Coronation Summer Page 14

  ‘I bet the Tansy’s givin’ shelter to more than ducks!’ he said in high elation, forgetting his fear that if he took hold of her hand she might rebuff him, and seizing hold of it anyway. ‘I bet it’s giving shelter to Matthew as well!’

  Daisy stared at him, her cornflower-blue eyes widening to the size of saucers. ‘Oh my Lord . . .’ she said in whispered realization. ‘Of course!’ Her fingers interlocked tightly with his. ‘Of course that’s where he’ll be! Why on earth did no one think of it before!’

  Billy’s heart soared, and for more reasons than one. ‘Then let’s reccy it out. ’Ow do we get there?’

  She began leading him at a run back along the towpath, saying breathlessly, ‘First of all we go back to your lorry, then we drive through the Blackwall Tunnel and out on to the East India Dock Road.’

  ‘Where to after that?’ he panted as, still hand in hand, they veered off the end of the footpath on to pavement.

  She laughed, the first time she had laughed in days. ‘We head straight out to Barking. From there we might have to park up and walk out to the creek. I don’t suppose there’ll be any proper roads.’

  As they raced to where he had parked his lorry, it occurred to Billy that it might have been easiest simply to go in search of her dad and tell him where they thought Matthew was. Leon would then have rowed his present barge upriver to Barking for a look-see and he, Billy, wouldn’t be about to ruin his precious blue suede shoes by ploughing through creek-side marsh and mud.

  ‘Daisy, do you fink—’ he gasped doubtfully as they came to a winded halt.

  ‘I think we should hurry,’ Daisy said, eyes glowing, impatient for him to open the high cab door and to give her a leg up. ‘Traffic can be dreadfully heavy in the tunnel. It might take us ages to get to the other side of the river!’

  Billy slicked his quiff back with his free hand, knowing he was beaten. He’d simply have to buy another pair of shoes, that was all. He grinned as he gave her a hand up into his cab. What were a pair of shoes when he’d have Daisy to himself for most of the morning? With a bit of luck it might take them an age to find the Tansy. It might even take them all day!

  ‘We’ve bin ’ere an hour now and we’ve searched the canal banks both sides,’ Danny said to Zac Hemingway in the cosy fug of Bert’s Dining Rooms where he, and most of the other searchers, were taking stock over pints of steaming tea and, in Danny’s case, a plate of eggs, sausage and mash, as well. ‘Who let on ter yer wot was ’appening?’

  ‘Jack Robson’s ma.’ Zac pulled out a battered wooden chair from a nearby table and straddled it. ‘She said I’d be wasting my time going into the gym for a morning workout. That you and Jack, and nearly everyone else in the square, were down Surrey Canal way, looking for the Emmerson kiddie.’

  Danny grinned and dunked a piece of crusty bread into his egg. ‘Yer’d better start understandin’ who’s who, mate, or yer goin’ to come a right old cropper,’ he said affably. ‘Fer starters, the lady with the pleasure o’ bein’ Mrs Robson senior ain’t Jack’s ma, an’ if ’e ’eard yer refer to ’er as ’is ma, ’e’d ’ave a pink fit!’ He reached for a bottle of brown sauce and shook it liberally over his sausages. ‘Jack’s ma died when ’e and ’is twin brother were nippers. ’Arriet is Charlie’s second wife – an’ before she took leave of ’er senses, givin’ up dignified spinster’ood to marry Charlie, she used to be Jack’s ’eadmistress!’

  Despite being faced with the rather off-putting sight of Danny shovelling away sausage and mash on an upturned fork, Zac grinned. He didn’t know much about the stresses and strains of family life, never having had a family, but he could well imagine that to have your dad marry your headmistress might be a bit much to take.

  ‘I didn’t know Jack had a twin,’ he said, interested. ‘Does he live local?’

  Danny laid his fork down, his freckled face suddenly sombre. ‘’E’s dead,’ he said briefly. ‘’E went off to fight with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.’ He fell silent, remembering. He and Jerry Robson had been good mates. They’d gone all through school together and, when they left, he signed on in the army and Jerry went to Spain. A month later he was killed; one of hundreds of disarmed militiamen rounded up by the Nationalists and executed in a bullring in a town called Badajoz.

  At a nearby table, Leon and Nibbo, and Jack and his dad, were deep in earnest conversation. ‘If he’s down the Greenland Dock it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ Jack was saying pragmatically. ‘You can’t see water there for barges and launches and tugs and ships.’

  ‘Jack very rarely talks about Jerry.’ Danny pushed his plate away, his appetite gone. ‘But he finks about ’im a lot. An’ so do I.’

  ‘There aren’t any schoolchildren down here, though,’ Nibbo was saying, a battered Panama hat pushed to the back of his head. ‘Surely a boy of Matthew’s age would be easily spotted amongst all those dockers and stevedores and crane-drivers and truckers?’

  ‘There’s only one way to tell.’ Leon pushed his chair away from the table and rose to his feet. ‘Come on. We’ll do the Greenland first and then the King George and King Albert.’

  Danny was still staring into the middle distance, lost in thought. Zac rose to his feet and pressed his hand lightly on Danny’s shoulder. ‘Come on,’ he said gruffly. ‘Pay for your grub. We’re off down the Greenland Dock.’ As he fell in behind Jack and the massive, shambolic figure of Jack’s dad, he was aware of a spurt of intense irritation. He’d started off not being too keen on Danny. Now he was beginning to like him. And liking Danny when he was so rapidly falling in love with Danny’s wife was something he hadn’t bargained for.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Course I’m not mistaken,’ Lettie Deakin said indignantly to Mavis as they stood on Lewisham clock-tower’s traffic island, Lettie en route to Chieseman’s department store, which stood on the north-west side of the High Street, Mavis heading in the opposite direction, towards Woolworths and the market. ‘We were slack at the pub last night and I slipped out to get a bit of fresh air. It was late, near closing time, and I took the dog up to the heath for a bit of a run.’

  ‘If it was dark, and if they were in a clinch, how the hell could you recognize them?’ Mavis asked scathingly, finding Lettie’s latest scandalmongering so ridiculous she wasn’t even angry at it. Carrie enjoying an illicit late-night rendezvous on the heath with Zac Hemingway, indeed! Lettie might just as well have said that Bob Giles was having an affair with Princess Margaret, or that the Pope was a Protestant.

  Lettie, well aware of Mavis’s contemptuous disbelief, put her shopping basket down at her feet and folded her arms across her ample chest. ‘Now just you look ’ere Mavis Lomax,’ she said confrontationally, ‘I ain’t blind and I ain’t ’alf-witted. I saw what I saw, and what I saw was your married sister and Zac Hemingway, kissing as if there was going to be no blinkin’ tomorrer!’

  Mavis’s eyes narrowed into slits. Silly beyond belief though Lettie’s story was, if she persisted in spreading it, some silly bugger would believe it – and the silly bugger in question just might be Danny. ‘You’re a liar, Lettie Deakin,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘And if I hear you repeating your cock-and-bull story to anyone else, I’ll have your teeth down the back of your throat, so help me I will!’

  Lettie was a Northerner and not intimidated easily. ‘You and who else’s army?’ she demanded, outraged at being called a liar when she was telling the God’s own truth.

  ‘’Morning, ladies!’ With a beaming smile Daniel Collins hopped nippily onto the traffic island out of the way of a number 21 bus. ‘Lovely day for a friendly gossip, isn’t it?’

  Lettie’s eyes held Mavis’s, bright with malicious satisfaction. Daniel was Carrie’s father-in-law. ‘Lovely,’ she agreed, picking up her basket. ‘Are you on your way back to the square, Daniel? Because if you are, I’ll keep you company as far as The Swan.’

  ‘Where the flaming hell’s our Carrie?’ Mavis demanded of h
er mother three minutes later, marching up to the family market stall at top speed.

  Miriam, standing in for Carrie for the second time in a week, was in no mood to be pleasant. ‘She’s ’elpin’ Kate keep sane while Leon an’ your dad an’ ’alf the square look for that little perisher, Matthew,’ she said bad-temperedly, arranging the best of a freshly opened crate of tomatoes on the front of the stall so that the previous batch, fit only for frying, weren’t so conspicuous. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, she’s takin’ liberties.’

  ‘Are Carrie and Kate looking for Matthew as well? And if they are, where are they looking for him?’ It wasn’t often Mavis felt an edge of panic, but she was feeling one now. Lettie was a silly cow and quite capable, under the guise of ‘only speaking out for the best’, of repeating her barmy story to Daniel. Daniel was too sensible a man to believe it, but he would be deeply disturbed that such a rumour was circulating about his daughter-in-law, and if he shared his concern with his wife, all hell would be let loose. Hettie would be convinced that Carrie must have done something to spark off the rumour, and Carrie’s life would be a misery for months.

  ‘’Ow the ’ell do I know where they are?’ Miriam was fed up to the back teeth. Just because one of the Emmerson kids had hopped the wag from school, people were behaving as if the world was coming to an end. Albert had abandoned their other market stall at Catford and gone charging off with Jack and Charlie and Nibbo, and God only knew who else, looking for him. Carrie had breezily announced that she was going to be spending the day with Kate, even though they’d both seen Christina going into number four with obviously the same intention. And she, Miriam, was manning the perishin’ market stall again!

  ‘Nice, firm tomatoes!’ she shouted in a voice that could have brought ships ashore in the thickest of fogs. ‘Get your lovely toms ’ere!’

  Mavis, aware that she had got from her mother all the information she was going to get, said tartly, ‘The toms you’re hiding underneath ain’t nice and firm. If Dad knew you were trying to clear fryers at salad prices, he’d have a pink fit.’

  ‘Well yer dad ain’t ’ere, and it aint ’im that’s selling ’em,’ Miriam retorted with spirit, ‘though he bloomin’ well should be! Come on ladies! Buy your lovely salad tomatoes ’ere! Pick o’ the crop! Hard and sweet!’

  ‘He’s a sweetheart, Great-Gran, really he is.’ Beryl had nipped back to Magnolia Square in her lunch hour in order to spend it with her bedridden great-grandmother. It was something she often did, for her great-gran loved company and gossip, and could never get enough of it.

  ‘A boxer?’ Leah Singer, eyes fiercely bright despite her frail frame, looked doubtful. ‘Why for do you want a boxer as a boyfriend? And ain’t boxers shvartzers? Leon Emmerson is, and he used to be a boxer. And that Sugar Ray Robinson is. Why for don’t you find a nice Jewish boy, Dolly?’

  ‘Because I don’t think of myself as being Jewish, and I don’t know any Jewish boys,’ Beryl said reasonably, shifting her position on the edge of the bed so that she wouldn’t squash the sleeping lump beneath the covers that was Boots, her great-gran’s Pekinese. ‘Grandad’s family isn’t Jewish, and Gran never behaves Jewish, not like you – and so Mum certainly hasn’t. And my dad’s a Catholic, or had you forgotten?’

  Leah raised age-mottled hands upwards in a despairing gesture. Albert, her good-natured goy son-in-law, had a lot to answer for. At least when Jack Robson had married a Jewish girl he went to a Rabbi once a week for a year, taking the time and trouble to understand her religion. In the far-off days before the First World War, when Albert married Miriam, he’d made no such similar gesture. The only Jewish things Albert had been interested in were salt beef sandwiches and apple dumplings.

  ‘And Zac isn’t black, Great-Gran,’ Beryl continued, trying to set her mind at rest. ‘Though I don’t see why it should matter if he was.’ Beneath the bedclothes Boots wriggled peevishly and Beryl obligingly shifted her position yet again. ‘He’s blond. As blond as Kate Emmerson. And he’s ever so nice.’

  Leah was unimpressed. Nice he might be. Jewish he wasn’t. ‘Of course he’s nice,’ she said querulously, ‘he ain’t got his feet under your table yet, nu.’

  At the thought of Zac Hemingway having his feet under her table, Beryl blushed. She’d had crushes before, but this one was different. This one was serious. ‘And he doesn’t have a girlfriend, Great-Gran,’ she said, eager that Leah should be aware of everything in Zac’s favour. ‘I know, because he’s lodging with Queenie Tillet, and she told me he hasn’t.’

  Leah rolled her eyes expressively upwards. So young and innocent was this great-granddaughter of hers. If this blond shaygets hadn’t a girlfriend now, living in a lodging-house full of dancers and actresses, he soon would have. ‘And your ma?’ she asked, not very hopeful of an encouraging answer. ‘What does your ma think of this young man of yours?’

  Beryl’s blush deepened. ‘He isn’t my young man yet, Great-Gran, and Mum’s only seen him at the gym. She hasn’t really met him properly. Aunt Carrie has, though, because Uncle Danny is his trainer.’

  Until the birth of her great-grandchildren, Carrie, her youngest granddaughter, had always held a special place in Leah’s heart because, unlike Mavis, she was at least dark-haired enough to look a little Jewish. And, unlike her elder sister, who seemed incapable of putting anything other than eggs and chips on the family dinner table, she could cook. Carrie’s chicken soup was chicken soup to die for.

  ‘Then I’ll ask your Aunt Carrie what sort of a young man this young man is. A chancer you don’t want. And if he’s a boxer . . .’ Leah lifted her bed-jacketed shoulders and her hands high, ‘. . . a boxer sounds like a chancer, Dolly. Trust me. I’ve been around a long time. I know these things.’

  ‘Kate and Christina and Carrie are out helping search for Matthew,’ elderly Harriet Robson said to Mavis in clipped, educated tones. ‘I’m looking after Johnny for her. If you’d like a cup of tea . . . ?’

  Mavis shook her head. She’d no time for cups of tea, especially with a woman who had once written on all her school reports, ‘A bright girl, but slipshod. Could do better.’

  ‘No thanks, Harriet. I need to find Carrie. You don’t know where they’re looking for Matthew, do you?’

  Harriet tucked an imaginary wisp of hair back into her immaculate bun and stepped further out on to the doorstep, pulling Kate’s door behind her a little so that, if Johnny came running into the hallway, he wouldn’t overhear what they were saying. ‘I’m not sure, Mavis.’ She dropped her voice slightly, her face grave. ‘Somewhere down by the river. Leon and the men have gone down to the Surrey Canal, and I do know that if they don’t find him there, they intend to begin a search of the docks.’

  ‘Blimey!’ With a docker for a husband, Mavis was well aware of just how enormous and difficult such a search would be.

  ‘Matthew loves the river.’ Harriet was very careful not to slip into the past tense. ‘Both Kate and Leon are quite sure that if he has run away, and not been abducted, that is where he’ll be.’

  Mavis’s eyes held Harriet’s for a long, horrified moment. When Billy was Matthew’s age he ran away from school so often that she packed him jam sandwiches for when he got peckish. She was well aware, of course, that Matthew running away from a school he boarded at was a bit more serious, but she hadn’t thought of his disappearance as being seriously serious. For the first time she realized the kind of fears Kate was living with and understood why Carrie felt she must be with her.

  Deep in thought, she made her way back down Kate’s lavender-edged pathway. Kate, Christina and Carrie couldn’t go roaming around the docks like Leon, a Thames waterman, could, and if Leon and his search-party had already earmarked the Surrey Canal towpath for part of their search, they wouldn’t be there either. As the gate clicked shut behind her, she paused. Where else would a young boy go, down by the river? There was the high-tide beach in front of Greenwich Naval College, but that was so close to home it would surely ha
ve already been searched. Where else might her friends and her sister have thought of looking? As she gazed across the square she suddenly realized she was staring straight at Hettie and Daniel’s front door. It was ajar. Did that mean they had a visitor, and was the visitor Lettie? At the thought of Lettie filling Hettie’s head with wicked nonsense about Carrie, Mavis’s sense of urgency increased. She needed to find Carrie. Once Carrie knew what was being said about her she would soon put a stop to it and, even more importantly, she would be able to make sure she spoke to Danny before his mother, or any other trouble-maker, did so.

  Woolwich. The thought came out of nowhere and brought with it instant certainty. The Woolwich free ferry across the Thames had always been a place truanting boys made for. They could hang over the deck rails all day if they wanted to, watching the spuming water beneath the huge paddles and shouting and waving at the mass of shipping coming up and down river. Luke Emmerson was always being hauled home after spending the day there when he should have been at school. It was one of the first places Kate would look for Matthew and, on a number 54 bus, it was only fifteen minutes or so away.

  ‘Nibbo thought Leon’s youngster might be here as well,’ Zac said pleasantly, standing on the ferry pier, his thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets. ‘And as he didn’t fancy being hit on the head by a jib or a hoist, or falling down an open hatchway, he asked me if I’d mind leaving the search on the docks to come out here with him.’

  ‘And?’ Mavis asked, looking past him along the pier’s narrow gangways to where a ferry, one of three, was ploughing landwards, a flag emblazoned with London County Council’s emblem of a castle and a shield, fluttering gaily at its bow.