Magnolia Square (5 page)

Kate bent down to him, saying with gentle firmness, ‘
I
want you to go with him. It will be nice for Luke to see the tugs, they’ll be all decked out in flags and bunting, and
he won’t go if you don’t.’

This was true, and Matthew knew it. His little brother wouldn’t go anywhere unless he went too. The desire to be a good boy and do what was being asked of him, and the desire to stay close
to Leon’s side, fought for supremacy. Leon was going to be his daddy – and no-one else he knew, no-one else at all, had a daddy who looked so excitingly different, a daddy who was
chocolate-coloured!

Seeing his disappointment, Leon squatted down on his haunches in front of him. ‘If you go with Luke down to the river today, with Rose’s daddy, I’ll take you down there
tomorrow on your own. We might even see the boat I used to work the river in and, with a bit of luck, go aboard her.’

Matthew beamed at him sunnily, his eyes shining. His new daddy-Leon had been a Thames Waterman before he’d gone away to fight, and when he grew up, he was going to be a Thames Waterman
too. ‘All right,’ he said, only too happy now to indulge his mother’s wish, ‘I’ll go with Rose’s daddy.’

‘That’s a good boy, pet lamb.’ Kate ruffled his blond hair lovingly, hardly able to believe that Danny was going to take
all
her children off her hands for her.

As Leon swung Luke down from his shoulders, his gratitude to Carrie knowing no bounds, Danny said plaintively, ‘Blimey, Carrie. Yer don’t ’alf drop a fella in it! I’m
goin’ to be like the Pied Piper of bloomin’ Hamelin with this little lot!’

‘You’ll enjoy it,’ Carrie said placidly, knowing he would do no such thing, ‘and it’s a way of keeping Matthew, Daisy and Luke out of Kate and Leon’s hair for
a little while.’

‘Out of their ’air?’ He was looking at her with incredulity, his own mahogany-red hair standing up in tousled tufts. ‘Out of their ’air?’ he said again as
Leon and Kate, their arms tightly around each other’s waists, began walking speedily away from them, Hector lolloping at their heels. ‘Lord ’ave mercy, Carrie! Leon’s only
been ’ome a shake of a donkey’s tail. Why the ’ell would ’e already be wantin’ the kids out of ’is ’air?’

Carrie looked at him pityingly. She loved him with all her heart, but it had to be admitted that there were moments when he was as thick as two short planks. ‘For the simple reason that
he’s not been home the length of time you have! Do use your head, Danny! They want to be on their own together for a bit of lovey-dovey.’

‘Well, they won’t get much lovey-dovey sharin’ a ’ouse with ’er dad,’ Danny said, a wealth of feeling in his voice. ‘We don’t get much
bloomin’ lovey-dovey living with your mam and dad, do we? And I don’t suppose even you can talk Carl Voigt into troopin’ dahn the river for the rest of the arternoon!’

‘I’ll have no need to,’ Carrie said with the serenity of certain knowledge. ‘Like the Vicar and Charlie, he’s got himself a lady-friend. She lives in Greenwich and
that’s where he is now. Would you like to take Bonzo down the river with you? He could do with a walk.’

‘No, I blinkin’ wouldn’t!’ Indignantly he swung Luke high up on to his shoulders, took Rose’s hand in his, and said to Daisy and Matthew, ‘Come on,
let’s be goin’ before we end up lookin’ like a circus with every dog in the bloomin’ Square ’angin’ on our ’eels!’

Nellie, who never missed a trick, watched from the depths of her armchair as Danny led his little troupe out of the Square in the direction of the river. Carrie wasn’t going with them,
which meant she was probably going to go after Christina and have a comforting word with her. It had certainly looked to be a fair old argy-bargy between Christina and Mavis. She grunted,
uncomfortably aware that she’d been unintentionally responsible for it.

On the far side of the Square the front door of number four slammed hastily shut behind Kate and Leon and then, seconds later, a bedroom window was slammed down on the noise of the party and the
curtains hurriedly closed. Nellie’s currant-black eyes gleamed. What with Charlie Robson popping the question to Harriet Godfrey, and the Vicar deciding to re-marry, and Kate and Leon so
obviously making up for all the years they’d been apart, passion was certainly alive and kicking in Magnolia Square. The question was, when was any of it going to come her way? She cackled at
the very thought. It would take a strong man – a very strong man indeed! Happily content at the thought of all the weddings that were to come, she let go of her balloon, watching as it gaily
sailed high over the rooftops in the direction of the Thames.

‘Where we goin’ to live when we’re married, ’Arriet?’ Charlie Robson, Christina’s father-in-law, asked Harriet Godfrey, Queenie padding at
his heels. ‘Your ’ouse or mine?’

Magnolia Square’s street party had come to a happy, exhausted conclusion. Hettie Collins’s piano had been trundled back into her parlour. Bob Giles, the Vicar, had scrupulously
picked up all the litter that had drifted on to St Mark’s grassy island. Mavis had helped her mother and Hettie clear the trestle tables, and Daniel Collins and Albert Jennings had moved them
away, stacking them in the church hall.

Charlie and Harriet were now walking hand in hand over the Heath towards Blackheath Village and Charlie’s next-to-favourite pub, The Princess of Wales. The Swan, tucked tidily away at the
bottom end of Magnolia Hill, was his favourite pub, but The Swan was a no-nonsense workmen’s pub and not the kind of watering-hole into which he could happily take Harriet, an
ex-headmistress.

Charlie’s question was one Harriet had been mulling over for several months, long before Charlie had even plucked up the courage to ask her to marry him. Her house, at the top end of
Magnolia Square, was immaculate. No children had ever scuffed the furniture or frayed the carpets. Original watercolours hung in narrow gilt frames on cream-papered walls. A walnut drawleaf table
that had been her mother’s graced the dining-room, smelling pleasantly of beeswax. A marquetry display cabinet that had been her grandmother’s held pride of place in her sitting-room.
Her bedroom furniture was carved mahogany, her bed-linen and bedspread a pristine, lace-edged white.

Charlie’s home, in the bottom, less salubrious half of the Square, was nearly as battered as the Lomaxes who lived next-door-but-one-to him. The dining-room was home to Charlie’s
bicycle and the array of tools needed to keep it roadworthy. The sitting-room possessed a moquette-covered three-piece suite with sagging springs, a framed picture of King George and Queen
Elizabeth in their coronation robes, and a wireless. The kitchen was the heart of the house, with its black-leaded fire and oven, its deal table, well-worn rag rugs and thick, blue-and-white
striped crockery. Charlie, however, loved his home dearly, just as she loved hers. And Harriet knew that Charlie would find it as hard to feel at home living in her house as she would do living in
his.

‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’ she said, slowing her naturally inclined strides down so that she didn’t outpace him. A big man, Charlie never strode. He ambled. He
never looked pin-neat either, as she did, though over the years she had managed to persuade him to wear his trouser belt through the loops provided for it, and to occasionally fasten a collar to
his collar-stud. She looked across at him lovingly. She didn’t give tuppence about his shambolic appearance. He was generous-hearted, compassionate and kind, and she thought herself the
luckiest woman in all the world that, having lived all her life as a spinster and after being retired for more years than she cared to remember, she was now on the verge of becoming his wife.

‘My house is too formal for you to feel comfortable in, and your house is too casual for me to feel comfortable in.’

Charlie nodded agreement. Harriet had a wonderful way of summing things up. It came of her being educated.

‘And so we’ll just have to compromise,’ Harriet said, choosing her words carefully. ‘If I come to live with you, you’ll have to let me make a few changes. I
wouldn’t want your bicycle in the dining-room for instance, and I’d want to re-decorate the sitting-room. And if you come and live with me I’ll put all my bone-china away and we
can use your blue-and-white-crockery and—’

‘But where’d I put my bicycle, ’Arriet?’ Charlie asked as they skirted one of the Heath’s gorse-covered gravel-pits, and Queenie raced down one side of it and up
the other. ‘I can’t put it in the shed. My pigeons are in the shed. And I can’t leave it propped in the back garden ’cos Billy Lomax will have his ’ands on it if I
do.’

‘That’s true,’ Harriet said thoughtfully, her tweed skirt flapping a few inches above her sensibly brogued feet, a pearl necklace adding a touch of elegance to her
raspberry-coloured twin-set. ‘And there’s another snag, Charlie.’

Charlie looked alarmed. It wasn’t like Harriet to admit there were snags. Harriet didn’t hold with snags. Snags were something she always speedily sorted out. ‘What’s
that, petal?’ he asked nervously. ‘It’s not the pigeons, is it? I wouldn’t want to part with my pigeons.’

‘Of course it isn’t the pigeons,’ Harriet said truthfully. ‘It’s something a little more awkward than that.’ She hesitated and then said gently,
‘It’s your Jack.’

‘Jack?’ Charlie’s craggy face was pathetically bewildered. ‘But Jack ain’t ’ome, ’Arriet. ’E’s in the Commandos!’

‘But he’s
coming
home, Charlie.’ Harriet steered him across the road flanking the Heath and towards the pub. ‘And soon he won’t just be home on leave.
He’ll be demobbed and home for good. And if he comes home to find I’ve moved in he might not like it.’

It was an understatement and Charlie knew it.

‘And then there’s Christina,’ Harriet said adroitly, moving in for the
coup de grâce.
‘She and Jack will want to be setting up home together and they
can’t do so at the Jenningses. Their house is packed to the rafters as it is.’

‘Jack wouldn’t live at the Jenningses!’ Charlie said, indignant at the very thought. ‘Why should ’e when ’e’s got a ’ome of ’is
own?’

This was exactly the conclusion Harriet had been steering him towards. As she seated herself at their favourite table near the door, and Queenie lay docilely down at her feet, she said
reasonably, ‘And so Christina will be moving in with you and Jack, and if I move in as well, we’re going to be nearly as crowded as the Jenningses.’ She tucked a straying strand
of hair back into her bun, saying tentatively, ‘And so it might be best if you moved in with me and let Christina and Jack have the house to themselves. I know they’d appreciate that,
Charlie. And I would make my house as comfy as possible for you. After all, if we share the house it will be yours just as much as mine. And it’s always been a lonely house. With you in it,
if won’t be lonely any longer.’

Charlie looked down at her, a lump in his throat. Lonely? Had his Harriet really been lonely before she met him? It was hard for him to credit. She was so organized, always sitting on committees
and such like. And yet it was he who had transformed her life. Him. Charlie Robson, ex-illiterate and ex-criminal. Well, thanks to her patient teaching he was illiterate no longer. And he
wasn’t a criminal any longer, either.

‘You’re right, ’Arriet,’ he said, happy to bow to her superior judgement. ‘Jack and Christina need to set up ’ouse together, and though the government’s
promised ’omes in plenty for men being demobbed, there’s precious few ’omes for ’eroes being built yet. And I reckon me and Queenie could settle anywhere just as long as I
’ave a pint mug for my char and Queenie has a bed that ain’t in a draught.’

At his mention of Queenie, and at the thought of dog hairs on her Turkish carpets, a spasm almost of pain crossed Harriet’s face. It was quickly vanquished. Queenie was a well-behaved
animal and she had known, right from the beginning of her friendship with Charlie, that where he went, Queenie went too. Making the ultimate sacrifice, she said, ‘Queenie can have her basket
in the kitchen, next to the Aga. And now I think I’d like a dry sherry, Charlie. It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it? And the best bit was seeing Kate and Leon so happy together. It
did my heart good just looking at them.’

‘It was wonderful to see Kate and Leon together,’ Kate’s father’s middle-aged lady-friend said as they sat drinking mugs of hot cocoa in her little
terraced house in Greenwich. ‘I expect there’ll be a wedding now, just as soon as one can be arranged.’

Carl Voigt nodded, his rimless spectacle lenses glinting in the light of the small gas-lamp she had lit when dusk had fallen. ‘Though it won’t be a white wedding,’ he said with
a small, sad smile.

Ellen Pierce’s eyes widened slightly. Carl had never spoken to her of Leon’s West Indian blood, and it was totally unlike him to make a dry joke of it, especially when the joke hung
on the hook of his daughter’s wedding.

‘Does it matter so much to you?’ she asked in deep concern. ‘Because if it does, you must remember that it could have been far worse. Leon might have been a black American
serviceman, not a black British serviceman, and then where would you have been? He would have taken Kate to America, and she and the children would be living in Pennsylvania or Virginia or
Alabama—’ She broke off, aware that he was staring at her in blank perplexity. ‘It
was
Leon’s skin colour you were referring to, wasn’t it?’ she asked,
suddenly unsure and feeling desperately awkward.