The Londoners (14 page)

Depressed by the news of Europe’s increasingly rapid descent into hell and depressed by the lack of any communication from Toby, Kate walked despondently across the Heath to work and back
each day, wondering if she had been a fool to have been so euphoric over her few brief hours in Toby Harvey’s company.

‘What’s the matter,
Liebling
?’ her father asked her at the end of the second week as she returned home from work on Friday evening. ‘You look as if you’ve
lost a pound and found a penny. There’s a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It came this morning after you had gone to work. The postmark is a Kent one and I don’t recognize the
handwriting. It certainly isn’t from anyone I know.’

With a gasp of relief and elation Kate darted past him, running into the living-room. The handwriting was bold and unmistakably masculine. Picking the envelope up and hugging it to her breast,
she hurried with it up the stairs to read it in the privacy of her bedroom.

My dear Kate
, he had written, and immediately her heart began to slam in thick, heavy strokes. The
‘My’
meant it was going to be far from an impersonal letter. She
wasn’t just ‘Dear Kate’, she was
his
dear Kate. Unsteadily she sat down on her dressing-table stool and continued reading.

Her relief that she had not been mistaken about his feelings for her was so intense that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and ended up by doing both as she re-read the letter and
then re-read it again. What photograph could she send him? Did she have a decent enough photograph? Nearly every photograph she had ever had taken had Carrie in it too and she wondered if he would
mind if the photograph she sent him featured her friend as well.

‘Are you all right up there,
Liebling?
’ her father called up to her a little anxiously from the bottom of the stairs.

Hastily she crossed to her bedroom door and opened it. Crossing the landing, she leaned over the bannisters. ‘I’m
fine
, Dad,’ she shouted back down to him. ‘The
letter was from Toby.’

‘Then that’s all right then,’ she heard her father say, a glimmer of amusement in his voice as he returned to their comfy sitting-room and his evening paper.

Kate thought it was all right as well. The frantic anxiety she had been living with for the past couple of weeks vanished as if it had never existed. She now had an address at which to write to
him. And if Toby did indeed have leave at Christmas, she could now look forward to the best Christmas of her life.

The letter she wrote to him that night, enclosing a photograph of herself and Carrie taken on the last Cricket Club outing to Folkestone and showing them both perched laughingly on the railings
that separated the promenade from the beach, the sea breezes tugging at their hair, ice-cream cones in their hands, was so speedily answered that for the rest of the week she felt as if she were
walking on air.

All through November letters flew fast and furious between them. She learned that he intended making the RAF his long-term career and that his decision was causing unpleasant tensions between
himself and his grandfather; that his favourite authors were Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, although his absolute favourite novel was not an American novel but the very English
Tom
Jones
by Henry Fielding. She learned that where the theatre was concerned he revelled in the
Sturm und Drang
of Jacobean drama but that he wasn’t adverse to contemporary
musicals, especially if the score was by George Gershwin. She learned that his favourite meal was steak Béarnaise; his favourite drink a long, ice-cold gin and tonic and his favourite method
of relaxation, horse-riding.

In early December, when the newspapers were full of reports of over two hundred German-Jewish schoolchildren arriving in London to be placed for safety in volunteer foster-homes, she was so full
of her own inner happiness that the information barely registered on her. It was her father who pierced her euphoria.

‘But not here,’ he said bitterly as he carried his supper plate over to the sink.

Still sitting at the table, she had been reading the horoscope column and she looked up from the paper and across at him, startled. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. What did you say?’

‘I said, “but not here”,’ he said again, dropping his plate into the stone sink with so much carelessness it was a wonder the plate didn’t break.
‘They’ve found foster homes for over two hundred German-Jewish schoolchildren but not one of them will be coming here.’

Mortified that she hadn’t had the sensitivity to realize how the news might affect him, she forgot all about her horoscope forecast for the week. Rising hurriedly from the table, she
walked swiftly towards him. He was still facing the sink, gazing grim-faced out of the kitchen window into the darkness beyond. Putting her arms around his waist and resting her head lovingly
against his back, she said gently, ‘Don’t take it so personally, Dad. It’s obvious the children would go to Jewish families, not non-Jewish. There are probably hundreds of other
families who have offered to give a home to German-Jewish refugees and who have been turned down because they are not Jewish.’

‘Maybe,’ Carl said, not sounding at all convinced.

Kate’s heart ached for him. He had lived in England for nearly all his adult life and until Hitler’s rise to power he had considered himself as much at home in England as if he had
been born there. Though it was probably true that his offer of providing a home for Jewish refugees had been turned down where Jewish children were concerned, surely the authorities could have
accepted his offer on behalf of a Jewish family?

‘Anyone would think I was a paid-up member of Hitler’s National Socialists,’ he said bitterly. ‘Why on God’s earth should the British Government assume I’m a
Nazi just because I was born in Germany? And if they’re going to take the same attitude to every German-born national living in Great Britain, what the devil are they planning to do with us
all if and when war breaks out?’

She had had no answer for him then and she had no answer for him now. ‘Don’t fret about it,’ she said lovingly, aware of how grossly inadequate her words were. ‘Why
don’t you go down to The Swan and have a game of darts with Nibbo or Daniel Collins?’

His back straightened fractionally. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said, forcing cheerfulness into his voice so as not to depress her as much as he, himself, was depressed.
‘I shan’t be long, only an hour or two. What will you do? Go down to Carrie’s?’

She shook her head. ‘No, Danny’s home on leave. I’ve bought a copy of the new magazine Miss Pierce told me about. I’m going to make myself a cup of tea and sit
comfortably in front of the fire with it.’

He kissed her on the cheek, took his winter jacket and scarf off the peg they were habitually hung on in the cupboard beneath the stairs, and let himself out of the house.

In a more subdued frame of mind than she had been in for weeks Kate did the washing-up and then made herself a cup of tea. Carrying it into the sitting-room, she turned on the radio. The music
of Reginald King and his Orchestra filled the room and with her cup of tea in one hand and a copy of
Picture Post
in the other, she settled herself down in an armchair in front of the
glowing coal fire.

In early December she received a letter from Toby informing her that he would be home on leave from 23 December to the 27th. A week later she received another letter in which
he told her that he would be arriving in London by train and that the train he intended travelling on was due in at Charing Cross Station on the 23 December at 6.15 p.m. Could she meet him there,
beneath the clock inside the station?

Could she meet him? Did giraffes have long necks? Were there pyramids in Egypt? Of
course
she could meet him. No power on earth would prevent her from doing so. That evening, as she
made the fruit and brandy-soaked Christmas pudding that she and her father always shared on Christmas Day and that needed at least two weeks to mature, she sang happily as a lark, oblivious of her
father’s excessive quietness.

‘What will you wear?’ was the first question Carrie asked her when they had a girls’ night out together after Danny had returned to Catterick.

‘I don’t know.’ It was a dilemma that hadn’t previously occurred to her and now that it had done it assumed astronomical proportions.

‘Well where is he taking you?’ Carrie asked, ever practical. ‘Is he taking you dancing or to a show or to the cinema?’

‘He didn’t say.’ Sudden doubt seized hold of her. ‘He might not be taking me anywhere. He might just want me to be company for him on the last leg of his journey back to
Blackheath.’

Carrie raised mascara-lashed eyes to heaven in despair. ‘God help me, Kate Voigt. You aren’t half an idiot at times! Of
course
he’s going to take you out! He has five
days leave. One of those days is Christmas and he’ll most likely be obliged to spend all that day with his grandfather. He has to travel back to camp on the fifth day so that’s another
evening he won’t be able to take you out anywhere. You don’t think he’s going to waste one of the precious remaining three nights hurrying home for a cup of hot cocoa, do
you?’

Kate grinned. ‘I sincerely hope not! I’m no nearer to solving my problem though, am I? What on earth shall I wear? I don’t want to find myself looking ridiculous in too much
finery in Lyons Corner House or wearing no finery at all and at the Ritz.’

‘Wear something expensive-looking but plain and take some jewellery with you,’ Carrie advised as if the dilemma was one she had faced often and conquered with aplomb. ‘If he
ends up being an old meanie and taking you to a Corner House, keep the jewellery firmly in your handbag. If he takes you to the Ritz, whip out your rope of imitation pearls and a pair of matching
earrings and you’ll look as good as anyone else there.’

Kate doubted it but knew it was sensible advice. She would wear a very plain dress and the opal brooch and matching earrings that had been her mother’s. As it was the middle of winter she
would also have to wear her rather shabby coat, but she would give it a very careful brushing and pressing and she would wind her heavy plait of hair into an elegant chignon.

Two weeks later, standing beneath the huge clock in Charing Cross Station, Kate felt as if she needed to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Was she really
waiting in lovesick fever for a man she had only spoken to on three occasions, one of which had been brief, impersonal and almost rude? The second occasion, when he had joined her as she ate her
lunchtime sandwiches by the banks of the Thames, had been decidedly friendlier and had established a feeling of deep-seated rapport between them but that, too, had been relatively brief. The third
occasion, when he had taken her for a drink at The Princess of Wales and then home, had been the only occasion that could remotely be classed as having been a date and even on that occasion their
time alone together had been minimal, the first half of it having been spent in Charlie’s company and the second half in her father’s.

Self-consciously she stood directly beneath the clock. The station was crowded with London office and shop workers making their way home to the suburbs and into Kent. On her right-hand side,
members of the Salvation Army stood in a small group singing Christmas Carols, collection tins conspicuously in their hands. On the left of her stood a Christmas tree decorated with baubles and
tinsel and crowned by a glittering silver star.

Where was Toby? She knew the platform his train from Kent was due to arrive at because she had checked it when she had alighted from the Blackheath train fifteen minutes earlier. She had been
tempted to wait at the barrier for him but the crush of home-going commuters was so thick that she decided there was a remote chance they would not see each other. Their pre-arranged meeting-place
beneath the clock was a far safer bet and she stood there, her carefully brushed and pressed cherry-red wool coat buttoned up to her throat, her gleaming blonde hair coiled into a sleek knot in the
nape of her neck, her black leather gloved hands clasped tightly together. What if his leave had been suddenly cancelled? What if he didn’t come? What if she had misread his letter and the
date was wrong? What if the time were wrong and he had arrived hours ago and, tired of waiting for her, travelled home to Blackheath alone?

‘Kate!’

She swivelled around in the direction of his voice. He was forcing a way through the throng, stunningly handsome in his RAF uniform, his RAF cap crammed jauntily on to his thick shock of fair
hair.