Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  Kate hadn’t seen Wilfred wearing his placards, but she did know that something was very, very wrong in the Sharkey house, and that the inmates might very well not want anyone calling on them. Instead, she called on Charlie, leaving a quarter of an hour later with a pair of nearly new sandals that he vowed he’d never wear, ‘’Cos ’Arriet don’t like to see me in ’em. She says they make me look like a spiv.’

  As Harriet would never disapprove of any article of clothing that would improve Charlie’s shambolic appearance, and as the word ‘spiv’ was not a word she could imagine Harriet using, she hadn’t believed his statement for a moment. He was being generous and was trying to cover up the fact, as he always was and he always did.

  At number sixteen, Mavis, conveniently caught before leaving home for her afternoon bus shift, stared at Kate and said, ‘They did wot to her? The bloody, bleeding bastards did wot?’

  Later, when Mavis had calmed down, she had said, ‘I know quite a few words of Polish myself. I’ll pop in on my way ’ome from work and say hello to her. An’ from the sound of it, wot she needs is someone ’andy with the Veet.’

  ‘Veet?’ Kate had asked, hoping the words Mavis had culled from her Polish airforce friends would be suitable words, and wondering if ‘Veet’ was one of them.

  ‘Depilatory cream,’ Mavis had said, ‘you know . . . for under the arms. Only with Anna, we could use it on her face an’ she’d be no more whiskery than you or me.’

  Vastly relieved that Mavis hadn’t thought to proffer any items of her own clothing to stock Anna’s sparse wardrobe, Kate walked up the familiar pathway of number eighteen.

  ‘I’m in the kitchen, bubbeleh,’ Leah called out from the rear of the house, anticipating quite correctly that her visitor would be a female member of her family, or Kate or Christina. ‘Be careful of the step! I’ve just white-stoned it.’

  Kate negotiated her way down the long, cluttered passageway, edging her way round Rose’s tricycle and stubbing her toe on a pile of dog-racing magazines.

  As she entered the kitchen, Leah looked up from the shirt she was ironing and said with a beaming smile, ‘You’re a treat to see. There’s freshly made bagels on the oven-top, but if it’s Carrie you’re after, she’s out doing I don’t know what.’ She lifted the flat of the iron upwards, spat on it, and then slammed it down hard on one of her goy son-in-law’s recalcitrant collars.

  Kate helped herself to a rich, golden brown confection with a hole in its centre. ‘It’s you and Miriam I want to see, Leah,’ she said, sitting down with her treat.

  ‘Miriam’s down the market,’ Leah said, setting the iron back on its stand. ‘But I’m here, Dolly, and I’m all ears.’

  Kate wiped a bagel crumb from the corner of her mouth. ‘Number eight’s new tenant arrived today and—’

  ‘Oy vey!’ Leah raised her hands to heaven. ‘I knew that house should have gone to Carrie and Danny! I knew it was bad luck to give it to a stranger, and now see what has happened and how we are! I saw the arrival with my own eyes and now we have to live with a freak of nature in the Square, as well as a religious lunatic!’

  Kate said steadily, ‘Anna Radcynska isn’t a freak of nature, Leah. She’s suffered terribly and when I tell you how, and at whose hands, I know you’ll feel differently about her moving into number eight.’

  It had been a long, hard battle to convince Leah. ‘But why for isn’t she in a special hospital?’ she had asked, time and time again. ‘Why for isn’t she being cared for in her own country?’

  ‘Because her mother was English,’ Kate had said patiently. ‘Because displaced people are being settled in the countries best able to offer such assistance, countries such as Britain and America.’

  ‘She’ll frighten Bonzo,’ Leah had said intransigently.

  ‘She won’t frighten anyone,’ Kate had retorted firmly, ‘not now we know why she is as she is.’ She had risen to her feet, so disappointed in Leah that her voice was unsteady. ‘And you might remember, Leah, that what happened to Anna could have happened to Christina. It could have happened to any woman taken into a concentration camp.’

  Leah’s wrinkled face had crumpled. ‘Oy vey,’ she had said, thinking of her old friend Jacoba. ‘Oy vey, oy vey.’ She had hugged her arms, beginning to rock herself, and Kate hadn’t been at all sorry that she had had to cause such distress in order to bring understanding.

  ‘I’ve arranged for a welcoming social for Anna to be held in the church hall this evening,’ Bob Giles said to Kate when all their visits were finally completed. ‘Hettie and Daniel are going to trundle their piano across so that we can have a sing-song. Nellie is making jellies and assures me that if they’re put in her cellar to set, they’ll be in perfect condition for this evening. Miriam is all set to give a public recitation of “Albert and the Lion”. Emily Helliwell is gearing herself up to sing “Jerusalem”. It’s going to be a grand evening. One of Magnolia Square’s best.’

  When Kate returned to number eight, it was to find Anna seated on the same hardback kitchen chair, a Paisley cotton dirndl skirt decorously covering stockinged legs, a toning blouse tie-fastened at her throat, a mass of Miriam’s steel curlers in her hair.

  ‘The stockings came care of Nellie,’ Carrie said with a grin, ‘as has a pile of towels, an eiderdown, two casserole dishes and a chamber-pot.’

  ‘There’s going to be a get-together tonight at the church hall so that you can meet all your other new neighbours,’ Kate said to Anna as the latter doubtfully fingered the curlers in her hair.

  Alarm flared across Anna’s face. ‘No children!’ she stated violently. ‘No dogs! No men!’

  Carrie suppressed a grin. Kate was going to have her work cut out introducing Anna to Charlie, Leon and Danny, Albert and Daniel and all the other male residents of Magnolia Square, not to mention Billy, Beryl and Daisy, Rose, Matthew and Luke.

  Kate said unflappably, ‘You’re going to have to overcome your aversion to children, Anna. There are lots of children in Magnolia Square, and many of them will be at the party this evening. And there’ll be men there, too. Nice men. Men like Charlie Robson, who gave you the sandals you’re now wearing. Men like my dad and Carrie’s dad. Men like Reverend Giles.’

  ‘No men,’ Anna said again, mutinously. ‘Maybe children, but no men.’

  ‘And no dogs,’ Carrie whispered naughtily to Kate under her breath. ‘How are you going to solve that little problem?’

  It was Ellen who, in her clumsy, naïve manner, solved the problem that evening. Loving dogs herself, unable to think of life without one at her side, she had been unable to bear the thought of Anna living without the benefit of such comfort.

  ‘Her name is Ophelia,’ she said, depositing a bedraggled-looking mongrel on to Anna’s vast lap. ‘Two small boys rescued her from the Thames a week ago. She’d been thrown in with a stone tied to her neck and she’s such a lovely doggie.’

  Anna shot to her feet, sending Ophelia sprawling. ‘No dogs!’ she roared. ‘No children! No men!’

  A score of appalled eyes turned in her direction. Ellen flushed an ugly, agonized red. Luke, hoisted high on Leon’s shoulder, began to cry. Miriam and Hettie began to murmur their shocked disapproval. Aware that the evening was plummeting towards disaster, Bob Giles began to hastily explain that Anna had an aversion to dogs and that, though he knew Ellen’s gesture had been well-meant, it had unfortunately been inappropriate.

  Not waiting for him to finish his awkward explanation, Kate caught hold of Ophelia and, tucking her under one arm, walked resolutely across to Anna. ‘Ophelia is a gift, Anna,’ she said, speaking in the same tone of voice she would a rude and impolite child. ‘She’s a creature who has been badly treated, just as you have been, and who is in need of a home, just as you have been in need of one and now have one.’

  The implication was obvious, and Bob Giles held his breath. If Anna spurned Ellen’s gift a second time he doubted if even the intervention of holy angels would be enough to integrate her
among her new neighbours. Kate held Ophelia out towards Anna. Ophelia wagged a stubby tail.

  ‘She’s yours, Anna,’ Kate said quietly. ‘She needs someone to love, someone who will love her in return.’

  Someone cleared their throat. Luke’s sobs hiccupped into silence.

  Very stiffly Anna’s arms moved from her sides and she took awkward hold of her gift. ‘No men,’ she said, gruffly capitulating. ‘Maybe children and dogs, but no men.’

  ‘We can promise you that, dearie!’ Nellie shouted out from the far end of the hall. ‘There ain’t enough of ’em to go around as it is!’

  The laughter that followed dissipated any lingering awkwardness. Ellen, assured by Bob Giles that she hadn’t acted crassly at all, but had instead acted with great sensitivity, recovered her composure and happily showed off the engagement ring sparkling on the fourth finger of her left hand. Hettie voiced it as her opinion that Anna had probably been terrorized in the past by Gestapo-owned German Shepherd dogs, and that it was no wonder she was cautious where the canine world was concerned. Charlie declared that a dog as young as Ophelia would be in need of training, and that he would be happy to help Anna train her. Miriam changed the subject by announcing that Albert had brought home a hearse-load of condemned tinned food and that with a little luck they’d be able to live on it for the next twelve months.

  ‘But how can you do that if it’s condemned?’ Emily Helliwell asked, perturbed. ‘Won’t it give you food-poisoning? I don’t like the thought of you giving Albert food-poisoning, Miriam.’

  ‘Lord love me! It ain’t the food that’s condemned,’ Miriam had said impatiently. ‘It’s the tins! They ain’t got no labels on, so ’ow can anyone sell ’em?’

  ‘An’ ’ow can anyone know what the ’ell they’re goin’ to be eatin’ when they open one of ’em?’ Danny Collins had said in an aggrieved aside to Charlie. ‘I’ve ’ad spam mornin’, noon and night this last week, all in the ’ope of openin’ a tin of salmon!’

  ‘I think it’s time for party-pieces!’ Bob Giles announced, vastly relieved that yet another crisis had been surmounted. ‘First, Miriam is going to recite “Albert and the Lion”, then Emily is going to sing “Jerusalem”, and then Charlie is going to give us a tune on his accordion.’

  ‘And where’s Christina?’ Hettie asked Miriam as they sat down to enjoy the show. ‘I never see her anywhere these days.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Miriam retorted archly, uncomfortably aware that though Carl Voigt’s lady-friend was radiantly showing off her engagement ring to all and sundry, Carl himself was nowhere in evidence. ‘She’s a grown woman, ’Ettie. She doesn’t ’ave to report all ’er comings and goings to me or to anyone else.’

  ‘I think we’re beginning to make encouraging headway,’ Carl Voigt said to Christina as they sat companionably side by side at a table on which was spread a sheaf of letters. ‘I’ve had a response from the Headquarters of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva.’ He picked up a letter dominated by an impressive crest and handed it to her. ‘Don’t be disheartened by the first paragraph where it is explained that, despite the impressive title, they don’t have anything to do with actual refugees, only policy! The second paragraph is the one that is of interest.

  ‘. . . the Registry for Refugees, also housed in the Palace of Nations, Geneva, may be of help to you,’ Christina read, her heart beginning to slam, as it always did when she felt a step forward, however slight, had been taken.

  ‘At least now we are collecting the addresses of organizations that are in the know.’ Carl took off his rimless spectacles and polished them on his handkerchief. ‘And one thing is becoming obvious.’ He put his spectacles back on again. ‘The Gestapo were meticulous record-keepers. They kept a log of nearly everyone they arrested and imprisoned, and many of those logs are now in departmental archives in Geneva or New York.’

  ‘Not London?’ Christina’s heart plummeted. ‘If there are no copies of such records in London, how can we possibly search through them? It would mean having to go to Switzerland or America!’

  Carl nodded. ‘It might,’ he said, not as pole-axed as she was by the thought. It was one that had occurred to him from the moment they had embarked on their search, and he had long since decided that if such trips were necessary, he would take them. ‘This letter here,’ he sifted through the paperwork in front of him and withdrew a letter just as officious-looking as the letter from the United Nations Commission for Refugees, ‘is from the International Refugee Organization. They have been very helpful. They say our best bet is to contact the newly set-up International Tracing Centre in New York. It’s a brainchild of General Eisenhower’s, and its sole purpose is to help in the reuniting of displaced children with parents.’

  ‘But I’m not a displaced child . . .’ Christina began doubtfully, too dazed by the monumental difficulties that still lay ahead to appreciate just how valuable a piece of information this last address might prove to be.

  Carl’s voice was gentle. ‘You may not be a child in the accepted sense, but you are seeking information about a parent and a grandparent, and if the Tracing Centre holds copies of Nazi records it will be of invaluable help to us.’

  ‘And you will write to the Centre?’

  Christina clasped her hands tightly, the knuckles white. Ever since Carrie had told her of how Anna Radcynska had been medically experimented on in Ravensbrueck, she had suffered mental horrors so terrible she had thought she was going to lose her mind. Ravensbrueck was one of the few women’s camps that had been in existence when her mother and grandmother were taken prisoner. If they, too, had been taken to Ravensbrueck then they, too, could well have suffered similar abominations.

  ‘Yes.’ Carl gathered up the letters and put them neatly into a folder. ‘And if we have to, Christina, we will go to New York to continue the search. We will go wherever is necessary.’

  ‘Even to Germany?’ she asked, her throat so tight, she could barely force out the words.

  Carl’s studious-looking face was grave. ‘Yes,’ he said sombrely. ‘If needs be, even to Germany.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I’m sorry, Doris,’ Dr Roberts said compassionately, ‘but there is no “tonic”, as you call it, that I can prescribe for Wilfred that will put his mental health back on an even keel again. And while he isn’t a physical danger to himself or to anyone else, it’s impossible for me to recommend he be detained in a mental home. Religious mania isn’t a mental illness as such, not unless the person in question is seeing visions and hearing voices, and to the best of my knowledge Wilfred is doing neither.’

  ‘But what about the great whore he keeps on and on about?’ Doris said piteously, wringing her hands in her aproned lap. ‘He must be able to see her, mustn’t he?’

  Bob Giles put his hand gently on her shoulder. He’d tried many times to explain to Doris that the Great Whore of Babylon was a biblical city, not a woman, but whenever he did so Doris’s confusion only grew worse. ‘What Dr Roberts is saying, Doris, is that Wilfred is deluded, but that he isn’t certifiably insane.’

  It was all too much for Doris. How could they say Wilfred wasn’t insane when he was as mad as a March hare? And how did they expect her to live with him when he frightened her so? ‘There must be something you can do,’ she pleaded desperately, looking from Dr Roberts to Bob Giles.

  Dr Roberts shook his head unhappily. Bob Giles looked anguished.

  Doris twisted round in her chair to where Pru was protectively standing and seized hold of her hands. ‘Tell them they have to do something, Pru! Tell them if your father isn’t insane enough to be put away, I soon shall be!’

  Pru had every intention of telling them, and of telling them a great deal more, but not in her mother’s hearing.

  Dr Roberts cleared his throat, well aware of Pru’s silent, burning disappointment in him. ‘Your mother needs a sedative and an iron tonic to strengthen her nerves,’ he said, fully aware that he was on the verge of
having not just one mentally disturbed patient at number ten, but two. He took out his prescription pad, writing in a heavy scrawl. ‘Here,’ he handed Pru the flimsy piece of paper. ‘Take this to the chemist and I’ll call in again towards the end of the week.’

  ‘And I’ll call by again this evening,’ Bob said, aware that he, too, had to be on his way. His next meeting was with his archdeacon and they had a lot to discuss, not least how most tactfully to relieve Wilfred of his position as churchwarden.

  Doris made no effort to rise from her chair and accompany them from the room. She had begun crying again, rubbing at her arms, her thoughts whirling and spiralling down to a dark, terrible, inescapable conclusion.

  Immediately Pru was alone with Dr Roberts and Bob Giles in the narrow hallway she said tautly, ‘My mother needs a lot more help than a sedative and a nerve tonic! Unless my dad’s sorted out soon, she’s going to have a complete breakdown.’

  Dr Roberts cleared his throat uncomfortably. He, too, knew that Doris was heading for a nervous collapse, but with the best will in the world he could see no obvious and easy solution to her problem. ‘Perhaps if your mother could be made to understand that she isn’t the only person having to cope with a mentally disturbed partner, it might help her,’ he said, edging towards the door. ‘Thanks to the stress and strain of the war, and especially as a result of last year’s V1 and V2 rocket attacks, I have several other patients on my panel list suffering mental breakdowns similar to your father’s.’

  Pru wasn’t interested in other people. ‘How long are you going to be able to keep issuing Dad with sick notes for work?’ she asked bluntly. ‘How long is it going to be before he loses his job? And what will happen when he does? I’ve had to give up work because Mum can’t manage Dad on her own. If I go back to work, Mum’s going to give way altogether, and even if I do, I’ll only be on a junior’s wage and that isn’t going to be enough for the three of us, is it?’

  Dr Roberts sighed heavily. He certainly couldn’t keep on supplying Wilfred’s employers with sick notes stating he was suffering from a virus infection, nor could he be expected to saddle himself with all the consequent problems of his patient’s illness.