London Pride (39 page)

And the elephant expanded before their eyes, swelling and shifting, sprouting ears or flippers, swelling further and further, rounder and rounder until with a squeak of rubber on grass it took off and began to float into the air, trailing its restraining cables.

The little watching crowd gave it a cheer.

‘That's the ticket,' a man near them said. ‘That'll keep the buggers out. They won't be able to bomb us with them things in the air.'

Peggy glanced a question at Jim. ‘How high will it go?' she said.

He was knowledgeable about that too. ‘A few thousand feet,' he told her. ‘Four, five, no more. If there's enough of them, they'll stop the Stukas. That's what they're designed for. To stop dive bombing.'

‘But ordinary bombers'll get through?'

He gave her the truth, ‘Yes.'

Then we shall be bombed, Peggy thought, the Tower and the docks, the theatres and cinemas, St Paul's and all the lovely churches that have stood here for ages, it will all be destroyed. Her dear, dear London. And the memory of the broken buildings of Guernica, the weeping women and
frantic children and the ghastly, broken dead crammed her mind with horror, and she thought of Joan and the kids and old Mrs Geary and Mr Cooper in his wheelchair and dear old hamfisted Mr Allnutt always trying to help, and tears brimmed out of her eyes before she could control herself.

‘Peggy?' he said. ‘What's up?'

The tenderness in his voice melted the little control she had left. ‘Oh,' she said, her face crumpling, ‘it's all going to be destroyed and I love it so.' She was ashamed to be crying in public, making an exhibition of herself, and right outside the Tower too in the very place where she should have been at her most controlled, but she couldn't help it. All the feelings she'd been carrying about with her for so long, unspoken and unacknowledged, fear of war, love for her city, and above all her endless hopeless love for him, came welling up with her tears. Turning, she hid her face in his tunic because it was
his
tunic and the nearest available cover.

He'd never seen her cry before, and the sight of that anguished face precipitated him into instinctive action. He put one arm round her and began to rub her shoulder, comforting her as though she was a child. ‘Don't cry, my little love,' he said. ‘I can't bear to see you cry.'

She lifted her head with the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Jim?' she said. Had she been hearing things or had he just called her his little love?

He was fishing a clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket. ‘Dry your eyes,' he said, opening it out for her. ‘I can't bear to see you cry.'

She dried her eyes obediently, while he stood with both arms encircling her, warm and close at last, so close that he could feel her breath fluttering underneath his chin. ‘My little love,' he said again.

‘Am I?' she said. Such an unnecessary question when he was beaming his love at her.

Now that he'd spoken he was full of unexpected confidence. ‘Oh yes. Always have been. Didn't you know?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I didn't think you were interested. Leastways not in … ' He was still beaming at her, encouraging her to change direction. Had she known it? ‘I don't
think
I
knew. I might've done.' The encircling warmth of his arms and his mouth so red and those blue eyes so tender were making it difficult to think at all.

‘I think I've loved you since we was both kids,' he said.

The pleasure of standing in his arms was so intense she was almost afraid of it. And a little embarrassed too because they were in such a public place. ‘People are looking,' she said. ‘I don't think we ought to.'

‘Let them look,' he said. He was smiling so widely his face had quite changed shape. ‘Do them good. I love you. Love you, love you, love you. Do you know that? D'you know it
now
?'

‘Yes,' she said, rather breathlessly. Was this really happening or was she dreaming it all? She was swimming in emotion and sensation, buoyed up, carried along.

‘And you?' It was demand, entreaty and question all at once.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I've loved you for as long as I can remember.' But then she glanced round her anxiously in case she'd been overheard and was relieved that the people nearest to them were making a lot of noise and looking up at the balloon.

‘Let's get out of here,' he said. He needed to kiss her and hold her very close and
show
her how very much he loved her.

They went to the pictures. Neither of them paid the least attention to the images flickering on the screen for this time they were in the back row among all the other courting couples with the freedom to kiss as long and as often as they wished. By the time the lights came up for the interval they were dizzy and dishevelled and drowsyeyed.

‘We're daft,' he said, leaning back in the seat still cuddling her. ‘All this time an' never saying a word.'

‘Soppy,' she said. She felt quite drunk with all that kissing.

‘I nearly told you that day at Brighton,' he confessed.

‘I wish you had.'

‘What would you've said?'

‘The same.'

‘Would you 've?'

‘Oh yes.'

What a lot of time we've wasted, he thought, aching to kiss her again. ‘Still I have now.' She was flushed and beautiful and ought to be kissed. Come on, turn the lights out.

‘Oh yes, you have now.'

‘And I've got ten days. Where shall we go tomorrow?'

But she never got the chance to tell him because the lights dimmed.

They spent the next ten days in a trance. Jim visited his mother and his mates from Warrenden's and took Mr Cooper to the library and went shopping with Lily and Percy, and Peggy went to work as usual, but these things were simply interludes, to be lived through as quickly as possible. The evenings were what counted, when they would walk arm-in-arm through the parks and eat fish and chips together and go to the pictures. The papers were full of the news that Mr Chamberlain had visited Herr Hitler at Berchtesgaden, ‘I had a long talk with Herr Hitler. It was a frank talk, it was a friendly one', and that he was flying home to discuss the situation with His Majesty's Government, but neither of them took very much notice. The Premier could go to Berchtesgaden or Bad Godesburg or anywhere else he wished. They were on holiday from wars and crises in a love-drenched world of their own.

When that final Sunday came Peggy cooked the Sunday joint for her family and invited him to share it. So they spent the last hour of his leave sitting side by side at the Furnivall table and so obviously in love that Baby felt quite jealous of them.

‘I suppose you'll marry him now,' she said, when Peggy came back from the station without him.

‘We've only just started walking out,' Peggy said. But it came as quite a shock to realize that neither of them had said a word about marriage and that she hadn't even thought about it. It had been enough just to love him and to know that she was loved in return.

‘Shush,' Flossie said. ‘Listen to this.' She was sitting beside the radio with one ear as close to it as she could get
it. ‘They're mobilizing the ARP. Did you know that, Peggy?'

‘What?' Peggy said, walking across the kitchen to listen too. They couldn't be. That would mean they thought the war was going to start at any minute.

‘I repeat,' the announcer was saying, ‘all ARP personnel are to report to their nearest Post or present themselves to their Chief Warden as soon as possible.'

‘Did you hear that, Peggy?' Mrs Geary called from upstairs.

‘I'm on my way now,' Peggy said, putting on her hat and coat. But she still couldn't believe it was serious. Not now, when the sun was shining and Jim loved her.

Even when she'd walked down to the Post, and Mr Goodall had given her a copy of their new duty rosta and told her to consider herself ‘on call' from that moment on, she still took it calmly.

On Monday evening she listened to the sound of Hitler ranting and raving at the Sports Palace in Berlin and the baying of the crowd, roaring ‘
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil
!' and it all seemed stupid and childish. She was sure it would all be resolved in the end without going to war. Mr Chamberlain would see to it.

The next morning she had her first love-letter from Jim and spent the day in a glow of well-being because of it. Even when she saw the placards announcing that the Navy had been mobilized she felt no alarm. The new fighter planes were being built as fast as they could get them off the production line, Jim had said so. And in any case there simply couldn't be a war. Not really. Not if it came to it. Something could happen.

That night after work she took a tram to Deptford and went to see Joan.

Yvey and Norman were in their pyjamas drinking a late night cup of cocoa.

‘Guess what,' Yvey said. ‘Daddy's gone to join the army.' She was rosy-cheeked in the firelight with a six year old's gappy teeth and her straight hair neatly brushed and as glossy as a polished cob nut.

‘Has he?' Peggy said in surprise.

‘Territorials,' Joan explained. She seemed excited by it,
with a brooding sexuality about her that Peggy hadn't seen since she was courting. ‘Him an' his pals. Went off three hours ago. What d'you think a' that?'

Peggy understood that the news should be praised and praised it.

‘Daddy's going to be a soldier,' Norman said, lifting his head from his mug. He had a moustache of cocoa over his top lip which he tried to lick clean. ‘He's going to have a gun, Aunty Peggy. I'm going to see it. Me an' him made a gingerbread man this afternoon.'

‘An' me,' Yvonne said. ‘I made one too.'

‘You ate yours,' Norman disparaged. ‘I'm never gonna eat mine, Aunty Peggy. I'm gonna keep it for ever and ever.'

He'd been so happy in the bakery that afternoon, down there in the floury heat with Yvey and Dad and all the other bakers. Dad had showed them how to make dough and shape bread and cut out gingerbread men and they'd stood beside him and watched, pink cheeked with heat and pleasure.

‘There y'are,' he said when the little men were finally cooked, ‘that's for you to remember me by when I've gone for a soldier. One fer you an' one fer Yvey. Now you can make 'em for me while I'm away, can't you Norm?' And he gave the little boy a wink as one man to another. ‘What d'you say ter that?'

They'd both kissed him, the way they always did in the bakery, because somehow or other it was easier to kiss him in the bakery when he was all over flour and his face was red from the ovens.

‘That's my good kids,' he'd said proudly, kissing them back. ‘Now run upstairs to yer ma while I'm finishing up.'

And they'd run upstairs and here they were with the precious gingerbread man lying on a plate on the dresser.

‘Couldn't wait five minutes to enlist, once they'd made their minds up to it,' Joan said. ‘Hardly ate any of his supper. Rushing off. You never saw such a carry-on.' He'd looked so handsome, with that rakish daring she remembered so well, bold and bright eyed and cheeky, like he'd been when they first met. She couldn't wait for him to come home.

‘There won't be a war,' Peggy said. ‘Not now. Chamberlain'll stop it. You'll see.'

‘They've mobilized the fleet,' Joan said. ‘That's not so good. Come on you two, time you were abed.'

‘I'm sure it'll be all right,' Peggy insisted as her niece and nephew kissed her goodnight.

And sure enough two days later the Premier flew back to Heston from his third meeting with Hitler, this time in a place called Munich, waving a piece of paper that he said meant ‘Peace with Honour'. Hitler had promised that he had ‘no further territorial claims in Europe' and that if he were allowed to ‘free the Sudeten Germans' he would be content.

‘Peace in our Time,' the newspaper headlines shouted with relief. And the
Daily Express
even went so far as to claim, ‘Britain will not be involved in a European war this year or next year either.'

‘Bloody fools!' Mr Cooper said, when he took a rest after the third rendering of the ‘Lambeth Walk' that Saturday. ‘The Czechs spend millions to build a line of defences against the Nazis all along their Sudeten frontier and we come along and make them give it all away. And who to? The bloody Germans. The self-same bloody Germans it was supposed to keep out. Now there's nothing to stop the bugger walking straight in and all over them. It's enough ter make you spit blood.'

‘I thought you didn't want a war,' Flossie said.

‘No more I do,' John Cooper told her. ‘Never have. But this ain't the way to prevent it. We've sold the poor bloody Czechs right down the river.'

‘Not if Mr Hitler keeps his word,' Mrs Roderick said, sipping her port and lemon.

‘Hitler is a crook,' Mr Grunewald told them. ‘A thug.' He knew, more than anyone in the room, how violent the Nazis were. ‘Thugs don't keep their word.'

But the months went by and things stayed surprisingly quiet.

‘I shan't get any leave till I've completed this course,' Jim wrote in his next letter, ‘which won't be till March if I'm any judge. It's a lifetime. I haven't kissed you for twelve whole days, I hope you realize. Dear God, twelve
whole days and only dreams and memories to keep me going. I shall be a shred of my former self when you see me next.'

‘I shall be glad to see you again even if you are only a shred,' she wrote back. ‘A shred would be better than nothing. I miss you more than I can say. Very quiet here. Is this Spitfire they're testing the one you were telling me about?'

In January, while they were still yearningly apart, a Spitfire flew from London to Paris in 41 minutes and at a speed of over 400 miles an hour.