‘Please God,’ she prayed inwardly. ‘Please let him not know Aunt Carrie yet! Please let him not stop and speak to her!’ Shifting her stance so that her back was placed firmly towards him, she waited with a fiercely beating heart for him to draw abreast of them, for him to walk on past them.
He drew abreast, but he didn’t walk past. Instead he slowed to a halt, his shadow falling over them as he said to Carrie in easy, teasing familiarity, ‘I expected to see you behind your dad’s market stall this morning, not in front of it.’
Carrie sucked in her breath in what sounded like exasperation. What her facial expression was, Beryl didn’t know. With her cheeks no longer pale, but brilliant scarlet, she was staring down at the pavement in an agony of self-conscious shyness.
‘I’m child-minding,’ Carrie said in what, for her, was a quite cross voice. ‘And I don’t have to account to you for how I spend my time, do I?’
‘Not unless you want to,’ Zac said affably. ‘Whose is the little nipper? I saw him earlier this morning, but wasn’t sure if it was his mum he was with.’
‘If she was blonde and her hair was in a plaited bun, it was his mum.’
‘Then it wasn’t.’ He knew now which of the two extraordinarily attractive women he saw coming out of number four was married to the darkie, but he still didn’t know who the other one was and nor, it seemed, was Carrie going to tell him. One thing was for certain, though. His new neighbours were proving to be an interesting bunch. He glanced across at Carrie’s companion, wondering whereabouts she fitted into the picture.
Carrie saw the glance and, knowing how fervently interested in him Beryl was, said with grudging politeness, ‘I don’t think you two have met yet, have you? Beryl, Zac Hemingway, Jack’s new boxer.’ She hesitated for a moment. She couldn’t now say, ‘Mr Hemingway, my niece Beryl.’ It would be too ridiculously formal, seeing as how they were all neighbours. Well aware that once she had referred to him by his Christian name there would be no going back, she said even more grudingly, ‘Zac, my niece Beryl.’
Wishing herself a thousand miles away and vowing never again to leave the office without benefit of powder and lipstick, Beryl reluctantly raised her head. Zac saw a pleasant-looking girl who, beneath her furious blushes, had an amazingly good skin, but whose unpowdered nose was a little too large for her ever to be described as conventionally pretty.
‘I met your cousin Billy last night at the gym,’ he said, trying to put her at her ease.
‘Billy isn’t my cousin, he’s my brother.’ Beryl’s blushes were beginning to ebb, but only slowly. Close to, Zac Hemingway’s physique was even more spectacular than it was at a distance. It was a blazingly hot day and he was wearing American Levi’s and a white T-shirt that was straining over a chest so broad and deep it would have put Charles Atlas to shame.
Zac’s eyes glazed slightly. This fresh-faced, wholesome-looking girl was Mavis’s daughter? His disbelief was almost as deep as when he discovered that Mavis and Carrie were sisters. ‘Have I met all the family now?’ he asked, disguising his disbelief with a grin that turned Beryl’s knees to water. ‘That’s your gran at the fruit and veg stall, isn’t it? She was at the club last night with your grandad and your mother and your brother. I’ve met your uncle Danny, of course. He’s my trainer. And I’ve met your cousin Rose.’
‘Then you’ve met all of us, apart from my dad.’ There was pride in her voice as she mentioned her dad. Her dad was a quiet bloke who didn’t look like a hero, but undoubtedly was one. In the war, under enemy fire, he had saved the lives of several men and had been awarded a medal for bravery.
‘We have to be on our way,’ Carrie said before Beryl could begin telling Zac about her dad’s distinguished war record and they found themselves talking to Zac Hemingway for half the morning. ‘I’ve promised Johnny he can help on the stall for a little while and—’
‘Come on then, let’s have a word with Carrie’s mum,’ Zac said, transferring his attention to Johnny who, his hand still in Carrie’s, had been waiting for such a move with admirable patience.
This wasn’t at all what Carrie had intended, but she could hardly say so, not with Johnny beaming up at Zac, and her mother now looking towards them and beckoning furiously in a way that quite obviously meant she wanted him bringing across so that she, too, could have a chat with him. She looked across at Beryl, saw that she was quite seriously wondering if she dare stay away from her office for a further ten or fifteen minutes and said, ‘You’d better be getting back to work, Beryl love. Your boss will be wondering where on earth you’ve got to.’
It was a statement there was really no arguing with. As reluctant now to say goodbye to Zac Hemingway as she had been to say hello to him, Beryl nerved herself into meeting his eyes properly. Blushing yet again, she said ingenuously, ‘Will you be at the gym this evening? I’m going to be there and I expect my grandad will be there as well.’
‘That’ll be champion, your grandad makes a very supportive audience,’ Zac said, while Carrie regarded her niece thoughtfully. If Beryl was always so transparent when trying to make headway with someone she fancied, then it was time she was advised not to be.
‘Are yer comin’ over fer a chat, or are yer not bloomin’ comin’ over fer a chat?’ Miriam bellowed, standing behind an impressive display of leeks and cabbages with her cotton-gloved hands deep in the leather cash-bag tied around her waist.
‘Coming!’ Carrie shouted back.
‘’Bye,’ Beryl said, speaking really only to Zac.
‘Now I see where you get the mouth on you, when you give your old man a blasting,’ Zac said under his breath to Carrie.
There was no opportunity for Carrie to give him a set-down. They were now face to face with her mother, and her mother was saying belligerently, ‘What’s our Beryl doin’ skivin’ off work at this time o’ day? ’Er boss’ll be givin’ ’er the old ’eave’o if she doesn’t sharpen ’er ideas up. And what are you doin’ down ’ere when you’re supposed to be child-mindin’?’
‘Johnny wanted to pay you a visit,’ Carrie said as Johnny made a dive for the front, lowest level of the stall, and began eagerly rearranging apples and oranges.
‘Then you might just as well ’ave worked ’ere as normal an’ let me save my legs.’ She turned her attention to Zac. ‘I’ve got chronic legs, they’re always lettin’ me dahn,’ she confided, conjuring up a picture that had Zac’s mouth twitching in a grin he could hardly contain. ‘Not that anyone cares, mind,’ she added darkly and, as Carrie never ceased running around for her, unfairly. ‘What I need is a pair o’ legs like yours, young man. I bet they never let yer dahn, do they?’
Zac, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, agreed that they hadn’t done so yet.
‘What, not even in the ring?’ Carrie asked, feigning surprise. ‘I thought being knocked down and knocked out was all part of a boxer’s repertoire.’
‘Not this boxer’s,’ he said, amused by her efforts to rile him.
‘I should think not,’ Miriam averred stoutly. ‘Not with those legs. I said to Albert last night, “with those legs ’e’ll go ten rounds an’ never notice the first bell’s gone.”’
Zac made no response to this flattering remark, because he was no longer looking at, or listening to her. He was looking at Carrie. She was wearing a scoop-necked, white-belted scarlet dress that looked as if it had been punished in the wash, for the seams were strained around her hips. Her only jewellery, apart from her wedding ring, was a fine gold chain from which a heart-shaped locket hung. As her eyes met his, very bright and very green, he couldn’t help but be aware that the locket was lying snug between the full, rich curves of her breasts. He felt a rising in his crotch. With her square-jawed, high cheekboned face and mass of untidy dark hair, she attracted him more than he’d been attracted by any woman for a long, long time and with sudden, overpowering certainty, he knew that he wanted to make love to her. The irony of his realization wasn’t lost on him. After two years enfor
ced celibacy at Her Majesty’s pleasure, he’d not only fallen for a married woman, but a woman he was quite certain had never been unfaithful in her life.
‘And so you’ll be comin’ with us all then, when we go up town to watch the coronation procession?’ Miriam was saying to him, more as a statement of fact than a query. ‘If we want a good pavement spot to see everythin’ from, we’ll have to bagsy it the night before. Malcolm Lewis, Mr Giles’s scoutmaster, says we can take a couple of ’is troops’ groundsheets with us. That should stop the cold strikin’ through to our you-know-whats.’
Carrie raised her eye to heaven in mock despair at her mother’s free-and-easy vulgarity. Johnny, a half-eaten apple in one hand, an orange he was saving for later in the other, scrambled out from under the front of the stall. ‘Will me and Mummy and Daddy and Jilly and Luke and Daisy be going with you?’ he asked, toffee-dark eyes ablaze with anticipation at the very thought. ‘Will we be sleeping out on a pavement as well? And Maffew,’ he added. ‘Will Maffew be coming home for the cowonation?’
There was a sudden tension that bewildered Zac. Carrie lost her look of mock despair and instead looked seriously concerned. Miriam’s eyes had suddenly filled as if she was about to burst into tears.
‘I’m not too sure if Matthew will be allowed home from school for the coronation,’ Carrie said at last, her voice strained. ‘I expect he, and everyone else in his class, will watch it on the television.’
Johnny, accustomed to Matthew only being home in proper school holiday time, found nothing odd about such a possibility. Zac did, though. He wondered if perhaps Matthew, who was obviously one of Johnny’s older brothers, was a young delinquent in an approved school somewhere, perhaps a borstal. It was the only reason he could think of for him being educated at what was a residential school far from home.
A little later, walking back down the High Street in the direction of the clock tower, Johnny straddling his shoulders, and Carrie resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to shake him off no matter what she did, walking alongside him, Zac said, ‘Is the certain person who isn’t likely to be home on Coronation Day in an approved school then?’
At any other time Carrie would have choked with laughter and said that Matthew’s school was highly approved, though not in the sense Zac meant. Instead she said soberly, ‘No. The person in question has never been in any kind of trouble whatsoever. He’s educated differently to . . . to . . .’ She hesitated, glancing upwards at Johnny to see if he was listening in on the conversation or not. He wasn’t. He was clinging on to Zac’s hair, giggling with joy at being so dizzyingly high and trying to attract as much attention to himself as possible. ‘He’s educated differently to the other children in the family,’ she continued as they crossed the busy main road towards Chieseman’s, ‘because he had a different father, and his father’s family were monied and wanted him to receive the kind of education his father had.’
‘Then he goes to a nob’s school? A public school?’
Carrie nodded.
Zac was intrigued, especially considering the unconventional nature of Johnny’s mother’s present marriage. ‘You said “had” a different father,’ he said as Johnny shouted out to someone he knew. ‘Does that mean that the gent in question is dead?’
Carrie nodded. She wasn’t betraying any secrets. Everyone in Magnolia Square knew Kate’s history. ‘He died twelve years ago, piloting a Spitfire at Dunkirk.’
Neither of them spoke for a little while. Carrie, because she was thinking back to the far-away days of the war; days that now seemed to belong to another world, and Zac, because he was realizing that when Carrie and her friend Kate were old enough to be having love affairs and babies, he was a wet-behind-the-ears, fourteen-year-old schoolboy. He glanced across at her. The knowledge that she was six or seven years older than him didn’t make any difference to the way he felt about her. She possessed a combination of gypsyish sensuousness and radiant wholesomeness that he found deeply erotic.
‘And all those other names Johnny mentioned – Jilly, Luke and Daisy – are those all Johnny’s other brothers and sisters?’
Despite her renewed concern over Matthew, a smile curved Carrie’s mouth. ‘Yes,’ she said, having no intention of elaborating, because to do so would just take too long, ‘they’re all Kate’s children.’
‘Blimey!’ Zac was profoundly impressed. Five children and, if his calculations were correct, she wasn’t a day over thirty-two and looked more like twenty-two.
They turned the corner into Magnolia Hill, with Carrie reflecting that never before had she been the object of so much female envy. All the way down the High Street, admiring eyes were turned in Zac’s direction. Once or twice she had glanced covertly across at him to see what his reaction was to so much blatant attention. He seemed totally unaware of it. He certainly wasn’t preening himself, and the attractive swagger in his walk was the loose-limbed grace of natural-born athleticism, not cock-of-the-walk male vanity. Even in much quieter Magnolia Hill, the girls and women they passed, no matter what their ages, all eyed him with undisguised interest. Carrie couldn’t really blame them. He was what film magazines described as ‘a gorgeous hunk of beef-cake’, and even she had to admit that he possessed other qualities, too, which were decidedly attractive. The way he was carrying Johnny home on his shoulders, for instance, and the way he’d chatted to her mum. A lot of young men she knew simply wouldn’t have taken the trouble.
As they neared the square, she wondered if he had a girlfriend. If he hadn’t, he was going to find himself inundated with offers, especially as he was boarding with Queenie. Queenie’s boarders were nearly all theatricals, and her Edwardian house, one of the largest in the square, was home to a constant stream of pretty young actresses and dancers. She frowned slightly. With rivals such as those, she didn’t think Beryl was going to be in with too much of a chance, which was a pity for Zac Hemingway as well as for Beryl, because Zac Hemingway would have a long, long way to go before he found another girl as unspoilt and as tender-hearted.
‘Will you be coming down the gym tonight?’ he asked as they rounded the left-hand corner of the square and came to a halt outside her front gate.
Carrie’s well-marked eyebrows nearly flew into her hair. ‘Me?’ she gurgled with laughter. ‘Not bloomin’ likely! I get enough of the smell of wintergreen living with Danny, without seeking out more!’
With a shaft of disappointment, Zac swung Johnny down from his shoulders. It seemed that everyone in Magnolia Square, from school-kids to old age pensioners, were keen on coming to the gym to watch him work out and that the only person who wasn’t was the one person he would have liked to have had there.
‘Uncle Danny! Uncle Danny! I’ve been on a donkey and helped Auntie Cawwie’s mum on her market stall!’ Johnny yelled, racing up the garden path as the front door opened and Danny, leaving the house for his afternoon stint at the gym, waved affably in Zac’s direction.
‘’Ave yer, young fellow?’ Danny said, grinning down fondly at him. ‘An’ I ’ope yer ’ad a bite to eat as well.’ He strolled down the path, Johnny scampering at his heels, saying in a disgruntled tone of voice to Carrie, ‘Which is more than I did, seein’ as you weren’t ’ome in time to make me anything.’
Carrie had had far too pleasant a morning to take exception to what was, coming from her nearest and dearest, a quite unexceptional and, in the circumstances, almost a reasonable remark. ‘Never mind, love,’ she said consolingly. ‘I’ll bring you a plate of something hot down to the gym.’
Their little marital exchange of words was quite beyond Zac’s understanding. Was Danny seriously put out that Carrie hadn’t been home to make him something to eat, or not? And if he were seriously put out, what was a spirited woman like Carrie doing, reacting to such a remark in such an apologetic manner? It wasn’t the first time he’d been confused by similar, overheard snippets of conversation between husbands and wives. If he’d ever had a home life he would, he supposed, have k
nown instinctively what was affectionate banter between a married couple and what was not, but he’d been an orphan, and in the Dr Barnardo’s home he was brought up in there had been care and concern, but no marital role models whatsoever.
‘’Bye,’ Carrie said to him cheerily, turning away from him and walking up her front path towards the door Danny had so conveniently left wide open.
‘What time will I be seein’ yer dahn the gym?’ Danny asked him.
Zac didn’t reply. He was watching Carrie as she stepped into the house to make a plate of something hot for her other half. Whatever the state of the Collins’s marriage, one thing was for sure. He fancied Carrie Collins. He fancied her something rotten.
Chapter Seven
Jack surveyed his new premises with satisfaction. Above a strip club, in the heart of Soho, it was a tidy little drinking club and he reckoned he was going to do very well with it. There was a mirror-backed bar, a couple of full-sized snooker tables for shooting craps, several smaller tables for rummy and poker and Kalooki, and room for a minuscule dance floor. He’d bought it with a drinking licence that still had another ten months to run, and was confident that, helped by his many contacts in the boxing world, its present, rather staid membership of mainly ex-officers and ex-NCOs, would soon be much increased and vastly enlivened.
All he now needed, before the club opened under his management, was the right kind of bar staff. Previously, the bar had been tended by a wing-commander type sporting a handle-bar moustache and a manner to match. He was ideal for a club catering primarily for ex-servicemen, bored and dissatisfied by peace-time monotony, but he wasn’t ideal for the kind of club that would soon, Jack hoped, be full of boxers and fringe showbiz personalities. He shot the right cuff of his well-cut suit jacket and glanced at his ostentatious gold watch. It was nearly two o’clock, and at two o’clock he was interviewing a string of girls in the hope of finding a couple who could efficiently, and glamorously, tend the bar, and a third with enough management ability to be able to oversee the running of it.
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