Magnolia Square (14 page)

‘I think you should sit down for a few minutes, Wilfred,’ Bob Giles said, rising to his feet, deeply concerned.

‘“. . . and they were cast upon the earth, and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up . . .”’ Wilfred continued, spittle forming at the
corners of his mouth, ‘“and the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood. .
.”’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Daniel said unhappily. ‘I think you need a dose of salts, Wilfred. A glassful of Epsoms would soon put you to rights.’

‘I think we need a pot of hot, strong tea,’ Bob Giles said, aware that he had a serious problem on his hands and wondering how best to deal with it. ‘And then I think it would
be a good idea if you knocked at the Sharkeys’, Daniel, and asked Doris to come over here.’

‘“. . . and the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and a day,”’ Wilfred continued, eyes glazed and oblivious of the concern he was arousing,
‘“. . . and thus I saw the horses in the vision and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone . .
.”’

Bob took hold of one of Wilfred’s twitching arms. ‘That’s enough, old chap,’ he said gently, ‘sit down and have a rest—’

‘“. . . and the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of holy angels and the smoke of their torment
ascendeth for ever and ever . . .”’

Daniel, about to leave the study in order to make the suggested pot of tea, paused at the doorway, his eyes meeting Bob’s. ‘Oh dear,’ he said again, graphically, ‘oh
dear, oh dear.’

Seconds later Bob heard him enter the kitchen and say to someone, presumably Ruth, ‘Poor old Wilfred. I do believe he’s finally lost his marbles.’

Though he wouldn’t have expressed himself in quite the same way, Bob Giles thought Daniel had summed the situation up pretty accurately. Through the stress and strain of the war years, he
had been a witness to many such breakdowns, though why Wilfred should suffer a mental collapse now, when the war in Europe was over and the war in the Far East was all but over, he couldn’t
quite fathom.

‘“And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways,”’ Wilfred said, his eyes still glazed and unfocused, but the frenzied passion
beginning to drain from his voice, ‘“and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth . . .”’

Hopeful that the worst was now over, Bob said to him again, ‘Sit down, old chap. Today’s news has been too much for you. Doris will be here in a minute, and she’ll take you
home and put you to bed so that you can have a proper rest.’

It was like setting a match to blue touch-paper. ‘Whore!’ Wilfred spat, springing back into full throttle with renewed vigour. ‘“The great whore that sitteth upon many
waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication!”’

Aware that, instead of making things better, he had somehow made them worse, Bob glanced towards his wall-clock. It was 11.15 a.m. He wondered if Dr Roberts would still be taking his surgery
and, more to the point, if the Sharkeys were his panel patients. If they were, he would suggest to Doris that she allow him to telephone the surgery and ask Roberts to visit Wilfred as soon as
possible.

‘“. . . and I saw the woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns . . .”’

Daniel pushed the door open with his elbow. He was carrying a tray bearing a pot of tea, milk-jug, sugar-bowl, three cups and saucers and three teaspoons.

‘Ruth’s gone to give Doris a knock,’ he said, setting the tray down on Bob’s cluttered desk. ‘She’s going to tell Doris that Wilfred’s had a bit of a
funny turn—’

‘Whore!’ Wilfred spat again. ‘Mother of all harlots!’

‘We’ve moved from fire and brimstone to the great whore of Babylon,’ Bob said in answer to Daniel’s startled expression.

‘Blimey!’ Daniel was impressed. Rambling on about whores in front of the Vicar was really going it. He began to pour the tea, wondering what Doris Sharkey would make of it all.
Unlike everyone else in Magnolia Square, the Sharkeys didn’t mix much with their neighbours. They kept themselves to themselves. Or they had until now. They certainly wouldn’t be able
to continue doing so with Wilfred spouting at the top of his voice about fire and brimstone and the great whore of Babylon.

Bob frowned, a very unnerving thought suddenly occurring to him. It had been mention of the Japanese that had first set Wilfred off on his fire-and-brimstone diatribe, but what was it that had
caused him to change tack to the great whore of Babylon? Surely it couldn’t have been mention of Doris? And if it had been . . . There came the sound of the vicarage door being opened in
haste.

‘Hopefully that’s Ruth with Doris,’ Daniel said as the door slammed shut and two pairs of hurrying footsteps reached as far as the kitchen and paused.

Bob knew very well why they had paused. In order to spare the Sharkeys embarrassment, Ruth was refusing to accompany Doris any further. That way she wouldn’t be another witness to
Wilfred’s breakdown. It was exactly the sort of sensitivity his late wife, Constance, would have shown. In a moment of overpowering certainty, he knew that Constance would have approved of
Ruth; that his marriage to Ruth would have had her whole-hearted blessing. Love and gratitude, both for the wife he had lost and the wife he was soon to gain, roared through him.

It was a moment quickly curtailed as Doris Sharkey knocked apprehensively on his study door and then, even more apprehensively, edged into the room. She had obviously been interrupted by Ruth
whilst doing her weekly laundry. Soap suds still clung to her cherry-red pinafore, and the sleeves of her violet wool cardigan were pushed high, her damp hands and forearms flushed and mottled from
the heat of the water in her copper.

‘Miss Fairbairn said as how Wilfred had been taken badly—’ she began nervously.

‘
Whore!
’ Wilfred roared, bounding to his feet and confirming all Bob Giles’s worst suspicions. ‘“Arrayed in purple and scarlet colour!”’

‘Telephone for Dr Roberts!’ Bob shouted to Daniel and then, to a terrified Doris, ‘And take your apron and cardigan off, for the Lord’s sake!’

‘What’s goin’ on at the vicarage?’ Mavis said to Kate as they paused for a chat by the Helliwells’ bomb-site, Mavis en route for the main road
flanking the Heath and a bus to central London, Kate heading in the opposite direction, towards Lewisham. ‘Ten minutes ago Ruth Fairbairn came runnin’ out, sprintin’ like a gym
mistress for the Sharkeys. Then she ’ared back with Doris in tow. Now Dr Roberts’s Morris Ten is parked outside.’

As Matthew, Hector at his heels, ran on ahead of her, Kate looked towards the top left-hand corner of the Square and the vicarage. The car was certainly Dr Roberts’s. She frowned. ‘I
don’t know. I hope Mr Giles hasn’t been taken ill. I won’t call in now, whilst Dr Roberts is there, but I’ll call in when I get back from Lewisham. What’s happening at
number eighteen? Is a welcome-home party for Jack in full flow?’

Mavis shrugged, her magnificent bosom straining against a frilly white organza blouse. ‘If there is, I ’aven’t been invited. And knowin’ Christina, I bet no-one else
’as either.’

Kate tried to hide her amusement. Like almost every other resident of Magnolia Square, she had seen the whole-hearted way Mavis had greeted Jack. That Christina now wanted Jack to herself for a
little while would come as no great surprise to anyone. ‘I expect he’ll be having a knees-up tonight in The Swan,’ she said consolingly. ‘I’ll have to be on my way,
Mavis. I don’t want Matthew and Hector running loose in Lewisham High Street.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ Mavis said, for all the world as if, when Billy and Beryl had been under-fives, she had been similarly conscientious. ‘Maybe I’ll see
you in The Swan tonight. Cheery-bye for now.’

‘Cheery-bye,’ Kate said, wondering if a knees-up in The Swan really was on the cards. It certainly would have been in the days before Jack’s marriage to Christina. The Swan had
always been Jack’s watering-hole. He’d never had any patience with pubs that veered on the pretentious. Christina, however, had never been known to enter any pub, not even the very
respectable Princess of Wales.

She turned into Magnolia Hill, her two-toned, Cuban-heeled shoes tapping out a smart rat-a-tat on the pavement as she began catching up with Matthew. Luke was with Leon, helping him make a new
strawberry bed. Daisy was at school. Her father was visiting Ellen in Greenwich. As she drew abreast of Matthew and tucked his chubby little hand into hers, she wondered if she had enough points in
her ration book to buy some dried fruit. She wanted to make a proper Christmas cake this year, not a poor replica made with carrots instead of currants and raisins, but storing up a suitable cache
of dried fruit via the points system wasn’t easy.

‘Can we have honey sandwiches for tea?’ Matthew suddenly asked as he skipped along beside her, his thoughts, like hers, on food. ‘I like honey sandwiches and Daddy-Leon likes
honey sandwiches and . . .’

The Bentley’s engine was so quiet, Kate wasn’t even aware of its approach. Sleekly it purred to a halt at the kerbside, a few yards in front of them. She came to a far more abrupt
halt, her heart racing, her throat so tight she thought she was going to choke.

‘What is it, Mummy?’ Matthew asked, looking up at her in perplexity. ‘Have you got a tummyache?’ The sun glinted on his thick shock of fair hair, burnishing it the colour
of ripe barley. ‘Are you going to grow another baby in your tummy, like you grew Luke in your tummy? Are—’

Hector bounded ahead and round the corner into Lewisham High Street. The Bentley’s uniformed chauffeur walked around the car, opening the nearside rear door. Joss Harvey stepped out, his
thickening shoulders still impressively broad beneath his Savile Row tailored suit, his silver hair unhatted.

Kate gripped Matthew’s hand so tightly he gave a yelp of pain. She wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t move and even if they would have done, there was nowhere to run to. After
nearly four years of leaving her in peace, Joss Harvey was quite obviously all set to engage her in battle again. And this time he was doing so confident that he held every advantage.

‘You married him then?’ he said succinctly, walking towards her and halting a foot or so away.

The force of his barely reined-in aggression was so intense, her every instinct screamed at her to fall back, to retreat as far and as fast as possible.

Defiantly she held her ground. ‘I’m married, yes,’ she said tersely. As always, whenever she was in confrontation with him, she found it impossible to believe there had ever
been any blood link between him and Matthew’s father. Toby had been good-humoured and good-natured. And tolerant – above all he had been tolerant. His upper middle-class upbringing and
public school education ensured he would have been as staggered as anyone if he had known she would one day marry a half-caste seaman. But he would have trusted her judgement. And if he had ever
met Leon, he would have liked him.

‘No Black Sambo is going to be stepfather to my great-grandson,’ Joss Harvey said bluntly, just as she had known he would. ‘We can settle this out of court, or in court. And if
you choose to go to court, you’ll regret it. The case will be splashed all over the local newspapers, and you and your blackie husband will soon find out what the public thinks to marriages
like yours. Especially when there’s a white child involved. A white child from a good background, with a great-grandfather well known and well respected and willing to provide a home and
education for him.’

Dimly Kate was aware that Hector was trotting back up Magnolia Hill towards them; that a group of workmen had stepped out of The Swan and were looking across at the Bentley with undisguised
interest and envy; that Matthew was tugging impatiently on her hand, trying to gain her attention. Joss Harvey had said nothing she hadn’t already anticipated him saying, but her reaction was
as intense as if she had been totally unprepared for it. Waves of sickness surged over her. This was the man Toby had admired, respected and loved: the man Toby would have wanted his son to grow up
admiring, respecting, loving. And he was a man who referred to Leon with ugly racial epithets, a man she wanted her son to have nothing to do with at all.

‘There was a time when I was happy for Matthew to spend time with you,’ she said tautly as Hector skittered to a halt beside them. ‘You were the one who put an end to that
situation. You abused my trust in the most dreadful way possible, and I’ve no intention of allowing you to do so again.’

Hector, sensing hostility, had begun to growl low in his throat. With her free hand Kate took hold of his collar. She didn’t want him to bite Joss Harvey. If he did, Joss Harvey would
inform the police and would insist on Hector being destroyed.

‘Mummy?’ Matthew was tugging on her hand in even greater urgency. ‘Mummy, who’s this man?’ He hadn’t understood anything that had been said but, like Hector,
he sensed her distress and his eyes, so like Toby’s eyes, were troubled and perplexed.

She didn’t answer him. Instead she gripped his hand even tighter and it was the man who was making her angry and upset who answered his question.

‘I’m your great-grandpa, young man,’ he said, bewildering Matthew even further, ‘and from now on we’re going to get to know each other very well. You’re going
to visit my house, the house your father lived in when he was a little boy. It has a big garden. A garden as big as a park. And you’re going to go for rides in my motor car—’

‘Oh no he isn’t!’
Panic bubbled high in Kate’s throat, almost choking her. She had envisaged Joss Harvey using all kinds of brutal tactics in his attempt to gain
guardianship of Matthew, but one thing she hadn’t anticipated was his attempting to seduce Matthew away from her. Or that Matthew would allow himself to be seduced.