Magnolia Square (23 page)

‘Come along, sweetheart,’ she said tenderly. ‘No more tears. Are you going to help me fill this pastry-case with strawberries? Would you like to make a strawberry tart all of
your very own?’

Christina lay beside Jack in their bedroom. He was sleeping soundly, his breathing heavy and deep, and she lay very still in order not to wake him. It was very early, faint
slivers of light just beginning to ease the curtained darkness. He spoke indistinctly in his sleep. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he was saying her name. She stared up at the ceiling. In
another few hours he would be leaving her. And when he returned, he would be doing so for good. Carefully, she slid her legs from beneath the sheets and stood up. It had been a hot night and the
linoleum beneath her feet was welcomingly cool. With her cotton nightdress skimming her ankles, she padded across to the window and drew back a corner of the curtain.

Pure and piercing, the first fingers of the dawn stabbed the sky. Number eighteen was at the bottom right-hand side of Magnolia Square, and from her bedroom window Christina had a magnificent
view of St Mark’s Church, standing proudly on its island of grass, and of all the even numbered houses, from number fourteen all the way to number two.

In the Lomaxes’ bedraggled front garden, a disused pram had joined Billy’s scrap-metal collection. Presumably he was going to strip it down and use the base and wheels for a trolley
or go-kart of some kind. Next door to the Lomaxes’, the Helliwells’ flower-strewn bomb-site added a touch of exoticism to the Square. In the now golden light, roses of medieval France
and Persia rampaged in what had always been an unorthodox garden. Left untended, the rose bushes had grown jungle-thick, reaching head-high in some places, white and crimson and heart-achingly
beautiful.

Next door to the bomb-site’s botanical splendour was number twelve. One lot of banns had already been called for Charlie and Harriet’s wedding, and in another three weeks they would
be man and wife, and living in Harriet’s house at the Blackheath end of the Square.

‘So you’ll ’ave plenty of time to fix number twelve up to yer own fancy before Jack comes ’ome,’ Charlie had said to her affably. ‘The only things I’m
leavin’ behind that I care about are my pigeons. ’Arriet says there’s no room for ’em in ’er back garden. Wot she really means is, she don’t want a pigeon shed
bang against ’er kitchen winder and pigeon droppings all over ’er lawn, and I don’t suppose you can blame ’er.’

Beyond number twelve were the heavily curtained windows of the Sharkeys’ house, windows that, as often as not, were now curtained throughout the day. What was going on there, Christina
didn’t know, though there were rumours in plenty. Albert had told his clan that he had it on good authority from Daniel Collins that Wilfred Sharkey had completely lost his marbles. Miriam
had given it as her opinion that Wilfred was a secret wife-beater, reminding everyone of the way Doris Sharkey had worn her hat halfway over her face at Kate and Leon’s wedding.

‘The nasty brute ’ad given her a shiner, I said so to ’Ettie at the time. Bible-bashers are all alike. All spare the rod and spoil the child, and I ’spect they’re
just the same with their wives. Poor Doris never passes the time of day with anyone now. She scurries in and out of that ’ouse like a frightened rabbit, and word is Pru’s ’ad to
give up ’er job at the solicitors in order to ’elp ’er mother keep Wilfred in ’and.’

Next door to the Sharkeys’, number eight stood starkly empty. The Tillotsons still hadn’t returned to the upper part of the house, and no-one knew when the Polish refugee destined to
move in to the lower half of the house was going to put in an appearance, though it surely couldn’t be much longer before she did so. Then there was the Voigts’ house, soon, no doubt,
to become known as the Emmersons’ house, and Harriet Godfrey’s house. When Harriet married Charlie she would become Jack’s stepmother and her stepmother-in-law. It was an odd
thought, but so many of her thoughts were odd now that one more was of no importance whatsoever. What
was
important, though, was that she still hadn’t shared her innermost thoughts
with Jack. She still hadn’t told him of her fierce hope that her mother and grandmother had survived the war, or of the efforts Carl Voigt was making, on her behalf, to find them. She leaned
closer to the window, her cheek pressed to the cool glass. Why hadn’t she unburdened herself to him? Was it because the celebratory atmosphere of VJ Day, and days that had followed it, had
been so ill-suited to such a discussion? Goose-bumps came up on her bare arms, but not from cold. The trip up town on VJ Day, with Jack, Kate, Leon, Danny, Carrie, Mavis, Malcolm Lewis and goodness
only knew who else, had been a nightmare for her.

Relieved though Christina was that the war in the Far East was finally over, she hadn’t wanted to celebrate it by whooping and singing and making an exhibition of herself in Piccadilly
Circus and Trafalgar Square. The others had, though. And they hadn’t been alone. Londoners had been out in full throng, and not just Londoners. There had been servicemen in Dutch, Polish and
Czechoslovakian uniforms. There had been so many Americans and so many Stars and Stripes vying for prominence with Union Jacks that it would have been quite easy to imagine they were in an American
city.

When people had begun dancing in the streets, the Magnolia Square contingent had joined in wholeheartedly, dragging her in their wake. In Trafalgar Square, Mavis, Carrie and Kate had scrambled
up on to the back of one of Landseer’s bronze lions, and Jack had laughingly insisted on her joining them. Outside Buckingham Palace they had sung the National Anthem and cheered King George
and Queen Elizabeth until they were hoarse. Then, when it was evening, they had forged a way through the crowds to Piccadilly Circus. At midnight, Big Ben’s chimes had boomed out resonantly,
signalling the official end of the Japanese War, and what had seemed to be every motor horn in London had begun to blare.

Klaxons had sounded. Policemen had blown whistles. From the direction of the Thames, tug horns had hooted. The cheering had become deafening, and it had been then, at the apex of exuberant joy,
that some GIs standing near them had stretched out a stout blanket to serve as a trampoline and Mavis had recklessly and willingly allowed herself to be flung by them, time and time again, high
into the air, her legs and arms all over the place, her skirts flying. She rubbed the goose-flesh on her arms. Jack had roared out his approval along with every other red-blooded male massing the
Circus, and she had felt, terrifyingly, mentally and emotionally distant from him. It had been a sense of distance that had escalated into an all too familiar sense of dizzy disorientation. Trapped
in a sea of celebrants, her heart and mind obsessed with the probable whereabouts of her mother and grandmother, it was a disorientation she was powerless to suppress.

Round and round her thoughts had gone, wondering if and where her mother and grandmother were celebrating the end of the war in the Far East. Were they in a hospital? A refugee-camp? Were they
perhaps picking up scraps from gutters in order to survive, as cinema newsreel films had showed thousands of European homeless doing? No-one around her, with the possible exception of Kate, was
sparing her mother and grandmother a thought, and in such an atmosphere it had been impossible for her to have spoken their names to Jack. And so nothing had been said; not then; not afterwards.
And now, in only a few short hours, he would be returning to his Commando unit, and unless she took very speedy action, the mental and emotional gulf yawning between them was going to remain
unbridged.

He stirred, beginning to wake, stretching a naked, well-muscled arm across to her side of the bed. As his hand failed to come into contact with her warm flesh his eyes opened abruptly, sleep
vanishing. ‘Christina?’ He pushed himself up against the pillows. ‘What are you doing out of bed at this unearthly hour, love? What is it? Five o’clock? Six?’

‘It’s just after five.’ She began to walk back towards the bed and he threw the sheets aside for her, suppressing a surge of impatience. If she’d woken early on this, the
last morning of his leave, why on earth hadn’t she woken him also, in order that they could make love? Why, instead, had she been standing staring out of the window?

As she lay down beside him, he pulled her lovingly into his arms, his desire and need of her blatantly obvious. Answering response flared through her, to be immediately checked at the thought of
the occupants of the adjoining rooms.

‘It’s Saturday,’ he said reassuringly, reading the expression in her eyes with unerring accuracy. ‘Miriam will have gone up to Covent Garden with Albert. She always does
on Saturdays.’ He reached down, lifting the hem of her nightdress, sliding his hand up the satin smooth softness of her flesh. ‘And Leah’s snoring like an old porker,’ he
said, cupping her left breast and gently brushing her nipple with his thumb, ‘and Carrie and Danny and the kids are still fast asleep.’

She trembled at the warmth of his touch, once again strung on exquisite cords of need that reached deep within her.

He sensed the instantaneity of her response and relief roared through him. She wasn’t regretting their marriage. She wasn’t beginning to fall in love elsewhere. She was still in love
with him. And, dear God, he was going to make sure she stayed in love with him! He lowered his head to hers, kissing her temples and then the corners of her mouth, his eyes dark with passionate
need.

She moaned softly in submission, her hands sliding up into the thick tumble of his hair. This time, when they had made love and were still lying conjoined, she would confide in him all her hopes
and fears where her mother and grandmother were concerned. This time she wouldn’t waste the opportunity; she would breach the mental and emotional chasm dividing them and they would be united
utterly, just as they should have been from the very first moment he had arrived home.

His hand uncupped the pleasing weight of her breast and slid downwards to the coarse, springy-dark triangle of her pubic hair. ‘This will be the last for a long time, sweetheart,’ he
said huskily as he felt her warm, velvet-soft dampness, ‘let’s make it memorable, shall we?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered with fierce urgency, for once oblivious of Leah asleep in the room next door, and of the presence of others elsewhere in the house. ‘Oh, yes, Jack!
Love me! Please love me!’

Only too happy to oblige, he eased his hard, superbly fit body over hers and silenced her pleas with hot, sweet lips.

Later, as they lay naked and sheened with sweat in a tangle of bed-linen, listening to the house beginning to creak to life, she said at long last, ‘There’s something I want to talk
to you about, Jack. Something that’s been troubling me.’

He had been lying, one arm around her shoulders, a cigarette in his free hand. He took one last drag on the Craven ‘A’ and then stubbed it out in the saucer by the bed that served as
an ash-tray. He’d known ever since he had returned home that there was something troubling her. Now, not before time, she was going to tell him what it was. He felt a spasm of apprehension.
Christina was a highly intelligent young woman. Whatever was troubling her would not be trivial. He just hoped to God Carl Voigt wasn’t part and parcel of it. In another time and place, Carl
Voigt was exactly the kind of well-educated, middle-class gent Christina’s family might well have been happy for her to have married. Or would have, if he had been Jewish. Even taking that
little difficulty into account, he knew there were many people who would have found the idea of Christina marrying a widower of Carl Voigt’s standing a great deal less surprising than her
having married a south-east London roughneck like himself.

Stalling for time, not knowing quite how to continue, Christina pushed herself up into a sitting position against the tumbled pillows. She didn’t only want to tell Jack about the search
she and Carl Voigt had embarked on, she wanted to try and make him understand the burden of guilt and grief she felt at having survived the war in the cosy security of Magnolia Square, when so many
millions of fellow Jews had perished in concentration-camp ovens – of the guilt she felt at having turned her back on her religion, and culture. She pulled a sheet over her knees and drew
them towards her chin, circling them with her arms.

Jack lay, his weight propped on an elbow, his eyes on her face. She was sitting in exactly the same position Mavis had adopted when he had been on the Heath with her. There, however, the
similarity ended. There was no blowsy, happy-go-luckiness in Christina’s demeanour. Framed by a halo of soot-dark hair, her delicately boned face was intent and pale.

‘Yes,’ he prompted. ‘What is it, Tina? Is living with the Jenningses beginning to get you down?’

The very idea was so ridiculous and, even if it hadn’t been, was so trifling an issue that her eyes flew wide with shock. ‘No, of course not! I love them all far too much for them
ever to get me down! It’s something else . . . something that isn’t easy for me to talk about.’