Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  She took the mug over to the sink and turned on the tap. When it came to housing, Kate and Leon were nearly as lucky as Christina and Jack. Apart from the children, who didn’t count, they only had to share number four with Kate’s father, and in the near future he would be marrying Ellen Pierce. She brushed her unruly, near-black hair away from her face with her free hand. And when Carl Voigt and Ellen Pierce married, Carl would most likely move into Ellen’s home in Greenwich, and Kate and Leon and their children would have number four to themselves.

  There came the sound of heavy knocking again, this time from the direction of the kitchen ceiling.

  ‘Where the ’ell ’ave yer got to, Carrie!’ Miriam’s market-trading voice carried downstairs magnificently. She thumped the bedroom floor again with her shoe. ‘Yer dad’ll be wanting that pint of water tonight, not next Christmas!’

  Carrie sighed heavily and turned the tap off. She loved her mother dearly, but there were times when she found her a sore trial. She began to make her way upstairs again, thankful that, as Rose had been moved into the roomy attic bedroom for the duration of Jack’s visit, she was unlikely to be woken by all the commotion.

  ‘It’s on its way!’ she shouted before her mother could really get her knickers in a twist.

  From behind her grandmother’s bedroom door Bonzo growled, bad-tempered at having his sleep disturbed. Carrie’s lips tightened. Bonzo would have his sleep disturbed even more frequently when the baby was born. And so would everyone else. Her grandmother, of course, wouldn’t mind in the slightest, but her mum and dad had to be up before the crack of dawn to be at Covent Garden, buying in fruit and veg, and broken nights would be hard for them. And what about Danny? She pushed open her parents’ bedroom door. She hadn’t told him about the baby yet. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Kate. And she didn’t intend telling anyone until she heard whether she and Danny were going to be able to move into number seventeen now that the Binns family were moving out of it.

  ‘That’s the gel,’ Miriam said, her pink slumber-net crammed on her head back to front. ‘Put it dahn by your dad’s side of the bed, but not too close. I don’t want ’im goin’ for a paddle in the middle of the night, as well as a piddle.’

  ‘It’s looking hopeful, Carrie,’ Bob Giles said to her next morning as she faced him across the desk in his cluttered study. ‘Housing don’t have any immediate plans for number seventeen, and it’s just possible we could pull a fast one and have you and Danny in there before the house is even officially listed as being empty. The landlord is the Harvey Construction Company.’

  Carrie’s sea-green eyes flew wide. ‘Blimey!’ she said expressively. ‘I didn’t know old man Harvey owned property in Magnolia Square, and I bet Kate doesn’t know either!’

  ‘Joss Harvey owns a lot of property in Blackheath and Lewisham,’ Bob Giles said, well aware of the fraught relationship that existed between Kate and Mr Harvey, ‘but I think number seventeen is the only house in Magnolia Square owned by him.’

  ‘And wouldn’t you know it has to be the only house me and Danny have a chance of moving into!’ Carrie said, not at all sure how she felt about having Joss Harvey as her landlord.

  Bob Giles, well aware that church property in the Square was still standing spectacularly empty, adjusted his clerical collar a little uncomfortably. ‘If I’d realized earlier how very much you and Danny wanted a place of your own, I would never have agreed to house a refugee in number eight. As it is, Miss Radcynska is due to arrive any day now and. . .’

  The unthinkable happened. Without so much as a knock or a by-your-leave, his study door flew open. ‘It’s over!’ Hettie announced euphorically, her wraparound, floral-patterned pinafore tied tightly around her ample waist, her hat crammed on her head at an almost jaunty angle, a feather-duster clutched in one hand. ‘The bloody Japs have given in! We’re not at war any more! Not with anyone!’

  ‘Praise God!’ Bob Giles bounded from his chair, oblivious of Hettie’s colourful language, Miss Radcynska forgotten. ‘Is Daniel at work, Hettie? Can he help me ring the bells?’

  ‘He should be at work but he’s got a bad back,’ Hettie answered, not wanting to admit to the fact that Daniel had woken with an almighty hangover. ‘It won’t stop him ringing the bells though! He knew it’s what you’d be doing and he’s gone straight to the church!’

  ‘Is it official, Hettie?’ Carrie asked as they hurtled out of the vicarage in Bob Giles’s wake. ‘Was it announced on the wireless by the Prime Minister?’

  ‘It was announced on the wireless, but not by Mr Attlee,’ Hettie panted, eager to share the moment with as many Magnolia Square residents as possible. ‘He’ll be announcing it official-like, later on. But it’s in the bag, Carrie! The man on the wireless said it was!’

  Carrie’s sudden doubt that Hettie might be wrongfully anticipating things was dispelled the minute they burst out of the vicarage and into the Square.

  Harriet Godfrey was running down her garden path, tears of thankfulness streaking her face. Kate was dancing a joyful ‘Ring-of-Roses’ with Matthew and Luke. Charlie was standing at his open doorway, throwing the sheets of his morning newspaper into the air as if they were giant pieces of confetti. Emily Helliwell was hanging a Union Jack out of her bedroom window. Nellie Miller was struggling down her garden path on elephantine legs shouting, ‘An’ now my ’Arold’ll be ’ome just like every other bugger!’ Mavis was standing by Ted’s motor bike, sounding its klaxon so hard, it was a wonder anyone could be heard shouting anything. Jack was hanging out of an upstairs window at number eighteen, his chest bare, his hair tousled, his grin so wide it was like the Cheshire Cat’s.

  ‘Then it’s really over?’ Carrie said incredulously beneath her breath as Bob Giles sprinted in the direction of his church and Hettie set off in his wake at a fair old trot, intent on dragging Leah out of number eighteen for a public knees-up. ‘No more killing? No more waiting in dread for military telegrams? No more enemies to beat?’

  There was no-one nearby to hear, nor answer, her queries and it didn’t matter because she already knew the answers. She lifted her face to the sun, joy and relief and pride surging through her. Dear old Britain had done it! She had vanquished Germany and now, with America’s help, she had put paid to Japan as well! As St Mark’s bells joyfully began to peal, she gave a whoop of exultation and exuberantly kicked off a shoe, sending it spinning as high and as far as she possibly could.

  Doris Sharkey had opened the door of number ten and was standing uncertainly on the doorstep, looking as if she hadn’t yet heard the news and didn’t know what all the commotion was about.

  ‘It’s peace!’ Harriet Godfrey called out to her as she hurried down the Square to number twelve in order to share the moment with Charlie. ‘The Japanese have given in! Isn’t it wonderful news, Doris? Peace at last after all these years!’

  If Doris also thought it wonderful news she didn’t say so, instead, like a frightened rabbit, she ducked back inside number ten, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Well?’ Wilfred demanded of her querulously. ‘What’s all the ruckus about? Have the Americans dropped another A-bomb? Is the Pope dead? Has that damn-fool Helliwell woman made spiritual contact with Hitler?’

  ‘It’s peace, dear,’ Doris said nervously, wishing Pru was home, wishing Bob Giles would visit, wishing her present domestic nightmare would end. ‘The Japanese have surrendered. The war’s over.’

  Her husband glared at her. He was standing full-square in front of the fireplace, two home-made notice-boards slung around his neck so that they covered him, front and back, from his neck almost to his feet.

  ‘And so, dear,’ she continued even more nervously, ‘as the war’s over there’s really no need for you to go out in the street like that and for—’

  ‘A spiritual war is still raging!’ Wilfred thundered, slamming a fist on the notice-board covering his chest. REPENT FOR THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH was emblazoned on it in large, scarlet letters. ‘“If a
ny man hath an ear, let him hear! Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils .. .”’

  He began to stride purposefully towards the hallway and the front door, and Doris pressed her hands to her face, saying in a cracked voice. ‘Please don’t go outside wearing those placards, Wilfred. Mr Giles won’t like it. He may ask you not to be a churchwarden any more—’

  ‘I am a prophet of the Divine Jehovah! The Anglican Church is a man-made abomination! Mr Giles is a disciple of the devil!’

  Silently and hopelessly Doris began to weep, the tears trickling through her fingers. It had been like this ever since Daniel and Bob Giles had brought Wilfred home from the churchwardens’ meeting. No-one, not even Dr Roberts, had been able to get a word of sense out of him. And now he wanted to go outside wearing his placards, and what would happen then? Small boys would laugh at him and perhaps throw stones at him. Right-minded people would cross the street to get out of his way. People might even be scared of him. Tears dripped from the end of her nose. She was scared of him. He had called her a whore of abomination, a harlot and a scarlet woman. Mr Giles and Dr Roberts had said he needed rest and quiet and that he’d probably be his old self in next to no time. Though Mr Giles and Dr Roberts had been unaware of it, they had been offering very little comfort.

  ‘Please don’t go outside, Wilfred,’ she said again, wondering how she would live with the shame if he did so. ‘Everyone’s happy and celebrating and—’

  ‘Get thee behind me Satan!’ her husband roared, steadfastly walking out of the room into the hallway, his placards swaying cumbersomely. ‘“For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men!”’ A placard caught on the hatstand, delaying his progress slightly. Wilfred turned sideways on, the better to navigate his passage towards the front door. ‘“And fire came down from God out of heaven”,’ he announced, reverting once again to the Old Testament, ‘“and the end of the world is nigh!”’

  Doris’s hands were no longer pressed to her tear-stained face. She was wringing them, beside herself with distress and apprehension and despair. Fire and harlots – it was all Wilfred seemed capable of thinking about. Dr Roberts had said that Wilfred’s obsession with fire had been triggered off by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that what he described as ‘Wilfred’s temporary nervous collapse’ was merely delayed reaction to the strain and stress of the last five years. Doris wasn’t so sure. Wilfred had always been strange about the Bible, quoting disjointed passages from it whenever he wanted to prove a point, which was often. And though Dr Roberts’s explanation would account for Wilfred’s obsession with fire, it hardly accounted for his unnerving obsession with harlots.

  ‘Harlots!’ Wilfred said vehemently, as if reading her mind. ‘Whores and sinners!’ He was at the door now, his fingers on the latch.

  Distantly Doris could hear some of her neighbours discordantly singing ‘There’ll Always be an England’. A klaxon was sounding. Harriet Godfrey would no doubt still be out in the Square, as would Leah Singer and Hettie Collins and Mavis Lomax and goodness knew who else. At the thought of what Mavis would make of Wilfred’s exhortations against harlots and whores, Doris felt quite faint. Wilfred couldn’t go outside and make himself such a laughing-stock. Somehow, some way, she had to prevent him. As the door opened she made a lunge for him, grabbing at his rear placard. The front placard shot upwards in response, nearly cutting his windpipe in half. As he staggered, half-throttled, Pru came running into view around the corner of Magnolia Terrace and Doris fell against the doorjamb, nearly senseless with relief.

  ‘’Ave they let you ’ave the rest of the day off work?’ the landlady of The Swan, a Northerner, shouted out as Pru ran grim-faced past the bottom of Harriet Godfrey’s garden. ‘Do you think the shops’ll be shut tomorrer and we’ll all be laking?’

  Pru didn’t answer her. Whether there was a national holiday tomorrow, she neither knew nor cared. All she knew was that her father was on the verge of stepping out into the Square, his ridiculous placards clanking about his person, and that her long-suffering mother would probably die with the shame of it if he did so. Breathlessly she raced past number eight and flung the gate of number ten back on its hinges.

  Her father, yanking hard on his front placard in order to ease the pressure on his windpipe, stared at her in mental confusion. ‘What are you doing home?’ he demanded, fire and harlots temporarily forgotten. ‘You should be at work.’

  ‘I’ve been given the rest of the day off,’ Pru panted, grateful that the unexpectedness of her arrival had induced a flash of lucidity. ‘Now go back in the house, Dad. You haven’t got the right shoes on.’

  ‘Haven’t got the . . .’ Wilfred began bewilderedly, straining to look over the top of his placard and down towards his feet.

  Before he could realize she was talking almost as much nonsense as he’d been talking, Pru seized him by the shoulders, whipped him smartly around and thrust him back into the hallway.

  As the door slammed mercifully shut behind them Wilfred said again, ‘What do you mean, I haven’t got the right shoes on? I always have the right shoes on. Brown for weekdays and black for Sundays—’

  ‘Let me help you take your placards off, Dad,’ Pru continued, aware that she just might have found a way of successfully handling the religious lunatic she and her mother were now obliged to live with. ‘It’s Tuesday today. You can’t wear placards on a Tuesday. Placards are for weekends.’

  ‘Placards are for . . .’ Wilfred began, his sense of disorientation growing.

  Seizing advantage of it, Pru began lifting his front placard up and over his head. ‘“To every thing there is a season”,’ she began, hoping a biblical quotation would settle the matter utterly, ‘“and a time to every purpose under heaven”.’ The front placard fell hard against the back one. ‘And the time for placards is Saturday,’ she finished firmly as the offending four-foot by two-foot constructions slithered to the floor.

  ‘Oh, Pru! How do you do it?’ her mother asked in heartfelt admiration. ‘I couldn’t do anything with him. He wouldn’t listen to me and—’

  The door knocker tapped lightly against the front door.

  ‘“And the Lord God shall come amidst thunder and Holy angels!”’ Wilfred declaimed, once more picking up steam.

  Doris and Pru looked at each other fearfully. What if it was one of their neighbours wanting them to come out and join in the general celebrations? What if, when the door was opened, the person or persons calling on them barged right in the house and Wilfred began regaling them with hell and damnation? The door knocker tapped against the door again, this time with a hint of impatience.

  ‘It might be Mr Giles,’ Doris said, her voice fraught with hope, ‘or Dr Roberts.’

  ‘“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you”,’ Wilfred moved with intent towards the sitting-room door and the hallway beyond.

  Pru moved like greased lightning, dodging in front of him, saving adroitly, ‘Let me go, Dad. I’ll see if whoever is there is fit for you to meet.’

  Wilfred halted in his tracks. Pru was quite perceptive at time. Prophets of Jehovah couldn’t hob-nob with any Tom, Dick or Harry.

  Praying that her mother was right about the possible identity of their visitor, Pru opened the door, but only a cautious couple of inches.

  It wasn’t Mr Giles or Dr Roberts. It was Malcolm Lewis. ‘Hello,’ he grinned cheerily, his white shirt open at the throat, his hands laconically in his trouser pockets. ‘Are you coming out to join in the fun? Jack Robson has suggested going up town. The King and Queen are bound to be making an appearance on the balcony at Buckingham Palace and—’

  ‘“Cast not your pearls before swine!”’ Though he couldn’t be seen, there was no mistaking Wilfred’s stentorian tones.

  Malcolm blinked.

  Pru flinched.

  ‘. . . and there’ll be singing and dancing until the early hours in Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square,’ Malcolm con
tinued, refusing to let the interruption deflect him from his purpose.

  It had been Mavis who had suggested Pru might like to join them all on a jaunt up town. ‘Poor little devil gets little enough pleasure, ’avin’ old sourpuss for a dad,’ she had said, showing a great deal of leg as she had sat astride her absent husband’s motor bike. ‘Why don’t you go and ask ’er if she wants to come with us while I take Emily for a victory spin over the ’Eath? You’re a scoutmaster and old man Sharkey isn’t likely to pitch into you the way ’e would if me or Carrie or Jack did the asking.’

  Without Mavis’s prompting, it would never have occurred to him to have asked Pru to go anywhere, no matter how big the group. He was twenty-seven and she was only sixteen or seventeen and, in his eyes, little more than a child, but as he had strolled towards number ten he had been aware of a very pleasant sense of anticipation. There was a blunt straightforwardness about Pru that he found both endearing and amusing, and, despite her curiously frumpish dress-sense, she was really quite pretty.

  Mavis had roared past him on her husband’s motor bike, eighty-year-old Emily Helliwell on the pillion, her scrawny, chiffon-clad arms around Mavis’s waist as she clung on for dear life. He had grinned and shaken his head in disbelief, reflecting that such a sight could only take place in Magnolia Square, which was why he liked the Square and its inhabitants so much. As he had dropped the Sharkeys’ highly polished door knocker on to pristinely painted wood, he had been thinking of how he would like to live in the Square and, when he had heard Pru’s footsteps walking, down the hallway to open the door, he had been looking forward to her surprise and pleasure when he announced the reason for his visit.

  ‘No,’ she said now to him tautly. ‘I’m not coming out. I don’t want to celebrate.’

  He stared at her in disbelief. ‘But it’s the end of the war, Pru! Everyone’s celebrating. And everyone’s going up town. Jack Robson and his wife. Mavis and Carrie. Kate and her husband. . .’