Aware that she was winded, though not knowing why, Luke remembered that he hadn’t yet made her a cup of tea. Regretfully he pushed his sketchpad to one side once again and rose to his feet. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? A cup of Lapsang Souchong?’
Deborah nodded, grateful for the fact that Kate did at least keep a decent tea in her kitchen cupboard, even if it was only used for guests. She’d tried to convert Nellie to the pleasures of Lapsang Souchong and had failed. ‘Cat’s pee,’ Nellie had pronounced, spluttering her first mouthful of it back into her cup. ‘That’s what it tastes like. Put some sugar an’ condensed milk into it, that might perk it up a bit.’
‘Is Architecture on your school syllabus?’ she asked, unable to keep incredulity from her voice. A south-east London state school, a school that was not even a grammar school, with Architecture on its syllabus? It was surely unheard of. She doubted if even Matthew’s public school taught so specialized a subject to eleven- and twelve-year-olds.
Luke shook his head as he filled the kettle at the sink, his thick mop of curly hair as luxuriant as a girl’s. ‘No,’ he said, happy to talk to her, just as he was always happy to talk to Nellie. ‘We do Art and Maths, but the two are never linked together. In Art all we ever do is mess about with clay, and in Maths it’s all easy problems. How many apples six ounces each and costing one and threepence a pound you can buy for ten shillings and all that sort of boring stuff.’
Deborah stared again at his pencil-drawn elevation of a modern multi-storied building, not surprised that the lessons he had just described bored him, or that he was inattentive in them. ‘Then who . . . ?’ She waved a hand towards his drawing. ‘How . . . ?’
Luke put the kettle on the electric hob and then took hold of a kitchen chair and straddled it, resting his folded arms on its bentwood back. ‘My Grandad Voigt,’ he said, adding, ‘He’s German,’ just in case she didn’t know.
Deborah shuddered. She knew very well that her nephew’s maternal grandfather was a Hun. It was the initial reason her own father, Matthew’s great-grandfather, had never wanted anything whatever to do with Matthew’s mother or family.
Luke, happily unaware of the kind of dark memories he was disturbing, continued with his explanation. ‘Grandad Voigt didn’t want me to grow up thinking all Germans, apart from him, were bad Germans, and so he told me about Germans who are respected world-wide and who left Germany rather than live under Hitler. Germans like Mies van der Rohe, who used to be director of the Bauhaus.’ He looked towards the kettle to see if it was beginning to puff steam yet, adding helpfully, ‘The Bauhaus was in Weimar and was the world’s—’
‘Leading design centre,’ Deborah finished for him testily, wondering if he realized just what the Harvey family business was. ‘And I’m familiar with the name Mies.’ But not, she thought frustratedly, knowledgeable. No German architects, not even Nazi-hating ones, had ever served as role models for architects working for Harvey Construction International.
Luke’s amber-brown eyes held hers with interest. Apart from his grandad, he’d never come across anyone who knew the name of any architect. ‘I got a book from the library,’ he said, rising to his feet in order to remove the now boiling kettle from the hob, ‘and there were lots of photographs in it of Mies’s work. Skyscrapers that were just . . . tremendous.’ He poured a small amount of the boiling water into a teapot and swirled it round to warm it. ‘They were all black steel and had curtain walls of clear glass, though I didn’t know what a curtain wall was then, of course.’ He emptied the water from the teapot into the sink and reached for the tea-caddy. ‘Sometimes the glass was bronze-tinted!’ There was awe in his voice and an expression of utter rapture on his dusky face. ‘They look like something out of a science-fiction comic, but they’re real.’
Deborah was beginning to feel that the conversation was far from real. If she were having it with Matthew it would, of course, have been a very different matter. But she wasn’t having it with Matthew. Matthew wasn’t remotely interested in any aspect of the construction industry, or of the vast company that would one day be a part of his inheritance. This boy, however, this very unlikely boy, was besotted with the beauty of buildings!
As Nellie would have said, it was a rum situation. A situation that needed a lot of thought. A lot of very careful thought.
‘I’ve bin thinkin’,’ Nellie said ruminatively to Leah, ‘about what’s goin’ to ’appen between your Mavis an’ Jack when they come out of ’ospital. Do yer think they might move in with each other? They’ve obviously got a bit of a ding-dong goin’, ain’t they?’
If it were anyone else making such a remark, Leah would have shot them down in flames. Nellie, however, was one of her oldest friends and, as she was also a friend she didn’t see enough of, the bedroom stairs being too much of an obstacle for Nellie to tackle with any great regularity, she wasn’t about to make a tummel by taking offence. ‘Whatever kind of ding-dong Mavis and Jack are having, legitimate it’s never going to be,’ she said, yanking Boots a bit higher up the eiderdown so that, if Nellie should topple from her chair, she wouldn’t fall on him and squash him flat. ‘They’re two of a kind, bubee, and that never works under one roof. Besides, Ted would never divorce Mavis. If he was the divorcing type, he’d have divorced her years ago!’
This was indubitably the truth, and something even Nellie couldn’t argue with. ‘P’rhaps it’s for the best,’ she said philosophically, ‘especially as ’ow that monster Archie Duke cut up Mavis’s face. It’s bound to clip ’er wings, ain’t it? I mean, she won’t be able to gallivant now like she used to, will she?’
Leah’s seamed mouth tightened so hard it nearly disappeared. She’d never had any patience with her eldest grand-daughter’s good-time behaviour, but her face being cut with broken glass, she didn’t deserve. ‘Momzer!’ she said of the monster in question, glad that, if the rumours she and Nellie had heard were true, Jack had half-killed him. ‘All these troubles! Mavis and Jack in hospital beds. No sight or sound of young Matthew Harvey. Billy and Daisy not speaking to each other, and Billy hanging around with one of Queenie Tillet’s circus artistes.’
‘Billy ’angin’ around with who?’ Nellie’s eyes had nearly popped out of her head.
Leah raised her hands expressively. ‘A circus artiste! I saw them the other night with my own eyes. And the clothes she wears! Black fishnet tights and high-heeled shoes, and when she got into that ramshackle lorry of his, she was wearing a man’s tailcoat and was carrying a top-hat under her arm!’
‘Blimey! Lion-tamers dress like that!’ Nellie had always had a soft spot for Billy and, at the thought of him courting a lion-tamer, was vastly impressed. ‘I don’t suppose she’ll be around for long, though,’ she added, unable to hide the disappointment accompanying this thought. ‘The circus never stays in the area for more than a week or two at a time. Still, perhaps she’ll be around long enough to teach Billy a few circus tricks, like fire-eatin’ or trapeze-walkin’.’
Leah didn’t respond to this remark. As far as she was concerned there were enough bizarre goings-on in Magnolia Square without young Billy Lomax adding to them by setting his quiff alight, fire-eating! The boxing chap who was lodging with Queenie for instance. Whenever Beryl came to visit her it was obvious she was still carrying a torch for him. Her plain, loveable face would be a picture of misery as she recounted how, no matter how many times she went to the gym, Zac Hemingway either wasn’t there or, if he was, seemed unaware of her existence. ‘He always asks after Aunt Carrie, though,’ she had said guilelessly on her last lunch-time visit. ‘Do you think he wants to see her so that he can ask her if I’m interested in him? Do you think he’s shy, Great-Gran? Do you think that’s why he doesn’t say anything to me himself?’
Leah thought Beryl was clutching at the frailest of straws. She’d seen Zac Hemingway lots of times from her bedroom window, and a man with his physique and looks and palpable self-confidence wasn’t likely to be shy. What he was likely to be, thoug
h, was interested in a woman he had no business being interested in. A woman older than himself. A woman who was married. A woman who became as flustered as a schoolgirl every time his name was mentioned.
‘Oi vey,’ she said, this time not sharing her thoughts with her friend. ‘Oi vey, oi vey.’ If Carrie was having an affair with Zac Hemingway, then there would be big trouble ahead.
‘Stop frettin’,’ Nellie said comfortingly, thinking Leah was still dwelling on Billy and his bizarre new girlfriend. ‘It’ll blow over. Everythin’ does – eventually.’
With long, easy strides Zac walked into the Hare and Billet. It was only just evening opening time, but he’d had an extremely satisfying day and was ready for a celebratory pint.
‘You’re early,’ the landlord said, not remotely curious. ‘What’s it to be? The usual?’
Zac nodded. The thing he liked about the Hare and Billet was that he wasn’t regarded there as a piece of public property, unlike at The Swan, where he was always plagued by ceaseless questions as to when he was going to fight in a fight that would put a bit of money in everyone’s pocket.
As his pint of beer was being pulled, he reflected on his good fortune. ‘The Orion will be arriving from Rio on Monday,’ his contact down at the docks had said to him. ‘She’ll be in the Pool of London all day, unloading and then loading and then, because her captain doesn’t want to get caught up in Tuesday’s coronation razzmatazz, she’ll be setting sail late that night.’
‘And her captain will take me, no questions asked?’ he had queried. ‘And he’ll take a woman passenger as well?’
His contact had grinned. ‘Captain Juarez is so crooked that, for the right amount of money, he’d smuggle a couple of convicted murderers out of the country!’
The landlord passed his pint of beer across to him. ‘Nasty news about the woman in Magnolia Square, isn’t it? They say her face is badly glassed and that Jack Robson nearly killed the fellow responsible.’
He began wiping down the polished surface of the bar, glad of the opportunity to talk with someone who lived in Magnolia Square and who might have some more information on things. ‘It’s a miracle to me that Robson didn’t finish him off good and proper,’ he continued wryly. ‘He’s an ex-commando and those blokes are trained to kill with their bare hands.’
‘Pity he didn’t.’ Zac’s words were heartfelt. When, early that morning, he’d heard what had been done to Mavis, he’d wanted to throttle the bastard responsible. He’d also wanted to see Carrie, but, hard as he tried, he’d not been able to track her down. Assuming that this was because she was at Guy’s, visiting Mavis, it was then that he decided to go down to the docks to see if there was any news of a suitable ship. He took a swallow of his beer, saying, ‘Whatever Jack gave him, the bloke more than deserved.’
‘No, he didn’t,’ a voice piped up from further down the bar. ‘’Cos it wasn’t Archie what glassed ’er. It was Arnie what glassed ’er.’
Both Zac and the landlord turned and stared. Pongo shrugged. They could stare all they liked – what he was saying was the truth. Archie hadn’t even told Arnie to rough up Jack Robson’s blonde bint. All he’d told him to do was to lock her in the lav, out of the way.
‘Say that again, mate,’ Zac demanded.
‘It wasn’t Archie what glassed Jack Robson’s bit of stuff,’ Pongo said obligingly. ‘It was Arnie, and Arnie was long gone by the time Jack Robson caught up with Archie.’
‘Blimey!’ the landlord said expressively. ‘Robson isn’t going to be very pleased with that little bit of information when he finally receives it!’
Zac eased himself away from the bar, tension in every line of his body. ‘Arnie?’ he said to Pongo. ‘Arnie who?’
Pongo shrugged yet again. ‘I dunno,’ he said truthfully. ‘Some pervert that boxes in pirate fights for Archie. He’s fighting a bloke called Big Jumbo on Monday night, but I don’t know where.’
Zac’s hands were already balling into fists. ‘I do,’ he said grimly, knowing there’d be time for the fight before the Orion set sail; knowing that Big Jumbo wasn’t going to mind if he took his place; knowing that as he’d soon be out of the country, it wouldn’t even matter if he killed the bastard!
Chapter Nineteen
Carrie was in the kitchen, bathing Danny’s patchwork quilt of facial stitches with tepid salt-water, when Zac strode into the house as if he owned it. Her reaction was one of such exhilarating, electrifying shock that she dropped the bowl she was holding, spilling water over Danny as well as the floor.
‘Hey, steady on, pet! Don’t bleedin’ drown me!’ Danny protested indignantly, and then, to Zac, ‘She makes a rotten Florence Nightingale – it’d ’ave all bin the same if the water ’ad bin boilin’!’
Zac flashed Carrie a look of such heat and intimacy she had to grab hold of the sink to steady herself. What on earth was he doing walking in on her and Danny without so much as a by-your-leave or a knock on the door?
The possibility that he’d come to have a showdown with Danny stupefied her with panic, but then he was saying, ‘It wasn’t Archie who glassed Mavis, Danny. And it wasn’t any of the cretins who were with him when you and Jack caught up with him. It was a geezer by the name of Arnie – the geezer Big Jumbo was all set to fight tomorrow night.’
‘Christ all bleedin’ mighty!’ Danny gawped at him, trying to take on board that Jack had nearly killed, and swung for, the wrong bloke and that the bloke he should have nearly killed was walking around unscathed! Another thought occurred to his dazed brain. ‘What do yer mean, was all set to fight? Does this Arnie bloke know we’ve nobbled ’im, an’ is ’e ducking out of the arrangement?’
‘Nah.’ Zac’s usual ever-so-easy smile was grim. ‘He doesn’t have a clue we know it was him, and we don’t want him to, otherwise he might not show.’
‘But I thought yer said the fight was scuppered—’
‘Nah.’ There was a glint in Zac’s eyes, a glint that had Carrie feeling she was racing down the biggest roller-coaster in the world. ‘The fight’s still on. But I want you to tell Jack it won’t be Big Jumbo the bastard will be facing. It’ll be me!’
‘S’truth!’ As realization as to what this would mean registered with him, Danny’s freckled face was a picture of fierce satisfaction. Mavis’s attacker would have his come-uppance – and he, and everyone else at the fight and in the know, would be quids in!
Thinking only of Mavis, the same fierce excitement gripped Carrie, as did another sensation.
‘Blimey, pet,’ her nearest and dearest said as she clapped a hand across her mouth and spun around to face the sink. ‘Yer ain’t bin eatin’ my pickled gherkins, ’ave yer? That’s the third time you’ve thrown up in an ’our!’
Carrie heaved, and brought up bile. She wasn’t surprised. She’d been sick so often, there was nothing else left in her stomach to bring up!
‘I’d better be gettin’ down to St Thomas’s to put Jack in the picture,’ Danny said as she rinsed her mouth out with water. ‘Then I’ll ’ave a word with Big Jumbo – ’e’s not goin’ to mind bein’ dropped from the fight. Not under the circumstances. An’ I’ll ’ave a word with Leon, as well – and old Charlie.’
‘Danny!’ Carrie was on her own private roller-coaster again. Danny couldn’t leave now! Not right this very minute! Not leaving her and Zac alone in the house. ‘Danny, hang on a minute—’
‘I’ll give Jack your love,’ Danny said, already hurrying through the house towards the half-open front door. ‘And you get dahn to the gym, Zac! I want you so fit yer could wipe the floor with Rocky bleedin’ Marciano!’
Carrie ran after him, but before she could catch up with him he was down the path and out into the square. She stood on the front doorstep, struggling to regulate her racing heartbeat.
In the golden, early evening light, Pru Lewis, Malcolm Lewis’s wife, was hanging a Union Jack out of a bedroom window in readiness for Tuesday’s celebrations. Nellie was stomping her way across the square
in the general direction of Kate and Leon’s. Nibbo was trimming his hedge. Danny, heading for Lewisham High Street and a bus up to London Bridge, had already taken the corner into Magnolia Hill at a run and was lost to view.
Sucking in a steadying lungful of air, Carrie turned to reenter her home and face Zac. He was leaning against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans, one leg crossing the other at the ankle. With a strong sense of déjà vu, she was reminded of the first time she had met him. He had been standing in her hallway, nonchalant and impudently at ease, just as he was now.
Now, though, they were lovers, and his being in her marital home, especially when Danny wasn’t in it, disturbed her profoundly.
‘I think you should leave . . .’ she began through dry lips, the door still half-open behind her.
He grinned, his hair a dull gold in the shadowed hallway. ‘We’re both leaving,’ he said, moving away from the newel post and towards her, ‘immediately after tomorrow night’s fight.’ He caught hold of her wrists, pinioning them behind her back, drawing her so near to him she could feel his hardness through the thin cotton of her dress. ‘I’ve got places for the two of us aboard a cargo ship sailing for New Zealand.’
She gave a gasp of disbelief. ‘I can’t leave tomorrow night!’ Giddily she remembered that she wasn’t going to leave at all; that she had vowed that yesterday, and only yesterday, was all the time they would ever have together.
The heat in his eyes deepened, turning his grey eyes almost black. ‘Yes, you can,’ he said in a honeyed voice of reason. ‘It’s easy. You just pack a small bag and step over the doorstep – and you don’t turn around or look back.’ His lips were brushing her temples, the curve of her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
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