Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  Unseen by anyone but Nellie, Pru Sharkey let the corner of an upstairs window curtain fall back into place. Why couldn’t she be the one Malcolm Lewis was interested in? Why couldn’t she be more like Mavis, not giving a fig what people thought of her, dressing as outrageously as she pleased, having respectable single young men as well as dangerously attractive married men, falling besottedly in love with her?

  ‘Pru?’ her mother called out nervously from the foot of the stairs. ‘Pru? I think your dad’s sedative is wearing off. He’ll be wanting to go out with his placards. Come down and help me with him for the Lord’s sake!’

  Carrie rounded the corner of Magnolia Terrace into the Square, easing her basket of groceries from one hand to the other. It was mid-afternoon and she still felt queasy. Had she felt queasy all day when she’d fallen for Rose? She couldn’t remember. Those days, when the war was a new and frightening experience, seemed so far in the past as to be ancient history.

  She walked desultorily along the top end of the Square, past St Mark’s vicarage. The war had been exciting, as well as frightening, what with cramming into public bomb shelters with babies and dogs and knitting and thermos flasks of tea, and having a good old sing-song to try and drown out the noise of the German bombers, and doing war work down the ammunitions factory at Woolwich, and having a bit of freedom in life for once.

  She turned the corner, walking past Harriet Godfrey’s spick-and-span front garden. The war had certainly changed Harriet’s staid way of life. Although well in her sixties when war had broken out, she had become a volunteer ambulance-driver, racketing through burning, bomb-shattered streets, a tin hat on her neatly coiffured hair, a rope of pearls incongruously around her throat. And she had reclaimed the Square’s local villain, teaching him to read and write, and falling in love with him in the process.

  Carrie shook her head in wonderment. Did people as old as Harriet Godfrey and Charlie really fall in love? And make love? Would she and Danny still be making love when they were in their sixties and seventies? She just couldn’t imagine it. She certainly couldn’t imagine her mum and dad making love. Miriam never went to bed without an armoury of steel curlers in her hair, and Albert’s snores could be heard throughout the house the instant his head touched the pillow.

  She lifted the latch on Kate’s gate. The way she and Danny were going on, love-making would be a thing of the past long before they were thirty, let alone sixty. They’d had another row that morning. She couldn’t remember now what it had been over, but it had been over something trivial, just like all their recent rows. She gave a cursory knock on the front door to announce her arrival and then opened the door, bracing herself for Hector’s boisterous welcome. As he half-knocked her off her feet she remembered why Danny had erupted so bad-temperedly before leaving for work. It had been because she had made cheese and tomato sandwiches two days running for his packed lunch.

  ‘You should be so lucky, Danny Collins!’ she had flared back at him, weary of morning sickness that stretched throughout the entire day; taut with tension at the prospect of telling him about the baby when their living conditions were so stressfully cramped; apprehensive as to whether they would, or would not, be able to move into the house the Binnses had now vacated. ‘Plenty of other men only have jam to look forward to!’

  ‘Well, I ain’t one of ’em and I ain’t goin’ to become one of ’em!’ he had shouted back. ‘My ma never dished up jam sandwiches! We always ’ad a proper meal on the table! Pig’s trotters and peas! Steak an’ kidney puddin’! Tripe an’ onions!’

  It had been useless to point out that it was his packed lunch they were at odds about, not the hot meal she cooked for him every evening. The row had gone on, common sense lost to the winds, ending only when he had slammed out of the house, too late to be able to clock in at work on time. And there, Carrie thought wearily as she fondled Hector’s ears, lay the true root of all their domestic difficulties. He hated clocking in at the factory. He hated the mind-deadening work he did there. He hated the lack of respect and deference that were accorded him.

  ‘I’m in the kitchen!’ Kate called out from the depth of the house, guessing correctly her visitor’s identity. ‘Don’t let Hector be a nuisance! And don’t let him get his nose into your shopping basket! He’s developed a craving for dried fruit and sugar!’

  Lifting her basket firmly out of the way of Hector’s nose, Carrie walked down the passageway towards the multi-coloured stained-glass panels decorating the kitchen door.

  How could she have been expected to know, when she had encouraged Danny to leave the Army, how much he would hate Civvie Street? To her, Danny being in Civvie Street had meant that, after years of living apart, they would at last be sharing a home together, even if that home was her parents’ home. It had meant she would be able to see him off every morning with a packed lunch and greet him home every evening with a hot dinner on the table. It had meant they would be able to go to the cinema together every week, take Rosie for walks in Greenwich Park, enjoy a drink together of an evening in The Swan. The prospect had seemed idyllic. The reality had been a slow decline into querulous disillusionment.

  ‘I’m making a treacle tart,’ Kate said in greeting, rolling pastry out on the floured surface of her kitchen table. ‘There’s enough pastry here for an extra one. Are you going to be here long enough to take it home with you, or shall I pop down with it later this afternoon?’

  ‘If it’s all the same with you I’ll stay till it’s ready,’ Carrie said, dumping her shopping basket down on the nearest available surface. ‘I need a cup of tea, probably several cups of tea, and a long, long chat.’

  Kate paused in her task, her hands still on her rolling-pin, a smudge of flour on her cheek. She and Carrie had been friends ever since they had been toddlers, and she knew her as well, if not better, than she knew herself. ‘Is it as bad as all that?’ she asked, reading aright the depth of feeling behind Carrie’s bland words.

  Carrie pulled a chair out from under the far side of the table. ‘Yes,’ she said, sitting down heavily. ‘Me and Danny are falling out over the least little thing. This morning it was over his sandwiches. Yesterday it was over the way I iron his shirts. Tomorrow it will probably be over something even more trivial. And I’m pregnant. And I haven’t told him yet. And Mr Giles hasn’t come back with any news over number seventeen.’

  ‘Pregnant?’ Kate seized on the only really important item in Carrie’s weary litany. ‘But that’s not bad news, Carrie, it’s wonderful news!’

  Carrie smiled sheepishly, pushing a thick fall of dark hair away from her face. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said, ashamed of having lumped the news of the baby in with grumbles about Danny and anxiety about number seventeen. ‘And if only Danny wasn’t so difficult these days, and if only we were living in a house of our own, I’d be over the moon about it.’

  Kate put down her rolling-pin. It wouldn’t do her pastry any harm to rest for a little while. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said, resorting to the oldest panacea she knew. ‘If you’re only a few weeks pregnant I expect you’re feeling queasy all the time, and that won’t be helping you see things in perspective.’

  She began to fill a kettle at the sink. ‘And there’s no need yet to get despondent about number seventeen. It isn’t as if anyone else has already moved in. And until they do there’s still hope.’ She set the kettle on to the gas ring. ‘As for Danny, there must be some underlying reason he’s so grouchy. It could be that he’s beginning to feel cramped, living with your mum and dad and gran, and that when you do get a place of your own, he’ll be his usual equable self again.’

  Carrie grinned, beginning to feel better already. It was an effect Kate always had on her. There was a sunny, inner serenity about her childhood friend that complemented her own, more turbulent nature perfectly. ‘Danny equable?’ she said wryly. ‘Who’s been pulling your leg? He’s about as equable as a rumbling volcano.’ Her grin faded. ‘And no, it isn’t because he’s feeling crampe
d, living with Mum and Dad and Gran. It’s something more serious. Something I don’t know how can be put right.’

  Kate’s long braid of hair had fallen forwards over her shoulder while she had been making pastry and she flicked it back again, her eyes holding Carrie’s. ‘Tell me,’ she said simply.

  Carrie rested her clasped hands on the scrubbed deal table. ‘Danny hates Civvie Street. He hates not being Sergeant Collins any more. He hates not being in a position of authority and not being respected, and being only a name and a number on a clocking-in card. He’s unhappy and miserable, and the worst thing of all is that it’s my fault he’s unhappy and miserable. His health wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t have stayed on in the Army if he’d chosen to do so. It was just dodgy enough to allow him to make a choice. And because I wanted him out of uniform and at home, I talked him into the wrong choice.’

  The kettle had begun to steam and Kate poured a small amount into a teapot, swirling it round and then emptying it down the sink. ‘But that’s understandable, Carrie,’ she said gently. ‘It isn’t as if, before the war, you and Danny were living in married quarters, is it? He was always at Catterick Camp or somewhere equally far away, and you were living with your mum and dad and gran. After all these years of his never being at home, it’s only natural you wanted him to opt for an early discharge.’ She tipped three caddy spoonfuls of tea into the warmed pot. ‘And so the first thing you can do is to stop feeling guilty,’ she said firmly. ‘Feeling guilty solves no problems whatsoever.’

  ‘And do you think it’s a problem that can be solved?’ Carrie asked hopefully, unclasping her hands as her tension began to ease.

  Kate emptied the boiling contents of the kettle into the teapot. ‘We can certainly try. There must be another job Danny could do, a job he would enjoy.’ She carried the teapot across to the table. ‘All we have to do is to think what it could be.’

  Through the open kitchen window came the sounds of childish shouts and squeals.

  ‘Leon dug out our Anderson shelter and built a sandpit on its site,’ Kate said as Carrie’s eyebrows rose queryingly. ‘Matthew and Luke love it. Their favourite game is trying to bury Hector.’

  Carrie grinned. It was typical of Leon that, instead of leaving a gaping hole where the air-raid shelter had been, he had utilized it to give pleasure to his children. It was also typical of Leon that he had made no wrong decision when he was discharged from the Navy. Before the war he had been a Thames lighterman, and it was a profession he had happily returned to.

  ‘I can’t imagine when Dad and Danny are going to get around to digging ours out,’ she said, pouring milk into the two mugs which Kate had set on the table. ‘Emily Helliwell asked Daniel to dismantle her indoor Morrison and reassemble it in the garden so that she can keep rabbits in it. It’s about all those mesh-sided contraptions are good for. I only climbed into one once, when an air-raid caught me short at a friend’s, and I felt like an animal in a zoo.’

  The minute Kate had sat down, Hector had laid his head in her lap and she stroked the top of his silk-soft head lovingly, saying, ‘Well, you’ll never have to do it again, thank God. No more air-raid sirens. No more panic-stricken shouts that a V2 is heading our way, no more—’

  Heavy, urgent knocking at the door broke her off short.

  ‘Were you about to say no more emergencies?’ Carrie said dryly as Kate jumped to her feet. ‘Because if you were, I think you might have been speaking a bit too soon.’

  The knocking came again, harder and even more insistent. With Hector bounding at her heels, Kate hurried out of the kitchen and down the long hallway leading to her front door. Through half-panes of frosted stained glass, an authoritative, dark-suited, masculine figure was discernible. She broke into a run. Had Daisy had an accident at school? Had Leon had an accident down on the river? With her heart racing, she yanked open the door and saw that the dark suit was offset by a pristinely white clerical collar.

  ‘Thank God!’ Bob Giles said with heartfelt relief. ‘I was beginning to think you were out. Could you give me some help, Kate? Miss Radcynska has arrived and I’ve got a problem. A very awkward, distressing problem.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Kate’s reaction was instant. ‘But I’ll have to ask Carrie if she’ll keep an eye on Matthew and Luke for me. They’re playing in the back garden at the moment and—’

  ‘And with a bit of luck they’ll remain in the back garden while I enjoy a mug of tea in peace,’ Carrie said, joining her at the open doorway.

  Bob Giles shot Carrie a look of gratitude and turned swiftly on his heel, taking the shallow flight of broad steps leading to the pathway two at a time. Kate exchanged a quick, perplexed look with Carrie and hurried after him. Carrie remained on the doorstep, one hand restrainingly on Hector’s collar, curious to see whether Mr Giles would head towards the vicarage or the church. He did neither. Instead he made a bee-line for the house two doors down, the house that had long been awaiting its new Polish tenant.

  ‘I haven’t time to prepare you properly for this encounter,’ Bob Giles said as Kate caught up with him. ‘Suffice to say that Miss Radcynska suffered obscenely in Ravensbrueck and her body, and perhaps her mind, has been permanently damaged.’ He ran a hand distractedly through his still thick hair. ‘I’ve known all along, of course, just what her history was,’ he continued, harrow-faced, ‘and I knew, or thought I knew, the kind of problems she would meet with.’ He pushed open the unlatched gate of number eight. ‘I hadn’t, however, anticipated lack of co-operation on her part, even though it is a reaction she can’t, perhaps, be held responsible for.’

  As they hurried up a pathway rank with weeds, Kate shot him a mystified glance. What on earth was he trying to tell her? And why should Miss Radcynska, after being hospitalized by the Red Cross and settled in England, be uncooperative with the clergyman trying to settle her in her new home? It didn’t make sense.

  Bob Giles didn’t respond to her glance. Rage and revulsion, almost disabling in intensity, were again roaring through him, just as they had roared through him when he had first heard details of Anna Radcynska’s suffering. ‘How,’ he had asked the Red Cross official thickly, ‘how in the name of all that is holy, could human beings descend to such depths of cruelty and evil?’

  ‘You’re a minister of God,’ the official had said, sending a thin folder skimming across his desk-top in Bob’s direction. ‘You tell me.’

  Bob had been unable to do so. He had certainly been unable to speak specifically of Anna’s suffering to his churchwardens when he had first broken the news to them of who was to tenant number eight. He had talked to Ruth, however, sitting with her in the blessed comfort and familiarity of his fire-lit study. ‘Along with countless other non-Aryan women and children, Anna was medically experimented on in Ravensbrueck,’ he had said, one arm around Ruth’s shoulders, the other clenching his pipe, the knuckles white. ‘What genetic conundrum the monsters were trying to unravel, God only knows, but she will never look, or sound, feminine again.’

  ‘Dear God in heaven,’ Ruth had whispered, her face draining of blood. ‘The poor, poor girl. What will happen to her now? Will she ever be able to live a normal life again, Bob? Will she really be able to feel at home in England?’

  ‘Yes,’ he had said firmly, ‘everyone in Magnolia Square is going to make quite sure of that.’

  Three hours ago, when he had come face to face with Anna at last, he had wondered with sick anxiety if he had been overoptimistic in believing such a grievously damaged woman could ever live an uninstitutionalized life. He had known she was in her late thirties, and had imagined her being slightly built and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Instead, she was tall and raw-boned, a woman who must have been masculine-looking even before being subjected to medical experimentation. Her hair stuck out as if it had been cropped with a knife and fork. Her teeth were bad and many of them were missing. There was badly shaved stubble around her mouth and on her chin and cheeks. The cotton dress she had been given was
far too short and far too tight for her, the body beneath it a parody of femininity. Her laced-up shoes were heavy enough for a navvy and worn without socks or stockings.

  ‘Hello,’ he had said, aware since reading her file that before the war she had taught English at Kraków University. ‘I’m Bob Giles and I’ve come to take you to your new home.’

  It had been a nightmare journey. Anna didn’t walk, she lurched, and people had stopped in the street, staring after them. On the Underground, fellow passengers had whispered and sniggered. On the train from Charing Cross to Lewisham, a group of youths had shouted ribald comments, uncaring of his clerical collar. A child in Lewisham High Street had thrown a tomato at Anna. Another group of giggling, cat-calling children had followed them all the way up Magnolia Hill. Nor had matters improved when they had entered the Square.

  Leah Singer, on her hands and knees white-stoning number eighteen’s front steps, had taken one look at Anna and had abandoned her task immediately, gathering her bucket and scrubbing brush and barrelling into number eighteen’s hallway before he could even make an attempt to introduce her.

  Billy Lomax, who should have been at school but was instead in his front garden stock-taking his arsenal of discarded Home Guard weaponry, had shouted out in genuine enquiry, ‘’Ello, Vicar. Who’s your funny friend? She looks like she’s a mate of Desperate Dan’s.’

  At the Robsons’, Queenie had charged down the pathway, barking furiously. At the Sharkeys’, Doris had paused in her task of shaking crumbs from a tablecloth out on to her front pathway, her mouth hanging open wide enough to garage a double-decker bus. As he shepherded his ungainly charge up the pathway of number eight, he had known that integrating her into Magnolia Square’s little community was going to be a far harder task than he had at first envisaged. And then, when he had escorted her across the threshold of her new home, had come the coup de grâce.