Magnolia Square (10 page)

Seeing the anxiety in her friend’s eyes, Carrie tried to be reassuring. ‘Just because he came for a look-see yesterday doesn’t necessarily mean he’s out to cause
trouble,’ she said, polishing apples to a rosy shine on her apron. ‘Though how he got to hear about your wedding beats me.’

‘It doesn’t beat me,’ Kate said darkly. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d known about Leon’s home-coming even before Leon knew of it!’

Carrie chuckled and gave her attention to a prospective customer. ‘Three pahnds of carrots? Better take four, luv,’ she said in warm and friendly south-London fashion.
‘They’re fresh as a daisy which is more’n can be said for the tired-lookin’ carrots Black’eath greengrocers are tryin’ to off-load. An’ what about a couple
of apples? They’re luvverly and juicy. Just the thing to keep the doctor away!’

Carrots and apples were speedily tipped into a cane shopping basket. Customers were never in short supply at the Jennings’s market stall. Weights were always generous and produce was
always fresh.

‘And anyhow,’ Carrie continued as another happy customer went on her way, ‘old man Harvey hasn’t given you any trouble for a long time now, has he? Why should he start
again now?’

Kate transferred her own shopping basket from one hand to the other. Her real fear as to why he should do so was one she hadn’t yet expressed, not even to Leon. She bit the corner of her
lip – especially to Leon. She said unhappily, ‘When Mr Harvey first tried to take Matthew from me, he told me he was doing so because, as I was having a second illegitimate child, I
wasn’t a fit person to rear his grandson’s child.’

Carrie snorted. Kate had repeated that particular conversation to her at the time, and she had thought Joss Harvey was clutching at straws then; she thought he was clutching at straws now. What
court would remove a child from its mother on those grounds? Especially when both children had been conceived during war-time and when the father of one of them had died a war hero?

Kate steeled herself to tell Carrie the real crux of why she was so worried. Her hand tightened on the handle of her basket. By her side, Hector whimpered with impatience. ‘And he said
that, as the father of my second child was black, no court in the land would consider him a suitable stepfather for his great-grandchild.’

Carrie’s jaw dropped.

‘And so that’s why I’m so worried,’ Kate said, knowing she had every reason to worry. If she hadn’t, if the notion of a court declaring Leon unfit to be
Matthew’s stepfather because of the colour of his skin had been ludicrous, then Carrie would have burst into derisive laughter.

And Carrie wasn’t laughing. She was looking horrified. ‘But . . . but Leon is going to
adopt
Matthew, isn’t he?’ she said at last. ‘And if he does, then
he’ll be Matthew’s legal father, won’t he? Not just his stepfather?’

Another prospective customer was eyeing Carrie’s display of onions, and it was obvious that their conversation couldn’t continue for much longer.

‘But what if Leon applying to adopt Matthew is what Joss Harvey has been waiting for?’ Kate said, her face pale and strained. ‘When there was every chance that Leon might be
dead, he couldn’t make an issue about his great-grandson being raised by Leon, but he can now. And I think he will do, Carrie, I think that’s why he came to Magnolia Square yesterday.
He wanted to see for himself that we had married. And now that we are married, he’ll try to take Matthew away from us.’

‘Four onions, six pahnds of carrots, a bunch of greens and three apples,’ Carrie’s customer said, snapping her carrier bag open in front of Carrie’s weighing scales.
‘And pardon me for saying so, but yer’d take much more custom if yer didn’t gab so much to yer friend. Are those radishes yer ’iding be’ind the carrots? Because if
they are I’ll ’ave two bunches.’

Kate raised a hand to Carrie to signify she was going to be on her way. Staying any longer was pointless. Lewisham High Street was no place to be discussing her very real fears about Joss
Harvey’s designs on Matthew.

Carrie tipped carrots on to the scales and watched her go, heavy-hearted. It had only been Kate’s wedding day yesterday, for goodness sake. In an ideal world she would have been enjoying a
honeymoon now, not trailing down to Lewisham High Street to confide her worries about Joss Harvey.

‘And I’d cheer up a bit if I was you,’ her customer said to her tartly. ‘The war in Europe’s been won an’ the world’s a sunnier place, or
’adn’t you noticed?’

Carrie grinned, knowing that her customer was right and knowing that if she didn’t at least look cheerful she’d scare further custom away. ‘I ’ad, as a matter of
fact,’ she said breezily. ‘And when the war in the Far East is won as well, you can ’ave a basket of apples for free.’

‘Bloody Japs,’ her father said later that day at supper-time. ‘Why can’t Hirohito throw the towel in?’ He rattled his evening paper in irritation.
‘It says here they lost over a thousand men when the Yanks finally took Okinawa. And still it goes on: Yanks dying, Japs dying, prisoners of war dying.’

Miriam sniffed as she sat in a sagging-bottomed easy chair, darning a pile of socks. She didn’t mind Albert being heart-sore over the Yanks who were dying out in the Pacific, but she
didn’t given a tinker’s curse about the bloody Japanese. Leah didn’t very much care about them either. Her thoughts were centred on Christina, not the ongoing war in the Far
East.

Albert, uncaring of his audience’s lack of interest, mounted another hobby-horse. ‘And look at this,’ he said, stabbing at the newsprint with his thumb. ‘It says here the
Tories stand no chance in the comin’ election. It says the new Prime Minister’s goin’ to be Clement Attlee, not Winston Churchill. And after all that Winnie’s done for us.
Keepin’ our spirits up durin’ our darkest hours. It’s a damned disgrace!’

‘I wish you wouldn’t take on so, Albert,’ Miriam said, tossing a darned sock on to a pile of similarly darned socks and reaching for an undarned one. ‘People want a
change, that’s all. And you can’t blame ’em. Not after all they’ve been through.’ She stuffed a darning-tree into the heel of one of his socks and stretched the
thinning wool over the top of it. ‘I’m goin’ to be votin’ Labour,’ she said, vigorously attacking the thinning area with her needle, ‘and I ’spect everyone
else in Magnolia Square will be voting the same way, ’cept for ’Arriet Godfrey of course. ’Arriet will be voting Tory. She’ll be votin’ Tory till the Second
Coming!’

Leah fidgeted uneasily in her fireside chair. It was all very well nattering on about the Japanese and the coming general election, but what about problems a little nearer to home? What about
Christina’s increasing preoccupation? Instead of being happy as a lark at the prospect of soon being reunited with Jack, she was becoming more withdrawn with every day that passed. And Albert
and Miriam didn’t seem to notice.

‘Where’s Christina?’ she asked before Albert could give vent to yet another of the bees in his bonnet. ‘Why for do we hardly see her these days?’

‘She’ll be in her room, writing to Jack,’ Albert said easily, turning over a page to see what else was wrong with the world.

‘No, she isn’t!’ Miriam broke off her woollen darning thread with her teeth. ‘She’s gorn up to Kate’s. Our Carrie says Kate’s worryin’ about old
man ’Arvey ’avin’ turned up at ’er weddin’. I ’spect Christina’s trying to cheer’er up a bit.’

Christina wasn’t even aware of Kate’s anxieties. Carrie had told her that Kate and Leon were taking Daisy, Matthew and Luke swimming that evening and that she,
Danny, Rose and Elizabeth were going to go with them. It meant that, with a little luck, Carl Voigt would be at home on his own.

As she walked from the bottom corner of the Square to the more salubrious top right-hand corner, she reflected on the oddness of what she was about to do. All through the early part of the war
years she had regarded Carl Voigt as an enemy. He was an Aryan German. She was Jewish. Only over a very long period of time had she begun to accept that he was no different a neighbour than Daniel
Collins or Charlie Robson. And now she was going to him for help. Help that she doubted anyone else would know how to go about giving.

‘Kate’s out,’ he said politely as he opened the door to her. ‘She and Leon have taken the children swimming.’

Christina pushed a fall of silky dark hair away from her face. ‘It wasn’t Kate I wanted to see, Mr Voigt,’ she said, her inner tension showing in her voice. ‘It was
yourself.’

Carl suppressed a stab of apprehension. There had been a time in his life when Christina, by drawing attention to his nationality, had caused him a lot of distress. Hoping fiercely that she
wasn’t about to do so again, he said reluctantly, ‘Then you’d better come in, Christina. Would you like a cup of tea? I was just about to make one.’

Half an hour later, as they sat on straight-backed chairs at opposite sides of the kitchen table, there was no sign of apprehension in his eyes, only compassion.

‘The Red Cross would be the first organization to approach,’ he said, taking off his rimless spectacles and rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Even
if they can’t help you themselves, they will be able to put you in touch with other refugee and aid organizations.’ He laid his glasses on the table and clasped his hands, wondering how
best to say what must be said. In the end he said simply, ‘You mustn’t have too much hope, my dear. Millions have died in Germany over the last ten years. And if your grandmother or
your mother
had
survived, it would surely have occurred to them that you might have found refuge in England with your grandmother’s old friend. And now that war in Europe is over,
contacting Mrs Singer would be easy. She and the Jenningses have lived at number eighteen since the 1914–18 war. There could be no question of mail being wrongly redirected.’

Christina remained silent. It was what Kate had said to her. It was what everyone would say to her.

Carl regarded her with an anguished feeling of helplessness. He knew the irrational burden of guilt she was bearing, a guilt that came of knowing that all her family were almost certainly dead.
He, too, was bearing a burden of irrational guilt. Though he was a pacifist and hadn’t set foot in his homeland for over thirty years, he felt guilt by proxy for the monstrous crimes
perpetrated there. And if he could help just one Jewish family to be reunited, it was a guilt that might, in a very small way, be eased.

‘Write down the names of your mother and grandmother,’ he said decisively, ‘their birth dates, their last known address. I’ll start making enquiries tomorrow.’

Christina gave a small gasp, almost crying with relief. If Carl Voigt was prepared to help her, then it meant her quest wasn’t entirely without hope. ‘Thank you,’ she said
unsteadily.

Carl smiled. With his thinning hair and rimless spectacles, he wasn’t a good-looking man, but his diffident manner possessed its own kind of charm, and Christina was suddenly aware of just
why a shy, middle-aged woman like Ellen Pierce was so attracted to him.

‘Nichts zu danken,’
he said, rising to his feet to make a fresh pot of tea. ‘Don’t mention it.’

For the first time ever she didn’t flinch at being so forcibly reminded of his nationality. It was, after all, her nationality also.
‘Meine Mutter ist am ersten Mai 1900 in
Heidelberg geboren,’
she said, reaching in her handbag for pen and paper, and speaking German for the first time in nearly ten years.
‘Und meine Grossmutter am siebten Oktober
1870 in Bermondsey.’

When Kate and Leon and the children burst into the house an hour or so later, they were brought up short in shock at hearing an animated conversation in German taking place in the kitchen.

‘I didn’t know your father ever lapsed into German,’ Leon said in startled surprise, Luke straddling his shoulders and clutching at his still damp, crinkly hair.

‘Grandpa calls me
mein Häschen,’
Matthew said informatively as they hung their coats and jackets up in the hall. ‘It means my little rabbit. And he calls Daisy
mein Schätzchen
which means—’

‘It means my little treasure,’ Daisy said, smiling winningly up at Leon. She, not Matthew, remembered him from a time even before Luke had been born. A time when he had returned to
Magnolia Square on leave, bringing her oranges when oranges were a nearly unobtainable treat. At seven years old, she was old enough to realize that Leon was not her real daddy, just as Kate was
not her real mummy, but that only made both of them more special to her.

‘Can we go swimming next week as well, Daddy-Leon?’ Matthew asked, trying to bring the focus of attention back to himself. ‘Will you teach me to doggy-paddle and dive
and—’

‘It must be Christina he’s talking to,’ Kate said as Leon swung a squealing Luke down to
terra firma.
‘I think it might be as well if you took the children
straight up to bed. I’ll bring a tray of cocoa and sandwiches up.’

Leon raised his eyebrows slightly. Kate was indicating that whatever conversation was taking place in the kitchen, it was of a private nature and she didn’t want the children interrupting
it.

‘All right,’ he said obligingly, wondering what on earth the subject under discussion could be. ‘Come on, troops. We’re going to make ourselves scarce for a little while.
Whose bedroom am I going to tell a bedtime story in?’

‘Mine! Mine!’ Matthew shouted eagerly, too delighted at the prospect of being told a bedtime story by his new daddy to protest at being taken to bed the minute they had returned
home.

‘It isn’t your bedroom,’ Daisy chided, taking hold of Luke’s hand to help him up the stairs. ‘It’s your bedroom and Luke’s. You share it.’

If his new daddy hadn’t been there, Matthew would have put his tongue out at her. As it was, he said magnanimously, ‘I
know
we share it. We share it ’cos we’re a
family. But I can still call it
mine.
Calling it mine doesn’t mean not sharing, does it, Daddy-Leon?’

Kate grinned and left Leon to it. Walking into the kitchen, she put the carrier-bag with their damp towels and wet swimming costumes down by the copper and said cheerily, ‘We’ve had
a wonderful time. I’d no idea Rose was such a good little swimmer. She and Daisy were like a pair of eels.’