London Pride (36 page)

Then the lorry swung in through the gates and deposited them at the guard house. And the RAF engulfed them. There were men in uniform everywhere they looked, walking briskly among long rows of wooden huts, or being marched about in well-drilled columns in a central square. The noise was incessant, drill corporals yelling, boots crunching gravel, hands slapping rifles, butts thwacking ground. There was even a side-drum clicking somewhere out of sight.

They stood in line outside the guard room as a roll was called and learned to say ‘Yes, Sergeant' in answer to their names. Then they were marched off to another hut and put in the charge of a corporal called Waller, who was short and dark and looked uncomfortably belligerent, which as they soon discovered was only to be expected when his nickname on the camp was Shit-house Wallah and his favourite form of punishment was latrine duty.

‘This is East Camp,' he shouted at them. ‘Those are your bunks, which you will keep clean, neat and tidy at all times. Now follow me.'

They spent the rest of the day being marched about and standing in queues. They queued for everything, to be given their service number and identity disks, for a medical which Jim found acutely embarrassing, to be issued with their kit which took hours, to be given their inoculations which were very painful, and at last, when they were all bewildered and exhausted they stood in yet another queue to be allowed to enter the mess hall.

Here they were ushered to a long table where they sat eight to a side and in complete silence, as though they were back at school. But the food was very welcome after such a day and when the orderlies wheeled their trolleys in from the kitchen and a meaty steam rose from the galvanized iron trays, Jim could have cheered with relief.

‘Blimey! What a day!' Froggy said, when they were finally allowed back to the hut ‘to get some kip'. He was an odd-looking chap with thin mouse-brown hair and bulging
eyes and the widest mouth Jim had ever seen, but he'd stayed irrepressibly cheerful all through their long day and he was still grinning even then.

‘A day an' a half,' Jim agreed, taking off his new boots and rubbing his heels.

‘D'ye reckon there'll be anythin' left for us tay do tomorrow?' Jock said.

‘Plenty,' Jim said. ‘You could lay money on it.'

‘I'm sick of queueing,' Froggy complained, grinning again.

And that got a chorus of agreement from every new recruit in the hut.

During the next few days they learned that the camp was so overcrowded that they would have to queue for everything. It became a normal part of their lives, like the interminable square bashing, an initiation that had to be endured before they could be considered airmen. Froggy and Jim rapidly became ‘oppos'. They soon discovered that they shared the same taste in literature, had both studied history and economics and had the same dry sense of humour. And the more they talked to one another the closer friends they became.

Later that week Jim wrote four postcards, one each to his mother and his two sisters, and as a considered afterthought one to Peggy. ‘We shall be square bashing for three months,' he told her. ‘I shall be glad when it's over I can tell you. It's worse than the gym we had to do at school. At least we didn't have to do that in army boots. The grub's good, plenty of it and served hot. I've had a haircut that makes me look like a fugitive from a chaingang. Give my love to the kids. Look after yourself, Love Jim.'

The sight of his familiar writing on that postcard made Peggy feel peculiarly lonely. She missed his presence next door more than she'd imagined she would. From time to time when she heard Mr Boxall shouting abuse or throwing things about, she found herself thinking of the old days when Jim hid his library books in her bedroom and brought fish for old Tabby and Tom, and it seemed to her that there was a huge empty pit yawning in the emptiness next door.

And when she came down to light the stove one bitter January morning and found her poor Tabby lying cold and dead by the hearth, with Tom sitting puzzled guard beside her, the emptiness yawned wider than ever, for Jim would have understood what a wrenching loss it was and now she had to endure it on her own.

He wrote her the most tender letter, pointing out that she'd given the old cat a good life and let her have lots of kittens and that if she hadn't rescued her from the farm she would certainly have died long ago. ‘And you've got Tom, don't forget.'

Which was all true, Peggy thought, reading the letter with Tom curled companionably on her lap, but the loneliness remained.

And it continued even when he came home on leave in March, for he spent all day in Thames Street with Lily and Pearl, and in the evenings he went to the pub with Mr Cooper and Arthur Walters, and although he walked down to the market with them all on Saturday evening and was marvellous handsome company at the ding-dong, he spent most of his time talking about the camp and his new friends there, which was understandable but disappointing, or discussing the German occupation of the Rhineland which was understandable but alarming.

By the time his leave was up and she and Mrs Geary were waving him goodbye from the upstairs window she knew how much she was going to miss him this time and how much she'd valued his company before he went away. Apart from Joan, on the rare occasions when she wasn't too worried about Sid and the children, there was no one she could talk to the way she'd always talked to Jim Boxall.

The thought made her sigh.

‘You'll miss him,' Mrs Geary said.

‘Yes. I shall.'

‘Pity you can't go with him.'

‘What, join the RAF you mean?'

That wasn't what Mrs Geary meant, but the old lady had the good sense to keep her meaning to herself. There's no point saying anything now, she thought. It'll only make the poor kid miss him more than ever, and she's got
enough on her plate with her mother going on about her nerves all the time and that Baby flibbertigibbeting. And anyway it don't look as if the penny's dropped yet. Next time maybe.

But next time wasn't for another two months and then it was only a thirty-six hour pass between one course and the next and he was so excited by his success he couldn't stop talking about it.

He'd passed his five week course for Titter's Mate' and now he was qualified to train as a flight mechanic. Froggy had failed the course, which was a great disappointment to both of them because it meant that they would have to part company, but they both knew that he would soon find something else and they'd promised to keep in touch.

‘I'm posted to Henlow,' Jim said to Peggy and Flossie and Mrs Geary at that night's ding-dong. ‘Report back Sunday night. Now I shall be servicing planes.' He was bristling with excitement, his dark hair thicker than they'd ever seen it, and his eyes shining.

They're exactly the same blue as his uniform, Peggy thought, admiring them, and he's so broad-shouldered now he's put on a bit of weight. And suddenly, for a brief dizzying second, she wished she could put her arms round his neck and kiss him. The feeling was so strong she was quite shaken by it. She wanted to kiss him, to stand as close to him as she could possibly get and hold him tight and kiss him. Oh dear oh dear, how awful. If she didn't watch out she'd end up being really fast, if she could feel things as quickly and strongly as that, and all for no reason. What a good job thoughts are private. She turned away and stopped looking at him so as to give herself a chance to calm down, and Baby came swishing across the room in her new crêpe de. Chine blouse and hung onto his arm and fluttered her eyelashes at him in that infuriating way of hers.

‘How's our handsome airman, all in his gorgeous uniform?' she said, clinging so hard she sent his arm downwards.

‘Thirsty,' he said, finishing off his beer and dislodging her hand in the process. How unattractive she was with that dyed hair and that awful lisp she would put on. Not
like Peggy, who was beautiful in her quiet way, even if she wasn't spangled with sunshine. And the memory of their day in Brighton washed back into his mind bringing desire with it. If only she was interested in me, he thought, but she was walking away from him, talking to Joan and Mrs Geary. And he remembered how embarrassed she'd been at the pictures that time, and that brought a familiar sinking of heart and desire.

‘How's the Royal Air Force?' Mr Cooper said turning from the piano at the end of his tune.

‘Posted to Henlow,' Jim said, relieved to be back on safe territory again.

That night he dreamed he was swimming in the sea with Peggy in his arms, and that they were making love under the water where no one could see them.

And that night Peggy was dreaming too, walking on a floating cloudway with her arms about a man she knew was her beloved, who was sometimes Jim, which was wonderful and easy, and sometimes a faceless, shapeless man, which was horrible and made her feel afraid. How stupid dreams are, she rebuked herself when she woke, and she got up at once to shake it out of her memory. It's no good thinking about Jim in that way. No good at all. And she thought how embarrassed he'd be if he knew about it and resolved never to tell him or anyone else.

When she said goodbye to him over the garden fence later that afternoon she managed to be perfectly calm and friendly without a trace of silliness.

‘Write to me,' she said, ‘and tell me how you get on.'

‘I will,' he promised.

It wasn't the sort of letter to keep tied in pink ribbon.

‘The U/T Flight Mechanics, that's us,' he wrote, ‘are in the old station as No 5 wing and the U/T Flight Riggers are in some new huts they've put up as No 2 wing. The course will last eight months and it's thorough. They are giving us all the gen, engine-fitting, handling and servicing, working carbon and alloy steels, ferrous metals and their heat treatments, various tools, taps and dies, drills, taper pins, pitch diameters, root thread, morse taper. You name it we do it. Yesterday we stripped down a Jupiter from a Bulldog and next week we shall be stripping a Kestrel
from a Hart. Look after yourself. Love, Jim.'

There you are, Peggy told herself sternly, he's not interested in me. Not in that way. I'm a friend and neighbour, that's all, and I'll have to be content with that. Still at least he didn't seem to be interested in any one else and that was some consolation, for she knew now that she would be jealous if he was. Look at the way she'd felt when Baby was being so silly trying to flirt with him. If only he hadn't gone into the RAF. Oh damn this war, she thought. I wish it would either hurry up and start or go away altogether.

It was an ambivalent wish but one that was shared by a good many people in London that summer, particularly as the news from the Continent was always so bad, and particularly as it invariably brought changes. In May Hitler's friend Mussolini announced that he had annexed Abyssinia, and in July a Spanish friend of his called General Franco led an uprising against the Spanish government. The newsreels were soon showing pictures of the uprising and horribly upsetting they were, of rifles firing and terrified civilians caught in the middle of a gun-battle with nowhere to hide.

Flossie said it stopped her heart beating she was so frightened, and certainly her trip to the cinema that week was followed by three days of constant nerves and bad temper.

‘If a war comes here we shall all be killed,' she said. ‘Why doesn't someone do something to stop them? What's the good of a League of Nations if they never do anything?'

A fortnight later something
was
done, although she didn't approve of that either.

In amongst the advertisements for bricklayers and plumbers and carpenters in the local newspaper was a plea for part-time workers to assemble civilian gasmasks.

This time it was Mrs O'Donavan who took up the offer, leaving her seven small children in the care of the eldest girl still at home.

‘It's horrid work, so it is,' she told her neighbours, ‘but you've got to make the effort, have ye not? I couldn't stand by and see the poor souls lying gassed in their beds and me
doing nothing to save them. Not after all those poor Abyssinians.'

‘Gas masks!' Flossie snorted. ‘I never heard such nonsense. Haven't they got anything better to do with their time than frighten us all? That won't do any good. It'll only make people run away.'

Two of Mrs Roderick's wealthiest customers agreed with her. That summer they sold up their London homes and went to live in the country. Flossie said she could quite understand it, but Mrs Roderick was aggrieved.

‘Such cowardice,' she said. ‘I thought they were made of sterner stuff.'

‘I suppose it's hard to know what they're made of,' Peggy said to Megan, when the two of them were gossiping in the shop. ‘Not when they're packed inside those great stiff corsets she sells them.'

‘They all look the same to me,' Megan grinned. ‘Like the Chinese. I can't tell 'em apart.'

‘It won't help our trade if they're all going to run away,' Peggy said.

But Madame Aimee's sales didn't drop and the next pair of runaways were the poorest couple in Paradise Row.

Peggy woke one night later that month to hear Mrs Geary hobbling about in her room next door. She got up at once to see what was the matter and found the old lady sitting by the window watching the road through her mirror.

‘Shush!' she whispered when Peggy came in. ‘Don't make a sound. They're doing a moonlight.'

‘Who is?'

‘Next door. The Boxalls. Come an' have a butcher's.'

In the pale blue light from the full moon they could see a wooden handcart propped up beside the kerb. It was loaded with old chairs and pots and pans and kettles and an assortment of badly-rolled rag rugs. Mrs Boxall was trying to push a cardboard box into the muddle.

‘They're owing two weeks' rent,' Mrs Geary said. ‘She was telling me. I knew this would happen once young Jim went away.'