Magnolia Square (44 page)

Christina had never been one of Hettie’s favourite people, but it was Christmas, the season of goodwill, and the poor girl had certainly had a rough time of it.

‘She’ll pick up now she’s ’ome,’ she said comfortably, ‘especially now she’s sorted things out with Mr Giles.’

‘Mr Giles?’ Nellie snapped to attention, or she did as far as her twenty stone would allow. Hettie’s flower arranging at St Mark’s meant she often picked up bits and
pieces of vicarage gossip that no-one else stood a cat in hell’s chance of overhearing. ‘Wot’s bin wrong between Christina and the Vicar?’

Hettie looked around to make sure no-one was listening in on them and then, satisfied they weren’t, leaned towards Nellie, lowering her voice, saying ominously, ‘Religion!’

Nellie blinked. It wasn’t quite what she had expected, and it was a bit of a let-down. ‘Well, ’e is a vicar when all’s said and done, ’Ettie,’ she said
reasonably. ‘I suppose if ’e wants to talk about religion ’e ’as more right than most—’

‘Not
his
religion,’ Hettie said exasperatedly,
‘hers.’
Mindful that the house was full of friends and neighbours, she lowered her voice even further.
‘It seems as if Mr Giles should never have married her and Jack in St Mark’s, only at the time she said it was what she wanted, and what with it being the war and everything, and Mr
Giles always being so obliging—’

‘Are you trying to tell me Christina and Jack ain’t legally married?’ Nellie’s eyes were as round as saucers. ‘Snakes alive but that’ll be a rum do,
won’t it? She was very nicely brought up, was Christina. Leah says ’er father was a professional man, a chemist. She won’t be ’appy livin’ over the
brush—’

‘They aren’t living over the brush!’ There were times when Hettie wanted to give Nellie a good shake, but Nellie’s mountainous bulk made such expressions of exasperation
impossible. ‘Being married in church is a civil ceremony as well as a religious ceremony. That’s why the happy couple have to sign the register, just as they do in a Register Office
wedding.’

‘Then wot’s the kerfuffle?’ Nellie asked, bewildered.

‘By marrying at St Mark’s she was turning her back on her religion,’ Hettie said, having overheard enough of Christina’s many conversations with Bob Giles to know that
this was the central issue. ‘And though she once tried to shut everything about her past out of her mind, her religion included, she doesn’t want to do so any longer. And Jack
doesn’t want her to do so, either. He’s been with her to see the Rabbi, and he’s taking instruction. He says if they’re going to have something Christina calls a Shabbas and
special candles on the table and eat bread with salt on it, he wants to know what it’s all in aid of.’

‘Yer mean Jack’s thinking of convertin’?’ Nellie asked with incredulity. ‘Blimey! If ’e does, ’e’ll ’ave to ’ave the end of his Jimmy
Riddler cut orf! I can’t imagine Jack likin’ the thought of that very much, can you? Circumspection I think it’s called, and it don’t sound very comfy.’

‘Can I just move you two ladies and your chairs back a bit?’ Daniel asked, striding up to them, a beaming smile on his good-natured face as he unwittingly put an end to their gossip.
‘Then I can fit a few more spare chairs in around the edges. There’s going to be quite a throng tonight. The first Magnolia Square Christmas Eve party of the peace! Even Anna’s
got her best bib and tucker on, though I don’t think pastel pink is really her colour.’

‘She bought it herself down Lewisham Market,’ Carrie was saying as she and Kate made chicken paste sandwiches. ‘I tried to talk her into wearing one of the dresses Harriet gave
her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. She just kept saying “pink is vunderful”, and that it reminded her of candy-floss and summer.’

‘And she’s quite right,’ Mavis said, tipping a packet of hundreds and thousands lavishly across the top of the trifle she had brought with her. ‘When it comes to clothes
you ’ave to wear wot you feel ’appiest in.’

Carrie eyed the plunging cleavage of Mavis’s scarlet chiffon flounced blouse, saying tartly, ‘Which in your case appears to be as little as possible.’

Mavis grinned. ‘We wouldn’t be just a little on the jealous side, would we?’ she asked, knowing how bored Carrie was with wearing frumpish maternity tops. ‘Yer should
lash out on a bit of parachute silk, our Carrie. Yer could ’ide a battalion under parachute silk and still look like Rita ’Ayworth in
Tonight and Every Night.
’

‘’Eave-ho and up she rises!’ Danny shouted as he heaved Hettie’s piano over the front doorstep and into the house. ‘Thank Gawd it ain’t snowing! If
there’d bin snow underfoot I’d be at the bottom of Magnolia ’ill by now with the joanna on top of me!’

‘When the boxing club opens, p’raps you should organize a bit of piano moving in amongst the weight-training.’

Leon, relegated to a supervisory capacity on account of the plaster-cast on his left wrist and the heavy strapping beneath his shirt which was holding his broken ribs in a firm position,
wasn’t altogether joking. Piano moving was tough exercise on the muscles as everyone who had ever shifted Hettie’s joanna well knew.

‘Can I play “Away in a Manger”, Granny, please?’ Rose asked Hettie as the piano was finally manoeuvred into the front room.

‘Do any of you three lads know how to spell Constantinople?’ Daniel, engrossed with compiling pen-and-paper games for later in the evening, asked, ‘because if you do, it means
it’ll be too simple a question for Daisy and Beryl and Rose.’

‘We’ll be open by the New Year,’ Danny said to Leon, ignoring his father’s attempts to be funny. ‘Jack says there’s no sense in ’anging around, not when
Elisha’s ’appy for us to set up at the back of The Swan.’ He wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead, his mahogany-red hair standing up in unquenchable spikes despite a
liberal application of Brylcreem. ‘’E’s goin’ to be payin’ me a proper wage, no nonsense about waitin’ to see how things go,’ he said, a happy grin nearly
spurting his freckled, snub-nosed face. ‘I give up work at the factory on the thirty-first, and from then on, Jack will be my guv’nor. This boxin’ club ain’t going to be
just any old boxin’ club, Leon. With Jack’s contacts and my expertise, it’s going to be the best there is.’

‘Is this party going to get under way, or isn’t it?’ Mavis asked, entering the room with panache, a plate of hot mince pies held high. ‘Dad’s serving up the punch,
but ’e’s ’avin to do it from the kitchen ’cos the bowl’s too heavy to carry.’

‘Someone’s singing carols at the door,’ Daniel said, helping himself to a mince pie and having to juggle it from one hand to the other, it was so hot.

‘It sounds like Anna and my ’Arriet,’ Charlie said, abandoning his efforts at Christmas decorations and lumbering happily out into the hallway.

‘Where’s Emily and Esther?’ Nellie hollered. ‘We can’t start a party without Emily and Esther!’

Harriet stepped into the house, saying as she received a loving kiss on her cheek from her husband, ‘She’s being wheeled up the Square now by Malcolm Lewis. His mother is with him
and so is Doris.’

‘Merry Christ-es-mas!’ Anna shouted gutturally, lurching into Kate’s hall, resplendent in the ruched pastel pink creation she had been wearing ever since lunch time, Ophelia
tucked like a Christmas parcel in the crook of her arm. ‘
Prosze! Witaj!
Gut tidings! Great joy!’

‘Even to children and to men?’ Daniel asked, taking his life in his hands.

Anna guffawed. ‘Zum men, my Mr Collins. Zum children. But not all! Never not all!
Dziekuje!
Vere are the mince-pies? Vere is the punch?’

‘Merry Christmas, everyone!’ Esther’s cheeks were rosy with cold from her brief, brisk outing as Malcolm adroitly steered her wheelchair into the living-room. ‘Oh, my
goodness! Aren’t the decorations pretty? Pink and gold chains, and holly—’

‘And mistletoe,’ Nellie said, a sprig clutched in one hand so that she’d be at the ready if anyone likely came within kissing distance. ‘Where’s Emily? And
where’s Mr Giles? He said he’d be popping in before evening service.’

‘I have an announcement to make,’ Malcolm said as Pru darted in the room to join him, her eyes sparkling, her smile radiant. ‘But I want everyone to have a drink in their hands
before I make it.’

‘Then you’d better wait till everyone comes in from out of the kitchen,’ Harriet said practically, looking like Queen Elizabeth in her best dove-grey silk dress.
‘I’ll go and herd them all up.’

‘An announcement?’ Carrie whipped off her pinny and fluffed her hair. If an announcement was going to be made then the party had well and truly started. ‘Do you know about
this, Kate? Has Malcolm popped the question to Pru?’

‘If ’e ’as, ’er father won’t be too pleased about it.’ Maids licked a streak of trifle cream from her finger. ‘I saw ’im late this afternoon dahn
at the clock-tower when I was gettin’ the last of my Christmas shoppin’ in.’ She gave one of her irrepressible chuckles. ‘I wished ’im a merry Christmas and ’e
told me to prepare to meet my doom!’

Carrie frowned slightly. ‘It’s all very well laughing at him, Mavis, but what’s he going to do for Christmas? Old misery though he is, it’s not nice to think of him
spending it alone.’

‘He isn’t spending it alone.’ Kate lifted Luke up in her arms in order that he wouldn’t be crushed when they went into the crowded sitting-room. ‘I asked him if
he’d like to come to the party tonight,’ she said as her son’s chubby legs straddled her hip, ‘and if he’d like to have Christmas dinner with us tomorrow. He said he
wasn’t celebrating an event that had been paganized beyond recognition, but that instead he’d be spending it with like-minded people.’ A smile twitched the corner of her mouth.
What Wilfred had actually said was that he was spending it with his disciples, but that piece of information would save for later. She didn’t want Pru’s engagement announcement to be
marred by fresh speculation as to her father’s mental condition.

‘So yer can celebrate Christmas with a clear conscience, Carrie,’ Mavis said as Ted took her by the arm and steered her out of the kitchen and into the paper-chain-decorated
passageway leading to the sitting-room. ‘The only waifs and strays this Christmas will be the four-legged ones Kate’s dad’s new wife always manages to find.’

‘Now that we’re all gathered together . . .’ Malcolm began, standing on the hearth-rug, one arm around Pru’s slender waist.

‘We ain’t all gathered together!’ Nellie interrupted in a voice that would have stopped traffic as far away as Catford. ‘The Vicar ain’t ’ere and Emily
ain’t ’ere and Christina and Jack and Kate’s dad ain’t ’ere!’

‘Christina and Jack are coming up the path now!’ Daisy volunteered from her look-out position at the front window.

‘No, they ain’t!’ It was Billy, standing behind her shoulder and, in Daisy’s opinion, making a nuisance of himself. ‘They’ve stopped to have a kiss and a
cuddle!’

‘And Grandpa’s coming!’ Daisy shouted, ignoring Billy’s common remark. ‘And he’s got
lots
of presents with him! Lots and
lots
!’

Ellen, her angular face softened by the happiness that marriage had brought her, wriggled her way through the crush in order to hurry to the door to greet him. This was their first Christmas
together as man and wife. Their first Christmas together as a
family.
‘From Grandma and Grandpa’ Carl had written on the little cards strung from the children’s presents,
and
she
was Grandma. Whenever they visited number four, Daisy’s face would light up at the sight of her. Matthew would run to greet her. Luke would wind his arms around her legs and
beam up at her, chanting, ‘Gran! Gran! Gran!’ She was loved and she was needed, and she was the happiest woman on God’s earth.

‘Now that we’re all gathered together,’ Malcolm said again as Christina and Jack eased their way into the crowded room, and Danny and Leon set about making sure everyone had a
full glass of punch in their hand and his mother stood at one side of him and Doris stood at Pru’s side, ‘I just want to say how much Magnolia Square means to me. So much so, that
I’m going to—’

‘Get on with it!’ Daniel shouted jovially. ‘We ain’t got all night, young fellow-me-lad!’

‘Where’s the Vicar and Emily?’ Nellie protested yet again. ‘They ain’t done a flit together, ’ave they?’

‘They’ll be here soon.’ There was such a look of barely contained excitement on Ruth’s face that a temporarily dumbstruck Nellie wondered if the Vicar’s young wife
was in the same happy condition as Kate and Carrie.

‘. . . that I’m going to marry a Magnolia Square girl,’ Malcolm finished to a storm of applause.

‘Good fer you, Pru!’ Nellie called out raucously, recovering her powers of speech. ‘’E’s a better catch than the insurance man!’

‘Let’s ’ave a look at the ring,
bubee
,’ Leah demanded, barrelling forward, all done up to the nines in a toffee-brown dress of shot-silk. ‘An engagement ring
is the best present in the world, eh,
nu
?’

‘Three cheers for the happy couple!’ Albert shouted, raising his glass high. ‘Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!’

‘There’s something I want to say to you, luv,’ Ted said to Mavis under cover of the cheers that were raising the Emmersons’ rafters. His arm was around her waist and
Mavis turned to look at him, aware from the expression in his voice that whatever it was he wanted to say, it was going to be something more important than asking her if she wanted her glass
refilling. ‘I know I’ve made things difficult for you since I got back home,’ he said, acutely aware that for the first time since his demob he was in the same room as Jack
Robson, ‘my not wanting to go out on the town and all that. It’s just that I’ve needed time to adjust, luv. It’s not bin easy for me, away from ’ome, and you an’
the kids, for years on end.’

He paused, struggling for words. He’d never been any good at words. Deeds were the things he was best at – showing bravery under fire; being faithful to a wife who was probably not
being faithful to him, when the rest of his unit were descending in droves on the nearest whorehouse; doing a hard week’s work as a docker and putting his unopened pay packet down on the
table every Friday night; loving his family; loving his country; living decently. At the far side of the room he could see Jack, all dark and damn-your-eyes, as he had once heard Hettie so
effectively describe him.