Coronation Summer Page 2

  ‘Gawage!’ her youngest son bellowed indignantly as she at last deposited him on his feet. ‘Not a bedwoom, a gawage!’

  ‘I don’t know how you cope,’ Carrie said, secretly wishing she had the same problem and trying not to feel envious. ‘Is it true a policeman caught Luke playing in the disused prefabs on Wednesday?’

  Luke was the present culprit’s eleven-year-old brother: an engaging rascal who looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and yet was never out of trouble.

  Kate put the truck down on to a floor of highly polished linoleum and led the way into the kitchen. ‘Yes, it is true, and yes, Luke knew the prefabs were off-limits.’ She grinned ruefully as she began filling a kettle with water. ‘That was the attraction, I suppose. Honestly, Carrie, you’d never believe the difference there is between bringing up a child who lives at home and goes to a local school and gets into mischief every second your back is turned, and one who is safely parked at prep school.’

  Despite the dejection that had brought her to Kate’s, Carrie grinned back at her. There weren’t many people who would be quite as aware of the difference as Kate, but then, there weren’t many people who had such a socially and racially mixed bunch of children.

  Daisy, Kate’s eldest child, was adopted and, if her pale creamy skin, dark blue eyes and dark hair were anything to go by, had a generous amount of Celtic blood in her veins. Matthew, twelve years old and three years younger than Daisy, was born illegitimately after his fighter pilot father’s heroic death at Dunkirk. Matthew’s father had come from a wealthy family and Matthew, at his father’s family’s expense, had always enjoyed a privileged education, going away at seven years old to the same exclusive preparatory school his father had gone to.

  Luke, her first child by Leon Emmerson, was born a little over a year after Matthew and was nearly as dark-skinned as his half West Indian father, and then, four years later, Jilly was born, and another four years later, Johnny.

  ‘Want a gawage!’ Johnny said now, exasperatedly. ‘Twucks need gawages!’

  ‘Why don’t you use the garden shed, pet lamb?’ Kate suggested, putting the kettle on to boil and then taking two cups and two saucers down from a nearby cupboard. ‘After all, trucks can’t go upstairs, can they? So the bedroom really wasn’t a suitable place. And if you garage the truck in the garden shed, you’ll be able to wash it down in there, just like the men do in real garages.’

  Johnny, a strap of his home-made dungarees slipping off his shoulder, regarded her thoughtfully for a long, silent moment. ‘A hose,’ he said at last in the tone of one who knows he’s pushing his luck but thinks there’s an outside chance he might just get away with it. ‘Can I use Daddy’s hose, Mummy?’

  ‘Not unless Daddy’s with you,’ Kate said imperturbably. ‘Now have a chocolate biscuit and go and play and let me have a quiet couple of minutes with Carrie.’

  The thought of playing with both water and his truck engaged Johnny’s attention. He might not be able to play with the garden hose on his own, but he could fill the watering-can from the garden tap and play with water that way. And it wouldn’t be naughty because his mummy didn’t say anything about not playing with taps and watering-cans. He accepted the biscuit Kate was proffering him and trotted obediently outside, a little angel bent on mischief.

  ‘So what’s brought you round at this time of day?’ Kate asked her lifelong friend as they waited for the kettle to boil. ‘Danny’ll be waiting for his tea, won’t he?’

  Carrie slipped off her coat and threw it over the back of a kitchen chair. ‘Most likely,’ she said uncaringly, sitting down. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, he can blooming well wait. Or make it for himself.’

  Kate giggled. Coming from Carrie this was real fighting talk, for she waited on Danny hand and foot, and Kate doubted if Danny would even know where to find a saucepan or a frying-pan, let alone know how to put them to good use. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked sympathetically. ‘Is he driving you mad, talking about nothing else but this new boxer Jack’s signed up?’

  Carrie propped her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table. ‘No,’ she said morosely, ‘I wish it was that simple.’ She chewed the corner of her lip, looking across at her serenely happy friend. How did Kate do it? She never seemed disillusioned or disappointed. But then Kate was married to a man who would never, in a million years, refer to her as ‘Ma’, and she had not just one child, but a houseful of them. ‘Don’t you ever get browned-off, Kate?’ she asked bluntly. ‘I mean, it’s not much fun being thirty-five, is it? For me, all there seems to be is working on Dad’s stall, coming home to more work of a different kind, washing and cleaning and putting meals on the table and clearing them away again, on and on, ad infinitum.’

  ‘That’s a long word for this time of day.’ Kate’s teasing tone of voice was at odds with the very real concern showing in her eyes. She took the kettle off the boil and poured a little into the teapot, rinsing it round to warm it. She knew there were times when Carrie’s marriage was under strain, and she knew that the fault invariably lay with Danny. He was such a know-all, and so cocky with it, she doubted if even his best mates would think him an easy bloke to live with. To make it worse, his mother had always doted on him and run round after him, and Danny expected the same kind of slavish attention from Carrie.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ Carrie began, and paused. She’d always been a spirited, jolly person, not much given to thoughtful introspection, but all of a sudden she saw her life as an outsider might see it, and with a stab of shock she realized how lustreless it had become.

  Kate, devotedly in love with a man who loved her with all his heart, mind and soul, glowed with inner happiness no matter how trying her children might be or how tedious her daily chores. But she, Carrie, didn’t glow, and it wasn’t because she didn’t love Danny, for she did. It was simply that they never seemed to talk to each other properly any more, or go out together any more. And when they were together at home, there was never an ounce of romance in the air. ‘’Ow about it, gel?’ was about the most romantic Danny ever got, and this invitation was usually only ever issued when he’d had a couple of pints down The Swan.

  ‘It’s just that Danny and I never seem to have any fun together any more,’ she finished inadequately, not wanting to sink to utter disloyalty by revealing to Kate how lacking in the love-making department Danny was. ‘The club takes up all his time. He’s round there whether he’s supposed to be or not.’

  Kate brewed the tea. She, too, often wished the Embassy Boxing Club to the ends of the earth, for Leon was nearly as bad, acting as a back-up coach at weekends whenever needed, and taking nearly as much interest in the welfare and progress of some of the youngsters who attended the club as he did of their own children. ‘Why don’t you spend more time down there yourself, Carrie?’ she suggested, carrying the teapot over to the table. ‘It isn’t as if you have to have a babysitter these days, is it? And it certainly isn’t as if you wouldn’t be made welcome. After all, the club’s practically a family business.’

  ‘The club’s Jack’s business,’ Carrie corrected darkly. ‘And quite frankly, Kate, I don’t know that I’m too happy about the way Jack conducts his business affairs.’

  ‘Well, Jack’s always sailed a bit close to the wind,’ Kate agreed, wondering if Carrie knew something she didn’t. ‘But the club is all legal and above board.’

  ‘I’m not sure all of the—’ Carrie began and was interrupted by the sound of loud, authoritative knocking on Kate’s front door.

  ‘That’s a policeman’s knock.’ Kate’s face paled. ‘Leon was ferrying a load of combustibles from Gravesend to Rotherhithe this morning!’ With visions of there having been a terrible accident on the Thames, she ran from the kitchen.

  Carrie hesitated for a moment and then followed her. She had been about to share her worry over whether all the fights Jack arranged were strictly legal, but when she saw that Kate was right, and that her visitor was a policeman, she was gl
ad she hadn’t done so. Kate obviously had other troubles at the moment. With fierce intensity, she hoped they wouldn’t be serious and that no one had been hurt.

  ‘No one’s been hurt, Madam,’ the policeman was saying to Kate reassuringly, ‘only there’s been a bit of bother at your lad’s school.’

  Kate’s shoulders slumped in relief. Luke was always in ‘a bit of bother’ at school, though it was coming to something when his headmaster began sending a policeman round to her door. It wasn’t as if Luke’s misdemeanours were ever of the bullying kind for, like his father, he didn’t have a vicious bone in his body.

  ‘Does his headmaster want to see me?’ she asked, wondering if Carrie would keep an eye on Johnny for her. ‘Because if he does, I’ll just get my jacket.’

  The policeman’s bushy eyebrows rose so high they disappeared completely beneath his helmet. ‘You’ll have a bit of a journey, Madam, if you don’t mind my saying so. Somerset is a tidy step even in this day and age.’

  ‘Somerset?’ Kate stared at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. ‘You’ve made some kind of a mistake, Constable. It’s my eldest son who is at school in Somerset, not Luke.’

  The policeman sighed. She was a stunning-looking woman but obviously not over-bright in the brainbox department. ‘It isn’t a Luke I’m here about,’ he said, with saintly patience. He looked down at his notepad. ‘It’s a Master Matthew Harvey, twelve years of age.’

  ‘Matthew?’ Kate bunked. What kind of trouble could Matthew be in? Matthew was never in trouble. Intelligent, well-spoken, well-mannered, he was as near to perfection as any boy his age possibly could be. But then, the policeman hadn’t said her son was in trouble. He’d said there had been a bit of bother at the school. Fresh fear seized her. ‘Has there been a fire?’ she asked urgently. ‘An outbreak of sickness . . . ?’

  ‘I told you before, Madam, no one’s been hurt and they aren’t sick or injured either. Your lad has, however, absconded. Now, boys being boys, he’ll no doubt be back at school by tonight, safely tucked up and—’

  ‘Absconded? You mean Matthew’s run away?’

  Kate felt dizzily disorientated. Matthew had been a pupil at St Osyth’s ever since he was seven years old. He liked St Osyth’s. He always did well in exams and excelled at games. Somehow, somewhere, there had obviously been a mistake.

  ‘If I could just come in for a moment, Mrs Harvey?’ the policeman asked, aware that he wasn’t, as yet, making much headway.

  ‘Mrs Emmerson,’ Kate corrected automatically, stepping back to let him in and bumping into Carrie as she did so.

  The policeman didn’t move. Emmerson. So there had been a mistake after all. ‘The young lad who’s gone missing is named Harvey,’ he said ponderously. ‘Matthew Harvey. I thought perhaps he was related to the local Harvey Construction Company family, him attending a nob public school like St Osyth’s. However . . .’ he looked towards Carrie, resplendent in her street-trading pinny, ‘I see I’ve made a mistake and I’m sorry to have—’

  ‘You haven’t made a mistake,’ Kate said impatiently, hating, as she always did, having to explain Matthew’s parentage. Without getting involved in the fact that Matthew had been born illegitimately and that, though adopted by the man she later married, she had come to an arrangement with Matthew’s deceased father’s family that Matthew would be known by his father’s surname, she said merely, ‘My surname is Emmerson, my son’s surname is Harvey.’ She led the way into the house, her mind racing. Where on earth could Matthew be? Had he run away because he was being bullied? He’d never complained of being bullied, but perhaps he was amongst a different set of boys now he was no longer in the prep department, but in the Lower School.

  She hurried into the sitting-room, making straight for the fireplace and the many framed photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘This is a recent photograph of Matthew,’ she said, handing one of them to the policeman, wondering how long it would take Matthew to get to London from Somerset; wondering if he had any money and, if he had, whether it was enough for the train fare home. ‘When did my son go missing?’ she asked, trying to work out how long it would take Matthew, travelling by train, to reach home.

  ‘I’m not rightly sure, Madam.’ The policeman took the photograph out of its frame and studied it. The boy in question was a good-looking boy, Nordically blond like his mother, and with her distinctive high cheekbones and generous, full-lipped mouth. He’d certainly be easily recognizable, and that was half the battle in runaway cases. ‘It appears the young gent wasn’t present at assembly this morning,’ he continued, slipping the photograph into his notebook. ‘So he could have been missing since last night.’

  Kate’s eyes flew in horror to Carrie’s. If Matthew had caught a train he would have been home by now. Was he trying to thumb a lift? Dear Lord, was he perhaps even trying to walk home?

  There came the faint sound of the front gate creaking back on its hinges and Kate darted past the policeman and Carrie, running out into the hallway and towards her still half-open front door, calling out urgently, ‘Matthew? Is that you, Matthew?’

  Seconds later the policeman, striding at a dignified pace in her wake, saw her hurtle down the steps fronting her door, not towards a young, white, public schoolboy, but a muscular, middle-aged man of West Indian origin.

  ‘What on earth would Matthew be doing here, love?’ the man asked in mystified concern, as, to the policeman’s stupefaction, she ran headlong into his arms.

  ‘Matthew’s run away from school! He very probably ran away last night!’ Relief that Leon was now with her overwhelmed her and suddenly, ridiculously, she felt like crying.

  ‘Well, if that’s all, love, it isn’t the end of the world,’ Leon said, concealing the alarm he felt and reassuring her as best he could. He looked towards the policeman. ‘Can you give me some details, Constable?’ he asked, his arm still around Kate. ‘Did my son speak to any of the other boys, saying why he was running away and where he was going to run to?’

  The policeman blinked. His son? Who did the darkie think he was kidding? ‘Now look here . . .’ he began warningly, and was stopped in mid-tracks by a passer-by.

  ‘I wouldn’t waste time chin-wagging with Mrs Emmerson, Constable!’ Lettie Deakin, Elisha Deakin’s wife, called out with relish. ‘Not when her back garden is nearly a foot under water! I’d phone for the ruddy Fire Brigade – or the Lifeboat Service!’

  Chapter Two

  By the time Carrie left number four it was way too late for her to honour her promise to call in and have a chat with her gran. Rose would be wondering where she was and perhaps beginning to worry, and Danny would very probably have already left for the club. In order not to have to walk past number eighteen, she cut across the square, walking hurriedly down the left-hand side of it.

  ‘What’s all the ter-do up at the Emmersons?’ Nellie Miller, her gargantuan next door neighbour, called out. ‘There’s been a bobby at the ’ouse for nearly an ’our. ’As young Luke been up to mischief again?’ Nellie’s twenty stone was crammed into a sagging armchair that took up all her open doorway. From there, like a pasha on a throne, she kept tabs on all the comings and goings in the square, doing so with even more meticulousness than Carrie’s gran.

  ‘It was young Johnny this time,’ Carrie said, knowing Nellie wouldn’t be fobbed off without a smidgen of the truth. ‘He took the hose off the garden tap and turned the tap full on. Then he couldn’t turn it off again. Kate’s back garden looks like Blackheath pond.’

  ‘Silly little bleeder,’ Nellie said with affection. ‘Tell ’im I’ve a bag of sweeties waitin’ ’ere for ’im next time yer see ’im.’

  Hurrying up her own front path, Carrie promised to do so. It was half past six. With a pang of guilt, she wondered if Danny had left for work without having anything hot to eat. There were two lamb chops under the net in the larder, but he wouldn’t have thought to pop them in a frying-pan. Her door was ajar as it always was on warm sunny evenings, and she pushed i
t wider, calling out defiantly as if she were still down the market, ‘If yer still ’ere and yer still ’aven’t eaten, it’s yer own fault, Danny! Yer shouldn’t behave as if you need a map to find the bloomin’ kitchen!’

  ‘Blimey,’ an unfamiliar masculine voice said in amusement, ‘that’s a right old greeting for the old man and no mistake.’

  Carrie came to a shocked dead halt in the middle of her narrow hallway. There was a man standing in her kitchen doorway. A man she had never seen before. A man who looked more like a film star than a burglar. Tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, with a shock of corn-gold hair, he was leaning laconically against the door jamb. With his arms easily folded, one leg negligently crossing the other at the ankle, he looked for all the world as if he was the one on home turf and she was the intruder.

  Carrie’s eyes flew to her sitting-room door. It was half open, the room obviously empty, and a strange jacket was hanging on the doorknob. ‘Where’s Danny?’ she demanded and then, an edge of panic in her voice, ‘Where’s Rose? And who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?’

  The stranger grinned. Unfolding his arms and easing himself away from the door jamb, he said with careless self-assurance, ‘Danny’s at the club. Rose has gone to see her great-gran. I’m Zac Hemingway. I’ve moved into the square to be nearer the club. I presume you’re Carrie. Danny said you’d soon be home.’

  ‘And he left you here to welcome me?’ Carrie shrugged herself furiously out of her coat. When she got hold of Danny she’d give him a rollicking he wouldn’t soon forget. How dare he leave a stranger alone in their house? She wanted to march straight into her kitchen in order to bang some pots and pans around and let off some steam, but she couldn’t very well do so while Zac bloody Hemingway was near as dammit barring her way. She flung her coat over the newel post, saying witheringly, ‘And so you’re the new boxer? You’re lodging with Queenie Tillet, not me. She’s only four doors away,’ she added pointedly, ‘at number nine, so you’ll not have far to walk.’