The Pearly Queen (13 page)

‘I'll give 'im funny, Betsy, if he comes up with any more stories about 'is sergeant-major,' said Aunt Edie.

‘Aunt Edie,' said Jimmy, ‘how about you and me doin' a duet at your concert? How about “If You Were The Only Girl In The World And I Was The Only Boy”?'

‘I never know if that young man is serious or not,' said Aunt Edie, but with a little sparkle of fun in her eyes. ‘Who'd like more tea?'

‘Me, please,' said Betsy, and Aunt Edie refilled all their cups.

Patsy thought oh, I really like Aunt Edie, she's a lot more fun than poor old Mum.

‘I'm willin', y'know, Aunt Edie,' said Jimmy.

‘Well, we'll see, Jimmy, we'll see,' said Aunt Edie.

‘I 'ope Aunt Edie don't fall through the stage like Dad's sergeant-major did,' said Betsy.

Aunt Edie laughed so much then that she nearly cried. Which made everyone else laugh their heads off. The upsetting nature of Mother's absence was forgotten again.

During dinner in the Temple that evening, Father Peter expressed satisfaction at the day's work of distributing pamphlets. A number of possible followers had been recruited. There had been a few minor embarrassments due to irreverence, but on the whole much of the seed they had cast had borne fruit.

‘The Lord's been with us,' said Father Luke, ‘givin' us 'Is blessin'. Which reminds me, Father Peter, I'd take it kindly, like, if Mrs Murphy could bless the potatoes with a bit more salt.' Mrs Murphy was the Temple cook, and came in daily.

‘I'll speak to her,' said Father Peter.

After dinner, he addressed himself to Mother Mary, who had expressed a wish to do some confessing. He said he was always available to hear confession, it unburdened his followers, especially the ladies, of anything that lay a little heavily on their consciences. Mother Mary said that was ever so kind of him, and went up with him to his private quarters on the first floor. In his study, with the curtains drawn to, the gas mantle turned low to cast subdued and discreet light, he sat with his back to that light so that shadow veiled his face, and Mother Mary knelt on a hassock at his feet.

‘I've only been to confession once, Father,' she said, ‘after I was confirmed. I didn't go any more, it was a bit embarrassin'. And I wasn't a sinful girl, anyway, my mother brought me up very religious. Mind, since gettin' married, I won't say I 'aven't been a bit irritable with me fam'ly sometimes.'

In a low and kind voice, Father Peter said that that wasn't a sin, merley a small human failing. Mother Mary had a bit of a think and said she'd once hit a noisy barking dog with a stick.

‘An unhappy gesture towards a dumb animal, perhaps, sister, but—'

‘It wasn't dumb, I can tell you that,' said Mother Mary, adjusting her knees on the hassock. ‘Bark bark all the time. So I gave it a bit of a whack with a stick.'

Father Peter said the Lord would not regard that as a great sin. There were sins far more serious. Was the sin of the flesh on her mind, perhaps?

Mother Mary looked askance. ‘Oh, I couldn't confess nothing like that, Father.'

‘But have you been guilty of such a sin, Mother Mary?'

‘I'm a married woman,' said Mother Mary offendedly. ‘It's my opinion that it's only men that's guilty of that kind of sin.'

‘Be assured you are confessing to the Lord, sister, not to me. I am only the medium. You may, without worry, speak of these things.'

‘What things?' asked Mother Mary.

‘Sins of the flesh.'

‘I already said I couldn't confess nothing like that, Father. What I want is to go among sinners and feel I'm not one meself, so I thought I'd purify meself by tellin' you that before I was actually married . . . well . . .' Mother Mary had another think. No, she just couldn't. Still, there was something else. ‘Well, perhaps I was a bit sinful when I used to think about men and women gettin' married. You know.'

‘Tell me, sister,' said Father Peter with gentle insistence.

‘Like what they did together on 'oneymoon,' said Mother Mary in a muffled tone.

‘Ah, and what did you imagine they did, sister?'

‘I can't remember what I imagined.'

‘Was your sin in the thoughts you had about it?'

‘Oh, the very idea. I just wondered what 'appened and how babies were made. That's what's on me mind now, Father, thinkin' it might 'ave been a sin to wonder about it.'

‘I understand. However, having taken your marriage vows, what were your thoughts when you came to . . . ah . . . when it happened?'

‘Oh, I'm not tellin' about that, Father, it's private.'

‘Marriage and its consummation are blessed by God, sister, and you may confess your thoughts and feelings.'

‘No, I couldn't,' said Mother Mary. ‘I'll just 'ave to ask God's pardon that I couldn't.' Nor could she confess the worst, that she'd let Dad fondle her in dreadfully intimate ways before they were married.

‘My child.' Father Peter's hand alighted gently on her bent head. His touch was a blessing. ‘Perhaps some other time. There can be sin in one's thoughts and feelings. These should be confessed.'

Mother Mary wondered again if it had been a sin to have been caught in her underwear. But she just couldn't mention that, either.

‘Well, if I feel I'd like to talk to you again—?'

‘Of course, some other time. Your faith is very strong, sister.' The gentle hand touched her shoulder. ‘It gave you courage to leave your home and enter the service of the Lord. You are absolved of your small sins.'

‘Thank you, Father, I feel I can go pure among sinners now.'

At home, after a Sunday supper of cold lamb, fried potatoes and pickled red cabbage, Aunt Edie was a further delight to the family. She did a turn at the piano. Mother had played a bit, but only hymns in recent years. It drove Dad back to his Sunday paper, and it drove Jimmy and his sisters out of doors. Aunt Edie didn't play hymns. No sooner was she at the keyboard than the parlour was alive with music hall songs. One followed another, and she sang them all, ‘Cockles and Mussels', ‘Daisy Bell', ‘Lily of Laguna' and ‘It's A Long Way To Tipperary'. They all sang ‘Tipperary', Dad with the strong voice of an old soldier. Aunt Edie followed that with ‘Any Old Iron', Harry Champion's famous cockney song. And she sang it with gusto.

‘Encore, Auntie!' cried Patsy.

So Aunt Edie sang it again. Well, if anyone in Walworth didn't like ‘Any Old Iron', then he or she needed to see a doctor.

After that, Jimmy suggested ‘If You Were The Only Girl', and that he and Aunt Edie should sing it together.

‘Made up your mind, 'ave you, Jimmy?' she smiled.

‘Let's give it a go,' said Jimmy.

‘Yes, come on, Aunt Edie, you and Jimmy,' said Patsy.

‘I 'ope I'm not lettin' myself in for something that's goin' to finish up a dead duck at the concert,' said Aunt Edie. Jimmy got up to stand beside her at the piano. ‘No, face the audience, Jimmy,' she said.

‘Crikey,' said Betsy, who couldn't remember any Sunday evening as rousing as this. ‘We're the audience, Dad.'

‘So we are, me pickle,' said Dad, ‘except we don't want you chuckin' any bad eggs at your brother, they might end up all over Aunt Edie's Sunday dress.'

‘Quiet in the stalls, if you don't mind,' said Aunt Edie. ‘All right, then, Jimmy. You know all the words?'

‘I'll break my leg if I don't,' said Jimmy.

‘Off we go, then,' said Aunt Edie, her mood irrepressibly infectious, and she rippled along the keyboard in the introductory chord. Then she and Jimmy sang the song together, Jimmy going solo when required and she likewise. She discovered he had a very good young baritone. ‘Well, bless us, Jimmy,' she said at the end, with the select audience clapping. ‘That wasn't 'alf bad.'

‘Ruddy good, if you ask me,' said Dad.

‘Language, Jack Andrews, language and little children,' said Aunt Edie.

‘Me, Aunt Edie?' said Patsy.

‘Me?' said Betsy.

‘Bless you, duckies,' said Aunt Edie. ‘Want to go through the song again, Jimmy?'

They went through it again, and then did ‘Let's All Sing Like The Birdies Sing' as another duet. Betsy giggled herself hysterical at Jimmy's 'tweet tweet'. It made her gasp, ‘Aunt Edie, stop 'im, or I'll 'ave an accident.'

‘Here, you better not come to the concert, then,' said Patsy.

‘No, nor had any other girls your age, Betsy,' said Dad. ‘We don't want accidents all over the hall.'

Aunt Edie's laughter pealed around the parlour.

The following day, Bank Holiday Monday, saw them all aboard a bus. The weather was fine, and they rode on the open top deck, from where one had a lofty view of sooty old London and felt high above the Thames as the vehicle chugged over Westminster Bridge. Aunt Edie said she was risking getting her large white Sunday hat dusty.

‘Of course, Betsy, it's not really an 'at, yer know,' said Dad. ‘It's what ladies like Aunt Edie call a creation, and if it blows off we're goin' to be in 'orrible trouble for makin' her ride on top with us.'

‘You're right, Jack Andrews,' said Aunt Edie. ‘You won't live to see the day through.'

Her hat had a white gauzy vell that protected her face, and Patsy thought she looked grand. She always dressed well, specially in summer. It often made Mum sniff a bit. She'd say it was all vanity. Dad said once that a bit of vanity was what made a lot of women look a bit of all right, and Mum took umbrage at that, saying a bit of all right was low and common. She said pearly queens were common too. Patsy didn't think so herself, she thought pearlies were jolly, hearty and entertaining, and fond of doing charitable works.

Hyde Park was green, the dry green of August, and the sun of August gave it large splashes of gold. Patsy and Betsy were in their best Sunday frocks, short-skirted, Patsy wearing imitation silk stockings and Betsy white socks. Jimmy wore a white open-necked cricket shirt and grey flannels. So did Dad. Jimmy was bare-headed and Dad wore a straw boater tipped over his eyes. Patsy said he looked cheeky. Dad winked. Aunt Edie wore a waisted lemon-coloured dress and patent white leather shoes fastened with buttons. Betsy said she bet her aunt would get off with a bloke.

‘I'll do me best, love,' said Aunt Edie, ‘but he'd better be a rich bloke.'

In the bandstand, uniformed soldiers were playing lively music and people were paying threepence to sit in deckchairs and listen in comfort. Dad and Aunt Edie decided they'd like some of that, although she did say Dad was welcome to wander around with Jimmy and the girls if he preferred. Dad said he didn't prefer, he said wandering around with his lively lot would wear his feet out. Could he accordingly have the pleasure of treating her to a deckchair and listening to the band with her? Jimmy said, ‘Treat yourselves to two, why don't you? You and Aunt Edie will make just one chair look a bit crowded.'

‘Hoppit,' said Aunt Edie.

Jimmy and the girls wandered off. They found the Serpentine. The shimmering water of the lake looked magical, and there were young men rowing their young ladies around it in boats. The spectacle held Patsy and Betsy. Jimmy told them to stay there while he did some strolling. He'd pick them up later. Off he went, reaching Speakers Corner, where all kinds of people, some barmy and some intense, stood on soap boxes or mobile rostrums and made speeches about things like the rich grinding the poor, the advantages of doing away with kings, queens and grand dukes, the awesome might of an avenging God, the iniquity of throwing people into workhouses, and so on. Anarchists argued for the assassination of everyone except themselves, and a policeman paraded around to make sure that such freedom of speech was not interfered with, and that hecklers only heckled. Pelting speakers with rotten fruit was forbidden. Jimmy stopped for a minute or so to listen to a self-proclaimed Bolshevik denouncing the capitalist profiteers of Britain and urging the workers to strike. Knowing he couldn't go on strike himself, because he had no job, Jimmy moved on to where hecklers were having a high old time at the expense of another speaker, a very tall dark-faced man in a black cloak and with a great mane of grey-peppered black hair. He was thundering at the hecklers.

‘I say unto you that God's anger will blast all who mock Him!'

‘Now don't upset yourself, Moses,' called one heckler. ‘I only asked can 'E make custard.'

‘Miserable unbeliever, did not God create the whole world and all its wonders?' boomed Father Peter, the man on the rostrum.

‘Praise Him,' sang several lady Repenters, who were standing around the rostrum, banners high.

Jimmy's eyes opened wide. Mother was among the banner-bearers, except that she carried only her umbrella. She looked holy, her eyes were shining, her expression just the kind she always wore in church.

‘Did He not create Adam, and from Adam did he not create Eve, and did He not send Joshua to smite the unbelievers?' thundered the speaker, arms lifted high and cloak spreading like black wings.

‘Yes, but can 'E make custard?' asked the heckler, and the crowd tittered.

‘Shall ye come to the Day of Judgement with mockery on your lips?' Father Peter's eyes glittered. ‘What shall it profit a man to deride the Lord?'

‘'Ere, leave orf, mister,' said another heckler. ‘Me friend's only askin' about custard.'

‘Yes, I like custard,' said his friend, and the crowd yelled with laughter. Jimmy saw Mother's expression change, and he knew she was beginning to fume. Her umbrella quivered.

‘By your words the Lord shall know ye,' declaimed Father Peter, ‘and by your deeds He will judge you. We who serve Him through the League of Repenters offer you redemption and salvation. Repent!'