decorations, Leon rectified the situation by borrowing a pair of her father’s secateurs and, aided by his crutch, disappeared into the night. When he returned he did so with his free arm hugging several branches of red-berried holly.

  ‘I noticed your neighbour’s holly tree earlier on,’ he said, laying his bounty on the table in high satisfaction. ‘I thought at the time your neighbour was a fool for not having taken advantage of it. It would have sold for threepence a branch in Lewisham High Street.’

  ‘Which neighbour?’ Kate asked, giggles rising in her throat. ‘Left-hand side or right-hand side?’

  ‘Left-hand side. If it’s someone you’re particularly friendly with they won’t mind and if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter very much, does it?’

  Her neighbour next door down was Mr Nibbs. ‘It doesn’t matter very much,’ she said, giving vent to her giggles. ‘Where shall we put the holly? Over the picture frames?’

  ‘And the mirrors. And don’t forget the Christmas pudding. You’ll need a tiny piece for the top of that.’ A look of alarm flashed across his good-natured face. ‘You have got a Christmas pudding, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I made one because I thought the two friends I spoke to you about earlier might be spending Christmas with me. As it is, Harriet has volunteered to stay on call as an ambulance-driver and Ellen has taken too many bombed-out animals into her care to be able to leave them.’

  His relief was so vast she couldn’t help saying, fresh laughter thick in her voice, ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed. There are no raisins and currants in it. Only ersatz dried fruit.’

  ‘And what,’ he asked, dreading the answer, ‘is ersatz dried fruit?’

  Her laughter was husky and unchained. ‘Grated carrot.’

  He closed his eyes in mock despair and then, opening them again, said, ‘Then you’ll just have to be extra generous when you pour the rum over it!’

  Later on in the evening he brought a pack of playing-cards down from his room and taught her how to play brag. Later still they listened to a midnight carol service on the wireless. The volume stayed steady and no sirens sounded.

  ‘I think we’re going to be lucky tonight,’ Kate said as she made two bedtime drinks.

  Leon knew that she was referring to the blessedly Luftwaffe-free night sky but he said, suddenly serious instead of teasing, ‘I already think myself pretty lucky. If you hadn’t come down to The Swan and offered me a room I’d be in an overcrowded hostel tonight.’

  She flushed slightly, not wanting his gratitude, only the uncomplicated comfort of his friendship. ‘And I would have sat on my own all evening,’ she said, handing him one of the mugs of milky Ovaltine, ‘apart from Hector, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and because he sensed the discomfort his seriousness had aroused in her, his voice was light and easy again. ‘And now I’m off to bed,’ he said, before even the least shadow of awkwardness could fall between them. ‘Goodnight, Kate. And Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Leon.’

  She stood alone in the kitchen, listening as his crutch tapped its way up the stairs; until his bedroom door had opened and then closed. A few minutes later there came a dull clatter. A smile touched her mouth. He had dropped his crutch to the floor, no doubt heartily wishing he was doing so for good.

  She leaned against the solidity of a kitchen dresser that had once belonged to her mother’s mother, sipping at her drink. Despite the easy camaraderie that had existed between them almost from the first instant they had spoken to each other, it was an odd feeling having a man other than her father in the house. Especially one who was physically so very different from any other man she knew. And by physically different, she wasn’t thinking of his injured leg, but of his skin colour.

  She stared thoughtfully across the kitchen to the far wall. Above a calendar, a twig of red-berried holly balanced precariously. He was an attractive man and his skin colour was part and parcel of his attractiveness. She liked the way his hair curled as tightly as a ram’s fleece. She was fascinated by the paleness of his palms in contrast to the rest of his body. She certainly didn’t like him in spite of his being black, just as she wouldn’t want him to like her in spite of her being half-German. She simply liked him as he was. As he, apparently, liked her.

  She eased herself away from the dresser and crossed the kitchen towards the sink, turning on the tap and rinsing out her mug. Harriet Godfrey had once gently asked her why she didn’t cease wearing her hair in such a pronouncedly Germanic way. ‘I could cut it for you,’ she had offered. ‘You needn’t have it too short. A shoulder-length bob would look lovely. And it wouldn’t shriek the fact that you are half-German.’

  ‘But I’m not ashamed of being half-German,’ she had said to Harriet’s deep disconcertion. ‘To be ashamed would mean that in some way I was ashamed of my father. And I’m not. He’s the kindest, most tolerant person I’ve ever met. And as he’s German, it means there must be other Germans with the same qualities. They can’t all be rabid Nazis. There must be some Germans, however small a minority, who are as appalled by Hitler as we are and who are vehemently opposed to everything he stands for.’

  ‘Maybe there are,’ Harriet Godfrey had said, deeply troubled, ‘but it isn’t a viewpoint I would express to anyone else if I were you, Katherine. I think what you are saying would be very much misunderstood.’

  It was an understatement, and Kate knew it. Yet she didn’t think Leon would misunderstand. If an action as simple as a haircut could change the way he was perceived by people, she doubted if he would take it. He would want people to accept him for what he was, not for what they could be led to believe he was.

  She turned the tap off and reached for a tea towel. And Leon was half West Indian and she was half-German. In their different ways they were both misfits. Misfits who instinctively understood one another.

  She put the two dried mugs away in a cupboard and looked around the kitchen, checking that it was neat and tidy to come down to in the morning. A sensation she hadn’t experienced for a long, long time, flooded through her. It was one of unalloyed happiness. Her father was safe and well in his internment camp on the Isle of Wight. Her baby was kicking gently, making its presence felt. And it was Christmas morning, the most special morning of the year.

  As she walked out of the kitchen and through the darkened house to the foot of the stairs, she knew she had a lot to be grateful for. And high on the list was a man she hadn’t met until eight hours ago; a man who was now sleeping beneath her roof in a bedroom only yards from her own; a man she knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, was her friend.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On Christmas Day afternoon they took Hector for a walk on the Heath. Down beyond Greenwich, on the north side of the Thames, smoke hung heavy in the air.

  ‘The East End,’ Kate said bleakly. ‘The
fires after a raid sometimes last for days. I can’t remember the last time I breathed in clean air. There’s always a smell of smoke and sulphur.’ She shivered, but not from cold, hugging her arms around her coated, distended body. ‘How long do you think it’s going to go on for, Leon? Is Hitler still planning to invade us as soon as possible or will he wait until the weather is in his favour? Will he wait until spring?’

  ‘God knows,’ Leon said, pausing for a moment and leaning on his crutch, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked over the Heath in the direction of the river. ‘He’s likely to do anything, isn’t he? No-one was prepared for him invading Norway. The Norwegians hadn’t even mobilized. And if he can launch invasion forces, in April, against a country with Norway’s terrain, a bit of English Channel snow and ice won’t deter him.’

  ‘So we can expect anything?’ Kate said as Hector raced in circles around them, impatient for the walk to continue.

  Leon’s laughter-lined face was grim. ‘Where Hitler’s concerned, we can expect the worst,’ he said starkly, having too much respect for her to tell her anything but what he believed to be the truth.

  She was silent for a moment and then she gave herself both a mental and a physical, shake. ‘Have you ever been to Barbados?’ she asked, changing the subject completely.

  He grinned, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. ‘No, though I expect if I stay in the Navy long enough, I will. Have you ever been to Germany?’

  She shook her head, her mane of plaited hair swinging gently against her back. ‘No.’

  There was no need for either of them to say any more. Unsaid but understood was the knowledge that their non-English heredity was equally alien to them; that though they didn’t fit smoothly into the social fabric of the country of their birth, they would feel even less at home in Barbados or Germany.

  Leon crooked his lips wryly. However unfamiliar Barbados might be to him, when he eventually visited it he would assimilate a damn sight more quickly than Kate ever would if she were to find herself in Nazi Germany. His wry amusement deepened. For once in his life he had met someone with a far more grave social disability than his own. If it came to a choice between being half West Indian or half-German, he’d plump for being half West Indian every time!