Coronation Summer

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Carrie?’ His voice was thick and low, with an urgent undertone that sent the blood fizzing in tumult along her veins.

  She was on the very edge of the precipice now, so confounded by desire for him she could hardly stand.

  ‘Carrie?’ He moved towards her and she knew that now, now, she must move swiftly away from him; must ask cheerily what he was doing in the village when he had said he would be at the gym; must claw her way back to normality; back into the safe world she had been inhabiting until a few seconds ago.

  She couldn’t do it. He was no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight and she was thirty-five. She had never in her life been unfaithful to Danny, not even in thought, not even during the long war years when he was a prisoner of the Italians. And still she couldn’t move or speak. He was only inches away from her now and when he reached out for her, she forgot all about the age difference between them; forgot all about Danny; forgot all about the sane, sensible person she once had been. With a small, primeval cry she swayed against him and, as his mouth came down on hers in swift, unfumbled contact, her hands slid up around his neck and into his hair, her lips parting willingly beneath his, her capitulation total.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Rubbish! Balderdash! Absolute stuff and nonsense!’ Deborah Harvey said with the kind of rough-shod certainty that had once helped Britain gain an empire. She was seated, ramrod-straight, on one of the Emmerson’s kitchen chairs. Daisy had left the house with Billy, the other children were all in bed, the only people facing her, ranged at either side of the kitchen table, were Kate and Leon.

  ‘It isn’t rubbish,’ Kate said, striving to keep her voice as non-confrontational as possible. ‘Matthew has always loved the river; whenever he’s home from school he always spends every minute he can on it.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Leon wasn’t really talking to Deborah Harvey. What was the point? She wouldn’t have taken the slightest notice of anything he said. He was looking across the table at Kate, hope fierce in his eyes and his voice for the first time in forty-eight hours.

  If Matthew ran away because he suddenly realized the kind of future that was being envisaged for him, a university education followed by a career in the law, or some other profession he wanted no truck with, then it meant they knew what they were dealing with. Matthew hadn’t been abducted. He hadn’t come to harm. He had simply been overwhelmed by the realization that what was expected of him by his Harvey aunts, his school and, for all he knew, his parents, was worlds away from what he wanted. And he had done what many boys his age did when confronted with situations they didn’t know how to face or handle: he had run away.

  Deborah Harvey’s arthritic, net-gloved hands tightened on the silver knob of her old-fashioned walking cane. The news that Matthew had been in the habit of spending all his time, when home from St Osyth’s, sailing the Thames like a tinker, didn’t surprise her in the slightest. It did, however, appal her. Illegitimate or not, Matthew was a Harvey, and his mother had no business allowing him to run wild like a slum child. As for her suggesting Matthew had run away from St Osyth’s because he had suddenly realized the kind of profession he was being educated for there, when what he wanted to be was a Thames waterman, words failed her.

  Leon Emmerson might have Thames water in his veins, and so might the dark-skinned children he had fathered, but her great-nephew didn’t – and if Kate Emmerson thought otherwise, then she was a fool. She didn’t look a fool, though. Grudgingly Deborah had to admit that if she’d known nothing more about Matthew’s mother other than of her being Toby’s fiancée at the time of his death, she would most likely have thought highly of her. For one thing, unlike so many modern young women, she wasn’t noisy or brazen or flashy. There was an inner radiance and a tranquillity about her that was both soothing and deeply attractive – and she was well-spoken and intelligent. Even the fact that she had allowed herself to become pregnant out of wedlock could have been forgiven her, considering that it had been war-time and that, if she hadn’t done so, the Harvey line would now be at a complete end. What couldn’t be forgiven, though, was her marriage to a half-caste ex-sailor. And then, as if that hadn’t been madness enough, she had announced that he was going to adopt Matthew and the courts had allowed him to!

  It was an outrage neither she nor her niece had ever come to terms with, or ever would come to terms with, and the result was now obvious for all to see. Matthew had run away and she, Deborah, didn’t blame him. She didn’t blame him in the slightest.

  ‘I’ll begin looking for him down by the river at first light,’ Leon Emmerson was now saying with passionate intensity. ‘That’s where he’ll be. I’m sure of it.’

  Struggling hard not to betray the tiredness she now felt, Deborah rose to her feet. It was after midnight. She hadn’t been out of bed so late for over twenty years. ‘You may be right,’ she said tightly, speaking to Leon but not looking towards him. ‘But if my great-nephew is down by the river, I am quite certain his reason for being there is not the one that has been suggested.’ She turned to make an abrupt exit, bumped into the chair she had just vacated and staggered. Leon stepped forward swiftly, steadying her by her arm. Deborah froze. Leon dropped his hand, his face tightening. Did she think his colour would rub off? Would she have preferred to fall rather than him make physical contact with her?

  ‘I’ll walk you to the front door, Miss Harvey,’ Kate said swiftly, smoothing the moment over. ‘If we find Matthew tomorrow I’ll telephone you immediately.’

  ‘There’ll be no need.’ Deborah’s voice was tighter than ever. The moment when Leon Emmerson took hold of her elbow was over, but it had profoundly shaken her. ‘I shall have my chauffeur take me to wherever it is thought Matthew might be.’

  ‘Wherever he’s sleeping at night, and I reckon it’ll be in an unused barge, he’ll be spending the days on the towpaths or the piers,’ Leon said, civil despite the provocation to be otherwise. ‘First thing in the morning I intend rounding up as many of my neighbours as possible and we’ll make a start on the Surrey Canal towpath. He used to love tiddlering there when he was small.’

  Deborah didn’t know what tiddlering was and, assuming it to be a working-class pastime, didn’t ask. She had all the information she required and now she needed her bed. ‘Good night,’ she said briefly to Kate at the door. ‘There’s no need to accompany me further. My chauffeur will assist me.’

  Kate didn’t protest. With her stomach muscles in knots of tension, she merely stood in the lighted doorway as the uniformed figure hurried up the path to respectfully lend an arm to his employer, all her thoughts on the coming morning. Would they find Matthew? Would he, please God, be down by the river, as near to home as he could get without having to face the music of his running away?

  ‘Course I’ll help,’ Jack said at first light next morning as, still in his pyjama bottoms, he stood on his front doorstep having answered Leon’s knock. ‘Just give me a sec to get some kit on and I’ll be right with you.’

  ‘Blimey, Leon. You’re up early, ain’t yer?’ old Charlie said a few minutes later as, bleary-eyed, he stood at his open front door. ‘I ain’t bin knocked up so early since the rozzers copped me for the Catford bank job just before the war.’

  ‘Goodness gracious me, Leon. Whatever is to do?’ retired Mr Nibbs asked, splendid in a burgundy wool dressing-gown. ‘Help you look for young Matthew? Well, of course, dear chap. I’ll just make myself a Thermos. It could be a long morning, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Crikey, mate! Yer startin’ off a bit early, ain’t yer?’ Danny grumbled good-naturedly as he leaned with his head out of his bedroom window. ‘The pigeons ’aven’t piddled yet!’

  As he ducked his head back into the room, Carrie pushed herself up against the pillows, saying anxiously, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  Danny scratched an armpit and looked around for his clothes. ‘Leon thinks young Matthew may be ’iding out down by the river. He wants a bit of help in lookin’ for ’im. ’Ave yer s
een what I’ve done with me trousers, pet? They’ve vanished into thin bloody air!’

  ‘Perhaps you left them in the bathroom.’ Carrie could hardly believe they were carrying on such a normal conversation. Couldn’t he tell, just by looking at her, that something cataclysmic had happened to her? Couldn’t he sense it? Guilt washed over in huge drowning waves. Had she really spent an idyllic age in Zac Hemingway’s arms last night? Had he really told her she was beautiful? The most beautiful woman he had seen in years?

  As Danny ambled out of the bedroom towards the bathroom, she waited for shame to suffuse her. It didn’t. Instead, hard on the heels of her guilt, came deep, indescribable joy. She felt alive. More alive than she’d felt in years and years and years. Realization rocked through her. She felt alive because, from the moment she had entered Zac Hemingway’s arms, perhaps even before she had entered his arms, she had fallen instantaneously and irrevocably and dizzyingly head over heels in love with him.

  ‘A mug o’ tea would go dahn a treat, gel,’ Danny said, re-entering the bedroom and zipping his flies up as he did so. ‘I ain’t used ter turnin’ out this early on a mornin’. Gawd knows ’ow dockers do it. I don’t.’

  Carrie stared at him. Unshaven and, as yet, unwashed, he was very far from being the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but he was the man she had loved and lived with all her adult life. He was her life. Her real life. What happened the previous evening wasn’t real. It had been too wonderful, too magical, too unbelievable to be real. And it couldn’t be allowed to happen again. For if it happened again—

  ‘I said “a mug o’ tea would go dahn a treat”,’ Danny said, aggrieved. ‘Cor blimey, girl, what are yer waitin’ for? Christmas?’

  ‘But I want to come with you.’ Christina swung her long legs from the brass-headed double bed to the carpeted floor. ‘I’ve nothing else to do, have I?’

  ‘Christ Almighty, sweetheart, you make it sound like a complaint.’ Knowing they would be searching boats and towpaths and piers and docks, Jack reached for a pair of Levi’s instead of one of his many pairs of hand-tailored suit trousers, adding with barely suppressed irritation, ‘My ma and my grans would have given their eye-teeth to have had nothing to do all day!’

  Christina raised her arms, lifting her lace-edged night-dress up and over her head. They were on the verge of having another of their ever more frequent rows. What was the use of pointing out that she wasn’t his mother, or one of his grandmothers? That she was, instead, a woman who had lost dearly loved members of her family in the Holocaust and who wanted to create another family? And if she couldn’t do so by having babies of her own, then surely they could adopt some?

  She stepped into a pair of silk cami-knickers and reached for a matching underslip, saying in a sudden rush, knowing it was the wrong time to be bringing up the subject, but unable to help herself, ‘I want us to visit an adoption agency, Jack! I know you don’t like the idea Liebling, but if we don’t adopt we’re never going to have children and I’m not getting any younger! I’m thirty-five. When my grandmother was thirty-five she’d had half a dozen children . . .’ That she had slipped into German, even though it was only for an endearment, was a measure of her inner turmoil.

  The word grated on Jack as if it had been a swear word. Why, with her history, would she still even think in German? It didn’t make sense to him, but then lots of things about his dearly loved wife didn’t make sense to him. This baby lark, for instance. No one wanted kids more than he did. But he wanted his kids, not someone else’s! He was a man who had never settled for second-best, and he certainly didn’t intend doing so when it came to something as all-important as kids.

  ‘No, sweetheart,’ he said as gently as possible. ‘You know how I feel. How the hell would we know what we were getting? The kiddie in question could have inherited all sorts of nasty characteristics – and not just characteristics. What if it turned out to be epileptic, or asthmatic, or what if there was a history of insanity in its family?’

  ‘But everyone has to take chances when they have a baby!’ Her smoke-dark hair, usually so smooth and glossy, tumbled unbrushed to her shoulders in disarray. She was still half naked, her skin a pale, pale olive, her waist fragilely narrow, her breasts full and firm, the nipples wine-dark.

  He felt a rising in his crotch. Dear God in heaven, how was he supposed to argue with her when all he wanted to do was to make love to her? He dropped the T-shirt he had been about to wear onto the bed. ‘Tina . . .’ His voice was husky with desire. There was time, before he joined in the search for Matthew, for them to make love.

  She read the intention in his eyes and was having none of it. She grabbed for her bra, putting it on with trembling hands, saying in a cracked, passionate voice, ‘Do you know how like the Nazis you sound, Jack? They couldn’t abide the thought of non-perfect babies either!’

  ‘Christ Almighty! That’s the most ridiculous . . . most outrageous—’

  ‘Is it?’ Her amethyst eyes flashed fire as she snatched a blouse from the wardrobe clothes-rail. ‘I don’t see the difference, Jack. I really don’t!’

  It was the worst, ugliest row they had ever had. He wanted to put a stop to it; he wanted to go back in time so that when she mentioned going to an adoption agency he gave her a less unequivocal response. It was impossible to do so, and it was also impossible to apologize. Why should he, for Christ’s sake? He hadn’t done the Nazi name-calling. If there was any apologizing to be done, she was the one who should be doing it.

  ‘We’re on our way, Jack!’ Leon Emmerson’s voice shouted up from the square. ‘We’ll meet you down on the Surrey Canal towpath!’

  Jack strode swiftly to the open window, sticking his head out, shouting down in response, ‘There’s no need, Leon. I’m going to be right with you mate!’ He rattled the window down on its sash cords, turning round, saying in a voice almost as raw with emotion as hers had been, ‘We’ll finish this conversation some other time. What matters right now is finding young Matthew. If you want to do something useful today, why don’t you keep Kate company? She must be at her wits’ end.’

  It was as near to putting things right as he could get. It did at least give him the excuse to walk out of the house in the hope that when he returned to it, she would be her normal self again.

  Pulling his T-shirt on over his head, he clattered down the stairs. By rights he had plenty of other things to do today other than search for a missing child. He was due to meet with Jack Solomons to fix a fight with him for Zac, and he was due to meet with an illegit promoter as well, in order to fix a pirate fight. Kate Emmerson was, however, one of his closest friends, and finding young Matthew for her had priority.

  He slammed out of the house, breaking into a run in order to catch up with Leon and the other friends and neighbours Leon had rounded up to help in the search. A Nazi! Had Christina really, near as dammit, called him a Nazi? Now that sexual temptation was out of his way, outraged indignation began to give way to anger. He hadn’t fought the Germans the length and breadth of war-torn Italy and Greece to be called a Nazi by his wife, by hell he hadn’t!

  ‘Don’t look so fierce, old chum,’ Elisha Deakin said to him as he caught up with him and the others. ‘We’re going to find the little perisher. You want to be glad you and your missus don’t have any nippers. The little buggers are nothing but trouble!’

  ‘Your mum and dad are goin’ to go crackers when they find out you’ve scarpered off school,’ Billy said, deeply concerned.

  ‘No they won’t.’ There was no doubt at all in Daisy’s voice. ‘They’re far too worried about Matthew to care if I skip school for a day, and I have to. I have to help look for Matthew. Mum and Dad are now certain he’s down by the river somewhere, and I think they’re right. Matthew’s always been potty about the river. When he was only four or five he would spend all day on the river with Dad. It’s so obvious he has a fever to follow Dad afloat that I can’t imagine why we didn’t realize it before.’

  They were
standing on the riverside path in front of Greenwich Naval College.

  ‘And do you say your dad and his mates are starting their search off down Surrey Canal way?’

  Daisy nodded, her neat cap of shiny dark hair cut in a demure bob. ‘Matthew used to spend a lot of time there when he was smaller. If they don’t find him there then I ’spect they’ll start on the docks.’

  Billy tried to put his hands in the pockets of his trousers but they were cut so tight it was impossible. He let them fall to his sides, wishing he had the nerve to take hold of Daisy’s hand, or to put an arm around her shoulders. If it had been evening, he would have. It was easier to do things like that on an evening. It seemed more natural and she very rarely rebuffed him. He reckoned she’d rebuff him if he tried it on now, though, at nine o’clock in the morning. Especially when her mind was on her missing young brother.

  ‘Your dad doesn’t sail the Tansy now, does he?’ he asked, looking down at his suede shoes and seeing, with a pang of grief, that the dried mud on the riverside path was doing them no favours whatsoever.

  Daisy shook her head and he couldn’t help noticing that her shoes were as immaculate as when she had left home. He didn’t know how she did it. Even as a small girl in the middle of the Blitz, she’d never had a hair out of place. ‘I don’t think she’s river-worthy any longer,’ she said, staring out over the river, frowning as she tried to decide where they should begin their search. ‘She’s moored somewhere up in Barking Creek, serving as shelter for ducks.’

  Billy felt his heart lurch to a standstill. The Tansy was the barge on which Leon Emmerson had served his apprenticeship as a lighterman, in the days before the war. After the war, when he had returned to Civvy Street, the Tansy had been waiting for him and he often took Matthew, and Luke, too, out on her for the day, sculling down to Gravesend, or up to the Greenland Dock in Rotherhithe or the more colourfully named Deadman’s Dock at Deptford, or Execution Dock at Wapping. In those days, before he’d been sent away at seven years old to St Osyth’s Preparatory Department, the Tansy had been Matthew’s second home.