Blitz (14 page)

‘Hey, pax, pax!’ David held up both hands. ‘Believe me, I mean no such thing. And isn’t it time we started to order? I yearn for noodles in my bowl rather than talking about the contents of male and female noodles, if you’ll forgive me a lousy joke.’

‘Darling, calling that a joke is to over-qualify it,’ Poppy murmured and began to read her menu. ‘Ye gods, David, how do they manage this in times like these? Shrimps and lobster?
Who’s catching them at this time of the year? Who’s got the time – ’

The proprietor materialized at her left shoulder. ‘I’m afraid there is no shrimp and no lobster available today, Madame Deveen,’ he said in a richly emollient voice. ‘There has not been for some time. But I leave these items on the menu just to encourage the hopes of better times to come. I can give you many agreeable dishes however. Some sweet and sour pork balls and a soft noodle and chicken dish – not a lot of chicken you understand, but some, and there are many ways with vegetables of course. I have some good won ton and a few spring rolls, filled with the best of bean sprouts which I grow myself from the small store of Mung beans I fetched from the docks only three days before the commencement of hostilities – ’

Joshy came back and joined in the ordering ritual with much delight and was given his first lesson with chopsticks by the round-faced proprietor and proved himself very deft. And Robin caught David’s eye and he lifted his brows comically and spread his hands wide as if to say, ‘You see? He just is a superior person.’ And she grinned back at him. Boy or girl, brain differences apart, it couldn’t be denied that there was a certain special something about Joshy.

They had been eating for five or perhaps ten minutes or so, prodding excitedly into one dish after another as they came up and were put on the Lazy Susan, when the big bead curtains over the main door rattled again and moved and a noisy party came bursting in. There was a blur of khaki and bright blue and a good deal of laughter that sounded to Robin decidedly alcoholic. She had spent enough nights on Casualty in her first year at the hospital, before the raids had begun, to have heard that on Saturday nights, and she recognized it again. And then there was a peal of high feminine laughter and her back stiffened suddenly. She knew that sound, and she lifted her head and looked, and Poppy, who was sitting opposite her caught her eye and said softly, ‘Is it?’

‘I think so –’ Robin said and ducked her head, as though she didn’t want to be seen and then, a little ashamed, raised it again. She was being ridiculous; and as the noisy party came barging past their table on a wave of brandy scented air well laced with a heavy musky woman’s perfume, she smiled carefully and said, ‘Hello Chloe.’

Chloe hadn’t seen them, but now she stopped and stared and then tugged on the sleeve of one of the men in her party and made him stop too.

‘Darling,’ she said and her voice was high and she used an exaggerated drawl. ‘Do see who’s here! The family, no less!’

‘What’s that?’ The man was a captain, and his uniform was very well pressed, even dapper. He wore his hair sleeked well back and rich with brilliantine and he had the square face, Robin decided, of the sort of man you saw in toothpaste advertisements. Quite good-looking at the first glance and desperately dull at the second. ‘Your people? Well, well. Good show, what?’

Robin felt her lips quirk. She’d lived in the East End long enough now to find herself filled with disdain at the sort of people her patients would label with loud scorn as ‘toffs’; and here undoubtedly was a toff. And a stupid one at that, she decided, because he was looking at them all with a sudden glassy stare. But then she realized he wasn’t stupid, but in fact rather sharp, because the glassiness came from brandy, rather than from any inner lacks.

‘How de do, sir,’ the man said and held out one hand to David. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr er – ’

‘Deveen,’ Chloe said loudly. ‘My stepfather, sort of.’ She giggled then. ‘Actually, dearest, I’m a poor ’ickle orphan, don’t you know, but Poppy here’s my stepmother and after my poor old dad died she hurried off and married David here, so he’s a sort of second time around stepfather, I suppose.’

‘With no control over her at all,’ David said easily, and smiled at Poppy and Robin could see the reassurance he was trying to put into that look. ‘Maybe you’ll do better, Captain er – ’

‘Stanniforth. Colin Stanniforth. You’re an American then?’

‘Indeed, yes.’

‘I see. Over here to see when your lot are going to come on in and join in the fun? Bit of a problem, some of your people, aren’t they? Want to sit there all cosy on the edge of the Atlantic and to hell with what’s going on this side? Never mind though. We can manage well enough, eh?’ And he laughed rather loudly, his glassy eyes now fixed on David’s civilian suit.

‘I’m a journalist,’ David said levelly. ‘Writing the most honest account I can of what’s going on here on the British side of the Atlantic. I could perhaps persuade a few of the
isolationists back home to think again. It’s certainly what I’m trying to do – ’

‘Oh, darlings, no boring shop talk, for God’s sake. Too bloody boring to be true!’ Chloe said loudly and looked challengingly at Poppy, who had reddened a little at her language and glanced uncertainly at Joshy. He, however, was ignoring all of them, intent instead on chasing a pea round his bowl with his chopsticks. ‘So what are you all doing here? I thought the young one was off being a vaccie somewhere? Ought to be in bed anyway.’

Joshy, aware now that he had entered the conversation and having successfully speared his pea, even if he couldn’t get it in the right way between the tips of both his chopsticks, glowered at her.

‘I ran away, if you must know,’ he said sourly. ‘Honestly, Chloe, you do look soppy. All that stuff on your face. You don’t look like that when you come to tea at our house.’

Chloe looked thunderous and David laughed. ‘Oh, dear, isn’t it sad when brothers and sisters fight, Captain Stanniforth? Still it must be a comfort to you to know that Chloe’s family is so honest with her!’

‘Eh, what? Oh, yes, absolutely, yes.’ Stanniforth said and gave a bark of puzzled laughter. ‘I say, Chloe, better be joining the others, I’m afraid. They’re getting a touch restless, the natives –’ And indeed the rest of their party had started banging on the table with spoons to attract their attention and everyone else in the restaurant was looking round. Robin was mortified but Chloe seemed to regain her composure at once and positively preened.

‘Such a fuss. Can’t leave them for a moment but they’re yelping,’ she said. ‘Just like you, Joshy. As I said, time you were in bed, isn’t it? You’re looking positively hagged. But then, so do you, Robin. You need some makeup, dear – let me know what you want to spend and I’ll put you in touch with my chap. A dear little man – gets all sorts of goodies over from America mostly.’ She flashed a sharp little glance at David. ‘I dare say you’re much too busy to think of such things for her, eh, David? Not even for Poppy –’ And she threw a slightly contemptuous glance at Poppy’s subtle makeup. ‘Well, dearest, must fly. See you soon, hmm?’ And she swept off, taking Stanniforth with her, and soon the noise from the other table
where they and their friends were ensconced doubled and everyone else returned to their own food and stopped staring.

‘Why does she do that?’ Poppy said in a low voice. ‘She’s not exactly marvellous when she comes to see us at home, but whenever we run into her when we’re out she behaves as though we’re something to be ashamed of – it’s too bad of her – and Joshy, you didn’t help. I’ve told you never to make personal remarks.’

‘Well, she did it first,’ Joshy said passionately.

‘I didn’t hear anything to make you so –’ Poppy began, but Joshy looked even more thunderous.

‘She made a personal
look
,’ he said. ‘She looked at me the way Mrs George looked at me the time I fell in all the cow muck and came into the kitchen and dropped it on the floor and the – ’

‘Joshy, darling!’ Poppy said and closed her eyes, for his voice had been loud enough for the people at adjoining tables on both sides to hear and look amused, and David laughed.

‘Forget it all,’ he said amiably. ‘This is our holiday, remember? Tomorrow it’s trains north and all the other miseries, but right now here are quantities of noodles and vegetables and even, I suspect, some more sweet and sour pork left. Joshy, will you have some fried rice first? Look, it’s got real undried egg bits in it – ’

They settled down to finish their meal and no more was said about Chloe. But Robin was very aware of her and sat and brooded a little. Did she really look so awful? It was all right for Chloe in her comfortable safe office job with all the time in the world to spare, or so it seemed, to look so wonderful – and Robin couldn’t deny she did, to a very marked degree – but no second-year student nurse at the London could possibly compete with her. Which saddened Robin a good deal. She wasn’t vain, but she took a healthy interest in her appearance, and she could still feel that cool stare of Chloe’s raking her face, innocent of any makeup as it was. She’d really have to take herself in hand, she thought then. I can’t have someone of her age looking so much better than I do –

And then felt another stab of anger; because wasn’t she now doing exactly what she had complained to David about – which was thinking like the silliest sort of girl? Modern women were supposed to be different, to be serious and hardworking, not
flibberty and makeup-mad like Chloe; yet here she was, as modern as anything and wanting to look like her man-mad stepsister –

It was a very confused Robin who filled her bowl with the last of the noodles and set about competing with Joshy to see who could eat them in the tidiest way. Very confused indeed.

By lunch-time, Poppy had seen Robin and a rather white-faced and stonily dry-eyed Joshy off at Liverpool Street station, and wept her way back to Jessie’s Cable Street premises in a taxi. Parting with him again had been hell and his own attempts to hide his distress had only added to her own sense of misery. But, she told herself, as she pushed her half crown into the taxi driver’s hand, go back to safety he’d had to. However painful it was better for everyone involved, it had to be, and she felt a great surge of gratitude for Robin’s good-heartedness in spending one of her all too precious off-duty days looking after her little brother’s needs. And that feeling helped her in her resolve to think no more about Joshy. To do so would be like pulling the scab off a festering wound. She wouldn’t, couldn’t do that. Instead she would concentrate on other matters; and now she sat at Jessie’s side going through the orders with her so that they could share their resources between their restaurants as scrupulously as they could. The time she had lost at the office because of Joshy’s escapade hadn’t after all resulted in the muddle and confusion she’d feared; Minnie, the bookkeeper at her own restaurant over in Knightsbridge had kept things going there beautifully, and hadn’t had a single quarrel with old Horace, the head waiter – a remarkable circumstance on its own – and at Jessie’s restaurant in Duke Street, Ollie, the chef Jessie had found in an Indian restaurant in the Old Kent Road and who had turned out to be the best cook of classic Jewish food in the whole of London, had been equally capable. So now the two of them sat hunched over their books at Cable Street, while that much smaller restaurant, too, almost ran itself, with Lily to keep an eye on it.

‘I tell you,’ Jessie said lugubriously. ‘If it wasn’t for this war and we could get all the supplies we need, we could be coining it, really raking it in, you know that? I’m turning customers away here and at Duke Street, just like you are in Knights-bridge, and I’m here to tell you it’s making me plutz – ’

She stopped then as Poppy lifted an eyebrow at her. ‘All right, it’s making me choke with aggravation! The money we could be making – ’

‘If there wasn’t a war on, Jessie darling, there’d be more restaurants around and not so many customers. It’s only because of rationing that more people try to eat out these days. So stop thinking you’re losing a fortune. You’re not. What we have to work on is this problem of supplies. And not just for the business. There’s the canteen to think about too – ’

Jessie looked at her sideways. ‘I sometimes get the feeling you worry more about the canteen than you do about the business.’

Poppy was silent for a moment and then said levelly, ‘Perhaps I do. It’s my war effort, Jessie. I have to take it very seriously.’

‘The restaurants are war work too,’ Jessie pointed out. ‘We give soldiers and all like ’em on leave places to go to, fun places they can take a girl and be romantic. It’s an important thing, that. Morale and so forth. They go on about it on the wireless, and I listen and I feel good. I think, Jessie, my girl, I think, you’re building morale, that’s what you’re doing. Even here in the East End which ain’t so glamorous and I’m the first to admit it, even here I do a sort of war work. Old Marky – you know the one – who’s partners with the Harris fella whose wife Sarah had the fits – Marky was telling me he’s working eleven, twelve, even thirteen hours a day, he’s got so many orders for naval uniforms in. And after that he’s got to make for the Army – if it wasn’t for this little place here, my little restaurant, he says he’d starve, on account he hardly ever gets to go home. So you don’t have to get so agitated over your canteen – you’re doing war work here.’

‘Yes I do, Jessie.’ Poppy pushed the books away from her and leaned back in her chair to stare very directly at her aunt. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Mind? Of course I don’t mind – I’m just saying you don’t have to run yourself skinny to do extra war work when you’re doing it anyway with the business.’

‘The business makes money. It’s our living – or part of it. David’s doing well enough, but with two young children to plan for – and there’s Robin too, entitled to some sort of future cash – well, I need the money. And work which earns it, I can’t see as a real war effort. So the canteen – ’

‘I know. You work all day here and then half the night there to make sure they may all get a cuppa, you don’t have to tell me – ’