Magnolia Square

by Margaret Pemberton

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘And a terrible time they ’ad of it,’ Nellie said to Hettie as they sat squarely in two armchairs in the Emmersons’ living-room, supervising Billy and Beryl and Rose and Daisy as they put up coloured paper-chains ready for the Christmas Eve party that was about to start. ‘On the edge of pneumonia, she was. Gawd knows wot would ’ave ’appened to ’er if Jack ’adn’t gorn and found ’er. She’d ’ave died, I reckon. She still don’t look too good, all blue shadows round ’er eyes and no roses in ’er cheeks.’

  Christina had never been one of Hettie’s favourite people, but it was Christmas, the season of goodwill, and the poor girl had certainly had a rough time of it.

  ‘She’ll pick up now she’s ’ome,’ she said comfortably, ‘especially now she’s sorted things out with Mr Giles.’

  ‘Mr Giles?’ Nellie snapped to attention, or she did as far as her twenty stone would allow. Hettie’s flower arranging at St Mark’s meant she often picked up bits and pieces of vicarage gossip that no-one else stood a cat in hell’s chance of overhearing. ‘Wot’s bin wrong between Christina and the Vicar?’

  Hettie looked around to make sure no-one was listening in on them and then, satisfied they weren’t, leaned towards Nellie, lowering her voice, saying ominously, ‘Religion!’

  Nellie blinked. It wasn’t quite what she had expected, and it was a bit of a let-down. ‘Well, ’e is a vicar when all’s said and done, ’Ettie,’ she said reasonably. ‘I suppose if ’e wants to talk about religion ’e ’as more right than most—’

  ‘Not his religion,’ Hettie said exasperatedly, ‘hers.’ Mindful that the house was full of friends and neighbours, she lowered her voice even further. ‘It seems as if Mr Giles should never have married her and Jack in St Mark’s, only at the time she said it was what she wanted, and what with it being the war and everything, and Mr Giles always being so obliging—’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me Christina and Jack ain’t legally married?’ Nellie’s eyes were as round as saucers. ‘Snakes alive but that’ll be a rum do, won’t it? She was very nicely brought up, was Christina. Leah says ’er father was a professional man, a chemist. She won’t be ’appy livin’ over the brush—’

  ‘They aren’t living over the brush!’ There were times when Hettie wanted to give Nellie a good shake, but Nellie’s mountainous bulk made such expressions of exasperation impossible. ‘Being married in church is a civil ceremony as well as a religious ceremony. That’s why the happy couple have to sign the register, just as they do in a Register Office wedding.’

  ‘Then wot’s the kerfuffle?’ Nellie asked, bewildered.

  ‘By marrying at St Mark’s she was turning her back on her religion,’ Hettie said, having overheard enough of Christina’s many conversations with Bob Giles to know that this was the central issue. ‘And though she once tried to shut everything about her past out of her mind, her religion included, she doesn’t want to do so any longer. And Jack doesn’t want her to do so, either. He’s been with her to see the Rabbi, and he’s taking instruction. He says if they’re going to have something Christina calls a Shabbas and special candles on the table and eat bread with salt on it, he wants to know what it’s all in aid of.’

  ‘Yer mean Jack’s thinking of convertin’?’ Nellie asked with incredulity. ‘Blimey! If ’e does, ’e’ll ’ave to ’ave the end of his Jimmy Riddler cut orf! I can’t imagine Jack likin’ the thought of that very much, can you? Circumspection I think it’s called, and it don’t sound very comfy.’

  ‘Can I just move you two ladies and your chairs back a bit?’ Daniel asked, striding up to them, a beaming smile on his good-natured face as he unwittingly put an end to their gossip. ‘Then I can fit a few more spare chairs in around the edges. There’s going to be quite a throng tonight. The first Magnolia Square Christmas Eve party of the peace! Even Anna’s got her best bib and tucker on, though I don’t think pastel pink is really her colour.’

  ‘She bought it herself down Lewisham Market,’ Carrie was saying as she and Kate made chicken paste sandwiches. ‘I tried to talk her into wearing one of the dresses Harriet gave her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. She just kept saying “pink is vunderful”, and that it reminded her of candy-floss and summer.’

  ‘And she’s quite right,’ Mavis said, tipping a packet of hundreds and thousands lavishly across the top of the trifle she had brought with her. ‘When it comes to clothes you ’ave to wear wot you feel ’appiest in.’

  Carrie eyed the plunging cleavage of Mavis’s scarlet chiffon flounced blouse, saying tartly, ‘Which in your case appears to be as little as possible.’

  Mavis grinned. ‘We wouldn’t be just a little on the jealous side, would we?’ she asked, knowing how bored Carrie was with wearing frumpish maternity tops. ‘Yer should lash out on a bit of parachute silk, our Carrie. Yer could ’ide a battalion under parachute silk and still look like Rita ’Ayworth in Tonight and Every Night.’

  ‘’Eave-ho and up she rises!’ Danny shouted as he heaved Hettie’s piano over the front doorstep and into the house. ‘Thank Gawd it ain’t snowing! If there’d bin snow underfoot I’d be at the bottom of Magnolia ’ill by now with the joanna on top of me!’

  ‘When the boxing club opens, p’raps you should organize a bit of piano moving in amongst the weight-training.’

  Leon, relegated to a supervisory capacity on account of the plaster-cast on his left wrist and the heavy strapping beneath his shirt which was holding his broken ribs in a firm position, wasn’t altogether joking. Piano moving was tough exercise on the muscles as everyone who had ever shifted Hettie’s joanna well knew.

  ‘Can I play “Away in a Manger”, Granny, please?’ Rose asked Hettie as the piano was finally manoeuvred into the front room.

  ‘Do any of you three lads know how to spell Constantinople?’ Daniel, engrossed with compiling pen-and-paper games for later in the evening, asked, ‘because if you do, it means it’ll be too simple a question for Daisy and Beryl and Rose.’

  ‘We’ll be open by the New Year,’ Danny said to Leon, ignoring his father’s attempts to be funny. ‘Jack says there’s no sense in ’anging around, not when Elisha’s ’appy for us to set up at the back of The Swan.’ He wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead, his mahogany-red hair standing up in unquenchable spikes despite a liberal application of Brylcreem. ‘’E’s goin’ to be payin’ me a proper wage, no nonsense about waitin’ to see how things go,’ he said, a happy grin nearly spurting his freckled, snub-nosed face. ‘I give up work at the factory on the thirty-first, and from then on, Jack will be my guv’nor. This boxin’ club ain’t going to be just any old boxin’ club, Leon. With Jack’s contacts and my expertise, it’s going to be the best there is.’

  ‘Is this party going to get under way, or isn’t it?’ Mavis asked, entering the room with panache, a plate of hot mince pies held high. ‘Dad’s serving up the punch, but ’e’s ’avin to do it from the kitchen ’cos the bowl’s too heavy to carry.’

  ‘Someone’s singing carols at the door,’ Daniel said, helping himself to a mince pie and having to juggle it from one hand to the other, it was so hot.

  ‘It sounds like Anna and my ’Arriet,’ Charlie said, abandoning his efforts at Christmas decorations and lumbering happily out into the hallway.

  ‘Where’s Emily and Esther?’ Nellie hollered. ‘We can’t start a party without Emily and Esther!’

  Harriet stepped into the house, saying as she received a loving kiss on her cheek from her husband, ‘She’s being wheeled up the Square now by Malcolm Lewis. His mother is with him and so is Doris.’

  ‘Merry Christ-es-mas!’ Anna shouted gutturally, lurching into Kate’s hall, resplendent in the ruched pastel pink creation she had been wearing ever since lunch time, Ophelia tucked like a Christmas parcel in the crook of her arm. ‘Prosze! Witaj! Gut tidings! Great joy!’

  ‘Even to children and to men?’ Daniel asked, taking his life in his hands.

  Anna guffaw
ed. ‘Zum men, my Mr Collins. Zum children. But not all! Never not all! Dziekuje! Vere are the mince-pies? Vere is the punch?’

  ‘Merry Christmas, everyone!’ Esther’s cheeks were rosy with cold from her brief, brisk outing as Malcolm adroitly steered her wheelchair into the living-room. ‘Oh, my goodness! Aren’t the decorations pretty? Pink and gold chains, and holly—’

  ‘And mistletoe,’ Nellie said, a sprig clutched in one hand so that she’d be at the ready if anyone likely came within kissing distance. ‘Where’s Emily? And where’s Mr Giles? He said he’d be popping in before evening service.’

  ‘I have an announcement to make,’ Malcolm said as Pru darted in the room to join him, her eyes sparkling, her smile radiant. ‘But I want everyone to have a drink in their hands before I make it.’

  ‘Then you’d better wait till everyone comes in from out of the kitchen,’ Harriet said practically, looking like Queen Elizabeth in her best dove-grey silk dress. ‘I’ll go and herd them all up.’

  ‘An announcement?’ Carrie whipped off her pinny and fluffed her hair. If an announcement was going to be made then the party had well and truly started. ‘Do you know about this, Kate? Has Malcolm popped the question to Pru?’

  ‘If ’e ’as, ’er father won’t be too pleased about it.’ Maids licked a streak of trifle cream from her finger. ‘I saw ’im late this afternoon dahn at the clock-tower when I was gettin’ the last of my Christmas shoppin’ in.’ She gave one of her irrepressible chuckles. ‘I wished ’im a merry Christmas and ’e told me to prepare to meet my doom!’

  Carrie frowned slightly. ‘It’s all very well laughing at him, Mavis, but what’s he going to do for Christmas? Old misery though he is, it’s not nice to think of him spending it alone.’

  ‘He isn’t spending it alone.’ Kate lifted Luke up in her arms in order that he wouldn’t be crushed when they went into the crowded sitting-room. ‘I asked him if he’d like to come to the party tonight,’ she said as her son’s chubby legs straddled her hip, ‘and if he’d like to have Christmas dinner with us tomorrow. He said he wasn’t celebrating an event that had been paganized beyond recognition, but that instead he’d be spending it with like-minded people.’ A smile twitched the corner of her mouth. What Wilfred had actually said was that he was spending it with his disciples, but that piece of information would save for later. She didn’t want Pru’s engagement announcement to be marred by fresh speculation as to her father’s mental condition.

  ‘So yer can celebrate Christmas with a clear conscience, Carrie,’ Mavis said as Ted took her by the arm and steered her out of the kitchen and into the paper-chain-decorated passageway leading to the sitting-room. ‘The only waifs and strays this Christmas will be the four-legged ones Kate’s dad’s new wife always manages to find.’

  ‘Now that we’re all gathered together . . .’ Malcolm began, standing on the hearth-rug, one arm around Pru’s slender waist.

  ‘We ain’t all gathered together!’ Nellie interrupted in a voice that would have stopped traffic as far away as Catford. ‘The Vicar ain’t ’ere and Emily ain’t ’ere and Christina and Jack and Kate’s dad ain’t ’ere!’

  ‘Christina and Jack are coming up the path now!’ Daisy volunteered from her look-out position at the front window.

  ‘No, they ain’t!’ It was Billy, standing behind her shoulder and, in Daisy’s opinion, making a nuisance of himself. ‘They’ve stopped to have a kiss and a cuddle!’

  ‘And Grandpa’s coming!’ Daisy shouted, ignoring Billy’s common remark. ‘And he’s got lots of presents with him! Lots and lots!’

  Ellen, her angular face softened by the happiness that marriage had brought her, wriggled her way through the crush in order to hurry to the door to greet him. This was their first Christmas together as man and wife. Their first Christmas together as a family. ‘From Grandma and Grandpa’ Carl had written on the little cards strung from the children’s presents, and she was Grandma. Whenever they visited number four, Daisy’s face would light up at the sight of her. Matthew would run to greet her. Luke would wind his arms around her legs and beam up at her, chanting, ‘Gran! Gran! Gran!’ She was loved and she was needed, and she was the happiest woman on God’s earth.

  ‘Now that we’re all gathered together,’ Malcolm said again as Christina and Jack eased their way into the crowded room, and Danny and Leon set about making sure everyone had a full glass of punch in their hand and his mother stood at one side of him and Doris stood at Pru’s side, ‘I just want to say how much Magnolia Square means to me. So much so, that I’m going to—’

  ‘Get on with it!’ Daniel shouted jovially. ‘We ain’t got all night, young fellow-me-lad!’

  ‘Where’s the Vicar and Emily?’ Nellie protested yet again. ‘They ain’t done a flit together, ’ave they?’

  ‘They’ll be here soon.’ There was such a look of barely contained excitement on Ruth’s face that a temporarily dumbstruck Nellie wondered if the Vicar’s young wife was in the same happy condition as Kate and Carrie.

  ‘. . . that I’m going to marry a Magnolia Square girl,’ Malcolm finished to a storm of applause.

  ‘Good fer you, Pru!’ Nellie called out raucously, recovering her powers of speech. ‘’E’s a better catch than the insurance man!’

  ‘Let’s ’ave a look at the ring, bubee,’ Leah demanded, barrelling forward, all done up to the nines in a toffee-brown dress of shot-silk. ‘An engagement ring is the best present in the world, eh, nu?’

  ‘Three cheers for the happy couple!’ Albert shouted, raising his glass high. ‘Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!’

  ‘There’s something I want to say to you, luv,’ Ted said to Mavis under cover of the cheers that were raising the Emmersons’ rafters. His arm was around her waist and Mavis turned to look at him, aware from the expression in his voice that whatever it was he wanted to say, it was going to be something more important than asking her if she wanted her glass refilling. ‘I know I’ve made things difficult for you since I got back home,’ he said, acutely aware that for the first time since his demob he was in the same room as Jack Robson, ‘my not wanting to go out on the town and all that. It’s just that I’ve needed time to adjust, luv. It’s not bin easy for me, away from ’ome, and you an’ the kids, for years on end.’

  He paused, struggling for words. He’d never been any good at words. Deeds were the things he was best at – showing bravery under fire; being faithful to a wife who was probably not being faithful to him, when the rest of his unit were descending in droves on the nearest whorehouse; doing a hard week’s work as a docker and putting his unopened pay packet down on the table every Friday night; loving his family; loving his country; living decently. At the far side of the room he could see Jack, all dark and damn-your-eyes, as he had once heard Hettie so effectively describe him.

  His arm tightened around Mavis’s waist. ‘I don’t want to lose yer, luv,’ he said fiercely. ‘This next year’s goin’ to be different, I promise. If yer want takin’ out on the razzle, that’s fine, jus’ as long as it’s me wot’s doin’ the takin’. I want us to be ’appy together, Mavis, jus’ like we used to be.’

  Mavis looked into his eyes, as aware as he of Jack’s so-near presence. Around them, for Malcolm’s benefit, the room had erupted into a noisy chorus of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!’ It was a long moment. She felt as if she would one day look back on it as being one of the longest moments of her life. Was she to go on with her marriage to Ted or, like thousands upon thousands of other women who had, through the war years, discovered a freedom they had never known before, to abandon her marriage and seek a divorce?

  And if she abandoned her marriage? She didn’t have to turn her head and look towards Jack to know that Jack would never be waiting for her, not in the way she wanted him to be. A wry, realistic smile touched her scarlet-lipped mouth. And if Jack wasn’t going to be waiting for her, there was no sense at all in throwing away a good man like Ted Lomax.

&
nbsp; ‘We will be, Ted,’ she said, standing on tiptoe in her high, wedge-heeled shoes in order to seal her decision with a wifely Christmassy kiss.

  He held back from her a little, his eyes holding hers. ‘There’s one other thing, luv. Something I’d like you to agree to.’

  Mavis suppressed a sigh. Why was it men were only prepared to go out of their way when they wanted something back in return? ‘All right,’ she said equably, ‘if you’re prepared to start taking me out on the razzle, I suppose I can’t say “no” to whatever it is you want me to agree to.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  It wasn’t often a grin split Ted’s narrow, serious face, but he grinned now. ‘I want us to ’ave another baby.’

  All around them their family and friends had embarked on a string of favourite carols. As hallelujahs filled the air, Mavis said a swear-word even Ted was barely on familiar terms with. Then glorious throaty laughter spluttered out as she clasped her hands behind his neck, saying, ‘All right, Ted Lomax. But see to it yer bring plenty of parachute silk ’ome! If I’m goin’ to be wearing maternity tops again, I want to be able to look like Rita ’Ayworth in ’em!’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Liebling,’ Carl Voigt said tenderly as he kissed Kate on the cheek. ‘This is a good Christmas. A Christmas we’ve waited a long time for.’

  Kate twined her fingers through his, squeezing his hand tight, knowing all the things he was remembering – the Christmases he had spent during the war in an internment camp; the Christmases she had spent alone, and lonely, when anti-German feeling against anyone of German descent had been at its height. Then, after Leon had come into her life, the terrible Christmases when he had been held a prisoner in German-occupied Russia, and she hadn’t even known if he were still alive.

  She looked around the room, at the throng of friends and neighbours spilling out into the hallway and the kitchen, knowing very well why her German-born father thought the Christmas they were now celebrating was so special. It was because Magnolia Square had chosen to have its collective Christmas Eve party in their family house, eradicating utterly and for ever that almost unbearably painful time when he had been excluded from such community gatherings.