Magnolia Square (20 page)

Carrie sighed heavily and turned the tap off. She loved her mother dearly, but there were times when she found her a sore trial. She began to make her way upstairs again, thankful that, as Rose
had been moved into the roomy attic bedroom for the duration of Jack’s visit, she was unlikely to be woken by all the commotion.

‘It’s on its way!’ she shouted before her mother could really get her knickers in a twist.

From behind her grandmother’s bedroom door Bonzo growled, bad-tempered at having his sleep disturbed. Carrie’s lips tightened. Bonzo would have his sleep disturbed even more
frequently when the baby was born. And so would everyone else. Her grandmother, of course, wouldn’t mind in the slightest, but her mum and dad had to be up before the crack of dawn to be at
Covent Garden, buying in fruit and veg, and broken nights would be hard for them. And what about Danny? She pushed open her parents’ bedroom door. She hadn’t told him about the baby
yet. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Kate. And she didn’t intend telling anyone until she heard whether she and Danny were going to be able to move into number seventeen now that the
Binns family were moving out of it.

‘That’s the gel,’ Miriam said, her pink slumber-net crammed on her head back to front. ‘Put it dahn by your dad’s side of the bed, but not too close. I don’t
want ’im goin’ for a paddle in the middle of the night, as well as a piddle.’

‘It’s looking hopeful, Carrie,’ Bob Giles said to her next morning as she faced him across the desk in his cluttered study. ‘Housing don’t have
any immediate plans for number seventeen, and it’s just possible we could pull a fast one and have you and Danny in there before the house is even officially listed as being empty. The
landlord is the Harvey Construction Company.’

Carrie’s sea-green eyes flew wide. ‘Blimey!’ she said expressively. ‘I didn’t know old man Harvey owned property in Magnolia Square, and I bet Kate doesn’t
know either!’

‘Joss Harvey owns a lot of property in Blackheath and Lewisham,’ Bob Giles said, well aware of the fraught relationship that existed between Kate and Mr Harvey, ‘but I think
number seventeen is the only house in Magnolia Square owned by him.’

‘And wouldn’t you know it has to be the only house me and Danny have a chance of moving into!’ Carrie said, not at all sure how she felt about having Joss Harvey as her
landlord.

Bob Giles, well aware that church property in the Square was still standing spectacularly empty, adjusted his clerical collar a little uncomfortably. ‘If I’d realized earlier how
very much you and Danny wanted a place of your own, I would never have agreed to house a refugee in number eight. As it is, Miss Radcynska is due to arrive any day now and. . .’

The unthinkable happened. Without so much as a knock or a by-your-leave, his study door flew open.
‘It’s over!’
Hettie announced euphorically, her wraparound,
floral-patterned pinafore tied tightly around her ample waist, her hat crammed on her head at an almost jaunty angle, a feather-duster clutched in one hand. ‘The bloody Japs have given in!
We’re not at war any more! Not with anyone!’

‘Praise God!’
Bob Giles bounded from his chair, oblivious of Hettie’s colourful language, Miss Radcynska forgotten. ‘Is Daniel at work, Hettie? Can he help me ring
the bells?’

‘He should be at work but he’s got a bad back,’ Hettie answered, not wanting to admit to the fact that Daniel had woken with an almighty hangover. ‘It won’t stop
him ringing the bells though! He knew it’s what you’d be doing and he’s gone straight to the church!’

‘Is it official, Hettie?’ Carrie asked as they hurtled out of the vicarage in Bob Giles’s wake. ‘Was it announced on the wireless by the Prime Minister?’

‘It was announced on the wireless, but not by Mr Attlee,’ Hettie panted, eager to share the moment with as many Magnolia Square residents as possible. ‘He’ll be
announcing it official-like, later on. But it’s in the bag, Carrie! The man on the wireless said it was!’

Carrie’s sudden doubt that Hettie might be wrongfully anticipating things was dispelled the minute they burst out of the vicarage and into the Square.

Harriet Godfrey was running down her garden path, tears of thankfulness streaking her face. Kate was dancing a joyful ‘Ring-of-Roses’ with Matthew and Luke. Charlie was standing at
his open doorway, throwing the sheets of his morning newspaper into the air as if they were giant pieces of confetti. Emily Helliwell was hanging a Union Jack out of her bedroom window. Nellie
Miller was struggling down her garden path on elephantine legs shouting,
‘An’ now my ’Arold’ll be ’ome just like every other bugger!’
Mavis was standing
by Ted’s motor bike, sounding its klaxon so hard, it was a wonder anyone could be heard shouting anything. Jack was hanging out of an upstairs window at number eighteen, his chest bare, his
hair tousled, his grin so wide it was like the Cheshire Cat’s.

‘Then it’s really over?’ Carrie said incredulously beneath her breath as Bob Giles sprinted in the direction of his church and Hettie set off in his wake at a fair old trot,
intent on dragging Leah out of number eighteen for a public knees-up. ‘No more killing? No more waiting in dread for military telegrams? No more enemies to beat?’

There was no-one nearby to hear, nor answer, her queries and it didn’t matter because she already knew the answers. She lifted her face to the sun, joy and relief and pride surging through
her. Dear old Britain had done it! She had vanquished Germany and now, with America’s help, she had put paid to Japan as well! As St Mark’s bells joyfully began to peal, she gave a
whoop of exultation and exuberantly kicked off a shoe, sending it spinning as high and as far as she possibly could.

Doris Sharkey had opened the door of number ten and was standing uncertainly on the doorstep, looking as if she hadn’t yet heard the news and didn’t know what all the commotion was
about.

‘It’s peace!’ Harriet Godfrey called out to her as she hurried down the Square to number twelve in order to share the moment with Charlie. ‘The Japanese have given in!
Isn’t it wonderful news, Doris? Peace at last after all these years!’

If Doris also thought it wonderful news she didn’t say so, instead, like a frightened rabbit, she ducked back inside number ten, closing the door behind her.

‘Well?’ Wilfred demanded of her querulously. ‘What’s all the ruckus about? Have the Americans dropped another A-bomb? Is the Pope dead? Has that damn-fool Helliwell woman
made spiritual contact with Hitler?’

‘It’s peace, dear,’ Doris said nervously, wishing Pru was home, wishing Bob Giles would visit, wishing her present domestic nightmare would end. ‘The Japanese have
surrendered. The war’s over.’

Her husband glared at her. He was standing full-square in front of the fireplace, two home-made notice-boards slung around his neck so that they covered him, front and back, from his neck almost
to his feet.

‘And so, dear,’ she continued even more nervously, ‘as the war’s over there’s really no need for you to go out in the street like that and for—’

‘A spiritual war is still raging!’
Wilfred thundered, slamming a fist on the notice-board covering his chest. REPENT FOR THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH was emblazoned on it in
large, scarlet letters.
‘“If any man hath an ear, let him hear! Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils
.. .”’

He began to stride purposefully towards the hallway and the front door, and Doris pressed her hands to her face, saying in a cracked voice. ‘Please don’t go outside wearing those
placards, Wilfred. Mr Giles won’t like it. He may ask you not to be a churchwarden any more—’

‘I am a prophet of the Divine Jehovah! The Anglican Church is a man-made abomination! Mr Giles is a disciple of the devil!’

Silently and hopelessly Doris began to weep, the tears trickling through her fingers. It had been like this ever since Daniel and Bob Giles had brought Wilfred home from the churchwardens’
meeting. No-one, not even Dr Roberts, had been able to get a word of sense out of him. And now he wanted to go outside wearing his placards, and what would happen then? Small boys would laugh at
him and perhaps throw stones at him. Right-minded people would cross the street to get out of his way. People might even be scared of him. Tears dripped from the end of her nose.
She
was
scared of him. He had called her a whore of abomination, a harlot and a scarlet woman. Mr Giles and Dr Roberts had said he needed rest and quiet and that he’d probably be his old self in next
to no time. Though Mr Giles and Dr Roberts had been unaware of it, they had been offering very little comfort.

‘Please
don’t go outside, Wilfred,’ she said again, wondering how she would live with the shame if he did so. ‘Everyone’s happy and celebrating
and—’

‘Get thee behind me Satan!’
her husband roared, steadfastly walking out of the room into the hallway, his placards swaying cumbersomely. ‘“For thou savourest not
the things that be of God, but the things that be of men!”’ A placard caught on the hatstand, delaying his progress slightly. Wilfred turned sideways on, the better to navigate his
passage towards the front door. ‘“And fire came down from God out of heaven”,’ he announced, reverting once again to the Old Testament, ‘“and the end of the
world is nigh!”’

Doris’s hands were no longer pressed to her tear-stained face. She was wringing them, beside herself with distress and apprehension and despair. Fire and harlots – it was all Wilfred
seemed capable of thinking about. Dr Roberts had said that Wilfred’s obsession with fire had been triggered off by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that what he described as
‘Wilfred’s temporary nervous collapse’ was merely delayed reaction to the strain and stress of the last five years. Doris wasn’t so sure. Wilfred had always been strange
about the Bible, quoting disjointed passages from it whenever he wanted to prove a point, which was often. And though Dr Roberts’s explanation would account for Wilfred’s obsession with
fire, it hardly accounted for his unnerving obsession with harlots.

‘Harlots!’ Wilfred said vehemently, as if reading her mind. ‘Whores and sinners!’ He was at the door now, his fingers on the latch.

Distantly Doris could hear some of her neighbours discordantly singing ‘There’ll Always be an England’. A klaxon was sounding. Harriet Godfrey would no doubt still be out in
the Square, as would Leah Singer and Hettie Collins and Mavis Lomax and goodness knew who else. At the thought of what Mavis would make of Wilfred’s exhortations against harlots and whores,
Doris felt quite faint. Wilfred
couldn’t
go outside and make himself such a laughing-stock. Somehow, some way, she had to prevent him. As the door opened she made a lunge for him,
grabbing at his rear placard. The front placard shot upwards in response, nearly cutting his windpipe in half. As he staggered, half-throttled, Pru came running into view around the corner of
Magnolia Terrace and Doris fell against the doorjamb, nearly senseless with relief.

‘’Ave they let you ’ave the rest of the day off work?’ the landlady of The Swan, a Northerner, shouted out as Pru ran grim-faced past the bottom of Harriet
Godfrey’s garden. ‘Do you think the shops’ll be shut tomorrer and we’ll all be laking?’

Pru didn’t answer her. Whether there was a national holiday tomorrow, she neither knew nor cared. All she knew was that her father was on the verge of stepping out into the Square, his
ridiculous placards clanking about his person, and that her long-suffering mother would probably die with the shame of it if he did so. Breathlessly she raced past number eight and flung the gate
of number ten back on its hinges.

Her father, yanking hard on his front placard in order to ease the pressure on his windpipe, stared at her in mental confusion. ‘What are you doing home?’ he demanded, fire and
harlots temporarily forgotten. ‘You should be at work.’

‘I’ve been given the rest of the day off,’ Pru panted, grateful that the unexpectedness of her arrival had induced a flash of lucidity. ‘Now go back in the house, Dad.
You haven’t got the right shoes on.’

‘Haven’t got the . . .’ Wilfred began bewilderedly, straining to look over the top of his placard and down towards his feet.

Before he could realize she was talking almost as much nonsense as he’d been talking, Pru seized him by the shoulders, whipped him smartly around and thrust him back into the hallway.

As the door slammed mercifully shut behind them Wilfred said again, ‘What do you mean, I haven’t got the right shoes on? I always have the right shoes on. Brown for weekdays and
black for Sundays—’

‘Let me help you take your placards off, Dad,’ Pru continued, aware that she just might have found a way of successfully handling the religious lunatic she and her mother were now
obliged to live with. ‘It’s Tuesday today. You can’t wear placards on a Tuesday. Placards are for weekends.’

‘Placards are for . . .’ Wilfred began, his sense of disorientation growing.

Seizing advantage of it, Pru began lifting his front placard up and over his head. ‘“To every thing there is a season”,’ she began, hoping a biblical quotation would
settle the matter utterly, ‘“and a time to every purpose under heaven”.’ The front placard fell hard against the back one. ‘And the time for placards is
Saturday,’ she finished firmly as the offending four-foot by two-foot constructions slithered to the floor.

‘Oh, Pru! How do you do it?’ her mother asked in heartfelt admiration. ‘I couldn’t do anything with him. He wouldn’t listen to me and—’

The door knocker tapped lightly against the front door.

‘“And the Lord God shall come amidst thunder and Holy angels!”’
Wilfred declaimed, once more picking up steam.

Doris and Pru looked at each other fearfully. What if it was one of their neighbours wanting them to come out and join in the general celebrations? What if, when the door was opened, the person
or persons calling on them barged right in the house and Wilfred began regaling them with hell and damnation? The door knocker tapped against the door again, this time with a hint of
impatience.