Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Then you’re taking far too much on yourself.’ He put a finger beneath her chin, tipping her face up to his. ‘The only thing that should be concerning you is how Doris can best be helped. Do you know if she has any family she could go and stay with for a short holiday? If she has, shall we ask Pru if she’d like to stay with us while her mother’s away? Daisy’s room is plenty big enough for another single bed to be put in there.’

  ‘What about Wilfred?’ she asked, her arms around his waist, dinner forgotten. ‘Who is going to look after Wilfred?’

  ‘I rather think everyone in Magnolia Square might have to help in looking after Wilfred,’ Leon said wryly. ‘Mr Giles will have the matter in hand, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘The dear Vicar sorted things out very speedily,’ Emily Helliwell said confidingly to Nellie Miller. ‘Doris has gone to stay with her sister. She lives in Essex, and Ruth Fairbairn drove her over there this morning.’

  Nellie, her swollen feet encased in brand-new carpet slippers bought in honour of Harriet and Charlie’s nuptials, said doubtfully, ‘It’s all very well you thinkin’ everythin’ is nicely sorted, Emily, but what about Wilfred? Word is, Doris’s little accident with the gas ’asn’t been enough to bring ’im to ’is senses, and if that won’t, what will?’

  Miriam bustled down the aisle, intent on securing herself a place in one of the front pews. Albert followed her at a more leisurely pace, nodding cheerily to friends and neighbours, his beefy neck uncomfortably constrained by a rarely worn collar and a tie.

  Unable to answer Nellie’s question, Emily changed the subject. ‘I do hope Ruth is going to be back in time to play “The Wedding March” for Harriet,’ she said, casting her eyes over the growing congregation. ‘It would be such a shame if, after being a spinster for over sixty years, Harriet should end up getting married without walking down the aisle to “The Wedding March” . . .’

  ‘After sixty years of being a spinster, I imagine she’ll ’ave more on ’er mind than wedding marches,’ Nellie said dryly. ‘Lord love me, but what the woman’s thinking of, I don’t know. Before I was widowed I ’ad my fair share of bein’ married, and I’ll tell you this for nothing – it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, not by a long chalk. Given a choice between marital obligations and a cup o’ tea, I’ll ’ave a cup o’ tea any time! Especially if it ’as sugar in it!’

  ‘Do I look bridal enough, Katherine?’ Harriet Godfrey was asking Kate anxiously as she and Kate and Leon stood in her sunlit hallway. ‘Perhaps I should have chosen something a little more summery than navy blue and white, but with rationing being what it is, I just had to take what was on offer.’

  ‘It looks like something bought before the war,’ Kate said truthfully, surveying Harriet’s trim, white-revered suit. ‘And your hat looks wonderful. That little posy of fresh marguerites you’ve pinned to the brim is very bridal.’

  Harriet’s net-gloved hands tightened around her white leather prayer book. ‘I never ever thought I would get married,’ she said suddenly. ‘Not even when I was a young girl. I was always so plain. My father told me that, as no man was ever likely to provide for me, I should concentrate on getting myself a good education and then a good job. And that’s what I did.’ She fell silent, thinking of the far and distant, lonely past. In the days before the First World War, when she had been at teacher training college, she had had no boyfriends, and she had certainly had none afterwards, when the fields of France and Belgium had been stained red with blood and single, able-bodied young men had been at a premium. ‘I’m very lucky,’ she said, checking her reflection in her hall mirror for the last time. ‘Not only lucky to be marrying a man as kind as Charlie, but lucky in my friends, too.’ She turned her head, looking across at Leon. He was standing a little behind Kate, impeccably dressed in a much-brushed, much-pressed dark grey suit, a grey-and-red striped tie emphasizing the pristine snowiness of his starched white shirt. ‘Thank you for agreeing to give me away, Leon,’ she said gratefully. ‘And now I think it’s time we walked across to the church, don’t you? I’ve never kept Charlie waiting, and I’m not going to start doing so today.’

  From his look-out at the church door, Danny Collins signalled to Bob Giles and to a rather breathless Ruth Fairbairn, that the bride was on her way. Ruth, still wearing the coat she had worn to drive Doris Sharkey to her sister’s house in Essex, settled herself a little more comfortably at the organ.

  In one of the front left-hand pews, Ellen Pierce slipped her hand into Carl’s. Luke and Matthew were sitting with them, patiently waiting for their mother to join them. Daisy was in the pew behind with the Collins family. As Carl’s fingers tightened lovingly over hers, Ellen realized with a deep rush of pleasure that very soon all three children would be regarding her as their step-granny.

  In the pew behind, Mavis thought about the letter lying in her fake lizard-skin handbag and wished that Luke and Matthew would stop fidgeting. What did it matter if Ted was demobbed before Jack? What earthly difference was it going to make to anything? There was the sound of activity at the church entrance. Kate hurried down the aisle towards the front left-hand pew, pretty as a picture in a pastel-blue dress she had skilfully renovated with crystal, pre-war buttons and a spanking new white belt. The stately strains of ‘Here Comes the Bride’ filled the church. Charlie stood facing the altar, his best man, Daniel Collins, at his side. No-one present had ever seen Charlie wearing a suit before, and all of them found it a strange experience.

  ‘Are you sure it’s ’im?’ Nellie Miller asked Emily Helliwell doubtfully. ‘It don’t look like ’im.’

  As if to reassure everybody, Charlie turned slightly, looking down the aisle to where his beloved was approaching on Leon Emmerson’s arm, her navy picture-hat dipping with French chic over one eye, the marguerites on its brim delightfully girlish. A beam of pure happiness split his crumpled face. She was a smasher, was his Harriet. She was a diamond, an absolute diamond.

  ‘Course they’re not goin’ away on a ’oneymoon,’ the landlady of The Swan said knowledgeably to a nosy enquirer at what was, for Magnolia Square, a remarkably restrained wedding reception in the church hall. ‘They’re both in their seventies, for heaven’s sake! They got married for a bit o’ companionship, not for a bit of ’ow’s your farver!’

  ‘I like this companionship lark, don’t you ’Arriet?’ Charlie asked with a cheeky chuckle as, much, much later on in the evening, they lay in each other’s arms in the vast double bed that had once belonged to Harriet’s parents. ‘It don’t ’alf make the mattress springs creak though, don’t it?’

  Harriet flushed rosily and then, as Charlie began to chortle and then to laugh so hard that the bed began to shake, she clung to him, laughing as she had never laughed before in her life.

  Outside in the Square, a man walking his dog heard the unrestrained, bellying, full-throated gales of laughter and shook his head in bemusement. Whatever the joke that had occasioned it, it must have been a good one. He whistled his dog to heel, wondering what it could have been.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack Robson lay on his back in his upper bunk. It was midday, and there was no-one else in the Nissen hut. He took a deep draw on his cigarette, propped it on an upturned Marmite lid, and began to re-read Mavis’s letter.

  . . . it was a shame you couldn’t be home for the wedding. Your dad was a sight for sore eyes. He and Daniel had white carnations in their lapels and their hair (or what they have left!), was so slicked with brilliantine they looked like a couple of old spivs! Harriet Godfrey looked the bee’s knees. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever seen her not wearing tweeds and brogues. She wore a navy suit with white revers, navy court shoes and a hat that must have come from Harrods. Do you remember when she was you and Jerry’s headmistress at Junior School and the two of you used to call her an old trout? Bet you never thought she’d one day marry your dad!

  As for other news, Leon and Danny are now good mates. They take their kids swimming togeth
er on Sunday mornings and the two of them go to the Baths without the kids every Friday evening. I have a sneaking suspicion that my pain-in-the-neck brother-in-law can’t swim and that Leon is teaching him. He and Carrie have moved into number 17, much to Mum’s relief. It means she can now listen to the news without having to listen to Danny’s know-all comments on each and every news item. According to him, he could do a much better job of running the country than Mr Attlee. He wasn’t amused when I asked him if it was only his job at the biscuit factory that was stopping him from giving the Prime Minister a hand!

  Jack grinned. He and Danny had been mates since their schooldays, and he knew very well what a cocky, self-opinionated little bleeder he could be. He picked up his cigarette and inhaled deeply. Working in a factory instead of strutting about with sergeant’s stripes decorating his arm must have been a pretty painful come-down for a bloke of Danny’s temperament. He rested his cigarette back on the edge of the Marmite lid. What Danny needed was a job with a bit of action. And once he was back home in Magnolia Square he, Jack Robson, would be just the person to be able to put such a job Danny’s way.

  . . . the other main bit of news is that number eight’s new tenant is beginning to settle in. She still looks decidedly odd, but thanks to me and Carrie and Kate, not as odd as when she first moved in! She talks to herself in the loudest, gruffest voice you’ve ever heard when she’s out in the street, but no-one in the Square takes any notice any more, not even the kids. Compared to Wilfred Sharkey, Anna is practikly normal! Poor Doris Sharkey is still hiding away at her sisters. Pru has moved in with the Emmersons (and is on public hand-holding terms with Malc Lewis??!!), and Wilfred is now a semi-permanent fixture at Lewisham clock-tower preaching hell and damnation to anyone dozy enough to listen to him!

  Jack’s grin deepened. A lot could be said about the residents of Magnolia Square, but no-one could ever accuse them of being dull or boring.

  What else? Now that Gran’s tin helmet is obsolete she’s put it to use as a soup tureen. Nellie’s using hers as a rose bowl and Emily Helliwell has transformed hers into a bird bath. Lord alone knows what Billy is going to do with all the junk he’s hoarded in our front garden. Wilfred Sharkey told me yesterday morning he thought the outside of my house was a public health hassard and that I should be reported to the council. According to Pru it’s the only rashional comment he’s made since VJ Day. When he made it, he was on his way to his pitch at the clock-tower wearing a placard that read HER HOUSE IS THE WAY TO HELL! PROVERBS CHAPTER 7 VERSE 8. As for Kate . . .

  Jack turned another vivid pink page of Mavis’s satisfyingly long and chatty letter.

  . . . she’s her usual wonderful self. Billy and Beryl call in at number four nearly every day after school for a piece of homemade gingerbread or shortcake or whatever else she’s made for her kids teas. She’s taken Anna under her wing just as she once took Nellie under it (you might not remember, but there was a time when if she hadn’t bathed and bandaged Nellie’s ulcerated leg for her every week, Nellie would have been bedridden). Her dad’s married his mousy, middle-aged lady-friend and has moved in with her. Joss Harvey’s chauffeured Bentley cruises into the Square once a week and parks outside number two waiting for Matthew to climb into the back of it. How Kate feels about it I don’t know. Nor does anyone else. Not even Carrie. I only wish I was the one enjoying such luxury! A ride in the back of a Bentley would go down very well, thank you very much!

  And that’s about it, except to say that now I’m no longer in the ATS but on the buses life isn’t half the fun it used to be. I don’t miss poor buggers being killed and maimed by bombs and V1s and V2s, but I’d got used to the danger of the war and the excitement and the sense of urgency and being part of it all. Being a clippie isn’t half as exciting, though I expect it’s better than working for my dad down the market.

  Ta-ra for now,

  Love Mavis.

  PS. Harold Miller’s on his way home at long last. Nellie got word yesterday.

  PPS. Ted’s on his way home too. Looks like you’re going to be the last of the Magnolia Square lot to be back in civvies. What’s keeping you? Are you scared you’ll slip up and call your new stepmother by her old nickname?’

  Jack’s grin deepened as he ground his cigarette stub out. Though he hoped to God he would never be so drunk as to call Harriet an old trout to her face, he knew it was the way he would always privately think of her. He wondered what Jerry would have thought of their father’s second marriage. His grin faded. Jerry. How many years was it now since Jerry had been killed in Spain? Eight? Nine? As clear as if it were yesterday, he remembered one of the last days they had ever spent together. It had been a glorious summer day, and every resident in Magnolia Square had been up on the Heath celebrating St Mark’s annual church fête. There had been side-shows and stalls, a Bonny Baby Competition for the proud mums of the parish, a cricket match for the men, donkey rides for the kids. Jerry had spent most of the day laughing and talking with Kate. And he, Jack, had first set eyes on Christina.

  He reached under his pillow for his packet of Craven ‘A’. It had been love at first sight as far as he had been concerned. In all the years since, he had never felt for any other woman what he had felt, and continued to feel, for Christina. He tapped a cigarette out of the packet. The question was, though, did she love him as fiercely and urgently as he loved her? He rolled over slightly, fumbling in the pocket of the Army jacket hooked on to the corner of his bunk. The letter he withdrew consisted of only two, neatly penned sheets. He scanned the half-dozen unsatisfactory paragraphs.

  . . . the wedding was lovely. Queenie wore a white satin bow around her neck and Daniel Collins took photographs . . . Carrie and Danny have moved in to number 17 and Carrie is expecting another baby . . . The weather has been very mild for October, Albert says it means we will have a hard winter . . . I hope you are well and that you’ll be demobbed soon . . .

  There was nothing in it that could be described as intimate or personal. Nothing about what she was doing with her time when she wasn’t working. Nothing about how much she was missing him. There wasn’t even any mention of whether she had moved into number twelve now that Charlie was living with Harriet. Nor was there any mention of Carl Voigt’s wedding. He lit his cigarette, blowing a thin filter of smoke towards the Nissen hut’s ceiling, wondering if much could be read into that particular omission. Mavis had written that Carl Voigt was no longer living in Magnolia Square, which meant that Christina was presumably no longer having her long, mysterious chats with him. He chewed the corner of his lip. What on earth had those chats been about? No matter how much he pondered over them he couldn’t come up with any likely answers – apart from one. He sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of his bunk. Christina and Carl Voigt? Was it really a possibility? The man was old enough to be her father. And he was an Aryan German. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense at all.

  He gave his well-muscled shoulders an angry shrug and jumped to the floor. Whatever was wrong with his marriage, it couldn’t be sorted by lying on a bunk, brooding about it. In another month or so he would be demobbed and home and then he would sort it. He would sort it if it was the last thing he ever did.

  ‘Two pahnds o’ carrots and an ’andful of greens,’ Christina’s customer said to her, holding her canvas shopping-bag open wide, ‘an’ throw in a couple of onions while you’re abaht it, there’s a dear.’

  Christina, wearing cotton gloves so that her hands didn’t get as rough and red as Carrie’s, burrowed into the giant pile of carrots fronting Albert’s market stall. Her customer sniffed. She preferred it when Carrie was serving. Carrie was always ready with a friendly word and a bit of banter. Christina, with her fancy name and dark, almost foreign looks, was polite enough, but it was the kind of politeness assistants in posh stores doled out. And when people shopped down the market they didn’t want to be treated as if they were in Fortnum & Mason or Harrods, they wanted a bit of heartwarming, friendly
cheek.

  Christina weighed the carrots, well aware of her deficiencies as a market-seller. She had no chat, no repartee, and she could no more shout her wares than fly to the moon. She tipped the carrots into her customer’s bag and reached for a couple of onions. It was she who had suggested, when the Jenningses had first taken her into their home, that she should contribute to the family’s finances by working on Albert’s fruit and vegetable stall. Albert had been delighted. It meant he could branch out and run two stalls instead of just one. The second stall, the one Christina and Carrie alternated on, was at the opposite end of the High Street to his original stall near the clock-tower, neatly capturing the custom of shoppers coming into the market from the Catford and Ladywell areas.

  ‘One and threepence, please,’ she said, packing the greens neatly in on top of the onions and carrots.

  Her customer sniffed again, but not in dissatisfaction. Prices on a Jennings market stall were always fair. As Christina rummaged in the leather pouch at her waist for change of the florin she was being proffered, she knew she only had herself to blame if she found her work uncongenial. Albert wouldn’t have minded in the slightest if, at any time over the last few years, she had found herself a job elsewhere. For much of the war, when she and Carrie had been seconded to do war work at an ammunition factory in Woolwich, he had had to manage without her, and he would certainly be able to manage without her again.

  Perhaps she would give up working on the stall when Jack came home. Perhaps she would have other demands on her time by then. Perhaps she would be looking after her mother and grandmother.

  ‘Ta, dearie.’ Her customer slipped the sixpence and threepenny bit Christina had given her into a battered purse and, meeting with no response, sniffed again and took her leave.