London Pride (15 page)

It was Grandpa, standing belligerently before them, mud-caked and disagreeable, his legs astride and his field hat pulled right down over his eyebrows like a helmet.

‘Leave that,' he commanded brusquely. ‘I got somethin' to show you.' And the words were as threatening as his appearance.

They followed him the half mile down to Tillingbourne in anxious silence. There was a blackbird singing with tremulous passion in the hawthorn hedge, and the sky was a beautiful, unclouded blue, diffusing sunshine without discrimination on placid sheep, green corn, Joan's misery and Grandpa's anger. What
was
he going to show them? Peggy worried as she followed his furious spine. It'ud be something nasty as sure as eggs were eggs.

He led them to the church, which comforted her a little, for it couldn't be too nasty, could it, if it was in a church? But they didn't go into the church, they walked round it instead, past the porch and then along the east wall until they reached the buttress that marked the division between the aisle and the chancel, and there the three girls stood in a line and waited, Joan pale-faced and drooping with fatigue, Baby close to tears, Peggy watchful and worried.

‘Look at that,' Grandpa said, squinting their attention towards the wall.

They looked.

‘Don't know what you're looking at though, do you?' he said, and his eyes were sharp with mockery.

Joan answered for all of them even though she felt ill. ‘No,' she said, speaking quietly to deflect his anger.

‘No, you don't,' he agreed. ‘So I'll tell you. High time you was told. That's the wall of a cell, that is. A cell for a wicked girl'.

Now they could see that there was a shape outlined in brick in the fabric of the wall. It looked like a door that had long since been blocked in, and a very low door too, not much taller than Grandpa.

‘And that,' pointing to an oblong opening in the middle of the shape, ‘that's a squint.'

It looked like a letter-box, only bigger.

‘They cut that,' Grandpa went on, ‘so's she could see the priest taking communion. Which was all the light she had. Jest that one little hole. There weren't another openin' nowhere, not a door, not a windy, nothin', just the four bare walls of her cell. Come out to about here it did,' walking the six short feet to the edge of the buttress, ‘an' that's all the space she had. Jest enough for a bed an' a few paces up an' down. Yes, that's where she was bricked up.'

Oh how terrible! Peggy thought, staring at the little space where the cell would have been. Bricked up alive. The words snagged her mind with horror, filling her imagination with terrifying images, bricks and plaster being pushed towards her eyes, crushing against her chest, inches from her unprotected head, the airless space full of
brick dust and falling debris, the weight of masonry an oppressive force all round her. Bricked up alive. ‘Poor thing!' she said.

‘Thirteen she was, when they bricked her in.' Grandpa said. They reckon she wanted to be a saint, put right away from temptation an' all that sort a' thing. Saint my eye. I don't reckon much to that line a' thinkin'. Nothing saintly about
that
girl, I can tell you. Oh no!
Nothing
saintly. She was a
slut
, that's what she was. A slut and she knew it. Thirteen years old, Joan Furnivall, and a slut like someone else we know. What've you got to say about that?'

Joan stood before him, her head bowed and her cheeks burning, and Peggy noticed with a rush of affectionate pity that her legs were trembling. Oh this was awful. Hadn't she been punished enough? How could she stop him?

‘Can we go home now, Grandpa?' she tried. ‘I don't think Joan's feeling very well.'

‘No I don't suppose she is,' Grandpa said gloating over it. ‘She don't deserve to feel well, and she'll feel a lot worse when she's heard what I've got to tell her. There's worse to come.'

Worse, Peggy thought weakly. How could there be? What could be worse than being bricked up alive?

‘Hadn't been there more'n a year or two before she up and changed her mind,' Grandpa said. ‘Which she'd got no business doing, not once she was enclosed. But she did, so you see the sort a' girl she was. And then do you know what she done? She set to with her bare hands an' she picked her way out, day by day, week by week, till she made a hole just big enough to squeeze through, and out she come and run off home to her father.'

I'd have done the same, Peggy thought, admiring the tenacity and good sense of the poor little prisoner. It filled her with relief to think of such a sensible escape. I'd have done just the same.

‘Her father,' Grandpa said, gloating again, ‘he weren't none too pleased to see her when they all thought she'd been settled once and for all. Her father, well he naturally thought of all the shame she'd bring down on his head, the little slut. He didn't want the bailiff coming down to see
him
, did he? So d'you know what he done? I'll tell you what he done. He took her straight back to the priest and had her bricked up all over again. And quite right too. That's what ought to happen to all sluts, didn't it, Joan Furnivall?'

Joan licked her lips. Her eyes were bolting with distress and there was no colour in her face at all. ‘What happened to her then?' she whispered.

‘You may well ask,' Grandpa said, stepping towards her until his face was no more than six inches away from hers. ‘She went mad, Joan Furnivall. She went mad and died.'

‘Oh please,' Joan whispered. ‘I didn't mean to … I didn't know all – this – would happen. I'm not a slut, Grandpa.'

‘Oh yes you are,' Grandpa said, bullying her with his face. ‘You're a dirty, filthy, shameless little slut. You brought shame on this family and the bailiff down on my head an' all. If I had my way I'd …'

But none of them ever heard what he would do because Joan slumped to the ground in a dead faint.

Then several things happened in rapid succession. Baby began to howl, Peggy dropped to her knees beside her sister and tried to lift her poor groaning head from the gravel, there was a swish of long skirts approaching along the path, and Grandpa disappeared like a rabbit into a hole.

‘If you will allow me to lift her up a little, we can put her head between her knees and that will bring her round,' Reverend Beaumont said.

Peggy was limp with relief to see his good honest face looking down so kindly at them. ‘She's not very well,' she said.

‘No,' Reverend Beaumont said, as Joan groaned and opened her eyes. ‘I can see that. It's lucky my car is in the road.' And he picked Joan up in his arms as if she were a baby and strode off with her towards the road, his cassock swinging.

Peggy and Baby followed at his heels, trotting to keep up with him, for despite his burden he was walking very quickly.

‘Here it is,' he said, stopping by his car and lowering Joan into the passenger seat. ‘Get in and I will take you home.'

Which he did, driving them the long way round through Gomshall and up the farm path they'd climbed on that first day, so long ago now. And when the path stopped, he parked the car neatly beside the hedge and escorted them right up to the kitchen door.

Aunt Maud opened the door.

‘I return your niece to your care, Miss Potter,' he said. ‘If you will allow me to advise you, I think you should put her to bed as soon as possible. She had a fainting spell in the churchyard and she still isn't at all well.'

Aunt Maud thanked him in some confusion. ‘Very kind of you, Father.'

‘Not at all,' the reverend gentleman said. ‘Treat her gently, Miss Potter. I really do think she's been punished enough, wouldn't you say.'

Aunt Maud didn't say anything, but her face was rigid with a combination of suppressed anger and fear, because it sounded as though he knew what Joan had done and how they'd dealt with it.

‘Come in,' she said grimly to her nieces, when the rector had swished back to his car. ‘What your grandfather will say when he hears about this, I do not know.'

‘He knows about it,' Peggy said, fighting back to protect her sister. ‘He was the one took us down to the churchyard. He was the one made Joan faint.'

If she'd hoped to gain any sympathy, she was badly mistaken. ‘Don't you dare say such a thing about your grandfather,' her aunt roared, red-faced with anger.

‘It's true. He did.'

‘You say another word,' Aunt Maud said furiously, ‘an' I'll wash your mouth out with soap and water. The shame of it! I shall never hold my head up again. For the Father to know! The shame of it!'

The three girls stood awkwardly before her in the kitchen, not knowing what they were supposed to do or say, Joan ashamed, Baby afraid and Peggy burning with anger because it was all so unfair.

And grandfather kicked into the kitchen, boots first, red
in the face and breathless as though he'd been running. ‘Where's your damn mother?' he roared. ‘Always out galli-vantin', God damn it.' And he pushed at Baby who was the nearest to his anger. ‘Get out my way, dammit.'

‘Leave her alone!' Mum said, arriving home just in time to see the shove and running in through the open door to fold her precious child in her arms. ‘What's she done? It's not her fault. It's
that
wretch you should be shoving about.' Glaring at Joan.

Baby burst into tears to show how hard done by she was. And then all three grown-ups began to shout at the same time and at the tops of their voices, not listening to one another.

‘Sluts! Harlots!' Grandpa roared, puce in the face and stamping his feet with every word. ‘I should never have taken you in. Dirty sluts, the lot of you! You deserve everything that's coming to you. You should never have been born …'

‘Nobody cares for me!' Mum shrieked. ‘My nerves are in rags! Rags! How could you
do
this to me? I simply don't understand. Don't you care that you'll make me ill? For a poor widow woman to be treated so …'

‘The entire village knows, I hope you realize,' Aunt Maud shouted. ‘The entire village. We shall all be ruined. I shall never hold my head up again. If the Father knows. He came here, right to my door. You're not even safe in your own home …'

The noise of their anger was so dreadful it made Peggy's stomach shake. This is what it must be like to be in a war, she thought, stuck in the trenches with the enemy firing their guns at you and not able to run away or fight back or anything. Oh please God, make them stop.

And as if in answer to her prayer Mum and Maud both stopped shouting and now it was only Grandpa's voice ranting on. ‘… you and your filthy brood, Flossie Furnivall. I'm glad you ain't a Potter no more an' that's a fact.'

‘If you hadn't taken 'em all down to the village no one would've known,' Mum said bitterly. Which showed that she must have heard some of the things Maud had been saying. ‘I kept 'em in, I hope you realize.'

‘And now you can take 'em all out,' Grandpa said
viciously. ‘That's what you can do. Take 'em all out.'

‘What d'you mean?' Mum said. ‘Take 'em all out where?'

‘Out a' my house,' Grandpa said. ‘That's where. I've had the bailiff up to see me, I'll have you know. You're to be out by the end a' next week, he sez, or I lose the cottage. That's what he sez. Be lucky if I don't lose me job an' all. You're to get out. You an' your shameful brood. Before we start the harvest. That's what he sez. Now you know.'

‘But we can't,' Mum wailed, changing in an instant from open-mouthed abuse to pathetic whining. ‘Where would we go? I'm just a poor widow woman. You know that. I need someone to take care of me. Where could we possibly go?'

‘Should ha' thought a' that before you let that trollop loose.'

‘You
must
let us stay,' she insisted. ‘We shall be homeless.'

‘By the end a' next week,' Grandpa said. ‘That's all there is to it. I'm off out.'

‘What about your supper?' Aunt Maud said.

‘Give it to the pig.'

‘Oh, that's nice!' Mum said, weeping. ‘Walk out on us, I should. You don't care what happens to anyone, you hateful man. You don't care for me. You never did. Or poor Baby. What did she ever do? Oh! Oh! I shall be ill and it'll be all your fault.' And as her father crashed out of the front door and crunched off along the path, she blundered through the door to the stairs and stumbled up to the bedroom.

The kitchen was suddenly and horribly quiet.

‘And you lot can stay in the yard,' Aunt Maud said. ‘I've had enough for one day.'

They sat in the barn with Peggy's cat and talked things over. And over and over.

‘Where will we go?' Joan said. ‘Oh God, Peg, this is all my fault. Where will we go?'

‘Wherever Mum takes us I expect,' Peggy said.

But as they were to discover in the next few fraught days their mother had opted out of the situation altogether.

‘I can't get up,' she said to Aunt Maud next morning, lying in the tangle of the bedclothes with her eyes shut. ‘I'm far too ill. I should collapse.'

Her illness didn't impress Grandpa. ‘You can roll around in bed all you like, gel,' he called up the stairs to her. ‘Don't make no odds to me. You're out of here next Friday. That's all there is to that.'

The weekend came and went and she was still in bed.

‘If we've really go to get out when Grandpa says, where are we going to go?' Baby worried, when Monday morning brought no change.

The three girls were out in the vegetable garden, weeding, Joan and Peggy with hoes and Baby with a rather useless trowel.

‘I don't know,' Joan said wearily. ‘I don't know what's to become of any of us.'

The weight of a necessary decision finally settled on Peggy's shoulders. ‘I'll see to it,' she told her sisters. ‘I promised Dad I'd look after Mum, an' if she's ill she can't look after herself.' And Joan was too low to know what to do and Baby too young. ‘You carry on here and I'll see to it.'