Magnolia Square (22 page)

‘I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea,’ Ellen said a few seconds later as Carl sat down in the place Coriolanus had vacated.

‘No,’ he said gently, trying to ignore the suspicious warmth emanating from the sofa cushions, ‘don’t make a pot of tea yet, Ellen. Let me tell you what’s been
preying on my mind.’

She sat on the edge of an easy chair, her hands clasped on her knees, as apprehensive as a little girl about to receive a catechism.

‘I don’t quite know how to go about this,’ Carl began awkwardly, hoping the warmth Coriolanus had so obviously left behind him, wouldn’t prove to be damp warmth.
‘But with Kate and Leon now married . . .’

Ellen’s knuckles showed white. He was going to leave the house in Magnolia Square to Kate and Leon and the children. He was going to leave London. Maybe, now Hitler and Nazism had been
ground into the dust, he was even contemplating a return to Germany? She clenched her knuckles even tighter. She wouldn’t cry when he told her – she wouldn’t. But she would cry
afterwards, when he had gone. She would cry and cry and she doubted if she would ever stop. For the moment, though, she had to listen to whatever it was he was trying to tell her. She had to try
and concentrate.

‘. . . and so if I moved in here—’

‘In here?’ she blinked. What did he mean? Was he asking her if he could become her lodger? And if he did so, what would her neighbours say? They all knew that he was her
gentleman-friend and they would come to some very incorrect and salacious conclusions! Or would their conclusions be incorrect? Scarlet spots of colour stained her cheeks.

Carl, mistaking the emotion that had occasioned them, said with even greater awkwardness, ‘I’m sorry, Ellen. I shouldn’t have even put the suggestion to you. It’s just
that I think it will be years before German is reinstated on grammar school syllabuses and until it is, my income won’t cover the cost of buying a second property. We could probably rent
somewhere, of course, though finding a landlord or landlady willing to accept Hector and Macbeth and Coriolanus won’t be easy and, as you’re so comfortable here, I didn’t think
you’d like the idea of starting married life in rented accommodation.’

‘Married life?’ The blood had begun to beat in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t be sure she had heard correctly. ‘Did you say “married”, Carl?’

He looked at her shiningly beautiful face, naked of powder, naked of guile. Had she been wool-gathering again? Had her thoughts been on Hotspur, still yearning for his walk, and not on what he
had been saying to her? Tenderly he said, ‘Of course I said married, Ellen. You can’t imagine I would have suggested my moving in here
before
we were married!’

Tears had begun streaming down her face. ‘Oh, Carl! Oh, of
course
we can live here after we’re married! It’s just that I hardly dared hope . . . I thought perhaps you
were going to go away . . . I thought . . . I thought . . .’

There was no way she could possibly tell him all the foolish things she had thought. And it didn’t matter that she couldn’t do so. All that mattered was that he wasn’t going
away. He wasn’t going to end their relationship. He was going to marry her. And he was going to marry her because he loved her; because she was just as necessary and dear to him as he was to
her.

Her legs were too weak with joy and relief to be able to support her unaided and Carl crossed the room towards her, taking her hands in his, drawing her to her feet. ‘I love you,
Ellen,’ he said simply. ‘I love you with all my heart.’

‘And I love you, Carl.’ Her voice was unsteady, tremulous with joy.

Behind them Coriolanus cocked a speculative eye towards the sofa.

‘There’s no sense in our having a long, formal engagement, is there?’ Carl said, the light glinting on his spectacle lenses. ‘If you’re happy for me to do so,
Ellen, I’d like to ask Mr Giles to announce the banns this coming Sunday.’

His arms were around her and she could feel his heart beating next to hers. ‘Oh, yes!’ she said, happier than she had ever been in her entire life. ‘I’m
very
happy
for you to do so, Carl!’

Behind them Coriolanus made his move, heaving himself back on to cushioned comfort.

Carl lowered his head to Ellen’s in loving commitment. Ellen’s hands slid up and around his neck.

Coriolanus closed his eyes, intuitively knowing that no-one was going to disturb him for quite some time.

Jack Robson and Mavis Lomax sat on the grass, by the Princess of Wales pond. Mavis had her knees hugged to her chest, her arms circling them. Jack was sitting with his legs
slightly apart, his arms resting on his knees, his hands clasped loosely. It had been an accidental meeting, though Mavis doubted that any busybody seeing them would think it so. Jack had left
number eighteen in order to buy a packet of cigarettes. She had been taking Bonzo for a walk on the Heath. Bonzo now lay a few feet away from them, his head on his paws, snoring soundly.

‘If I knew what was wrong, I could put it right,’ Jack was saying bluntly. ‘But the hell of it is, I don’t
know
what’s wrong!’ He ran a hand through
his hair dishevelling it and, unwittingly, making himself look even more attractive. ‘We haven’t had a row over anything. Nothing has been
said
, but this leave home hasn’t
been anything like I anticipated it would be.’

‘In my experience, things never are,’ Mavis said dryly, unclasping her hands and plucking a blade of grass. She began to shred it with a scarlet-lacquered nail. ‘Christina
probably finds it ’ard ’aving a reunion with you while she’s living at number eighteen,’ she said, showing a perspicacity that would have surprised a great many people.
‘I know
I
wouldn’t ’ave wanted to ’ave been living there when I ’ad my reunions with Ted.’ She chuckled throatily. ‘It was bad enough ’aving
to cope with our Billy and Beryl charging in and out of the bedroom at inconvenient moments, without ’aving Mum and Dad and Gran doing it as well!’

Despite his despondency, Jack grinned. ‘Maybe,’ he said, not totally convinced. His grin faded. ‘The thing I
really
don’t understand,’ he said, frowning
slightly and disclosing a perplexity he wouldn’t have disclosed to one of his mates in a million years, ‘is why Christina is now so friendly with Carl Voigt. I mean, the man’s a
German
for Christ’s sake! You’d think he’d be the last person in London she’d want to hob-nob with! Yet the first night I was home she slipped away from the knees-up
at The Swan, just to have a natter with him. And she did the same thing again yesterday morning.’

Mavis plucked another blade of grass. ‘I don’t ’ave an answer for that one,’ she said frankly. ‘Leaving out ’is being German, Carl isn’t exactly the
kind of fella to ’ave a laugh and giggle with, is ’e? ’E’s far too quiet and serious.’

Jack remained silent. Christina never laughed and giggled in the way Mavis and Carrie and their friends did. It was one of the many things about her that had first caught his attention. And as
it was quite obvious Christina wasn’t merely having a laugh and giggle with Carl Voigt, as Mavis did with Daniel for instance, it only made the puzzle of why Christina was chin-wagging with
him so often even more perplexing.

Some twenty yards or so away from them, on the far side of the pond, Leon Emmerson was squatting down on his haunches at the edge of the water, Matthew beside him. Slowly, and very carefully, he
was launching a magnificent-looking sailing ship.

‘They’re an odd couple, aren’t they?’ Mavis said, intuitively realizing that Jack had said as much as he wanted to say where his wife was concerned.

‘Kate and her bloke?’

Mavis nodded. ‘And ’im and the kiddie. I mean, ’owever much Leon loves and cares for Matthew, no-one’s ever going to believe ’e’s Matthew’s
real
dad, are they?’

Jack’s mouth twitched in amusement. ‘No,’ he agreed, as Matthew clapped his hands in delight at the sight of the sailing ship forging its way across the pond, his hair the
colour of pale wheat in the bright afternoon sunshine, ‘it would beggar belief a bit, wouldn’t it?’

They remained in companionable silence for a little while, watching Leon’s dark figure as, time and again, he retrieved his handiwork, making adjustments to the sails and then floating it
again, Matthew eagerly helping him and chatting to him non-stop.

‘I can’t wait for me and Christina to have kids,’ Jack said suddenly, with surprising passion. ‘You know Dad’s moving out of number twelve when he marries,
don’t you? There’ll be room in that house for me and Christina to bring a large family up.’

‘You won’t want so many blinkin’ kids if the first one’s anything like my Billy,’ Mavis said wryly, swatting a bee away. ‘You know what ’is last
trick’s been, don’t you? Tryin’ to make a bomb in the back garden out of an empty shell casing and sugar and sodium chloride!’

Jack gave a crack of laughter. There was nothing he’d like better than to have a son as lively as Billy. They could go to football matches together and he’d teach him to box and how
to play a mean hand at cards and. . .

‘We’ve been spotted,’ Mavis said, indifferent to the fact. ‘There’s a black straw ’at bobbing along over there,’ she nodded peroxide-blonde curls in the
direction of the nearest of the three narrow roads that traversed the Heath, ‘and unless I’m very much mistaken, the body bobbing along beneath it, is ’Ettie Collins.’

Jack turned his head in the direction she was indicating, squinting his eyes against the sun. She was right. It was Hettie. And if the indignant set of her shoulders was anything to go by,
she’d seen them and drawn a predictable, and very erroneous, conclusion. He gave a sigh. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t give a fig what conclusion Hettie had come to, only the
present moment, with Christina behaving so oddly and his leave about to come to an end, was not normal circumstances. He didn’t want Hettie filling Christina’s head with ridiculous
suspicions hours before he and Christina were going to be parted. An early demob was, after all, something he only hoped for, not something that was a foregone conclusion. It could very well be
months before he was back home for good. It might not even be until next year.

‘Bloomin’ old tabby,’ he said, disgruntled. ‘Why she should be so ready to stir up trouble beats me.’

Mavis stretched out her legs and rolled on to her side a little. ‘She’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud is old ’Ettie,’ she said sagely, resting her weight on her elbow.
‘She thinks you should ’ave married a south-London girl.’

Jack grinned, recovering his good humour. ‘How could I? The best ones were all taken.’

Incredibly, under her carefully applied make-up, Mavis blushed. Not wanting Jack to see her reaction she turned her head swiftly, looking again in the direction of the pond and Leon and Matthew.
‘Odd that neither of us worried what conclusion Leon might come to, seein’ us sittin’ on the grass together.’

His grin deepened. ‘You’re not sitting on it any longer. You’re lying on it. And no, it would never occur to me to think Kate’s bloke might come to a wrong conclusion and
broadcast that conclusion far and wide. For all Carl Voigt’s a German, he’s the most non-judgemental person I know. Kate’s the same. And she’d never have married a
judgemental man. Not in a million years.’

‘Unlike poor old Doris Sharkey,’ Mavis said, remembering Magnolia Square’s latest piece of titillating gossip. ‘Did you know Wilfred was seen in Lewisham ’Igh
Street yesterday afternoon, paradin’ up and down with placards slung about ’is neck announcin’ that the end of the world was nigh? ’Ow Doris and Pru put up with ’im, I
can’t begin to imagine. It must be like livin’ with Moses on a bad day!’

‘Why can’t
I
go with Matthew tomorrow to see Great-Grandad?’ Luke asked, tugging at Kate’s skirt as she rolled pastry for a strawberry tart.
‘Why can’t
I
go for a ride in a big motor car?’

Kate paused in her task, brushing a stray strand of hair away from her face. The problems she had known would come when she had agreed to Joss Harvey renewing contact with Matthew, were already
beginning. How did she explain to a three-year-old that, though Joss Harvey was Matthew’s great-grandad, he wasn’t
his
great-grandad? And that Matthew would now quite often be
enjoying the kind of treats that he and Daisy would never be able to enjoy?

She bent down to him, taking hold of his chubby hands, saying gently, ‘Though we’re all one family, you and Daisy and Matthew all had different daddies, and so your grandads and your
great-grandads on your daddy’s side of the family, are all different. That’s one of the things that makes all three of you so wonderfully special. And though it’s sad that only
Matthew’s great-grandad is still alive and able to visit him and take him out for treats, we mustn’t be jealous of that, must we? Instead we must be very pleased for him. Nothing in
life is ever the same for
everyone
, darling. And while Matthew is out with his great-grandad, you will be able to go somewhere nice with Daddy.’

Beneath his mop of silky dark curls, Luke frowned, struggling to understand the complicated talk of different daddies and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. ‘But, though my daddy
wasn’t
always
Matthew and Daisy’s daddy, he is their daddy now, isn’t he?’

‘He’s going to be their
adopted
daddy,’ Kate said, drawing him into the circle of her arms, ‘and he loves them just as he loves you.’

Luke’s frown deepened, his toffee-brown eyes bewildered. ‘But if
I
share Daddy with Matthew and Daisy, why can’t Matthew share his great-grandad with me?’ His
bottom lip began to tremble. ‘Want to go out with Great-Grandad Harvey,’ he said, his eyes brimming with uncomprehending tears. ‘Want to go for a ride in a motorcar.’

With an aching heart, Kate lifted him up in her arms. Perhaps Leon would be able to explain to Luke in a way he could more easily understand. Perhaps, in time, Luke wouldn’t mind the
expensive treats Matthew enjoyed when out with Joss Harvey.

Cold shivers of apprehension slid down her spine. What if things went the other way? What if Luke began to mind more, not less? What if Joss Harvey’s re-emergence into Matthew’s life
resulted in the relationship between Luke and Matthew being permanently marred? What would she do then? How would she ever forgive herself ? As Luke’s arms slid around her neck, she knew that
she never would be able to forgive herself; that the entire responsibility would be hers, and hers alone. Luke’s tears trickled damply on to her neck and she hugged him close, wishing Leon
would come home. She needed him to comfort her just as she was now comforting Luke. Once in the shelter of his arms, nothing would seem quite so daunting.