London Pride (24 page)

‘Poor you,' he said. ‘I go in February.'

‘Have you got a job?'

‘Apprenticeship,' he said, but his face was so pinched with cold she couldn't tell whether he was happy about it or not. ‘Warrenden Brothers, the marine engineers, in Deptford Creek. Better than nothing I suppose. At least I can start getting some qualifications.' The failure of the strike had made him more determined to educate himself than he'd ever been. Without qualifications a man was nothing.

‘At work?' she said.

‘No. At evening classes. I've signed up for English and General Science. Start January.'

‘Ah.'

‘It's a funny world,' he said, ‘when you got to wait to leave school before you can get educated.'

And put like that she had to agree it was.

They walked on together in companionable silence, she thinking how much she wished she could start work in February too, he pondering the basic unfairness of the world and how it ought to be put to rights.

He was glad to be leaving school, and glad that he would soon be earning, but although it was better to be going to an apprenticeship instead of to a dead-end job, an apprentice's wages were very low indeed, and nothing to the sort of salary he could have commanded if he'd been allowed to take his place at the grammar school. It had been a bitter day for him when half a dozen of his class mates sat the second chance scholarship and he'd been left in the classroom. But what was the use of hoping or entering? His father would have refused that just as he'd refused the first. Now at least he would be his own man with his own wage, however small. And February was only ten weeks away.

He left school quietly, as they all did, collecting his reports from the headmaster on his last afternoon and walking away from the building without a backward
glance. It was a cold bleak day and the houses in Randall Place were huddled and grey like a row of little old men. But he had already started his evening classes and was enjoying them very much, and tomorrow he was beginning the next stage of his life and would be a wage-earner, and that was what was important. As he turned the corner into Paradise Row he was humming to himself with pleasure.

The next morning he was awake at half past six, and up, washed, dressed and breakfasted by seven. He was full of restless energy, eating his bread and marge on the prowl, hovering behind his mother while she cut his sandwiches and made up his lunch-box.

‘Two of yer now,' she said proudly, smiling at him.

He gave her a hug. ‘Everything'll be different from now on,' he said. ‘Only don't you tell
him
what I'm giving you.'

Mention of her husband made Mrs Boxall wince and turn her ear towards the stairs. ‘He'll be down presently,' she said, listening to the clumping sounds above their heads. ‘Better get off before, eh?'

So he went off early.

It was bitterly cold out in the first light of that February morning, and the gaslight in the windows of Paradise Row was so pale it was almost colourless. He turned up his collar against the chill, tucked his lunch-box under his arm and trudged off towards Church Street, where the trams were humming and clanking and he could hear a car hooting.

The main roads were a little more lively and the gas lamps here gave a better light, buttery yellow with a blue corona. There were plenty of men on the pavements walking to work, just like he was, and several cars and delivery vans already busy among the trams. He quickened his pace, heading towards Billingsgate Street and the wharves. And found he was whistling to himself.

‘Well hello!' a voice said behind him. ‘Where are you off to?'

It was Johnny Foster, his old rival, lucky Johnny Foster who'd taken up his scholarship and gone to Roan's, perched on a bicycle with a newspaper sack round his shoulders, his fair hair dampened by mist and his glasses glinting in the gaslight.

‘Work,' Jim explained, with just a touch of pride.

‘No kidding,' Johnny said. ‘You can't be. We've only just started the third year.'

Jim had almost made himself forget what a long education boys were given at Roan's. ‘Yes well,' he said. ‘Some of us start earlier than others.' It was no good getting upset about such things.

‘Poor you,' Johnny said. ‘I started German this year. Can't say I like it much, all those declensions. It's worse than French and that's saying something. Science is OK. We've got a super stinks lab.'

Jim was irritated by this conversation despite his intention to make the best of his lot. ‘You're lucky,' he said.

‘Yes,' Johnny agreed, ‘so they keep telling us. But it takes a lot of work you know. It's not easy.'

It would have been for me, Jim thought. ‘You on your paper round?' he asked trying to change the subject.

‘Yes, bit of a bore, but you've got to show willing.'

He looks different, Jim thought, noticing the uniform blazer and the neat shirt and tie underneath his friend's macintosh, and he talks different. Two and a half years and they've quite changed him. He sounds like a toff. And he knew he was jealous of the change and was annoyed with himself for succumbing to such an ugly, useless emotion.

‘Better be off,' he said. ‘Mustn't be late on my first day.'

‘Where's the job?' Johnny asked casually.

‘Warrendens.'

‘That dump!' Johnny said disparagingly, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Poor you! Well rather you than me, that's all I can say.'

Humiliation, jealousy, anger and a searing sense of the injustice of his life suddenly boiled in Jim's chest and rose towards his throat in a treachery of tears. He had to get away, to put a distance between himself and Johnny's thoughtless success before he burst into tears. God, what a disgrace to weep in the street, and in front of Johnny Foster too. It couldn't be borne. He turned on his heel abruptly and for the first time in his life stepped out into the road without looking.

The van hit him in the arm and the chest. The blow was so sudden and unexpected it stopped his thought and his breath together. He knew he was being propelled through the air, that he was falling sideways, his arms spread like wings; he felt the shock of his landing, the force of it spreading through his body in terrifying uncontrollable waves; then darkness pressed him into the pavement.

The arrival of a policeman in Paradise Row in the middle of a quiet Thursday morning caused a dreadful stir. Mrs Geary saw him first, naturally enough, glimpsing his dark uniform in one corner of her mirror just as she was arranging her legs more comfortably on the footstool. She swung the mirror round at once to see where he was going.

‘Mrs Furnivall!' she called. ‘There's a bobby in our street. Come an' see!'

Flossie was up the stairs in an instant, avid with interest. The two women watched with mounting concern as the policeman marched towards them. They were quite relieved when he knocked next door.

‘Now what?' Mrs Geary said peering through the gap in her net curtains. ‘D'you think it's
him
, Mrs Furnivall?'

‘Nothing would surprise me where that man's concerned, Mrs Geary,' Flossie said. ‘I've always said he'd get himself into trouble sooner or later. A man with that sort of temper.'

But when the policeman left and Mrs Boxall ran to their door, white-faced and shaking, to stammer out her news, they were both ashamed to have been so uncharitable.

‘Jim's been knocked over,' she said. ‘Hit by a van, poor kid.'

‘Is he bad?' Flossie asked.

‘His arm's broke, the copper said. An' something's happened to his ribs. Cracked I think he said. Oh dear. I
got to go up the hospital right away, an' there's the girls coming home ter dinner any minute. What if I'm not back in time, Mrs Furnivall? Oh dear, oh dear, I don't know whether I'm coming or going.'

‘Poor Jim!' Mrs Geary said, hobbling down the stairs. ‘What a dreadful thing! You cut along, Mrs Boxall dear. We'll look after 'em. Don't you worry.'

‘But I don't know how long I shall be,' Mrs Boxall grieved. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, what will his father say?'

‘Take as long as you like,' Flossie said, patting her shoulder. ‘They'll be all right with us, won't they, Mrs Geary?'

‘You'll pop in after, and tell us how he is, won't you?' Mrs Geary said.

But Mrs Boxall wasn't back when her children came home for their dinner and by then the news was up and down the street. Lily and Pearl were most upset, and so was Peggy.

‘I shall go and see him,' she said. ‘Poor Jim.'

‘They won't let you in,' Flossie told her. ‘They don't have kids in hospitals. They like to keep it quiet.'

‘I'm not a kid,' Peggy said sensibly. ‘I shall be out at work in August, don't forget. They'll let me in, you'll see. They let me in to see Dad.'

‘That was different,' Flossie said. ‘You were next of kin. You're not next of kin now.'

‘Then I shall go with Lily,' Peggy said, doggedly. ‘She's next of kin. We'll go tonight. Nobody else'll go tonight I'll bet.' That wretched Mr Boxall wouldn't set foot in the place. He'd be off up the pub and Mrs Boxall would have to wait in to feed him.

‘Oh,' Lily said, doubtfully, ‘I don't know. I mean … Perhaps Mum won't let us.' She didn't really want to go to the hospital at all. Hospitals were frightening places where people went when they were all covered in blood and they were going to die. She knew that even though she'd never been inside one. Besides it would mean actually having to see what had happened to Jim. It was bad enough knowing without having to look.

But for all her quiet demeanour, or perhaps because of it, Peggy's determination was implacable. At twenty-five
minutes to seven that evening the two girls presented themselves at the gates of St Alphege's Hospital as visitors for Jim Boxall, Men's Surgical.

‘You relations?' the porter quizzed.

‘Tell him,' Peggy said, prodding Lily.

‘I'm his sister,' Lily obeyed.

‘Down that corridor,' the porter instructed. ‘Third on the left.'

It was the first time Peggy had been inside a hospital since her Dad died, and the memory of that occasion filled her mind as she walked down the long corridor, smelling the familiar, frightening mixture of disinfectant and floor polish. Dear Dad! What a long time ago it seemed, standing beside him in that white room, promising to look after Mum, wanting to cry and knowing she mustn't. Lily clung to her hand, whimpering that ‘she didn't know, she really didn't know', but the decision had been made and there was no going back on it now. She was a soldier's daughter, born in the Tower of London. And anyway the doors opened at seven.

There were small crowds of visitors waiting outside every door along the corridor, humble in their dark working clothes, and talking in whispers as though they were in church. Peggy and Lily stood at the back of their particular crowd and so they were the last to walk into the ward when the bell rang and a stern-faced sister opened the door. Then there was such a scramble as the other visitors rushed towards the beds that it took a few seconds before Peggy could see where Jim was, and then she could only be certain it
was
him because his was the only bed left unvisited.

He looked so awful that the sight of him gave her a shock despite her determination to stay calm. He was propped up in one of the beds in the middle of the ward, wearing hospital pyjamas and not moving. His left arm was encased in white plaster, there was a wide bandage all around his chest and his face was so bruised and swollen she could barely recognize it. Lily began to whimper again.

‘Hush up!' Peggy hissed at her, giving her arm a shake. ‘You make that noise you'll upset him.'

‘He looks so awful,' Lily whispered.

‘Smile at him,' Peggy said, and she sounded so fierce that Lily did her best to obey, stunned that her gentle neighbour was showing such unexpected force. Whoever would have thought it?

But the force was for a purpose. Peggy knew instinctively that whatever else the two of them might do or say they should be quite sure not to let Jim know how bad he was or how awful he looked. Visiting Dad had taught her that all those years ago. He'd be in pain, he was bound to be, and pain was enough to contend with without having to cope with them making a fuss.

‘Hello,' she said brightly as they approached the bed. And she was pleased to hear how normal her voice sounded.

‘ 'Lo Peg,' he said, speaking thickly because his lips were swollen. He had an awful black eye, almost closed up, the left side of his face was red and purple with bruises, and when he turned his head she could see a long red cut on his chin sutured with spiky black stitches.

‘Don't say nothink,' she advised. ‘I'll ask questions and you can nod. I've brought your book for you, see.' Holding it up towards his good eye. ‘I don't suppose you'll feel much like reading just yet, but I'll put it on your locker for when you're ready.'

He was relieved by her tact and good sense. After a day drained by shock and torn by almost perpetual pain he was too exhausted to talk. His ribs ached and his arm pulsed, even now through all the drugs they'd given him. But he managed a nod to thank her.

‘Now then,' she said, when she'd made Lily sit on the side of the bed where he couldn't see her and had sat down on the more visible side herself, ‘what do you need? You got hankies?'

Slight shake.

‘D'you need some?'

Equally slight nod. They'd only be bits of old rag but he didn't tell her that.

‘That's the way,' she approved. ‘I'll bring some tomorrow. I'll make a sort a' list. Then we'll go home an' leave you to sleep, won't we, Lily? You'll feel better tomorrow. Toothbrush?'

The questions continued, gently and easily, letting him
take his time to rest between each one and think for as long as he liked before answering. Then she signalled to Lily and stood up to leave. And Lily almost wrecked the visit.