Coronation Wives (4 page)

‘Why should I?’

Polly sounded almost angry. ‘Why should you? You know damn well why! You know I’ve been wanting to leave this country for years.’

Although she wasn’t quite sure of the significance of the conversation, Janet said, ‘There are times when I’d like to fly away and never come back.’

‘Your mother wouldn’t like it,’ said Edna, her knuckles white with the force of her grip on the pushchair.

Janet’s laugh was like a wooden spoon banging around the inside of a saucepan. ‘I doubt whether she’d notice. She leads a busy life helping other people. We’ve got nothing in common.’

Edna turned sharply to her, a shocked expression on her face. ‘That’s not true. Your mother is the most caring person I know and I can’t believe that you’re not as good-hearted as she is. Susan wouldn’t have run out to fetch you if you weren’t. Children are very knowing.’

Janet said nothing, but undamped a splat of wet hair from her cheek and brushed it back.

‘Aunty Polly’s gone again,’ said a serious Susan in a matter of fact voice.

Edna had exasperation written all over her face. ‘She’s gone back to look at that poster. This could be serious.’

Janet considered asking why Edna looked worried, but changed her mind. Polly was old enough to look after herself. And anyway, she had her own problems, and, as if on cue, she was reminded of them.

A middle-aged couple just two feet away had stopped and were eyeing her with curious discernment. ‘It’s her!’ Their voices were full of contempt.

Her? Did they mean her? Had she seen them somewhere before? Their clothes at least looked vaguely familiar. The woman wore a flowered dress with a dull white collar. The man wore an old-fashioned pinstripe suit with baggy trousers.

‘Hussy!’ said the woman, her thin lips pursed above a pointed chin.

‘Out at all hours, leading decent men astray,’ hissed the man through a grey moustache and yellow teeth.

Janet felt the colour draining from her face. It was like remembering a bad dream. These people were standing behind her in the police station. They had heard everything. But she wasn’t going to let them treat her like this.

‘You stupid, stupid people!’ she shouted. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Passing shoppers stopped and stared. Even the man selling newspapers from a stand paused and looked in her direction, perhaps considering her a potential threat to his own pitch.

Edna grabbed her arm. ‘Janet! What is it?’

‘They’re calling me names.’ Janet couldn’t stop shaking. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It’s not true! I didn’t encourage him. I told the policeman that. I didn’t even know him.’

The couple melted into the crowd.

Edna’s voice was soft and soothing. ‘Oh, Janet!’ She placed her arm around Janet’s shoulders.

Janet felt strangely comforted. Edna wasn’t asking her what had happened. The look in her eyes said it all. There was no need for details. There was only comfort. No wonder she was so good with children.

‘It was dark. I think he was foreign,’ she said in a small voice and looked round to see where Polly was.

Realizing her reason for doing so, Edna said, ‘Relax. She’s still looking at that poster about Australia.’

Janet nodded appreciatively. She didn’t want Polly, Dorothea or her mother to hear her secret. It was all too painful.

Edna squeezed her shoulder. Her voice was gentle. ‘You need to talk to someone. I suppose you don’t want to talk to your mother?’

Janet shook her head.

Edna pressed a clean handkerchief into her hand. ‘I could never talk to mine – though I have to say that Charlotte is a lot easier to get on with than my mother ever was.’

‘I just want someone to listen, not to tell me what to do.’

‘I understand. Dry your tears. I also take it you don’t want Polly to know.’

‘I’d rather she didn’t.’

‘Then she won’t.’

Polly chose that exact moment to get back. ‘What’s up with her?’ she said, indicating Janet with a jutting of her chin.

‘Just a headache,’ said Edna.

‘Right,’ said Polly and didn’t really seem to care whether it was the truth or not.

Her gaze kept wandering back to the window and the poster of Sydney Harbour.

Edna was worried. Marriage to Billy had never quite suited Polly. Perish the thought, but she’d actually enjoyed the war and although at first it had seemed that Billy could provide her with the life she craved, it had never quite come off. Australia might very well suit Polly, thought Edna – but what would Billy think?

Carwardines ground their own coffee on the premises in large rotating grinders. When Polly was out of earshot, Edna suggested to Janet that they meet somewhere private where people they knew weren’t likely to go.

‘Will you give me time to collect myself?’ said Janet.

‘Take all the time in the world.’

‘I’ll phone you from work if I can. I’ll wait until everyone is out of the office. I don’t want anyone to hear.’ A rumble of thunder sounded overhead. ‘More rain,’ Janet said with a weak smile.

Edna only nodded. Like today, life could be very sunny for a while then things could change without warning. Sometimes you saw the clouds and sometimes you didn’t. You just took shelter where you could.

‘There’s too many cars on the road,’ Charlotte muttered to herself as she finally arrived at the Bureau of Displaced Persons.

‘The master wants you in his dungeon,’ said one of her grinning colleagues as she made her way to the office she shared with several men, all doing the same work as she.

Charlotte merely raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement and made her way to the office of Nathaniel Brookman, Officer in Charge. She fully expected an enquiry as to why she was late and had rehearsed in her mind an apology that was cheerful rather than servile.

‘Here I am,’ she said brightly as she pushed open the door.

‘Good morning,’ said Brookman, but didn’t look up. ‘Do sit down.’

Charlotte eyed him thoughtfully as he scrawled away at the forms and files in front of him. Not an attractive man by any means, with a round head, a scrawny neck and a walrus moustache. Wire-rimmed spectacles sat precariously above the hook in his nose.

His office reflected his personality – or rather lack of it. A battalion of metal filing cabinets stood against dark green walls, which were completely bereft of pictures, posters or even a calendar. There were no untidy piles awaiting attention or
filing. Every useable surface was bare of anything except what was currently in use. Nathaniel Brookman was a man of meticulous and old-fashioned habits. He also suffered from rheumatism, thus while the rest of the building smelt of old plaster and beeswax, his office smelt of wintergreen ointment.

‘I have something for you,’ he said.

Expecting to be briefed on a new influx of Polish refugees within the privacy of his office was not unusual. Neither was handing her a letter, but what he said next surprised her.

‘This has come from Germany addressed to you. Please read it.’

Leaving her to read on, his attention went back to the paperwork stacked neatly before him.

Already apprehensive, Charlotte unfolded the letter and felt a tightening in her chest, her heart racing as her eyes tripped over the words.

Afterwards, hands shaking, she refolded the stiff paper, unsure what to say, unsure what was expected of her. Eight years since the end of the war. Lives had been rebuilt, past liaisons and indiscretions laid to rest. And now this.

Without looking up Brookman said, ‘I take it the information is correct – she is a friend of yours?’

‘Yes.’ She said it softly as though she didn’t really want to admit to it. As the shock of the letter’s contents sank in, her gaze drifted to the window behind Brookman’s head. Through it she could see the city’s church spires, islands amid remaining war ruins and reconstruction.

‘Is the information correct?’ he repeated, eyeing her over his glasses.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, realizing he hadn’t heard her the first time. ‘Yes. She is a friend of mine.’

He put his pen down, straightened in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. ‘Of course this sort of thing is really
nothing to do with us. Not that I am condemning the actions of women –
some
women during the war. The Americans were very generous and our rations were very meagre. But reuniting
any
of the parties involved or resulting from such liaisons is really nothing to do with the Home Office or the Bureau for Displaced Persons. Priority, as you know, is to aid the resettlement of refugees from a Europe that is still in turmoil despite the success of the Marshall Plan. Herr Josef Schumann is one of our most valued contacts dealing with the resettlement of war orphans in tandem with the Pestalozzi Children’s Trust. Obviously he thought it best to be discreet. American liaisons are not always viewed with toleration. He seems certain you knew the woman concerned.’

‘Yes.’

The contents of the letter had already sent Charlotte’s heart racing. At the mention of Josef’s name, it beat even faster.

Nathaniel Brookman took off his glasses and looked at her meaningfully. ‘Is this woman married?’

‘Yes. Very happily so.’

He rubbed thoughtfully at the bridge of his nose where his glasses had left an angry red mark. ‘Then I will leave it to your own judgement whether you show her the letter. Personally I’d be loath to cause any trouble between husband and wife. The war is over. In my opinion you should let sleeping dogs lie and write to Herr Schumann accordingly. Some things are best forgotten. I suggest you tell him she’s dead.’

Such a cruel comment yet Charlotte knew it wasn’t meant that way. It would be unrealistic to dismiss it out of hand. But she needed time to think.

‘I’ll do what I think is best.’ She placed the letter in the zipped purse formed within the silk lining of her handbag and clipped it tightly shut.

Again Brookman slid his glasses off his nose and rubbed at
the raw line making it even redder than it was before. ‘I can’t understand why he didn’t send the letter direct to you. He knows your address, I take it?’

‘Yes. But Herr Schumann is very professional. He would prefer to use official channels.’

Brookman sniffed in an approving manner. ‘That’s one thing you can say for the Huns – they are very efficient. Very efficient indeed!’

It was around eleven o’clock when she eventually left the office and its dusty odours behind.

Outside it was a warm June day, but with the promise of rain that everyone hoped would stay away until after the Coronation of the new Queen Bess. Bunting flapped from lampposts, buildings sported banners that spanned their entire frontage. Even on building sites where reinforced concrete grew skywards from bombed out rubble Union Jacks fluttered from scaffolding.

Charlotte was in turmoil. Josef! She’d never thought to hear that name again, certainly not to hear
from
him.

The sound of concrete mixers and the clanging of metal girders raised by a clanking crane sounded to one side. The city was full of the noise of reconstruction.

Today she took a short cut between two neighbouring sites where new shops and offices were being built. Noise, machines, dust, men shouting orders, a cacophony of sound, smells and textures tumbled out onto the pavement. Nothing unusual in any of them, until angry voices erupted from among the bricks, bags of cement and piles of wood to her right. Then a full-scale fight broke out onto the pot-holed path in front of her.

Shouts, cries and words muffled by struggle rumbled between the scuffles. Clouds of dust whirled around her feet as two shabbily dressed men fell onto the cracked pavement and
fought on the ground, their feet encased in Wellington boots, which scratched and scuffed against the cracked kerbs and loose gravel.

She stopped in her tracks, raised her hands in horror and shouted for them to stop. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she yelled again and again. Of course they ignored her. I sound feeble, she thought and looked around for help. Two men with brawny arms and hard expressions ran towards them from the site. A smarter man in a double-breasted suit followed. The men with brawny arms wore frayed shirts, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Thick leather belts circled their waists. Tatty braces held up their trousers.

At first she was relieved. These men were going to do something. Relief turned to horror as steel toe-capped boots sliced into soft bellies.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she cried again.

They paid her no heed. Fists as big as shovels grabbed the fighting men’s collars and hauled them to their feet. The man in the suit was grim-faced, but looked as though he might be in charge.

She directed her question at him. ‘Are they all right?’

He glanced at her briefly then turned away without answering. The two bullies with rolled up sleeves manhandled the men back towards the site where a concrete building threw dark shadows over the dusty earth. From within those shadows the man in the suit now stood, watching her. Despite the bright sunshine she felt suddenly cold. For a moment her eyes met his before he moved swiftly away and was gone.

In that split instant she had the distinct impression that she’d seen him somewhere before. She shook her head and told herself she was probably imagining things. There was nothing she could do and she had quite enough problems to think about without enquiring further, though something about the fighting men stayed with her.

That evening before dinner she kissed David on the head. He did not respond. He never did.
You’re both middle-aged, a time of mellow fruitfulness. Physical affection is best left to the young.

She remembered the letter from Josef and felt an instant pang of regret for past moments that had been short, but very sweet. Pull yourself together, she said to herself, then swallowed hard and adopted her cheeriest smile.

‘Has Janet gone out?’ she asked, noticing that only two places had been set on the green and white tablecloth.

David put down the medical journal he was reading. ‘She told Mrs Grey she had a headache.’

‘Again?’ Charlotte frowned. ‘She’s had a headache for three or four days. I’ve hardly seen her.’