Magnolia Square (30 page)

‘Did he believe in dragons as well?’ Pru asked, no longer acutely aware of their nine-year age difference, and no longer painfully self-conscious in his company. ‘On maps that
were made when
everyone
thought the earth was flat there are drawings of monsters in the corners, warning that “Here be dragons!”’

‘I never thought to ask him,’ Malcolm said, happily aware that Pru was going to keep her hand tucked in the crook of his arm, ‘but he probably did. Would you like to go to the
flicks tonight? I don’t know what’s on, but if there isn’t anything worth seeing on in Lewisham, we can always go to Greenwich.’

Kate carried a basket of wet laundry out into her back garden and began pegging it on the line. It was a sunny day with a refreshing breeze, and everything would be dry by
tea-time.

‘Can I peg out?’ Luke asked toddling over to her, as grimy as a coal-miner from his digging activities.

‘Not on this clothes-line, it’s too high for you, and not with hands that colour you can’t!’ Kate said, dropping the shirt she had been holding back into the basket and
scooping him up, tucking him under her arm.

Her long braid had fallen forward over her shoulder when she had bent down towards him and she flicked it back with her free hand, saying in mock severity, ‘A soapy flannel on your hands
and face is what you need, young man. And stop wriggling. You’re worse than that worm you were frightened of!’

He shrieked and giggled as she carried him into the kitchen and sat him on the draining-board, next to the sink.

‘There’s enough dirt under your fingernails to grow potatoes in,’ she said, making him giggle harder than ever. She turned on the tap and reached for the flannel. Then a
distant scream froze her into immobility.

It was followed by another scream. And another. They weren’t the screams of children at play, or even adult screams of pretend terror. They were terrified. Horror-riven. Desperate. And
they ran one into another, on and on.

She whipped a startled Luke off the sink-top. ‘Stay here! Don’t leave the house! Do you understand?’

Uncertain and alarmed, he nodded, putting his thumb in his mouth for comfort as she raced out of the house and into the Square.

Bob Giles was running down the vicarage’s short front path in his shirt-sleeves. Leah was running up from the bottom end of the Square, moving at a speed Kate could scarcely believe.
Charlie was charging out of his garden gate. Emily Helliwell was hurrying across from the far side of the Square. All were making a bee-line for the open front door of number ten. Charlie reached
the Sharkeys’ gate first, Kate hard on his heels.

‘Run for the vicar!’
Malcolm Lewis could be heard shouting from inside the house. ‘Tell him to ring for an ambulance!’

‘Ring for an ambulance!’ Charlie shouted over his shoulder to Bob Giles, who was fast approaching the Sharkeys’ gate.

‘Ruth’s already ringing for one!’ Bob panted, racing into the house in Charlie and Kate’s wake.

The smell of gas was overpowering. They ran down the long hallway leading to the kitchen, bursting into it, seeing instantly the open oven door, the cushion Doris had placed inside it for her
head, the heavy ornamental tablecloth she had draped over the oven and her shoulders so that no fumes would escape. Malcolm Lewis had carried Doris’s comatose body out into the back garden
and, as Pru continued to scream, was trying to revive her, pressing down hard on her shoulder-blades, lifting her chest free of the ground by her shoulders in order to draw air into her lungs,
pressing down again, lifting, pressing down, lifting.

‘Is all the gas turned off?’ Bob Giles demanded urgently, dropping down on his knees beside Doris, feeling for her pulse.

Malcolm nodded, still pressing down and lifting, pressing down and lifting. ‘Yes . . . but all the windows in the house need opening, and for the love of God tell no-one to strike a
match!’

‘Charlie’s seeing to the windows,’ Kate said as Pru’s screams subsided into terrified sobs.

‘Our Father which art in Heaven,’ Emily Helliwell was saying quietly, standing several yards away so that she wouldn’t impede the resuscitation attempts of Bob Giles and
Malcolm Lewis, ‘Hallowed be thy Name . . .’

‘It’s Dad’s fault! It’s all Dad’s fault!’ Pru sobbed, hugging her arms, rocking herself to and fro. ‘And now Mum’s killed herself and I’ll
never be able to forgive him! Never!’

There was a hoarse, wheezing sound as Malcolm Lewis lifted Doris’s shoulders clear off the ground yet again.

‘She’s alive, my life!’ Leah’s voice was fervent. If Doris had succeeded in killing herself, it would have been a terrible thing; a criminal action.

‘Don’t stop what you’re doing till she regains consciousness or the ambulance-men arrive,’ Bob Giles said tautly to Malcolm, his fingers still on Doris’s
frighteningly weak pulse beat.

Malcolm nodded, beads of sweat standing out on his brow, his face fierce with concentration.

‘I fink I’ll just remove that cushion and ’eavy tablecloth from the oven, Vicar,’ Charlie said ruminatively from behind them. ‘We don’t want the ambulance-men
gettin’ any funny ideas about wot ’appened, do we? They might go reportin’ it to the police.’

After only the slightest of pauses, Bob Giles said, ‘No, Charlie. We don’t. I rather think Doris left the gas on by accident when she made her lunch-time cup of tea, and then fell
asleep and was overcome by the fumes. Make sure the oven door’s closed, there’s a good chap.’

Doris gave another, barely audible, rasping sound of life.

Pru’s knees buckled and she sank down on them, saying through her tears, ‘Come on, Mum! Please come back to me! Please!’

Miss Helliwell said in a voice rendered quavery by shock, ‘I can hear an ambulance bell ringing, Vicar. It’s going to be all right, I know it is. If Doris had been going to die,
Moshambo would have told me.’

Seconds later, they could hear Charlie shouting informatively to the ambulance-men as they ran into the house, ‘The lady’s out the back! She’s ’ad a bit of a nasty
accident with ’er gas!’

‘And then what happened, sweetheart?’ Leon asked, concerned. He was sitting at the kitchen table and she was forking a generous wedge of toad-in-the-hole from a
baking tin, on to his dinner plate.

‘One of the ambulance-men confirmed she was alive and praised Malcolm Lewis for the way he had acted.’ She handed him the plate, her face pale with distress. ‘Then they rolled
her on to a stretcher and put her in the ambulance and took her to Lewisham Hospital.’

‘And Pru went with her?’

She nodded, making no attempt to put anything on her own plate. ‘Malcolm Lewis went as well,’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I think he and Pru must be very fond of each other.
He had his arm around her shoulders and she was leaning against him as if he was all the comfort she needed.’

Leon made no move to pick up his knife and fork. He knew his Kate, and he knew there was something else distressing her, something she hadn’t told him yet. ‘What is it, love?’
he asked gently. ‘What are you fretting about?’

Her eyes held his, the expression in them agonized. ‘That it was partly my fault,’ she said hoarsely.

He stared at her in utter bewilderment, ‘But how on earth . . .’ he began, his dinner forgotten.

‘I was the one who lent her the money for the gas!’ Tears began streaming down her face. ‘Oh, Leon! I didn’t know what she was going to do when she asked me for it, but I
did know she was troubled, and I didn’t do anything about it. I simply went on with my laundry! And all the time she was . . . she was . . .’

He was out of his chair, his arms around her, drawing her to her feet, holding her close against him. ‘How could you possibly know what was going to happen?’ he said, his voice full
of loving reason. ‘If you hadn’t lent her the money, she would only have borrowed it off someone else. Leah, perhaps. Or Nellie.’

‘But I feel so guilty!’ Her words were muffled against the comforting warmth and strength of his chest. ‘I feel so responsible!’

‘Then you’re taking far too much on yourself.’ He put a finger beneath her chin, tipping her face up to his. ‘The only thing that should be concerning you is how Doris
can best be helped. Do you know if she has any family she could go and stay with for a short holiday? If she has, shall we ask Pru if she’d like to stay with us while her mother’s away?
Daisy’s room is plenty big enough for another single bed to be put in there.’

‘What about Wilfred?’ she asked, her arms around his waist, dinner forgotten. ‘Who is going to look after Wilfred?’

‘I rather think everyone in Magnolia Square might have to help in looking after Wilfred,’ Leon said wryly. ‘Mr Giles will have the matter in hand, you can be sure of
that.’

‘The dear Vicar sorted things out very speedily,’ Emily Helliwell said confidingly to Nellie Miller. ‘Doris has gone to stay with her sister. She lives in
Essex, and Ruth Fairbairn drove her over there this morning.’

Nellie, her swollen feet encased in brand-new carpet slippers bought in honour of Harriet and Charlie’s nuptials, said doubtfully, ‘It’s all very well you thinkin’
everythin’ is nicely sorted, Emily, but what about Wilfred? Word is, Doris’s little accident with the gas ’asn’t been enough to bring ’im to ’is senses, and if
that
won’t, what will?’

Miriam bustled down the aisle, intent on securing herself a place in one of the front pews. Albert followed her at a more leisurely pace, nodding cheerily to friends and neighbours, his beefy
neck uncomfortably constrained by a rarely worn collar and a tie.

Unable to answer Nellie’s question, Emily changed the subject. ‘I do hope Ruth is going to be back in time to play “The Wedding March” for Harriet,’ she said,
casting her eyes over the growing congregation. ‘It would be such a shame if, after being a spinster for over sixty years, Harriet should end up getting married without walking down the aisle
to “The Wedding March” . . .’

‘After sixty years of being a spinster, I imagine she’ll ’ave more on ’er mind than wedding marches,’ Nellie said dryly. ‘Lord love me, but what the
woman’s thinking of, I don’t know. Before I was widowed I ’ad my fair share of bein’ married, and I’ll tell you this for nothing – it ain’t all it’s
cracked up to be, not by a long chalk. Given a choice between marital obligations and a cup o’ tea, I’ll ’ave a cup o’ tea any time! Especially if it ’as sugar in
it!’

‘Do I look bridal enough, Katherine?’ Harriet Godfrey was asking Kate anxiously as she and Kate and Leon stood in her sunlit hallway. ‘Perhaps I should have
chosen something a little more summery than navy blue and white, but with rationing being what it is, I just had to take what was on offer.’

‘It looks like something bought before the war,’ Kate said truthfully, surveying Harriet’s trim, white-revered suit. ‘And your hat looks wonderful. That little posy of
fresh marguerites you’ve pinned to the brim is
very
bridal.’

Harriet’s net-gloved hands tightened around her white leather prayer book. ‘I never ever thought I would get married,’ she said suddenly. ‘Not even when I was a young
girl. I was always so plain. My father told me that, as no man was ever likely to provide for me, I should concentrate on getting myself a good education and then a good job. And that’s what
I did.’ She fell silent, thinking of the far and distant, lonely past. In the days before the First World War, when she had been at teacher training college, she had had no boyfriends, and
she had certainly had none afterwards, when the fields of France and Belgium had been stained red with blood and single, able-bodied young men had been at a premium. ‘I’m very
lucky,’ she said, checking her reflection in her hall mirror for the last time. ‘Not only lucky to be marrying a man as kind as Charlie, but lucky in my friends, too.’ She turned
her head, looking across at Leon. He was standing a little behind Kate, impeccably dressed in a much-brushed, much-pressed dark grey suit, a grey-and-red striped tie emphasizing the pristine
snowiness of his starched white shirt. ‘Thank you for agreeing to give me away, Leon,’ she said gratefully. ‘And now I think it’s time we walked across to the church,
don’t you? I’ve never kept Charlie waiting, and I’m not going to start doing so today.’

From his look-out at the church door, Danny Collins signalled to Bob Giles and to a rather breathless Ruth Fairbairn, that the bride was on her way. Ruth, still wearing the coat she had worn to
drive Doris Sharkey to her sister’s house in Essex, settled herself a little more comfortably at the organ.

In one of the front left-hand pews, Ellen Pierce slipped her hand into Carl’s. Luke and Matthew were sitting with them, patiently waiting for their mother to join them. Daisy was in the
pew behind with the Collins family. As Carl’s fingers tightened lovingly over hers, Ellen realized with a deep rush of pleasure that very soon all three children would be regarding her as
their step-granny.

In the pew behind, Mavis thought about the letter lying in her fake lizard-skin handbag and wished that Luke and Matthew would stop fidgeting. What did it matter if Ted was demobbed before Jack?
What earthly difference was it going to make to anything? There was the sound of activity at the church entrance. Kate hurried down the aisle towards the front left-hand pew, pretty as a picture in
a pastel-blue dress she had skilfully renovated with crystal, pre-war buttons and a spanking new white belt. The stately strains of ‘Here Comes the Bride’ filled the church. Charlie
stood facing the altar, his best man, Daniel Collins, at his side. No-one present had ever seen Charlie wearing a suit before, and all of them found it a strange experience.

‘Are you sure it’s ’im?’ Nellie Miller asked Emily Helliwell doubtfully. ‘It don’t look like ’im.’

As if to reassure everybody, Charlie turned slightly, looking down the aisle to where his beloved was approaching on Leon Emmerson’s arm, her navy picture-hat dipping with French chic over
one eye, the marguerites on its brim delightfully girlish. A beam of pure happiness split his crumpled face. She was a smasher, was his Harriet. She was a diamond, an absolute diamond.