Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  He slid by Jetty Roads and began pulling across Hook Ness to Galleon’s Point, his Navy duffle coat buttoned against the stiff breeze. Perhaps Matthew, too, would one day proudly wear a Waterman’s badge on his breast pocket. He looked across to the yawning entrances of the King George and Albert Docks. Matthew could do far, far worse. It was a grand life, working the river. Especially when a man had a cosy home and a loving family to return to every evening.

  The Tansy rounded the bend into Woolwich Reach. The Woolwich ferry was ploughing across the river, a spume of white water in its wake. It was a free ferry and a favourite haunt of truanting youngsters. Young Billy Lomax, for instance, often spent all day hanging happily over the ferry’s rails as it forged back and forth, offering a magnificent view of passing shipping. There was no sign of Billy today, however, and Leon sailed on, past St Mary’s Wharf and Trinity Wharf and the huge Siemans factory. With luck, Matthew and Luke would never play truant from school, and he certainly had no worries on that score where Daisy was concerned. Daisy was as happy as a little lark at school. Every mealtime they shared together, she chattered ten to the dozen about the things she and her friends were doing in class and the things they were going to do.

  He began to round the bend that heralded Blackwall Point. He was a lucky man. He had a job that satisfied him to the depths of his being; he had children he would die for; and he had a wife he loved with all his heart and body and soul. Just thinking of Kate made him feel breathless. She possessed an inner radiance and serenity that drew people to her like moths to a flame, and she possessed a passion that was reserved for him, and him alone. At the mere memory of it he felt his throat tighten. Only that morning, she had told him that her period was late.

  ‘Please God let her be pregnant,’ he prayed as he brought the Tansy round head on tide, off Deadman’s Dock. ‘And let it be a girl this time. Another little girl will make our family complete.’

  He continued up-river, past the giant Tate & Lyle treacle factory on the north bank. The area all around it was known locally as Treacle Town, and he grinned to himself, glad he didn’t live there; glad he was a south-Londoner; glad that he lived in a part of London rich in history and with wonderful high, open views of the river. Glad, and grateful, to be alive.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s still too early to be sure,’ Dr Roberts said to Kate, his stethoscope dangling from his ears like permanent appendages. ‘However, if your breasts are tender and you’re passing urine more often than usual, and certain foods are making you feel nauseated, then it’s highly likely the reason is pregnancy.’ It was the third time he had broken such news to her, and the first time she had received the news as a married woman. He sighed. Even now, with a wedding ring gleaming on the fourth finger of her left hand, the situation wasn’t ideal. He didn’t approve of miscegenation. Black races were black and white races were white and, in his opinion, a mixing-up of the two benefited no-one. Especially not the children of such marriages who, in his view, were unlikely to be accepted by either their father’s race or their mother’s race.

  With perfect professional propriety he kept his thoughts to himself, saying, ‘Come and see me in another four weeks. An internal examination should be decisive by then.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Roberts.’ Kate smiled politely, turned and left the room, well aware of his unexpressed opinion. It saddened her, but didn’t distress her. There would always be people who disapproved of the unusual, and Dr Roberts was one of them. He wouldn’t, however, ever cause her or hers grief by name-calling or by behaving towards them in anything but the same, punctiliously correct manner he displayed to the rest of the world.

  She stepped out of the surgery into the chill crispness of autumn, dismissing him from her thoughts, thinking only of the baby she was now sure she was expecting. It would be the first child she had conceived and would carry in conventional circumstances. Instead of being alone, unable to share either the weariness of pregnancy, or the exultation of it, with the father of her child, she would be able to share every step of her pregnancy with him; the confirmation of it; the first time the baby moved in her womb; even, perhaps, the actual birth. With a spring in her step and a heart bursting with joy, she unleashed Hector from the surgery railings and began to walk homewards, making a slight detour so that her route would take her past the Point. It was a glorious morning and she wanted to be able to look out over the river in the faint, fond hope of being able to discern the Tansy amongst the maelstrom of shipping heading either up-river to the wharves and docks, or down-river towards the open sea.

  ‘Cooee, there!’ a woman she knew only by sight called out to her from the far side of the road. ‘Where are the little ones today?’

  ‘Matthew is at nursery school, Luke is helping a neighbour care for his pigeons,’ Kate called back, wondering just how Charlie was coping with Luke’s ‘helping’.

  With a cheery wave the woman continued on her way, heading down towards Greenwich. Kate continued in the opposite direction, breasting the hill that led out on to the Heath, unleashing Hector from his lead so that he could have a good run. What would she and Leon call this new baby? Always, before, the choice of a name had been hers and hers alone. This time it would be a joint decision. A joint decision that would be enhanced by a lot of suggestions from Daisy.

  She skirted one of the Heath’s disused, gorse-thick gravel-pits. She wouldn’t even think of boys’ names because this time the baby was going to be a girl, she was sure of it. Rebecca was a nice name, and biblical, too, like Matthew and Luke. On the other hand, it would be nice to have a name that married well with Daisy. Briony, perhaps. Or Pansy, or Primrose. She called Hector to heel and crossed the road that flanked the Heath, separating it from the Point. Rose would have been an ideal name, but Carrie’s daughter was called Rose, and two Roses in the Square would be confusing.

  She came to a halt, her cherry-red coat buttoned high to her throat against the stiff breeze, looking out over the great loops of the Thames as it curved like a snake around Blackwall Point a little to the east, curving again at Greenwich Reach directly below her, and then coiling yet again at Limehouse Reach to the west, just beyond the Greenland Dock. Was that where Leon was now, at the Greenland entrance, waiting for the outer lock gates to yawn open and swallow the Tansy in? Or was he already in the main dock, the Tansy nose-to-tail with other lighters and tugs and launches as they jostled for their respective wharves? Wherever he was, he would be content. The river was in his blood and his bones, and she knew that he hoped at least one of his children would follow him on to it.

  She frowned slightly, the stiff October breeze ruffling tendrils of hair at her temples, her long rope of braided hair hanging straight as a line down to her waist. Matthew was already showing every sign of being fascinated by the river, but how could Matthew ever become a Thames Waterman? Joss Harvey had already entered his name for the preparatory department of the prestigious public school that Toby had once attended. And a public school education led to many things, but not to obtaining Port of London Authority Waterman’s and Lighterman’s licences and becoming a Freeman of the River.

  Hector was barking impatiently, unhappy at the lack of attention he was receiving. She bent down and picked up a stick, throwing it for him, her frown deepening. For Matthew to enjoy a public school education when Luke and Daisy and the new baby attended local schools, would be to bring class divisiveness right into the heart of their little family. Yet what choice did she have when she knew, without a moment’s doubt, that Toby would have wanted his son to be educated as he had been educated?

  Hector bounded triumphantly back to her, the stick in his mouth. She gently removed it, throwing it again, wondering what effect such a difference of education would have on the children’s relationships with each other. Especially the relationship between Matthew and Luke. Down below her there was a subtle change on the river. Was the tide beginning to ebb? If it were, it was high time she returned to Magnolia Square and relieved Charlie of hi
s baby-sitting duties. She called a reluctant Hector to heel and turned her back on one of the most magnificent vistas London had to offer. When Luke was a little older perhaps he would show signs of having the same Thames-loving fever as his father. If Luke became a Waterman then it wouldn‘t matter that Matthew didn’t do so. And the new baby? Briony or Pansy or Primrose? What would she become when she grew up?

  Kate raised her face to the hard grey sky, laughing aloud for pure joy. It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter in the slightest, not as long as she grew up happy and healthy and kind-hearted. She stepped once more on to the Heath, working out the months. She must have conceived around the beginning of September, which meant the baby would be born in early June. Her own birthday was in June, and next year she would be twenty-five. What a wonderful twenty-fifth birthday present a new baby would be, especially as Leon’s application to adopt Matthew would have been approved and granted by then, and he would be Matthew’s legal father. She broke into a run of exhilaration, Hector bounding at her heels. Life was good. Life was so good that if it hadn’t been for the baby she was certain she was carrying, she would have performed cartwheels all the way across the Heath and into Magnolia Square.

  Mavis didn’t feel like performing cartwheels. She was on the run from Trafalgar Square, up the Haymarket to Piccadilly and then on into Oxford Street to Marble Arch. It was one of the busiest bus routes in London, thick with shoppers and shop-workers. ‘’Old tight!’ she shouted as Burt, her driver, lurched away from the Simpson’s corner stop and into the maelstrom of traffic surging around Piccadilly’s Eros. ‘Move dahn a bit, or go up on top. There’s plenty of room up there.’

  A young man who had been strap-hanging, a shiny briefcase clutched to his chest with his free hand, obligingly accepted her advice, squeezing past her as he made his way towards the stairs. Mavis braced herself against one of the crowded passenger seats, leaning back as far as she could to give him room. Burt braked hard as a black cab shot across his path from Vigo Street. The strap-hangers lurched against each other, one woman giving a little scream. A seated passenger’s carrier bag fell off her knees, spilling apples and a bottle of Daddie’s Sauce into the aisle. The young man with the briefcase staggered hard against Mavis, standing on her toes as he did so.

  ‘Ow!’ Mavis protested vehemently as his weight pressed her wooden ticket rack hard against her rib cage. ‘Mind what yer doin’ with yer plates of meat!’

  ‘Sorry if I stood on your toes, miss.’ The young man flushed scarlet as he struggled to regain his balance. ‘Are you all right? I haven’t really hurt you, have I?’

  ‘You’ve bloomin’ well nearly crushed me to death,’ Mavis said, pushing herself away from the passenger seat and upright again, readjusting the leather shoulder satchel that held her takings and change. ‘Now ’ave yer paid or ’aven’t yer? I don’t want to be climbing those stairs again just for you.’

  ‘A three a’penny one, please,’ he said, fumbling with his free hand in his trouser pocket for change, blushing harder than ever.

  Mavis took compassion on him and grinned. He didn’t look a day older than twenty, and there was something about him that reminded her of Malcolm Lewis.

  ‘A three a’penny one it is,’ she said, taking his money and punching him a ticket. ‘An’ if you were ’oping to be a ballet dancer, I’d forget about it. You’re as ’eavy on yer feet as an elephant.’

  There were appreciative chuckles from the passengers within earshot, and the young man’s face deepened to the colour of the headscarf Mavis was wearing, turban-fashion, over her buttercup-blonde curls. He didn’t scuttle away up the stairs, though. There was more than teasing amusement in the disconcertingly green eyes so flagrantly meeting his. There was come-hither encouragement as well.

  Standing his ground, he said with every inch of courage he possessed, ‘Perhaps you’d let me make amends. Would you come out for a drink with me this evening? Or perhaps for a meal. . .’

  Mavis sighed, regretting her moment of light-hearted flirtation. She was a lot of things but she wasn’t a cradle-snatcher. Even if she had been, this young man, as clean-cut and fresh-faced as a Mormon missionary, was definitely not her type. She liked her men to be dangerously knowing, and she liked them to be tall and toughly built and to move with the springy precision that indicated strength and muscular control. The young man now looking at her with such urgent hope in his eyes was more like a clumsy young colt than a superbly fit Commando. And it was a Commando, one very particular Commando, that she was yearning for.

  As she thought of Jack, slim and supple in his American blue denims, desolation swept over her. Where had the two of them gone wrong? Why hadn’t they married a decade ago, when they were even younger than the young man now standing before her, still waiting for an answer to his request.

  ‘No,’ she said, finally answering it and trying to sound regretful and to let him down gently, ‘I’m a married woman.’ She held up her left hand, waggling her wedding ring finger so that he could see the narrow gold ring encircling it. ‘Mind the stairs as you go up. We’ll be turning into Oxford Street in a minute and it’s a sharp corner.’ She turned her attention to the rest of her passengers. ‘Hold tight! No standing on the platform, please! Oxford Circus next stop!’

  ‘I’ve just heard word about Wilfred,’ Daniel said at the close of his weekly meeting with Bob Giles. ‘What are Doris and Pru going to do, now that Wilfred’s been asked to resign from his job?’

  Bob took off his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Wilfred. How much more bizarre were events going to become where his former churchwarden was concerned? Knowing that Daniel would have to be told some time, he laid his glasses on his desk-top, saying, ‘Whilst Doris is with her sister in Essex, Pru has begun working again, so there’s no immediate problem there.’ He paused. Daniel waited patiently. That there was going to be a problem somewhere else, he could tell by the weary tone of Bob Giles’s voice. ‘As to Wilfred’s loss of earnings . . .’ Again Bob Giles paused. If he didn’t tell Daniel now, Daniel would only hear from another source. By the time Wilfred’s ‘disciples’ began making visits to number ten, there would be wild and wonderful rumours in plenty. ‘Wilfred seems to have attracted what can only be described as a paying congregation,’ he said, trying to sound as if it were nothing very uncommon. ‘A coterie of middle-aged Blackheath ladies have taken him under their wing and are, I understand, funding him extremely generously.’

  Daniel blinked. ‘Funding him? You mean they’re giving Wilfred money?’

  Bob sympathized with Daniel’s incredulity. ‘The payments are being described as tythes,’ he said, not knowing whether to abhor Wilfred’s business acumen, or admire it.

  ‘Blimey!’ Daniel thought of St Mark’s collection plates. They never garnered more than a handful of loose change. He wondered if Wilfred was quite as adrift in his brain-box as they all thought.

  ‘And they’re going to begin holding Sunday morning meetings at number ten,’ Bob said, seeing no reason why Daniel should any longer be spared from knowing the worst.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Daniel shook his head unhappily. ‘Doris isn’t going to want to come home to that, is she? I’ve never known a woman so particular about her carpets.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘And are these ladies of Wilfred’s married ladies or widowed ladies? Because if they’re widowed ladies—’

  ‘Whatever their marital status, there will be unpleasant rumours,’ Bob said, knowing he was making a colossal understatement.

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t become a polligammythingummy, like the Jerry O’Gormans,’ Daniel said, wondering how on earth he would break such news to Hettie.

  ‘Mormons don’t practise polygamy, if polygamy is against the law of the land they live in,’ Bob said, feeling faint at the very thought of polygamous wives, as well as so-called disciples, establishing a bridge-head on St Mark’s very doorstep. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Daniel? I could certainly do with one.’<
br />
  ‘So could I,’ Daniel said with heartfelt feeling, ‘but Wilfred won’t be able to have any cups of tea, not if he starts behaving like a Jerry O’Gorman. And he won’t be able to enjoy a glass of beer either!’

  For the rest of her shift, Mavis was far less chirpy than usual. Life just didn’t seem to be any fun any more. By the time she paid in her takings at the end of the day she was even beginning to wish she’d accepted the fresh-faced young man’s offer to take her out for a drink. She grinned ruefully to herself. What the heck was life coming to? There’d been a time not so long ago when she’d been ankle-deep in men, and they had been real men, not briefcase-carrying, Malcolm Lewis look-alikes who had barely begun to shave. Yanks, Canadians, Australians, Poles. She’d been able to take her pick and, like a lot of other young women whose husbands were serving overseas for sometimes years on end, she had done so. She had never done so, however, with serious intent. A kiss and a cuddle at the end of a night’s dancing had been as far as it had ever gone.

  She hopped off the service bus that took her from her bus depot to the corner of the Heath. Where were they now, all those Yanks, Canadians, Australians and Poles that she’d danced night after night with? Already demobbed and back home probably, and if not already home, on troopships heading for home. She strode out across the coarse grass, the harsh serge of her clippie’s trousers rough against her legs. Ted, too, was now heading home. Her stomach muscles tightened in a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. What was life going to be like for them after six years of separation broken only by a few inadequately short leaves? They were going to be strangers to each other. Her sense of apprehension grew. In some ways, they’d always been strangers to each other. Ted was a quiet chap. He’d never been one for gallivanting or dancing the night away. Home and hearth, that was Ted.