Of course, Peggy thought. That’s what he’s miserable about. I should have worked that out for myself. ‘They’re all in it together, that’s what it is,’ she said, ‘like we are in London.’ A community of suffering was something she understood very well.
The sleek planes followed one another onto the runway, their engines still running sweetly, smooth and strong and dependable. ‘Nothing nicer than the sound of a Spitfire,’ Peggy said.
And they’d all come home this time, as the two women could see from the relief on their husbands’ faces.
‘More coffee?’ Megan offered, hoping it hadn’t gone cold while they were out of the house.
‘I’d rather go for a walk,’ Jim said. ‘I could do with a bit of fresh air.’ And he signalled to Peggy with a quick imploring glance.
‘Good idea,’ Peggy said, understanding him. ‘I could do with a walk too.’ They hadn’t had a minute to themselves since she arrived.
So they left the newly weds in the cottage and strolled along Froggy’s neatly-cleared pathway together in the greening dusk, arm in arm.
‘I’m glad they all got back,’ she said. ‘The Spitfires I mean.’
‘Yes. It’s a bad show when they …’
‘I know,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘At least they all got back tonight.’
They walked on in silence and he was still obviously unhappy. Perhaps it wasn’t the Spitfires.
‘I wish we could get cracking and end this lousy war,’ he said presently.
‘We will.’
‘Can’t see any signs of it yet,’ he said and he gave such a profound sigh that she looked up at him questioningly. ‘There’s no rooms, Peg,’ he confessed. ‘No flats. No bedsits. Nothing. I’ve been all over the shop looking.’
So that’s what it is, she thought, and she tried to comfort him. ‘Never mind.’
The attempt failed. ‘I do mind,’ he said miserably. ‘It drives me up the wall. I’d do anything to get us a place of our own and we’ve got about as much chance as a cat in hell.’
She stood still and, putting her arms about his neck, kissed him with an almost autumnal tenderness. ‘Dear, dear Jim,’ she said.
He drew back from her, gazing down at her, his blue eyes suddenly angry. ‘Don’t,’ he said.
She was surprised by his sudden change of mood. ‘Don’t what?’ she said. ‘Don’t you want me to kiss you?’
‘Not like that,’ he said angrily. ‘I’m not a bloody invalid. Like this.’ And he made a grab at her and kissed her with such a combination of fury and frustrated passion that she could hardly breathe. Desire was triggered in both of them and at once, hot and strong and uncontrollable. When he finally lifted his mouth from hers they were panting and quite incapable of speech or reason. There were only kisses and more kisses, flesh hot for caresses, and their aching, tormenting imperative need for love. They stumbled backwards through the bushes, fell against trees to kiss and caress, tumbled into rustling piles of beech leaves, driven on and on. Peggy had just enough of her wits left to wonder if they could be seen, and that thought provoked shame and a crawling anxiety strong enough to inhibit her desire and deny her the final pleasure she wanted so much. But Jim was lost, his face strained and unfamiliar in the throes of sensations too strong to be inhibited by anything. It was only when their passion was spent and they lay side by side in the leaves catching their breath that he realized how public they were being, how shamefully he’d been behaving. It was the sort of thing the camp loud-mouths were always bragging about, the way they went on with their good-time girls. And now he’d dragged his lovely Peggy down to their level.
‘This God-awful bloody war,’ he said. ‘Oh Peggy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.’
She was lighting two cigarettes for them, sitting on the beech leaves, concentrating on the flame, her face calm, looking entirely composed and herself. ‘Have a fag,’ she said, holding his out to him. ‘It’s all right. Really.’ Her back was aching with unsatisfied desire but she had to comfort him, he looked so woebegone.
‘I should’ve waited,’ he mourned. ‘Only a few hours and we could have been in bed. Oh Christ, I couldn’t even wait a few hours. I shouldn’t have treated you like that.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said again, drawing the smoke into her mouth, glad of its bitterness on her tongue.
They smoked together sitting on the ground. And were comforted a little as the dusk descended upon them in gentle tides of lilac shadow.
‘What’s up?’ she said. ‘It’s not just the war, is it? Or not getting a flat.’
‘No.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I thought we was going to live in Vine Cottage,’ he said. ‘You an’ me. Not Froggy and Megan.’ And having begun, he told her the whole story.
It was painful to expose this petty, shameful side of his nature, to talk of jealousy and his childish need for fairness in a world which was plainly and fundamentally unfair, but she listened to him calmly and showed no sign of being upset or appalled, so he stumbled on, confessing everything.
‘So there you are,’ he said ruefully when he’d finished. ‘Now you know the sort of bloke you’ve married. Not very pretty, is it?’
‘I love you so much,’ she said. ‘More than I ever have. I think you’re the best man that ever lived, to tell me all that.’ Her eyes were brown in the half light and meltingly tender. ‘To be so honest.’
He lay beside her among the beech leaves and put his head in her lap. ‘I don’t deserve you,’ he said. He was still shamed by his confession. ‘I’m not much cop.’
‘Oh yes you are,’ she said, stroking his hair. ‘You’re brave and patient and loving. You’re a very good man. We’ve all got faults.’
‘You haven’t,’ he said.
‘Yes I have. Look at the way I went on when Mum died. I was useless. If you hadn’t been there I don’t know how I‘d’ve made out. And I can be pretty horrid to Baby when I like. Oh yes, I’ve got lots of faults.’
‘Confession’s good for the soul, they say,’ he said smiling up at her. There was a peculiar nakedness about this conversation. Lying there in her warm lap with the beech leaves harsh under his hands he felt he could tell her anything, absolutely anything at all.
‘We know one another so well,’ she said, taking the last pull on her cigarette.
A sharp breeze had sprung up while they were talking, chill enough to make them both shiver. He was aware of it even in his thick tunic and she only had a woolly cardigan.
‘We ought to get back,’ he said nipping out his fag-end between finger and thumb. ‘They’ll be wondering where we are.’
They dawdled back to the cottage with their arms about each other, loath to relinquish this new heightened intimacy they’d found, this lovely trust and tenderness. It was quite a disappointment to reach the gate.
‘About our flat,’ Peggy said as they stood together not wanting to go in. ‘I don’t mind, you know.’
‘I do,’ he said ruefully.
‘Well you mustn’t. If there ain’t any flats there ain’t any flats. You’d have found one by now if there had been. I’ve known that for ages.’
‘It wasn’t for want of trying.’
‘I know. Never mind. We can go on as we are, can’t we? We’re all right as we are. There’s lots of people like us. We’re no worse than any of the others, now are we?’
It was a relief to him to have these things said.
‘I shall go on trying,’ he promised, kissing her.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And we’ve got this leave now, and a put-u-up of our own even if it is Froggy’s.’
Which made them both laugh. And laughing they walked through the gate.
So it was a happy leave after all, and by the end of it even Megan had relaxed and was beginning to lark about. In fact the last meal they had before Peggy went back to Greenwich was as easy as tea in Paradise Row.
But then they had to say goodbye to one another. Peggy had time
d her journey so that she could travel in daylight and get back to the wardens’ post for her eight o’clock duty. But it was miserable to part, and when she kissed Jim goodbye at Chichester station she was quite envious of Megan and wished she could have stayed on at the cottage too, even in that awful put-u-up.
It was a wish she remembered two hours later when she turned the corner into Paradise Row and stepped straight into a dramatic row between Mrs Roderick and Mrs Nonnie Brown. They were out in the street brawling like tinkers and Nonnie Brown was pulling Mrs Roderick’s hair.
‘Peggy!’ Mrs Roderick called, standing stiff as a board under the assault, ‘tell her. I didn’t leave your mother to die, did I?’
‘No, course not,’ Peggy said, glancing up at the faces happily enjoying the spectacle from every open window. Well I’m home now, with a vengeance, she thought.
Nonnie aimed a kick at her opponent’s shins while she was looking away and off guard. ‘Walked off an’ left ’er,’ she shrieked. ‘ We know. Give herself la-di-da airs an’ she walked off an’ left ’er.’ She smelled strongly of sweat and gin and her blouse had come unbuttoned to reveal a wide expanse of scarlet neck and a crumpled chimmy streaked with brown stains.
‘Where’s Mr Brown?’ Peggy called to Mr Allnutt, who was watching from his doorstep.
‘Down the Earl Grey,’ Mr Allnutt said happily. ‘Shot off the minute they started. Couldn’t see him fer dust.’
‘Go and get him,’ Peggy ordered, for the two fighters were still snarling at one another even if they weren’t lashing out. ‘Your husband’s coming, Mrs Brown,’ she said. ‘You stay there and he’ll take you home. I’ll just get Mrs Roderick inside and see to that eye. You stay there.’
‘Bleedin’ cow!’ Nonnie said, swinging a punch at her neighbour. Fortunately it was so wild that it didn’t connect with anyone, but the impetus of it pulled her right off her feet so that she fell face downwards in the gutter. And lay there, muttering to the September dust while her neighbours cheered and laughed and Peggy led the weeping Mrs Roderick into number six.
‘I never left her,’ she wept. ‘I told her to come with me. I did truly. I wouldn’t have left her. You know that, don’t you?’
‘You got a nasty cut under that eye,’ Peggy said. ‘I’ll put some iodine on it. Don’t take no notice of that Mrs Brown. It’s the drink talking most of the time. I know you didn’t leave her. We all know you didn’t leave her.’
‘I was very fond of her,’ Mrs Roderick said. ‘You know that. Just because I’m a bit behind with the rent, there’s no call for that sort of behaviour.’
‘Are you?’ Peggy said. ‘Hold your face quite still.’
‘Well I am a bit,’ Mrs Roderick admitted, wincing as the iodine bit into her cuts. ‘I’ve lost a lot of customers, that’s the trouble. People don’t buy corsets like they used to. Not now. They reckon they can go without now there’s a war on. Oh dear I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’
‘I’d start up a new line of business if I was you,’ Peggy said calmly. ‘You’re ever so good with your needle and there’s lots of kids round here grown out of their clothes. Why don’t you set up in business remodelling ’em, turning ’em over, you know, new clothes for old.’
‘New clothes for old, eh?’ Mrs Roderick said, considering the idea. ‘Do you think I could?’
‘Course. You’re just the one. There that’s done. I’ll make a quick cup of tea. Then I shall have to be getting up to the Post.’
‘You’re a good girl, Peggy,’ Mrs Roderick said, smiling at her as well as she could for her cuts. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
After the intensity of that leave the words jarred. This is the life I’ve got to lead, Peggy thought ruefully, the life I’ve chosen, and although she was still proud that they all depended on her and glad that she was so useful, she knew she’d made a hard choice. But she was a soldier’s daughter, wasn’t she? And born in the Tower of London. So how could she do anything else?
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Roderick repeated. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
It was a sentiment that was repeated many times in Paradise Row that winter, for the rations diminished and the raids continued intermittently and the news grew worse and worse. She was such a comfort was Peggy Boxall, such a dependable comfort, always there when you needed her. And they needed her a lot in those dark cold days.
The papers reported that the Russians were having a very hard time of it. On 9 September, when Jim was home for thirty-six hours, the Germans started a long and terrible siege of the city of Leningrad and ten days later the city of Kiev was captured. By the beginning of October, when the thirty-six hour pass Jim was hoping for had suddenly been cancelled, the German armies were advancing on Moscow. Peggy was honest enough to admit to herself that she didn’t know what upset her most, the bad news of the war or not seeing Jim when she missed him so much.
Mr Cooper followed the news with outraged compassion. ‘Poor devils,’ he said. ‘Imagine it. Be like having bloody Germans all round London. Think how we’d feel.’
But the women of Paradise Row were more concerned with all the British ships that were being sunk out in the Atlantic. There were so many merchant ships lost that the papers didn’t even name then, and the old Ark Royal was sunk in November and the Prince of Wales and the Repulse a month later. There was hardly a woman in the street who didn’t know of someone who’d been killed at sea. And such heavy losses meant that food was in very short supply, and queues were longer and more wearying than ever. It wasn’t long before the government introduced a new style of rationing by points.
It caused consternation in Paradise Row.
‘I shall never work it out,’ Mrs Roderick said. ‘The other was all right. You just got your ration whatever it was. Even if it wasn’t much. But this is awful. How are you supposed to know what you’re entitled to? Four points for this, six points for that. I ask you. I shall never work it out. Never. What did they want to go and make it so complicated for? Why couldn’t we have had rations instead? And just when I’ve got myself a nice little job with the kiddies’ clothes and I thought everything was going to work out.’
‘Ask our Peggy,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘She’ll tell yer. She’s ever so good with it. I just give her my ration book and she does it all for me. I’d do it mesself only I got these legs. Play me up somethink chronic in this weather they do.’
It was wickedly cold, as though the weather was conspiring with the Germans to make them all as uncomfortable as it could. On the day Arthur received his call-up papers and a travel warrant to Salisbury the sky was pewter grey with the threat of snow.
He came down to number six to say goodbye to Peggy and Joan that evening, his face peaked with cold and anxiety. ‘Keep an eye on my Lily for me, will you, Peg?’ he asked. ‘She’s bound to be a bit low.’
‘We’ll ask her up here the minute you’ve gone,’ Peggy promised. ‘We can listen to the wireless before I go to the Post and then she can stay with Joan for a while. It won’t hurt your Percy to sit up.’
‘You’re a brick,’ Arthur said, as he kissed her goodbye. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
‘Quite right,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘Salt of the earth she is.’
But it was salt that Jim Boxall had to learn to live without as the winter worsened, for the extreme cold meant more work for electricians and mechanics and the long leave he was hoping for was cancelled until the weather improved.
‘Things must start looking up soon,’ he wrote to Peggy. ‘Or warming up at the very least. I ain’t kissed you for such a long time I’m beginning to forget how it feels. This winter’s been going on for ever.’
And things did warm up, although not in the way he’d been thinking of when he wrote. On 7 December the news suddenly broke that the Japanese had attacked the American fleet at a place called Pearl Harbor. It was a surprise attack carried out without a formal declaration of war and it sank the best part of t
he Pacific fleet with appalling loss of life.
‘Japs, you see,’ Mrs Geary said, scowling at the newspaper. ‘Nasty treacherous little things, Japs, Well they’d have to be wouldn’t they to be on the same side as that Hitler. They’ll live to regret it and serve ’em jolly well right.’
‘I think it’s a good thing in a way,’ Joan said. ‘At least it’s brought the Yanks into the war. They can’t go on dragging their feet now, can they?’
‘Perhaps they’ll come over here,’ Baby said. ‘Do you think they’ll bring any make-up?’ The shortage of lipstick and mascara was a continual annoyance to her, particularly as Joan and Peggy didn’t seem to understand how important it was.
But the weeks passed and Jim still didn’t get any leave and the Americans didn’t come to Britain.
‘Too cold for ’em probably,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘They’re used to lots a’ sunshine out in that Texas place. I seen it at the pictures. Still never mind, they’ll probably give them Japs a trouncing first.’
But if the newspapers were to be believed it was the Japs who were trouncing everybody else. They seemed to be as good at winning battles as the Germans. They took Hong Kong on Christmas Day, Borneo in January, Singapore in February. There was no end to their success. Nor to the Germans’. In January the British newspapers began to write about a German general called Rommel who’d landed in North Africa to help the Italians in their fight against the British 8th Army and was defeating the British tanks in one battle after another.
It was horribly demoralizing, particularly as the weather was colder than ever, with two inches of snow falling on 1 February and twenty-two per cent of frost recorded in London.
‘As if we haven’t got enough on our plates without this,’ Mrs Allnutt said, tottering down to the market with a walking stick to support her over the uneven lumps of trodden snow. ‘I can’t feel my feet, Peggy.’
‘No more can I,’ Peggy said cheerfully. ‘Hang on to my arm. Have you heard about Megan?’ She’d had a letter from her that morning and was itching to spread the good news.
London Pride Page 47
