Magnolia Square (25 page)

Malcolm tried to suppress the surprise he felt. True, he barely knew Ted Lomax, for Ted had volunteered for duty at the outbreak of the war long before he, Malcolm, had become St Mark’s
scoutmaster, but it was inconceivable to imagine Mavis married to a man who didn’t enjoy a rowdy night out amongst friends.

Mavis, aware of his surprise, said wryly, ‘It does take a lot of believing, doesn’t it? Me, married to a non-partygoer.’

Malcolm coloured slightly, wondering if Mavis always read his thoughts with such embarrassing accuracy.

Mavis adjusted her stance a little more comfortably against the motor bike. ‘The attraction of opposites, that’s me and Ted,’ she said with typical frankness. ‘We
haven’t a single thing in common, except the kids, whereas—’

She broke off abruptly. She’d been about to say, ‘Whereas me and Jack have everything in common.’ It was no use allowing her thoughts to go down
that
particular
road.

‘. . . whereas Carrie and Danny are alike as two peas in a pod.’

Malcolm, who didn’t know either Carrie or Danny very well, accepted her statement without demur. ‘I suppose it comes of them having known each other since they were nippers,’
he said easily. ‘I don’t think I’d fancy it myself. There can’t be many surprises in store when you know someone so well, and I rather like surprises, they make life
interesting.’

Mavis, too, liked surprises, but not the kind of surprise Jack had sprung on her when he had become so obsessed by Christina. What on
earth
was the attraction there? Jack was flamboyant
and extrovert and dangerously reckless, and Christina was prissy and unemotional and agonizingly uptight. And, as if that weren’t enough, Jack was as south-London as jellied eels, while
Christina was utterly and quite unmistakably foreign. She chewed the corner of her lip. It was a foreignness no-one else, not even Jack, seemed aware of, probably because of Christina’s
nearly flawless spoken English. And it was a foreignness that wouldn’t have mattered a jot if only Christina had been more . . . more . . . She sought vainly for a suitable word and failed to
find it. Approachable, perhaps? Outgoing?

‘I’m going up the open-air swimming pool this evening with the Emmersons and their kids,’ Malcolm said, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘Do you fancy coming? It might be a
last chance now we’re into September.’

Mavis shook her head, no longer in her usual happy-go-lucky mood. ‘No thanks, Malc. I’ve things to do.’ She stepped away from the motor bike. ‘You could do worse than ask
Pru Sharkey if she wants to go with you, though,’ she said as an afterthought. ‘She’s been holed up in number ten like a latter-day Rapunzel for days now. A couple of hours of fun
is just what she needs.’ She walked across the pavement towards the munitions dump that was her front garden, her coarse-woven clippie’s trousers not diminishing her sexiness an iota,
no longer a Betty Grable look-alike but a Marlene Dietrich look-alike.

Malcolm remained on the pavement, watching her sashaying hips in flagrant admiration. Rapunzel? Where on earth had Mavis heard, or read, the story of the incarcerated Rapunzel? And how come in
all the time they had been speaking together she hadn‘t dropped an aitch once? As the front door of number ten closed behind her, he shook his head in bemusement. There was far, far more to
Mavis than met the eye.

‘Givin’ you the run-around, is she?’ a vastly amused Nellie shouted across to him. ‘I could’ve told you she would if you’d bothered to ask.’ She wheezed
with laughter. ‘Yer need a bit o’ Commando panache to succeed with Mavis. A scout’s whistle and a lanyard just ain’t enough!’

Malcolm grinned, not taking umbrage. If Nellie wanted to entertain herself at his expense she was more than welcome to do so. Whether he should knock on the door of number ten, risking having it
slammed in his face again and thereby giving her even more entertainment was, however, a moot point. He plunged his hands into his flannels pockets, debating it for a minute or two. Did he want a
graceless young woman, little more than a child, giving him the brush-off again? The answer was, of course, that he didn’t. He began walking in the opposite direction to number ten, towards
Magnolia Hill, pondering on the kind of activity his scouts would most enjoy at their next meeting.

Unseen by anyone but Nellie, Pru Sharkey let the corner of an upstairs window curtain fall back into place. Why couldn’t
she
be the one Malcolm Lewis was interested in? Why
couldn’t
she
be more like Mavis, not giving a fig what people thought of her, dressing as outrageously as she pleased, having respectable single young men as well as dangerously
attractive married men, falling besottedly in love with her?

‘Pru?’ her mother called out nervously from the foot of the stairs. ‘Pru? I think your dad’s sedative is wearing off. He’ll be wanting to go out with his placards.
Come down and help me with him for the Lord’s sake!’

Carrie rounded the corner of Magnolia Terrace into the Square, easing her basket of groceries from one hand to the other. It was mid-afternoon and she still felt queasy. Had
she felt queasy all day when she’d fallen for Rose? She couldn’t remember. Those days, when the war was a new and frightening experience, seemed so far in the past as to be ancient
history.

She walked desultorily along the top end of the Square, past St Mark’s vicarage. The war had been exciting, as well as frightening, what with cramming into public bomb shelters with babies
and dogs and knitting and thermos flasks of tea, and having a good old sing-song to try and drown out the noise of the German bombers, and doing war work down the ammunitions factory at Woolwich,
and having a bit of freedom in life for once.

She turned the corner, walking past Harriet Godfrey’s spick-and-span front garden. The war had certainly changed Harriet’s staid way of life. Although well in her sixties when war
had broken out, she had become a volunteer ambulance-driver, racketing through burning, bomb-shattered streets, a tin hat on her neatly coiffured hair, a rope of pearls incongruously around her
throat. And she had reclaimed the Square’s local villain, teaching him to read and write, and falling in love with him in the process.

Carrie shook her head in wonderment. Did people as old as Harriet Godfrey and Charlie really fall in love? And make love? Would she and Danny still be making love when they were in their sixties
and seventies? She just couldn’t imagine it. She certainly couldn’t imagine her mum and dad making love. Miriam never went to bed without an armoury of steel curlers in her hair, and
Albert’s snores could be heard throughout the house the instant his head touched the pillow.

She lifted the latch on Kate’s gate. The way she and Danny were going on, love-making would be a thing of the past long before they were thirty, let alone sixty. They’d had another
row that morning. She couldn’t remember now what it had been over, but it had been over something trivial, just like all their recent rows. She gave a cursory knock on the front door to
announce her arrival and then opened the door, bracing herself for Hector’s boisterous welcome. As he half-knocked her off her feet she remembered why Danny had erupted so bad-temperedly
before leaving for work. It had been because she had made cheese and tomato sandwiches two days running for his packed lunch.

‘You should be so lucky, Danny Collins!’ she had flared back at him, weary of morning sickness that stretched throughout the entire day; taut with tension at the prospect of telling
him about the baby when their living conditions were so stressfully cramped; apprehensive as to whether they would, or would not, be able to move into the house the Binnses had now vacated.
‘Plenty of other men only have jam to look forward to!’

‘Well, I ain’t one of ’em and I ain’t goin’ to become one of ’em!’ he had shouted back. ‘My ma never dished up jam sandwiches! We always ’ad
a proper meal on the table! Pig’s trotters and peas! Steak an’ kidney puddin’! Tripe an’ onions!’

It had been useless to point out that it was his packed lunch they were at odds about, not the hot meal she cooked for him every evening. The row had gone on, common sense lost to the winds,
ending only when he had slammed out of the house, too late to be able to clock in at work on time. And there, Carrie thought wearily as she fondled Hector’s ears, lay the true root of all
their domestic difficulties. He hated clocking in at the factory. He hated the mind-deadening work he did there. He hated the lack of respect and deference that were accorded him.

‘I’m in the kitchen!’ Kate called out from the depth of the house, guessing correctly her visitor’s identity. ‘Don’t let Hector be a nuisance! And don’t
let him get his nose into your shopping basket! He’s developed a craving for dried fruit and sugar!’

Lifting her basket firmly out of the way of Hector’s nose, Carrie walked down the passageway towards the multi-coloured stained-glass panels decorating the kitchen door.

How could she have been expected to know, when she had encouraged Danny to leave the Army, how much he would hate Civvie Street? To her, Danny being in Civvie Street had meant that, after years
of living apart, they would at last be sharing a home together, even if that home was her parents’ home. It had meant she would be able to see him off every morning with a packed lunch and
greet him home every evening with a hot dinner on the table. It had meant they would be able to go to the cinema together every week, take Rosie for walks in Greenwich Park, enjoy a drink together
of an evening in The Swan. The prospect had seemed idyllic. The reality had been a slow decline into querulous disillusionment.

‘I’m making a treacle tart,’ Kate said in greeting, rolling pastry out on the floured surface of her kitchen table. ‘There’s enough pastry here for an extra one.
Are you going to be here long enough to take it home with you, or shall I pop down with it later this afternoon?’

‘If it’s all the same with you I’ll stay till it’s ready,’ Carrie said, dumping her shopping basket down on the nearest available surface. ‘I need a cup of
tea, probably several cups of tea, and a long, long chat.’

Kate paused in her task, her hands still on her rolling-pin, a smudge of flour on her cheek. She and Carrie had been friends ever since they had been toddlers, and she knew her as well, if not
better, than she knew herself. ‘Is it as bad as all that?’ she asked, reading aright the depth of feeling behind Carrie’s bland words.

Carrie pulled a chair out from under the far side of the table. ‘Yes,’ she said, sitting down heavily. ‘Me and Danny are falling out over the least little thing. This morning
it was over his sandwiches. Yesterday it was over the way I iron his shirts. Tomorrow it will probably be over something even more trivial. And I’m pregnant. And I haven’t told him yet.
And Mr Giles hasn’t come back with any news over number seventeen.’

‘Pregnant?’ Kate seized on the only really important item in Carrie’s weary litany. ‘But that’s not bad news, Carrie, it’s
wonderful
news!’

Carrie smiled sheepishly, pushing a thick fall of dark hair away from her face. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said, ashamed of having lumped the news of the baby in with grumbles about Danny and
anxiety about number seventeen. ‘And if only Danny wasn’t so
difficult
these days, and if only we were living in a house of our own, I’d be over the moon about
it.’

Kate put down her rolling-pin. It wouldn’t do her pastry any harm to rest for a little while. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said, resorting to the oldest panacea she
knew. ‘If you’re only a few weeks pregnant I expect you’re feeling queasy all the time, and
that
won’t be helping you see things in perspective.’

She began to fill a kettle at the sink. ‘And there’s no need yet to get despondent about number seventeen. It isn’t as if anyone else has already moved in. And until they do
there’s still hope.’ She set the kettle on to the gas ring. ‘As for Danny, there must be some underlying reason he’s so grouchy. It could be that he’s beginning to
feel cramped, living with your mum and dad and gran, and that when you do get a place of your own, he’ll be his usual equable self again.’

Carrie grinned, beginning to feel better already. It was an effect Kate always had on her. There was a sunny, inner serenity about her childhood friend that complemented her own, more turbulent
nature perfectly. ‘Danny equable?’ she said wryly. ‘Who’s been pulling your leg? He’s about as equable as a rumbling volcano.’ Her grin faded. ‘And no, it
isn’t because he’s feeling cramped, living with Mum and Dad and Gran. It’s something more serious. Something I don’t know how can be put right.’

Kate’s long braid of hair had fallen forwards over her shoulder while she had been making pastry and she flicked it back again, her eyes holding Carrie’s. ‘Tell me,’ she
said simply.

Carrie rested her clasped hands on the scrubbed deal table. ‘Danny hates Civvie Street. He hates not being Sergeant Collins any more. He hates not being in a position of authority and not
being respected, and being only a name and a number on a clocking-in card. He’s unhappy and miserable, and the worst thing of all is that it’s my fault he’s unhappy and miserable.
His health wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t have stayed on in the Army if he’d chosen to do so. It was just dodgy enough to allow him to make a choice. And because I wanted him out
of uniform and at home, I talked him into the wrong choice.’

The kettle had begun to steam and Kate poured a small amount into a teapot, swirling it round and then emptying it down the sink. ‘But that’s understandable, Carrie,’ she said
gently. ‘It isn’t as if, before the war, you and Danny were living in married quarters, is it? He was always at Catterick Camp or somewhere equally far away, and you were living with
your mum and dad and gran. After all these years of his never being at home, it’s only natural you wanted him to opt for an early discharge.’ She tipped three caddy spoonfuls of tea
into the warmed pot. ‘And so the first thing you can do is to stop feeling guilty,’ she said firmly. ‘Feeling guilty solves no problems whatsoever.’