‘I don’t know, I can’t remember,’ said Annabelle faintly. ‘You’ll have to do it again.’
Nick did it again, very willingly, and Annabelle came out of the encore with her eyes still closed and her knees weak.
‘Have I passed?’ asked Nick.
Annabelle opened her eyes.
‘Has the train gone?’ she asked. Nick laughed. She smiled. ‘Now, come and talk to my parents,’ she said, ‘and talk nicely to them. Don’t tell my mum you were ever a ragamuffin, an urchin, a street corner boy or a hooligan. Tell her you’ve got a prosperous new job and a certificate for being respectable.’
‘I could tell her other things, I could tell her my sisters drive me up the wall, that Ma did the dance of the seven veils when she was eight, and that Pa’s done time for doing a Charlie Peace job.’ Charlie Peace was a man who’d made a name for himself years ago as London’s craftiest and most successful burglar. ‘How about that?’ said Nick.
‘Oh, you daft thing, be your age,’ said Annabelle, ‘you’ve got to be serious, not barmy. You can’t make jokes like that about your dad in front of Mum, specially not when everything’s all about you and me.’
‘It’s serious, everything about you and me?’ said Nick.
‘Yes, of course. I—’ Annabelle had an unusually reticent moment. It induced a little flush. ‘I mean, it’s not a game any more, is it?’
Well, thought Nick, if it gets critical and I start thinking about wedding bells, I’ll have to tell her about Pa or it might all blow up in my face at the wrong moment. No, that’s no good, I’ve got to tell her now, otherwise there’ll still be times when I’ll have to come up with lies.
‘Listen, Annabelle,’ he said, and he told her everything about Pa. Annabelle listened, dubious at first, then disbelieving, then round-eyed and astonished. But it didn’t change the way she felt about him. He ended up by saying, ‘Now you can see why I tried to keep my distance.’
Annabelle drew a long breath, then released a slightly shaky smile.
‘Nick, you silly, you should have told me before,’ she said. ‘What kind of a girl d’you think I am? How could anyone blame you for your dad hot being brought up right? You seem to have been brought up right yourself, your mum’s made a smashing job of you, and I’d trust you with my life’s savings.’ She smiled again. ‘Nearly thirty pounds, let me tell you,’ she said, ‘I know you chuck your weight about a bit – look how you’ve chucked it at me – but you’re still my best bloke. Besides, all our families are as cockney as yours is, and cockneys don’t take any notice – well, not much – of what some of our relatives get up to. Mind, you and I will have to take a lot of notice of what your dad might get up to now he’s out, we’ve got to make sure he stays in his honest job. I’ll talk to him if I have to, you see if I don’t. We won’t let him spoil things for us, we’re going to have lovely times together, and at committee meetings I promise not to make you bawl and shout. You’re funny when you bawl and shout, did you know that?’
‘Annabelle—’
‘Oh, you silly,’ she said again, and gave him an impulsive hug. ‘You should have told me all this when we first had tea and crumpets together. Well, you must have known then that I’d made up my mind I was going to be your one and only. Nick, you do want me for your one and only, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I seriously do,’ said Nick, thinking her support made her his favourite bet for the kind of future that had roses round the door.
‘Then that’s all that matters,’ said Annabelle. ‘So now we’d better go and tell my mum and dad. It’s best not to keep these things secret. Secrets sort of fall out of locked cupboards. Dad will be nice about it because he’s like my Uncle Boots, but Mum will have fifty fits and one more. Still, when she’s recovered she’ll see what a nice lovely bloke you are yourself, and after all your dad did save a warder’s life and earned himself a medal.’
‘I don’t think there was any medal,’ said Nick.
‘Well, we won’t say so to Mum. Actually,’ said Annabelle, ‘you’ll like my mum when you get to know her, she’s got lovely looks. But don’t go dotty about her because, as my Uncle Sammy says, she’s my dad’s married wife. Let’s see, your hair looks nicely brushed, your tie’s straight, and you only need to stick your chest out – Nick!’
Nick was doing his first tickling job on her. But because she was a peach of a girl in every sense, the tickling was of the kind recommended by Ma, and it made Annabelle decide she’d come back for a bit more later on.
Yes, after they’d talked to her mum and dad, and her mum had recovered from her fifty and one fits.
THE END
About the Author
Mary Jane Staples was born, bred and educated in Walworth, and is the author of many bestselling novels, including the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family.
Also by Mary Jane Staples:
The Adams Books
Down Lambeth Way
Our Emily
King of Camberwell
On Mother Brown’s Doorstep
A Family Affair
Missing Person
Echoes of Yesterday
The Young Ones
The Camberwell Raid
The Last Summer
The Family at War
Fire Over London
Churchill’s People
Bright Day, Dark Night
Tomorrow is Another Day
The Way Ahead
Year of Victory
The Homecoming
Sons and Daughters
Appointment at the Palace
Changing Times
Spreading Wings
Family Fortunes
A Girl Next Door
Ups and Downs
Out of the Shadows
A Sign of the Times
The Soldier’s Girl
Natasha’s Dream
Nurse Anna’s War
Other titles in order of publication
Two for Three Farthings
The Lodger
Rising Summer
The Pearly Queen
Sergeant Joe
The Trap
The Ghost of Whitechapel
Escape to London
The Price of Freedom
A Wartime Marriage
Katernia’s Secret
The Summer Day is Done
The Longest Winter
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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PRIDE OF WALWORTH
A CORGI BOOK : 9780552142915
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446488294
First publication in Great Britain
PRINTING HISTORY
Corgi edition published 1995
Copyright © Mary Jane Staples 1995
The right of Mary Jane Staples to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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