London Pride (48 page)

There was no logical reason to any of it, but the defeats and anxieties of the last few weeks had taken most people beyond logic or reason. This was the stubborn, illogical, unwarranted optimism which is both the curse and the strength of the British in adversity. They might have their backs to the wall, they might be rationed, blacked-out, without allies, they might not have enough planes or ships or guns, beleaguered in their tight little island, but it never occurred to anyone to doubt that sooner or later right would triumph and they would win the war.

And over in America one of the leader writers of the
New York Times
put words to the mood.

‘So long as the English tongue survives,' he wrote, ‘the word Dunkirk will be spoken with reverence. In that harbour … at the end of the lost battle, the rags and blemishes that had hidden the soul of democracy fell away. There, beaten but unconquered, in shining splendour, she faced the enemy, this shining thing in the souls of free men which Hitler cannot command … It is the future. It is victory.'

‘Sometimes I think my life is just passing me by,' Baby said, pouting at her reflection in the mirror. Her latest perm hadn't been at all successful. All the waves were going the wrong way.

‘No it ain't,' Megan said cheerfully. ‘What are you on about?'

‘I'm all by myself in this family,' Baby complained, spreading scarlet lipstick across her top lip. ‘That's what I'm on about. Nobody ever thinks of me. Jim's come home on a forty-eight so of course Peggy's gone rushing off to Croydon with him. I don't count any more once he's home. Joan's got a week's holiday. A whole week. You'd think she could spend a bit of time with her sister on a week's holiday. But oh dear no. She's taken the kids off somewhere instead. She's always taking the kids off somewhere. Mum's at the pictures. Surprise surprise! Even the cat's gone out. I don't know why I bother.'

‘Well I'm here now,' Megan said, ignoring the complaint. ‘Where d'you want to go? Pictures? Up the palais? You say.'

They'd planned this outing at the last ding-dong when Megan was rather jolly with drink and although she'd had second thoughts about it she was keeping her promise. You had to feel sorry for Baby sometimes. She never seemed to have any friends.

‘John from the paint shop was going to take me out, you know,' Baby said, powdering her nose. ‘And then he came in yesterday and said he couldn't. Not a word about being sorry or anything. Just he couldn't. “Oh charming!” I said. “That's really charming.” And do you know what he said then? He never meant to take me out anyway. It was just a dare. “Oh really charming!” I said.'

‘Are you ready?' Megan asked.

‘No. Not yet. Well then he said. “You're not Betty Grable you know!” I was livid …'

‘Are we
going
?' Megan asked, standing up and slinging her gasmask over her shoulder.

Baby spread another layer of lipstick across her mouth. ‘So I was telling you,' she said.

‘You don't need any more lipstick,' Megan said. ‘You got enough on already.'

‘Oh that's right,' Baby said petulantly. ‘Tell me off. Criticize. I should. Everybody tells me off.'

‘I wasn't telling you off,' Megan said, floundering in the sudden backwash of Baby's heavy emotions. ‘I was only saying…'

‘Everybody tells me off,' Baby said, tears welling into her eyes. ‘I can't do a thing right. Ever. Oh now look! You've made my mascara run.' Black streaks were falling from her wet eyelashes and meandering down her carefully rouged cheeks. ‘Oh God! I look an absolute sight!' and she ran through the kitchen, pushed past Megan and clattered upstairs.

Now what? Megan thought. She is peculiar. No wonder she ain't got any friends if she goes on like this all the time.

There was a rattle at the front door as the key was pulled through the letter-box. She could hear voices. Jim's and Peggy's. Well thank heavens for that.

‘Hello,' Peggy said. ‘You still here? I thought you'd have gone by now. What's up?'

‘Your sister is,' Megan said.

‘Where is she?'

‘Upstairs. In a paddy.'

‘Megan's waiting for you, Baby,' Jim called up the stairs. ‘Are you coming down?'

‘Oh do go away,' Baby's voice replied. It sounded muffled and tearful. ‘I can't bear it.'

‘I'd give up if I were you,' Jim said to Megan. ‘If she's piping her eye you could be here for hours. Come to Croydon with us. We're going to visit Froggy and his sister.'

‘I promised to go out with her,' Megan said, looking very uncertain. They could hear Baby sobbing in the room above their heads.

‘He's quite right,' Peggy said. ‘She could go on like this for ages. She can be a real pest sometimes.'

‘Are you coming down or ain't yer?' Jim called again.

‘Go away!' Baby wailed.

So Megan went to Croydon with Jim and Peggy.

It was 15 August 1940 and a glorious summer afternoon. Croydon was quite perky in the sunshine with the trolley buses shining red as tulips and the glass of the shop windows glinting and dazzling between its protective lattice-work of brown paper. They took a 42 tram down North End, passing the new white frontage of Allder's department store and the age-blackened bricks of the Whitgift Hospital, in a street full of affluent shoppers. Megan was most impressed, both by the width of the street and the wealth of the shops. ‘Better'n Greenwich by a long chalk'. But Peggy was thinking what a lot of uniforms there were in the streets these days, soldiers, airmen, WVS, even the occasional sailor swaggering along, bell-bottoms flapping.

‘We're all at war now,' she said to Jim.

‘Not today,' he said, giving her a squeeze. ‘Day off today.' And his eyes said, ‘love tonight.'

The unspoken message roused her most pleasurably but the pleasure trailed shame in its wake. She wanted to sleep with him, of course, of course, but it was still wrong what they were doing. They should have waited. But how could they wait? How could they marry with a war going on, and everything changed and God knows what ahead of them?

‘Here we are,' Jim said.

Froggy's sister turned out to be a neat young woman in her middle thirties called Claire. She didn't look a bit like her brother, which Peggy thought privately was just as well. She had a rather wider mouth than most women and she shared Froggy's pale colouring but her eyes were small and shrewd and her head neatly shingled and she was stylishly dressed, in a trim yellow tea-gown that put her two guests at a disadvantage in their cheap skirts and home-made blouses.

But she was a good hostess and made them all very welcome, serving them a three course dinner, which they
found rather disconcerting, in the modern dining room of her third floor flat, where a wire-haired terrier sat on the hearthrug like a modern statue, its sculptured legs and well-trimmed whiskers unbelievably straight and clean.

‘That's my Totty,' she said. ‘His kennel name is Moses Tutankhamun the Third, if you ever heard of anything so ridiculous. So I call him Totty.'

She also fed him tit-bits from her plate, and when dinner was over, they all had to take him upstairs onto the roof of the flats ‘for a breath of fresh air'.

It was extraordinary up on the roof, for being a modern construction the entire area was as flat as a school playground. It had been roofed over by a dome made of thin wire mesh, presumably to prevent the playing children from falling over the edge, and there were garden seats set beside the chimneys and the water tower. They had a spectacular view south across the tree-lined streets of South Croydon and all the way to the hills and woods and green fields of Purley and Addiscombe. They could even see the north downs in the distance, humped like pale blue whales.

‘Gosh!' Megan said. ‘What a view!'

‘Come over the other side,' Claire suggested. ‘It's even better there.'

‘Why didn't you tell us you was one of the idle rich?' Jim hissed at Froggy, once his sister was on the other side of the roof and out of earshot.

‘Nobody asked me, Sir, she said,' Froggy grinned.

‘That's torn it,' Peggy said, teasing Jim. ‘What you going to do now, Mr working-class Boxall?'

‘I shall give it serious thought,' Jim said. ‘I take a dim view of this you know, Froggy.'

‘Does he see everything in class terms?' Froggy asked Peggy, laughing at his friend.

She could see that the question had irritated Jim and she was afraid that she might have annoyed him too by calling him working-class like that, so she thought for a few seconds, trying to find something soothing to say.

‘Not everything,' Jim answered for her. ‘Only politics, religion, education, economics, war. Trivial things like that.'

‘And marriage?' Froggy asked.

‘Well of course. You'd be asking for trouble if you married out of your class.'

‘He's a Puritan,' Froggy said to Peggy. ‘You'll have to watch that.'

‘But Peggy was watching the sky. ‘What's that?' she said.

‘What's what?' Jim asked looking up too. ‘Hey, Froggy. Look at that!'

There was a squadron of planes flying in formation above the Anerley Hills, unfamiliar dark planes trailing white con trails. They could hear the laboured droning of their engines in the distance.

‘D'you recognize them?' Froggy asked.

But before Jim could answer him the planes were recognized in a most specific way. They could hear the pounding of anti-aircraft fire and shell bursts began to open like surrealistic black roses in the blue sky beside the planes.

‘They're Jerries!' Jim shouted. ‘They're Jerries.'

And on a bombing raid too, forming a line ready to attack, making shallow dives one after the other as the shells burst all around them. Now there were plumes of black smoke rising from the ground after every dive and they could hear the crump of the explosions.

‘Where is it?' Megan said breathlessly, running to join them and standing close to Peggy.

‘Croydon Airport, I'll bet,' Froggy said. ‘They're bombing the airport.'

There was something unreal about it, as if they were watching a film, only a film in natural colour instead of black and white, for now there were flames among the smoke.

And then as suddenly as it had begun, the raid was over. The planes regrouped and flew back the way they'd come, climbing into the blue, leaving their white trails behind them, as innocent as lambs' tails. And the smoke of the anti-aircraft fire dispersed too, elongating into grey wisps, and finally vanishing like the planes.

‘Good God, Bertie,' Claire said to her brother. ‘We've seen an air raid.'

In the shock of the moment none of them registered that Froggy's name was Bertie.

‘Why didn't somebody sound the sirens?' Peggy asked.

As if in answer to her question the sirens began to wail.

‘Bit late now,' Froggy said.

‘Perhaps it's another lot,' Claire said, squinting up at the sky. ‘Should we go down to the shelter, do you think?'

‘If it's another lot we shall see them coming from up here,' Froggy told her. ‘We'll give them a quarter of an hour and see what happens.'

So they waited in a rather eerie silence, staring out across the peaceful countryside. War had come to London at last, but none of them could take it in. That's what it's like to be bombed Peggy was thinking, planes diving and guns firing and earth thrown up hundreds of feet into the air, but it was still unreal. They're bombing airfields, Jim was reasoning, so it'll be our turn sooner or later. And the thought was still casting a chill into his mind when the all clear went.

‘Let's go dancing,' he said. They needed to enjoy themselves, to feel alive and full of energy, to put as much pleasure as they could between themselves and the bombs that were going to fall. ‘Where's the nearest palais, Froggy?'

So Claire telephoned her young man and told him to meet them in the Lido and they all went dancing. And a high old time they had, stumbling and giggling through waltzes and quicksteps and even attempting foxtrots for once although they didn't know the steps. But the floor was so crowded and there was such an electric excitement in the place that nobody minded what sort of dance they were doing. And at the end of the evening when they'd smooched the last waltz with the lights romantically dimmed and their faces spangled by the dazzle of the spinning chandelier, Froggy said he'd come back to Greenwich with them so that he could see Megan to her door.

‘Well ta,' Megan said, ‘but there's no need really. I can go with Jim and Peggy.'

‘Oh reason not the need,' he said in a voice that showed he was quoting from something. ‘Don't argue. I'm coming with you.'

And did.

Jim was pleased. ‘Gives us more time on our own,' he said to Peggy as they stopped to kiss in the darkness. ‘Cook me breakfast tomorrow?'

‘Can't you cook your own breakfast yet?' she teased.

‘Yes, OK. Breakfast I can manage on my own,' he said, teasing back. ‘But there are other things, now our Lily's got a job.'

Lily had followed Joan's example, and after arranging for Percy to be looked after during the day by his grandmother in the new council flats round the corner, she'd taken a job in the local munitions factory. So the house was conveniently empty.

They cooked a leisurely breakfast of Peggy's potato cakes and one precious rasher of bacon each and they read the morning paper, which reported ‘Germans raid airfields. 71 German planes shot down,' and then since they were still officially on holiday from this war, they went to bed, to the sharpest and most prolonged pleasure they had ever known. It was as if their unexpected preview of the battles to come had sharpened their capacity for delight.