The Londoners (19 page)

‘As if Hitler will ever overrun France!’ Miss Helliwell said, equally staunchly. ‘How could he, with your Danny fighting out there and Ted in France as well and Jack Robson in
the Commandoes?’

‘Now that Billy and Beryl are back home Mavis is findin’ food rationin’ a real ’eadache,’ Miriam confided to Miss Godfrey. ‘She never was
what you would call a natural-born ’ousewife and this ’avin’ to register with one grocer for everythin’ is throwin’ her somethin’ shockin’.’

Miss Godfrey eased her wicker shopping basket from one arm to the other and made a murmur of sympathy. That Mavis was not a natural-born housewife came as not the remotest surprise. No-one who
knew her would ever have come to any other conclusion.

‘’Course, Nibbo latched on to the advantages straight away,’ Miriam said, a hint of bitterness in her voice. ‘’E no longer describes himself as a green-grocer,
which is what ’e’s been for as long as I can remember. Ever since ’e got a sniff of what the government intended ’e began stockin’ sugar and tea and God knows what
else and calling ’imself a grocer.’

Miss Godfrey frowned slightly, ‘But that was quite sensible of him, surely?’

‘Oh,
very
sensible,’ Miriam said, her bitterness now blatantly apparent. ‘It means ’e’s not only cornered a captured market for rationed foods but that
everyone who buys their food rations from ’im will also buy their unrationed greengroceries from ’im as well! After all, if you can buy everythin’ under one roof, why tramp down
to the market for your fruit and veg?’

Miss Godfrey, embarrassingly aware that three apples were nestling somewhere in her basket alongside her small supply of rationed tea, sugar and margarine, all of which had been purchased from
Mr Nibbs, tried to adjust the basket so that its contents were not quite so visible.

‘I’m sure none of your previous market customers will desert you,’ she said, her conscience clear of hypocrisy because she had never shopped in the market but had always been
one of Mr Nibbs’s customers.

Miriam looked unconvinced and in an effort to move the conversation onto more neutral ground Miss Godfrey said, ‘Personally, I’m far more worried about meat rationing than the
rationing of groceries. I’ve always shopped around for my meat and I’m not looking forward to the prospect of having to use one butcher week in, week out.’

‘Stockings!’ Carrie said to Kate, highly disgruntled. ‘How the hell are we going to manage if we can’t buy silk stockings for special
occasions?’

They were in Kate’s bedroom and Kate, who was holding a sleeping Rose lovingly in her arms, was unable to proffer a suitable reply. Ever since war had been declared there had been
shortages of all kinds of commodities, but whereas neither she nor Carrie minded very much about food and petrol shortages, the near impossibility of obtaining silk stockings had hit hard.

‘We could begin wearing lisle stockings, I suppose,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Lisle?’ Carrie stared at her as if she had taken leave of her senses.
‘Lisle?
We’d look like women of fifty! I might be married and a mum but I want to look
like Betty Grable when I go out on the town! Not my mother or my mother-in-law or Miss Helliwell!’

Kate grinned. With her square-jawed face and heavy dark hair, Carrie could never, in a million years, look like Betty Grable. She looked more like Katharine Hepburn or Claudette Colbert.

‘Leave looking like Betty Grable to Mavis,’ she said, easing Rose into a slightly more comfortable position in her arms. ‘Why don’t we follow the advice of the beauty
article in last week’s
Picture Post
and simply make-up our legs with foundation cream and draw a line down the middle of the backs of our legs so that it looks like a stocking
seam?’

Carrie’s eyes widened. ‘Is that what it suggested?’

Kate nodded. ‘According to the article there’s leg make-up and pencils made specially for the purpose, but until we can buy them we can make do with foundation cream and an eyebrow
pencil.’

Carrie had already reached for her handbag. ‘It’s an idea of genius!’ she exulted, beginning to rummage through it for her make-up purse.

‘Either genius or lunacy,’ Kate said, giggling and laying the still-sleeping Rose carefully down on the bed. ‘Have you found your foundation and a pencil? I’ll make-up
your legs first and then you can do mine. Do you think it will fool anyone?’

Carrie hitched her skirt up so that the pencil line could run from the back of her knee down to her ankle. ‘If it fools Mavis, even for five minutes, it’ll be worth it. I truly think
Mavis would sell her soul for a pair of silk stockings!’

By early April the situation on mainland Europe was so dire even Mavis had more on her mind than silk stockings. Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. Denmark fell almost
immediately and though a Norwegian Nazi sympathizer, Major Vidkun Quisling, proclaimed himself head of the Norwegian Government and ordered all resistance to Germany to cease, Norwegian forces
refused to do so. Aided by British and French troops they began a desperate battle to oust the invader from Norwegian soil.

‘Let’s ’ope they succeed,’ Charlie Robson said to Kate as he crossed the Square, heading towards the Heath, Queenie at his heels. ‘If they don’t, Hitler will
use all Norway’s ports as naval bases for the German fleet and then his ships will be able to sweep down on us any time they like.’

Kate regarded him with a startled expression, taken aback by such a cogent explanation of the situation from a man usually inarticulate unless expressing an opinion on horse or greyhound
racing.

‘I know that for a fact,’ he added, taking pity on her wonderment, ‘’cos Harriet told me.’

In Norway, as with doomed Poland and Denmark, nothing got better; events only grew worse. By the end of the month British and French troops had no option but to withdraw from their precarious
Norwegian footholds. With all but nominal resistance in Norway crushed, Hitler turned his attention from northern Europe to western Europe.

Mavis, who had been listening to Reginald King and his Orchestra on the wireless, was the first person in Magnolia Square to hear the news. ‘We are sorry to interrupt
this programme . . .’ a solemn voice began and seconds later Mavis was pushing up her sash window and yelling for the benefit of any of her neighbours who were within hearing distance,
indoors or out,
‘That bugger Hitler’s just walked into France!’

‘And
Belgium
and
Holland,’ Carl said later to Kate, grim-faced. ‘How much worse can things possibly get?’

He found out how much worse things could get for himself and for Kate next morning when it was officially announced that from now on, no matter what the mitigating
circumstances, all male Germans and Austrians from the ages of sixteen to fifty were to be interned.

‘But it can’t apply to you, Dad!’ Kate said in anguish as her father opened drawer after drawer in his bedroom, taking out underclothes, pullovers, belts and braces. ‘Mum
was
British!
She was a
Londoner! You’re
a Londoner now! You’ve lived here for over half your life!’

‘A policeman is waiting for me downstairs,’ he said, his voice unsteady as he began placing underpants and socks into a small suitcase. ‘All over Europe families are having to
endure far worse partings, Kate. I’m not being taken into a German concentration camp, a Dachau or a Buchenwald, nor am I shortly going to be in battle in Belgium or Holland or
France.’

She sat down on the bed, ashamed of her near hysterical outburst; sick at the thought of how long it might be before he was allowed to come home again.

Her father placed a copy of John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath
, lent to him by Toby, into the suitcase on top of his clothes. ‘I’m sure we’ll be allowed to
write to each other,
Liebling
. And perhaps you will be able to send me parcels occasionally and keep me supplied with books.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ She could hardly speak she was so terrified of distressing him further by breaking down into tears. ‘Where are you going? Will I be able to visit
you?’

He closed the suitcase lid. ‘I don’t know where I’m to be interned. I imagine it will be somewhere remote; certainly somewhere far from London.’

The tears she had held in check with so much difficulty could be held in check no longer. They slid down her cheeks, falling on to her tightly clasped hands. ‘I’m going to miss you,
Daddy,’ she said, as if she were a small child again. ‘I love you.’

Very gently he reached down for her hands, taking them in his and drawing her to her feet. ‘I love you too,
Liebling
,’ he said, holding her close. ‘And everything is
going to be all right. The next few days and weeks of the war are going to be crucial but they’re going to be crucial in the Allies’ favour. Evil never triumphs for long and Hitler will
be stopped in his tracks before he can overrun France and long before he can attempt an invasion of Britain. You’ll see. Another few months and life will once again be normal.’

Her head was against his chest and she was glad that she couldn’t see into his eyes for she knew that he was lying to her in the hope of comforting her. No matter what the outcome of the
battles now being waged life would never be the same again, not for them and not for anyone else.

‘Mr Voigt?’ an unfamiliar voice called from the foot of the stairs. ‘Are you ready, sir? Time’s passing and we have to be on our way.’

‘Goodbye,
Liebling.’
He kissed her tenderly on the top of her head. ‘God Bless.’

As he reluctantly turned away from her and picked up his suitcase she said thickly, ‘I’m coming downstairs with you.’

He merely nodded, the constriction in his throat too tight for speech. Silently he walked down the stairs towards the waiting policeman. The front door was open, as it had been ever since he had
answered it to the unmistakably officious knock. As he stepped outside with his escort, Kate, a step or so behind him, could see a knot of curious onlookers standing on the pavement outside Miss
Godfrey’s.

Christina was there, her exquisitely boned face impassive, only the dark pools of her eyes betraying the deep pleasure she felt at the sight of an Aryan German being forcibly removed from his
home and family. Miriam and Albert were with her, Albert having the grace to look slightly uncomfortable, Miriam displaying no such emotion. It was a warm day and she wore no cardigan over her
sleeveless, flower-printed, cotton overall. Her plump arms were folded aggressively across her ample chest, her grim expression a clear announcement of her belief that the authorities
wouldn’t be interning Carl Voigt unless they were certain he was a secret Nazi.

Kate, remembering the long, happy years during which she had been made as welcome in Miriam’s home as if it had been her own, stared at the hostile figure in sick disbelief. Miriam’s
eyes refused to meet hers.

‘Bloody Hun!’
a voice from the crowd that had gathered called out.
‘Pity you’re only being interned and not hung, drawn and quartered!’

There was a shocked intake of breath from many members of the crowd but no-one spoke out in protest. Kate’s eyes flew in the direction the voice had come from. Though there were many faces
she recognized: Miss Helliwell’s, Leah Singer’s, Nibbo’s, there were also many faces she didn’t recognize. She wondered where they had come from; how they had come by the
news that a German living locally was to be arrested and interned.

As her father stepped out on to the pavement he carefully closed the gate behind him, doing so before she could possibly follow him any further. Her hands tightened on its wrought-iron
scrollwork. He didn’t want her to follow him any further. He didn’t want her to be witness to any more viciousness and hatred.

As he and his escort strode briskly out of Magnolia Square and down Magnolia Terrace, the small crowd began to disperse. The faces she had been unable to recognize headed down towards Magnolia
Hill and Lewisham. Albert put a work-gnarled hand beneath Miriam’s elbow and steered her away in the direction of their home. Leah Singer followed them. Miss Helliwell looked at Kate in
almost pathetic bewilderment and then, without speaking to her, turned her back, hurrying after the Jennings, not wanting to be the last to leave the scene.

That honour was Charlie’s. He stood on the pavement, his shirtsleeves rolled high, his shabby trousers held up around his paunch by a broad leather belt, Queenie at his heels.

Kate’s knuckles were white as she tightened her hold on the gate. ‘What about you, Charlie?’ she demanded, her voice as taut as tightly strung wire. ‘Do you think my
father should be hung, drawn and quartered as well?’

Charlie, who had watched Carl Voigt’s figure until it had walked out of sight, was still staring after him. Slowly he turned and faced her.

‘I fink there’s bin a mistake,’ he said steadily. ‘I fink the bloody authorities ’ave taken leave of their senses.’ And in deep puzzlement he began to walk
away from her and towards the Heath, Queenie trotting at his side.

For a fleeting moment a dark, dizzy tide engulfed her. She didn’t know whether it was a supreme relief that at least Charlie had not metamorphosed into a hostile stranger or whether it was
reaction to the knowledge that her father was no longer in sight, that he had gone and that she had no way of knowing when she would see him again.

As the threat of fainting receded she became aware of someone’s presence by her side. ‘You need a cup of tea, my dear,’ Miss Godfrey said, her face nearly as white and strained
as Kate’s own. ‘I’ve put the kettle on and I don’t want any arguments. You need a breathing space in which to adjust to what has just happened and in which to recover from
the shock you must feel. Where that dreadful man who shouted at your father came from I can’t imagine. Lewisham, I suspect. Or possibly Catford.’

Kate didn’t know, nor did she care. Wherever he came from the ugly sentiments he had expressed had not been shouted down by people her father had once regarded as friends; people who did
not come from Lewisham or Catford but were his neighbours in Magnolia Square.