Free The Londoners by Margaret Pemberton

well as plates? ’Ettie’s done enough fruit trifle to feed an army.’
    ‘I’ve brought a dozen glass dessert dishes,’ Miss Godfrey said, anxious to please. ‘They won’t go very far I’m afraid, but it’s the best I can
do.’
    ‘They’ll be a great help,’ Miriam said, taking the box from Miss Godfrey’s arms. ‘Come and ’ave a look at the cake. ’Ettie made it and it’s a
smasher.’
    Deciding she might as well stay for a little while and help with the laying of the tables, Kate followed Miriam and Miss Godfrey to the far end of the hall where the cake stood in three-tiered
magnificence on a table all to itself.
    ‘Ain’t it grand?’ Miriam said proudly, adjusting the two little figures symbolizing the bride and groom on the top tier.
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ Miss Godfrey said, wisely not commenting on Mrs Collins’s rather disastrous efforts to stain the imitation groom’s night-black hair to a dull red
with cochineal.
    ‘How are you doing, ladies?’ Albert Jennings called out to them cheerily as he struggled past carrying several folding chairs, a similarly laden Charlie Robson in his wake.
‘Have you got your glad-rags ready for tomorrer?’
    ‘I have indeed, Mr Jennings,’ Miss Godfrey said, guessing correctly that he was referring to the outfit she intended wearing.
    The church hall doors were kicked open with such a clatter that Miriam nearly jumped out of her skin and Charlie dropped one of the chairs he was carrying.
    It was Mavis, a heavy carrier-bag in either hand. ‘You need to wedge this bloomin’ door open so we can get in and out a bit easier,’ she said to no-one in particular. Crossing
the wood-boarded floor towards her mother and Miss Godfrey and Kate, she dumped her cargo on the nearest table. ‘’As anyone seen our Billy? I ’ad a bobby at the door five minutes
ago. ’E said Billy ’ad fired a broom handle from the roof of Nibbo’s shed and it ’ad landed in a front garden in Magnolia ’ill.’
    ‘Then ’e’s talkin’ out of the back of ’is ’ead,’ Miriam said, opening one of the carrier-bags Mavis had put on the table. ’E’d ’ave
’ad to fire it over the flippin’ rooftops for it to reach a front garden in Magnolia ’ill from Nibbo’s tool shed.’ She lifted a stack of crockery from the carrier-bag.
‘These blue and white plates do look nice, don’t they? They’ll match the bridesmaids’ dresses a treat.’
    ‘Accordin’ to the bobby it did go over the rooftops,’ Mavis said, parental pride in her voice. ‘Apparently Billy pinched a plank of wood from the shed and bent it into a
giant-sized bow. With that and the ’elp of a clothes-line, he could probably have fired the broom ’andle into the Thames. Only trouble was, ’e’d sharpened one end of it into
a point and it nearly impaled a poor old codger doin’ ’is garden.’
    ‘Boys will be boys,’ Miriam said philosophically. ‘’ave you brought any trifle dishes? We’re runnin’ low on trifle dishes.’
    With laughter choking in her throat, Kate said, ‘I’m going now. I’ll see you all tomorrow.’
    ‘And I must be going too,’ Miss Godfrey said hastily.
    Very briskly she led the way to the door, efficiently propping it open with the nearest chair to hand and then, when they were safely some distance away, she said to a still laughing Kate,
‘A broom handle over the rooftops for goodness sake! Billy Lomax is more of a death threat than Hitler’s army! It could quite easily have killed someone and yet neither his mother nor
his grandmother seemed to think it at all reprehensible.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘That family really is quite extraordinary. I wouldn’t put it past them to have Bonzo in
church tomorrow, a ribbon round his neck.’
    Containing a fresh surge of laughter only with the greatest difficulty, Kate said as demurely as possible, ‘Neither would I, Miss Godfrey.’
    Miss Godfrey looked across at her suspiciously, about to ask