London Pride

by Beryl Kingston

  When the streets were empty again, and Mum and Aunt Maud and Baby and all their new neighbours went rushing back home as fast as they could, Joan and Peggy dawdled behind the rest. They walked arm in arm for comfort along the footpath from Tillingbourne and although the wind was blowing in their faces they paid no attention to it, for now at last they would have a chance to talk to one another again. Half-way up they stopped by the hawthorn hedge where there was a clear view across the valley to Tillingbourne Manor, neat as a doll’s house on the opposite hillside.

  ‘I look out for you every morning, you know,’ Joan said, squeezing Peggy’s arm.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Every morning.’

  ‘Can you see us?’ Peggy said, amazed by the thought.

  ‘I can see your red beret walking along behind the hedge.’ And every time she saw it she felt weak with homesickness. But she couldn’t tell Peggy that because she was only little and it would upset her.

  ‘I shall wave tomorrow,’ Peggy promised. ‘An’ every morning after. Right here. By this big tree.’

  ‘That’s an oak,’ Joan said. ‘Cook’s been teaching me. How are things at home?’

  ‘All right,’ Peggy said. ‘Mum gets shirty sometimes.’ It was cold in the cottage and uncomfortable and full of tensions she didn’t like and couldn’t understand, but she didn’t think she ought to say so. Not now that Joan was in service because it might upset her, and that wouldn’t be kind. ‘What’s it like working in a kitchen?’

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ Joan said, but she had to change that subject quickly too in case talking about it made her cry. Now that she was home again she realized there was rather a lot she couldn’t say. ‘Tell me about school. I bet they don’t learn you much.’

  ‘There’s a swimming-pool in the field at the back,’ Peggy said, glad to find a topic that wouldn’t upset either of them. ‘You pay a shillin’ when it opens, which is May, I think, an’ they let you go swimming all through the summer. What d’you think a’ that? If we’re still here after Christmas I’m going to run errands with the others and save up for it. Only I don’t suppose we shall still be here, shall we?’ And she looked up hopefully at her big sister.

  ‘If you ask me we shall still be here the Christmas after next,’ Joan said. ‘She don’t mean to move, does she?’

  That was too awful for Peggy to contemplate so she changed the subject. ‘Will they let you home for Christmas?’ she asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Joan said importantly. ‘The whole Bromwich family’s coming down, the Captain and his wife and Miss Amelia and Master Toby and everybody. We’re cooking a turkey an’ a goose an’ a sirloin a’ beef. I ‘spect they’ll let us off afterwards though. In the New Year.’

  It made Peggy feel sad to think that they would be apart at Christmas time, but she didn’t say anything about that either, because she could see that Joan was putting on a brave face.

  ‘I shall see you at midnight mass,’ Joan promised. ‘We’re all coming down to the church at Tillingbourne for that.’

  But it wouldn’t be the same, Peggy thought sadly, because they wouldn’t be in the Tower, and they wouldn’t be with Dad. It would be sad like it had been at the procession. And she missed him with the same dreadful lurching sensation she’d felt so terribly when he died. Dear, dear Dad. Christmas would be awful without him. ‘It’s ever so cold,’ she said, shivering.

  ‘Let’s make tracks,’ Joan said.

  CHAPTER 6

  The family pig lived in a sty behind the chicken run. Actually, according to Aunt Maud he was only half theirs because they owned him jointly with Mr and Mrs Matthews next door, which seemed rather odd, but he was an amiable animal however much they owned of him. At first Peggy had been rather wary of him because he had mean little eyes like Grandpa and an enormous chomping mouth and a habit of barging the side of the sty as though he was going to knock it down, but as the days passed, she realized there was no malice in him at all and she became quite fond of him. She and Baby were sent off every day to gather buckets full of acorns for him, which he scrunched up with ridiculous pleasure, dribbling and snuffling and watching them eagerly in case there was more to come, and when they’d fed him they leaned over the side of the sty and scratched his back with a stick and talked to him.

  ‘He’s a funny sort of pet really,’ Baby observed. ‘I’d rather have one you could keep in the house, like a cat or a puppy.’

  ‘It’s different in the country,’ Peggy said. The farm cats lived in the barn and the dog was kept in a kennel when she wasn’t working the sheep. ‘He’s jolly useful though, aren’t you, Pig? He eats up all the scraps.’

  The pig snuffed the toes of her shoes, leaving a trail of white slobber across the leather.

  ‘D’you think we could take him for a walk?’ Baby asked, trying to unwind his tail with her stick.

  ‘No. I don’t’, Peggy said, sensibly. ‘You don’t take animals for walks in the country. Come on. Time we were off to school.’

  It was half a mile from Grandpa’s cottage to Tillingbourne school and the darker the days became the further it felt. The fields were full of alien creatures, tatty sheep with peculiar eyes, pale blue with a black stripe down the middle, rooks strutting aggressively or sawing the air with malevolent cries, massive cows with grey tongues and eyelashes like brushes, the great concave bones of their haunches as sharp as cleavers under their mud-caked skin.

  All this was bad enough in the daytime, but it was worse when Peggy was lugging her sister back home in the lessening light of a winter dusk, for then the half-seen animals were at their most threatening and the hedges creaked and glittered with little watching eyes. She walked as quickly as she could, half trotting, half afraid, with her senses at full stretch, ready for anything.

  Even so, the sudden noise she heard that evening in November was so awful it made her heart jump with fear. It was a high-pitched terrified squeal, and it went on and on, getting higher and higher and more and more terrible.

  ‘It’s Pig,’ she said, grabbing Baby’s hand. ‘Run! It’s Pig!’

  They skimmed over the rough earth as quickly as they could, stumbling and panting, and now they could hear shouts and roars, and see the flicker of lanterns behind the hedge, and at that she dropped Baby’s hand and ran on ahead without her, struggling through into the clearing, and there was Pig running madly from side to side as though he was being pulled between two ropes, with Mum and Aunt Maud and all their neighbours chasing him and shouting at him, their long shadows leaping beside them on the trampled grass.

  ‘I’ll get you some acorns,’ Peggy shouted into the hubbub. ‘You could catch him with acorns as easy as pie.’

  And a strange man rose up behind the pig, tall and black as an avenging angel, and hit the frantic animal on the side of the head with a huge sledge hammer.

  The sickening thud of the blow reverberated in Peggy’s skull as though she’d been struck down herself. She was so shocked she couldn’t move. They’re killing him, she thought. They’re killing our pig. And she knew they wanted to kill the poor thing, that they’d planned it, because they were laughing and cheering as though they’d done something wonderful. And the butcher lifted Pig by his snout and slit his throat. The gush of bright red blood from that awful slit was too much. With a strangled cry of horror and compassion, Peggy ran from the scene into the bushes where she was violently sick.

  When she came back, the poor pink corpse was lying on a trestle table surrounded by women, who were scalding him with boiling water and scraping him with long knives and as little concern as if they were scraping earth from new potatoes. Baby had joined the group and was standing beside their mother watching the proceedings with great interest.

  ‘There you are,’ Mum said happily. ‘Ain’t he a fine fat Pig?’

  ‘You killed him,’ Peggy said, with disbelief and revulsion.

  ‘A’ course,’ Aunt Maud said. ‘That’s what pigs are for.’

  ‘We go
t to eat,’ Mum said. ‘No good bein’ sentimental when you live on a farm. We always kill off old stock in the autumn. Old stock and young pigs. We don’t breed ’em for old age. Bred for the table they are. He’s had a good life.’

  ‘We shall live off this pig all winter,’ Aunt Maud said. ‘Us and the Matthews. Pig’s fry, trotters, chitterlins, lard, pig’s head, roast pork, nice salt bacon. Won’t be a thing go to waste, you’ll see. He’ll last till the spring. Wait till you taste the bacon he’ll make.’

  But Peggy was still white with shock.

  ‘You’ve bred a townie,’ Aunt Maud said to Flossie.

  ‘She’ll prefer the spring,’ Flossie said, scraping vigorously, ‘won’t you, Peggy? All those pretty new lambs. An’ Easter eggs. She likes Easter eggs.’

  Then we’re not going back to London after Christmas, Peggy thought, but she was too numb with shock to do more than register the fact. It was something she ought to have known, just as she ought to have known they were going to kill the pig. Oh Dad, she grieved, if only you were still alive none of this would have happened. And she took Baby by the hand and walked miserably into the cottage away from the nightmare.

  Spring was a long time coming that year. The footpaths were still slippery with mud when the first primroses appeared, pale and hesitant and vulnerable beneath the rough claws of the hedges. And the little new lambs were vulnerable too, huddled beside the dirty fleeces of the ewes, like little heaps of unmelted snow. Peggy felt sorry for them, bred for the table, and when the first balmy days stirred warm air along the hillside and they began to jump and frisk on their stiff little legs, she felt sorrier than ever.

  ‘It’s ever such a cruel world,’ she said to Joan when she was home one Sunday afternoon and all three girls were walking down to evening service together.

  ‘Yes,’ Joan said easily. ‘Course it is.’

  ‘I wish it wasn’t.’

  ‘Well it is,’ Joan said, ‘so there’s no use fretting about it is there?’ She’d had a very bad week in the kitchens, with two dinner parties that hadn’t gone as well as they should have done and Cook bad-tempered as a result, and on Friday she’d gashed her finger when she was chopping carrots, and had then been sent to mash spinach through a hair sieve, which was a job she really hated.

  ‘One of the cats had kittens this morning,’ Baby told them. ‘They’re ever so pretty.’

  ‘We’ll go an’ see ’em after church,’ Joan decided. ‘How many’s she got?’

  There were four, one black, one ginger and two tabby like their mother, who was lying in the nest of straw she’d made herself at the far end of the barn, purring and contented as the little creatures squeaked and suckled, their tiny bodies trembling with pleasure.

  Peggy was enraptured by them. ‘They’re so soft,’ she said, stroking the velvety fur on the black kitten’s tremulous back. Soft and defenceless with their tiny scrabbling paws and their eyes shut tight. ‘I can feel his spine. All the little bones. Could we pick them up?’

  ‘I don’t see why not?’ Joan said. ‘She don’t seem to mind.’

  So they each picked up a kitten to cuddle and Peggy had one of the tabby ones, which she held right up under her chin, thrilled by its tiny warmth and the way its little paws scrabbled into her neck. ‘It’s trying to climb,’ she said. ‘Oh it’s lovely. D’you think Mum would let me have it for a pet?’

  ‘I want one too if you’re having one,’ Baby said.

  The mother cat was beginning to look anxious, her green eyes very watchful.

  ‘She wants ’em back,’ Joan said, setting her kitten gently down on the straw beside its mother’s extended flank.

  Baby and Peggy relinquished their kittens too, Peggy very reluctantly, and they all watched while the mother cat washed all four with her harsh pink tongue, gently holding them down with one paw and licking them, from their dear little round heads to their funny little spiky tails.

  ‘They’re the prettiest things I’ve ever seen,’ Peggy said. ‘I shall come and see them every day. An’ I’ll ask Mum tonight.’

  ‘Wait till I’ve gone back then,’ Joan said. ‘If you’re going to make her shirty I’d rather be out of it.’

  ‘Will it make her shirty?’ Peggy wondered. But she knew it was likely. Mum and Aunt Maud were both the same. They got shirty at the least little thing and they always seemed to be on the edge of having a row. One would start to say something unkind and then stop and make a grimace, and the other one would reply with something equally nasty, and she’d stop half-way too, and shrug her shoulders and look hateful. There wasn’t any sense in it.

  ‘Yes,’ Joan said. ‘Either her or Aunt Maud. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish they’d have a proper barney and have done with it,’ Peggy said.

  Joan had her own grimace now, which she put on whenever a grown-up was being silly. ‘I think they enjoy carping,’ she said.

  ‘The only time they agree with one another is when they’re hiding something from Grandpa.’

  ‘I’ve noticed,’ Joan said. ‘Come on, we’d better be getting in, or it’ll be time to set the table and we shan’t be there and then we shall cop it.’

  So they went in, and as the atmosphere round the supper table was rather fraught Peggy decided to wait till next day before she asked about the kitten.

  It was a decision she was to regret for a very long time.

  The next evening as soon as she got home from school, she left Baby sitting by the stove and rushed off to the barn.

  She could hear the kittens squealing as she ran in the door. Dear little things. Then she noticed that one of the farm hands was kneeling in the straw where the mother cat had made her nest. He looked up as she came running in, shifting his body slightly in her direction, and she saw that it was Josh who lived in the end cottage, and that he had all four kittens held tightly in one hand.

  ‘You won’t hurt them, will you?’ she said, walking towards him, and worried in case the mother cat was upset by having all her babies removed from the nest at once. They’re ever so little.’

  ‘Hurt ’em?’ he said, and he laughed in a rough horrid way, showing the gaps in his teeth. ‘That’s rich! Hurt ’em!’

  She was suddenly afraid, remembering the pig. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ she said.

  His answer was immediate and laconic. ‘Why drown ’em, gel. What else? Vermin they are.’

  ‘Oh you can’t!’ she cried, her hands to her mouth in distress.

  But he was half-way across the barn, with the mother cat mewing at his heels, and already thrusting the kittens into a bucket. She could hear the slop of the water as he pushed them down, and their paws scraping against the tin sides, and their frantic, tiny screams. ‘Oh please!’ she said. ‘Don’t! I’ll look after them.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said, prodding into the bucket with a broom handle. ‘Always drown kittens we do. Tha’s the way of it. We’d be overrun else. You wouldn’t want that.’

  But she would, she would. She couldn’t bear this awful, unnecessary, lingering death. And the mother cat crying so terribly too.

  It seemed hours before the little mewing cries finally stopped and then it was so quiet in the barn that she could hear her own heart beating. The farm hand trudged out of the door swinging the bucket in his hand. ‘Shove off home,’ he said to her as he passed. ‘You got no business in ’ere.’

  But she stayed where she was. She was too shocked and miserable to do anything else, and besides somebody had to look after the poor mother cat, who had crept back to her empty nest and was licking her swollen teats. Didn’t he understand how awful it was to see your babies being killed? He could at least have left her one. He didn’t have to drown them all. It was too cruel. Weeping with pity, she crept into the straw beside the little cat and began to stroke her back, very very softly.

  ‘If I was grown up,’ she said passionately, ‘you could be my cat. I’d take you away and keep you somewhere safe an
d you could have as many kittens as you wanted and I wouldn’t drown one. Not ever. You poor thing.’

  But she wasn’t grown up. She was only eight and she had no power at all.

  After that she took tit-bits out to the cat whenever she could, although she was very careful to do it when there was no one about to see her, just in case Josh came back and decided to drown the mother as well as her babies. And the kittens died again and again in the misery of her dreams.

  If only we could go back to London, she thought, when she woke wet-eyed and grieving. If only Mum would make up her mind and take us all back. Joan wouldn’t have to go on working in the kitchen and getting burnt and Mum wouldn’t have to go on living here and arguing with Aunt Maud, and we could take the cat with us and let her keep all her kittens.

  But Mum showed no signs of wanting to go back to London. She never ever mentioned the place. And that was because she very rarely thought of it.

  For although none of her daughters knew anything about it, Flossie Furnivall had found an escape from her cramped existence in Grandpa’s cottage and it was an escape that suited her extremely well.

  Once Joan had been settled at work and Peggy and Baby were both at school, life on the farm had been undeniably dull and difficult. She and Maud spent all their time in the house, scrubbing, sweeping, washing up, feeding the chickens, feeding the pig, placating their father and cooking endless, boring meals. And they really didn’t get on. There was no denying it. There was always a row hanging in the air between them, like a perpetual unspoken complaint. After three weeks of the same unvaried repetition and the same nerve-racking, halfspoken disapproval, she felt she couldn’t face another day of it. Something would have to be done about it. And just at that moment a letter arrived with the Postal Order for her widow’s pension. She put half of it away in Joe’s old wallet for her keep and decided to spend some of the rest of it on herself. It was high time she had some pleasure in her life. She’d been dull long enough.