by Katie King
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Peggy and Holly returned home from the postbox and Granny Nora’s, Tall Trees was in uproar and everyone was standing in the back yard.
Milburn’s head was alert as it hung over his stable door and he looked on in such interest that his little chestnut ears were so flicked forward as to be almost touching at their tips, and Porky was happily snuffling around everyone’s feet. Even Bucky the cat was watching, perched on the stable door close to where Milburn’s head was pointing over.
Roger appeared to be almost cranky, Peggy thought, which was extremely unlike him, while Mabel and all the children looked most put out. This was very uncharacteristic of Mabel, especially, as usually she treated everyone and nearly all situations with an enviable equanimity.
‘What on earth is the matter with everyone?’ cried Peggy, whose heart had given a little flop of panic at the first sight of them all, before she concluded the strange atmosphere of the group looked to be more one of temper and someone having done something wrong, rather than the melancholy feel of there having been a tragedy.
Nobody replied as everyone was staring daggers at Roger, and so Peggy added encouragingly, ‘It was all sweetness and light before I left.’
‘Roger says he is going to KILL Porky!’ Connie literally squealed then. ‘Do something to stop it, Peggy!’
‘Yeah, ’e’s goin’ ter do ’im in!’ shouted Larry. He had spoken with more of a gangster swagger than was strictly necessary, and Peggy thought that very possibly Larry had been sneaking into the cinema without paying to watch some Mickey Rooney flicks.
‘Well, no, er, it isn’t quite true that I am going to “do Porky in”,’ said Roger, although Peggy thought he looked a trifle shamefaced. ‘What I actually said was—’
‘It’s time t’ pig went t’ slaughter,’ interrupted Tommy.
‘Yes, well, er, I did say that,’ admitted Roger.
‘So ’e is goin’ ter do in our Porky – I told yer all!’ Larry sounded triumphant.
Tommy geed up the excitable mood with, ‘Yeah, the knacker man’s going to come round an’ do fer Porky. ’E’ll whack him on t’ ’ead, an’ ’ang ’im up wi’ ’is throat slit to get t’ blood!’
‘’E’ll ’ave ’ad ’is chips!’ added Larry
‘Larry! Tommy!’ admonished Peggy.
‘But Porky’s part of the family!’ protested Angela. ‘I’m never going to eat him.’
‘Nor me,’ said Jessie, who was looking very upset.
‘You’ll all eat what you are given, and—’ said Roger peevishly, although he was stopped from saying anything further when Mabel gave him a look that would have had a lesser man quaking in his boots.
Porky gave a grunt as if to remind everyone that he was there, and listening to what they were saying about him.
The children, and Mabel, all glanced at Porky before they stared accusingly at Roger once more as if he had instigated the most unpleasant thing in the world, which Peggy supposed that, in Tall Trees terms, he rather had.
Roger tried to look authoritative. ‘Look, can everyone be sensible, please? And remember that I’ve always told everyone that the only reason we have even had a piglet here at Tall Trees has been to, er, fatten him up, into a pig. And pigs mean food. So Porky is an animal who is going to feed us, and from which we can have the butcher make us delicious sausages, bacon and all the rest. We can make brawn from his head, and use the trotters as a meal too. And I know that there’s not a person here who isn’t partial to roast pork and apple sauce, and crispy roast crackling,’ Roger said, licking his lips at the very thought. ‘There is a war on, after all, and Porky is part of our own private war effort.’
Roger looked down at Porky, who gazed back at him with a trusting look in his eyes. ‘In fact, the only bit of a pig that one cannot eat is the oink, so I’m told!’ Roger added in an affectionate manner.
Peggy didn’t think the rector had noticed that he had been lovingly scratching Porky just where everyone knew the pig liked it, right behind the sprouting of ginger tufts that grew in a little crested patch nestled bang centre between his ears.
Roger was still scratching and so Porky closed his beady eyes in sheer unadorned pleasure, and a hind leg involuntarily lifted and trembled in the air in happy abandonment.
Peggy had always thought this tiny but distinct patch of ginger at the top of his head made Porky look rather rakish, and a bit like he had a small topknot of devil-may-care russetcoloured hair.
Roger glanced up to see why nobody had tittered at his joke about the oink, to see that only Peggy and Holly were still standing there with him and Porky.
Everyone else had drifted away in a silent protest as he spoke, unobserved by Roger, or by Peggy and Holly, so intent on Porky had they been. Even Angela’s wheelchair barrelling away hadn’t been noticed by any of those still left in the back yard.
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Roger. ‘I didn’t want to upset anyone, but it is the time of year for slaughtering the pigs. And having Porky was to give us some meat that isn’t on the ration, after all. We have a lot of mouths here to feed, and four growing boys who need all the meat they can get. I don’t want to upset anyone, Peggy, but we never got Porky to be a pet – he was always, in my eyes, a collection of meals on four legs.’
With a series of little snorts, at this Porky removed his ginger topknot out from under Roger’s fingers, and with a grunt the pig turned around and pointedly sashayed his way out of the yard, heading for his favourite patch of mud beside the vegetable patch, his corkscrew tail jauntily aloft and his hooves beating their distinctive pattern on the path.
As if the pig had made a secret sign to the other animals, Milburn lifted his head and turned his back on what was going on in the yard and Bucky jumped down and made a swift exit down the path towards the front of the house.
‘Porky is going to be collected at the end of the week,’ Roger said weakly, his voice wobbling just a little, ‘and he’ll go to the slaughterhouse, and then to the butcher, after which we get everything back, except for a cut or two the butcher will keep as payment for the butchering.’
‘Are you sure, Roger? I think there might not be much of an appetite for sausages and bacon for a while if this happens, and it would be terrible for such a sacrifice on Porky’s part to go to waste if nobody wants to eat him,’ said Peggy. ‘Although I’m very partial to a pork banger, for instance, if I knew it was made of Porky, I couldn’t face it. Even you would have to agree that Porky does seem very much part of the family.’
‘The children love black pudding …’ Roger began.
Porky made a loud porcine noise from his hidey place around the corner as if Roger was very wrong in this assumption.
‘Not a black pudding from Porky, they won’t,’ Peggy told Roger firmly, as if he might not have already got the point.
Roger looked down for a long while, and Peggy had to force herself not to interrupt him, and then he said quietly, ‘Well, perhaps when the children are a little bigger and they won’t remember Porky being such a dear little piglet quite so vividly.’
‘Porky certainly was a very adorable wee chap when he arrived, wasn’t he, with those little high-pitched squeaks and the way he learnt his name on the first day and would come to call?’ said Peggy. ‘He was easy to pick up, can you remember? And he had that miniature pale pink snout that was so sweet and so perfect-looking, and those tiny little trotters and, my, how he hated being put into that crate by the hearth each evening to keep him out of trouble!’
Roger held his hands up in defeat, and Peggy knew that Porky wouldn’t be sent off with the knacker man for quite a while yet.
In fact, if she had any money going spare, which of course she didn’t, she would have been quite happy betting all of it on the odds of Porky living out his natural lifespan in the large garden at the rectory.
Clearly, it wasn’t helpful to the war effort if Porky wasn’t slaughtered, Peggy understood, but while that was fine in th
eory, in practice the piglet had always had a lot of character about him, and his loss would leave a large Porky-shaped hole at the rectory that nobody and nothing would be able to fill. Peggy didn’t think Tall Trees would be the only household that would be struggling to kill their pig.
‘You win, Peggy; and yes, Porky was a very likeable little piglet,’ said Roger. There was a pause, and then he whispered to her, ‘Thank goodness the children haven’t twigged that not all the chickens we eat for our Sunday roast have come directly from the butchers.’
‘Well, let’s not tell them that once the hens at the bottom of the garden stop laying, they’re then for the cooking pot,’ said Peggy.
‘Yes, let’s not,’ agreed Roger.
To change the subject to something happier, Peggy said then, ‘Roger, I have a favour to ask of you, and so will you come with me for a moment?’
He nodded, and she led him across the yard.
It was quite some time later when he and Peggy, and Holly, went into the rectory again.
Peggy’s eyes were lit up with energy and enthusiasm as she told Mabel all about it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
First thing the next morning, Peggy said to June Blenkinsop before she had even removed her coat and hat that they needed to have a word.
June looked a bit resigned and Peggy wondered if June had been half-expecting this.
‘You know that I have enjoyed working with you here so much, don’t you, June?’ Peggy began.
June nodded, but as she was clearly not reassured by the faint but unusual jag to Peggy’s voice; it was a suspicious nod.
‘You were my first friend in Harrogate, June, and I can never thank you enough for that,’ said Peggy. ‘I hope that you know that I have been incredibly impressed with the way you have turned your very nice tea shop into a really excellent eatery for those needing hot meals throughout the day; it wouldn’t be the same in this town without your thriving establishment. I’ve learnt a tremendous amount, and I will always be extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity by you of seeing how well a talented and capable woman can run her own business,’ said Peggy.
‘Dammit woman, get to the point!’ said June irritably. ‘Is this your way of telling me that you are going to open a rival eatery?’
‘Of course I’m not!’
For a moment Peggy felt quite affronted that June could even for a moment think that she would do such a thing that would so obviously step on her friend’s toes.
June’s expression softened slightly.
Peggy explained, ‘Don’t be daft, June – of course not. I’m going to open a playgroup! I had a word with Gracie last night, and she is going to come in with me on this as my assistant. It will really help us with looking after Holly and Jack in the way that we would want them to be looked after, and we can help other mothers with small children who need to work, and hopefully it will earn us some profit too.
‘There’s a large bit of the garage going begging that Roger never uses at Tall Trees – it’s huge really, and part of the old stable and coach block, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to convert it into somewhere we could work with. There’s a burner in it already that used to heat it when part of it was a tack room way back when the block was divided into stables and a place for the coaches, there’s a proper quite low ceiling too as mine and Holly’s old bedroom were above part of that, and we can clean the windows and insulate the walls without too much trouble.
‘It’s perfect for what we’d require, as nobody need traipse through Tall Trees as they can go around the side. And there is even a lavatory nearby that we could convert into something the little ones could use, and an annexe where I could put some cots for naptime. And it means that Holly won’t be a problem causing you a headache here any longer, and in the spring the bigger kiddies who come to the playgroup can do things like collect eggs from the chickens and have a vegetable plot, and there’ll be Milburn and Porky and so I’m sure they’ll enjoy all the attention. Milburn and Porky enjoy the attention, I mean, and not the kiddies – but now I think on it both pony and pig can really shower the attention the other way if they think a snack might come. And if there’s an air raid the icehouse will be plenty big enough for everyone. I’ve still got to think about meals and so forth but I am sure I can make it work.’
‘Peggy, it sounds lovely, but I admit that I feel devastated,’ said June as Peggy ran out of steam and had to take a big and audible breath as she had spoken all of this very quickly, she was so excited at the change her life was about to take.
‘That’s the honest truth,’ June went on. ‘Devastated for me of course, as it has been wonderful having you here. But I do understand that this is a good opportunity for you, and so I am going to do my level best to be thrilled for you – I’ll have to work very hard on that, as it will be a real wrench losing you. But thrilled I will be, I promise! And with your teaching experience, you are perfect for running this, and I know you’ve done a first aid course, and so you are going to do very well, I just know it. Now, why are you crying?’ asked June.
‘I don’t want to go now after all your kind words, you are so, er, er, lovely,’ blubbed Peggy. ‘I don’t deserve you saying such nice things, June.’
‘Give over, Peggy, and stop making such a fuss, else I won’t offer you a teacake and a second cuppa to celebrate, and you know you wouldn’t like that,’ June said vigorously.
‘Where is my hanky?’ said Peggy as she patted her various pockets in vain, although she did her best to smile gratefully at her friend through her tears.
It was true what they said, she thought as she accepted June’s neatly pressed and folded handkerchief and dabbed her face, that parting really was such sweet sorrow, and with that thought Peggy discovered that she had started to tear up all over again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Peggy worked another three weeks for June, in order to make sure that there was time for her friend to find a replacement for her at the café, as June wasn’t going to be able to manage long-term on her own.
Peggy couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her pal in the lurch, and in any case she wanted to show the new employee the ropes of keeping the busy café’s books, how to manage the ordering of the stock and take the money at the till, and so forth.
Mabel helped out by looking after Holly while Peggy was over at the café, which was a relief as it stopped Peggy worrying about Holly getting into a pickle, as these days she was into everything and unless she was actually asleep she needed watching or playing with all the time.
Luckily Mabel seemed happy to step into the breach, although she always seemed very relieved to hand Holly back to Peggy at teatime. One day Peggy joked, ‘You’ll get your reward in Heaven, I’m sure’, and Mabel replied, ‘I feel that particular reward might be coming sooner rather than later, she keeps me on my toes so much.’
Peggy laughed, saying, ‘I know what you mean. Just think what it will be like if we get as many as twelve little ones in who are this age …’
‘Heavens to Betsy!’ exclaimed Mabel with a look of mock horror, and she fanned her hand quickly as if beating extra air in the direction of her face. Then she laughed to let Peggy know she didn’t mean it. In fact Peggy suspected that Mabel was rather looking forward to having lots of small children enjoying themselves at Tall Trees.
And during the evenings and at weekends Peggy found, to her surprise, that she was quite a dab hand at converting the space into what she wanted. She could knock in nails straight and true, and she wasn’t bad at sawing pieces or wood to length either.
Of course, all of this could only happen once Peggy had bribed one or other of the children to watch Holly for her as she worked. This was usually the promise that whichever babysitter it was who looked after Holly could scavenge for anything they wanted from among all the ancient things that had been piled into the coach block that Peggy was sorting through, and they could then keep whatever treasures they found for themselves, or else
put them towards the war effort as nearly everything could be repurposed these days.
For what seemed like an interminably long time, the work was back-breaking, and consisted mainly of Peggy hauling out old furniture and implements from one side of the space to another to make way for the renovations she had planned – the area had clearly been a dumping ground for all sorts of things for many years – and in her tidying out a smaller outbuilding to house Milburn’s trap.
Once the first half of the space had been cleared, there turned out to be a lot of planks of wood stacked up, goodness knows where from. And to Peggy’s relief Larry proved very skilled at teasing out the rusty nails with a claw hammer, so that each plank could once again be serviceable.
Peggy was delighted at this unexpected find as she thought these planks would be ideal as flooring that she could put down over a network of thin wooden struts she could place over the bricks already there, and once she had filled the gaps between the struts with old newspapers for insulation, then she could lay the planks on top to create a level floor.
Roger had asked his parishioners if anyone had rugs or carpets they no longer needed and this gleaned a good selection. Someone had a lot of unwanted linoleum that Peggy decided to place between the planks and the carpet to try and stop any rising damp.
Peggy thought it might look a bit bizarre underfoot when it was all done as the disparate patterns of the carpets might jar, but she doubted that the tiny children themselves would care a jot as they crawled or toddled around on it.
A parishioner had even said Peggy could have her old carpet sweeper, and so that meant it shouldn’t be too difficult for Peggy (or better, Gracie) to clean up all the bits of dirt and fluff at the end of each day.
Peggy found that getting the premises ready was hard physical work and she was very tired each night by the time she went to bed as she wasn’t used to such graft.
But there were a few unexpected upsides: the waistbands of her skirts were definitely a little looser than they had been, and Peggy discovered that the more she dragged, pulled and lugged things around the stronger she became.
