The Camberwell Raid (14 page)

Annabelle knew a lot about her mum’s earlier life and background, and she knew too that Nick and his family had known the same kind of hardships as her mum and her uncles. Nick, like them, had overcome similar disadvantages to turn himself into a lovely young man, just as she thought Uncle Boots had done, even if he had been called Lord Muck. If Nick decided to take out the mortgage on the Ferndene Road house, they would start their married life in a property even better than that of her parents.

‘Nick darling?’ she said, walking arm in arm with him through the dusk of the April evening.

‘I’m here,’ said Nick, deep in thought.

‘Yes, isn’t that nice?’ she said. ‘I’m fond of togetherness. Nick, if we really can’t afford it, I shan’t mind. And, anyway, perhaps it would be more sensible to start off in a smaller house, like Mum and Dad have.’

‘On the other hand, if we went for a twenty-year mortgage, that would help a lot,’ said Nick.

‘Oh, could we do that, could we manage more easily then?’ asked Annabelle. ‘Only it’s such a lovely family house. I could keep on working for a while and we could put all my earnings into the bank.’

‘You’re not going to keep on working,’ said Nick. ‘Your Great-Uncle John would have me executed if I let you. No, you can’t go out to work, Annabelle, not with a house like that to look after. And there’s the garden too.’

‘Me?’ said Annabelle. ‘Me look after the garden as well? That’s your job.’

‘Is it?’ said Nick. ‘You sure?’

‘You bet I’m sure,’ said Annabelle.

‘All right, I’ll look after the garden,’ said Nick. ‘Mind you, I’ll be a novice at it.’

‘You’ll learn,’ said Annabelle. ‘Nick, are you really going to say yes, to go for a twenty-year mortgage?’

‘I’m going to see that we start off in a house you’re already in love with,’ said Nick.

‘Oh, rapture,’ said Annabelle, and hugged his arm. ‘Nick, you’re lovely to me. I don’t know if I’m as deserving as that.’

‘Well, I’d like to have enough spare earnings to be able to keep you in decent style,’ said Nick. ‘You deserve that and more.’

‘Nick, I really won’t mind if we have to make do a bit,’ said Annabelle earnestly.

‘You still deserve the kind of clothes you like, and so on,’ said Nick. ‘The kind I like to see you in.’

‘What’s so on?’ asked Annabelle.

‘Woolly vests?’ said Nick.

‘Oh, yes, I wear those two at a time, I don’t think,’ said Annabelle. ‘Listen, when we get home, can we phone the Lawsons and tell them we’ve decided?’

‘Would you like us to?’ asked Nick.

‘Nick, I really would,’ said Annabelle.

‘And we’ll also tell them, shall we, that they can leave us the cot?’

‘Not likely,’ said Annabelle, ‘they might think I’ve already been struck by lightning, and we’re not married yet.’

‘All right, I’ll just say it might come in handy sometime,’ said Nick.

Annabelle laughed. As they turned into Denmark Hill, she asked, ‘Nick, have you ever had a girl?’

‘What, one I carried about with me and put in a cupboard at night?’ said Nick.

‘No, you daft thing,’ said Annabelle, ‘you know what I mean.’

‘Are you asking me if I’ve ever made love to a girl?’

‘Well, some young men get the urge, don’t they, and some girls say yes, don’t they?’

‘And some of ’em get into trouble,’ said Nick, ‘and ruin their lives. Ma brought me up not to go in for ruining any girl’s life. So I channelled all my urges into football. I expect even Jesus had urges, and what did He do with them? He channelled them into performing miracles.’

‘Oh, don’t you get urges now you play so much football?’ asked Annabelle.

‘What’s going on?’ enquired Nick.

‘I’m only asking,’ said Annabelle.

‘It’s a funny conversation,’ said Nick.

‘No, it isn’t, not between you and me,’ said Annabelle. ‘Anyway, urges are natural, aren’t they, when you’re in love?’

‘Hello, d’you get urges too?’ asked Nick.

‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Annabelle. ‘I mean, if we didn’t have them, something would be wrong with us, wouldn’t it?’

‘I suppose we’d both have to have an operation,’
said
Nick. ‘But I don’t feel I need one at the moment.’

‘Oh, good, because I don’t either,’ said Annabelle. ‘You don’t mind us talking like this, do you, Nick?’

‘It’s making me feel June’s a long way off,’ said Nick.

‘Crikey,’ said Annabelle, ‘d’you mean you’ve got an urge now?’

‘I’m giving up talking like this,’ said Nick.

‘Nick, you’re shy,’ said Annabelle, and laughed.

When they reached her home she asked him if he’d phone the Lawsons now. Nick said yes.

So he did, and he offered six hundred pounds as a first-time buyer. After some discussion, he and Mr Lawson settled for six hundred and ten, providing Nick would deposit fifty pounds with the agents within two days. Nick said he would, and Mr Lawson said he would advise the other couple that a firm offer had been made and accepted.

When Nick came off the phone, and had received good luck wishes from Lizzy and Ned, Annabelle whisked him into the parlour and kissed him.

‘Do that again,’ said Nick.

‘I’m going to be very nice to you,’ said Annabelle, ‘and tell you the best thing that ever happened to my dad was my mum, and the best thing that could have ever happened to me was you. Do you remember how we first met, in that lift at the insurance company’s offices?’

‘That was my luckiest day,’ said Nick, so Annabelle kissed him again and told him how improved he was, so different from the grumpy bloke he’d been when bossing the football team’s committee about many months ago.

Nick said he begged to differ, he’d never been
grumpy
, he’d been patted on the head all his life for being cheerful in the face of all disasters.

‘What disasters?’ asked Annabelle.

‘I’ll think of some,’ said Nick.

‘It’s Cassie’s and Sally’s double wedding soon,’ said Annabelle.

‘I hope I’ll survive the racket,’ said Nick. ‘I’m set on attending our own wedding.’

‘Oh, I do hope you’ll be there,’ said Annabelle. ‘It won’t be the same if you’re not.’

‘I’ll make it,’ said Nick. ‘What a house that is.’

‘And it’s going to be all ours,’ said Annabelle.

‘They’re leaving the carpets and the fittings,’ said Nick, ‘and I told them we’d like the cot as well.’

‘Nick, we’ll never get into the cot together,’ said Annabelle. ‘Can’t we afford a double bed?’

Meanwhile, the atmosphere among Boots and his family was one that had an uneasy lurking aspect. Despite Rosie’s calm demeanour, there was an undercurrent of worry that Major Armitage might attempt to make a claim on her. The family intended to fight that all the way.

Eloise put herself closer to Boots in her wish to be a reassurance to him. She knew all too well by now that he regarded Rosie as his very own, just as much as she herself was as his natural daughter. He was a man of very warm and generous affections.

‘We shall keep Rosie, Papa,’ she said more than once, ‘she is ours, yes, and I am being very nice to her.’

‘Well, you’re very nice to all of us,’ he always said.

Lilian was finding ways and means to avoid bumping into her conversational and admiring milkman.

Well, a milkman, for goodness sake. Her late husband Jacob, fatally wounded during the second battle of the Somme, had been in textiles and set for a promising career before he volunteered. There was nothing promising about a milkman’s career. But he’d unsettled her, and at a time when the thought of marrying again, of having a man in her bed and around the house, had been a recurring one. Her still healthy body had actually begun to feel starved. Oh, holy Moses, she thought, I’m blessed if that milkman doesn’t make a woman in my condition look twice. He’s got blue eyes like Sammy. The next thing I know I’ll be inviting him round one evening. I should worry about that? Yes, I should. He might start thinking about bedtime. So might I.

So she kept avoiding any possibility of bumping into him. And into Mr Abel Morrison too, for that matter.

A lady my age has got to be sensible, she told herself. I don’t want a portly bloke or one whose wage means I’ll still have to buy my own clothes. A wife has to be a giving woman, so she’s entitled to some rewards, like an open invitation to her husband’s wallet. Also, would I want to change my religion for a Church of England milkman with a thin wallet, even if he does remind me of Sammy?

My life, why have I suddenly got problems?

Lilian was by no means a grasping woman. She was as warm-hearted as any of her kind, but she was sold on the principle that it was a husband’s privilege to keep his wife, not the other way about.

The milkman, Bill Chambers, went whistling on his
round
and bided his time. He had taken a healthy fancy to his best-looking customer, a handsome and desirable widow, as the saying was about such women, and as long as the chief Walworth rabbi didn’t queer his pitch, he meant to court her. Some men did get to marry Jewish ladies.

THE SCHOOLS WOULD
soon be breaking up for the Easter holidays. Miss Polly Simms stopped Emma Somers as Lizzy’s younger daughter made for the gate after classes had finished one afternoon. Emma had followed her sister Annabelle to West Square, just as Annabelle had followed Rosie.

‘Emma?’

‘Oh, hello, Miss Simms,’ said Emma, chestnut hair of an even deeper hue than Annabelle’s, and eyes just as brown. She was two months short of thirteen, very bright and very self-confident. Out of school, Miss Simms was Aunt Polly to her and all the younger generation of the Somers and Adams families.

‘How is everyone at home?’ asked Polly.

‘Oh, jolly well in the pink,’ said Emma, school hat on the back of her head, gymslip reaching to her knees, satchel slung.

‘Will you and your family be going away for Easter?’ asked Polly.

‘Well, if we are, Miss Simms, no-one’s told me,’ said Emma. ‘Sometimes I feel ever so unimportant.’

‘Well, you’re not,’ smiled Polly, ‘and you don’t look it, or believe it either.’

‘Oh, I try to show a brave front,’ said Emma. ‘Of course, all it does is to make Daddy ask me why I’m sticking my chest out. He says things like that, you know, just like Uncle Boots does.’

‘Oh, they’re a couple of old soldiers together,’ said Polly, eighteen months short of forty and wishing she wasn’t.

‘Oh, did you know about Uncle Boots and Rosie?’ asked Emma.

‘What about them?’

‘Well, Rosie’s dad has turned up,’ said Emma.

‘Rosie’s dad?’ said Polly.

‘Yes, her real father,’ said Emma. ‘He called on them one evening, just like that, sort of out of nowhere.’

Polly, always a trim and elegant figure, even in the practical blouse and skirt she usually wore as a teacher, visibly stiffened.

‘Emma, for heaven’s sake, are you telling me that the man who fathered Rosie has made an appearance in her life?’ she asked in disbelief.

‘Well, yes, Miss Simms,’ said Emma, as pupils flowed or dashed by them.

‘Oh, my God,’ breathed Polly, thinking of Boots and how he would have taken the blow. It would have been a blow. He and Rosie were a collective symbol of inseparability.

‘Aunt Polly?’ said Emma, wondering why this long-standing friend of the families looked so shocked.

‘What happened between this man and Rosie?’ asked Polly.

‘Oh, nothing very much,’ said Emma, ‘except that Rosie’s going to spend a day with him at his country home.’

‘I see.’ Polly pulled herself together. ‘Well, stranger things have happened, I suppose. Off you go, Emma, thanks for telling me.’

Off Emma went, joining friends. Only five minutes
later
, Polly, having excused herself from attending a pre-Easter teachers’ meeting, was away herself, in her little sports car, parked as usual by the railed green quadrangle of West Square. She motored fast to Camberwell Green, whipping around traffic.

Boots had just finished a business phone call when his office door opened and Polly slipped silently in.

‘Polly?’ he said.

She looked at him. Oh, ye gods and little fishes, she thought, he’s insufferable in the way he never shows his real feelings. Rosie’s natural father has materialized, but he still looks as if he’s just heard Max Miller’s latest joke.

‘No-one thought to tell me,’ she said.

‘Tell you what?’ he asked.

‘That the man who fathered Rosie has turned up,’ said Polly. ‘If Emma hadn’t let it slip out fifteen minutes ago, I still wouldn’t know.’

‘So you’ve heard,’ said Boots.

‘Just,’ said Polly, ‘but no thanks to you.’

‘I thought Rosie would have phoned you,’ said Boots, getting up.

‘Well, she didn’t. And you didn’t bother, either.’ Polly was seething. ‘What am I, something the cat brought in?’

‘I think you’re cross,’ said Boots.

‘Yes, I bloody well am,’ said Polly. ‘I count myself a close and faithful lover, and I claim the right to be told of something like this.’

‘Well,’ said Boots, ‘the fact is—’

‘Damn the fact, whatever it is,’ said Polly. ‘You love me, don’t you? Yes, you do, I know you do, so what the hell d’you mean by treating me like a dog’s dinner?’

‘So sorry, Polly,’ said Boots, ‘phoning you slipped my mind.’

‘Like hell it did,’ breathed Polly, ‘you simply didn’t bother.’

Boots looked at his watch. Just after four-thirty.

‘Come and have a cup of tea at Lyons, Polly,’ he said.

‘Sod Lyons,’ said Polly, whose vocabulary had been enriched during the war. ‘You’re unbelievable. Some man, some ghastly character, probably, is actually having the gall to claim he’s Rosie’s father and to perhaps devastate your family, and all you can do is invite me to have a cup of tea at Lyons?’

‘It might calm you down,’ said Boots, ‘and we can talk. Let’s try it, shall we?’

‘Well, don’t complain if I pour my cup all over your waistcoat,’ said Polly.

Boots reached for his hat, took her by the arm and brought her out of his office. In the corridor, they encountered Annabelle.

‘Hello, Aunt Polly, haven’t come after my job, have you?’ she said. ‘I’ll be leaving in June – oh, that reminds me, Mum’s delighted you can come to the wedding. So’s Dad. Well, Dad’s an admirer.’