by Katie King
Peggy’s next doze was deeper and more restorative and when she started to come to, Peggy realised that the game of cricket was over and the children had gone off somewhere. She turned to look at Holly, who was still fast asleep, flat on her back under her small cloth tent with her two plump fists stretched out on the ground above her head, and Peggy realised that while she was asleep she had turned over and laid a hand protectively on her daughter’s tummy.
Peggy smiled and put her head back down and closed her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had a sleep in the daytime like this. But for the moment it was sheer bliss not having to be anywhere other than where she was, with nothing to do other than look after Holly when she woke up.
A shadow fell on her bare legs, and she opened her eyes to see the outline, stark against the blue sky above, of James standing beside her with the bat, ball and stumps in his hands. He crouched down and began tidying away some of the picnic debris.
Peggy made as if to get up, but he said, ‘You’re all right. You’ve got at least twenty minutes more before everyone gets back. I sent them about a half-mile up the coast to work off a bit more energy, especially as they’ll have to take it in turns to push Angela along. I gave them a list of things they had to see or find before they come back, and Angela is going to keep score of what everyone manages.’
‘They’ll love that – they’re still at the age where they’re really happy to be in friendly competition. They’ll be at secondary school soon, and then it won’t be long before they’ll go all sullen and grumpy. What a lovely old-fashioned jaunt out we’re having, and I mean old-fashioned in a good way. Why don’t you come and talk to me?’ she urged, ‘I want you to tell me about driving and whether you think I could do it.’
Peggy had assumed previously that if she did get a mobile canteen going one day, to provide refreshments for the helpers who’d be clearing up after any bomb damage, that she would work in it alongside somebody else who could drive. But on the way to the coast that morning she had watched closely what James had done as he’d manhandled the charabanc, and she didn’t think it looked too difficult, so she thought that if she drove the mobile canteen, then that would free up an able-bodied person to work elsewhere on something useful.
She told James now that she thought one of the disadvantages of growing up in a city was that one tended to get buses, or the occasional train, which meant there was very little reason for anyone to own a car. And actually she’d only been in a private vehicle on a few occasions.
James laughed at this, and said he loved driving and having his own car, not that he got to drive it very often these days, and he thought that one day nearly everyone would want to have a vehicle to call their own. He doubted she’d find driving too difficult and said that lots of women were now learning how to do it because of the war. Peggy said how Barbara was always talking about the women bus drivers and ambulance drivers in London, and James said he thought they’d be switching to women drivers for the hospital’s ambulances too.
With the last of the picnic debris now tidied away, James stopped what he was doing and went and plonked himself down on a spread-out blanket near to Peggy, who now sat up and put a sun hat on as the sun had moved around. It was shining down, and after a while James stretched extravagantly and then lay back, almost horizontal but with his weight supported on his elbows and he closed his eyes for a minute or two. After a while he turned onto his side, facing Peggy, but with his head propped on his hand as he listened to her chatter on about what a nice thing it was that he was doing for the children, and that she was sorry that so far she had been absolutely no help at all in looking after them and had been leaving everything to him. And so on. Peggy suddenly felt nervous – she wasn’t sure why – and so it seemed easier just to keep on prattling away about not very much at all.
After a while, and just as Peggy was suggesting that James tell her the story of his life, he leant across and, with a small smile, briefly touched a finger to her lips to stem her chatter.
She stopped what she was saying immediately but then James didn’t say anything, as Peggy fought to steady her erratically thumping heart.
She looked at James again and she noticed that his face had caught the sun and that his brow was beaded with perspiration from running about in the cricket match. But Peggy didn’t have more than a moment to think about this as then he said quietly ‘May I?’ causing her to move her head a little in his direction to catch his words, and when she had, she wasn’t sure what he meant.
Then he leant over and kissed her softly on the lips, and she understood what he had be suggesting. Oh, how out of practice she was with all of this! she thought.
The feeling of James’s lips on hers was a shock at first, although almost immediately Peggy gave herself up to the exquisite sensation that set every cell in her body jingling.
Then the spell was broken as James wrenched himself away as if Peggy was on fire.
Abruptly he sat up, and shuffled his bottom across the blanket so that he was positioned well away from her. Looking anywhere but at Peggy, James began to apologise profusely as he tucked his shirt back under his belt where it had ridden up a little, and then he made to re-tie his shoelaces, saying quickly a flurry of things like ‘I’m so sorry, Peggy’, ‘oh my goodness’, ‘I do apologise, I don’t know what came over me’ and ‘please accept my apology, it won’t happen again’, at which Peggy’s heart plunged in disappointment as it was clear to her that he had enjoyed the kissing, brief as it was, a whole lot less than she had.
Just for an instant Peggy stretched over as if to touch his arm, although she kept it hovering a few inches above his elbow, as she said, ‘James’, followed by another ‘James’, this second time more softly when she could finally get him to look at her.
‘I’m not sorry, James. Um. Er, I haven’t been —’ Peggy began, although with no clear idea of what she should say as with a jolt she realised that she hadn’t once thought of Bill as James had been kissing her, or indeed at all that morning that she could remember, apart from a fleeting moment when she was having a sponge wash before breakfast, and she certainly hadn’t felt as if she were a woman still legally married to somebody else. Peggy wasn’t at all decided as to whether this feeling of abandon (what else could she call it but that?) was a good thing or a bad thing.
Then Holly woke abruptly and began to cry insistently, clearly feeling that she’d been missing out on a party for far too long, and Peggy distracted herself by kneeling and leaning over to her daughter in order to pick her up, and James sighed in a way that Peggy was unable to fathom any meaning.
And so whatever had been going on (or almost had been going on) between James and Peggy in their few minutes in a bubble of a perfect afternoon was rudely ruptured into smithereens, leaving both feeling assaulted by a huge gamut of feelings.
Chapter Twenty-three
There must have been something in the air at Withernsea Sands that day because as the children reached the point along the coastal path that James had sent them to, after which they had larked around there for a while before they turned to head back to where James and Peggy and Holly were, Tommy volunteered to push Angela’s wheelchair even though it was Connie’s turn. Connie didn’t mind at all as this meant she could walk side by side with Aiden.
Tommy pushed the wheelchair very slowly for fifty yards or so, and then he pretended that something was making one of the wheels drag but he insisted that the others should head on back to James and Peggy without waiting for him to sort it out in order that James wouldn’t be cross about them all not returning to the picnic area at the time they’d been instructed. Tommy promised that he and Angela would catch up with everyone once the errant wheel had been sorted.
Aiden and Larry made a move in his direction as if they were going to help him, but Tommy made a snarly ‘get lost’ face at them from where he was now crouching behind Angela’s back that brooked no arguments, and they quickly cottoned on that their ser
vices were not required and so they made themselves scarce.
As Aiden and Larry caught back up with the others, and several seconds later there was a loud gale of laughter from them, Tommy huddled down even further as he fiddled about with the inside of one of the back wheels. Although Angela tried to see what he was doing to the wheel, she couldn’t quite peer far enough over to glimpse exactly what it was that he was up to.
Once he thought he had spent long enough doing this as the other children were quite some way away by now and their chattering voices and happy sniggers could no long be heard, Tommy said a firm ‘that’s better’, and that they could get going now. But then he shuffled forward and stayed squatting as he began instead to talk to Angela and point things out to her such as the white-horse waves that they could see cresting the gunmetal-grey sea and the harsh calls of the ever-circling yellow-eyed seagulls who were flying above, carrying on their normal scavenging obviously unaware that the country was at war. And at long last Tommy finally risked snatching a kiss from a most surprised Angela, although whether it was from the kiss itself or because of Tommy talking about, as she saw it, not very boyish things like waves and birds, it was hard to tell.
It was the first time either he or Angela had ever kissed or been kissed, but then they were both only eleven and so it wasn’t surprising, even though with each week that passed, Tommy was getting more of a shadow where his moustache would one day be. They both reddened profusely when they realised what they had done. But then they did it again, just to be sure that it hadn’t been some sort of mistake earlier, before Angela muttered regretfully that they’d better rejoin the others or otherwise Peggy and James would be sending a search party out, and they didn’t want to be caught like this.
‘But maybe we could risk just one more before we go off to find everybody?’ she said finally, and Tommy thought that she had probably had a good idea. A minute later he thought that in fact Angela had had a very good idea indeed.
It was an oddly subdued journey home from the seaside. Tummies were full of chips and garishly coloured boiled saveloys, and the children were feeling much more sloth-like than when they’d been driven the other way. It felt to all of them as if it had been a long day and that they had all had more than their fair share of fresh air and sunshine.
Peggy had been looking forward to eating some plump and juicy fried cod with her chips, but when they had got to a fish and chip shop it was to learn that sea fishing had now virtually stopped because of the danger to the fleets posed by German U-boats.
Peggy slapped a hand to her brow and then told James that she should have realised this would be the case as June had been muttering about the scarcity of fish for her fish pies, but she hadn’t thought it through and she was sorry. Then James said no, it was his fault as it had originally been his suggestion, at which point they looked at each other slightly askance as, although their words had been to do with fish and chips, somehow it felt like they’d been talking about something else, and that something else was unspecified but all the same, quite, quite awkward.
Despite having gorged themselves with the picnic sandwiches earlier, the children were hungry again as they had done a lot of haring about, and so Peggy insisted that she should buy some food for them all anyway. Aiden chose a saveloy to accompany his chips, after which all the other children copied him, and then Larry wanted a pickled onion as well, which of course meant that all the others wanted pickled onions too. Peggy paid for everyone’s food, insisting it was her treat, although it turned out to be quite a tussle to do this as James tried very hard to pass a note or two from his wallet over to the chip-shop owner before she could take the money from her own purse.
Then, as they waited for their food to be sprinkled with salt and vinegar and wrapped in individual portions in cut-up newspaper for them to eat outside straight from the paper, Peggy surprised herself by suddenly having to blink away a tear or two as the familiar smell of the fryers in the fish and chip shop reminded her with a painful whump to her chest of her dear puss Fishy, who was still with Barbara and Ted back in Jubilee Street.
Peggy’s chest ached with missing her cat as she remembered how the tabby had always sat up and begged like a little dog by lifting her two front paws up and down together whenever Peggy and Bill had enjoyed some fish and chips. Fishy knew Peggy would soon be giving her a saucer onto which she had put some prime flakes of fish from Peggy’s own portion and so this begging motion was to hurry her mistress up.
Peggy had noticed that, just like on the day of the twins being overcome while collecting the eggs, her bouts of homesickness would come out of the blue and would hit hard when they struck. In general she had thought herself lucky that she was an adult and therefore (she told herself firmly) less prone. But Barbara had told her on her last visit to Yorkshire when Peggy had talked about them, that Peggy was forgetting that she was a recent mother and so it was to be expected that she would be feeling emotional as she had a small baby to care for. Barbara advised that Peggy should remind herself that wherever Holly was would therefore be home as far as Peggy was concerned, at least for the moment.
And so it turned out to be, Peggy thought, as her thoughts of Fishy and her begging turning out unexpectedly to be the agent for making her realise that while there were positives to being in Harrogate, there was quite a large part of Peggy that was yearning for her old life, although these feelings were muddled as she knew too that she had enjoyed her kiss with James, which of course would never have happened had she stayed in London.
Wishing she could have Fishy in Harrogate with her, as the small kit’s purrs were so comforting of an evening when they’d sat nestled together in a chair as they listened to the wireless, Peggy remembered then with something approaching affection just what a softie Bill had been for Fishy when she had been a wee kitten. And then it all felt a bit too much for her again, and her chin began to dimple with the effort of holding back her tears. Peggy looked downwards and stared morosely at her startlingly pink saveloy and the golden chips peeping out at her from the folds of newspaper she was holding. Holly had been left safely swaddled on the charabanc parked outside the chippy with its door open to encourage a breeze, and in a trice Peggy found that her appetite had withered away again, although she tried not to draw attention to this but she wasn’t able to do it quickly or convincingly enough to stop James looking at her seriously. While she was feeling tired and not like it at all, Peggy had to make a show of eating, after which she gave in with relief, and then the children were very happy to divvy up the rest of her unwanted meal between them, even though Peggy could see that James was still examining her with scrutinising eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking at him.
As they lined up to climb back into the charabanc to make their way home to Harrogate, Peggy pushed her way to the front of the queue.
‘I’ll sit at the back so that I can see to Holly,’ she said brusquely, not caring if James thought her rude. She felt unsettled and unable to concentrate, and it was as if her thoughts of Bill and tiny Fishy had further complicated what had gone on earlier when she and James had been sitting on the rug.
Perhaps it was all just as well she was sitting back where she was, with no opportunity to talk with James as he drove, Peggy thought before they’d gone more than a mile on their way home. Now he didn’t seem to want to look at her either, or to speak to her unless absolutely necessary, and he obviously didn’t want to kiss her again. Bother. She didn’t want to draw the children’s attention to any of this in case they said anything to Mabel or Gracie (she knew Roger would never stray into such territory with her) but she didn’t know if she was overcomplicating things and making a fuss about nothing very much that was merely indicative of a muddle in her head purely of her own making. Or maybe she was just overtired and had had too much sunshine, which was why she now could feel a headache coming on.
She should never have let James kiss her, Peggy admonished herself a few miles further on, and then felt worse wh
en she remembered how regretful she had felt when James had pulled away from her after the kiss as if she were something unpleasant and as if for him to have made this move towards her was a huge mistake. That stupid kiss – she hadn’t wanted it or asked for it (well, she didn’t think she had, although she wasn’t absolutely sure, as to be completely honest she doubted she would have lifted her skirt to just above knee-level if, say, she had been sitting in the sun with either Roger or Ted), but now that the kiss had happened she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it, no matter how hard she tried.
And as uncomfortable and squirm-making as part of the memory was, each time she remembered the sensation of James’s lips on hers, her belly slid downwards with a lurch of pleasure that immediately made the secret places of her body tingle and do a different sort of squirm.
Holly had now finished her tea and so Peggy made sure her own clothes were back where they should be and then she placed her replete daughter over her shoulder to wind her, and she allowed Holly to fall asleep where she was as she seemed content and comfy.
Peggy had a lot of staring out of the window that she wanted to do as she tried to analyse the maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions swirling busily around inside her. It was impossible for her to come to any firm conclusions, and she realised she must have been sighing in frustration with herself when Jessie looked over at her with curiosity, and she had to plaster on her face a cheery smile to encourage him to look elsewhere.
As Peggy mulled over her day, occasionally she turned her eyes towards the charabanc’s mirror that the driver was to use to see the vehicles behind and which was positioned where the two pieces of glass that formed the windscreen joined in its middle. She could pick out James’s face in it if she tilted her head just a little, and she saw that he appeared to be staring intently at the road which was what she would have expected, seeing as he was driving them all back to Harrogate, which was why she had dared to sneak a peek. But then James glanced into the mirror and they looked for a moment directly at each other, him frowning and turning away first. With a wash of perspiration down her back, Peggy made so sure that she didn’t angle her head that way again that in tandem with her headache her jaw began to ache from being clenched with the effort of her only looking out of the window with feigned fascination.
