London Pride

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Quite right,’ Peggy said gaily, ‘So it is.’ And she began to sing ‘The sun has got his hat on’, dancing along the pavement in tune to the words.

  They were still giggling and singing as they walked into the market.

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ the egg man said.

  ‘Yes,’ Peggy said, grinning at him. And there standing right behind him was the most handsome boy she’d ever seen, tall and fair with lovely blue eyes and the faintest fluff of fair moustache on his top lip. She was instantly and very decidedly smitten as she told Megan afterwards.

  ‘He made me go weak at the knees,’ she confessed happily. ‘Just like they do in the novels.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Megan said. ‘Do you think you’re in love?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Peggy admitted. ‘Do you think he’ll be there Saturday?’

  He was, and even more handsome than she remembered him. This time he smiled at her, which was hardly surprising as she’d been standing by the egg stall for nearly twenty minutes hoping he’d notice her and wondering where Megan had got to. He didn’t say anything, but that didn’t matter, a smile was enough. In fact a smile would be enough to live on for the rest of the week because he really was the most handsome boy. Oh where was Megan? She couldn’t wait to tell her.

  She found her friend by the china stall, gazing into the middle distance with an enraptured expression on her face. ‘Isn’t he just it?’ she said when Peggy arrived beside her.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That boy on the till.’

  He looked very ordinary to Peggy, but Megan was in love too. ‘He’s got such lovely broad shoulders,’ she said. ‘And heavenly eyes.’

  That night at the ding-dong while the others were singing their raucous songs the two girls compared notes. Their feelings were remarkably similar and wonderfully strong. ‘We must be in love,’ Megan decided. ‘Ain’t it grand.’

  Peggy wasn’t really sure that grand was the right word to describe her new emotions but they were certainly absorbing. She and Megan spent all their time and energy either preparing for their visit to the market or reliving every moment of it afterwards. The visits themselves were short, sweet and soon over. But by dint of careful detective work they discovered what their two young men were called, Peggy’s beloved being Tom and Megan’s Harry, and they lurked outside the market at closing time in case either of them came out alone and there was a chance to get talking. The chance was never given. Neither of the young men paid much attention to them, but that was part of their charm, and allowed the two girls to weave the most delicious fantasies about the sort of marvellous daring things that might happen if only they would. The more distant they were, the more they loved them.

  The summer days passed in a swoon of dreams. They didn’t even notice the flies and the smell of drains.

  Until the end of the school term and Baby’s first day at her new job. Then the storm broke.

  ‘You’re getting dolled up, aintcher?’ Joan said when Baby was putting on her uniform in the bedroom that morning.

  Baby looked shifty and went on dressing herself. Now that the moment had come when her marvellous secret was finally going to be revealed, she was too anxious to want to show off about it.

  ‘Tosh sort a’ rig for a servant,’ Joan persisted. The anger on her face was growing plainer and more menacing by the second.

  Silence.

  ‘Where are you going to work?’ Peggy said, growing suspicious.

  Silence.

  ‘Come on, Baby,’ Peggy said. ‘Tell us.’ There’d been altogether too much mystery about this job. Neither Mum nor Baby had ever said anything about it and now she could see how suspicious that was. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Dodds,’ Baby admitted, and she could feel her heart sink with the word. Mum had been right to keep quiet about it. There was going to be a row.

  ‘The outfitters?’

  ‘Yes,’ Baby said, adding truculently, ‘Well, why not? We don’t all have to be servants you know.’ If they were going to be nasty she’d fight back.

  ‘I’ll tell you why not,’ Joan said fiercely. ‘Because it ain’t fair, that’s why not. Me an’ Peggy work bloody hard for a living, an’ you ought to work bloody hard too. Dodds!’

  ‘What’s all that row?’ Mum called from downstairs. ‘Breakfast is on the table. Look sharp or you’ll all be late.’

  ‘She’s going to work in a shop,’ Joan said, furious with accusation.

  ‘Yes,’ Flossie said. ‘She is. She’s got to work somewhere. Eat your bacon while it’s hot.’

  ‘D’you think that’s fair?’

  ‘Now don’t start,’ Flossie warned, ‘unless you want to bring on my nerves. What’s done is done. There’s no point talking about it.’ And she busied them and bustled them and refused to let any of them talk again until they were leaving the house.

  So the protest was shelved. For the time being. And Baby went off to work looking smug. But that wasn’t the end of it. How could it be when it was so unfair? That night when Baby went to bed still full of herself and how well she’d done on her first day, neither of her sisters would talk to her. Even when she grew deliberately tearful and complained that they were being hateful and she’d tell Mum, they still ignored her.

  ‘People who behave like greedy little pigs,’ Joan said pointedly, ‘must expect to be cut.’

  On the second night Baby cried so much when they ignored her that Peggy felt quite sorry for her. But she agreed with Joan that something had to be done and as Mum wouldn’t allow either of them to talk about it, even though they both tried every morning and evening, punishing Baby with silence was the only thing they could think of to show their disapproval.

  That next evening, when Mum had spent the whole of supper-time telling them that they should let bygones be bygones and wailing that they were giving her the most terrible nerves, ‘keeping on about it’, Peggy decided to walk down to the library with Jim Boxall. It was something she often did now that the weather was fine and she’d developed a taste for romantic novels, and on this particular evening it gave her a break from the brooding bad temper in the house. On the way back, almost on impulse, she told him about Baby’s favoured treatment and asked him what he thought about it. He was always so sensible and if he said it was unfair she would know they weren’t making a fuss about nothing.

  His reply was practical. ‘If you don’t want to go on being a housemaid,’ he said, ‘why don’t you get a job in a shop too? They don’t pay well but there’s plenty of work about.’ Which was more than could be said for jobs in the engineering trade. There were rumours that his own firm was going bust, but he didn’t tell her that, because he hadn’t told anyone. It was a private worry. The sort of thing men kept to themselves.

  She looked up at his reassuring face, at the familiar scar on his chin and the broken nose that always reminded her how brave he was, at his blue eyes looking at her so seriously, and she was warmed by his good sense.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course. That’s what we ought to do. That would solve it, wouldn’t it.’ And a jolly sight better than all this rowing.

  But Joan was too enmeshed in anger to agree. ‘We ought to have it out,’ she said. ‘Why should they get away with it? If we just go quietly off and get ourselves new jobs they’ll think it doesn’t matter any more. They’ll have won. And I’m damned if I’m having that.’

  She was so cross that Peggy gave up trying to persuade her. I’ll wait a day or two and try again, she thought. It’ll start to blow over in a little while.

  But of course it didn’t. At the end of the week when all three of them arrived home with their pay packets, the second secret was out and then there was no restraining Joan’s fury.

  She turned on Flossie ablaze with anger, hurling Baby’s pay packet across the table. ‘Five shillings!’ she yelled. ‘You let this spoilt brat of yours work for five shillings! What were you thinking of?’

  ‘It’s only for four weeks,’ Flo
ssie said huffily.

  And Baby said, ‘I’m being trained,’ spitting the information into her mother’s words and her sister’s fury.

  ‘Trained!’ Joan said scornfully. ‘I’ll give you trained, see if I don’t. All these years we’ve worked and slaved,’ she said to Flossie, ‘and we’ve never said a word about all the money you’ve took from us. Neither of us. Have we, Peggy? And now, just when things ought to be getting easier, you send that God-awful brat into a shop to work for nothing, and we’ve got to slog our guts out to keep her while she trains. Slog our guts out so that she can ponce about as a telephonist. It’s bloody unfair.’

  ‘Language!’ Flossie reproved. ‘You watch your mouth, my girl. You’re not too old for me to wash it out with soap and water.’

  Joan ignored such a pitiful diversion. ‘She got this job on our backs,’ she said. ‘Mine and Peggy’s. That’s the truth and you know it.’

  ‘Peggy,’ Flossie said, appealing for help. ‘Tell her to stop. Tell her it’s not true.’

  ‘It is true,’ Peggy said. ‘There’s no point lying. You’ve been very unfair. Both of you. I wonder you can’t see it.’

  ‘She’s too delicate for housework,’ Flossie said, trying to justify herself.

  ‘And we’re not?’ Joan yelled. ‘We’re not? Oh I can see it all now. You’ve never cared for us, either of us. It’s always been Baby. Your precious Baby. Spoiled bloody Baby. I’d like to scratch her rotten eyes out.’

  ‘Don’t you touch me,’ Baby shrieked leaping away from Joan’s outstretched fingers. ‘Mum! Stop her! She’ll do me a mischief.’

  Peggy was running between them, aching to placate them, to stop this awful row before it got any worse, but she couldn’t find the words to persuade them and anyway they were making such a row they weren’t listening to her.

  ‘Baby,’ she begged. ‘Hush! Joan, don’t. Please don’t. They’ll hear us next door. Mum, look let’s … ’

  ‘You don’t care for me!’ Flossie shrieked. ‘You know what a state my nerves are in. You’re making me ill the lot of you.’

  ‘Serve you right!’ Joan shouted. ‘You’ve had this coming to you for years.’

  ‘Oh!’ Flossie wailed. ‘How can you say such things? Can’t you see what you’re doing to me, you hateful girl?’

  ‘No,’ Joan said coldly. ‘I can see what she’s doing to us. And it’s bloody unfair.’

  Flossie took two strides across the kitchen and slapped Joan hard across the face. The crack of the blow echoed like a gunshot. ‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘Shut up! Shut up! I’ve had enough!’

  ‘Don’t you dare hit me!’ Joan roared. And she dealt her mother a return blow that sent her reeling back against the dresser.

  There was a split second of total silence while they all looked at one another in horror. Then Flossie opened her mouth and began to scream. She screamed without stopping and without restraint, on and on and on, in a dreadful hysterical abandonment, her face distorted and her mouth as wide as a cave. Peggy could see her uvula throbbing as she screamed.

  ‘Mum! Please!’ she begged. ‘Come and sit down. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘Yes Mum, please,’ Baby said, shocked white by such a display. ‘Don’t keep on.’

  They were wasting their breath. Flossie couldn’t stop. She was screaming as she breathed, lost in a echoing limbo of pent-up fury and guilt and self-pity. She couldn’t even see them.

  None of them heard Mrs Geary hobbling down the stairs but they weren’t surprised when she walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Hysterical,’ she said, speaking calmly as though finding a screaming woman in her kitchen was an everyday event. ‘Make her lie down. She won’t scream so easy lying down.’

  But it took all three girls a very long time to coax their mother to her bed in the front parlour, and she went on screaming even when she was flat on her back.

  ‘You’ll have ter get Dr Thomas,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘Nip round the corner, Baby. Quick as you can.’

  Baby was shaking with fright but she did as she was told. She’d never meant this to happen. Never. All she’d wanted was a good job and not to be a servant. Oh dear, oh dear!

  CHAPTER 15

  Dr Thomas was not accustomed to being called out to Paradise Row. He knew from long experience that the people of that district were loath to ask for medical advice, preferring to dose themselves with patent medicines or horrible concoctions of their own devising, so he was intrigued when a pasty-faced child appeared on his doorstep requesting his immediate attention for a mother who had taken a fit. It could well be something interesting, he thought, as he picked up his bag.

  It was a disappointment to discover that his patient was nothing more than a foolish woman who’d lost her temper and been screaming too much. She had her eyes tightly shut, her face was swollen and blotchy and when he spoke to her she gave a dramatic shudder and began to sob, but her pulse was slow and steady and there was no sign of any medical abnormality whatever.

  Her three daughters stood at the foot of the bed and watched him anxiously. When he first saw their three pale faces grouped together against the dark green of the wallpaper he was reminded of the three graces, but he revised his opinion on second glance because it was only the eldest who had any looks. She was a willowy young woman with a foxy face and sandy-coloured hair, quite charming in a raffish sort of way. The other two were distinctly ordinary.

  ‘Is it a brainstorm, doctor?’ the middle one asked anxiously.

  ‘No, my dear,’ he said kindly. ‘It is not. Just a temporary upset, that’s all. Your mother will recover in an hour or two, you have my word for it.’

  ‘Only she does suffer with her nerves you see,’ she confided.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Dr Thomas said. She looked just the type. ‘I will ask my dispenser to make up a sedative for her. Call round to the surgery in half an hour and he’ll have it ready for you.’

  ‘Should she stay in bed?’ the pretty one asked.

  ‘Keep her quiet for a day or two,’ the doctor temporized. The poor creature probably needed a rest and if he gave his permission now, she would be allowed to take one. It was a situation he’d often encountered. ‘One of you could look after her, I dare say?’

  ‘I’m out at work all day,’ the pretty one said quickly. ‘I’m the breadwinner.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ the youngest said, assuming a pathetic expression that made her look half-witted. Not a prepossessing child. ‘I’ve only just started work. This week. At Dodds the outfitters. I’m a telephonist. They wouldn’t like it if I was to stop, would they?’

  ‘What about you?’ Dr Thomas asked the middle one.

  She thought for a second before she agreed and the little delay annoyed the doctor. What was there to think about? You’d imagine she’d jump at the chance to get off work for a while and stay at home with her mother, especially with two sisters around to earn her keep. Some of these working-class girls simply didn’t know what was good for them.

  ‘I will send you my bill in due course,’ he said, shutting his bag. It had been a waste of his time and he would charge accordingly.

  ‘Well?’ Mrs Geary said, hobbling out of the kitchen as soon as Peggy had closed the door on his departing back.

  ‘I’m to stay in bed,’ Flossie said, in a new weak voice. ‘It’s brain-fever, Mrs Geary. Brain-fever! Oh my poor girls! How will they manage?’

  They managed because Peggy gave up her job and took over the running of the house. And very difficult it was without her earnings. Even when Baby finished her four week training and brought home a proper wage packet they were still short of money. Finding two guineas to pay the doctor was a nightmare. And Mum was so demanding, always calling her for something or other, a fresh glass of water, her pills, her nerve tonic, to be helped out to the lavvy. Sometimes it was difficult to keep even tempered, especially as she never got any respite from it.

  Megan called round on what would have been their afternoon
off, all prettied up and ready for their trip to the market. It was quite a shock to Peggy to realize that since the row she’d hardly given Megan a thought, and, what was worse, she’d forgotten about her handsome Tom altogether. In fact it was a few seconds before she could remember what he looked like.

  ‘Come out for half an hour,’ Megan urged. ‘Just to the market an’ back. You know. It’ud do you good. You look awful.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Peggy said. ‘Who’d look after Mum? Mrs Geary can’t. Not with her legs.’

  ‘You could leave her for half an hour, surely to goodness.’

  ‘Well I could but what if she took another fit?’

  ‘You ask me there ain’t a lot wrong with her,’ Megan said trenchantly. ‘She’s got a lovely colour. Better than yours.’

  But Peggy didn’t think it was worth the risk. So Megan went a-marketing on her own. She was back within twenty minutes, awash with tears.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh Peggy, he’s gone. His family’s up an’ done a bunk. The salad woman said. All in the middle of the night. Nobody knows where to. I asked an’ asked an’ nobody knows. Oh Peggy, Peggy, I shall never see him again.’

  ‘He’ll turn up somewhere else,’ Peggy comforted. ‘He’s bound to try for another job.’

  ‘No he won’t,’ Megan wept. ‘They went out the district. The salad woman said. They owed to everybody. I shall never see him again. Never.’

  Peggy sat her down in the kitchen, offered strong tea and let her enjoy a good cry. It wasn’t until long after her heart-broken friend had been comforted and gone home and she was busy remaking her mother’s bed for the second time that day that she realized that she hadn’t thought to ask whether her own beloved was still working in the market. But by then she was too tired to care. You get over love pretty quick, she thought, stooping to tuck in the covers. After the impact of that awful row her grand passion seemed a trifling thing. It was rather sad, or would have been if she’d had the time to think about it.