Jack lay, his weight propped on an elbow, his eyes on her face. She was sitting in exactly the same position Mavis had adopted when he had been on the Heath with her. There, however, the similarity ended. There was no blowsy, happy-go-luckiness in Christina’s demeanour. Framed by a halo of soot-dark hair, her delicately boned face was intent and pale.
‘Yes,’ he prompted. ‘What is it, Tina? Is living with the Jenningses beginning to get you down?’
The very idea was so ridiculous and, even if it hadn’t been, was so trifling an issue that her eyes flew wide with shock. ‘No, of course not! I love them all far too much for them ever to get me down! It’s something else . . . something that isn’t easy for me to talk about.’
From the attic room above them came the reverberation of footsteps and the muffled sound of childish voices. Soon Rose would be on her way downstairs to the kitchen and breakfast. There were already familiar sounds emanating from that direction. The rattle of a frying pan being slapped on top of the stove. Water filling a kettle. Cutlery being clattered. It would be Carrie who was up and doing, for there had been no movement from Leah’s bedroom. Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, was a day when Leah often stayed in bed for an extra half hour or so, and on both Saturday and Sunday mornings Danny always stayed in bed for as long as Carrie’s patience would allow.
‘What is it then?’ he asked again, beginning to wish he hadn’t stubbed his cigarette out. Whatever the problem troubling her, it was obvious it wasn’t going to be aired and over with quickly.
She said at last, her voice resolute, her dark-lashed eyes holding his, ‘Ever since the war with Germany came to an end, I’ve been thinking more and more about meine Mutti and Grossmutter . . .’
He felt the tension in his stomach relax. Christ! Was that all this was about? Was it nothing to do with their personal relationship at all? He sat up, his strong back muscles rippling.
‘That’s only to be expected, love,’ he said understandingly, covering her clasped hands with one of his. ‘But that nightmare’s over now. You need never, ever, give the bastard Germans or Germany another thought.’ He grinned, his teeth dazzlingly white against a skin that had been weathered by fighting in Italy as well as Greece. ‘You’re a south-east London girl now. And south-east London girls don’t brood. It isn’t in their nature.’
He had meant to jolly her out of her sombre mood but instead of returning his smile her eyes darkened. ‘I’m not a south-east London girl,’ she said tautly, ‘I don’t have a south-east London girl’s history or temperament. I’m a German – a German Jew.’
If she’d said she was a creature from another planet, he couldn’t have been more pole-axed. How on earth, after all that the Germans had done to her family, could she possibly think of herself as being German? He certainly didn’t think of her as being so. He ran his free hand through his thick shock of hair. Christ Almighty! He’d just spent six years fighting the bastards. He certainly didn’t think of himself as being married to one of them. And if Christina thought he was labouring under such a misapprehension, it was no wonder she was troubled!
He slid an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close against him, saying reassuringly, ‘You’re wrong about your not being a south-east London girl, sweetheart. This is your home now. It’s been your home for nearly ten years, and it’s going to be your home for life. We need neither of us ever speak about what you suffered before you came here. It’s in the past and the past is dead and buried.’
She tried to shake her head but he was holding her too close against him. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, an edge of panic entering her voice. ‘The past isn’t dead and buried for me, Jack. It isn’t dead and buried for any Jew that has survived . . .’
Rose’s footsteps hurried past their bedroom door. A smell of fish was beginning to permeate the house – kippers, perhaps, or maybe smoked haddock.
‘It is for Jews who married in an Anglican church,’ he said wryly, interrupting her and trying to get her to see things in perspective. Hell, her Jewishness had never been an issue between them. If it wasn’t that it had been the cause of her having to flee Germany, he would no more have thought of her as Jewish as he thought of her as German!
‘Nationality and religion are never going to be an issue for us, sweetheart. No-one in Magnolia Square thinks of you as being German, and, despite the reason for you having come here in the first place, I doubt if many people think of you as being Jewish, just as no-one thinks of Miriam as being Jewish, or of Carrie having Jewish blood. You’re a south-east Londoner now, just like the rest of us, and—’
Rose burst into the room, fizzing with energy. ‘We’re having kippers for breakfast!’ she announced, her eyes sparkling in happy anticipation. ‘Mum’s serving them up now, so you’d better hurry!’
‘Don’t go waking Jack and Christina, Rosie!’ Carrie shouted up from the bottom of the stairs. ‘I can keep their breakfast warm for them!’
‘Too late came the cry,’ Jack said dryly, ensuring that the sheet was covering him to the waist. ‘Off you go, young Rose. Tell your mum we’re on our way.’
‘Good,’ said Rose, who had had no intention of eating breakfast with no-one for company. ‘’Cos kippers aren’t very nice warmed up, are they? An’ you should ’ave told Dad you didn’t ’ave any pyjamas. ’E’d ’ave lent you a pair of ’is. Mum says if you don’t wear pyjamas in bed you get chills on your chest.’
Jack cracked with laughter. ‘I don’t have chills on my chest, young Rose! When my luck’s in I have something far more interesting! Now scarper so’s we can get dressed.’
As he threw a pillow in the general direction of her unruly curls, she dodged adroitly, running out of the room, shouting down to her mother, ‘Jack and Christina don’t want to stay in bed! They’re getting up and going to have their kippers now!’
Jack swung his legs from the bed, still laughing. Rose was a little minx and no mistake. A chill on his chest indeed! And him a Commando! He reached for his trousers, grateful for the way she had burst in on them. If she hadn’t, Christina’s conversation would no doubt have turned to the subject of concentration camps, and he had determined never to allow her to brood on such horrors. The war was over and they need never think of it again. What mattered now was the future. The minute he was back in Civvie Street he was going to set about making a tidy fortune, and if he had to cut a few corners and skirt the law in order to do so, what did it matter? Risk-taking had always been second nature to him, and six years in the Commandos had turned it into a way of life, a way of life he thrived on. He wanted to be able to give Christina, and the kids they would have together, lots of creature comforts.
He grinned across at her, buckling the leather belt sitting low on his waist. ‘In a year or so, perhaps even less, we’ll have a little madam of our own, just like young Rose. Perhaps we could give her a name just as pretty. Holly or Poppy or Primrose.’
She was fastening her skirt, her head turned away from him. ‘Don’t you think it would be a flower name too many?’ she said, struggling to keep the despair she felt from showing in her voice. ‘There’s already a Daisy in the Square. And besides,’ a new note had entered her voice, one he had never heard before, ‘I would like any daughter I have to be named after my mother and grandmother.’
He was standing by the door, waiting for her, his naked chest broad and bronzed. ‘That’s fine by me,’ he said easily, ‘remind me what your ma and grandma were called?’
Her hands shook as she fastened the buttons on her blouse. ‘My mother’s name is Eva and my grandmother’s name is Jacoba.’ He’d forgotten their names! How could he have forgotten their names? And how could he be so insensitive not to notice that where he had used the past tense in talking about her mother and grandmother, she had used the present tense?
‘You’d better go down to the kitchen or your kippers will be cold,’ she said, knowing that unless she had a little time to herself she would break down completely. ‘I’ll be with you
in a minute, when I’ve put my stockings on.’
When he had left the room she sank down on to the edge of the bed, her stockings in her hands. How was it possible to love someone so much, and to communicate with them so badly? How could she and Jack ever enjoy the kind of relationship Kate and Leon, and Carrie and Danny, enjoyed together, when her hopes and fears were a closed book to him?
‘Your kippers are going cold, Christina!’ It was Rose, intending to be helpful.
With an aching heart, she began to put on her stockings, knowing that if she didn’t speedily put in an appearance at the breakfast table Rose, or perhaps even Jack, would be coming upstairs to see what it was that was delaying her.
The cotton skirt she was wearing was toffee-coloured, her blouse pale buttermilk. She cinched her waist with a cream belt and slipped her stockinged feet into cream-coloured, wedge-heeled sandals. In an hour or two, when Jack had left for the station, she would go up to the Voigts and see if Carl had any further news for her. There might be letters she could write, a fresh line of enquiry to follow.
As she entered the kitchen, Carrie gave her a strained smile. She was beginning to suffer from morning sickness, and kippers were the last thing she had wanted to cook. They were, however, Jack’s favourite breakfast and, as this was the last breakfast of his leave, she had made a special effort. She bit into a piece of dry toast. Christina was looking under the weather as well, though that would be because of Jack’s approaching departure. She sighed. Christina certainly had nothing else to be despondent about. In another few months Jack would be home for good, and they would be setting up home in number twelve. If only she and Danny could look forward to setting up home in a house of their own, she wouldn’t let anything get her down, not even morning sickness.
She looked up at the kitchen clock. It was nearly half past nine, and Danny was still in bed. With a surge of rare irritation, she pushed her chair away from the table, carrying her plate over to the sink, saying to a startled Rose, ‘Will you tell your dad that if he doesn’t show his face within the next five minutes I won’t be serving him his kipper on a plate, I’ll be slapping him around the face with it!’
Chapter Thirteen
‘It’s time you got yourself a steady girl-friend,’ Mavis said to Malcolm Lewis.
It was a week after Jack had returned to his unit, and she was leaning against Ted’s motor bike, clad in the serviceable slacks and jacket of her bus-conductress’s uniform, her blonde hair scooped into a scarlet headscarf, the ends fastened in a knot on top of her head.
Malcolm grinned. ‘If you’re offering, I might,’ he said, knowing he stood no chance at all and not too seriously upset by the fact. He was a scoutmaster and an active Christian, and adultery wasn’t on his agenda. If Mavis had been single though . . . His grin deepened as he thought of what his mother’s reaction would be if he brought a sex-siren like Mavis home as a girl-friend. Common. Tarty. Fly-by-night. Those would be the kind of words his mother would use to describe Mavis.
Even now, dressed in a far from glamorous clippie’s uniform, Mavis still exuded earthy glamour, impossibly blonde curls escaping from her confining headscarf, tumbling à la Betty Grable over her forehead, her lips and fingernails painted the same searing scarlet as her turban. ‘Don’t be so cheeky,’ she said, without the least trace of censure in her voice. ‘I’m a respectable married woman, Malcolm Lewis, and well you know it.’
Malcolm eyed her in genuine perplexity. Was she? She certainly wasn’t if the rumours about her relationship with Jack Robson were anything to go by. Their chat was being conducted on the kerb of the pavement, outside number sixteen. Next door, on the bomb-site, Emily Helliwell’s giant-sized cat had returned to his erstwhile home and was stalking some poor unsuspecting creature through thick undergrowth. On the corner across from number sixteen, Nellie Miller was seated in state on a dining chair placed full-square in her open doorway. From this admirable vantage-point, she was keeping tabs on her neighbours’ comings and goings, and was taking enjoyable interest in Mavis’s and Malcolm’s tête-á-tête.
Well aware of Nellie’s affable scrutiny, Malcolm said, changing the subject slightly, ‘When will your husband be demobbed? Have you heard from him?’
Mavis’s thoughts, too, had flicked to Ted. It was all very well harmlessly flirting with Malcolm and teasing him as to whether or not she was all that she should be, but when Ted came home she would no longer be able to flirt with anyone, harmlessly or otherwise. ‘I had a telephone message from him via Mr Giles. He said he’d definitely be demobbed by Christmas, and with luck he’d be home for our wedding anniversary in October.’
Any telephone message for Magnolia Square residents came via the vicarage as no-one else in the Square possessed the luxury of a telephone. It meant messages by phone could be delivered but that conversations between message-giver and eventual message-receiver rarely took place. Mavis wished she’d been able to have a few words with Ted. They’d been separated for so long that the unthinkable was happening to her; she was growing nervous at the thought of a reunion that wouldn’t only be for the length of a leave, but would be for good.
‘That’ll be nice for you,’ Malcolm said, vaguely surprised that the Lomaxes gave thought to such conventional niceties as wedding anniversaries. ‘I expect that will mean another good old celebratory knees-up in The Swan.’
‘It might not,’ Mavis said, seeing no reason why Malcolm should live in happy anticipation of an event unlikely to take place. ‘Ted isn’t Jack. He’s a quiet bloke, and I doubt if he’ll want a rowdy get-together.’
Malcolm tried to suppress the surprise he felt. True, he barely knew Ted Lomax, for Ted had volunteered for duty at the outbreak of the war long before he, Malcolm, had become St Mark’s scoutmaster, but it was inconceivable to imagine Mavis married to a man who didn’t enjoy a rowdy night out amongst friends.
Mavis, aware of his surprise, said wryly, ‘It does take a lot of believing, doesn’t it? Me, married to a non-partygoer.’
Malcolm coloured slightly, wondering if Mavis always read his thoughts with such embarrassing accuracy.
Mavis adjusted her stance a little more comfortably against the motor bike. ‘The attraction of opposites, that’s me and Ted,’ she said with typical frankness. ‘We haven’t a single thing in common, except the kids, whereas—’
She broke off abruptly. She’d been about to say, ‘Whereas me and Jack have everything in common.’ It was no use allowing her thoughts to go down that particular road.
‘. . . whereas Carrie and Danny are alike as two peas in a pod.’
Malcolm, who didn’t know either Carrie or Danny very well, accepted her statement without demur. ‘I suppose it comes of them having known each other since they were nippers,’ he said easily. ‘I don’t think I’d fancy it myself. There can’t be many surprises in store when you know someone so well, and I rather like surprises, they make life interesting.’
Mavis, too, liked surprises, but not the kind of surprise Jack had sprung on her when he had become so obsessed by Christina. What on earth was the attraction there? Jack was flamboyant and extrovert and dangerously reckless, and Christina was prissy and unemotional and agonizingly uptight. And, as if that weren’t enough, Jack was as south-London as jellied eels, while Christina was utterly and quite unmistakably foreign. She chewed the corner of her lip. It was a foreignness no-one else, not even Jack, seemed aware of, probably because of Christina’s nearly flawless spoken English. And it was a foreignness that wouldn’t have mattered a jot if only Christina had been more . . . more . . . She sought vainly for a suitable word and failed to find it. Approachable, perhaps? Outgoing?
‘I’m going up the open-air swimming pool this evening with the Emmersons and their kids,’ Malcolm said, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘Do you fancy coming? It might be a last chance now we’re into September.’
Mavis shook her head, no longer in her usual happy-go-lucky mood. ‘No thanks, Malc. I’ve things to do.’ She ste
pped away from the motor bike. ‘You could do worse than ask Pru Sharkey if she wants to go with you, though,’ she said as an afterthought. ‘She’s been holed up in number ten like a latter-day Rapunzel for days now. A couple of hours of fun is just what she needs.’ She walked across the pavement towards the munitions dump that was her front garden, her coarse-woven clippie’s trousers not diminishing her sexiness an iota, no longer a Betty Grable look-alike but a Marlene Dietrich look-alike.
Malcolm remained on the pavement, watching her sashaying hips in flagrant admiration. Rapunzel? Where on earth had Mavis heard, or read, the story of the incarcerated Rapunzel? And how come in all the time they had been speaking together she hadn‘t dropped an aitch once? As the front door of number ten closed behind her, he shook his head in bemusement. There was far, far more to Mavis than met the eye.
‘Givin’ you the run-around, is she?’ a vastly amused Nellie shouted across to him. ‘I could’ve told you she would if you’d bothered to ask.’ She wheezed with laughter. ‘Yer need a bit o’ Commando panache to succeed with Mavis. A scout’s whistle and a lanyard just ain’t enough!’
Malcolm grinned, not taking umbrage. If Nellie wanted to entertain herself at his expense she was more than welcome to do so. Whether he should knock on the door of number ten, risking having it slammed in his face again and thereby giving her even more entertainment was, however, a moot point. He plunged his hands into his flannels pockets, debating it for a minute or two. Did he want a graceless young woman, little more than a child, giving him the brush-off again? The answer was, of course, that he didn’t. He began walking in the opposite direction to number ten, towards Magnolia Hill, pondering on the kind of activity his scouts would most enjoy at their next meeting.
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