London Pride (19 page)

‘Look sharp!' Mrs Geary said when the first notes struck up on that particular evening. ‘We got to be there first because a' Polly.'

‘Polly?' Flossie asked, dabbing powder on her nose.

‘Me parrot.'

‘Are you taking the parrot?'

‘Course.'E loves it. It's the company you see. Loves company. Mr Allnutt carries ‘im down.'

Which Mr Allnutt did, supporting the cage carefully with both hands and talking to Mrs Geary all the way.

It's like the Pied Piper, Peggy thought, as she followed
them, everyone going in the same direction, following the music. He'll never fit us all in his front room.

But Mr Allnutt's front room appeared to be made of elastic. There was no furniture in it apart from two wooden benches pushed against the walls and the piano in all its glory, and as people used the open window as an extra door they managed to get in and out of the place almost at will. The old and infirm sat on the benches, the children commandeered the stairs, the young and vocal stood hip to hip wherever they could find a space, and the parrot had pride of position on top of the piano where he bounced up and down in time to the music and squawked and took bites at anything that was pushed into his cage, from scraps of food to inquisitive fingers. Beer and shandy and lemonade were slopped in over the singing heads, and from time to time delicacies appeared and were passed from hand to sweating hand, a paper bag full of brown shrimps, or a tub of cockles, or winkles, pins and all. It was picnic, party and public entertainment all rolled into one. And for the three Furnivall girls it was almost too much to take in.

Joan stuck close to Mrs Geary on that first evening, because Mrs Geary was cheerful and knowledgeable and protective, but as soon as Peggy and Baby set foot inside the room they were seized by two small girls in frilled pinafores who told them they were looking out for them because they were their next door neighbours, Lily and Pearl Boxall from number five.

‘She's Lily,' the smaller of the two said, prodding her sister in the chest. ‘She's nine. I'm Pearl. I shall be nine soon.'

‘No you won't,' Lily said amiably. ‘You got fourteen months yet. Don't exaggerate. Here, you got a cat aintcher? We seen it in the garden.'

Peggy admitted to the cat.

‘Come on the stairs,' Pearl said, unabashed by her sister's criticism. ‘You can sit wiv us if you like. We shall ‘ave shrimps presently, when me bruvver comes. ‘E always buys us shrimps.' She had blue eyes like her brother and a very open face. Peggy liked her at once.

‘I shall get my frock all mucky if I sit on the stairs,' Baby complained.

‘Go an' sit with Mum on the bench then,' Peggy said.

‘She the youngest?' Lily asked when Baby had gone grizzling off. And when Peggy nodded, ‘Yeh! Thought so. Youngest's always spoilt. The littlest O'Donavan is a horror. That's ‘im over there bein' carried.'

‘How old is he?' Peggy asked.

‘Three,' Lily said scathingly, ‘an' still bein' carried about. They live next door to you the other side, the O'Donavans. There's ever so many of 'em. There's our Mum look, over there.'

Peggy looked to see a shabby woman in a faded brown frock standing beside the piano. She had straggly brown hair tied up in a bun and lots of lines on her face and she was holding her glass in her left hand because her right one was small and sort of withered as if it hadn't grown properly.

‘Dad's up the boozer,' Lily said. ‘He's always up the boozer.'

‘ “My ol' man!”' Pearl said excitedly, leaping from the stairs. ‘Come on you two. I got to sing this.'

Peggy hadn't heard any of the songs before, but the choruses were easy to learn and soon she was joining in with everybody else and singing at the top of her voice, particularly when the words were rude. She learnt one song all through, because it was short and naughty and they sang it over and over again, dancing about in the crowded room and out of the door and into the street.

‘Chase me Charlie, chase me Charlie,

Lost the leg a' me drawers.

If you find it, starch an' iron it,

Send it back ter the boys.'

There were songs to dance to, and songs to holler, and sad songs to sit on the floor and listen to with tears in your eyes. And the shrimps were really tasty.

‘Thanks ever so much,' she said, when Jim Boxall gave her a handful.

‘That's all right,' he said, grandly, like a lord distributing largess. ‘Cat like the pieces?'

‘I'm keepin' 'em for her breakfast.'

‘Don't keep 'em too long,' he warned, ‘Or they'll go off. I'll give you some more next week if you like.'

‘Won't he mind, your fishmonger?'

‘Not if 'e don't see,' he said grinning at her.

The grin made her feel so welcomed and so much at home she decided she liked him after all.

Over on the other side of the swaying crowd Flossie had found a new friend too. She wasn't really very sure whether she approved of this get-together or not. It was friendly, there was no denying that, but she had a sneaking feeling it was really a bit too common for her and her children, so when the woman sitting next to her gave a derisive sniff at the start of ‘They're moving father's grave ter build a sewer' she looked round at her with understanding.

‘Dreadful song,' the woman said. ‘Not the sort of thing really.'

‘No,' Flossie agreed.

‘You're new, aren't you?' her neighbour said. ‘Yes. I thought so. I didn't think I'd seen you here before. I live at the end house. Number eight, you know.' She was a very stiff woman, with a long stiff face powdered shell-pink, bright blue lids to her pale blue eyes, narrow lips enamelled red and dyed black hair marcelled into waves as hard as corrugated iron. She sat bolt upright and as straight as a board under her yellow cotton frock and she didn't look as though she approved of anything she saw.

Mr Allnutt loomed upon them with a tray and a smile. ‘What can I get you ladies?' he asked. ‘Mrs Roderick?'

‘My usual, Mr Allnutt,' Mrs Roderick said, putting the necessary coins on the tray. ‘Port and lemon if you please.'

‘Same for me,' Flossie said, fishing her money from her bag and feeling glad to be making an equally ladylike choice.

‘Plays lovely, don't he?' Mrs Roderick observed, tilting one ear towards the piano.

‘Yes,' Flossie agreed. ‘Very good.'

‘Plays for the pictures,' Mrs Roderick explained. ‘That's what does it.'

The pictures, Flossie thought. How lovely! ‘You got a cinema here then?' she said.

‘Two,' Mrs Roderick said proudly. ‘The Hippodrome and the Empire. I go to one or the other every Thursday. All by mesself, but you got to get out now and then, haven't you?'

‘I go to the pictures Thursday too,' Flossie admitted, delighted to think that the habit could continue here in Greenwich. ‘Wouldn't miss it for worlds. I don't think it matters being by yourself in the cinema.'

‘They got Rudolph Valentino at the Palace next week,' Mrs Roderick said. ‘In
The Eagle
.'

‘Oh!' Flossie breathed. ‘Rudolph Valentino!'

‘Such a sympathetic actor,' Mrs Roderick said.

‘Oh yes!'

There was a pause while they both thought about their hero and John Cooper took a draught from his pint of bitter.

‘Does Mr Roderick like the pictures?' Flossie asked, as the solo began.

‘He's gone,' her neighbour said lugubriously. ‘Gone long since. Took with the consumption, poor soul. Galloping consumption it was. Ever so bad he was. Well, they said at the 'orspital he was the most chronic case they'd ever seen. The most chronic case.'

‘Poor man,' Flossie commiserated. ‘How sad for you.'

‘Yes,' Mrs Roderick said. ‘It was quite a come-down, really. We had such a lovely little place when he was alive. And now I'm reduced to this. If it wasn't for my ladies I don't know how I should make out.'

‘Yes,' Flossie said, trying to look intelligent although she wasn't quite sure what her new friend was talking about. ‘Don't fidget, Baby dear. You'll scuff your nice sandals.'

‘Can I go an' play with Marie O'Donavan?' Baby said.

Flossie smiled permission as sweetly as she could, secretly feeling very glad to be rid of her, because for all her charm Baby could be a bit of an embarrassment sometimes with some of the things she said. But then just as she got rid of one encumbrance another one came bawling into the room. Brother Gideon, red-faced and affable with drink, bellowing for his ‘old friend Cooper'.

Mrs Roderick shuddered. ‘That awful man!' she said. ‘He don't live here you know. He's a butcher from right
over the other side of town. I don't see why we have to put up with him week after week.'

Gideon had his red arms round the pianist's neck. ‘How's me old mate then?' he was shouting.

‘They was in the war together,' another woman explained, smiling at the embrace. ‘In the trenches.'

‘That's no excuse,' Mrs Roderick whispered to her new friend. ‘No excuse at all. In my opinion the war has a lot to answer for. All these ex-servicemen begging in the streets. My ladies don't like it and I can't say I blame them.'

Flossie was caught between the need to preserve a diplomatic silence in order to save face, and the knowledge that sooner or later Mrs Roderick was bound to find out that she and the butcher were related. ‘Your ladies?' she temporized.

‘My customers, really,' Mrs Roderick explained, ‘but I call them my ladies, because they're more like friends to me you see than customers. They always say so. Mrs Roderick, they say, you're the best friend a lady could ever have. So charming. I'm a corset fitter you know. Spirella corsets. Only the best, so naturally I move among an altogether better class of person in my line of country.'

‘I used to live in the Tower of London when my husband was alive,' Flossie said, not to be outdone. ‘We had a
very
good class of people there. Royalty, you know. The King and Queen were always visiting. Many's the time I've seen them arrive. Lovely people.'

‘Fancy!' Mrs Roderick said, obviously impressed. ‘Well then you know what I mean, my dear.'

‘Yes,' Flossie said happily and she was just going to tell her new friend something more about her days in the Tower when Mrs Roderick spoke again and in a different tone of voice.

‘Oh my good God!' she said, turning up her nose. ‘Now look!'

By now the room was so full of people that Flossie couldn't see much more than the bouncing backs and gesticulating hands six inches in front of her face. She didn't even know where Baby had got to with that Marie, which was rather worrying, and Peggy and Joan were quite lost over by the piano. But then two of the backs
turned away from one another and she caught a glimpse of a slatternly woman with uncombed brown hair, a blotchy face and a purple nose staggering into the room hauling a small huddled man behind her. Everything about him drooped, his moustache, his eyes, his lank hair, even his jacket and trousers, everything about her seemed to be falling to pieces. ‘Here we are!' she called. ‘Jus' in time!'

‘Nonnie Brown,' Mrs Roderick said. ‘She is my landlady. Now you see what I have to put up with. Tight as a tick most a' the time, she is. Well you can see. An abomination.'

The abomination had lurched her way to the piano and seemed to be dismantling her handbag. ‘I've got it in 'ere somewhere,' she called. ‘Don't you worry. I'll find it.'

‘What's she looking for?' Flossie asked.

‘His wretched mouth organ,' Mrs Roderick sneered. ‘And then he'll have to play and we'll have to listen, heaven help us all. She does this every Saturday'

‘Here it is!' the woman called holding a mouth organ triumphantly aloft. ‘Now we're all right. Come along, Cyril. They're all waiting.'

Cyril was shrinking into his shirt, like a tortoise retreating into its shell. ‘No they're not, Nonnie,' he said. ‘Really you know. They're not.'

‘Quite right, mate,' his neighbours agreed. ‘You give it a miss. Don't you go playin' on our account.'

But the instrument was already being pushed into Cyril's mouth.

‘He can't play,' Mrs Roderick said scathingly. ‘Ah, there's our port an' lemon. Ta, Mr Allnutt, you're a gentleman.'

The mouth organ was making wheezing noises to an accompaniment of catcalls and ribald remarks. ‘Go on Cyril, mate. You show 'em. Why don'tcher pin it to the wall? Then you could suck it off from there.'

‘Aark!' the parrot shrieked, excited by the antagonism. ‘Bugger off! Bugger, bugger, bugger.'

‘Is it supposed to be a tune?' Flossie asked, trying to ignore that awful bird, but embarrassed despite her efforts.

‘Don't ask me,' Mrs Roderick said, sipping her port and lemon. ‘He always makes that row.'

The crowd in the room began to thin as people took advantage of the lull to pop out the back or nip across to the pub for a quick one. Now Flossie could see Mrs Geary sitting stumpily at one end of the other bench with Joan squatting on the floor beside her. They were sharing a plateful of cockles and Joan was laughing and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The laughter and the carelessness of that gesture irritated Flossie into tetchiness, particularly after all the embarrassment she'd had to subdue. The girl had no right to be looking so happy not after the way she'd behaved. She didn't deserve it. And she won't do her frock much good sitting on this floor either, she thought, dropping her glance to check it for dirt. Then she saw what her daughter was wearing on her legs. Silk stockings! For heaven's sake! A servant dismissed without a character and she was wasting her money on expensive silk stockings. I'll get you to work on Monday, my girl, she thought crossly. High time you buckled down and got some of these silly ideas out of your head.