The Londoners by Margaret Pemberton Read Free Book Online Page B

yes?’
    ‘Yes,’ Kate said, shaking her hand warmly. ‘Welcome to England, Christina.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Christina said simply. ‘It is good to be here. Very good.’
    As their eyes held, Kate saw with a stab of shock that Christina’s brave, shy smile was not reflected in her eyes. They were dark with grief and suffering – and stoic resignation.
Immediately her thoughts flew to Christina’s mother and grandmother. Only her father had wondered about their whereabouts. Was the reason they, also, had not requested help from the Jennings
family because they were being held in a Nazi concentration camp? Were they perhaps dead?
    With a heart full of compassion, she squeezed Christina’s hand wishing she could say something comforting, knowing that anything she said would be hopelessly trite and inadequate.
    ‘Come on boys,’ Miriam Jennings said robustly to Danny, Jack and Jerry. ‘Show us what you’re made of and try and get an arrow into the bull’s-eye. The Vicar’s
already shot one in so it can’t be that hard!’
    Everyone laughed, even Christina, and for the next hour Danny, Jerry and Jack vied with each other for the highest score. It was Jerry who won and Jerry who, later on in the afternoon, won the
official archery competition.
    When the vicar’s wife graciously presented him with the prize of a teddy bear, he turned to Kate, handing it to her and saying with a grin she found quite heart-stopping, ‘Look after
him for me. I won’t have much use for him in Spain.’
    Later, still remaining together in a group that included Christina, they strolled over to the cricket pitch that Kate’s father and Nibbo had marked out earlier in the day.
    As they sat on the grass calling out encouragement to whoever was batting, Carrie’s hand rested snugly in Danny’s, Jack sat as close to Christina as was humanly possible and Jerry
chatted almost exclusively to Kate.
    Years later Kate had only to close her eyes and she could conjure up every detail of that sun-scorched, carefree afternoon. Her father, a panama shading his head from the sun, batted as if his
life depended on it. Nibbo shouting, ‘Well played, sir! Well played!’ Mavis’s euphoria as she told them that Beryl had won the Bonny Baby Competition. The universal amusement when
Charlie Robson won the raffle and was obliged to accept the teddy bear prize from the vicar. It had seemed as if the only cloud marring the day was Jerry’s imminent departure for Spain. Then
the cricket match had ended. They had all walked over to the tea-tent. And her father and the rest of the cricket team had joined them.
    ‘You put up a good show out there, Carl,’ Albert said, his shirt open almost to the navel, a pint pot of steaming tea in one hand, a buttered scone in the other. ‘I thought the
last ball you hit was going to reach Dover!’
    ‘You haven’t introduced Christina,’ Carrie said to her father as Miss Helliwell squeezed past them, a flamboyant scarf worn exotically gypsy-fashion.
    ‘Why all the fuss about introductions?’ her father grumbled in mock exasperation. ‘It ain’t a Buckingham Palace garden party!’
    Carrie raised her eyes to heaven and took the honours on herself, ‘Christina, allow me to introduce you to Mr Voigt. Mr Voigt is Kate’s father and captain of the pub cricket
team.’
    Carl took hold of Christina’s outstretched hand. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ he said in German. ‘Welcome to England.’
    Christina froze, ‘You’re German?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Jewish? You’re a refugee also?’
    ‘I’m not Jewish and not a refugee,’ Carl said as Hettie Collins pushed through the throng towards them. ‘But I am German. I was born in Heidelburg.’
    Christina snatched her hand from his grasp as if from a fire and then, in front of all his neighbours and the entire pub cricket team, she spat full in his face.

Chapter Three

    JULY 1938
    ‘It’s going to be a lovely sunny day for tomorrow’s