London Pride (43 page)

‘You got to stop,' she panted. ‘Please.'

He lifted his chest and shoulders away from her, supporting himself on the palms of his hands. She could see his eyes shining in the faint moonlight and his hair falling over his forehead, and that ardent urgent expression that moved her so much. ‘Why? Don't you want me to?'

‘You know I want you to,' she said, and the words sounded like a groan. ‘Too much. That's the trouble.'

‘Well then,' he said. ‘Let me.'

She wriggled out from underneath him and sat up, straightening her clothes. ‘We mustn't,' she said. ‘Not that. It ain't right.'

‘Go on,' he said. ‘There's a war on. It's different now.'

‘No,' she insisted. ‘It ain't. It ain't right.'

‘Middle class morality,' he mocked, stroking the side of her face and pleased to see that she shivered at the pleasure of it. ‘How long we got to wait then?'

‘Till we're married I suppose.'

‘Oh God, Peg, that won't be till next year. I've just told you. You're not going to go on saying no till next year?'

She didn't know the answer to that. Perhaps she wasn't. Perhaps she was. She'd said no for the moment and that was enough to be going on with.

‘What are you scared of?' he persisted. ‘I wouldn't get you pregnant.' He'd braved the barber's final embarrassing question after an unnecessary haircut and was fully prepared.

In a vague way she'd accepted that he would know what to do about that. ‘No,' she said, speaking more calmly now. ‘It ain't that. ‘It's just – oh, I don't know – I don't think we should. It ain't right.'

He sat up too, sighing with resignation, fished his battered packet of fags out of his pocket, and shook out two cigarettes, putting them both in his mouth to light them and shielding the flame of the match carefully with both hands. When they were both alight he passed one across to her as he usually did. ‘There you are, kid,' he said, lovingly. ‘I take a pretty dim view of this, you know.'

She drew on the cigarette, glad that he had accepted her interruption with such good grace. ‘I do love you,' she said.

‘One day perhaps you'll show it,' he suggested, narrowing his eyes against the smoke.

He looked so handsome, narrow-eyed and firm jawed and tousled in that admirable uniform, that her heart contracted with distress at the thought of what she'd just done to him, letting him go so far and then saying no. It wasn't kind. ‘I'm ever so sorry,' she said. ‘It's just…'

‘I know what it is,' he said. First time nerves. He'd heard a lot of talk about it, most of it ribald. ‘Come on. Time we was getting back.'

After he'd returned to Catterick at the end of his leave, kissing her goodbye at the station most ardently to show her that he loved her as much as ever, she was glad she'd said no. It was the right thing. Everybody knew that. And in these days they all had to try and behave as well as they possibly could. Everybody knew that too. The certainty that she
had
behaved well despite temptation increased her private sense of worth even further. She was sensible Peggy Furnivall who could be depended on to do the right thing no matter what. And even though she had a sneaking feeling that she was being smug, she went on feeling virtuous and pleased with herself.

It was Joan who was miserable. Despite being kept very busy in the factory by day, she missed her children painfully.

‘If only they was old enough to write a proper letter,' she said to Peggy late one night at the end of October. Flossie and Baby had gone to the pictures and Peggy had just come off the day shift so they had the kitchen to themselves and plenty of time to talk. ‘They send me a postcard reg'lar as clockwork, every Tuesday morning it comes, but they always say the same thing. You can't really tell how they are from that, now can you?'

The postcard she pushed across the kitchen table to her sister was neatly-written but it sounded impersonal. ‘We are well. We like it in the country. Mrs Ray is looking after us alright. Love from Yvonne and Norman.'

‘Yes,' Peggy said. ‘I see what you mean. Don't they ever say anything else?'

‘No. They don't. I reckon they write it up on the blackboard
for 'em and they just copy it.'

‘No news is good news,' Peggy offered, trying to comfort.

‘It's their bein' in the country I can't stand,' Joan said. ‘I'd go down an' see 'em, only Sid mightn't like it.'

‘Well don't tell him,' Peggy advised. ‘What the eye don't see the heart can't grieve for. He's not coming home this weekend is he? And you've got the money now you're working.'

‘I asked him to go last weekend,' Joan said. ‘He said it'ud upset them. Do you think it would?'

‘It might,' Peggy said. ‘People do say it's better just to leave them where they are.' She'd had to deliver an ARP leaflet last week saying just that.

‘It's such a worry,' Joan said. ‘Mrs Jones' two came back yesterday. That's twelve of 'em back now just in our street.'

‘But they're the weakly ones,' Peggy said. She didn't approve of evacuees returning. What was the point in sending them into the country to be safe if they all came trooping back? ‘Your two are made of sterner stuff.'

‘I hope so,' Joan said. ‘So you think not to visit?'

‘Yes,' Peggy decided, giving her advice firmly as she always did these days. ‘Leave it a bit longer and see, eh?'

‘That's what Sid said,' Joan told her. ‘So I suppose I'd better. If only they could write me a proper letter.'

The next morning she wrote to them both at length and lovingly, as she always did, but this time she threw out a hint in a PS ‘Can you tell me a bit more about how you are, my darlings? What do you have to eat? What is your bedroom like? What are they learning you at school?'

The next Sunday postcard was more difficult for Mrs Ray to write. ‘You'd better say you're getting on all right at school,' she instructed as the children sat before her at the kitchen table with their pens and their blotting paper and a bottle of blue-black ink before them. ‘There's the words.'

Yvonne copied neatly while Norman waited to add his name. And as there was rather more to write and she had a little more time that evening she tried to include an honest answer to her mother in addition to the words Mrs Ray had written out for her. If she kept it hidden under a
corner of the blotting paper, they could put the stamp on it quick and take it down to the pillar-box and nobody need know.

‘What are you hiding there?' Mr Ray said, leaning across the table to peer at her and the postcard.

‘Nothing,' she said, pulling the blotting paper even further across.

‘Give it here,' he said, snatching the postcard.

Yvonne watched with alarm as her message was lifted into the air.

‘What's this?' he roared when he saw what she'd written.‘ “We don't like it here. We want to come home.” Is that the sort of thing to write to your poor mother. You
will
upset her. What nasty children you are. I can see we shall have to teach them better manners, won't we, Mother? I'll get a little cane for them tomorrow. It's about time their behaviour was taken in hand. “We want to come home” indeed!' He was furious at such deceit, and frightened too in case their treatment of the pair got out.

‘We do want to go home,' Norman said. ‘We do too.'

‘That,' Mrs Ray said bringing her face right down to his level to threaten him with it, ‘is because you're a nasty cowardly little thing. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself to say such things.'

‘A cane, Mother,' Mr Ray said. ‘That's what they need. They'll be much nicer children when there's a cane in the house.'

The cane was bought the next day and hung ceremoniously on a nail beside the fireplace. It had an immediate and unforeseen effect. Norman was so frightened by it that he wet the bed.

The warm dampness spreading against her legs woke Yvonne up. ‘Look what you're doing,' she whispered to her terrified brother, thumping him in the back to wake him. ‘Why didn't you wake up and use the pot, you dirty boy? You'll get the stick, you see if you don't.'

‘Perhaps it'll be dry by morning,' Norman hoped.

‘No, it won't,' Yvonne said. ‘There's too much of it, I'm sopping wet. We shall have to sleep up the other end.'

Sure enough the mattress was still wet when they woke in the morning.

‘We'll cover it up with a blanket,' Yvonne decided. ‘Then she won't see it.' Norman's woebegone face was making her feel sorry for him. ‘Come on, we'll get off to school quick before she says anything.' Luckily it was their turn to go to school in the mornings that week.

But although Mrs Ray rarely swept their bedroom and usually only opened the door to check that the blankets had been folded according to her instructions, that morning she was alerted by the smell.

‘You filthy little pigs,' she said, when the two children crept into her kitchen for their dinner. ‘What's
that
, eh?' She had the cane in her hand and was pointing with it at their shameful mattress, which was propped up against a chair in front of the stove, steaming.

‘We're ever so sorry,' Yvonne said. ‘We didn't mean to.'

‘I'll give you sorry,' Mrs Ray said grimly. ‘I'll make you sorry you was ever born. Come here.'

They shuffled towards her, their hearts thumping like drums.

‘We didn't mean it,' Norman tried, but she cut off his words and into his legs with the first swish of the cane.

It was a furious assault, but neither of them tried to run away from it. Where could they run? They stood where she tugged them and endured, wincing at the impact of the first blow, whimpering at the second and crying aloud by the time the last descended.

Mrs Ray hung the cane back on its hook, her face grim with satisfaction. ‘Pull your socks up,' she instructed. Red weals were rising on the pale flesh of their calves and there was no need for anyone to see that.

They pulled up their socks, inching them gingerly over the stinging.

Mrs Ray turned her attention to dinner.

‘If you think I'm going to waste good food on filthy little pigs that wet their beds you've got another think coming. Bread and water for you. That's all you deserve. And think yourself jolly lucky you get anything at all. You're nothing better than animals.'

The kitchen was hot with bad temper and rank with the stink of the mattress. By now Yvonne was feeling so sick it was almost impossible to chew anything, let alone dry
bread. But she made a valiant effort, swallowing the first mouthful and taking a sip of water to wash it down, and presently Norman followed her example as well as he could for crying.

Their hostess stood over them until they'd forced down every harsh crumb and their plates and mugs were empty. ‘Now get out into the yard the pair of you,' she said, ‘and don't let me
see
you till bedtime.'

‘Oh Yvey,' Norman cried when they were in the orchard and out of earshot, ‘what are we going to do?'

‘I don't know,' Yvonne admitted.

‘Let's run away.'

‘Where to?'

‘Home.'

‘We'd have to go on a train,' Yvonne said reasonably. ‘We come on a train, so we'd have to go back on one. An' we don't know where the trains are, do we?'

That was true.

‘We can't stay here,' Norman persisted. ‘She'll hit us all the time now. We'll have to tell somebody we can't stay.'

‘Who?'

Neither of them knew.

‘We'll tell Mum,' Norman said.

‘How?'

‘We'll write a letter. I mean, you can write a letter an' I'll sign it.'

‘They'll read it.'

That was true too.

‘You won't have to wet the bed again,' Yvonne said.

‘Oh I won't,' Norman said earnestly. ‘I promise.'

‘See it wet see it dry?'

Norman licked one finger and held it up for her inspection, wet and then wiped dry.

But of course it wasn't a promise he could possibly keep.

After that first awful day he wet the bed with terrifying frequency and they were both caned for it every time, even though he confessed that he was the one to blame.

‘You're as bad as one another,' Mr Ray told them. ‘Dirty little pigs the pair of you. Dirty slummy little pigs. But we won't let you get away with it, will we, Mother?'

There were days when Yvonne said she didn't think it could get any worse. Caned in the morning, sent to school hungry, kept out of the house in the cold of December with nothing to do when they weren't at school and nowhere to go except to prowl the lanes with the other evacuees who were kept out too. ‘It's just got to get better.'

But she was wrong. Christmas was the worst day of the lot. They missed their mother most terribly then, sitting chilled and silent in the church while a strange vicar boomed above them, and mute and miserable in the Rays' dark parlour while their hosts entertained them with ghoulish tales of Christmas funerals. And back in Deptford, waking alone in her flat without them, Joan grieved too, missing them so much it made her ache all through her body. Even when she cut across to Paradise Row for Christmas dinner, she couldn't really enjoy the meal or the company for thinking of her poor lonely kids stuck out there in the country. Oh a dreadful day!

And then it was February and in February the winter began.

That first winter of the war was one of the coldest that anyone could remember. Down on the south coast the snow lay in drifts as high as a man's thigh and all along the shoreline the sea was so cold that it froze into thin grey ice-floes that heaved and shifted on the sullen water. In mid-Sussex, roads were impassable for days at a time, pipes froze solid, schools were shut, sheep had to be dug out of the snow, and the children's uncurtained bedroom window was perpetually patterned with thick ice crystals growing up across the glass like complicated white ferns. Now they had to trudge to school through heavy snow and across exhausting drifts, their bare knees stinging with cold. Before long they both had chilblains on their fingers and toes and Norman had a bright red crop all round the lobes of his ears.