Magnolia Square (33 page)

Bowler-hatted and gloved, and wearing a vicuña overcoat, Joss Harvey stomped up the polished wood stairs of his City solicitors. Kate Emmerson,
née
Voigt,
no doubt thought she’d been deviously clever in allowing him access to Matthew. She no doubt thought such contact would satisfy him and preclude him from trying to obtain custody of Matthew.
He snorted in derision as a female minion hurried out of Cyril Habgood’s plushly furnished sanctum to greet him. She hadn’t been clever at all, by God. She’d been an absolute
ninny. The contact he had since had with his great-grandson had merely served to reinforce his determination to remove the boy permanently from her care and to rear him himself. And thanks to the
offensive environment in which Matthew was living, such a task was going to be exceedingly easy to achieve.

He snorted to himself again as he was ushered into Cyril Habgood’s holy of holies. Despite every appearance to the contrary, he had known his former employee was a slut from the moment she
had told him she was pregnant with his grandson’s child. How could she be anything else? Respectable young women did not have babies out of wedlock. No doubt if Toby had lived, he would have
married her, but the girl would still have been a slut. How could a girl who had happily embroiled herself with a black West Indian seaman be anything else?

‘Morning, Joss!’ his solicitor said sunnily, rising from behind his massive mahogany desk to greet him. ‘Wonderful weather we’re having for late October! Or is it news of
the income tax cuts that’s making me feel so equable? A reduction from ten shillings to nine shillings in the pound isn’t to be sneezed at, is it?’

‘I’m not here to chat about the Budget,’ Joss said abruptly, shaking Cyril’s hand and then seating himself heavily in the leather chair facing the desk. ‘I’m
here to find out how you’re going to block a Black Sambo’s application to adopt my great-grandchild.’

Leon shipped oars and reached for the hand-rolled gasper tucked behind his ear. It was good to be back on the dear old Thames. Compared to a lot of other recently demobbed men,
he was exceedingly lucky. Not only, as a Thames lighterman, had he been able to return immediately to a job he knew and loved, but he was even sailing the very same barge he’d been sailing
before the war had broken out. The last six years had left the
Tansy
a little bit the worse for wear, but she was still a solid craft. As she rocked and bobbed safely out of the main
shipping line, he took his mid-morning toke, watching the build-up of shipping heading up-river towards London’s wharves and warehouses. There were oilers and tugs gunnel-deep with coal and
tea and ballast. A boat from Norway surged up-stream, its decks piled high with planed timber. Another boat was from Sweden. Another from Denmark. He watched them without envy. The Thames would do
for him, thank you very much. He’d had enough of foreign seas to last him a lifetime.

He took a last drag at his cigarette before tossing the butt into the eddying water. He was bound for Greenland Dock and he still had quite a bit of river to cover. He set the
Tansy
to
hug the south shore off Woolwich Arsenal, wishing he had Matthew with him. Perhaps this coming Saturday, if he had overtime, he would suggest to Kate that Matthew spend the day aboard the
Tansy.
Luke would want to come too, of course, but he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes on two of them, and it was Matthew who was mustard-keen to sail the river.

He slid by Jetty Roads and began pulling across Hook Ness to Galleon’s Point, his Navy duffle coat buttoned against the stiff breeze. Perhaps Matthew, too, would one day proudly wear a
Waterman’s badge on his breast pocket. He looked across to the yawning entrances of the King George and Albert Docks. Matthew could do far, far worse. It was a grand life, working the river.
Especially when a man had a cosy home and a loving family to return to every evening.

The
Tansy
rounded the bend into Woolwich Reach. The Woolwich ferry was ploughing across the river, a spume of white water in its wake. It was a free ferry and a favourite haunt of
truanting youngsters. Young Billy Lomax, for instance, often spent all day hanging happily over the ferry’s rails as it forged back and forth, offering a magnificent view of passing shipping.
There was no sign of Billy today, however, and Leon sailed on, past St Mary’s Wharf and Trinity Wharf and the huge Siemans factory. With luck, Matthew and Luke would never play truant from
school, and he certainly had no worries on that score where Daisy was concerned. Daisy was as happy as a little lark at school. Every mealtime they shared together, she chattered ten to the dozen
about the things she and her friends were doing in class and the things they were going to do.

He began to round the bend that heralded Blackwall Point. He was a lucky man. He had a job that satisfied him to the depths of his being; he had children he would die for; and he had a wife he
loved with all his heart and body and soul. Just thinking of Kate made him feel breathless. She possessed an inner radiance and serenity that drew people to her like moths to a flame, and she
possessed a passion that was reserved for him, and him alone. At the mere memory of it he felt his throat tighten. Only that morning, she had told him that her period was late.

‘Please God let her be pregnant,’ he prayed as he brought the
Tansy
round head on tide, off Deadman’s Dock. ‘And let it be a girl this time. Another little girl
will make our family complete.’

He continued up-river, past the giant Tate & Lyle treacle factory on the north bank. The area all around it was known locally as Treacle Town, and he grinned to himself, glad he didn’t
live there; glad he was a south-Londoner; glad that he lived in a part of London rich in history and with wonderful high, open views of the river. Glad, and grateful, to be alive.

‘I’m afraid it’s still too early to be sure,’ Dr Roberts said to Kate, his stethoscope dangling from his ears like permanent appendages. ‘However,
if your breasts are tender and you’re passing urine more often than usual, and certain foods are making you feel nauseated, then it’s highly likely the reason is pregnancy.’ It
was the third time he had broken such news to her, and the first time she had received the news as a married woman. He sighed. Even now, with a wedding ring gleaming on the fourth finger of her
left hand, the situation wasn’t ideal. He didn’t approve of miscegenation. Black races were black and white races were white and, in his opinion, a mixing-up of the two benefited
no-one. Especially not the children of such marriages who, in his view, were unlikely to be accepted by either their father’s race or their mother’s race.

With perfect professional propriety he kept his thoughts to himself, saying, ‘Come and see me in another four weeks. An internal examination should be decisive by then.’

‘Thank you, Dr Roberts.’ Kate smiled politely, turned and left the room, well aware of his unexpressed opinion. It saddened her, but didn’t distress her. There would always be
people who disapproved of the unusual, and Dr Roberts was one of them. He wouldn’t, however, ever cause her or hers grief by name-calling or by behaving towards them in anything but the same,
punctiliously correct manner he displayed to the rest of the world.

She stepped out of the surgery into the chill crispness of autumn, dismissing him from her thoughts, thinking only of the baby she was now sure she was expecting. It would be the first child she
had conceived and would carry in conventional circumstances. Instead of being alone, unable to share either the weariness of pregnancy, or the exultation of it, with the father of her child, she
would be able to share every step of her pregnancy with him; the confirmation of it; the first time the baby moved in her womb; even, perhaps, the actual birth. With a spring in her step and a
heart bursting with joy, she unleashed Hector from the surgery railings and began to walk homewards, making a slight detour so that her route would take her past the Point. It was a glorious
morning and she wanted to be able to look out over the river in the faint, fond hope of being able to discern the
Tansy
amongst the maelstrom of shipping heading either up-river to the
wharves and docks, or down-river towards the open sea.

‘Cooee, there!’ a woman she knew only by sight called out to her from the far side of the road. ‘Where are the little ones today?’

‘Matthew is at nursery school, Luke is helping a neighbour care for his pigeons,’ Kate called back, wondering just how Charlie was coping with Luke’s ‘helping’.

With a cheery wave the woman continued on her way, heading down towards Greenwich. Kate continued in the opposite direction, breasting the hill that led out on to the Heath, unleashing Hector
from his lead so that he could have a good run. What would she and Leon call this new baby? Always, before, the choice of a name had been hers and hers alone. This time it would be a joint
decision. A joint decision that would be enhanced by a lot of suggestions from Daisy.

She skirted one of the Heath’s disused, gorse-thick gravel-pits. She wouldn’t even think of boys’ names because this time the baby was going to be a girl, she was sure of it.
Rebecca was a nice name, and biblical, too, like Matthew and Luke. On the other hand, it would be nice to have a name that married well with Daisy. Briony, perhaps. Or Pansy, or Primrose. She
called Hector to heel and crossed the road that flanked the Heath, separating it from the Point. Rose would have been an ideal name, but Carrie’s daughter was called Rose, and two Roses in
the Square would be confusing.

She came to a halt, her cherry-red coat buttoned high to her throat against the stiff breeze, looking out over the great loops of the Thames as it curved like a snake around Blackwall Point a
little to the east, curving again at Greenwich Reach directly below her, and then coiling yet again at Limehouse Reach to the west, just beyond the Greenland Dock. Was that where Leon was now, at
the Greenland entrance, waiting for the outer lock gates to yawn open and swallow the
Tansy
in? Or was he already in the main dock, the
Tansy
nose-to-tail with other lighters and tugs
and launches as they jostled for their respective wharves? Wherever he was, he would be content. The river was in his blood and his bones, and she knew that he hoped at least one of his children
would follow him on to it.

She frowned slightly, the stiff October breeze ruffling tendrils of hair at her temples, her long rope of braided hair hanging straight as a line down to her waist. Matthew was already showing
every sign of being fascinated by the river, but how could Matthew ever become a Thames Waterman? Joss Harvey had already entered his name for the preparatory department of the prestigious public
school that Toby had once attended. And a public school education led to many things, but not to obtaining Port of London Authority Waterman’s and Lighterman’s licences and becoming a
Freeman of the River.

Hector was barking impatiently, unhappy at the lack of attention he was receiving. She bent down and picked up a stick, throwing it for him, her frown deepening. For Matthew to enjoy a public
school education when Luke and Daisy and the new baby attended local schools, would be to bring class divisiveness right into the heart of their little family. Yet what choice did she have when she
knew, without a moment’s doubt, that Toby would have wanted his son to be educated as he had been educated?

Hector bounded triumphantly back to her, the stick in his mouth. She gently removed it, throwing it again, wondering what effect such a difference of education would have on the children’s
relationships with each other. Especially the relationship between Matthew and Luke. Down below her there was a subtle change on the river. Was the tide beginning to ebb? If it were, it was high
time she returned to Magnolia Square and relieved Charlie of his baby-sitting duties. She called a reluctant Hector to heel and turned her back on one of the most magnificent vistas London had to
offer. When Luke was a little older perhaps he would show signs of having the same Thames-loving fever as his father. If Luke became a Waterman then it wouldn‘t matter that Matthew
didn’t do so. And the new baby? Briony or Pansy or Primrose? What would she become when she grew up?

Kate raised her face to the hard grey sky, laughing aloud for pure joy. It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter in the slightest, not as long as she grew up happy and healthy and
kind-hearted. She stepped once more on to the Heath, working out the months. She must have conceived around the beginning of September, which meant the baby would be born in early June. Her own
birthday was in June, and next year she would be twenty-five. What a wonderful twenty-fifth birthday present a new baby would be, especially as Leon’s application to adopt Matthew would have
been approved and granted by then, and he would be Matthew’s legal father. She broke into a run of exhilaration, Hector bounding at her heels. Life was good. Life was so good that if it
hadn’t been for the baby she was certain she was carrying, she would have performed cartwheels all the way across the Heath and into Magnolia Square.

Mavis didn’t feel like performing cartwheels. She was on the run from Trafalgar Square, up the Haymarket to Piccadilly and then on into Oxford Street to Marble Arch. It
was one of the busiest bus routes in London, thick with shoppers and shop-workers. ‘’Old tight!’ she shouted as Burt, her driver, lurched away from the Simpson’s corner stop
and into the maelstrom of traffic surging around Piccadilly’s Eros. ‘Move dahn a bit, or go up on top. There’s plenty of room up there.’

A young man who had been strap-hanging, a shiny briefcase clutched to his chest with his free hand, obligingly accepted her advice, squeezing past her as he made his way towards the stairs.
Mavis braced herself against one of the crowded passenger seats, leaning back as far as she could to give him room. Burt braked hard as a black cab shot across his path from Vigo Street. The
strap-hangers lurched against each other, one woman giving a little scream. A seated passenger’s carrier bag fell off her knees, spilling apples and a bottle of Daddie’s Sauce into the
aisle. The young man with the briefcase staggered hard against Mavis, standing on her toes as he did so.