Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  She said cautiously, knowing she was on very sensitive ground, ‘Did the Nazis regard your family as being an enemy of the state because of its Jewishness?’

  Christina remained silent, her eyes fixed on her clasped hands, smoke-dark wings of hair falling softly forward on either side of her delicately etched face. She had known how difficult it would be to confide in anyone, but she had forgotten how bizarre it would be, confiding in someone with a German surname. Someone whose father was an Aryan German. She took a deep, steadying breath. Carl Voigt hadn’t lived in Germany since the outbreak of World War I. He had never, in even the minutest way, been an admirer of Hitler. But he was German. The country he had grown up in was the country she had grown up in. They shared a mutual language, though neither of them ever, apart from an occasional expletive or endearment, lapsed into it. He understood the German way of doing things, the German love of bureaucracy. And if anyone would be able to help her through the nightmare of finding out what had happened to her mother and grandmother, he would be able to do so.

  ‘My father was printing anti-Nazi leaflets in the basement of his chemist’s shop,’ she said, looking up from her clasped hands and meeting Kate’s eyes. ‘Heinrich was distributing them.’

  It was the first time Kate had even known Christina’s brother’s Christian name. She drew in a deep, unsteady breath. Through the open window came the sound of Daniel Collins mowing his lawn; Nellie Miller chatting to Harriet Godfrey; the clip-clop and rattle of the horse-drawn hearse that Albert Jennings used as a fruit and vegetable cart; the chime of St Mark’s Church clock. It seemed so strange, listening to these familiar sounds and hearing Christina talk at first-hand experience of the horrors of being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany.

  ‘Your father and brother must have been very brave,’ she said at last, awkwardly.

  Christina clasped her hands even tighter, the knuckles showing white. ‘My father’s friend, who helped him with the printing, told me I mustn’t wait to see if my mother and grandmother would return.’ Her voice trembled. ‘He told me they would never return and that if I wanted to avoid being arrested and never being seen again, I had to leave Germany immediately. He knew of a route into Switzerland; people who would help me.’ Tears glittered on her eyelashes. ‘He was going to come with me, but on the night we were to leave he was arrested. And so I left alone.’ Her voice had become barely audible. ‘And I feel so guilty, Kate. I feel so guilty for having escaped and for living so cosily in Magnolia Square when . . . when . . .’ She couldn’t go on. Tears were spilling down her cheeks. She had said it. She had admitted to the guilt that was so heavy she sometimes thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe for it. She was alive and her father and Heini were dead. All through the war years she had lived in the relative safety of London, in the bosom of a loving, noisy family, and her mother and grandmother had been – where? Lichtenburg? Dachau? It didn’t bear thinking about. To think about it would be to lose her reason, and so for years she had told herself that her mother and grandmother had died almost immediately after their arrest, that they were no longer suffering, that they were at peace. And the guilt of her own survival had been almost more than she could bear.

  Kate reached across the table and covered Christina’s clasped hands with her own. ‘There’s no need to feel guilty, Christina. It’s the very last thing your father and brother would have wanted. As for your mother and grandmother . . .’ Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to encourage Christina to hope if all hope was futile. And certainly it must be nearly futile. How could two Jewish women, one middle-aged and the other elderly, possibly have survived the war years in Germany, especially when it was known without doubt that they had been arrested as long ago as 1936? Yet there were people who had believed that Leon had died in 1942. She had never believed it. She had known he was still alive. But Christina had no such sixth sense about her mother and grandmother, for if she had, she would have expressed the belief years ago.

  She said carefully, ‘If they have survived the war, then I’m sure that now it’s over they will contact Leah. And if they don’t . . .’ Her words hung heavily in the bright, sunny kitchen. ‘If they don’t, then you will just have to accept that they are dead, Christina. That they have been dead for a long, long time.’

  The brass knocker tapped against the front door, and before Christina could make any kind of a response the door was opened. ‘Cooee!’ Hettie Collins called out cheerily. ‘Anyone in?’

  Kate held Christina’s eyes for a long, agonized moment. There was no way their conversation could be continued now. Giving Christina’s hands a comforting squeeze, Kate called back, ‘I’m in the kitchen, Hettie! Christina’s with me!’

  Hettie bustled down the hallway leading from the front of the house to the back. ‘I’ve just come from doing the flowers at the church,’ she announced as she burst into the kitchen. ‘Albert gave me some lovely delphiniums. They look a treat at either side of the aisle.’ She looked across to the table and the lack of any sign of a teapot or cups. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ she asked, already reaching for it. ‘I’m gasping for a cuppa.’ She turned on the tap, running water into the kettle, saying as she did so, ‘In the old days, Constance Giles always invited me into the vicarage for a cuppa when I’d finished doing the flowers. ’Course, I don’t expect the Vicar to invite me in for a cuppa, but I miss it all the same.’ The kettle was banged down on top of the oven’s gas hob, and the imitation cherries on her black straw hat shuddered and bobbed. ‘And when he marries again,’ Hettie continued without pausing for breath, ‘which, being a man, he’s going to do, I don’t expect I’ll be offered tea. I expect his new, slip-of-a-girl missus will think herself far too lah-di-dah for that.’

  Both Kate and Christina remained silent. Both of them knew and liked Ruth Fairbairn, Bob Giles’s fiancée, but at the present moment neither of them had the heart to enter the lists on her behalf. For one thing, they both knew nothing they could say would change Hettie’s attitude towards Ruth, and for another, their thoughts were still firmly on the conversation Hettie had interrupted.

  ‘And so I wondered what flowers you’d be wanting in church for your wedding,’ Hettie continued, slapping cups on to saucers as if the kitchen was her own. ‘If the wedding’s going to be this week or next week there won’t be many roses out. There’s some Canary Bird rioting all over the local bomb-site, but Canary Bird’s a little on the tiny side to go well with fern, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a bride with yellow roses. You want red for a wedding. Carrie had red roses when she married our Danny, and if I say so myself her bouquet was a sight for sore eyes.’

  ‘I think I’d rather like a bouquet of Canary Bird,’ Kate said, aware that verbal response to her unwanted visitor was long overdue. ‘It would be both pretty and unusual.’

  Hettie sniffed. Flowers from a bomb-site weren’t her idea of wedding flowers, even if they were roses. Next thing she knew, Kate would be asking her to arrange stepmother blossom and rose-bay willow-herb all the way down the aisle!

  ‘The kettle is boiling,’ Christina said, as steam began to puff upwards.

  Hettie sniffed again. She didn’t need a foreigner to tell her when a kettle was boiling. Pointedly leaving it for another few seconds she poured milk into the cups. She’d never overly taken to Christina. Other people had suffered in the war, as well as the Jews. What about Constance Giles, the Vicar’s wife? A nicer lady had never lived. She’d never had a bad word for anyone. Never hurt a fly. It was typical that, when she’d been blasted to kingdom come in the first air-raid of the war, she’d been making a visit to one of her husband’s sick parishioners.

  Using a kettle-holder Kate had made years ago, when she had been a Girl Guide, she poured some boiling water into the teapot, swirled it round and poured it out and then spooned tea into the warmed pot. To her mind, Christina was a hard little piece, and she didn’t know what Jack Robson saw in her. He’d have been better off marrying a south-London girl. He’d
have known where he stood then. She poured boiling water on to the tea-leaves. She and Daniel only had one son, Danny, and he, thank goodness, had had the good sense to marry a proper south-London girl. Everyone knew where they were with Carrie. She was always bright and cheery and straight as a die. Whereas Christina . . . Her mouth tightened as she waited for the tea to brew. In her opinion, Jack Robson would never know where he stood with Christina. Still waters ran deep, and there were none stiller than Christina.

  ‘One sugar or two?’ she said to her now, miffed that she had been cheated of her heart-to-heart with Kate, adding acerbically, ‘Or have you given it up to help the Jenningses with their rationing?’

  Chapter Four

  ‘And now the war is over, you’ll never go away again?’ Matthew was asking Leon anxiously as they squelched over the mud flats below Greenwich.

  ‘No,’ Leon said, holding on to Luke’s chubby hands as he straddled his neck.

  Luke. He still couldn’t get over the wonderment of his son. Or the name Kate had given him. It wasn’t a very West Indian name. It wasn’t even a very common English name, or at least it wasn’t common in south London. He grinned to himself. First Matthew. Now Luke. If they had another two sons would Kate insist on christening them Mark and John?

  ‘And we’ll be a proper family now, won’t we?’ Daisy said, walking as close to him as was humanly possible. ‘We’ll be just like other people, won’t we?’

  ‘We’re going to be a grand family,’ Leon said, flashing her his sunlit smile. Though she was still only seven, Daisy remembered him from when he had been home on his last leave; the leave Luke had been conceived. Matthew had been only a baby then. Matthew had no memories of him, though it was hard to believe from the proprietorial way he dogged his every step.

  ‘Want to throw stones,’ Luke announced. ‘Want to throw stones in the river.’

  Leon swung him down from his shoulders, and Luke’s wellington boots made a satisfyingly squelchy sound as they made contact with the mud.

  ‘We’re going to look for treasure,’ Matthew said, speaking for Daisy as well as himself. ‘Pirate ships used to anchor here and there’s lots of buried treasure!’

  A paddle-steamer on the way to Southend trawled downriver, its wash causing small waves to ripple outwards towards the banks. Luke screamed with delight as his wellingtons received a soaking. Daisy and Matthew hastily scampered out of range. Leon watched his little tribe indulgently. All kids loved playing about near the water’s edge. His own childhood had been spent further down the river, at Chatham, and he had spent many happy hours searching for plunder amongst the flotsam and jetsam swept up by the tide.

  Very few people ever believed him when he told them he hadn’t only lived in Chatham as a child, but had been born there. ‘Don’t be daft,’ even his closest friends had said, ‘’ow could you ’ave bin, when you’re a darkie? Yer must ’ave bin born in Africa. Darkies come from Africa.’ That had been before the war, of course; before black American servicemen stationed in England had startled, and often shocked, the local populace.

  ‘My father came from Barbados,’ he had said patiently, time and time again. ‘My mother was English. Kent born and bred.’ It had never made any difference. His skin was dark and Darkie had become his nickname, and no-one ever believed he was as British as they were.

  ‘We’ve found some money!’ Matthew shouted gleefully. ‘A threepenny-bit. And Daisy’s found a mouth-organ. It doesn’t work, but it might do when it’s dried out!’

  A seaman on a tug ploughing up river recognized Leon’s naval jersey and gave him a friendly wave. Leon waved back. He’d met with very little racial prejudice at sea, thank goodness, and ever since he had saved young Billy Lomax from being injured or killed in a runaway lorry, he had met with none at all in Magnolia Square. What he would do when he met with it in his children’s presence, he didn’t yet know. It was an ugliness he didn’t want any of them exposed to, and yet they would be exposed to it, it was impossible they wouldn’t be. And they would be exposed to it directly, as well as on his behalf.

  For Luke, it would come in a different form to the remarks Matthew and Daisy would have to contend with. For all three of them it would be difficult. And somehow, he and Kate had to prepare them for the jokes that would hurt, the jibes that would be meant to hurt.

  ‘Can we spend the threepenny-bit at Mr Jennings’s fruit stall, Daddy-Leon?’ Matthew asked, looking up at him, his little face shining with happiness. ‘Can we have a picnic on the Heath?’

  ‘Of course we can,’ he ruffled Matthew’s blond hair lovingly, ‘and I’ll tell you what else we can do. We can go to the pond at the top end of the village and see if anyone is sailing boats. And tonight I’ll start building you a boat of your own. A boat with sails and masts and a flag.’

  ‘Miss Radcynska is a displaced person,’ Bob Giles said a few days later to his two churchwardens. ‘The Church of England charity seeking to help victims of the war have asked me if a home can be provided for her in St Mark’s parish.’ He paused, toying with a pencil on his desk, wondering just how to continue. Did he tell Daniel Collins and Wilfred Sharkey all he knew of Miss Radcynska’s history, or would doing so be counterproductive? He looked across his cluttered desk at them both: Daniel, stolid and dependable and with a heart as big as Asia; Wilfred, austere, ascetic, and with rigid convictions no force on earth could sway. ‘Miss Radcynska has suffered greatly,’ he continued, choosing his words with care, deciding not to disclose for the moment just how stupefyingly horrific Anna Radcynska’s suffering had been – and still was. ‘She isn’t well enough to live a completely independent life . . . and this gives rise to difficulties.’

  Daniel waited patiently for the difficulties to be explained. When they were, whatever they were, he would set his mind to overcoming them. Wilfred frowned. He didn’t like difficulties. They upset the tenor of a well-organized existence, and a well-organized existence was an existence that was centred in Christ.

  ‘As I’m a widower, it isn’t possible for Miss Radcynska to move temporarily into the vicarage,’ Bob Giles continued, a shadow darkening his eyes as it always did whenever he spoke of the loss of his wife, however obliquely. ‘But number eight is church property, and the bombed-out East End family we rehoused in the lower half of the house are moving out and moving back to the other side of the water.’ Though he wasn’t London-born and bred, Bob Giles had lived so long in south London that he spoke of the Thames as his friends and neighbours did, as if it were a cultural divide there was no overcoming.

  ‘Then there’s no problem,’ Daniel said cheerily. ‘With the Tillotsons living above her and Wilfred and his family living next door to her, Miss Radcynska will be as snug as a bug in a rug.’

  Wilfred cleared his throat. It was all very well for Daniel to be so magnanimous. He wasn’t the one who would be living next door to Miss whatever-her-name-was. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hasty,’ he said, an air of condescension in his voice. Daniel was a boiler-maker and Wilfred, a draughtsman, felt by far his social superior. ‘There are, after all, lots of British-born homeless people who would be only too happy to tenant number eight. How do we know how the Tillotsons will feel about Miss . . . Miss . . .’ rather than risk mispronouncing the name he didn’t attempt it, ‘about a foreigner moving in beneath them? How do we know that the young woman in question can speak English?’

  ‘As far as the Tillotsons are concerned, there isn’t an immediate problem,’ Bob Giles said, disappointed, as, always, by Wilfred’s ungenerous spirit. ‘It could well be the beginning of next year before Major Tillotson is demobbed, and Mrs Tillotson is, as you know, in Scotland with her mother. As to your other question, Wilfred, the answer is, I’m afraid, that I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, if she can’t speak English, all the more reason why she should be living among people who will only be too happy to help her learn it,’ Daniel said, impatient at such nit-picking. ‘Christina’s as much at home now in south London
as if she’d been born here, and Miss Radcynska soon will be as well.’

  ‘Let’s hope so, Daniel,’ Bob Giles said, speedily taking the matter as having been settled. ‘And now I think we’d better be heading over to the church. I’ve a wedding to conduct in twenty minutes unless I’m very much mistaken.’

  ‘Weddings!’ Hettie Collins said to Miriam, as they sat in one of the right-hand pews. ‘This one’s all right, but what Harriet Godfrey thinks she’s doing, marrying for the first time at her age, I don’t know. You’d think an educated woman like her would have something better to do with her time. As for the Vicar . . .’ The bunch of imitation cherries on the plum straw hat, which replaced her workaday black one, wobbled with the force of her indignation. ‘You’d think if he was going to marry again, he’d at least have married someone near his dead wife’s age, not a young woman still in her twenties. He could have married a widow. There’s plenty of ’em about these days, poor devils.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Miriam said sagely, nodding a head of iron-grey hair, for once not encased in hair curlers. ‘It’s almost as if he’s ’appy to be marryin’ again. I wouldn’t want my Albert to be ’appy to be marryin’ again. I’d be revolvin’ in my grave at the very thought!’

  ‘And I thought Kate said she was only ’avin’ a small weddin’.’ Hettie continued, looking around the nearly full church. ‘There couldn’t be more people in ’ere if she’d invited all of Lewisham!’

  ‘They’ve not all been invited,’ Miriam said knowledgably. ‘Word’s spread and they’re just noseyin’.’

  ‘Well, I ’spect they’ve somethin’ to nosey at,’ Hettie conceded, her eyes on the groom.

  In his naval uniform, and in the stark white and polished wood interior of St Mark’s, Leon didn’t look merely chocolate-coloured. He looked as black as the ace of spades.

  ‘They’ll do all right together,’ Miriam said generously, knowing exactly what it was that Hettie, with unusual tact, hadn’t put into words. ‘An’ it isn’t as if ’er mother’s alive to be upset, is it?’