Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘So who’s going to be married first?’ Nellie Miller called out to her. ‘You an’ Leon or the Vicar an’ his lady-friend?’

  With agonizing reluctance Kate broke eye contact with the man she loved with all her heart. ‘Me and Leon,’ she said without a second’s hesitation.

  Nellie grinned, displaying a mouthful of appallingly crooked and broken teeth. ‘I’m glad to ’ear it. It’s about time at least one of your whipper-snappers was made legit.’

  Kate crossed over to Nellie’s shabby armchair and perched on the arm. ‘They’re both going to be legitimized,’ she said as Hettie began playing a conga, and the throng around them exuberantly pushed and pulled themselves into a long conga line. ‘The minute we’re married, Leon’s going to adopt Matthew and we’re both going to apply to adopt Daisy. With a little luck, by the end of the year we’ll be an ordinary family.’

  Nellie looked across to where Leon was again talking to Daniel Collins, the children swarming around him like a band of boisterous monkeys. Daisy’s hair was dark and straight and fine, her blue eyes and magnolia-pale skin indicating she had more than a little Irishness in her blood. Luke was as dark-skinned as his father and, though his mop of curls wasn’t yet as tight and wiry as Leon’s, it would be when he was older. As for Matthew . . . Toby Harvey had been fair-haired and, as Kate’s hair was the colour of ripe wheat, Matthew’s colouring was as Nordic as a little Viking’s.

  Nellie chuckled. Whatever else the about-to-be-formed Emmerson family might be, it was certainly never going to be ordinary! ‘An’ who’s going to be matron-of-honour?’ she asked as the conga line noisily encircled her chair. ‘Yer can’t have both Carrie an’ Christina.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Nellie clicked her tongue. ‘Because though you can ’ave as many bridesmaids as yer want, you’re only supposed to ’ave one married friend as a matron-of-honour. So who’s it going to be? Carrie or Christina?’

  ‘Then it will have to be Carrie. After all, we’ve been best friends ever since we were toddlers. I’ve only known Christina since she came here as a refugee.’

  As the conga line danced its way down to the bottom end of the Square, she saw that Carrie had run Danny and Rose to earth, for they were walking hand in hand, with Rose skipping along in front of them, to where Leon and Danny’s father were still deep in conversation.

  ‘It’s ’ard to think of ’er as a refugee, ain’t it?’ Nellie said ruminatively. ‘I mean, it’s not as if she speaks like a foreigner, is it? There’s Ukrainians and Poles down in Woolwich can’t speak a word of the King’s English, poor bleeders. Gawd knows ’ow they manage, I don’t. Christina speaks it like a nob.’

  ‘Her gran was English,’ Kate said, remembering that her intention had been to sympathize with Nellie about her nephew’s continuing imprisonment by the Japanese, and that she hadn’t yet done so. ‘She was born and brought up in Bermondsey and went to school with Carrie’s gran. That’s why, when Christina came to England, she moved in with Carrie’s family.’

  ‘Well, she’s English enough now she’s married Charlie Robson’s son,’ Nellie said, who didn’t much understand why Christina’s Bermondsey-born grandmother should have wanted to go off and marry a Hun, even if it had been before the First World War when she’d done so. ‘Though it might be some time before Jack’s demobbed. Fighting in Greece last time anyone ’eard, wasn’t ’e? Commandos don’t ’alf get about. ’E’ll find Civvie Street pretty boring after rampaging all over Greece with knives stuck down his boots, and grenades ’angin’ from his belt.’

  ‘I came to sympathize with you about your nephew,’ Kate said, eager to accomplish her mission so that she could join Leon. ‘It can’t be much fun, everyone celebrating the end of the war in Europe, when he’s still being held by the Japanese.’

  ‘No, it ain’t,’ Nellie said frankly as Hector slumped at her swollen feet, patiently waiting for Kate to make a move. ‘But the Yanks’ll soon ’ave the Japs on the run and old ’Irohito’ll get his just desserts just like old ’Itler did. An’ when we ’ave a Victory over Japan party, I’ll be conga-ing with the best of ’em, bad feet or no bad feet. I can’t understand why Christina ain’t ’ere, you’d think she’d be dancin’ ’er ’eart out, wouldn’t yer?’

  Christina Robson had never felt less like dancing in her life. She stood on the far, north-west corner of the Heath, looking out over a superb view of Greenwich and the River Thames and, a little more distantly, the City and the glittering dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. London. It was the city that had given her refuge, and for that reason alone she would be grateful to it for as long as she lived. But she wasn’t merely grateful to it, she loved it. She loved its tree-shaded squares, its unexpected patches of green, its noise and its bustle and its friendliness. It had become her home, and she wanted no other. Why, then, did she continue to feel so dispossessed? Why did she feel as if she were never, ever, going to become a Londoner herself? She was, after all, married to a south-Londoner. All her friends were south-Londoners. All her neighbours. Surely, by now, she should feel she was a south-Londoner by adoption?

  Despite the heat of the sun, she hugged her arms. She certainly hadn’t done so when Magnolia Square’s street party had been at its height. She had felt like the biblical Ruth amid the alien corn. Everyone else, with the exception of Nellie Miller, had been celebrating reunions or pending reunions. Though a general demob was still weeks, and possibly months, away, brothers and fathers, boy-friends and husbands, would soon be returning home en masse. Danny Collins, who had been a prisoner of the Italians, and Leon Emmerson, who had been freed by the Russians from a German prison camp, were both already home.

  Had it been the realization of all those reunions that had brought the past hurtling back to engulf her so cruelly? Or had it been the talk of weddings? The Vicar’s wedding to his rather surprisingly young, but extremely pleasant, lady-friend. Leon and Kate’s imminent wedding. Both weddings would take place in St Mark’s, as had her own wedding to Jack – and St Mark’s was an Anglican church, and she was Jewish.

  While her friends and neighbours had gossiped around her, she had stood with her back to one of the magnolia trees the Square had been named after, staring up at St Mark’s glittering spire, wondering what her father would have said, what her mother and grandmother would say – and it had been then, as, for the first time in ten years, she thought of her mother and grandmother in the present tense, that mental and emotional pain had sliced cripplingly through her. How could she possibly have thought of them as if they were still alive? How, after all that had happened in her homeland over the last decade, could she subconsciously have thought of them in the present tense, betraying vain hope that they had survived, that a reunion was still a possibility?

  Leon Emmerson might have walked jauntily into the Square after an absence of information indicating he hadn’t drowned over three years ago, but German-born Jews, Jacoba Berger and Eva Frank, dragged from their Heidelberg home and incarcerated in a concentration camp even before the war had begun, weren’t likely to be so lucky.

  Distantly, on the light summer breeze, came the sound of piano playing and discordant but exuberant singing. Magnolia Square’s street party was still going at full throttle. In a nearby shrub, two sparrows wrangled noisily. A butterfly alighted briefly on one of the shaking leaves and then flew off, the sun glinting on the scarlet markings of its wings. Christina’s fingers dug deeper into the flesh of her arms. Ever since she had escaped from Germany, she had schooled herself to accept that her mother and grandmother were dead. Why now, after all this time, had doubt begun to return? Certainly the news reports of the last few weeks had given no cause for hope. The first Allied troops into the camps had found horrors beyond imagining, and the estimate of the number of Jews who had died in them now ran into the millions. To entertain any hope that two women who had been imprisoned as long ago as 1936 could have survived was not only vain, it was ridiculous.

  Or was it?

&nb
sp; The sparrows flew off, still wrangling. A bee began to circle the bush, looking for flowers and pollen. Slowly, as she stood there, the hope she had suppressed for so many years began to take fierce hold. All over Europe displaced people would be struggling to make their way back to their homes. All over Europe, reunions similar to Leon and Kate’s would be taking place. What if her mother and grandmother hadn’t died in the concentration camp they had been taken to? What if, by some miracle, they, like Leon, had survived?

  ‘Hello there!’ a middle-aged woman she knew only by sight called out to her cheerily, a mongrel skittering at her heels. ‘I’ve just been told your vicar’s thinking of marrying again. Lovely woman Bob Giles’s first wife was. I remember the day she was killed. The first air-raid of the war, it was. Such a shame, and her only a young woman too. Still, it’s nice he’s found happiness again.’

  With great effort Christina dragged her thoughts away from a ravaged Europe and the thousands upon thousands of displaced persons trailing the rutted road, their pathetically few belongings piled high in old prams and handcarts. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, smiling politely. ‘It is.’

  The woman would have liked to stay for a longer chat, but there was something about Christina Robson that was definitely not encouraging. She was polite enough, of course, but she wasn’t a friendly, jolly south-London girl, like her friends Kate Voigt and Carrie Collins. She was too reserved. Too deep. Which all came of her being a foreigner of course, and Jewish into the bargain.

  ‘Toodle-oo,’ she said amiably, making allowances for what the poor girl couldn’t help, adding as an afterthought, ‘Your hubby will be demobbed soon I expect, or he will be if he doesn’t decide to make a career of commando-ing. I’ve seen newsreels of Commando attacks. The Commandos were all guyed up in balaclava helmets with muck on the bits that show so they’d merge into the background, and they were bristling with knives and pistols. Should suit your Jack a treat. He always was on the wild side.’

  Christina made no comment. She didn’t want to think about Jack yet for a bit. Thinking about Jack was too unsettling, too intimidating. She would think about her mother and grandmother instead. She would think of ways she could try to discover what had happened to them, if they were alive or dead and, if they were dead, where they had died, and how. And if they were alive? Her throat was so tight she could hardly breathe. If they were alive she would find them. She would find them if it was the very last thing she ever did.

  Kate sidestepped a running toddler and joined Leon as he continued to chat with Carrie and Danny and Danny’s dad, Daniel.

  ‘. . . that kid should’ve bin a requisitions officer,’ Danny was saying, quite obviously referring to Billy and his private ammunition dump. ‘’E’s got a natural-born talent for scroungin’.’

  Kate slid her arm around Leon’s waist. The street party seemed to be going on for ever. When on earth would it come to an end? When would they be able to escape and have some privacy?

  His hand cupped her far shoulder as he hugged her close, his thoughts exactly the same as hers. As she leant her head against his shoulder, he looked down at her in utter love, his throat tightening in emotion. Christ, but she was beautiful! No woman he had ever seen had hair of such a rich, glorious gold colour. Or hair so long and lustrous. And she had waited for him. For over three years she hadn’t known whether he was dead or alive, but she had given birth to his son and had waited faithfully in fierce hope.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear as their son continued to ride high on his shoulders, and Daisy and Matthew engaged in a giggling game of tag with Rose. ‘When the devil can we escape and be alone together?’

  Before she could make a response, Daniel Collins said genially to her, ‘Have you heard that you and the Vicar aren’t the only ones having weddings this month? Charlie Robson has just announced he’s going to marry your next-door neighbour. Funny old couple they’ll make, her a retired headmistress and a spinster and him a widower with a criminal past, barely able to read and write.’

  ‘They’ve been friends for a long time,’ Carrie said, wondering what Christina would think of her father-in-law’s rather surprising wedding plans.

  Danny ran a hand through his spiky, mahogany-red hair in baffled bemusement. ‘Wasn’t ’Arriet Godfrey Jack’s old ’eadmistress? And didn’t she once say Jack was more suited to a Borstal than ’er junior school? I wonder what ’e’s goin’ to think when ’e comes ’ome and finds she’s about to become ’is stepmother!’

  They all roared with laughter, not noticing Mavis’s approach. ‘Is it a private joke or can anyone join in?’ she asked, strolling up to them on perilously high, peep-toed, wedge-heeled sandals, her toenails a vivid scarlet beneath her sheer silk stockings.

  Carrie sighed, her laughter subsiding. Her older sister was a constant source of irritation to her. Where, in these days of deprivation, had the silk stockings come from, for instance? Wherever it was, the supply would have to stop when Ted was demobbed. He’d been upset enough about her long-standing flirtatious relationship with Jack Robson, and he knew Jack well. He certainly wouldn’t countenance a similarly dubious relationship with a stranger, and the stockings must have come from a stranger because Jack hadn’t swaggered into Magnolia Square on leave since the weekend he’d been home and married Christina.

  ‘We were just anticipating Jack’s surprise when he comes home and finds his dad has married Harriet Godfrey,’ Kate said, flashing Mavis a wide, warm smile. ‘She used to be his headmistress when he was in junior school. I can’t imagine he’s going to find it easy calling her Mother, can you?’

  At the very thought, Mavis spluttered into throaty laughter, and even Carrie began to giggle again. ‘Well, we’ll all be finding out how he’s going to manage soon enough,’ Mavis said when her laughter finally subsided. ‘I had a letter from him this morning. He says he thinks he’ll be home by the end of next month, and demobbed soon after.’

  ‘When he does come home, you just make sure you give him a wide berth,’ Carrie said, suddenly serious. ‘He’s married now, and no matter how much you and he might protest that your horse-play is innocent, Christina mightn’t think it innocent. And she’s been hurt enough in the past, losing all her family the way she has done, without being hurt by your shenanigans.’

  Mavis put a hand on an aquamarine-skirted, curvaceous hip, and tapped a foot up and down. ‘Why the hell can’t you keep your useless opinions to yourself, Carrie?’ she demanded witheringly, uncaring of their embarrassed audience. ‘Me and Jack are mates. Always ’ave been. Always will be. And ’is ’avin’ married Christina isn’t going to make a ha’p’orth’s difference to that friendship, so don’t you go ’opin’ it will. And as Christina is ’eading this way at this very moment,’ she added, her eyes no longer holding Carrie’s but looking over Carrie’s shoulder, ‘I suggest we put the kibosh on this conversation, don’t you?’

  Before Carrie could make any response, they all heard Nellie boom out from the depths of her sagging armchair, ‘Where the ’ell ’ave you been, Christina? You’ve been missing all the fun!’

  ‘I’ve not been far,’ Christina said, smiling at Nellie with affectionate warmth. ‘I just wanted to be on my own for a little while.’

  ‘Well, you chose a rum day for it, dearie!’ Nellie’s red balloon still bobbed jauntily on the end of its string. ‘Still, it takes all sorts and I ’spect you wanted to enjoy the news about your Jack coming ’ome and ’opin’ to be demobbed soon. It’s grand news, ain’t it?’

  Christina stared at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, utterly bewildered. ‘I don’t understand. How do you know Jack’s going to be home soon?’

  ‘Mavis told me,’ Nellie said blithely. ‘She ’ad a letter from ’im this mornin’. I expect her Ted will be ’ome soon as well. I ’aven’t ’ad news about ’Arold, but that’s only to be expected . . .’

  Christina was no longer listening to her. She was looking across at Mavis, her face so white it looked as if it were ca
rved from marble.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Mavis said graphically to the world at large, ‘that’s torn it. How was I to know Jack hadn’t written her with the news yet?’

  ‘Well, you know now,’ Danny said dryly as his father began prudently edging away from what was obviously going to be the centre of a very unpleasant explosion.

  ‘And if I were you, Mavis, I’d start thinking what to do about it,’ Carrie added, grim-faced. ‘And I’d start thinking fast. Very fast indeed!’

  Chapter Two

  Of all four girls, Christina was the most petite. Though Kate was ethereally slender, she was tall. Carrie was curvaceously heavy-bosomed and broad-hipped, far too much so for her own liking. Mavis was narrow-waisted and buxom, and happily emphasized the fact. Christina was small-boned, and there was an air of fragility about her that brought out fierce protectiveness in some people and irritation in others. In Mavis, well aware that beneath Christina’s apparently wand-like fragility lay true steel, it brought out irritation. It brought it out in bucket-loads.

  Christina’s true steel was blazingly apparent now. It flamed out of her eyes, turning their beautiful amethyst colour near black. ‘Nellie says my husband has written to you, telling you he’s coming home on leave and hopes to be demobbed soon. Is that true?’ She faced Mavis full square, not putting her hands on her hips in confrontational south-London fashion, but with her hands clenched at her sides, every nerve and muscle as taut as a coiled spring.

  Mavis sighed. For all her noisy exuberance, she didn’t like scenes and she had no particular desire to spoil Magnolia Square’s street party by pitching into a full-scale brawl with the Jewish refugee it had collectively taken under its wing. ‘Yes,’ she said, keeping her voice as pleasant as her patience would allow. ‘It was a general sort of letter. A letter to the family. If you haven’t heard from him yet it must mean his letter to you is snarled up somewhere. You can’t expect Forces post to be normal these days, can you?’