Magnolia Square (34 page)

‘Ow!’
Mavis protested vehemently as his weight pressed her wooden ticket rack hard against her rib cage. ‘Mind what yer doin’ with yer plates of meat!’

‘Sorry if I stood on your toes, miss.’ The young man flushed scarlet as he struggled to regain his balance. ‘Are you all right? I haven’t really hurt you, have
I?’

‘You’ve bloomin’ well nearly crushed me to death,’ Mavis said, pushing herself away from the passenger seat and upright again, readjusting the leather shoulder satchel
that held her takings and change. ‘Now ’ave yer paid or ’aven’t yer? I don’t want to be climbing those stairs again just for you.’

‘A three a’penny one, please,’ he said, fumbling with his free hand in his trouser pocket for change, blushing harder than ever.

Mavis took compassion on him and grinned. He didn’t look a day older than twenty, and there was something about him that reminded her of Malcolm Lewis.

‘A three a’penny one it is,’ she said, taking his money and punching him a ticket. ‘An’ if you were ’oping to be a ballet dancer, I’d forget about it.
You’re as ’eavy on yer feet as an elephant.’

There were appreciative chuckles from the passengers within earshot, and the young man’s face deepened to the colour of the headscarf Mavis was wearing, turban-fashion, over her
buttercup-blonde curls. He didn’t scuttle away up the stairs, though. There was more than teasing amusement in the disconcertingly green eyes so flagrantly meeting his. There was come-hither
encouragement as well.

Standing his ground, he said with every inch of courage he possessed, ‘Perhaps you’d let me make amends. Would you come out for a drink with me this evening? Or perhaps for a meal. .
.’

Mavis sighed, regretting her moment of light-hearted flirtation. She was a lot of things but she wasn’t a cradle-snatcher. Even if she had been, this young man, as clean-cut and
fresh-faced as a Mormon missionary, was definitely not her type. She liked her men to be dangerously knowing, and she liked them to be tall and toughly built and to move with the springy precision
that indicated strength and muscular control. The young man now looking at her with such urgent hope in his eyes was more like a clumsy young colt than a superbly fit Commando. And it was a
Commando, one very particular Commando, that she was yearning for.

As she thought of Jack, slim and supple in his American blue denims, desolation swept over her. Where had the two of them gone wrong? Why hadn’t they married a decade ago, when they were
even younger than the young man now standing before her, still waiting for an answer to his request.

‘No,’ she said, finally answering it and trying to sound regretful and to let him down gently, ‘I’m a married woman.’ She held up her left hand, waggling her
wedding ring finger so that he could see the narrow gold ring encircling it. ‘Mind the stairs as you go up. We’ll be turning into Oxford Street in a minute and it’s a sharp
corner.’ She turned her attention to the rest of her passengers. ‘Hold tight! No standing on the platform, please! Oxford Circus next stop!’

‘I’ve just heard word about Wilfred,’ Daniel said at the close of his weekly meeting with Bob Giles. ‘What are Doris and Pru going to do, now that
Wilfred’s been asked to resign from his job?’

Bob took off his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Wilfred. How much more bizarre were events going to become where his former churchwarden was concerned? Knowing that Daniel
would have to be told some time, he laid his glasses on his desk-top, saying, ‘Whilst Doris is with her sister in Essex, Pru has begun working again, so there’s no immediate problem
there.’ He paused. Daniel waited patiently. That there was going to be a problem somewhere else, he could tell by the weary tone of Bob Giles’s voice. ‘As to Wilfred’s loss
of earnings . . .’ Again Bob Giles paused. If he didn’t tell Daniel now, Daniel would only hear from another source. By the time Wilfred’s ‘disciples’ began making
visits to number ten, there would be wild and wonderful rumours in plenty. ‘Wilfred seems to have attracted what can only be described as a paying congregation,’ he said, trying to
sound as if it were nothing very uncommon. ‘A coterie of middle-aged Blackheath ladies have taken him under their wing and are, I understand, funding him extremely generously.’

Daniel blinked. ‘Funding him? You mean they’re giving Wilfred
money?’

Bob sympathized with Daniel’s incredulity. ‘The payments are being described as tythes,’ he said, not knowing whether to abhor Wilfred’s business acumen, or admire
it.

‘Blimey!’ Daniel thought of St Mark’s collection plates. They never garnered more than a handful of loose change. He wondered if Wilfred was quite as adrift in his brain-box as
they all thought.

‘And they’re going to begin holding Sunday morning meetings at number ten,’ Bob said, seeing no reason why Daniel should any longer be spared from knowing the worst.

‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Daniel shook his head unhappily. ‘Doris isn’t going to want to come home to that, is she? I’ve never known a woman so particular about her
carpets.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘And are these ladies of Wilfred’s married ladies or widowed ladies? Because if they’re widowed ladies—’

‘Whatever their marital status, there will be unpleasant rumours,’ Bob said, knowing he was making a colossal understatement.

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t become a polligammythingummy, like the Jerry O’Gormans,’ Daniel said, wondering how on earth he would break such news to Hettie.

‘Mormons don’t practise polygamy, if polygamy is against the law of the land they live in,’ Bob said, feeling faint at the very thought of polygamous wives, as well as
so-called disciples, establishing a bridge-head on St Mark’s very doorstep. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Daniel? I could certainly do with one.’

‘So could I,’ Daniel said with heartfelt feeling, ‘but Wilfred won’t be able to have any cups of tea, not if he starts behaving like a Jerry O’Gorman. And he
won’t be able to enjoy a glass of beer either!’

For the rest of her shift, Mavis was far less chirpy than usual. Life just didn’t seem to be any
fun
any more. By the time she paid in her takings at the end of
the day she was even beginning to wish she’d accepted the fresh-faced young man’s offer to take her out for a drink. She grinned ruefully to herself. What the heck was life coming to?
There’d been a time not so long ago when she’d been ankle-deep in men, and they had been
real
men, not briefcase-carrying, Malcolm Lewis look-alikes who had barely begun to
shave. Yanks, Canadians, Australians, Poles. She’d been able to take her pick and, like a lot of other young women whose husbands were serving overseas for sometimes years on end, she had
done so. She had never done so, however, with serious intent. A kiss and a cuddle at the end of a night’s dancing had been as far as it had ever gone.

She hopped off the service bus that took her from her bus depot to the corner of the Heath. Where were they now, all those Yanks, Canadians, Australians and Poles that she’d danced night
after night with? Already demobbed and back home probably, and if not already home, on troopships heading for home. She strode out across the coarse grass, the harsh serge of her clippie’s
trousers rough against her legs. Ted, too, was now heading home. Her stomach muscles tightened in a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. What was life going to be like for them after six years
of separation broken only by a few inadequately short leaves? They were going to be strangers to each other. Her sense of apprehension grew. In some ways, they’d
always
been strangers
to each other. Ted was a quiet chap. He’d never been one for gallivanting or dancing the night away. Home and hearth, that was Ted.

A surge of pride eased her apprehension. And home-and-hearth Ted Lomax had won himself a medal for saving the life of a comrade under heavy fire. He was a hero, was her Ted. And he deserved a
hero’s welcome from his wife, not a welcome marred by doubt as to what the future held for them both or, even worse, tarnished because her thoughts weren’t centred on him alone.

She saw Harriet and Charlie some distance away, Queenie running in wide circles around them. They were walking away from her and she didn’t call out to attract their attention. Instead she
continued to ponder the mystery of just
why
she and Jack had ended up as only friends and not as husband and wife. They’d been inseparable as kids. As they had grown older and Jack had
started breaking hearts the length and breadth of south-east London, it was always her he’d returned to, saying she was his best girl and his best mate. And then she’d met Ted and was
intrigued by his quiet manner and, next thing she knew, she was pregnant with Billy. ‘Which just goes to prove that the quiet ones are the worst,’ her mother had said darkly on being
told the news. Her father, too, had been remarkably philosophical. ‘Me and yer mother ’ad to get married a bit sharpish,’ he had said, standing with his legs apart, the better to
balance his beer belly, ‘an’ we’ve bin ’appy enough.’ Mavis smiled to herself fondly at the memory. Dear Dad – all he asked of life was a hot meal on the table
at the end of each day and the luxury of a steamingly deep bath on a Friday night.

She stepped off the Heath, crossing the road that flanked it, her smile fading. It had been Jack’s reaction, though, not her parents’ reaction, that had been crucial to her. And
Jack’s reaction had been appallingly indifferent. ‘He seems like a good bloke,’ he had said to her when she had told him the news. ‘And he’s a docker. Dockers always
bring home a decent pay packet. You’ll be all right there, Mavis, just as long as you don’t give him the run-around.’

Even now, after all these years, she didn’t know whether or not he had been covering up a hurt and disappointment as deep and monstrous as her own.

She turned into Magnolia Terrace, aware that even if he had been, the arrival of Christina Frank would have swiftly put paid to it. Her jaw tightened. Hitler had a lot of sins to answer for, and
in her opinion, one of them was in being responsible for Christina fleeing Germany and seeking refuge with the Jenningses. Within days of moving in there, and without even trying, she had caught
Jack’s attention and he had fallen for her hook, line and sinker.

Was he still quite so besotted? Musingly she rounded the corner into the Square. He certainly hadn’t been a hundred per cent happy on his last leave home. ‘I can’t work it
out,’ he had said to her time and time again. ‘Something’s wrong between me and Christina, but I’m damned if I know what it is. And if I don’t know what it is, how the
hell can I put it right?’

She had had no answer for him. Christina was a mystery there was no unravelling. Why, for instance, was she the only person in Magnolia Square not to have befriended Anna Radcynska? It
didn’t make sense. Anna had suffered the torments of hell at the hands of the Nazis, just as Christina’s family apparently had, yet to the best of her knowledge Christina had never
troubled to call on Anna to introduce herself. It was almost as if she didn’t want anyone remembering what her past had been; as if she had blanked from her mind all memory of the family she
had lost.

A faint sprinkling of rain dampened her face and she quickened her step. In Harriet’s carefully tended garden, late flowering Michaelmas daisies jostled with the bronze pom-pom heads of
chrysanthemums. In Anna’s garden, a freshly planted japonica indicated that the surrounding nettles and weeds would soon be a thing of the past. She wondered who had planted it for Anna.
Carrie, probably. Or Kate. The sky, which had been a hard pale blue when she was crossing the Heath, was now purpling to dusk. She looked down the Square, wondering if Billy and Beryl had let
themselves into the house and had made themselves some drip and bread or jam and bread for their tea. If they hadn’t, she’d get the chip pan out. She grinned to herself, recovering a
bit of her old bounce. Egg and chips, a mug of tea, and
Variety Band-box
on the wireless. It wasn’t exactly the way she would have chosen to spend the evening, but it had its
compensations. She’d be able to go to bed early for one thing, and as her clocking-on time in the morning was six-thirty, an early night wasn’t to be sneezed at.

As she walked past the Sharkeys’, she saw that someone was seated on her garden wall. Someone masculine and uniformed and very, very tired-looking. She stopped dead in her tracks,
terrified that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It couldn’t be Ted. It couldn’t. There would have been a telegram telling her when to expect him. A phone call via Mr Giles. The
seated figure was probably an irate householder waiting to complain to her about Billy’s apple scrumping or bicycle-chain filching. The man raised his head, looked directly at her, and rose
to his feet.

‘Oh my God!’ she whispered, and then, forgetting all her ambivalent feelings of a few moments ago, she began running towards him, shouting joyfully, ‘Ted!
Ted!
Why
didn’t you let me know you’d be ’ome tonight? All I’ve got for yer tea is egg and chips!’

A grin cracked his tired face as he rose to his feet to meet her. ‘So what’s new, Mavis love? The last time you cooked a decent tea, ’Itler was just a strugglin’ painter
and decorator an’ the Duke of Windsor was the Prince of Wales an’ in short trousers!’

With a shout of laughter she hurtled into his arms, hugging him with all the strength she had. At last, nearly unsteady on his feet with tiredness, he held her away from him a little in order
that he could kiss her. His had been a long war and a hard war. He’d fought what had seemed to be the length and breadth of Europe, and he never wanted to see Europe again. England would do
for him, thank you very much. Home – that was all he wanted. And rest. Above all, he wanted rest.

‘Let’s stop givin’ the Square a public display,’ he said, raising his head from hers. ‘Yer might ’ave only eggs an’ chips fer tea, Mavis, but I’m
ready for ’em. I ’aven’t eaten fer so long, me stomach finks me froat’s bin cut.’

Mavis blinked up at him. His kiss, for a reunion kiss, had left an awful lot to be desired. Her disappointment vanished as she saw the utter exhaustion in his face. ‘What you need, Ted
Lomax,’ she said perceptively, ‘is a scalding ’ot pint of tea with lashings of condensed milk in it. Come on, I’ll put the kettle on and yer can get out of uniform. Yer can
get out of it and never put the blinkin’ thing on ever again!’