Pru Sharkey sat miserably in the bus-shelter at the corner of the Heath. It was August now, and London was suffering one of its periodic summer thunderstorms. In the distance, lightning flashed over Blackheath Village, searingly illuminating All Saints’ Church. A little nearer, the donkey-man had donned a capacious mackintosh and sou’wester and had thrown groundsheets over his animals to keep the worst of the rain off them while he stoically waited for the storm to rumble away.
The donkeys looked exceedingly despondent and Pru sympathized with them. She, too, felt despondent. She had felt despondent for so long she had forgotten what it was like to feel anything else. She looked down at her sensibly shod feet. Brown, low-heeled, thick-soled shoes with a sturdy strap across the ankle. They were unfashionable shoes – old women’s shoes – shoes that looked like boat-barges.
‘They’re serviceable,’ her father had said as he towered over her in Jem Porritt’s linoleum-floored Repair and Shoe Shop. It had been an adjective impossible to disagree with.
Rain drummed down on the roof of the bus-shelter, and Pru sighed heavily. She was nineteen years old. No-one else she knew of her age had to suffer being taken for a new pair of shoes by their father, especially when the money for the shoes was being paid for out of her own hard-earned money. She sighed again. And she hadn’t wanted to shop for shoes in Mr Porritt’s musty-smelling shop. She had wanted to shop for them in Lewisham or Catford, and to do so in a shoe shop that sold stylish shoes, not just old women’s shoes and working boots and slippers.
Trying to explain to her father was hopeless. It always was. All he cared about was that she didn’t look flighty and cheap. ‘Kate Emmerson doesn’t look flighty or cheap,’ she had said frustratedly, ‘and Kate doesn’t buy her shoes at Jem’s. She buys them in Lewisham, at Timpsons.’
Whether Kate had bought her tan leather and white buckskin, Cuban-heeled shoes at Timpsons, Prudence didn’t truly know. But they looked as if they had come from Timpsons. Although they were sensible, they were also classy. Everything about Kate Emmerson was classy.
‘You’re damned out of your own mouth!’ her father had said harshly. ‘Katherine Voigt is the mother of two illegitimate children! And one of them is a half-caste child who will never be accepted by either its mother’s race, or its father’s!’
‘Kate’s name is Emmerson now, not Voigt,’ she had said mutinously. ‘And you’re wrong about Luke. Everyone adores him!’
‘They won’t when he’s older and eyeing their daughters,’ her father had retorted crushingly. ‘And now let’s get some dubbin to waterproof those shoes.’
A bus trundled into view. Pru remained seated. She wasn’t waiting for the bus, she was simply taking shelter and delaying the moment when she would have to return to her joyless home. Malcolm Lewis, Mr Giles’s young scoutmaster, was standing on the platform, obviously about to jump off even before the bus splashed to a stop. Pru felt a stirring of interest. Malcolm Lewis was extremely personable. He was also very often the subject of Magnolia Square gossip. ‘Why he’s not in the Forces beats me,’ she remembered Hettie Collins once saying to Miriam Jennings, when the Blitz had been at its height and they had all been crammed together in the local air raid shelter. ‘He’s young and fit, and for all he’s a scoutmaster, he’s not a conchie.’
‘Mebbe ’e’s somethin’ ’igh in intelligence,’ Miriam had proffered, sucking on a glacier mint. ‘Mebbe ’e’s ’ighly indispensable to the government.’
Pru eyed Malcolm Lewis speculatively as he jumped nimbly off the bus. Was he a secret service agent? And if he was, how was it he’d spent the war in Lewisham and Blackheath? Why hadn’t he been in Paris or Tangiers or Cairo?
‘You’d better be quick,’ he said to her affably as the bus driver looked towards her. ‘He won’t wait for ever.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Pru said, flushing and feeling foolish.
The bus driver raised his eyes to heaven and slammed his bus once more into gear. Malcolm Lewis grinned. ‘It isn’t raining so heavily now. Shall we walk over to Magnolia Square together and dodge the raindrops?’
With awkward self-consciousness, she rose to her feet. Whether Malcolm Lewis had or hadn’t a glamorous war-time past, he was most definitely the most good-looking young man for miles around. Far too good-looking for her to have ever hoped he might take an interest in her. And he wasn’t taking an interest now, she reminded herself glumly as they left the pavement and struck out across the sopping wet grass of the Heath. If he’d come across Miss Helliwell or Nellie Miller at the bus stop he would have chatted to them just as companionably. He was that kind of young man.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked, turning the collar of his jacket down as the raindrops decreased to an occasional spatter and a weak sun speared the clouds.
‘Work.’
She sounded so morose that his grin deepened. ‘It can’t be that bad, surely? Didn’t your father get you a position as a filing clerk with Baileys, the solicitors?’
Pru nodded. He had, and the work bored her to tears. The office was cramped and fusty-smelling. Mr Bailey was older than Methuselah, and Miss Crabtree, his secretary, had been employed by him since before the 1914–18 war. If she had been allowed to choose her employment for herself she would have chosen to work in a dress shop, but she hadn’t been allowed to choose her own employment. Her father regarded shop-work as common, and clerical work, albeit lowly clerical work, as being far more respectable.
‘OK. It is that bad,’ he said as he received no answer to his query. ‘So why stay? There’s plenty of jobs about. You could take your pick.’
‘No,’ she said briefly, not turning her head to look at him. ‘I couldn’t.’
He regarded her with a mixture of amusement and perplexity. She was a strange girl. Plain and oddly unforthcoming. He wondered why she didn’t make more of herself. His sisters were no older than Pru and they both wore a touch of lipstick and darkened their eyelashes. With a flash of surprise he realized that if Pru Sharkey wore lipstick and darkened her eyelashes she would look quite pretty.
‘Have you heard about the Polish girl who’s coming to live in the Square?’ he asked, changing tack as he quite obviously wasn’t getting anywhere with his present subject of conversation. ‘She should be arriving any day now.’
Pru’s jaw tightened. Had she heard about the Polish girl! For the last few weeks she and her mother had heard of nothing else. ‘It’s criminal short-sightedness!’ her father had ranted time and time again. ‘We already have Germans, market-traders, a West Indian and a criminal living in the Square! Any more riff-raff and we might as well be living in Bermondsey or Limehouse!’
‘There’s only one German living in the Square, dear,’ her mother had protested bravely, speaking of Christina.
The interruption had been a mistake.
‘And what do you think the Voigts are?’ he had demanded savagely, spinning round on her. ‘English landed gentry?’
Her mother’s face had drained of colour and Pru’s intention of reminding her father that Leon Emmerson was only half West Indian and that Charlie Robson was an ex-convict rapidly vanished. If she deliberately antagonized him he would only take his temper out on her mother, turning physically abusive as he had the day before Kate and Leon’s wedding.
‘Yes,’ she said, remembering that, via his church activities, Malcolm Lewis was a kind of colleague of her father’s, ‘I’d heard.’
Malcolm dug his hands into the pockets of his flannels and gave up. He couldn’t make her talk if she didn’t want to. He wondered what activity his scout-pack would enjoy that evening. And he wondered if he could persuade Mavis Lomax to encourage young Billy to become a scout. If he did, Billy might, just might, end up a law-abiding young man and not a tearaway, or worse.
‘Not perishin’ likely!’ Billy said with fervour when his mother put the proposition to him. ‘Scouts wear short trousers and I ain’t stayin’ in short trousers a day longer than I ’ave to!’
The fact that he wasn’t already in long trousers was an ongoing source of contention between them. ‘Jimmie Binns is in long trousers an’ ’e’s only eleven!’ he had pointed out in simmering frustration. ‘An as ’e’s in my gang it makes me look ridiculous!’
Mavis had been uncaring. ‘Jimmie Binns is only in long trousers ’cos they’re ’is big brother’s ’and-me-downs,’ she had said, smoothing Vaseline on her eyebrows to make them glossy. ‘’Is short trousers ’ad so many ’oles in ’em ’e looked like a colander.’
Jack Robson sprang off the still-moving train as it eased its way into Blackheath Station. He was home again on leave and, judging by the cataclysmic news broadcast that morning by the BBC, in another few months he would be home for good. The Japs couldn’t possibly prolong the war now, not after two of their biggest cities had been obliterated by A-bombs. He strode down the platform, his kit-bag slung easily over his shoulder, a tall, loose-limbed, hard-muscled young man. Would he be demobbed by Christmas? It was certainly a possibility.
‘Wotcher, Jack!’ the aged ticket collector said, his face wreathed in welcoming smiles. ‘A forty-eight-hour one, is it? Your missus’ll be pleased.’
‘She’ll be surprised as well,’ Jack said with a grin. ‘For all she knows I’m still in Greece.’
The ticket collector chuckled. If any other young serviceman had told him he was arriving home after an absence of over a year, without prior warning, he would have told him he was taking a hell of a risk. Many young wives behaved themselves between their husbands’ far too infrequent leaves, but a staggering amount didn’t. They were off dancing and drinking and having themselves a rare old time. Christina Robson wasn’t one of them, though. Jack was as likely to find someone else in his home, his feet under the table, as the Pope was likely to turn Protestant.
Well aware of the ticket collector’s thoughts, Jack swung out of the station and into the heart of Blackheath Village. He hadn’t written to Christina with the news because he hadn’t been a hundred per cent sure his leave would come off and because if it did come off, he wanted to see the incredulity and joy on her face when she opened the door to him. And he hadn’t written and told her he felt an early demob was on the cards, as he had to Mavis, because until this morning’s news it had only been a fierce hope. Now, however, with Japan facing the threat of more A-bombs and virtual extinction unless she speedily surrendered, he felt wide-scale demobilization was a sure-fire certainty, and he whistled exuberantly to himself as he began to stride up Tranquil Vale, towards All Saints’ Church and the Heath.
‘Hello there, Jack!’ Hettie Collins called out to him from the other side of the street as she stood in a long queue outside the butcher’s. ‘Nice to have you home again! When’s it going to be for good, though, that’s what I want to know!’
Jack merely grinned, not slackening his pace. However long the interval between leaves home, some things never changed. The queues, for one thing. Housewives had begun queuing when food shortages had first hit in the early days of the war, and they were queuing still. Outside the greengrocer’s he spotted little Miss Helliwell, her old-fashioned georgette summer dress reaching almost to her ankles, chiffon scarves and multitudinous necklaces fighting for space around her neck. He suppressed the temptation to stop and chat with her. There would be time for such chats later, after his reunion with Christina.
Desire surged through him. From the first moment he had seen her, he had wanted her. And he had known why he had wanted her. It had been because, with her shiny black hair and delicately featured face, she was as beautiful as a Madonna. And, like a Madonna, there was a mysterious air of self-containment about her. Unlike the bright and breezy south-east London girls he had grown up with, Christina never chattered for the sheer joy of chattering, or ever indulged in light-hearted banter. Always polite, always pleasant, her thoughts were her own and impossible to guess at. He had found her intriguing and tantalizing, and had pursued her mercilessly.
Easing his kit-bag a little more comfortably on his shoulder, he set out across the Heath, thinking back to the early days of their courtship. Such pursuit had been a novel experience for him. Ever since he had been a toddler, the opposite sex had sought him out remorselessly and, by the time he had been in his late teens, his reputation as a lady-killer had been well established. His mouth quirked in amusement. It had been a reputation Christina had been singularly unimpressed by. How long had it taken him to break down her defences? Four years? Five? The war hadn’t helped. He had volunteered for the Commandos, and ever since he had enjoyed only intermittent leaves at home. Soon, however, he would be home for good, and then his and Christina’s life together could really start.
‘Jack! Jack!’ An ecstatic female voice shrieked, breaking in on his thoughts.
He shielded his eyes from the sun and saw that it was little Beryl Lomax who was racing towards him, her eyes alight, her face glowing.
‘You’re home! You’re home! You’re home!’ she shouted joyfully, as he dropped his kit-bag to the grass and opened his arms wide.
‘I am, but not for long,’ he said, his arms closing round her, ‘so you’d better make the most of me while you can!’
Laughingly he swung her dizzyingly round and round. When at last he set her totteringly back on her feet, she said admonishingly, ‘I’m nine years old now! Only babies get swung round.’
‘Oh no, they don’t,’ Jack said, picking up his kit-bag and slinging it back across his shoulder and taking hold of her hand. ‘No young lady is ever too big to be swung around.’
Beryl giggled. With her fine, fair hair worn short and straight she wasn’t a spectacularly pretty child, but she was an engaging one. ‘Will you swing Ma around?’ she asked, skipping along at his side. ‘Will you swing Mrs Miller around?’
‘I shall probably swing your ma around,’ Jack said equably, ‘but I’d need the help of a crane to swing Nellie Miller around!’
Beryl giggled some more and then said, ‘I suppose you want the news. When people have been away for a long time they always want news.’
‘That’s very true,’ Jack said, knowing she was trying to be grown-up and refraining from teasing her. ‘So fire away. What’s been happening? Has Kate had news of her fellow yet? Has Nellie heard from her nephew? Has the Vicar re-married?’
They were nearing the edge of the Heath now and Beryl knew that once they entered Magnolia Terrace word of Jack’s homecoming would spread like wildfire and her precious time alone with him would come to an abrupt end.
‘Leon’s home, and he and Kate are married,’ she said, eager to impart all important information. ‘And the Vicar is engaged to Miss Fairbairn. I don’t know anything about Nellie and her nephew, but I do know your dad is going to be married. He’s going to marry Miss Godfrey.’
Jack stumbled. Regaining his balance he said with feeling, ‘Quit the teasing, Beryl. You nearly gave me a perishing heart attack!’
Beryl tilted her head slightly to one side and regarded him gravely. ‘I’m not teasing,’ she said, mildly offended. ‘I wouldn’t tease about people getting married. ’Course, they’re both ever so old to be getting married,’ she added, trying to see the news from his point of view and remembering something she had overheard her granddad saying to Mr Collins when they had been discussing the forthcoming wedding, ‘but there’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle.’
Jack made a choking sound and she said, perplexed, ‘Well, that’s what Grandad said, but I don’t understand it. Your dad doesn’t play a fiddle, does he? And Miss Godfrey only plays the piano.’
When Jack could trust himself to speak he said hoarsely, ‘And when’s this wedding going to take place?’
Beryl shrugged her shoulders. ‘I dunno. I ’spect they’re waiting for you to come home.’ She flashed him a smile that almost split her elfin face in half. ‘And you’re home now, aren’t you? Perhaps it will be this week!’
It was Billy who saved Jack from having to make any kind of
a response. He had been languishing high up in a favourite tree in Magnolia Terrace, and the second he saw them he jackknifed upright, nearly falling out of it.
‘Jack! Jack!’ he yelled, waving madly. ‘Have yer got any Commando knives with yer? ’Ave yer got any Jerry ’elmets?’
By the time Beryl and Jack reached the foot of the tree Billy, whooping like a dervish, had shinned down it.
‘Wotcher, mate,’ Jack said affectionately, rumpling Billy’s spiky mop of hair. ‘Who were you on the look-out for? A Luftwaffe pilot that doesn’t know Germany’s surrendered yet?’
‘Nah,’ Billy said, not wanting his idol to think he was so daft, ‘but it ain’t ’alf borin’ not ’avin’ anything to look out for. Mum thinks it’s boring too, ’specially as my gran’s kicking up a ruckus about ’er goin’ out at night. Gran says my dad’ll be ’ome soon,’ he added confidentially, ‘and that as Mum will ’ave to start behavin’ ’erself then, she might as well start behaving ’erself now.’
Jack, well accustomed to the plain speaking that took place in the Jennings and Lomax households, merely grinned at the thought of Miriam trying to clip Mavis’s wings at this late stage of the game. Inwardly he wasn’t grinning at all. He was trying to come to terms with Beryl’s shattering news.
Had his father really proposed marriage to Harriet Godfrey? Harriet Godfrey, a woman he and his friends had always referred to, when she had been their junior school headmistress, as a prissy old trout? He’d known, of course, that the two of them had struck up an unlikely friendship. His father had never grasped the difficulties of reading and writing and, inexplicably, Harriet Godfrey had one day taken it into her head to begin teaching him. Even more inexplicably, his father had happily allowed her to do so. From then on the two of them had been regularly seen together, walking Queenie on the Heath or enjoying a drink at The Princess of Wales. And now, according to Beryl, they were going to get married.
As Billy grabbed the lids off two dustbins and began leading the way into Magnolia Square, clanking them together and shouting to the world at large, ‘Jack’s home! Jack’s home!’ Jack wondered if there was any hope that Beryl had misheard or misunderstood. Children often did, after all. Or perhaps whoever had told her the news had been teasing her. Or had been just trying to stir up trouble. Or . . .
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