Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  Behind her, in The Swan, Miriam’s eyebrows rose nearly into her tightly curled, netted hair. ‘Where’s Christina ’ared off to?’ she demanded. ‘Billy’ll be back with the winkles in a minute.’

  ‘She’s gone to have a word with my dad about something,’ Kate said, knowing that if she didn’t suitably satisfy Miriam’s curiosity, Miriam would publicize Christina’s departure to all and sundry by asking the pub at large if they knew where she had disappeared to. ‘Is that Malcolm Lewis over there, earwigging Daniel? It’s not often he comes down to The Swan, is it? I always thought scoutmasters were teetotal.’

  With his latest order of drinks generously distributed far and wide, Jack turned to catch Christina’s eye. Why she was sitting in the corner like an old biddy, he didn’t for the life of him know. He wanted her next to him, in the centre of the throng, so that he could stand with his arm proprietorially around her waist, showing her off to all his mates. When he saw her empty place on the banquette he frowned slightly. Where the devil had she gone? If she’d gone to the Ladies she’d have had to walk right past him and he would have seen her.

  Seeing his perplexity, Kate rose hastily to her feet, about to go across and quietly tell him that Christina had slipped out for a few minutes. Miriam saved her the trouble.

  ‘If you’re looking for your trouble and strife, Jack, she’s gorn to ’ave a word with Kate’s dad,’ she informed him loudly, ‘an’ while I’ve got yer attention, that last round you bought might ’ave reached everyone else but it didn’t reach this little corner and mine’s a port an’ lemon.’

  Carrie, standing with Danny in Jack’s extended circle, groaned with embarrassment. Her mother was always the same when she’d had a couple of drinks. Louder than usual and playfully aggressive with it. ‘You’ll have to excuse her,’ she said to Jack, more for the benefit of his mates than himself, ‘she thinks she’s still down the market.’

  Jack barely heard her. All he was aware of was that Christina had walked out of the pub without even bothering to tell him where she was going, or why.

  Kate, seeing his frown deepen, carried out her initial intention and squeezed from behind the corner table, shouldering her way through the crush towards him. ‘It’s all right, Jack,’ she said a trifle breathlessly as she reached his side. ‘Christina tried to get your attention to let you know she was slipping out for a minute or two, but you were busy ordering drinks. It’s a grand party, isn’t it? There’s faces here I haven’t seen since I was at school. Is that Archie Cummings with the moustache? I’d heard he’d been invalided out of the paras. And is—’

  ‘Why on earth has Christina gone to have a word with your dad?’ Jack asked, not as easily side-tracked as Miriam. ‘It’s not that long since she wouldn’t even wish him the time of day!’

  ‘It may not seem a long time to you, Jack, because you’ve been away from home for so long,’ Kate said, understanding why it would seem so incomprehensible to him, ‘but Christina and my dad have been on speaking terms for ages now.’

  ‘But what have they got to talk about that’s so urgent?’ Jack persisted, keeping his voice low so that his mates wouldn’t know he was even remotely put out by his wife’s disappearing act.

  His real question, and Kate knew it, was why would Christina go up the Voigt home to speak to Carl Voigt in such peculiar privacy? If they had anything to talk about, why couldn’t it be talked about in daylight, in the Square or over the Voigts’ garden gate? Kate hesitated, in a dilemma. If Christina had told Jack about her growing certainty that her mother and grandmother were still alive, and of her decision to try and find them, he would have known why she wanted to talk in private with the only other German resident in Magnolia Square. That he didn’t, indicated that she hadn’t yet told him, and it was a subject too personal and too close to Christina’s heart for her to be the one to break the news.

  Awkwardly, she said, ‘I’m not sure, Jack. I think it’s something she thinks Dad can help her with, him being German.’

  Jack’s perplexity turned to downright incredulity. Christina couldn’t bear to even hear the word ‘Germany’, and he didn’t blame her. If there was one thing there was no room for in their lives, it was reminders of the hell she had left behind her when she had escaped to England. ‘I think someone’s been spinning you a line, Kate,’ he said, his hazel eyes dark, his thumbs tucked into his belt loops, his body tense. ‘With all due respect, Christina wants no reminders, in any way shape or form, of Germans or Germany.’

  Kate’s unhappiness increased. She could hardly tell Jack he was wrong, without also telling him why he was wrong.

  ‘Come on, Jack!’ Mavis exhorted, reaching out and ruffling his hair from her vantage position perched on the bar. ‘Stop lookin’ as if you’ve lost a tanner and found a penny! Get up ’ere with me and let’s get a proper singsong goin’.’

  ‘Who’s the blackie?’ one of Jack’s mates asked him as, with athletic ease, he did as she suggested. ‘Is he a Yank?’

  ‘No,’ Jack responded swiftly before Kate could draw breath, adding as he settled himself comfortably on the bar top. ‘He’s home-grown and this is his local.’

  ‘Well, if it’s all right by you, it’s all right by me,’ the speaker, a sallow-complexioned young man with a tic near his eye, said grudgingly, reading aright the inference to back off, ‘but Yank blackies usually keep to their own kind. Makes things simpler, if you know what I mean.’

  Kate felt almost unbearable pressure building up behind her eyes. This was the second time in a day that Leon’s skin colour had been derogatorily remarked upon. Right from the beginning of their relationship Leon had warned her that it would happen and, until now, she had felt confident of being able to handle whatever ignorant abuse was handed out. What she hadn’t expected, however, was that she would have to cope with that kind of abuse from her son’s great-grandfather, or that she would meet with it in The Swan.

  The urge to tug on Jack’s mate’s arm and give him a piece of her mind, died. It would only result in an ugly scene and she didn’t want to spoil Jack’s party. Nor did she want to remain at the party any longer. She wanted to be at home with Leon. She looked down the crowded bar to where he was deep in conversation with Charlie and Harriet, his dear, dark face looking tired and strained. She knew the reason why. It was because of their long discussion about how best to handle Joss Harvey’s reemergence in their lives.

  ‘He’s a mate,’ Kate heard Jack say to his friend as she turned away from them, ‘so give it a rest.’

  As she squeezed past Malcolm Lewis, Kate felt a spasm of gratitude. Jack’s statement was a lie, for he barely knew Leon, but he was obviously taking the line that any husband of hers was a friend of his. Word would now spread among his cronies that derogatory remarks about Leon were off-limits, and there wouldn’t be any – at least not in his hearing.

  As she reached his side he slid an arm lovingly around her waist. ‘Hello, sweetheart. I thought you’d deserted me.’ Despite his inner dejection at the problems now facing them, he smiled down at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Harriet and Charlie have set the date for their wedding. They’re planning to have it on a weekday so that Billy won’t be able to present Harriet with half a hundred weight of nutty slack for good luck!’

  ‘It’s going to be a quiet wedding,’ Harriet Godfrey said, striving to make herself heard over Mavis and Jack’s spirited rendering of ‘There’ll Always be an England’.

  Charlie shook his head in disbelief. For an intelligent woman, his Harriet could be incredibly naïve at times. ‘Don’t be daft, pet,’ he said reasonably, ‘this is Magnolia Square. ’Ow the ’eck could anythin’ possibly take place quietly?’

  It was a question even Harriet couldn’t answer.

  ‘Winkles!’ Albert shouted over the now communal singing. ‘If you want ’em, come and get ’em!’

  ‘I think I want to go home,’ Kate said to Leon as everyone began to make a bee-line towards Albert and his precious car
go. ‘Do you mind, darling?’

  He shook his head, his arm tightening around her. ‘No,’ he said tenderly, ‘let’s slip away now. I don’t think we’ll be missed.’

  ‘If you ain’t got yer own winkle-pin, I’m not lendin’ yer mine,’ Miriam was saying crossly to her son-in-law. ‘Lor’ ’elp me, Danny, don’t you ever get yourself organized?’

  ‘I ain’t ’ad a winkle since I can’t remember when,’ Mavis was saying with saucy sexual innuendo to Jack as he swung her down from the bar. ‘But if you think it’s time I ’ad one . . .’

  ‘Never mind ’is winkle, I’ve got a winkle goin’ spare!’ Archie Cummings shouted.

  There was a roar of bawdy laughter and then, as Kate and Leon stepped out of the pub and on to the street they heard Mavis saying tartly, ‘An’ you can keep it, Archie Cummings, ’cos from what I’ve ’eard, you’d need a pin to bloomin’ find it!’

  The laughter reached gale-force proportions and then the pub door swung shut behind them and Leon said, amusement thick in his voice, ‘And Harriet’s hoping for a quiet wedding! She doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance!’

  Despite her inner weariness, Kate gave a throaty chuckle. ‘I think Charlie’s made her realize that.’

  His arm went around her shoulders, and she slid an arm around his waist. ‘They’re an odd couple, aren’t they?’ she said, her weariness easing in the comfort of his nearness. ‘Harriet was always such a prim spinster. Hair in a bun, no lipstick, always very authoritarian and proper. No-one ever called her by her Christian name. It would have been unthinkable. And then, after she retired as a headmistress, she took it upon herself to teach Charlie to read, and suddenly the entire Square was on Christian-name terms with her and now she’s not only drinking in The Swan, she’s joining in the singing too!’

  ‘Lots of happy, perfectly suited couples seem, on the surface, to be oddities,’ Leon said as, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, they turned the corner into the Square. ‘Take you and me, for instance. I’m sure most people must shake their heads when they see us together, and wonder what a half-German south-east London girl and a half-Bajan sailor could possibly have in common. And then there’s Christina and Jack. Christina’s German and Jewish and, though she never talks about it, she obviously comes from an extremely refined, middle-class background. Jack is a south-east London tearaway. Lord only knows how he’s going to settle down to Civvie Street when he’s demobbed from the Commandos.’

  Kate didn’t answer him. She was wondering a lot of other things about Jack. She was wondering how long it would be before Christina began confiding in him as a wife should confide in her husband. And she was wondering what Jack’s reaction would be when she finally did so.

  Chapter Ten

  With an unsteady hand, Christina knocked on number four’s front door. The primrose paintwork gleamed palely in the moonlight, and as she waited for Carl Voigt to answer her knock, Christina was aware of the heavy, pungent perfume of roses and night-scented stocks.

  He opened the door to her, blinking slightly. As usual when left to baby-sit, he had taken advantage of the relative privacy to sit and enjoy one of his classical music records and had fallen asleep whilst doing so. ‘Come in, my dear,’ he said, gathering his wits, ushering her through into the sitting-room as the sound of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number One played melodically to a close. ‘Kate’s told you about the letter, has she? I was going to leave it to the morning to tell you about it.’ He smiled his reticent, oddly charming, smile. ‘I knew it was Jack’s party tonight and I thought perhaps you wouldn’t want to be troubled.’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’ Her voice was nearly as unsteady as her hands had been. ‘What did the letter say? Are the Red Cross going to be able to help us? Do they have lists of names of Displaced Persons? Lists of names of people who were released from, or who survived, the concentration camps?’

  ‘It’s not quite so simple and straightforward,’ Carl said, wanting to put her out of her suspense, yet wanting to let her down gently. ‘Here.’ He patted an armchair. ‘Sit down and let me get my glasses and I’ll show the letter to you.’

  In a fever of impatience, she sat down whilst he lifted the arm of the record-player from the record and set it back on its rest, and then fumbled for his glasses and the letter on a nearby cluttered table. When at last he put the letter, with its distinctive letter-heading, into her hand, she was so nervous that her eyes would barely focus properly.

  Dear Mr Voigt, she read with a beating heart, Thank you for your communication regarding your efforts to trace Jacoba Berger née Levy born London, 7.10.1870, and Eva Frank, née Berger, born 1.5.1901, Heidelberg. At the moment of writing, these names do not show up on any of the Displaced Persons files presently held in Great Britain. These files are, however, constantly being updated and it does not mean to say that the names you enquired after will not appear eventually. Our advice would be to write again with your query in three months’ time.

  As to your query regarding the availability of concentration camp records; some camp records are in our possession, but not for the years 1936/7.

  It is known, however, that a significant number of people imprisoned during this period of time were later released.

  If there is any chance at all that Jacoba Berger and Eva Frank were among them, and that they subsequently became refugees, the newly established Headquarters of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva may be able to help you.

  In a rush of conflicting emotions, Christina put the letter down and looked across to where Carl Voigt was sitting. ‘Is it hopeful news?’ Somehow, even though there was no real information about her mother or grandmother in the letter, just seeing their names typed on Red Cross headed notepaper seemed to make the hope that they were still alive more feasible.

  ‘I think it is, yes,’ Carl said cautiously. ‘It’s certainly hopeful to have corroboration from such a source that German Jews imprisoned in 1936 stood a slight chance of subsequent release. That certainly wouldn’t be the case if we were talking about a later date.’

  ‘And the United Nations Commission for Refugees? You will write to them for me?’

  At the fraught urgency in her voice, Carl felt a wave of compassion for her, wishing he had warned Kate not to tell her about the letter so soon. Tomorrow would have been early enough. As it was, her husband’s welcome home party had been spoiled for her, and all to no real avail. There was still nothing she could do but wait and hope, certainly for weeks, possibly for months.

  ‘I’ve already done so,’ he said gently. ‘Would you like a cup of cocoa, or are you impatient to get back to The Swan?’

  ‘I’d like a cup of cocoa, please,’ Christina said, in no hurry at all to return to the noisy, raucous pub.

  As she watched Danny struggling, tipsily, to undress, Carrie lay back against the pillows on their big, brass-headed bed, her thoughts on Jack and Christina. Compared to her and Danny, they were lucky. Very lucky. When Jack was demobbed and home for good, they would have number twelve all to themselves.

  Danny, his right leg safely extricated from his trousers, tried to extricate his left leg and, in doing so, stood on his right trouser leg, half-falling against the bed. ‘Oops,’ he said, grinning blearily at her from beneath his thatch of spiky, mahogany-red hair. ‘Someone’s moved the bloomin’ bed again.’

  Despite her exasperation with him, Carrie grinned. He was an absolute idiot at times, trying to keep up with Jack’s hard-drinking mates when he knew very well that more than five pints would see him half-seas over, but he was her idiot and she loved him dearly.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, embarking on the difficult task of pulling his pyjama bottoms on without putting both legs down the same pyjama leg. Carrie moved over slightly, making more room for him, her thoughts once again on Jack and Christina. Number twelve was a large, roomy house. One day it would, presumably, be full of children, but for the moment Jack and Christina would be able to enjoy it in ab
solute privacy. At the thought of such privacy Carrie felt weak with envy. She and Danny had never spent as much as one night together without being aware of the close proximity, through the paper-thin walls, of her mum and dad and gran.

  As if on cue, Miriam banged on the bedroom wall. ‘Yer dad’s flaked out without bringin’ any water up for durin’ the night, Carrie! Can yer bring ’im a pint mug in? I’d do it, but me legs ain’t ’alf givin’ me gyp!’

  Carrie rolled her eyes to heaven and heaved herself from the bed. After a few jars at The Swan, her dad always woke in the middle of the night with a thirst, and usually had the foresight to arm himself accordingly. And she doubted very much that her mum’s legs were paining her. She was tight, that was all, and it was no wonder, considering the number of port and lemons she’d downed!

  ‘Blimey, it ain’t mornin’ already, is it?’ Danny asked as, giving up the battle with his pyjama-cord, he sank back heavily against the pillows.

  As she walked towards their bedroom door, her high-necked, white cotton nightdress brushing her ankles, she resisted the temptation to fib and cause even more confusion to his addled brain. ‘No,’ she said, opening the door. ‘I’m just going to get some water for Dad. Do you want me to get some for you as well?’

  He didn’t answer and she paused in the doorway, looking towards him. He was dead to the world, his arms and legs spread-eagled, his eyes closed, his mouth sagging open. With rising exasperation, she went downstairs to the kitchen. Men! If they knew how unappetizing they looked when drunk, they surely wouldn’t get drunk. As she slammed a cupboard door open, taking her father’s pint mug down from a shelf, she wondered if Jack Robson and Leon Emmerson were equally comatose, and doubted it. Jack had an awesome reputation for being able to hold his drink, and Leon had taken Kate home while the evening was still young.