Coronation Summer

by Margaret Pemberton

  Jaime, too, was wondering what was going to happen when the Orion sailed into port. Captain Juarez had already made it clear to him that he was not to take Matthew ashore, as he had at Madeira and Tenerife. ‘Better if no one knows he ever left England,’ he had said practically. ‘That way we can be blamed for nothing, eh? Whatever our young friend says when he does return home, it will simply be a fanciful story. A boy’s story. A story without corroboration.’

  The problem troubling Jaime was one no one else seemed to be worrying about, especially not Captain Juarez. What if, in their home port of Rio de Janeiro, their orders for their next trip were not a return to London? Such things happened. On the kinds of ships they sailed, they happened all the time. What would happen to his young friend then? Would Juarez dump him in Rio or take him with them to Cape Town or Lagos or to wherever else it was they were bound? That his young friend’s fate was so very problematical was a very troubling thought, Jesu-cristo! It was a very troubling thought indeed!

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jack’s bright yellow Cadillac snarled into life and seconds later was out of the square and haring along Magnolia Terrace towards the heath. Jack usually got a great kick out of his car. There wasn’t another one like it in the whole of south-east London and it was a certain attention-getter and head-turner. For all he cared at the moment, however, he could have been driving a battered pre-war Austin. From where he and Christina had started out, how on earth had they reached the situation they were now in? He loved her, for Christ’s sake! His hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles showed white. He loved her, yet he had treated her as if she were a whore. It was no wonder that the instant he released his hold of her she half-scrambled, half-fell off their bed and began flinging hastily grabbed clothes into a suitcase. Mere minutes later, her face still stained by tears of protest and pain, she hurtled out of the house and, hard as he tried, he hadn’t seen her since.

  He knew where she was, of course. Hell, the entire square knew not only that she had left him, but that she had gone to her mother’s in Greenwich. Whether it was Hettie who saw her leave the house with her suitcase and who later spoke to Eva, or some other busybody, he didn’t know and didn’t care. He swung the Cadillac on to one of the narrow, unpavemented roads that criss-crossed the heath, heading towards Greenwich and the river. He was too dazed with disbelief at his own actions to go after her when she walked out, and, besides, he knew that if he had done so, it would have resulted in a public scene, with heaven only knew who listening in on it. He tried to see her, of course, but when he drove down to Eva’s, she refused to come to the door to talk to him and Eva, a protective Jewish mother to the hilt, refused to let him over the doorstep. He was furious with her, furious with Christina, and even more furious with himself. Hadn’t he always known that, because of her history, heavy-handed tactics would never get him anywhere with Tina? He groaned and slewed the Cadillac into Croom’s Hill, speeding down into Greenwich. Christina’s history was vile. As a young girl she saw her father and brother dragged from their home by Nazi thugs and shot dead in the street. What she had suffered at Nazi hands she had never told him – or anyone. She had, though, been scarred emotionally and mentally by her experiences. He knew that from the first moment he met her, and, knowing it, he vowed no one would ever hurt her again.

  Uncaring of the local speed restrictions and heavy traffic, he swerved into Greenwich High Street. Well, he’d blown that vow with a vengeance! If it was possible for a woman to be raped by her husband, then he’d raped Tina. And what had been gained by it? Nothing. Absolutely bloody nothing! At high speed he passed Eva’s husband’s butcher’s shop and then three minutes later, after several right and left turns, he screeched to a halt outside a small, trim Georgian terraced house. With luck, this time she’d speak to him and he’d be able to persuade her to return home. That way he would then be able to give other things his attention. The opening of The 21, for instance, and Zac’s forthcoming fight, and the little matter of Archie’s threats of a show of violence if he, Jack, didn’t toe the line.

  Grimly, having no intention of toeing Archie’s line, or anyone else’s, he strode across the pavement and up to the brass-knockered front door.

  ‘Wie geht’s?’ Eva said pleasantly, opening the door to him. ‘How are you, Jack? It is not very nice, is it, this situation?’

  Jack didn’t bother to reply. That the situation was not very nice was self-evident and he was in no mood for meaningless generalities. ‘I want to see Christina,’ he said bluntly, putting one foot in the doorway so that it couldn’t be closed in his face.

  Eva obligingly opened it a little wider so that he could easily enter. ‘Sie ist nicht hier,’ she said, the ring of truth in her voice. Her eyes held his, deeply troubled. ‘Vas is the matter, Jack? Vy are you and Christina no longer happy? Vy does she spend all day out valking by herself, returning vith blue shadows beneath her eyes and not a vord for me, or for George?’

  George was Eva’s husband, a gentleman his friends thought had fallen well and truly on his feet when he had persuaded Eva to marry him. Jack could well understand why. Even in her mid-fifties, and after enduring the horror of Hitler’s Germany, Eva was a strikingly beautiful woman. Like her daughter, it was a beauty that was bone-deep, etched in the fine sculpturing of her cheekbones and jaw, emphasized by flawless skin and eyes the colour of amethysts.

  With the door now wide open to him, he didn’t bother entering. If Christina wasn’t there, there was no point.

  Eva touched the eau-de-nil silk scarf that was tied rakishly around her throat, adding elegance to a white, short-sleeved sweater and a straight, kick-pleated, navy skirt. ‘Vill you not tell me vat has gone wrong between the two of you?’ she asked in deep concern. ‘Is it because there is no child—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Eva!’ Jack made no attempt to hide his angry reaction. Things were bad enough without their childlessness being dragged into it. He wondered what Eva would say if he told her it was hardly surprising there was no baby when Christina never wanted him near her in bed any more! Instead he said tautly, ‘I’m not sure what the hell it is that’s going wrong between me and Tina, Eva, but I’m going to put it right, I promise you that.’

  Eva believed him. As she watched him stride back to his distinctive American car, his dark hair as tightly curled in the nape of his neck as a gypsy’s, his short-sleeved shirt emphasizing arm muscles of stevedore proportions, she just hoped that he would put things right soon. If he didn’t, and if Christina continued with her present inexplicable behaviour, refusing to even see him, then there was no telling where it might all end, except that it would end in tears. With eyes dark with anxiety she watched him slide behind the Cadillac’s wheel and gun the engine into life. Though he had been angrily exasperated by the very idea, she was certain the root of the trouble was his and Christina’s continuing childlessness. What answer, though, was there to that problem? If God didn’t send babies, he didn’t send them. With a heavy heart she closed the door and went back into her kitchen. She would bake. Baking always comforted and soothed her. She would make Apfelkuchen and Schokoladenkuchen – the apple flan because it had been Christina’s favourite when she was a child, the chocolate cake because, like all Englishmen, George adored it.

  Christina stood beside the tall iron railings that protected the playground of Maze Hill School from the busy pavement. The infant class were out at play, shouting and shrieking with high spirits as they exuberantly let off steam. Some of the little girls had bows in their hair, either at the end of pigtails or anchored with hair-slides and hair-grips. One little girl, whose mother had obviously handmade her red gingham-checked dress, sported an outsize hair ribbon of the same material; another had her cardigan buttoned up wrongly and white ankle socks that half-disappeared beneath her heels.

  She wondered how she would dress her little girl, if she had one. Any child she had would be bound to be dark-haired for both she and Jack had dark hair. Bright colours, t
hen, would suit their daughter. And like the mother who had so lovingly made the red gingham dress, she, too, would make all her daughter’s clothes herself. Ice-cold fingers of reality squeezed her heart. She was never going to have a little girl to make pretty clothes for. She and Jack were never going to have a child. Bleakly she turned away from the railings, not even sure if she and Jack had a marriage any more. How could they have when he was turning into a frighteningly aggressive stranger?

  She began to walk aimlessly in the direction of the river. She’d always known there was a side to Jack she knew very little about. The blatantly roustabout side of him, the side of him that had thrived on the dangers of being a commando in war-torn Italy and Greece. The side of him that loved boxing or, as he always referred to it, ‘the fight game’. Though it was never spoken of between them, she knew that some of his business dealings were not always legal. Jack loved a bit of recklessness in life, a bit of danger. In a bizarre way, that was what had attracted her to him. He was so unlike the kind of respectable, middle-class, professional man she would, if it hadn’t been for the war, have been expected to marry. And he had sex appeal. He had lots and lots of sex appeal.

  She crossed busy Trafalgar Road, heading for the riverside walkway that ran in front of the Royal Naval College. Had their love for each other been a case of opposites attracting? And was that attraction, where Jack was concerned, waning? If so, it would explain why he didn’t want them to adopt a baby, and it would explain the amount of time he was now spending with Mavis. She stood by Greenwich Pier, gazing unseeingly across the broad, glittering expanse of the Thames. The brutish way he had taken her on the day she left him – was that the kind of sex Mavis enjoyed? And was that why he had treated her in such a manner? Because he had been thinking of Mavis and wishing it were Mavis he was with?

  ‘Are yer gettin’ on the boat dahn to Westminster, or ain’t yer?’ the man selling tickets asked. ‘’Cos if you ain’t, yer standin’ in the way of those that are!’

  Christina blinked, feeling oddly disorientated. What was the man saying to her? And why was she on the pier? A feeling of panic bubbled up into her throat. What on earth was happening to her? Was she so unhappy that she was beginning to lose her mind?

  ‘Come on, dear. On the boat or out of the way,’ the ticket-collector said, wondering if she was drunk. She didn’t look the kind of woman who would be drunk, but these days there was never any telling.

  Christina took a hasty step backwards and bumped into a small child. She spun round to apologize, gazing down into an aggrieved little face.

  ‘Are you all right, Judith?’ the smartly dressed, middle-aged woman holding the child’s hand was asking, though not with much concern. ‘Has the lady hurt you?’

  ‘I’m so sorry . . . I’d no idea she was behind me . . .’ Christina felt dreadful. The child was only four or five years old, and if they had been standing a little nearer the edge of the pier, she could easily have knocked her into the Thames!

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ the woman said, satisfied no great harm had been done. ‘If she hadn’t been lagging behind me it wouldn’t have happened. It’s a nuisance taking her anywhere. She never keeps up. Her other auntie, the one we’re visiting today, says exactly the same. There’s no pleasure in taking her out. None at all.’

  Throughout this diatribe, Christina and Judith had continued to stare at each other. No longer aggrieved, Judith’s eyes were big and dark and solemn. Far too solemn for a child her age. There was another expression in them, too. An expression of unhappiness, and stoical acceptance of that unhappiness, that spoke straight to Christina’s heart.

  ‘You’re her auntie?’ she asked the woman, her eyes not leaving Judith’s.

  Judith’s aunt nodded, quite happy to spend a few minutes chatting. ‘For my sins,’ she said caustically. ‘Her mother was my youngest sister. She never had much common sense and when she was eighteen she ran off with a Bermondsey Jewboy. He left her a year later to scarper off to Israel with a girl of his own faith, and I don’t suppose he even knows Babs is dead.’ Her mouth tightened, scarlet lipstick seeping into runnels around her lips. ‘It was pleurisy that did for her. “Look after Judith, for me,” she said before she died and so here I am, having to take her with me everywhere I go.’ She waited for the sympathetic noises this little speech usually met with, but none came.

  Christina didn’t even make a commiserating clicking noise with her tongue. Instead she said, ‘You don’t have to take Judith with you today, if you don’t want to. You could leave her with me. You could leave her with me every day.’

  The woman’s jaw dropped and alarm flashed through her eyes. ‘How could I do that? I don’t know you!’ She yanked Judith closer to her, as if frightened Christina was going to make off with her then and there.

  There was interest mixed with her alarm, though, and, seeing it, Christina knew that if she could ease the woman’s conscience she’d be only too glad to have her look after Judith for her. She concealed the fierce urgency she was feeling in order not to alarm the woman more, saying persuasively, ‘I’m Christina Robson. I live in Magnolia Square, just off the heath.’ She hesitated for a second and then said, ‘My husband, Jack, has a boxing gym in Magnolia Hill, above The Swan public house.’

  The alarm was fast fading from the woman’s face. ‘The Jack Robson who drives a big yellow American car?’

  Christina nodded and held her breath. It was a gamble, mentioning Jack’s name. She’d done so because he was such a well-known local figure it was possible the woman would know of him, but whether, if she did so, she would regard him as being respectable enough to serve as a reference was quite another matter.

  ‘Well then, that’s all right,’ the woman said. ‘He was in Italy in 1944, wasn’t he? My brother took part in the Allied assault on Monte Cassino and I remember him saying Jack Robson had been out there.’

  ‘Yer ferry’s comin’ in!’ the ticket-collector called out.

  The woman looked towards the boat that had just docked and then back at Christina and finally down at Judith.

  Reading her mind, trying to put the last of her doubts at rest, Christina said persuasively, ‘Tell me how long you’re going to be and we’ll meet up with you at the jellied eel shop.’ The jellied eel shop was just across the road from the pier. If she and Judith arrived there before Judith’s aunt, they could have a cup of tea whilst waiting for her to arrive.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the woman said, obviously sorely tempted. ‘She is my responsibility after all and—’

  ‘Don’t want to go to Auntie Flo’s,’ a little voice suddenly said, deciding the matter for her. ‘Want to stay with the lady.’ And to prove her point, Judith moved from her aunt’s side and, standing beside Christina, slipped her hand into hers.

  It was a moment Christina knew she would never forget. Joy surged along her veins. It was as if, in that one moment, her old childless life had come to an end and she now stood on the brink of a whole new existence.

  ‘Oh, well then,’ the woman said, shrugging her shoulders dismissively, ‘if that’s the way Judith wants it . . .’

  ‘What time at the jellied eel shop?’ Christina could barely force her voice to be steady. She and Judith were going to have a wonderful time together, and there would be lots of other wonderful times, too, for Judith’s aunt obviously found her an encumbrance she could well do without. Perhaps she would be able to look after Judith every day. Perhaps, one day, she might even . . .

  Before she could even finish formulating her last dizzying thought, Judith’s aunt was giving Judith a perfunctory kiss and telling her to be a good girl. ‘And don’t be cheeky to Mrs Robson and don’t wee-wee your knickers,’ she added and then, transferring her attention to Christina, she said, ‘Not that she’s likely to be cheeky – she’s too moody and sulky for that kind of behaviour. I’ll be back four o’clockish if that’s all right with you.’

  Christina nodded, her hand tightly clasping Judith’s, marvelling at
how little her aunt knew her. Judith wasn’t moody or sulky. She was unhappy, and no wonder, when her father had deserted her and her mother had died. She remembered her own deep pain when, through the war years and with her father and brother dead, she had been separated from her mother and grandmother, not knowing where they were or even if they were still alive.

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ she said now as Judith’s aunt turned to go, ‘and we should exchange addresses in case one of us has an accident and can’t meet up at four o’clock.’

  ‘Madge Dracup,’ Judith’s aunt said over her shoulder, not wanting to dally and miss the ferry and clearly not remotely interested in Christina’s address, ‘and I live at fifty-six New Hyland Street.’

  ‘My name isn’t Dracup,’ Judith said, her face upturned trustingly to Christina’s. ‘My name is Levy, but auntie doesn’t like it.’ Christina looked down into an elfin face framed by hair as dark and as satin-smooth as her own. ‘I like it,’ she said, feeling as if her heart were going to burst. ‘Levy is a pretty name. It’s a Jewish name and lots of Jewish names are pretty.’

  In happy companionship they began to walk from the pier towards the short road that led to Greenwich Park.

  ‘Do you know other Jewish names?’ Judith asked, intrigued. She had heard the word ‘Jewish’ spoken many times by her Auntie Madge and Auntie Flo, but never in a nice way; never in a way she could understand.

  For a second Christina could barely speak and then, with tears stinging her eyes as she thought of all the childhood friends who, unlike herself, had not survived Hitler’s Germany, she said, ‘Yes. Yes Judith, I know lots. And I know lots of Jewish stories too. Would you like to hear one about a lady with the same name as yourself? A lady called Judith?’

  Judith nodded, her eyes rounding. Her mummy had told her nursery rhymes but she hadn’t told her stories. ‘Can I call you auntie?’ she asked as they began to cross the road. ‘Can I call you Auntie Magic Lady?’