Magnolia Square (6 page)

‘His skin colour?’ Carl frowned, trying to remember exactly what it was he had said. ‘Why should that have any bearing on Kate being unable to wear white on her wedding day? I
was thinking about the fact that she’s already a mother. A mother twice over.’

Ellen flushed deeply. Carl was a quiet, cultivated, sensitive man to whom any sort of coarseness was anathema. ‘It hasn’t any bearing on it,’ she said hurriedly, hoping he
wouldn’t realize in what way she had misunderstood him, ‘and you’re quite right, it
is
a pity that a girl as young as Kate should be unable to have a white wedding with all
the trimmings.’ She put her mug of cocoa down on the tiled hearth of the fireplace. ‘That is, it’s a pity if it really
is
impossible. Under the circumstances,
Matthew’s father being killed before he even knew Kate was having a baby, and Leon being a prisoner from before Luke was born, I don’t think Mr Giles would mind too much. I mean, I
don’t think he would refuse to marry Kate if she decided she wanted to wear white.’

‘Probably not,’ Carl said, doubt in his voice, ‘but even if Bob Giles didn’t object, the local matrons would have plenty to say! It would be asking for unkind comments,
and there may be enough of those, from people who don’t know Leon well.’

Ellen remained silent, not knowing quite what to say. She knew that this time he really
was
referring to Leon’s skin colour and was nervous that anything she said might sound wrong.
If she said Leon’s skin colour didn’t matter, Carl might take the view she wasn’t being aware enough of the difficulties Kate and Leon would undoubtedly face in the years ahead of
them. If she agreed there would be unkind comment, Carl might assume she not only thought such comments to be expected, but that she had a glimmer of sympathy with them.

She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, torn by an agony of indecision. Why, oh why did she constantly feel so apprehensive of what was the proper thing to say or do? Was it Carl’s
natural reticence that made conversational intimacy between them so difficult? Or was it just her own deep-seated sense of insecurity? And
why
was she so insecure? She was forty-two for
goodness sake! She had a good job, good health, and owned her own home. And she was terrified of losing Carl Voigt’s affection. Terrified that he would one day realize she wasn’t his
intellectual equal.

‘Whatever Kate wears, she’s going to be a beautiful bride,’ she said, knowing with relief that this statement at least was utterly true, and utterly safe. ‘It’s
going to be a joyous wedding. The most joyous Magnolia Square has ever had.’

It was late afternoon the next day when Christina walked up the Voigts’ garden path and the short flight of shallow steps that led to their immaculate, primrose-painted
front door. She knew she wouldn’t be intruding on Kate and Leon because she had seen Leon striding down the Square towards Magnolia Hill, Luke astride his shoulders, Matthew and Daisy
skipping along at either side of him. Even from inside number eighteen she had heard the children’s happy laughter. Wherever Leon was, there was always happiness and laughter.

As she let the polished bronze knocker fall in a light tap against the door, she felt a spasm of envy. Kate and Leon were such an
uncomplicated
couple. There were no hidden depths to
either of them, or none that she had ever been able to discern. It was impossible to think of Kate tormenting herself because Leon was, in ways she couldn’t quite define, a stranger to her.
And it was impossible to think of Leon causing Kate jealousy.

She gave a slight, almost Gallic shrug of her shoulders. What on earth was the point of feeling envious? Even if she could have Leon as a husband she wouldn’t want him. Likeable as he was
he could never, in a million years, set her heart racing and her pulse pounding as the mere thought of Jack did. And once Jack was home for good, he would no longer seem like a stranger to her. And
she would make utterly, utterly sure that she had no cause for jealousy. None at all.

‘Come in!’ Kate called out, from what Christina judged to be the kitchen, ‘the door’s on the latch.’

She opened the door to be nearly bowled over by Hector. ‘Down!’ she commanded, fending off his friendly overtures, wondering why it was the British thought no house a home unless it
contained a dog. Leah had a whippet. Her father-in-law had an Alsatian. Ellen Pierce, Kate’s father’s lady-friend, had
three
dogs, all of which she had taken in as bombed-out
strays.

‘I’m making some fairy cakes for the children’s tea,’ Kate said, greeting her with a wide, sunny smile. ‘Hettie’s given me the icing sugar left over from the
cake she made for the street party. She must have had the packet since before the war – it was so lumpy I had to take a rolling-pin to it!’

Christina’s answering smile was unintentionally as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s.

‘Why can’t Christina smile properly?’ Hettie Collins had once demanded of Jack Robson. ‘Why can’t she show her teeth like other people do?’

‘Because she isn’t other people,’ Jack had said irritably. ‘She’s beautiful, and beautiful women don’t grin. They have pussycat smiles instead.’

She said now, clasping her hands together on top of the table, ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about, Kate. Something important.’

Kate iced the last fairy cake, dropped the knife into a sink of soapy water and turned to look at her, her eyes apprehensive. Was it about Mavis and Jack? Was Christina going to admit that it
was a relationship deeply troubling her? ‘What is it?’ she asked, hoping fervently that her guess wasn’t going to be proved correct.

Christina waited until Kate had seated herself at the table opposite her and then said thickly, ‘It’s about my family, Kate. I can’t stop thinking about them. I can’t
help wondering if, by some miracle, they might still be alive.’

Kate’s eyes widened. In all the years she had known Christina, she had never discussed her family with her. She said hesitantly, ‘Have you any reason to think it a possibility? I
always understood your brother and father had been shot, and that your mother and grandmother had been taken to a concentration camp.’

Christina’s beautiful face was pale, and there were faint blue shadows beneath her eyes. Revealing her feelings and emotions had never been easy for her, and even now, after nine years,
she was totally unable to speak of the deaths of her brother and father. She said instead, ‘My mother and grandmother could still be alive. I never knew which camp they were taken to, or even
if they were taken to a camp. I only knew that the Nazis regarded our family as being an enemy of the state and were intent on stamping it out.’

Kate blinked. She had always assumed Christina’s family had been murdered and hounded simply because they were Jews. Was there more to it, then? Had they been actively plotting against
Hitler and his government at a time when the British government was still trying to read pacific intentions into Hitler’s aggressive actions? In 1936, Nazi troops had occupied the Rhineland.
British politicians had expressed the view that Hitler was ‘only re-occupying his own back yard.’ Later in the year, Hitler had signed a pact with Mussolini. Though it was obvious to
anyone who had eyes to see, that the two dictators would now terrorize and hunt as a pack, the British Ambassador in Berlin had been a guest at the ceremony.

She said cautiously, knowing she was on very sensitive ground, ‘Did the Nazis regard your family as being an enemy of the state because of its Jewishness?’

Christina remained silent, her eyes fixed on her clasped hands, smoke-dark wings of hair falling softly forward on either side of her delicately etched face. She had known how difficult it would
be to confide in anyone, but she had forgotten how bizarre it would be, confiding in someone with a German surname. Someone whose father was an Aryan German. She took a deep, steadying breath. Carl
Voigt hadn’t lived in Germany since the outbreak of World War I. He had never, in even the minutest way, been an admirer of Hitler. But he was German. The country he had grown up in was the
country she had grown up in. They shared a mutual language, though neither of them ever, apart from an occasional expletive or endearment, lapsed into it. He understood the German way of doing
things, the German love of bureaucracy. And if anyone would be able to help her through the nightmare of finding out what had happened to her mother and grandmother, he would be able to do so.

‘My father was printing anti-Nazi leaflets in the basement of his chemist’s shop,’ she said, looking up from her clasped hands and meeting Kate’s eyes. ‘Heinrich
was distributing them.’

It was the first time Kate had even known Christina’s brother’s Christian name. She drew in a deep, unsteady breath. Through the open window came the sound of Daniel Collins mowing
his lawn; Nellie Miller chatting to Harriet Godfrey; the clip-clop and rattle of the horse-drawn hearse that Albert Jennings used as a fruit and vegetable cart; the chime of St Mark’s Church
clock. It seemed so strange, listening to these familiar sounds and hearing Christina talk at first-hand experience of the horrors of being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany.

‘Your father and brother must have been very brave,’ she said at last, awkwardly.

Christina clasped her hands even tighter, the knuckles showing white. ‘My father’s friend, who helped him with the printing, told me I mustn’t wait to see if my mother and
grandmother would return.’ Her voice trembled. ‘He told me they would never return and that if I wanted to avoid being arrested and never being seen again, I had to leave Germany
immediately. He knew of a route into Switzerland; people who would help me.’ Tears glittered on her eyelashes. ‘He was going to come with me, but on the night we were to leave he was
arrested. And so I left alone.’ Her voice had become barely audible. ‘And I feel so guilty, Kate. I feel so guilty for having escaped and for living so cosily in Magnolia Square when .
. . when . . .’ She couldn’t go on. Tears were spilling down her cheeks. She had said it. She had admitted to the guilt that was so heavy she sometimes thought she wouldn’t be
able to breathe for it. She was alive and her father and Heini were dead. All through the war years she had lived in the relative safety of London, in the bosom of a loving, noisy family, and her
mother and grandmother had been – where? Lichtenburg? Dachau? It didn’t bear thinking about. To think about it would be to lose her reason, and so for years she had told herself that
her mother and grandmother had died almost immediately after their arrest, that they were no longer suffering, that they were at peace. And the guilt of her own survival had been almost more than
she could bear.

Kate reached across the table and covered Christina’s clasped hands with her own. ‘There’s no need to feel guilty, Christina. It’s the very last thing your father and
brother would have wanted. As for your mother and grandmother . . .’ Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to encourage Christina to hope if all hope was futile. And certainly it must
be nearly futile. How could two Jewish women, one middle-aged and the other elderly, possibly have survived the war years in Germany, especially when it was known without doubt that they had been
arrested as long ago as 1936? Yet there were people who had believed that Leon had died in 1942. She had never believed it. She had
known
he was still alive. But Christina had no such sixth
sense about her mother and grandmother, for if she had, she would have expressed the belief years ago.

She said carefully, ‘If they have survived the war, then I’m sure that now it’s over they will contact Leah. And if they don’t . . .’ Her words hung heavily in the
bright, sunny kitchen. ‘If they don’t, then you will just have to accept that they are dead, Christina. That they have been dead for a long, long time.’

The brass knocker tapped against the front door, and before Christina could make any kind of a response the door was opened. ‘Cooee!’ Hettie Collins called out cheerily.
‘Anyone in?’

Kate held Christina’s eyes for a long, agonized moment. There was no way their conversation could be continued now. Giving Christina’s hands a comforting squeeze, Kate called back,
‘I’m in the kitchen, Hettie! Christina’s with me!’

Hettie bustled down the hallway leading from the front of the house to the back. ‘I’ve just come from doing the flowers at the church,’ she announced as she burst into the
kitchen. ‘Albert gave me some lovely delphiniums. They look a treat at either side of the aisle.’ She looked across to the table and the lack of any sign of a teapot or cups.
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ she asked, already reaching for it. ‘I’m gasping for a cuppa.’ She turned on the tap, running water into the kettle, saying as she did so,
‘In the old days, Constance Giles always invited me into the vicarage for a cuppa when I’d finished doing the flowers. ’Course, I don’t expect the Vicar to invite me in for
a cuppa, but I miss it all the same.’ The kettle was banged down on top of the oven’s gas hob, and the imitation cherries on her black straw hat shuddered and bobbed. ‘And when he
marries again,’ Hettie continued without pausing for breath, ‘which, being a man, he’s going to do, I don’t expect I’ll be offered tea. I expect his new,
slip-of-a-girl missus will think herself far too lah-di-dah for that.’

Both Kate and Christina remained silent. Both of them knew and liked Ruth Fairbairn, Bob Giles’s fiancée, but at the present moment neither of them had the heart to enter the lists
on her behalf. For one thing, they both knew nothing they could say would change Hettie’s attitude towards Ruth, and for another, their thoughts were still firmly on the conversation Hettie
had interrupted.

‘And so I wondered what flowers you’d be wanting in church for your wedding,’ Hettie continued, slapping cups on to saucers as if the kitchen was her own. ‘If the
wedding’s going to be this week or next week there won’t be many roses out. There’s some Canary Bird rioting all over the local bomb-site, but Canary Bird’s a little on the
tiny side to go well with fern, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a bride with yellow roses. You want red for a wedding. Carrie had red roses when she married our Danny, and if I say
so myself her bouquet was a sight for sore eyes.’