‘I’m not knocked out with work,’ she said, fighting a rising surge of hysteria at his choice of words. ‘I’m knocked up, Danny. I’ve been seeing someone . . . I’ve been having an affair. And though I haven’t missed a period yet, I know I’m pregnant . . .’ She couldn’t go on. There was no need for her to go on. Everything that had to be said, she’d said. Everything was out and in the open now. Tangible. Real. There could be no going back to the way things had been a few seconds ago. Between herself and Danny, things were never going to be the same ever again. They couldn’t be. Their lives were always going to be divided up into ‘before’ and into ‘after’.
‘What did yer say?’ Danny didn’t move from where he had come to a halt, just inside the kitchen door. Even if he’d been paid a million quid to move, he couldn’t have done.
Carrie didn’t move either. Still seated at the table, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her tortured eyes holding his, she said, ‘I’ve been seeing someone . . . someone I’ve fallen in love with. He’s going away and he wants me to go with him . . . and . . . and . . . and I think I might go with him, Danny. I think I might.’ The tears she had battled against for so long were now streaming down her face. ‘I’m sorry, Danny. So sorry. Truly I am.’
‘Yer’ve bin . . . yer’ve bin ’aving an affair?’ Danny’s face was a picture of dazed, disbelieving incredulity. ‘But you ain’t . . . you ain’t—’
‘The type?’ Despite her distress, there was an edge in Carrie’s voice. Was it because Danny had never thought her ‘the type’, by which he meant glamorous and, in the eyes of other men, desirable, that she had fallen so swiftly and irrevocably for a man who did think her glamorous and desirable?
The edge in her voice was lost on him. He was staring around the kitchen as if he no longer knew where he was and was trying to find something familiar to orientate himself by. ‘But yer can’t . . . yer can’t be goin’ to leave us?’ he said at last as, failing in his task, his eyes came back to hers. ‘Not me an’ Rose!’
Tears were falling onto Carrie’s clasped hands. This wasn’t how she had thought it would be. It was worse. Much worse. She had thought Danny’s first demand would have been the name of the person she was having the affair with. Instead it was a question that didn’t seem to have occurred to him. Was that because he had taken it for granted that the man would be someone he didn’t know? That it was beyond his imagination that she might be having an affair with someone he knew, someone he might even think of as being a friend?
It was then she knew she couldn’t possibly tell him it was Zac. Not when he and Zac needed to be in close mental unity ready for tomorrow night’s fight. When the fight was over, then she would tell him. She would have to. And for now she would struggle to answer the question he had asked. ‘It’s just . . .’ She came to a halt, unable to find the right words. Panic bubbled up into her throat. If she couldn’t find the right words to explain to Danny, how in God’s name was she going to explain to Rose? And to her mum and dad and gran? And Mavis? And Kate? Feeling as if she were struggling in quicksand, she said, ‘I’m in love with him. I don’t know him very well, but I’m in love with him. I can’t help it. And I’m expecting his baby—’
‘Yer can’t be!’ Danny swayed on his feet. ‘Yer not to ’ave any more babies! The doctor said so when you ’ad your miscarriage!’
The feeling of being in quicksand was getting worse. Why wasn’t he giving vent to his hurt pride in raging, roaring anger? Why wasn’t he lifting his hand to her, demanding to know how long she’d been seeing her fancy-man? Where she had been seeing him? Where it was she intended going with him? Why, when she had told him about the baby, was his first reaction to think of her? To be worried about her?
He passed a hand across his eyes. ‘Whoever this bloke is . . . I don’t want yer to go away with ’im, Carrie. I don’t want . . . want . . .’
‘Danny? Danny?’ There was as much disbelief and incredulity in her voice as there had been, mere seconds ago, in his. He was crying. Her bumptious, hard-as-nails, know-it-all, smart-alecky Danny was crying! With her feeling of panic now full-blown, Carrie was on her feet and rounding the table towards him.
In a few simple words, he stopped her dead in her tracks. Stopped her from breathing. ‘I know yer wouldn’t want to get rid of it, Carrie, but this bloke won’t know how dodgy a pregnancy could be for yer. He mightn’t look after yer properly. If yer’ll stay – an’ I want yer to stay,’ his voice cracked and broke, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if yer don’t stay, Carrie, but if yer do stay, then I’ll take the nipper on as mine. No one need ever know any different. Not Rose. Not my mum and dad, or your mum and dad.’
Carrie tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. There was a ringing noise in her ears and the floor was threatening to shelve away at her feet.
‘But . . . why?’ How she forced the words out, when there was no air in her lungs, she never knew.
He looked at her in pathetic bewilderment, unable to even begin to understand why she would ask such a question. ‘Because I love yer, Carrie,’ he said, as if the fact were far too obvious to need putting into words. ‘I’ve always loved yer. I think yer beautiful.’
*
‘Christ!’ It was next morning and Jack was staring at Danny, wondering just how many more of Danny’s visits he could survive. Yesterday he’d knocked him sidewise telling him it wasn’t Archie who’d glassed Mavis – and now this!
‘No one else’ll ever know, but I had to tell someone.’ Against his sheet-white face, Danny’s freckles were a sickly orange. ‘I still don’t know what she’s goin’ to do, yer see.’
Never in his life had Jack seen a bloke with so much stuffing knocked out of him. Danny didn’t merely look like a shadow of his former self, he looked like another bloke entirely.
‘When I told ’er I’d take the nipper she’s expectin’ on as mine, she just started to cry. She went ter bed an’ locked the door and I fink she cried all night.’
‘Christ!’ It was the second time Jack had blasphemed in as many minutes, but no other exclamation seemed remotely adequate. If Carrie was having a baby, then he knew damn well who the father was – but Danny obviously didn’t! He passed a hand unsteadily across his eyes, deeply grateful that, when it came to revealing the father’s name, Carrie’s courage had failed her. If it hadn’t . . . He thought of the fight that was to take place that night and blanched. For Mavis’s sake, it was vital the fight took place, and a mammoth set-to between Danny and Zac would have very likely scuppered it.
‘I don’t know what I’ll do if Carrie goes away with this fella,’ Danny was saying, his voice raw with pain at the very thought. ‘I love her, yer see? She’s just . . . she’s just Carrie.’ It wasn’t a very articulate way of putting his feelings into words, but it was effective.
Jack, thinking of Carrie’s vibrancy and sizzling liveliness and sunny good nature, knew exactly what he meant. He also knew that, as he was the only person Danny had taken into his confidence, he was the only person who could give him some straight advice. Or a word of warning. ‘I can imagine how you feel, mate,’ he began tactfully. And stopped. He couldn’t imagine how Danny felt. The mere thought of Christina being pregnant to another man made him feel as if he would explode. ‘You can’t do it, Danny mate!’ he erupted harshly. ‘You can’t take on another bloke’s kid as if it’s your own!’
Danny blinked, his faded red hair so grizzled with grey, he looked to be in his forties, not his mid-thirties. ‘What do yer mean?’ he asked, bewildered. ‘A kiddie’s a kiddie. It don’t matter who its real dad is, not if you’re the one carin’ fer it an’ bringin’ it up.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I ’ave ter get back to the square, Jack. I ’ave ter make sure Zac is sorted fer tonight’s fight – an’ I ’ave to be with Carrie. I ’ave to know what it is she’s goin’ ter do. I ’ave ter know if she’s goin’ ter stay with me or . . . or not.’
Jack made no response. As Danny walked from the ward in abject mise
ry, his hands plunged deep in his trouser pockets, Jack simply stared after him, feeling as Saint Paul must have felt on the road to Damascus. How could he have been so blind for so long to something that was, to Danny, so obvious? And not only to Danny. He thought of Leon’s attitude towards Matthew and Daisy. Leon loved Matthew and Daisy just as much as he did Luke, Jilly and Johnny. Like Danny, Leon knew that when it came to kiddies, it was the caring and cherishing that mattered, and nothing else. He thought of Christina walking out into the hospital gardens and Judith running shining-eyed towards her, and excitement began to surge deep in the pit of his stomach. Judith looked so like Tina, and though Jewishness was passed down through the female line, Judith’s father being Jewish surely made her half-Jewish; in his eyes, this was exactly what any child of his and Christina’s would have been. And Judith’s mother was dead and her father had abandoned her.
He clenched his knuckles, his excitement so fierce he could hardly contain it. Would Judith’s aunt allow him and Tina to foster Judith? Even as the thought occurred to him, he was certain of the answer. Of course she would. From what Tina had told him, Madge Dracup never wanted to look after Judith in the first place, and would be only too happy to off-load responsibility for her. Together, he and Tina and Judith could be a family. The kind of family Tina had yearned for, for so long – and that he, in blind stupidity, had refused to consider.
‘Nurse!’ He pressed the buzzer by the side of his bed. He needed to get a message to Tina now. Immediately. He’d wasted enough time – years of it – and he wasn’t going to waste so much as another minute!
‘If we are to spend tomorrow with the Emmersons, I think it would be good manners if you were introduced to them today,’ Deborah was saying to a dazed Genevre. ‘Not that we shall be doing any celebrating tomorrow, of course. I’ve already told Nellie not to expect us to join her at the Robsons’—’
‘Nellie?’ Genevre asked faintly, wondering if there was something wrong with her hearing. Spend Coronation Day with the Emmersons? Finally, after all these years, to meet Matthew’s mother? And his adoptive father? His black father? Surely she couldn’t be hearing right! And who was Nellie? Her aunt never referred to people by their Christian names; not unless they were family.
‘Nellie is the . . .’ Deborah began, impatient with Genevre’s dim-wittedness, and then stopped. She had been about to say ‘lady’, but if Nellie ever knew she’d been referred to as a lady, she would cackle herself into a coma. ‘Nellie is the individual who came to my aid the day Adams was taken ill and the Emmersons were not home.’
‘And the Robsons?’ Now that she knew she hadn’t completely misunderstood what Deborah was saying to her, Genevre was aware of a feeling of anticipation so intense, it hurt. Ever since her brother first fell in love with Kate, she had wanted to meet her. Then Toby was killed at Dunkirk and, after Kate had met and married Leon Emmerson, it seemed as if a meeting between herself and Kate would never take place. Now Deborah was suggesting not only that they visit Kate’s home in Magnolia Square, but that they spend all of Coronation Day there!
‘The Robsons?’ Deborah frowned. If her fifty-five-year-old niece were to be taken aback when introduced to Nellie, she was going to be a hospital case when introduced to Charlie. It was possible, of course, that his eminently presentable wife would coerce him into a collar and tie on Coronation Day morning. Possible, but doubtful. ‘The Robsons are the only people in the square, apart from Charlie Robson’s son and his wife, who possess a television set,’ she said, deciding that Genevre would just have to take the more working-class elements of Magnolia Square in her stride. ‘Nellie will be watching the Queen’s crowning on it as, I expect, will lots of their friends and neighbours.’
Genevre’s jaw dropped when she realized that not only was she going to meet Matthew’s south-east London family, but that there was also the chance she might be invited into a neighbouring home to watch the coronation in the most wonderfully vulgar way imaginable. On television!
‘I know I said I wouldn’t dream of watching the coronation on the Robsons’ television when we could, instead, be up in town, watching the procession for real,’ Ruth Giles said to Bob as she disturbed his weekly sermon preparation by setting a mid-morning tray of tea and biscuits down on his desk. ‘But I’ve changed my mind.’
Bob blinked, struggling to re-focus his thoughts. They hadn’t been centred on next Sunday’s sermon, as they should have been. Though he would never dream of admitting as much to Ruth, he had been thinking, instead, of the illegal boxing match that was to take place that evening in a deserted warehouse, somewhere down near the river. He wasn’t, of course, supposed to know about it and, as a vicar, he certainly wasn’t supposed to be approving of it. Not that he was approving of it. But he didn’t report the matter to the police and nor was he going to.
‘Why, love?’ he asked, perplexed, as she waited for a response from him.
‘Because without going up to town tonight, to stake out a good place to see everything from, it won’t be worth it,’ she said, trim and neat in a green-and-maroon plaid skirt and a lavender-hued Fair Isle twin-set. ‘We’ll be at the back of the crowd and won’t be able to see very much.’
‘Yes, love,’ he agreed patiently, his perplexity growing. ‘But as we are going up to town tonight—’
‘I’m not.’ From where she was standing, at the far side of his desk, Ruth’s eyes held his. To the best of her knowledge, she had never, since their first meeting, ever done or said anything that would shock or offend him. She knew, though, that she was about to do so now. ‘I’m not going,’ she said quietly and firmly. ‘I’m not going, Bob, because I’m going to the boxing match that I know you’re not supposed to know about, but that you do know about.’
‘You’re going to go to an illegitimate boxing match?’ He stared at her in stunned, goggle-eyed stupefaction. She might as well have said she was going to go down to Soho and strip in a clip-joint! ‘You can’t, Ruth!’ He forced himself to his feet, wondering if she had the faintest idea as to what such a fight would be like. ‘People get hurt, love, in pirate fights. You’ll hate every minute of it and—’
‘Mavis got hurt.’ Ruth’s voice was as taut as a bow-string. ‘And even if the police brought charges against the villain who scarred her for life, he wouldn’t get much of a sentence, would he? Ted said that when the police interviewed Mavis they seemed to think that, as she was in a Soho club when it happened, it really wasn’t such a big deal. They didn’t say they thought she was a prostitute who’d been done over by her pimp, but Ted said it was obvious that was what they thought. Though why it should make any difference even if she were a prostitute, I don’t understand.’
Swiftly, aware of the depth of her distress, he rounded his desk, taking her in his arms.
Her small-boned hands clenched into fists against his chest. ‘And so that’s why I’m going to the fight tonight,’ she said with a fierceness that shocked him inexpressibly. ‘I want the villain who took a broken drinking glass to Mavis’s face to receive some kind of punishment for what he did – and Zac is the only person who’s going to be able to give that punishment.’
‘If anyone should be knocking that bastard into the middle of next week, it’s me, not Zac Hemingway!’ Ted Lomax said explosively to Leon. It was lunchtime and they were standing on the pavement opposite St Mark’s church, Leon on his way to the gym, Ted on his way tip-town, to visit Mavis.
Leon, who had boxed in the Navy and helped train more fighters than he could remember, regarded Ted’s narrow physique with something approaching despair. Ted had the bravery – and a war medal to prove his bravery – but he didn’t have the build to go into a boxing ring. Especially not against an opponent he knew would be built like a brick out-house.
‘Everyone understands how you feel, Ted,’ he said sympathetically, ‘but Zac has the opportunity to paste the bloke in question, and you don’t.’
The skin tightened over Ted’s high cheekbones. ‘And we al
l know who is giving him the opportunity and who set it all up. It was Jack. You can’t pretend it wasn’t. And I’ve had a bellyful of Jack pitching in where my Mavis is concerned.’
Leon regarded him unhappily. He could quite understand Ted being prickly where Jack was concerned. The rumours that were flying around Magnolia Square about Jack and Mavis were enough to make the steadiest head spin. Christina, however, didn’t seem to be setting much store by them. When he’d left home only minutes ago, she was helping Kate peg out washing, radiant with the news that she and Jack were, at last, about to foster a child.
Hoping to ease Ted’s tortured mind a little, he said, ‘Jack didn’t know who his fighter was going to be up against tonight, Ted. Not until yesterday. And when he did find out, he didn’t ask Zac to take Big Jumbo’s place. That was Zac’s own decision. And as for anything else . . . it’s hardly likely Jack would be playing away from home when he and Christina are all set to foster a kiddie.’
‘Foster a kid? Jack?’ Ted was so startled, he forgot that he was also furiously angry. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake, Leon. Jack’s never held with fostering and adopting—’
‘He might not have once upon a time, Ted, but he’s thinking differently now. Christina says he wants the two of them to foster the little girl she’s been looking after. He’s dead keen, apparently. And she’s over the moon about it.’
‘Blimey!’ Ted pondered Leon’s information. If Jack really was all set to foster a kiddie, it was hardly likely there’d been anything serious going on between him and Mavis. ‘Blimey,’ he said again and scratched the back of his head. ‘My Beryl told me Hemingway wasn’t fighting tonight because Jack had told him to. She said he was doing it for her, but I couldn’t see it at the time.’
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