London Pride (62 page)

‘You're a brick,' Arthur said, as he kissed her goodbye. ‘I don't know what we'd do without you.'

‘Quite right,' Mrs Geary said. ‘Salt of the earth she is.'

But it was salt that Jim Boxall had to learn to live without as the winter worsened, for the extreme cold meant more work for electricians and mechanics and the long leave he was hoping for was cancelled until the weather improved.

‘Things must start looking up soon,' he wrote to Peggy. ‘Or warming up at the very least. I ain't kissed you for
such a long time I'm beginning to forget how it feels. This winter's been going on for ever.'

And things did warm up, although not in the way he'd been thinking of when he wrote. On 7 December the news suddenly broke that the Japanese had attacked the American fleet at a place called Pearl Harbor. It was a surprise attack carried out without a formal declaration of war and it sank the best part of the Pacific fleet with appalling loss of life.

‘Japs, you see,' Mrs Geary said, scowling at the newspaper. ‘Nasty treacherous little things, Japs, Well they'd have to be wouldn't they to be on the same side as that Hitler. They'll live to regret it and serve 'em jolly well right.'

‘I think it's a good thing in a way,' Joan said. ‘At least it's brought the Yanks into the war. They can't go on dragging their feet now, can they?'

‘Perhaps they'll come over here,' Baby said. ‘Do you think they'll bring any make-up?' The shortage of lipstick and mascara was a continual annoyance to her, particularly as Joan and Peggy didn't seem to understand how important it was.

But the weeks passed and Jim still didn't get any leave and the Americans didn't come to Britain.

‘Too cold for 'em probably,' Mrs Geary said. ‘They're used to lots a' sunshine out in that Texas place. I seen it at the pictures. Still never mind, they'll probably give them Japs a trouncing first.'

But if the newspapers were to be believed it was the Japs who were trouncing everybody else. They seemed to be as good at winning battles as the Germans. They took Hong Kong on Christmas Day, Borneo in January, Singapore in February. There was no end to their success. Nor to the Germans'. In January the British newspapers began to write about a German general called Rommel who'd landed in North Africa to help the Italians in their fight against the British 8th Army and was defeating the British tanks in one battle after another.

It was horribly demoralizing, particularly as the weather was colder than ever, with two inches of snow falling on 1 February and twenty-two per cent of frost recorded in London.

‘As if we haven't got enough on our plates without this,' Mrs Allnutt said, tottering down to the market with a walking stick to support her over the uneven lumps of trodden snow. ‘I can't feel my feet, Peggy.'

‘No more can I,' Peggy said cheerfully. ‘Hang on to my arm. Have you heard about Megan?' She'd had a letter from her that morning and was itching to spread the good news.

‘No,' Mrs Allnutt said obligingly.

‘She's expecting. Ain't it grand?'

‘Smashing. When?'

‘June, she says. I had a letter this morning.'

‘When's your Jim coming home?' Mrs Allnutt said, sliding on. ‘We ain't seen him fer ages. He's all right, is he?'

‘He's very busy,' Peggy explained. ‘They all are. It's the cold. It makes a lot of extra work with everything freezing up you see. Ice is bad for the engines.'

‘It's bad for the feet an' all,' Mrs Allnutt said. ‘I don't know how we put up with it.'

‘It's being so cheerful as keeps us going,' Peggy said, quoting a catch phrase from a character called Mona Lot in Tommy Handley's radio show
ITMA
, and that made them both laugh and warmed them sufficiently to get them over the next frozen ridge of snow and up into the High Street where the trams kept the roads clear.

And then just to cap everything the government announced that they were raising the draft age for men to fifty-one and that they had decided to start calling up unmarried women.

Baby was horrified. ‘They can't do that,' she said. ‘I can't go in the army, I'd have to wear uniform. Imagine it. I'd look a freak.'

‘You'll have to go if you get called up,' Joan said, with some satisfaction. ‘Do you good. Make a man of you.'

‘And you can just shut up,' Baby said, scowling at her. ‘What am I going to do, our Peg?'

‘You could go in the WAAF,' Peggy said, ‘if you don't fancy the ATS.'

‘Or join the Civil Defence like Peggy,' Joan said. ‘You'd like that. Out all hours with the raids on.'

‘I think you're both being foul,' Baby said and flounced
out of the house, blonde hair swinging.

But at last it was March and although several eighteen-year-old women in the neighbourhood had already received their call-up papers, Baby was still at large, the snow had finally gone and Jim was allowed home for ten precious days. Mr Allnutt decided they would have a ding-dong to celebrate and to cheer poor Lily up because she'd been very low since Arthur went into the army. It was the first ding-dong they'd had for a very long time and they were all looking forward to it, even though Mrs Roderick and Nonnie Brown would both be present and they still weren't on speaking terms.

‘Still,' Mrs Allnutt said to Peggy, ‘we can sit 'em one at each end of the room. There's always ways an' means. Is Mrs Geary bringing Polly? If the worst comes to the worst we'll get him swearing and he can drown 'em out.'

But it wasn't Nonnie or Mrs Roderick who caused a stir at the party. It was John Cooper and he did it quite inadvertently by arriving with a copy of the
Evening Standard
and the news that the RAF had bombed a German city called Lübeck. The centre of the city had been completely flattened.

Cyril Brown seized the paper and waved it in triumph. ‘And about bloody time too!' he said. ‘Serve the buggers right. They've had it coming to 'em.'

Joan wasn't so sure. ‘Was it an army base?' she said. ‘Something to do with the army or the navy or something?'

‘It was a picturesque city,' John Cooper said, reading from the paper. ‘A medieval town it says, a port. It had a timber built medieval centre.'

‘What's it matter?' Cyril said. ‘They've asked for it and now they're getting it. I'm sick of hearing how we can take it all the time. It's about time we started dishing it out for a change.'

Peggy was appalled. ‘We're bombing women and children,' she said. ‘That's what we're doing. It's dreadful.' And she looked across the room to where Joan and Lily were dancing with Norman and Yvey and little Percy.

‘And what d'you think they been doing all this time?' Cyril shouted at her.

‘Two wrongs don't make a right,' Peggy told her doggedly. ‘We ought to be behaving better than them. Not worse.'

And suddenly she was overcome with weariness, tired of the war and the cold and the long hours queueing, of being married and having to live apart, of the shabby, shoddy endlessness of it all, and she knew she was perilously close to tears and ducked her head to gain control of herself. And Jim, alerted at once, took her by the elbow and began to steer her out of the room and away from trouble.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘You need a break from that lot. Bit a' peace and quiet.'

It was very quiet out in the street with just enough moonlight to show them the way and the air smelling of soot and coalfires.

She followed him into number two and up the dark stairs to the room that was now ‘theirs'. They pulled the black-out curtains and lit their little bedside light, listening to the piano twanging below them. Then they comforted one another by making love, very gently and tenderly.

‘This war's making us all cruel,' she said as he lit their two cigarettes.

‘Not you,' he said tenderly, lying back among the pillows to admire her. ‘You've got more love in you than anyone I've ever met.'

‘It is though, it's making us cruel. Mrs Roderick and Mrs Brown fighting in the street, and people gloating. Just think what Cyril was saying. Serve 'em right. Women and children.'

‘For some people, yes, I suppose it is. We've had too much bad news. That's what it is. We need a victory.'

‘Yes,' she said seriously. ‘We do. But not by bombing women and children.'

‘Something to lift our spirits,' he said, flicking ash from his cigarette. A victory, or if not an out-and-out victory a success, a little hope, some joy.

But where could such things be found in a world at war?

Baby was standing on the pavement outside the entrance to the market when the first Americans came jazzing into town. It was an electrifying experience. She was so used to the discipline of the British troops stationed around Greenwich that she hardly noticed them. Well there wasn't very much to notice, was there? They all marched together with such dull precision that the tramp of their boots sounded like a single pair of feet, all caps set at the same angle, all arms swinging to the same rhythm, nothing remarkable about that. These soldiers were another breed altogether.

For a start they were preceded by the jazziest military band she'd ever heard. It set her feet tapping at once. And then, when the troops appeared round the corner they were all black, every single one of them, and they weren't marching at all. They were leaping about and jumping in the air, and marching backwards and sideways and all sorts, chewing and grinning. Soon people on the pavements began to cheer them and to clap in time to the rhythm, and they waved and grinned, showing very white teeth. It was like a carnival.

‘They're smashing,' she said to Joan and Peggy and Mrs Geary when they were eating their Woolton pie that evening. ‘Where d'you think they're stationed?'

‘I wonder you didn't follow 'em and find out,' Mrs Geary said rather acidly.

‘I'll bet they're smashing dancers,' Baby said, unabashed
by her sarcasm. ‘I shall go to the Palais on Saturday and see.'

And she did, returning home very late indeed with her hair tousled and her shoes covered in dust to report that she'd danced every single dance and she'd never had such a smashing time in her life.

‘They're ever so comical,' she said. ‘There was only white ones there tonight. They're called GIs and they call you Honey and Sugar and funny things like that, and they've got the most peculiar names, Hank and Marvin and Sergeant Buzzywitzy or something, imagine, and they give you gum and sweets. I think they're smashing.'

‘She wants ter watch out,' Mrs Geary warned, ‘or one of 'em'll give her a bit more than gum. Specially the way she goes on with that hair.' She'd never approved of peroxide blondes. Fast, the lot of 'em.

But Baby was hell-bent on a life of pleasure. And despite her dumb blonde appearance she was shrewd enough to work out how to get it without having to pay the traditional price. And she knew exactly what the traditional price was. There were no secrets now about poor Joan's disgrace, only the memory of how awful it had been, and the residual fear that men were bestial and brutal and had to be kept in check for your own protection and never allowed to touch you anywhere they shouldn't. So what you did was flirt and tease and make eyes, which got you gum and candies and doughnuts and plenty of dancing partners, but always arrange beforehand to go home in a crowd.

Sometimes despite her careful plans the crowd broke up into snogging couples as soon as they left the dance hall and then things could get a bit difficult, but she usually found that she could deal with most over-amorous Yanks providing she stopped their hands wandering the minute they started. In fact it was often better to make a speech as soon as they showed signs of wanting to do anything more than just kiss her. It was really quite a good speech. She said she wasn't a good-time girl, and she was only trying to make them feel at home in a foreign country, and she did hope they hadn't got the wrong idea about her, and if they still pressed on regardless she cried a few pathetic
tears and told them she was an orphan. And that usually worked a treat.

She was shrewd enough to have taken action to avoid the call-up too. By dint of listening and questioning she found out that some people were in what was called reserved occupations, and that some firms could keep a few of their most valuable staff out of the forces for six months at a time by making a special plea for them. So she put herself out to become one of Dodds' most valuable employees, taking over the book-keeping from Mr Trotkins when he went away to the army and doing it in addition to her job on the telephones. She'd had to tell quite a few lies to get the extra job, well not lies exactly, sort of half-truths, about how good she'd always been at arithmetic, and how easy she'd always found it. Actually adding up columns of figures was jolly hard work and took her much longer than she pretended, but it was worth it. Anything was better than going in the army. Of course what with dancing all hours and working all hours she didn't have the energy for any housework or shopping or anything like that. But luckily Peggy understood and did all that sort of thing for her. Good old Peg. She didn't seem to mind how much extra work she did. And all that nonsense about finding a flat and living with Jim near the base seemed to have died the death. Thank heavens. Things were much better as they were, with Jim coming home on leave now and then and Peggy free to look after the house.

In the summer, when London was swarming with Yanks, she teased her sisters to go up West with her and the kids and see the new arrivals for themselves.

‘Look at all them lovely uniforms,' she said to Yvonne. ‘It's lovely cloth. Ever so soft. Better'n that horrible rough stuff our fellers wear.'

Joan grimaced but said nothing.

‘Ain't they fat!' Yvonne said as two plump GIs strolled past, their sleeves straining with well-fed flesh.