Coronation Summer

by Margaret Pemberton

  Ruth looked down at her white-gloved hands. She wouldn’t listen to the swearing every man in the building seemed to be indulging in. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the mobster who had rammed a broken drinking glass into Mavis’s face would, in just another few minutes, step all unsuspecting into the ring to face Zac.

  ‘There ain’t any punch that ’urts like a hook to the liver.’ Nellie, who didn’t believe in short rations no matter where she was, was happily tucking into the top layer of a box of Milk Tray as she gave Charlie the benefit of her opinion. ‘An’ that’s what Zac’ll do to ’im straight off, you mark my words.’

  ‘Who’s Jack Robson puttin’ in the ring against Arnie, then?’ a slick-suited gent was yelling down from the catwalk to where Albert and Miriam were seated on a long bench by the ringside. ‘One of the boy scouts that’s always milling about his gym?’

  There was a roar of laughter from everyone within earshot.

  ‘Mebbe it isn’t a boy scout! Mebbe it’s a kid from the Boys’ Brigade!’ another joker pitched in.

  Albert, uncaring of the gales of laughter, smiled grimly. He knew who’d be having the last laugh, by crikey he did!

  Hettie, seated at the far end of the bench in question, was earwigging in to each and every conversation going on around her. All she wanted was to hear someone boast of having been the person who had laid into her Danny and she’d have the hat-pin out of her black straw titfer and straight in his big, fat, you-know-what in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!

  ‘Of course Zac Hemingway’s going to prove to be a destructive fighter,’ Daniel Collins was saying a little exasperatedly to middle-aged Harold Miller, Nellie’s nephew.

  Harold, one of life’s pessimists, wasn’t too sure. He wanted to make a bet on Zac Hemingway but, as no one, not even Daniel’s son, Danny, who was supposed to be Zac’s trainer, had seen Zac fight in a pukka match, he couldn’t quite bring himself to take the risk.

  ‘You beat style!’ a know-all stood in the middle of the standing crush behind the benches could be heard shouting. ‘The other guy’s style! That’s how you win fights!’

  ‘I’ve put all next week’s housekeeping on Zac Hemingway,’ Pru Lewis was saying nervously to Beryl. ‘I’ve never made a bet on anything before, not ever. He will win, won’t he? If he doesn’t, I don’t know how I’m going to explain to Malcolm!’

  Beryl was too racked with nerves to even answer her. All these horrible, horrible people crowing that Zac was going to be knocked out in the first round! Tears stung the backs of her eyes. What if he were? What if the Arnie person hurt him? What if he mutilated him, as he’d mutilated her mother? What if he killed Zac?

  ‘Arnie’ll bleedin’ kill ’im,’ Billy could hear someone saying a little to the left of him. ‘He’ll take ’im out in the first round with a right upper-cut and a straight left ’and.’

  Standing a little apart from the Magnolia Square contingent, Billy clenched his fists, a nerve ticking at the corner of his lean jaw. When he thought of what the bastard being talked about had done to his mum’s face, he wanted to take him on himself. There was no way he could do so, though. Not without ending up in jail, and his mum wouldn’t want that. It’d rile her something rotten! He sucked in his breath so sharply he nearly swallowed the gum he was chewing. There, on her own and pushing her way with difficulty through the crowd, obviously looking for a familiar face, was Daisy! His heart felt as if it were somersaulting in his chest. She looked so neat and clean and shiningly pure! A lout wearing a gangster-style trilby put his big paw on her shoulder, obviously making a pass at her. Billy saw her colour and shake her head and then he didn’t see anything because he was too busy pushing and shoving a way through to her.

  ‘C’m on! C’m on! C’m on!’ a tout was hollering. ‘Time’s runnin’ out! Place your bets!’

  ‘He’ll be down in less time than it takes to boil an egg,’ someone else was yelling, but whether they were referring to Arnie or to Zac, Billy didn’t know.

  ‘Daisy! Daisy!’ He side-stepped a big bloke he’d once seen box somewhere. He had to get to Daisy before the fight started. He had to get her out of the warehouse before the opening bell sounded. ‘DAISY!’

  She heard his voice, turned her head towards him, the relief on her delicately boned face so vast he could hardly breathe, his throat was so tight. At last he was by her side, and the bloke with the gangster-style trilby shrugged, turning away to talk to his mates.

  ‘What the heck are you doing here, Daisy?’ He seized hold of her arm, steadying her as they were both jostled by those around them trying to get a better view of the ring. ‘Who brought you down ’ere? Who . . . ?’

  ‘I came to see you! I have to talk to you, Billy!’ She was wearing a mustard-coloured corduroy pinafore dress and snowy-white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and looked like a Sunday school teacher. A heavily made-up young woman, the kind who liked to be seen with the kind of monied men who attended fights, squeezed past them. ‘If you don’t want to see me any more because . . . because you like someone else better, then I’ll understand.’ Her voice throbbed emotionally. ‘But I can’t bear it if you don’t want to see me because of something you think is my fault, and that isn’t my fault at all!’

  A recorded trumpet voluntary deafened them. Daisy clapped her hands over her ears. Billy kept hold of her elbow. He’d never manage to get her out of the building once the fight started, and it was only brief minutes away from doing so. ‘This way . . .’ He began pushing a way through to the back of the dense crowd, pulling her with him.

  The trumpet voluntary came to a brief end, obviously only a practise run. The big arc lights that had been erected over the ring clicked full on.

  Daisy was oblivious. ‘Whatever those girls from my class may have led you to believe, I’ve never been ashamed of you,’ she was saying to him fiercely. ‘I’ve always known it would be difficult, me being away at university whilst you were here, working, but I’ve never been ashamed of you because of what you do. I couldn’t be. I’m proud of you, Billy. I’m proud of the way you’re running a business of your own at twenty-one. And I know that your business won’t always be scrap-metal. I know that one day you’ll be a . . . a . . .’

  ‘A business magnate?’ Billy finished for her, happiness fizzing through him till he thought he was going to burst with it.

  Time seemed to stop and stand still for Daisy. Was it going to be all right? Was Billy not, after all, in love with his exotic companion of the last few days?

  ‘The girl I’ve kept seeing you with . . .’ she said hesitantly. ‘The one who is lodging with Queenie—’

  ‘Perdita?’ Billy’s grin was splitting his face. What fool would want a girl as exotic as Perdita on his arm when he could have Daisy instead?

  ‘Is she . . . ? Was she . . . ?’

  ‘Nah.’ Billy knew what it was she was trying to put into words. ‘Course she wasn’t. She’s far too bossy. Comes of ’er bein’ a lion-tamer, I expect.’

  There was a crackling of static indicating that the recorded trumpet voluntary was about to once again blast their eardrums.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, continuing to battle a way through to the nearest exit. ‘Let’s get out of ’ere.’

  ‘But the fight? Don’t you want to stay and watch it for your mum’s sake?’

  Billy hauled her past a couple of muscle-men who were doing duty as doormen, and out into the blue-spangled light of late evening. Ten minutes ago he would have thought nothing in the world could tempt him away from seeing Zac pound his mother’s attacker into a quivering heap. Now, however, he knew differently. He wasn’t going to expose Daisy to the kind of catcalls and language that would soon be raising the warehouse roof.

  ‘Nah. I don’t need to see it to know what kind of a performance Zac’s goin’ to turn in.’ He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. It felt wonderfully right there, and it was going to feel wonderfully right there for as long as he lived. ‘Let’s go up to Guy’s
,’ he said. ‘Visiting will be over, but they’ll still let us in.’

  As she smiled sunnily up at him, her neat bob of blue-black hair shining like satin, he hoped the jeweller’s they would have to walk past to reach the hospital would have its lights on. There was something in the window he wanted to show her; something he intended buying for her; something she would be able to wear on the fourth finger of her left hand and that would, when she went away to university, remind her of the future they were going to share.

  Ted wasn’t aware that Billy was no longer in the crowd. He was in such a state of acute tension, he was barely aware of anything other than that the bastard who had beaten Mavis was, any second, going to be in the ring only yards away from him. His hands bunched into fists. How he was going to prevent himself from vaulting over the ropes and smashing his fist into the bastard’s face, he truly didn’t know.

  ‘Move over a bit, Ted,’ Nibbo’s familiar voice shouted over the din. ‘Let me and my lady-friend squeeze in next to you.’

  The word ‘lady-friend’ caught even Ted’s attention. Nibbo didn’t have a reputation as a lady’s man. The last time he’d been known to indulge in a spot of courting was during the war, and it had come to a speedy conclusion when his lady-friend’s husband came home unexpectedly from Tobruk. He dragged his eyes away from the still empty ring, looking across at Nibbo’s companion.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Lomax,’ Mavis’s Ward Sister said with a naughty smile. ‘This makes a rare old change from going to the cinema on my night off!’

  The trumpet voluntary was blasting everyone’s eardrums, the arc lights were blazing down at full force, the Master of Ceremonies was in the centre of the ring, bawling details of the evening’s card through a megaphone as Carrie pushed and squirmed and squeezed her way through to where the rest of her family were sitting and standing.

  ‘I thought you weren’t goin’ to make it, pet!’ her dad bawled at her, a bottle of stout in one hand, a Coronation Day flag in the other.

  ‘IN THE RIGHT-HAND CORNER WE HAVE ARNIE!’ the Master of Ceremonies was hollering as the crowd parted beyond the right-hand side of the ring to allow a giant-sized, fist-punching, silk dressing-gowned figure through to the ring apron. ‘AND IN THE LEFT-HAND CORNER . . .’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Carrie said through parched lips, ‘Oh my dear God!’

  ‘Here he comes!’ Queenie Tillet screamed in her ear. ‘Ain’t he just gorgeous? Ain’t he the most beautiful-looking guy you’ve ever seen?’

  ‘I suppose the fight will be getting under way now,’ Harriet Robson said, as, seated in a wicker chair next to Leah’s bed, she changed her knitting needles over from one hand to the other. ‘I must say, I’ll be glad when this evening is over and Charlie is safely back home. He’s getting a little old for gallivanting in a deserted dockside warehouse, especially when those he’ll be gallivanting with will, for the most part, be south-London criminals or East End mobsters.’

  Leah forbore to point out that, considering Charlie’s own criminal past, he would be more at home than most in such company. Harriet hadn’t been married to Charlie when he had been known as the most efficient safe-blower south of the Thames and, in her ex-headmistress-like manner, was always trying to present him as being far more respectable than he really was.

  ‘You want there should be boy scouts and Sunday school teachers at a pirate fight?’ she asked, shifting Boots’s weight from off her legs, where he had been lying for far too long.

  Harriet watched the waddling Pekinese reposition himself at Leah’s feet. Presumably he would serve more as a hot-water bottle there than a dead-weight. ‘As Malcolm Lewis and your Beryl are among those who have gone to watch it, scouts and Sunday school teachers will most certainly be represented,’ she said dryly, flicking bilberry-coloured wool around her flashing needles.

  ‘Beryl’s there because she thinks she owes it to her mum to be there.’ That wasn’t the whole truth and Leah knew it, but she wasn’t about to start telling Harriet about Beryl’s crush on Zac Hemingway. ‘And I know you don’t approve of what’s takin’ place tonight, Harriet, and that you’ve never much approved of Mavis and her goings-on, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her. It was a sin and a shame, and I hope that goy boxer of Jack’s pulverizes the meshuggener responsible.’

  It was a sentiment Harriet couldn’t help agreeing with, even though she had no intention of putting it into words. She came to the end of a row and switched needles. ‘Mavis has so much personality, I doubt if it will register on people that her face has been scarred,’ she said, hoping to be reassuring and praying her words would prove prophetic. ‘And she certainly won’t let what has happened prevent her from enjoying life to the hilt, just as she’s always done. I was her headmistress, Leah. Believe me, I know!’

  Kate was seated in one of St Mark’s Church front pews, her head bowed as if the weight of her burnished-gold plait of hair was too heavy for her to bear. Although neither Leon nor Daisy were at home, she had no need to find a babysitter in order to leave the house for a little while. Deborah and Genevre Harvey had descended on number four late in the afternoon, and were still there; Deborah, for reasons Kate couldn’t begin to understand, focusing most of her attention on Luke; Genevre happily engrossed in playing Ludo with Jilly and Johnny.

  When St Mark’s heavy oak door creaked open, she was too deep in her silent pleas to God that Matthew would be returned to her, to take any notice.

  Stiffly, aided by the silver-knobbed walking-cane she had begun, of late, to favour, Deborah Harvey made her way down between the rows of empty pews. She had done a lot of thinking in the last few days and she, too, needed to commune with her Maker. She already knew that, when she did so, she was also going to have a long, long conversation with the Emmersons; that no matter what the outcome of Matthew’s disappearance, she was going to suggest that, at her expense, Luke Emmerson receive the kind of education that would best fit him for a future as an architect.

  With the scent of her distinctive lavender cologne making Kate draw her breath in sharply, she seated herself next to her, her near ankle-length purple coat brushing Kate’s floral-patterned, cotton skirt. Kate didn’t raise her head or open her eyes. She had a prayer to finish and she wasn’t going to be detracted from it by anyone – not even Deborah Harvey.

  Deborah, too, bowed her head, her toque hat wobbling ever so slightly. The other decision she had made, and which she still had to communicate to the Emmersons, she now communicated to God: if Matthew was found, safe and sound, he would have her blessing to follow whatever profession it was his choice to follow. And if that meant becoming a Thames waterman like his adoptive father, she would, if necessary, go with him to Waterman’s Hall to see him indentured.

  When at last Kate raised her head, Deborah reached out and laid a mauve-gloved, arthritic hand over Kate’s still clasped hands. It was a gesture that would, a mere week or so ago, have been inconceivable to both of them. Without speaking, knowing everything that was being silently said to her, Kate unclasped her hands, her fingers sliding between Deborah’s. For both of them, reaching the new relationship that now existed between them had been a long, painful process. All they needed now, to make it complete, was Matthew.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As the recorded trumpet voluntary sounded, Zac strolled out of his dressing-room, Danny and Leon in his wake, and as the crowd parted to make way for them, he padded into the makeshift spotlight as casually as if he were on a morning shopping trip in Lewisham market. Without a robe or socks, wearing plain black trunks and boots laced high above the instep, he crossed the ring apron and, as the Magnolia Square contingent roared themselves hoarse, climbed the corner steps and ducked under the top rope, a no-frills gladiator, oiled and greased and with a mission to accomplish.

  ‘ON MY RIGHT,’ the compère was shouting authoritatively into the megaphone, ‘WE HAVE ARNIE, HEIGHT SIX FEET THREE INCHES AND WEIGHING IN AT FIFTEEN STONE EIGHT POUNDS . . .’

  ‘W
here’s Big Jumbo?’ someone yelled from the floor. ‘I thought Arnie was fighting Big Jumbo?’

  So did Arnie. In narrow-eyed perplexity, he glared across at Zac’s corner. He’d been told he’d be either up against Big Jumbo, who he’d been assured was, in boxing slang, nothing more than dogmeat, or another of the tiddlers in The Embassy’s pathetic little pond. The guy now being gloved up in the opposite corner looked nothing like dogmeat, and he certainly wasn’t a tiddler.

  ‘Who the fuck is he?’ he snapped to Ginger, who was acting as his second. ‘I thought you said Robson’s fighters were nothing more than glorified boy scouts.’

  Ginger eyed Zac. Whoever he was, he most certainly wasn’t a boy scout. He was, though, utterly without nerves, betraying none of the restless movements most boxers were unable to control once in their corners, waiting for the bell. ‘He must be the geezer Pongo told us about,’ he said, beginning, for the first time, to doubt Arnie’s chances. ‘Just because he looks the part doesn’t mean he can deliver the goods, though, does it?’

  ‘. . . AND ON MY LEFT,’ the compère continued at the top of his lungs, ‘WE HAVE ZAC HEMINGWAY WEIGHING IN AT FIFTEEN STONE TWO POUNDS!’

  Ginger’s eyes glazed. He’d heard of a geezer by the name of Hemingway on one of his visits to a mate in Parkhurst nick. ‘Every time ’e ’its yer, yer see a flash of light,’ his mate, who worked out regularly in the prison sports hall, had said. ‘Yer either grab ’im or yer move back, because if ’e ’its yer twice, you’re gone.’ Ginger could see the fat wad of money he’d bet on Arnie going as well. Going right down the Swanee River! When he thought of the amount Archie had riding on Arnie’s back, small black dots danced before his eyes. There was going to be murder done if Arnie went down.

  ‘If he comes this way at you, go that way,’ he snapped back at Arnie, aware it was advice that left a lot to be desired.