London Pride (2 page)

‘How's my birthday girl, eh?' Dad said, beaming at her as she trotted across to kiss them. ‘How's that girl who was born in the Tower?'

‘I'm hunky-dory,' she said, using his favourite word and beaming back at him, as she climbed on his knee. ‘Morning, Mum.'

‘Born in the Tower,' he said, stroking his moustache with the remembered pleasure of it. ‘If that ain't something to be proud of, I'd like to know what is. There ain't many can lay claim to an honour like that, let me tell you. And you done even better than the others, because you was born on a day of history, the day the Great War began.' He reached behind him and lifted the family Bible from its place on the dresser the way he always did on a birthday, opened it with a flourish, and showed her the familiar entry. ‘Margaret Furnivall born in the Tower of London, 4 August 1914.'

The Great War meant nothing to Peggy beyond a muddled recollection of some very noisy celebration when it was over. It was the present day that was important to her. The present day and its pleasant rituals.

‘Tell me all about it,' she said, and her voice was easy with the certainty that he would tell her at once, as he always did. She'd heard the story so many times she knew every word of it by heart, but she never tired of it. It was the start of every birthday. ‘Please, Dad.'

‘Well,' he said, settling her on his lap, ‘when you was born – and a dear pretty little baby you was, so quiet and good – when you was born, I had to go straight off and tell the Constable of the Tower, didn't I, same as I did when your sisters was born. I had to go straight off and tell the Constable of the Tower, and the Constable of the Tower,
he
had to write straight off to tell the King. King George himself. You think a' that! And when the King heard you was born, bless me, if he didn't sit right down and write a letter to your mum, with his congratulations. And here's the very letter, bless me if it ain't.' And the letter was drawn very carefully and delicately from the envelope at the back of the Bible where it was always kept, so that they could read it together.

‘So you see that makes you very special,' Dad said, finishing the story. ‘A Londoner, you see. You can't get no better than that. Citizen a' the biggest town in the whole wide world. And a soldier's daughter to boot. Don't forget that. So you got to grow up strong and brave and proud a' yerself, ain'tcher?'

And she agreed with him, as she always did, nodding and smiling and feeling very strong and brave and proud of herself.

She adored her father. She knew every line of his dear old face by heart, all the lovely odd mixtures of colour and texture, his bristling hair, (‘pepper and salt, that is,' he'd explain when she patted it) and the beard that was white on his chin and gingery where it curled about his mouth, and his cheeks that were covered all over with little wavery red lines like threads of cotton, and his eyes that were neither green nor brown but a sort of olive colour, striped with brown lines that radiated out from the centre like the spokes of a little toy wheel until they reached the rim, which was an extraordinary dark blue. (‘God couldn't make up His mind, that's what it was, so He give me a bit of allsorts.')

Peggy's eyes were exactly the same colour as her father's, so God hadn't made up His mind about her either. It was nice to think that God wasn't quite sure of things, providing, of course, they were always unimportant things like the colour of your eyes or whether it would rain or not. He'd be sure about all the important things, she knew that, because Dad said so. Thanks to the things Dad told her and the things she heard in church of a Sunday, she had a very clear image of God. He lived in a palace, of course, just like the Tower, only bigger, and He was tall and bluff and kind and gentle and patient and protective, rather like Dad really, only older and with a white beard and a commanding voice.

Dad's voice was a mixture like everything else about him. He was gruff and gentle when he spoke to her or Mum or her sisters, but when it was his turn to be a guide and give a lecture to the visitors, he spoke so loudly you could hear his words right across the green as clear as though he was using a megaphone. Oh he was a lovely dad.

‘Here's your sisters down,' he said, setting her feet on the kitchen floor again. ‘Time for presents, eh, birthday girl? You ready?'

She scrambled onto her chair, more than ready, bright with happy anticipation, and the second birthday ceremony began. Baby first, because she was the youngest, shyly offering a card she'd made herself and signed with seven kisses. Then big sister Joan with a colouring book, which was a lovely present, or would have been if she only had some colouring pencils left. Hers were all worn down to the stubs. She kissed Joan's cheek affectionately and made private plans to buy herself some crayons bit by bit with her pocket money. And then it was Mum's turn.

Mum always made a great fuss of birthday presents, wrapping them up in tissue paper and tying them with a ribbon, but they weren't always as exciting inside the wrapper as they looked outside. In fact more often than not they were a bit of a disappointment. And this year's gift was no exception. It was a long, hand-knitted, tweed-coloured, winter scarf, beautifully pressed and carefully folded and undeniably dull.

When Peggy unwrapped the paper and saw what it was she was disappointed, but she didn't say so, because she knew you weren't supposed to pass comment on a present no matter what you thought of it. That would have been looking a gift horse in the mouth and Dad said you must never ever do that. Besides if she said the wrong thing she'd be bound to upset Mum, and that was something they all went out of their way to avoid, because Mum suffered with her nerves and when her nerves were playing her up she could get very shirty indeed.

It took quite a few seconds to think of something suitable to say, and they were very long seconds because Mum was standing right beside her, poised, with the newly-filled teapot in her hand, waiting, and Dad had his encouraging look on, and Baby and Joan were both watching her every move. She looked at the scarf all the time as though she was examining it carefully, and eventually she found the words among the threads.

‘Thanks, Mum,' she said. ‘It'll be ever so warm in the winter.'

‘I should hope so,' her mother said, setting the teapot down on its trivet at last, ‘the hours it's took me.' But despite the querulous tone of her voice, they all knew she was pleased by the answer, because she was patting the tea cosy, and she always patted things when she was pleased. ‘You can wear it tonight,' she said, ‘when you watch the Keys.'

‘You got another present yet,' Dad said, handing his across the table.

It was a pencil box absolutely crammed with lovely coloured pencils.

‘Oh!' she said, quite breathless with the pleasure of it. ‘Oh Dad! It's just what I wanted.' And she slipped from her seat to kiss him rapturously, over and over again.

‘Do you mean to eat this breakfast, Joe Furnivall, or don't you?' Mum said, quite crossly. ‘You muck about any longer an' it'll all go cold on you.'

Peggy tidied her presents onto the dresser at once, and Dad looked a bit sheepish, and they all settled down to breakfast. There were meals to eat and chores to do no matter what sort of day it was.

The chores took quite a long time that morning, because their usual supper was going to be a birthday tea, so Mum was hard at work in the kitchen, and Joan and Peggy had to see to the bedrooms on their own, turning beds and airing bedding, emptying heavy slop buckets, polishing basins, beating rugs and sweeping into all the corners, tidying and dusting. As Joan said, rather wearily, there was no end to it.

‘We shan't neither of us get out before dinner at this rate,' she complained.

‘Never mind,' Peggy said, smoothing a pillow case. ‘We got all the afternoon.' They were always allowed to play out in the afternoons.

‘Eileen'll ‘ave been waiting hours,' Joan said, tweaking the counterpane. ‘If I don't look sharp she'll have something to say, I can tell you.' Eileen was her best friend and not one to wait with much patience.

Peggy's friends always waited for her without complaining at all. She had lots of friends because there weren't many children living in the Tower and they all went to the school in the Casemates so you could be friends with everyone. It was nice living in the Tower of London, like being in a village only right in the middle of the City. They had their own hospital in the Barracks and their own church on the Green and there were lots of wonderful places to play, out in the Casemates when it was dry, sitting in one of the arrow slit windows when it was wet, on the Green before the visitors arrived and even in the gun park on the Wharf overlooking the River Thames where you could strut about lording it over the visitors like anything because they were never allowed there. You weren't really supposed to be there either but that made it all the better.

That afternoon they played in the Casemates, British Bulldog and long rope skipping and ‘What's the time Mr Wolf?' until heat and exertion finally slowed them down. Then they paired for gentler games like tops and dabs and hoops, and Peggy and her very best friend Megan found a quiet corner down by the archway that led to the Green where they could chalk out a game of hopscotch.

The chalking out took longer than the game because
both little girls were very particular about it. The squares had to be perfectly straight before they were satisfied with them, so there was much spitting on fingers and rubbing out, and they'd only just hopped the first round when Megan scrambled to her feet and put her grubby hand to her mouth in alarm.

‘Oh lor'!' she said. ‘Here comes the Bully boys. I'm off out of it.' And she went at once, trotting through the arch into the Casemates before Peggy had time to pick up the pebble for the next go.

The Bully boys were Fred and Sam the ten-year-old twins of Sergeant-Major Bullough, and most people ran away from them. They were rather undersize for their age, but what they lacked in inches they more than made up for in aggression. They had rough red hands and big booted feet and the fair hair that could have redeemed their faces with some softness if only it had been allowed to grow was cut back to a mere eighth of an inch of stubble so that their skulls looked misshapen and brutal. They walked like battering rams, bent forward from the waist, fists clenched and bullet heads to the fore, squat faces scowling.

Just the sight of them made Peggy feel uneasy, but she stood her ground and put on a bold face, because she was seven years old now, wasn't she, and a soldier's daughter and born in the Tower, and she had to be brave.

Even so, Fred, who was the first to reach her, looked horribly fierce. He came straight to the point. ‘Stinko says you're staying up fer the Keys ternight. Is that right?'

‘Yes,' she said, standing defensively, her body turned away from him as though they were fencing, and her toes flexed just in case she had to run.

‘Yeh. Stinko said,' he nodded. ‘That's all right then.'

She felt vaguely glad that it was all right, but she remained alert because the words were more ominous than their meaning.

‘Me an' Sam are going on a ghost hunt after the Keys,' he said prowling round her so that they were face to face again. ‘You game?'

‘A ghost hunt?' she said, her heart quaking at the idea.

‘Take you with us if yer like,' Sam said. ‘Our mum's
cleaning the Salt Tower. We got the keys.' He had such an eager expression on his face, he looked as though he was barking.

Peggy didn't want to go on a ghost hunt at all. She knew there were lots of ghosts in the Tower, because everybody who lived there knew that, but until that moment, being a sensible child, she had managed to avoid thinking about them.

She tried to temporize, using her mother's formula. ‘Don't know,' she said, staring him out. ‘Depends.'

‘What on?' Sam said.

She didn't know the answer to that, because nobody had ever queried her mother when she said such a thing. ‘Why don't you take Stinko?' she suggested. ‘He'd like it.'

‘Give over!' Sam mocked. ‘He'll be in bed, same as all the others. We'll be the only ones up that time a' night. Are you game?'

They had argued her into a corner. What could she say? She blinked at them in the strong sunlight. ‘I don't think I want to.'

Her answer aggravated them. That wasn't what they wanted to hear. Nor what they expected, because she was renowned for being a sport and good for a dare. Look at the way she'd balanced along the wall that time. Oh no! She was to come with them, that's what. It wouldn't be half so much fun without a girl to frighten. They turned their combined powers upon her at once.

‘What sort of answer d'you call that?' Sam said scornfully.

‘She's scared,' Fred said, thrusting his bullet head at her. ‘She's nothing but an old scaredy-cat.'

She defended herself at once. ‘No I ain't.'

‘You are!'

‘I ain't!'

‘If you don't come with us,' Sam said, ‘you're a scaredy-cat. Proven.'

Faced with such crushing logic there was nothing she could do but agree to join them. She couldn't admit to being a coward, and specially not today. ‘All right then,' she said. ‘Only …'

But they'd taken her agreement and were already walking away with it.

‘Ten o'clock sharp,' Fred called back to her. ‘By the Bloody Tower.'

She stood where she was in the sunlight, turning the pebble round and round in her fingers, calm and still even though her heart was throbbing with alarm at what she'd agreed to do. A ghost hunt. She
couldn't
go on a ghost hunt. What if they actually saw one? It made her blood run cold even to think of it. Imagine being touched by a ghost. And what if it had no head? She'd heard enough about them to know that lots of ghosts were people who'd been beheaded. Imagine seeing a ghost walking towards you, ready to touch you, and
with no head
. Oh, she
couldn't
go. She just couldn't. But how was she going to get out of it, now she'd given her word?