The Londoners (10 page)

Having finished all her letters, Kate began to type the relevant addresses on to envelopes. No doubt Mr Harvey felt very much as Hettie did. After all, if war did break out, no-one in their
right mind would relish the idea of a child or grandchild being in the very forefront of the fighting. She remembered that her first impression of Toby Harvey had been one of athletic ability.
Certainly the way he moved spoke of training and perfect physical fitness. As she began marrying the letters to the envelopes she did so convinced that if Mr Harvey was trying to deter his grandson
from joining the RAF, he was destined to meet with disappointment.

From behind the closed interconnecting door came the sound of mutual laughter and she raised her eyebrows slightly. No matter how inauspiciously the meeting had begun it was obviously now on a
very amicable footing. Which was not too surprising, considering Toby Harvey’s unorthodox manner.

Her flare of anger had now ebbed and as she put the pile of letters waiting for signature in a neat pile by the side of her typewriter it occurred to her that she might have gravely misjudged
Toby Harvey. If his manner was merely unorthodox he might very well have had no deliberate intention of wrong-footing either her or Mr Muff. And if he hadn’t, her manner towards him had been
excessively impolite.

She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. If she had been impolite, there was nothing that could be done about it now. He should have introduced himself properly and he shouldn’t have made
such over-familiar remarks about her hair. She remembered the expression of admiration in his eyes when he had looked at her and felt her cheeks warm. Though excessively annoying he was also
excessively good-looking. She gave a wry smile. There was no use setting her sights in
that
direction. The grandson of Mr Harvey of Harvey Construction Ltd was nearly as far removed from
her social orbit as King Edward VII had been from Carrie’s.

‘The Harveys?’ Carrie asked as Kate walked with her down Magnolia Hill towards Lewisham market. ‘Why on earth ask me? You’re the one who works for them!
All I know about old man Harvey is that he lives in a whopping great house facing the Heath and that he goes to all the nob events.’

‘What events?’ Kate asked curiously.

‘Oh, you know,’ Carrie said airily, ‘racing at Ascot and sailing at Cowes.’

Kate’s curiosity deepened. ‘How on earth can you know that?’

‘’Cos I’ve seen photographs of him at Ascot and Cowes in the
Tatler
, and before you ask where the heck I read the
Tatler
, I read it at the
hairdressers.’

Kate, who had never been to a hairdressers in her life, said, ‘Are there ever any photographs of other members of his family in the
Tatler
?’

‘He doesn’t have any other family, does he?’ Carrie said as they turned out of the bottom end of Magnolia Hill and into the busy High Street. ‘He’s widowed. His son
was killed, fighting in Flanders and his daughter-in-law was killed in a motoring accident somewhere exotic. France or Italy, or was it Switzerland? I can’t remember now, but I know there was
an awful lot of fuss in the local papers when it happened. I’m surprised you don’t remember it.’

Kate, who never read about accidents if she could avoid it, said persistently, ‘How long ago was it?’

Carrie shrugged. ‘Donkey’s years ago. I must have been about twelve. I know I was impressed at the thought of someone local travelling as far as Italy or Switzerland. Why all the
interest? Are you writing a family history for the work magazine?’

‘No, I’m just curious that’s all.’

‘Seems a funny thing to be curious about. All I’m curious about is whether Hitler’s going to invade Czechoslovakia and what the hell will happen if he does.’

Kate was silent. If Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland then Europe would most likely be plunged into full-scale war.

‘Danny says all future leave has been cancelled,’ Carrie said as the first of Lewisham’s market stalls came into view, ‘and he says there are rumours that the
navy’s about to be mobilized. It doesn’t look very good, does it?’

‘No,’ Kate said soberly, wondering how her father would be affected if war were declared between Britain and Germany; wondering if Danny would be sent straight to the front;
wondering how long it took for an RAF recruit to gain his wings.

‘No war!’ Mr Muff said to her with vast relief three weeks later. ‘Mr Chamberlain has dealt with the matter and now we can all live in peace, thank
God!’

‘It isn’t a very satisfactory peace, is it?’ Kate asked from behind her typewriter. ‘We haven’t stood up to Hitler. We’ve given in to him. He now has the
Sudetenland, which is what he wanted all along. What happens when he wants more of Czechoslovakia? When he turns his greedy eyes towards Bohemia and Moravia? What are we going to do
then?’

‘But he won’t,’ Mr Muff said patiently as he retrieved a letter from a filing cabinet. ‘The Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia is inhabited mainly by Germans, which is why
ceding it to Germany is, in a way, quite reasonable. And now he’s got what he wants, Herr Hitler will settle down and we’ll all be able to enjoy a little peace and quiet.’

‘I’m not sure that the Sudetenland
is
inhabited mainly by Germans,’ Kate said, mindful of her many conversations on the subject with her father. ‘There are
Czechs and Slovaks and Hungarians and Ruthenes living there as well.’

‘Ruthenes?’ Mr Muff asked with mild interest as he returned to his desk. ‘What are Ruthenes? Are they members of a religious sect?’

‘They’re Slavs,’ Kate said, trying to keep impatience from her voice and wondering if Mr Chamberlain was similarly ignorant. ‘And no-one seems to have asked what will
happen to
them
now the Sudetenland has been ceded to a fascist state.’

‘I’m sure everything will work out quite satisfactorily,’ Mr Muff said, too vastly relieved by the promise of peace for his own country to worry overmuch about the fate of a
people he had, until that moment, been ignorant of.

‘And there will be Jews in the Sudetenland,’ Kate added, refusing to let him off the hook. ‘What will happen to them now?’

Mr Muff didn’t know, and if the answer was one which would keep him awake at night, neither did he want to know.

‘There’s a lot of post this morning,’ he said, clinging determinedly to the cheerfulness he had felt ever since he had heard the BBC report of the Munich Peace Agreement.
‘We’d better make a start on it. Onward and upward.’

Kate had brought a packed lunch to work and at lunchtime she walked down towards the river. Sitting on a conveniently sited bench a little down-river from Greenwich Pier, she
gazed out over the iron-grey surface of the Thames and wondered why it was that a man as essentially kind and decent as Mr Muff should be unable to see the Munich Peace Agreement for what it truly
was; an obscene sell-out to Hitler.

The river was thick with shipping. Tugs and lighters, gunnel-deep with crates and bales destined for the wharves and warehouses of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, vied for shipping space with barges
and an occasional paddle-steamer.

Kate took her sandwiches out of her shoulder bag and opened them, wondering where the larger ships had come from and where they were going; wondering if any of them were still trading with
Germany.

‘A penny for them,’ a voice she would have recognized anywhere said, his shadow falling over her.

Her heart began to beat in sharp, slamming little strokes that she could feel even in her finger-tips. Ever since her initial meeting with him he had been working with Mr Tutley in Planning and
Design and she had seen him only at a distance. From a distance she had, however, been acutely aware of him and she had become convinced that her revised opinion of him was correct. He hadn’t
intentionally meant to disconcert either her or Mr Muff. He was simply unorthodox in that he treated everyone, from senior management to cleaning staff, in the same direct and friendly manner.

As he sat down beside her, she said truthfully, ‘I was wondering where all the ships come from and go to and I was thinking that it must be very nice to be a sailor, especially if being a
sailor means not having to endure newsreels of Mr Chamberlain waving his wretched piece of paper in the air and being congratulated for having achieved peace at Czechoslovakia’s
expense.’

‘Do you think he has achieved peace?’ Toby asked, helping himself, uninvited, to one of her cheese and tomato sandwiches.

To her amazement she felt her heartbeats steady and her tummy muscles relax. It was suddenly as if she was talking to someone she had known for a long time; someone with whom she was completely
at ease.

‘No,’ she said with stark frankness. ‘Do you?’

‘No,’ he said, as she had known he would. ‘It’s a cop-out. However loudly Hitler shouts that Czechoslovakia is his last territorial demand, no-one with any sense believes
him.’ He stretched his long legs out in front of him. ‘Duff Cooper certainly doesn’t believe him. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t resign his position as First
Lord of the Admiralty. And Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill certainly don’t.’

‘And I don’t,’ Kate said darkly as the
Laguna Belle
paddle-steamer hoved majestically into view.

‘Well of course you don’t,’ he said with the easy confidence she found so attractive, ‘we’re always going to be in agreement about everything important. I knew it
the moment I set eyes on you.’

It was so exactly her own feeling that she was robbed of breath, completely unable to make any kind of a reply.

He turned towards her, his eyes holding hers steadily. ‘I want to know you better, Kate. It was hopeless my trying to do so while we were both working under the same roof. The speculation
and gossip would have made life a misery for you.’

Her heart once more began to beat in painful, slamming strokes. He wasn’t flirting with her. The depth of feeling in his voice and the expression in his dark grey eyes was heart-stoppingly
serious.

‘Today is my last day,’ he said, taking hold of her hand. ‘I leave for RAF training camp tomorrow. Will you write to me while I’m there? Will you go out with me when I
have leave?’

Unnoticed by both of them, the packet of sandwiches slid off her knee and onto the dusty ground.

‘Yes,’ she said, the blood drumming in her ears. ‘Yes, of course I’ll write to you. Of course I will go out with you.’

The paddle-steamer was now abreast of them and the many passengers en route to Southend were leaning against its deck-rails, regarding them with interest.

‘Thank God,’ he said with vast relief and, to the delight of their many onlookers and a cacophony of wolf-whistles and encouraging cheers, he leaned across and kissed her full on the
mouth.

When she left work at the end of the afternoon and walked out into the road leading up to the Heath, he was sitting in a parked, open-topped sports car, waiting for her.

‘Hop in,’ he said with a wide grin, leaning over and opening the passenger-seat door. ‘We may as well start the way we mean to go on.’

It wasn’t the most romantic of invitations but it was a blatant affirmation of their new-found relationship and Kate’s heart sang as she stepped into the tiny MG and settled herself
into the low-slung seat.

‘Which way?’ he asked, switching on the ignition and gunning the engine into life. ‘Uphill or downhill?’

‘Up,’ she said, acutely aware of how strong and sure his well-shaped hands were on the wheel. ‘I live in Magnolia Square, just off the south-west corner of the
Heath.’

‘Then we’re nearly neighbours,’ he said, slipping the car into gear. ‘My family home overlooks the Heath.’

She knew very well where his family home was because weeks ago, after Carrie had told her its location, she had walked past it when taking Bonzo for a walk. In comparison to her own middle-class
home it was palatial. Built in the style of Robert Adams, it had a columned portico and a front door decorated with a classical pediment. The windows were long and slender with delicately moulded
architraves and the rear garden, enclosed by a high wall, had looked to be vast.

‘Were you born in Blackheath?’ she asked as they roared up the hill with Greenwich Park to the left of them.

‘I was born in the house I still live in,’ he said, slowing down as they neared the junction with the road skirting the Heath. ‘What about you? You said you weren’t
Swedish, but were you born somewhere else in Scandinavia? Denmark or Norway or Finland?’

She shook her head, her heavy braid of hair flaxen-gold in the late afternoon sunlight. ‘No, I was born in Magnolia Square.’

‘Then you’re English?’ He drove across the old London to Dover road and on to one of the narrow roads that criss-crossed the Heath. ‘I hope you won’t take offence
at my saying so, but you don’t look it.’ He flashed her a sudden, down-slanting smile. ‘You look more like a goddess out of Norse mythology than a born and bred London
girl.’

Her hands had been resting lightly clasped on her lap and now they tightened, the knuckles showing white. A few years ago it would never have occurred to her to be hesitant about admitting to
her German ancestry, but that had been before the threat of war with Germany had loomed so large. She wondered what Toby’s reaction would be when he learned that her father was German; she
wondered if he would still want her to write to him; if he would still want to take her out when he came home on leave.