Magnolia Square (26 page)

‘And do you think it’s a problem that can be solved?’ Carrie asked hopefully, unclasping her hands as her tension began to ease.

Kate emptied the boiling contents of the kettle into the teapot. ‘We can certainly try. There must be another job Danny could do, a job he would enjoy.’ She carried the teapot across
to the table. ‘All we have to do is to think what it could be.’

Through the open kitchen window came the sounds of childish shouts and squeals.

‘Leon dug out our Anderson shelter and built a sandpit on its site,’ Kate said as Carrie’s eyebrows rose queryingly. ‘Matthew and Luke love it. Their favourite game is
trying to bury Hector.’

Carrie grinned. It was typical of Leon that, instead of leaving a gaping hole where the air-raid shelter had been, he had utilized it to give pleasure to his children. It was also typical of
Leon that he had made no wrong decision when he was discharged from the Navy. Before the war he had been a Thames lighterman, and it was a profession he had happily returned to.

‘I can’t imagine when Dad and Danny are going to get around to digging ours out,’ she said, pouring milk into the two mugs which Kate had set on the table. ‘Emily
Helliwell asked Daniel to dismantle her indoor Morrison and reassemble it in the garden so that she can keep rabbits in it. It’s about all those mesh-sided contraptions are good for. I only
climbed into one once, when an air-raid caught me short at a friend’s, and I felt like an animal in a zoo.’

The minute Kate had sat down, Hector had laid his head in her lap and she stroked the top of his silk-soft head lovingly, saying, ‘Well, you’ll never have to do it again, thank God.
No more air-raid sirens. No more panic-stricken shouts that a V2 is heading our way, no more—’

Heavy, urgent knocking at the door broke her off short.

‘Were you about to say no more emergencies?’ Carrie said dryly as Kate jumped to her feet. ‘Because if you were, I think you might have been speaking a bit too soon.’

The knocking came again, harder and even more insistent. With Hector bounding at her heels, Kate hurried out of the kitchen and down the long hallway leading to her front door. Through
half-panes of frosted stained glass, an authoritative, dark-suited, masculine figure was discernible. She broke into a run. Had Daisy had an accident at school? Had Leon had an accident down on the
river? With her heart racing, she yanked open the door and saw that the dark suit was offset by a pristinely white clerical collar.

‘Thank God!’ Bob Giles said with heartfelt relief. ‘I was beginning to think you were out. Could you give me some help, Kate? Miss Radcynska has arrived and I’ve got a
problem. A very awkward, distressing problem.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Kate’s reaction was instant. ‘But I’ll have to ask Carrie if she’ll keep an eye on Matthew and Luke for me. They’re playing in the
back garden at the moment and—’

‘And with a bit of luck they’ll remain in the back garden while I enjoy a mug of tea in peace,’ Carrie said, joining her at the open doorway.

Bob Giles shot Carrie a look of gratitude and turned swiftly on his heel, taking the shallow flight of broad steps leading to the pathway two at a time. Kate exchanged a quick, perplexed look
with Carrie and hurried after him. Carrie remained on the doorstep, one hand restrainingly on Hector’s collar, curious to see whether Mr Giles would head towards the vicarage or the church.
He did neither. Instead he made a bee-line for the house two doors down, the house that had long been awaiting its new Polish tenant.

‘I haven’t time to prepare you properly for this encounter,’ Bob Giles said as Kate caught up with him. ‘Suffice to say that Miss Radcynska suffered obscenely in
Ravensbrueck and her body, and perhaps her mind, has been permanently damaged.’ He ran a hand distractedly through his still thick hair. ‘I’ve known all along, of course, just
what her history was,’ he continued, harrow-faced, ‘and I knew, or thought I knew, the kind of problems she would meet with.’ He pushed open the unlatched gate of number eight.
‘I hadn’t, however, anticipated lack of co-operation on her part, even though it is a reaction she can’t, perhaps, be held responsible for.’

As they hurried up a pathway rank with weeds, Kate shot him a mystified glance. What on earth was he trying to tell her? And why should Miss Radcynska, after being hospitalized by the Red Cross
and settled in England, be uncooperative with the clergyman trying to settle her in her new home? It didn’t make sense.

Bob Giles didn’t respond to her glance. Rage and revulsion, almost disabling in intensity, were again roaring through him, just as they had roared through him when he had first heard
details of Anna Radcynska’s suffering. ‘How,’ he had asked the Red Cross official thickly, ‘how in the name of all that is holy, could human beings descend to such depths of
cruelty and evil?’

‘You’re a minister of God,’ the official had said, sending a thin folder skimming across his desk-top in Bob’s direction. ‘You tell me.’

Bob had been unable to do so. He had certainly been unable to speak specifically of Anna’s suffering to his churchwardens when he had first broken the news to them of who was to tenant
number eight. He had talked to Ruth, however, sitting with her in the blessed comfort and familiarity of his fire-lit study. ‘Along with countless other non-Aryan women and children, Anna was
medically experimented on in Ravensbrueck,’ he had said, one arm around Ruth’s shoulders, the other clenching his pipe, the knuckles white. ‘What genetic conundrum the monsters
were trying to unravel, God only knows, but she will never look, or sound, feminine again.’

‘Dear God in heaven,’ Ruth had whispered, her face draining of blood. ‘The poor, poor girl. What will happen to her now? Will she ever be able to live a normal life again, Bob?
Will she really be able to feel at home in England?’

‘Yes,’ he had said firmly, ‘everyone in Magnolia Square is going to make quite sure of that.’

Three hours ago, when he had come face to face with Anna at last, he had wondered with sick anxiety if he had been overoptimistic in believing such a grievously damaged woman could ever live an
uninstitutionalized life. He had known she was in her late thirties, and had imagined her being slightly built and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Instead, she was tall and raw-boned, a woman who must
have been masculine-looking even before being subjected to medical experimentation. Her hair stuck out as if it had been cropped with a knife and fork. Her teeth were bad and many of them were
missing. There was badly shaved stubble around her mouth and on her chin and cheeks. The cotton dress she had been given was far too short and far too tight for her, the body beneath it a parody of
femininity. Her laced-up shoes were heavy enough for a navvy and worn without socks or stockings.

‘Hello,’ he had said, aware since reading her file that before the war she had taught English at Kraków University. ‘I’m Bob Giles and I’ve come to take you
to your new home.’

It had been a nightmare journey. Anna didn’t walk, she lurched, and people had stopped in the street, staring after them. On the Underground, fellow passengers had whispered and sniggered.
On the train from Charing Cross to Lewisham, a group of youths had shouted ribald comments, uncaring of his clerical collar. A child in Lewisham High Street had thrown a tomato at Anna. Another
group of giggling, cat-calling children had followed them all the way up Magnolia Hill. Nor had matters improved when they had entered the Square.

Leah Singer, on her hands and knees white-stoning number eighteen’s front steps, had taken one look at Anna and had abandoned her task immediately, gathering her bucket and scrubbing brush
and barrelling into number eighteen’s hallway before he could even make an attempt to introduce her.

Billy Lomax, who should have been at school but was instead in his front garden stock-taking his arsenal of discarded Home Guard weaponry, had shouted out in genuine enquiry, ‘’Ello,
Vicar. Who’s your funny friend? She looks like she’s a mate of Desperate Dan’s.’

At the Robsons’, Queenie had charged down the pathway, barking furiously. At the Sharkeys’, Doris had paused in her task of shaking crumbs from a tablecloth out on to her front
pathway, her mouth hanging open wide enough to garage a double-decker bus. As he shepherded his ungainly charge up the pathway of number eight, he had known that integrating her into Magnolia
Square’s little community was going to be a far harder task than he had at first envisaged. And then, when he had escorted her across the threshold of her new home, had come the
coup de
grâce.

‘Go vay,’ she had said brusquely in her gutturally accented voice. ‘I don’t like English children. I don’t like English dogs. Go vay and leave Anna
alone.’

In vain he had protested that he hadn’t yet shown her over the house; that there was milk and tea and sugar in the kitchen and that he had intended making a cup of tea for the two of them;
that he had hoped he would be able to answer any queries she might have, and give her any reassurance she might need.

‘Go vay,’ she had said again and then, to his stunned disbelief, she had manhandled him, Amazon-like, back over the doorstep and slammed the door on him, ramming the top and bottom
bolts firmly home.

As he and Kate climbed the five broad, shallow stone steps leading to the still-closed door he said, ‘I’m afraid Miss Radcynska has locked herself in, Kate. It’s an
understandable enough reaction in the circumstances. There were a few . . . incidents . . . on our journey from central London to Lewisham and it’s only to be expected that she is feeling
uncertain and insecure.’ They came to a halt on the top step. ‘It is, however, an embarrassing reaction,’ he said, his kindly face deeply troubled. ‘Anna needs to be
introduced into our community in a sympathetic manner, and if she sends out the wrong signals so early on . . .’

If she sent out the wrong signals so early on, it would be impossible to win people’s understanding. She would simply be regarded as a freakish curiosity, best avoided, and her life would
be even lonelier than if she had been sent to a displaced person’s camp.

Apprehensively he knocked on the door in what he hoped was an unintimidating manner.

‘
Go vay!
’ Anna roared. ‘
I vant to be alone!
’

It was such a parody of Greta Garbo’s often-quoted request that, in other circumstances, he would have been vastly amused. Instead, he raised his voice loud enough for her to hear but not,
he hoped, loud enough to attract public attention.

‘I have a young woman with me, Anna. Her name is Kate. She’s one of your new neighbours and she’d like to say hello and make friends.’

There came the sound of long, low muttering in Polish and then a heavy object was thrown at the door. Bob slipped a finger inside his dog collar to loosen it and give himself a little more air.
In retrospect he realized he should have taken Ruth, or Kate, with him when he had gone to collect Anna. That way she might have been a little more trusting. As it was . . .

‘Miss Radcynska?’ Kate’s voice was gently calming. ‘I live two doors away. Would you like to share a cup of tea with me? I have a dog, and I know you don’t like
dogs very much, but Hector is very friendly.’

No sound came from behind the closed door. Bob Giles held his breath. He had known the minute he had found himself on the wrong side of the barred door that if anyone could gain Anna
Radcynska’s confidence, it would be Kate Emmerson.

‘I’m in the middle of baking a treacle tart for tea,’ Kate continued, just as if she had received vocal encouragement. ‘I’m doing a second one for a friend and I
could quite easily make some more pastry and do a third one, so that you have something in for tea. I know that Reverend Giles will have stocked your kitchen cupboards with essential groceries, but
I doubt if he’s thought to leave anything freshly made.’

Again there was no reply. Nellie Miller who, from the chair in her front doorway, had seen Anna’s lurching arrival, was stumping with equal lack of grace up the far side of the Square
towards the Collins’s house, her eyes fixed avidly on number eight as she did so.

Bob Giles again loosened his clerical collar, knowing that in another few minutes Nellie would be sharing her news with Hettie, and that when she had done so, Hettie would shoot straight out of
the house in order not to miss a second of the bizarre scene now taking place.

‘Miss Radcynska?’ Kate said again, not allowing the faintest sign of anxiety to show in her voice. ‘Mr Giles tells me you are Polish. During the war lots of young Polish airmen
were posted at Biggin Hill Aerodrome, which isn’t too far from here. They were very handsome and brave and popular.’

Bob Giles quelled a spasm of near-hysterical mirth. The Poles’ good looks had certainly made them popular with the women of the area. It had been rumoured that Mavis had enjoyed the
attentions of a Polish boy-friend, and certainly Eileen Dundas, in nearby Dartmouth Hill, had had a Polish boy-friend. Her little boy’s Slavically high cheekbones were clear enough proof of
that.

‘Go vay,’ Anna said again, though this time without the same vehemence. ‘No like dogs. No like children. No like men.’

Kate’s eyes held Bob’s. Hettie and Nellie were now out on number three’s doorstep, enjoying a grandstand view. Leah was standing at the Robsons’ gateway, quite obviously
imparting news of Anna’s arrival to Charlie. Another group, who had trailed them up Magnolia Hill from Lewisham, were congregated beneath the shade of St Mark’s magnolia tree.

‘I think you’d better go,’ she said to him apologetically. ‘I don’t think Miss Radcynska is going to open the door knowing you’re still here.’

Bob didn’t think she was going to either. ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly, aware that their audience was growing larger by the minute. ‘But I have to warn you
that—’

‘There’s no need,’ Kate said swiftly, knowing what he was about to say. ‘I’ve already guessed.’

Still Bob hesitated. Anna Radcynska had manhandled him out of her new home with all the strength of a Samson. If she should turn that strength, in fear and anger, on to Kate . . .