The Londoners by Margaret Pemberton

Author:Margaret Pemberton [Pemberton, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781447230229
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Thirteen

Kate couldn’t move. She was paralysed by horror; suffocating in it; drowning in it. Carrie had turned against her. What Christina’s first-hand accounts of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis had failed to do, Danny’s capture by the Italians had succeeded in doing. Just like Mr Nibbs, Miss Helliwell, Hettie, Miriam, Leah and a host of others, Carrie now regarded her as a creature set apart; a person to be avoided; a person symbolic of Germany and, as such, symbolic of the cause of all their suffering.

‘Carrie!’ she called out after her, her voice strangling in her throat. ‘Carrie!’

Only Rose turned her head, her little face beneath her knitted beret bewildered by both the events that had taken place a little earlier, when the man had knocked at the door with the piece of paper her grandad had referred to as a telegram, and the frightening tension she now sensed and couldn’t understand.

Carrie’s back remained resolutely set against Kate as she continued to walk swiftly up Tranquil Vale, Rose struggling to keep up with her.

With every fibre of her being Kate wanted to run after Carrie; to seize hold of her; to make her see the needless dreadfulness of what would now happen between them. She couldn’t do so. Every line of Carrie’s back was so rigid and hostile that she knew the kind of response she would receive if she ran after her. It was a response she couldn’t face. A response she wouldn’t be able to bear to live with.

As she stood transfixed, scarcely able to believe that what had happened hadn’t been hallucination or nightmare, Charlie Robson heaved himself out of the Three Tuns public house and on to the broad tree-lined pavement only a few yards away from her.

‘You’ll catch your death of cold standin’ about in this weather, petal,’ he said, hiccupping as he did so.

Queenie bounded down the steps of the pub behind him and made a bee-line for Kate, nearly knocking her off her feet in the exuberance of her greeting.

Kate buried her hand in Queenie’s fur, her throat tight, her eyes overly bright.

Charlie, never excessively observant at the best of times, merely said, ‘Are you goin’ over the ’eath, petal? Because if you are, I’ll come with you. I could do with a bit o’ company. I never see ’arriet now she’s racketing around in that tin bus she calls an ambulance. Gawd knows what the injured think when they find ’arriet tendin’ ’em in her tweed suit and pearls. They must think it’s Queen Elizabeth doin’ her bit for the nation!’

With Queenie’s cold nose nuzzling at her hand, Kate nodded assent to Charlie’s suggestion. Carrie was no longer in sight and a faint sprinkling of snow had begun to fall.

‘It’ll look a treat at Christmas if the snow stays,’ Charlie said as he weaved a little unsteadily at her side and they breasted the hill, looking out from the top corner of Tranquil Vale across to the chocolate-box prettiness of All Saints’ Church and the frosted expanse of the Heath beyond it.

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