Magnolia Square
Authors: Margaret Pemberton
For my daughter, Polly.
A gypsy at heart, but a world-travelling
gypsy, who always returns to the green and
grassy corner of south-east London
which is home
‘Blimey,’ Carrie Collins, née Jennings, said graphically to her best friend Kate Voigt as they escaped from the exuberant street party, paper Union Jacks on
sticks still in their hands, ‘have you ever known a day like it?’
‘Never!’ With her eyes shining, her face radiant, Kate led the way into her sun-filled kitchen, making straight for the stove and the kettle that sat on the top of it. ‘The war
is over, Carrie!
Over!
’
As Carrie plumped her Junoesque figure exhaustedly into the rocking-chair that sat on top of a gaily coloured rag rug, Kate carried the kettle over to the sink. ‘Or it’s nearly
over,’ she amended, turning on the tap, ‘because the war in the Far East can’t go on for much longer, surely?’
Outside, in the Square, the VE party was going at full throttle with ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ being sung with gusto by all their friends and neighbours. Carrie beat time with her
Union Jack, saying with unabashed frankness, ‘Bugger the Far East, Kate. All that matters to me is that no-one we know or love is still fighting. My Danny and your Leon are already home,
thank God. And what’s more, they’re
staying
home!’ The muffled strains of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ merged into ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and she put
her Union Jack down on the nearby kitchen table, the sunlight glinting on her wedding ring as she did so.
Kate sat the kettle on the gas hob and then, leaning her slender weight against the stone sink, said musingly, ‘But what are they going to do for jobs, now they’re home? I know your
Danny’s been working at the biscuit factory, but I don’t suppose he wants to stay there for ever. And I’m not sure Leon will be able to go back to working on the river. Every
demobbed merchant seaman in London will be looking for work as a Thames lighterman.’
Carrie didn’t know what the chances were of Leon being able to return to his pre-war job, but she did know what she felt about Danny’s future work prospects. ‘I don’t
care what Danny does as long as we can be together,’ she said fiercely, the radiant vivacity in her sea-green eyes replaced by passionate intensity. ‘I don’t want us to live like
we did before the war, when he was a professional soldier and always away at Catterick or somewhere even further north, and me and Rose were at home with my mum and dad and gran. This time,
whatever he does and wherever he goes, me and Rose go too.’
Kate’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘But you won’t be going anywhere, will you, Carrie? Even if Danny gets a better job, it will be a local job, won’t it?’ The thought of
Carrie moving away from the Square they’d both been born and brought up in, horrified her. What would she do without being able to rely on her daily chats and giggles with Carrie? Ever since
she could remember, Carrie’s noisy, boisterous, laughter-filled home at the bottom end of Magnolia Square had been a second home to her.
Her own home had always been happy, but it had been quiet. Her widowed, German-born father was intellectual by inclination and introspective by nature, and in contrast to her own sedate home
life, Carrie’s part-Jewish, market-trader family had been a revelation to her. Leah, Carrie’s gran, cooked like a dream and thrived on histrionics, indulging in them with relish. Bonzo,
her dog, seemed to think barking and howling was a way of justifying his existence. Carrie’s big-hearted
goy
father, Albert, was so used to hollering out his wares down Lewisham Market
that he no longer seemed to know what a normal speaking voice was. ‘Speak up a little louder, why don’t yer,’ Carrie’s mother, Miriam, was always saying to him in loving
sarcasm after he had bellowed some comment to her, ‘they can’t ’ear yer in Purfleet!’
‘I don’t know,’ Carrie said starkly. ‘Danny’ll just have to take what he can get, and it might mean moving north of the river.’
Despite her alarm at the thought of Carrie moving out of the Square, a smile twitched the corners of Kate’s generously shaped mouth. Like all south-east Londoners, Carrie spoke of the
Thames as if it was a divide as great as the English Channel.
Kate’s waist-length, wheat-gold braid of hair had fallen over her shoulder and she flicked it back, saying, ‘I can imagine a lot of things, but I can’t imagine living anywhere
but in Magnolia Square. Where else in London is so near to both the river and high, open heathland?’
Carrie, who much preferred the hustle and bustle of Lewisham’s High Street and market, to Blackheath’s nearby, gorse-covered Heath, said a little indifferently, ‘Nowhere, I
s’pose. Are you going to brew that tea today, Kate, or wait until next week?’
With a grin, Kate returned her attention to the kettle, lifting it off the hob and scalding out the waiting teapot. She was wearing a pre-war, ice-blue cotton dress which she had frugally
renovated, but the original cap sleeves and full gathered skirt made her look more like a young girl fresh from the schoolroom than a woman in her mid-twenties: a woman who, though still unmarried,
was mother to three young children.
Amusement gleamed in Carrie’s eyes. As a child, she’d always been the careless, harum-scarum one, the one most likely to find herself in trouble. Yet it had been quiet,
well-brought-up, well-spoken Kate who had found herself literally ‘in trouble’ within a couple of years of leaving school.
As Kate put three caddy spoonfuls of tea into the warmed teapot, Carrie’s eyes flicked to the photograph propped high on the kitchen dresser against a little-used cream-jug. Toby Harvey
had been handsome – and brave. Only twenty-three, he had died engaging his Spitfire in combat with a Messerschmitt above the bloody beaches of Dunkirk. The heroic circumstances of his death
had protected Kate from too much censure when Matthew had been born eight months later, and there was certainly no censure when, the Blitz at its height, she had given a home to bombed-out,
orphaned, lovable little Daisy. Carrie’s wry amusement deepened. No, it hadn’t been Matthew’s illegitimacy or her unofficial fostering of Daisy that had set the cat among Magnolia
Square’s pigeons. It had been Kate’s subsequent love affair with Leon Emmerson that had sent shockwaves vibrating far and wide.
‘Do you want a ginger biscuit with your cup of tea, or have you stuffed yourself to sickness point on VE party jellies and cakes?’ Kate asked, breaking in on Carrie’s
thoughts.
‘I only had
one
helping of jelly,’ Carrie said defensively, ‘and I never got near the cakes. Your kids and Rose and our Billy and Beryl saw to that!’
Billy and Beryl Lomax were her niece and nephew and, because her happy-go-lucky, pleasure-loving older sister hardly ever bothered to reprimand them, or keep an eye on them, they were a constant
source of despair to Carrie. She said now, helping herself to a biscuit as Kate set a tin in the middle of the scrubbed wooden table, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Billy’s
latest acquisition to his personal ammunition dump, have you? He only dragged it home this morning. God knows where he found it. It’s at least four feet long and has fins on it. One of these
days he’s going to pilfer something that’s live and the whole bloomin’ Square will go up in the biggest bang since the Germans bombed the oil refineries down at
Woolwich.’
Laughter bubbled up in Kate’s throat. She had a soft spot for the Square’s acknowledged tearaway, and whenever he embarked on one of his escapades he often did so provisioned with
her home-made scones and buns.
‘It’s all right you laughing,’ Carrie said darkly, dunking a ginger biscuit into her steaming cup of tea. ‘You don’t live next door to him. You’d think, now
that he’s thirteen, he’d be starting to show a bit more sense, but instead he’s fast on the road to becoming an out and out hooligan, and it’s all Mavis’s fault. As a
mum, that sister of mine’d make a perishin’ good bus driver . . .’
‘Hallooo! Anyone ’ome?’ a familiar voice carolled out in carrying tones from the front of the house and the open doorway.
Carrie raised her eyes to heaven. She loved her mother dearly, but the tart repartee they so happily indulged in was based on the mutual pretence that they drove each other to distraction.
Without bothering to wait for an answer, Miriam Jennings barrelled through into the kitchen. ‘What the bleedin’ ’ell are you two doin’ hidin’ away in ’ere
when the biggest party of the century’s takin’ place in the Square?’ she demanded cheerily, her hair still in metal curlers even though the party was at its height, a gaily
patterned wraparound pinafore tied securely around her ample figure. ‘Our Mavis is just about to let rip singin’ a bit o’ Boogie-Woogie an’ she wants all the audience she
can get.’ She eyed the teapot with enthusiasm. ‘And is that tea fresh, because if it is I’ll ’ave a cuppa.’
‘Yes, it is, and no, I’m not coming out to watch Mavis make an exhibition of herself,’ Carrie said crossly as her mother pulled out a kitchen chair and plonked herself down on
it.
As Kate obligingly took another cup and saucer down from the dresser, Miriam looked around her. Satisfying herself that no-one else was in the kitchen, she said a trifle exasperatedly, ‘I
thought I might have found Christina ’ere. Gawd knows where she’s ’ared off to. There’s been no sight or sign of ’er for the past hour.’
‘Christina’s a grown woman, Mum.’ Carrie’s hand hovered over the biscuit tin as she wondered whether, with her ever-expanding hips, she should treat herself to another
biscuit. ‘And she’s never liked crowded get-togethers,’ she continued, deciding that one more couldn’t possibly make much difference. ‘She’s probably gone off
for a walk and taken Bonzo with her.’
‘She ain’t taken Bonzo ’cos yer dad’s just ’ad to throw a bucket o’ water over ’im to stop him doing rudies to Charlie Robson’s Alsatian
bitch.’