‘Mrs Peggy Boxall,’ she said, turning the ring on her finger.
‘Suits you.’
‘Where are we going, Jim?’
‘It’s a secret,’ he said beaming at her.
She didn’t try to guess where it was. Let it be a surprise. Honeymoons were supposed to be secret, weren’t they?
The train was packed, as trains always were. They had to stand in the corridor side by side and hemmed in with kitbags as they rattled past bomb sites and wrecked buildings and long patient queues of muffled women shuffling in the rain. Then they were chuffing through muddy fields, past stained cattle and grubby sheep grazing stolidly in the darkening air, but it wasn’t until they burst from a tunnel to find themselves facing a hillside smothered in houses that she began to suspect where they were. A large seaside town somewhere on the south coast.
‘Is it Brighton?’ she asked.
‘Course,’ he said. Where else would they go?
It was a Brighton much changed from the light-hearted resort they’d enjoyed when they were both nineteen. This was Brighton at war, full of servicemen and women, bristling with defences, with a vast rough iron-grey sea to protect it. There were concrete anti-tank blocks and rolls of barbed wire all along the beach, the kiosks were shut and shuttered, and the façades of all those once-smart hotels were chipped and weather stained and badly in need of paint. But in an odd sort of way it seemed proper that it should be so run down. It was part of the war, the outward sign of struggle and endurance.
‘Dear old Brighton,’ Peggy said, and to Jim’s relief, despite the sleet and the grey skies, her face looked warmer.
They spent most of their precious eight days alone together in a small room just off the Lanes. Once she had been given Jim’s ration coupons, the landlady took them under her protection, mothering them with fires and the best meals she could produce given ‘this dratted rationing’, but otherwise leaving them discreetly alone, assuming that they were in the customary state of most of her honeymooners. But in fact they made love rarely, because Peggy was still numb with mourning and Jim was too aware of her feelings to urge her, and even then the first time, tender and gentle though it was, reduced her to weeping.
‘Oh dear,’ she cried, sobbing against his chest. ‘What a way to go on. Oh dear oh dear. On our honeymoon an’ all. I am sorry.’
‘Cry all you like,’ he soothed. ‘It ain’t a honeymoon. We had that years ago. Remember? All I done now is make an honest woman of you.’
The little joke made her smile, a weak smile and tear-washed, but a smile nevertheless. ‘I never thought we’d get married like this,’ she said.
‘No more did I,’ he admitted. ‘That’s the war for you. Not sorry, are you?’
‘Oh no, no,’ she said, kissing him at once to prove it. ‘I’d never be sorry. Never ever.’
‘That’s all right then,’ he said, reaching for their cigarettes. ‘One last fag an’ then we’ll get some sleep, eh?’
They lay together snug under the covers, and smoked and talked. Despite death and grief and wartime miseries, this leave was still something to enjoy, a time set apart with no duties and no queueing and their meals cooked for them, a rare chance to sleep late every morning and go out dancing or to the pictures every night, but the real luxury was having time to talk. There were so many things to talk about, the war, of course, and the RAF and the blitz, Flossie and the awful days after her death, his mother and how impossible it was to look after her, and finally and most rewardingly, the sort of life they would live together after the war.
They were still talking on their last afternoon, when they walked uphill to the station through the darkening streets. There was a raid on, and somewhere over the Channel they could hear the engines of a Dornier and its pursuing Hurricane heading out to sea, but they were still absorbed in planning their future.
‘No kids yet,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right. We’d both be worried out of our wits having babies in all this.’
‘When the war’s over,’ she said, snuggling against his arm. ‘Oh Jim, I wish we wasn’t going back. We’ve hardly had any time at all.’ It felt so warm and right and normal here beside him. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go back to camp. I wish we could stay together all the time, an’ live together properly, like people used to do before the war.’ These days and nights spent entirely in his company had made her acutely aware of what they were missing.
‘I’ll find us a place to live somewhere near the camp,’ he promised, ‘an’ then we can. It’ll be the first thing I do when I get back.’
‘Promise?’
‘See it wet, see it dry,’ he said, licking a finger the way he’d done when they were kids, holding it up for her to see, wiping it dry on his tunic. But even as he spoke he knew it would be virtually impossible.
‘Soppy thing,’ she said lovingly as they walked into the station.
This time they got seats, and this time as the darkness was inky black against their crisscrossed windows, they looked at one another in the dim blue light all the way to Victoria, and they talked. And over and over again they promised one another that they would find a place to live ‘near the camp’, that they would soon be together ‘all the time’, that they were married now and they would ‘always be together’, as if promising could make it so. And the iron miles clicked away beneath their feet, nearer and nearer to the city that would pull them apart.
CHAPTER 32
Joan and the kids had spent the afternoon in Paradise Row sitting round the fire with Baby and Mrs Geary, waiting for Peggy and Jim to come home. The kids had been playing draughts, Joan had been darning socks as well as she could with the cat on her lap, Baby had been painting her nails and Mrs Geary had been knitting a jersey with a complicated cable pattern which involved considerable lip-chewing and counting aloud. They were all annoyed when the sirens went.
‘I thought we’d finished with daylight raids,’ Joan complained as she put up the shutters. ‘Go and sit under the stairs, you two.’
There were three camp stools in the cupboard under the stairs, so Norman and Yvonne did as they were told, taking the draught board with them.
‘It won’t be long,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘One thing about a daylight raid, it’s soon over. Knit one, slip one, pass the slipped stitch – over.’
It wasn’t a long raid, nor a particularly noisy one. There was a lot of ack-ack but they could only hear one or two planes and although there were several explosions they were all far enough away not to be alarming. And after half an hour and several dropped stitches, the all clear went.
‘I don’t think we’ll stay to see Peggy back after all,’ Joan said, gathering the children’s coats and scarves. ‘Not now the raids have started. We’ll cut off home while the going’s good. Give ’em my love. Tell ’em I’ll see ’em tomorrow dinner time.’
Once they were gone, Baby fussed and fidgeted and complained.
‘Peggy ought to be back by now, surely to goodness,’ she said to Mrs Geary. ‘Where d’you think they are? I don’t know why they had to go off on a honeymoon with a war on. I know I wouldn’t.’
‘Nobody asked yer,’ Mrs Geary observed, ‘unless I’ve missed something.’
Baby decided to ignore that. ‘If it wasn’t for this stupid black-out,’ she said, ‘I could look out the window an’ see them coming.’
‘Watched pot never boils,’ Mrs Geary said, concentrating on her knitting.
‘That’s a stupid thing to say,’ Baby said crossly. ‘It has to sooner or later. Stands to reason.’
‘Why don’t you put one on an’ see,’ Mrs Geary suggested.
‘One on what?’
‘One kettle,’ the old lady explained patiently, ‘on the gas. See if it’ll boil. If it does we can have a cup a’ tea. I don’t know about you but I could just go a nice cup a’ tea.’
So the kettle was grudgingly filled, but just as Baby was grumbling round the kitchen complaining that she couldn’t find the tapers, Jim and Peggy
came tumbling into the hall, dropped their cases by the hatstand and romped into the back room on a wash of unfamiliar scents and smells, soot from their travel, sea salt on their clothes, garlic from their landlady’s cooking. They looked well-fed and cheerful and very much a couple. Baby was instantly jealous of them.
‘An’ about time too,’ she said.
‘She means, “welcome home”,’ Mrs Geary grinned, setting her knitting aside to kiss them. ‘No need to ask how you got on. Where d’you go?’
They settled by the fire and told her about Brighton, while Baby stood with a taper in her hand looking sour.
‘Sounds a treat,’ Mrs Geary said when they’d finished. ‘Now what?’
‘Jim’s going to find us a nice little flat near the camp,’ Peggy said. ‘Soon as he gets back there. Ain’t that right, Jim?’ Their fantasy was still warm in her mind, sustaining her.
‘Soon as I can,’ Jim said, backing her up. It might be possible. You never knew. Damn it, he’d make it possible.
Baby’s jealousy spilled over into ill-humour. How was she supposed to manage if Peggy was going to live near the camp? Who’d do the shopping? Since Mum died she’d felt more and more vulnerable. There was no one to protect her now and with Jim married into the family things could be jolly difficult. It was all very nice flirting with him when he’d only been the boy next door but he’d gone and changed everything now. ‘This sink’s been stopped up for four days I’d have you know,’ she said.
‘So why didn’t you fix it?’ Jim asked.
‘It ain’t up to me to fix it,’ Baby pouted. ‘I ain’t a plumber.’
‘And Peggy is, I suppose,’ he said. ‘You really are the laziest little toe-rag alive.’
‘Oh lovely!’ Baby bristled. ‘That’s right. Call me names. I should. Just because you married our Peggy that don’t give you the right to …’
There was someone scrabbling at the door, pulling the key through the letter box. The little unexpected sound alerted them all, stopping the row, making Mrs Geary set her knitting aside.
Peggy was on her feet at once and half-way across the room. ‘Hush!’ she ordered. ‘Something’s up.’ As she reached the hall they could hear Joan’s voice and the kids crying.
‘Joan,’ Peggy said. ‘Whatever is it?’
‘We been bombed,’ Joan said as she stepped into the hall. She was ashen faced with shock and her eyes were red-rimmed. ‘Got back to find the shop in half, our flat an’ all. We’re bombed out. We come straight back here. Oh Peg!’
Death flexed cold fingers in their warm house for the second time that month. The honeymoon was over, the quarrel seen for the petty thing it was, war had returned and with it the awful searing memory of their mother’s death, the evenings in the hospital, that numbing funeral.
Norman was sobbing so much he was almost choking. ‘They bombed my gingerbread man,’ he wept. ‘My gingerbread man.’
‘Well at least it wasn’t you,’ Peggy said, stooping to put an arm round his quaking shoulders.
‘Me an’ Dad,’ the little boy sobbed, ‘me an’ Dad made the gingerbread man.’ It was all he had left to remember his father by and now it was gone. ‘Me an’ Dad.’
‘When he comes home I’ll bet you he’ll make another one the first thing he does,’ Peggy comforted.
‘We could a’ been killed,’ Joan wept, hanging on to Yvonne’s hand as Peggy led them all into the back room, ‘all the lot of us. If we’d been there we’d a’ been blown to bits.’ Jim was already setting chairs for them beside the fire, and to her credit Baby had lit the gas at last. ‘We could a’ been killed.’
‘Well thank God you wasn’t,’ Peggy said, chafing her sister’s cold hands, gentling Yvonne and Norman into the chairs, setting their feet on the fender to warm them. ‘Just as well you was here.’
Baby was standing in the kitchen door with the teapot in her hands. She was avid for details. ‘How awful!’ she said. ‘Was it all blown up? Everything?’
Peggy made a warning grimace at her in case it wasn’t the right time to ask questions, but Joan spilled into talk at once. ‘Everything,’ she said, sitting by the fire. ‘Bomb must a’ cut it in half. There’s half the kitchen just hanging there up in the air, all my pots and pans, china on the dresser all broken to bits. You never saw such a mess. An’ the kids’ clothes all over the shop, torn to shreds. We brought what there was. It’s out the front in the pram. The WVS said we was to go to the refuge but I said, “No jolly fear. We’ll go to me sister’s.” I couldn’t be doing with the refuge. You get all sorts up there. Oh God, Peggy, what are we going to do?’
‘Stay here with us if Mrs Geary doesn’t mind,’ Peggy said at once. ‘I’ll look after you.’
‘Why not?’ Mrs Geary. ‘The more the merrier, that’s what I say.’
‘There you are then,’ Peggy said to the kids. ‘You’ll be all right here. We don’t get bombed in Paradise Row.’
‘Really?’ Norman asked, looking up at her. In the warmth of the fire and her good sense he’d stopped crying and was beginning to recover. But there were still doubts. ‘Gran did though, didn’t she?’
‘Poor Gran,’ she said. ‘Yes, she did. Not here though. Not in Paradise Row. I don’t reckon old Hitler knows where we are down here.’ Oh poor dear Mum! It was an awful way to go.
‘Where d’you leave your stuff?’ Jim said to Joan. He’d sensed the return of Peggy’s grief and needed to turn their attention to practical things.
‘Out the front,’ Joan said. ‘I told you. There ain’t much. Just a few bits and bobs really.’
Her old pram was standing outside the door, packed with oddments of linen and clothing, Norman’s teddy bear, bent saucepans, cushions, a bundle of family photographs, and tied across the top of it all, a chest of drawers, miraculously undamaged. It was so heavy it needed their combined efforts to wheel it into the hall where it stood incongruously against the yellow anaglypta.
‘Was there anything else?’ Jim asked.
‘No,’ Joan said sadly. ‘Only this.’
‘I’d go back tomorrow if I was you,’ he advised, ‘in case you’ve missed things. You have to lay claim to your own stuff pretty quick before someone else gets their hands on it.’
‘They wouldn’t, would they?’ Peggy asked.
‘Not much, they wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty a’ tea leaves around. The war ain’t converted ’em, it’s just given ’em more scope.’ That’s right, he thought, talk about thieves and looters. That’s better than dwelling on grief.
‘Did you get your ration books?’ Peggy asked as they walked back to the fire. There were such a lot of things to be attended to when you were bombed out.
‘In me bag,’ Joan said. ‘I always keep ’em with me, just in case.’
‘She’s got her head screwed on, our Joanie,’ Mrs Geary approved, patting Joan’s hand because she looked as though she was going to cry again. Despite Jim’s intervention, memories and grief were still washing all about them, unspoken but all the more potent for that.
‘I’m starving,’ Norman said in his matter-of-fact way. His eyes were quite dry now and there was a little more colour in his face.
‘Time for supper then,’ Peggy said, glad of his rescue. ‘What say we get some fish an’ chips?’
‘I couldn’t eat anything,’ Joan said. ‘I’d be sick. It made my stomach shake seeing it all cut to bits like that.’
‘I could, Aunty Peggy,’ Norman said quickly. ‘You could an’ all, couldn’t you, Yvey?’
And although Yvonne was still quiet and pale, she agreed that she was hungry.
‘That’s settled then,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘You could pop in to the off licence fer some beer, couldn’t you, Peggy? And a bottle a’ Tizer for the kids. My treat. I’d go mesself only these legs are giving me proper gyp tonight.’
It was a ramshackle meal, eaten out of the newspaper in the time-honoured way with pickled onions and lots of salt and vinegar. Joan picked at a few chips an
d told her bomb story over and over again until she’d made sense of it, and the rest of them ate every last crumb and even licked their fingers afterwards. Then Peggy began to organize them for the night.
‘Time you kids was in bed,’ she said to the children. ‘I’ll clear up all this paper and then we’ll nip upstairs and get the camp-beds down. Better look sharp or we shall have the sirens going in a minute.’ She was a warden again, back home in London, doing the job she’d done all through the war. ‘We’ll put them under the stairs,’ she said to Joan. ‘There’ll just be room.’
Joan was worrying again. ‘We got no night things or nothing,’ she mourned.
‘There’s all Mum’s things in the chest a’ drawers,’ Peggy remembered. ‘Sheets and clothes and underwear and everything.’ She hadn’t had the time or the heart to attend to them. ‘You could use some of them for the time being. Save ’em going to waste.’
‘What would she have thought of all this?’ Joan sighed.
‘Just as well she can’t see it, you ask me,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘I’ll tell you one thing though. She’d be glad to see you make use of her things. She kept ’em lovely. Always so particular she was. You use ’em, gel’.
So Flossie’s sheets were taken from the cupboard and Joan found one of her nightgowns for Yvonne and an old blouse for Norman to wear as a night shirt, which made them all laugh because he looked so comical trailing about in it.
The sirens went as they were making up the beds, but by then their panic and tears were all forgotten, calmed by routine. There was such a comfort in housework and its familiar sensations, Peggy thought, and particularly in a raid, a sheet smoothing under her hands, the automatic neatness of a well-tucked corner, a whacked coal shooting sparks up the chimney to hang like red stars among the soot, the kettle whistling, tea falling fragrant into the cup, the rattle of their spoons and saucers echoed by the rattle of the trams in Church Street, small, comforting signs that life was going on despite the bombs.
‘We’ll play cards,’ she said as the noise of the raid got worse. ‘Take our minds off it.’
London Pride Page 44
