London Pride (21 page)

‘I wouldn't go la-di-da,' Jim pleaded. ‘Really, Dad.'

‘An' another thing,' his father went on relentlessly. ‘You ‘ave ter stay at Roan's till you're bloody sixteen. We'd have ter sign to it. If you think I'm going to keep you in bloody idleness till you're bloody sixteen you got another think coming.'

Mrs Boxall slid a kipper neatly onto the plate underneath her husband's beer belly. ‘Nice an' hot,' she offered placatingly.

‘It'ud better not have too many bones,' Mr Boxall complained, pulling his first forkful from the plumper side of the fish.

As his mother humbly slid a slice of bread and scrape beside the kipper, and Pearl and Lily retreated into the yard, Jim gathered his courage for a last stand against his father's impossible unfairness. ‘It's an honour,' he said. ‘There was only three of us an' I was the best. You ought to be proud of me. I passed better'n any one else.'

‘You keep on,' his father said, munching the kipper, bones and all, ‘an' I'll take my belt to yer. You ain't goin' an' that's final. More tea, Mavis.'

Hope and ambition congealed into a solid lump of disappointment that filled Jim's throat and made tears prick behind his eyes. He was too bitterly disappointed to be angry, and too stunned by the injustice of it to fight on or even speak.

But in those brief fraught minutes, while he stood before his father hating him with all his strength, all sorts of half-digested facts crystallized into knowledge inside his sharp young brain. He understood that his father's opposition was unreasonable and that because it was unreasonable it would never be altered. He knew that his mpther's dejected expression was the outward sign of almost total defeat, and that her defeat was a combination of his father's brutality and the daily and impossible task of trying to find enough money to feed them all. And worse than both these things, he knew that his scholarship to Roan's had been the one certain way out of their poverty,
that with a good education he could have found a good job and earned a good salary and looked after his mother properly. Now he would have to find some other way to do it, for it would have to be done, somehow or other, no matter what his father said. He might be defeated now but that wasn't the end of it. He wouldn't allow it to be the end of it. And with that determination in his mind, he turned and walked out of the house.

And now here he was, loitering into Randall Place School among all the other reluctant pupils, dragging his boots through the dust and wishing himself anywhere but where he was. Even when the final bell rang he didn't hurry. What was there to hurry for? Three more years of the sort of work he could do with his eyes shut, and a dead-end job at the end of it. He trailed into his new classroom hump-shouldered with dejection, reading the name over the lintel by force of habit but without any hope or interest at all. Mr Gurton.

‘Just in time, Boxall,' Mr Gurton said. He was a short, sharp-featured elderly man with a narrow skull and long narrow hands and a way of darting his attention at his pupils that was rather disconcerting. ‘Another second and you'd have been late and spoilt your record. Early tomorrow, eh?'

It was a surprise to Jim that a teacher in the senior boys should know anything about him. And he was even more amazed when the teacher asked him to stay behind when everyone else went into the hall for prayers.

‘I've read your reports,' Mr Gurton said, shooting that penetrating look again. ‘You're a very bright boy and we both know you shouldn't be here. But you are and so we've got to make the best of it. However I see no reason why you should follow the same course as all the others, and neither does the headmaster. So what we propose is this. I will give you extra maths lessons whenever I can, the sort of maths you ought to be learning at Roan's, you see, arithmetic and algebra, a little geometry later. Here's the book we shall use. You can work through that while the others are going the dull stuff. And you can do extra English and History and Geography with Mr Williams. Cheer up! There's always another chance.'

‘Is there?' Jim asked, flatly.

‘Oh yes. We send boys on at thirteen too you know. Don't lose heart.'

If my Dad won't let me go at eleven, he won't let me go at thirteen, Jim thought. But he tried to smile at Mr Gurton despite the misery of this knowledge, because the teacher was so plainly expecting it.

‘That's right,' Mr Gurton said, encouraged. ‘Keep your pecker up, eh. Oh and another thing. If I were you I'd join the public library. We don't have as many books in this school as I'd like. Nowhere near. There isn't the call for them. And you need to read very very widely. Oh yes, very widely indeed. Two books a week at least. I'll sign the application form for you, if you can't – um – find anyone else to do it.'

Does he know about Dad, Jim wondered. Oh God, I hope not! It would be a terrible disgrace for a teacher to know what he was like.

‘We'd better cut along to prayers now,' Mr Gurton said, ‘or we shall be considered part of the godless generation. We'll slip in at the back behind the top class. No one'll see us.'

So they slipped in behind the rough backs of class three just as throats were being noisily cleared for a growl through the first hymn of the morning.

To have been singled out for such very special treatment had lifted Jim's spirits. Perhaps coming back to Randall Place wasn't the end of the world after all. Perhaps there was hope. Of a different sort, but hope. ‘Onward Christian soldiers!' he sang, ‘Marching as to war.'

In the senior girls, on the floor below, Peggy's name was being entered in the register by her new teacher, a rather censorious-looking lady by the name of Miss Gwynne-Jones.

‘And where were you born?' the teacher asked.

‘If you please Miss, in the Tower of London.'

‘Were you indeed? Then you'd better go and sit next to Megan Griffiths. She came from the Tower of London too. Isn't that right, Megan?'

Megan Griffiths, Peggy thought, surprise and excitement
fluttering in her chest. Could it really be Megan Griffiths?
Her
Megan, who'd been her very best friend back in the Tower. Oh, if it was, it would be too good to be true.

And it was, older and thinner, with a narrower face and work–scarred hands, but undeniably the same girl, with the same shock of dark hair and the same friendly blue eyes. Megan Griffiths. What a bit of luck!

‘No talking!' Miss Gwynne-Jones instructed, as the bell summoned them to prayers. ‘Sit up straight. Right you are. Class stand!'

They were very strict in the senior girls. Even whispering was frowned upon except in the needlework classes, and nobody spoke at all on the way into prayers, or on the way out. It wasn't until playtime that Peggy and Megan were finally able to talk to one another. And then they both asked exactly the same question at exactly the same time.

‘What are
you
doing here?'

‘Dad took a fall,' Megan explained. ‘Broke his back. I think it was his back. Anyway they invalided him out the army and we had to come here. We've been here nearly a twelvemonth.'

‘Poor thing!' Peggy said sympathetically, remembering the bulky soldier he'd been. ‘Is it still broke?'

‘No,' Megan said. ‘Don't think so. He limps a bit but he can walk about an' everything. It's just he can't be a soldier. He got a job at the gasworks. Doesn't half make him pong. Tell me where you've been. You went to the country didn'tcher?'

They spent the happiest twenty minutes gossiping and reminiscing, and after an uneventful morning, they strolled out of the gates at dinner-time arm-in-arm and still talking nineteen to the dozen.

‘Where d'you live?' Peggy asked.

‘Here,' Megan said, turning her dark head to look at her house, ‘in Randall Place. Where do you?'

‘Just round the corner,' Peggy said with delight. ‘Almost next door. See you 's afternoon.'

‘I got lots to tell you,' Megan promised.

But as it turned out it was Peggy who had the most exciting news that afternoon.

She and Mum and Baby were eating their pudding and she'd just finished telling them about Megan and what an extraordinary thing it was to find her again here in Greenwich, when there was a knock at the front door.

‘See to that,' Mum said to Peggy. ‘If it's someone selling something we don't want any.'

It was the boy next door. ‘I've got your cat in the lavvy,' he said. ‘Can you come an' get her?'

Peggy's heart gave a lurch of alarm. ‘Why?' she said. ‘What's up? Is she hurt?'

‘Oh no,' he said quickly, cross with himself for having startled her. ‘Nothing like that. She's got kittens, that's all.'

Kittens! Fancy saying ‘that's all' about kittens! ‘How marvellous!' she said. ‘Hang on a tick an' I'll get her box.'

‘I thought you'd better take her back before my Dad comes home an' sees her,' he explained as they walked through his tacky kitchen, past his mum and his sisters and out into the rubbish in the yard. ‘He don't like cats.'

‘He don't like much, you ask me,' Lily said following them out. ‘Can I see 'em, Peggy? Jim said I wasn't to.'

‘Go back in,' Jim said. ‘You know what I told you. No one's to touch 'em except Peggy. You go poking your nose in, you'll upset the mother cat an' then she won't feed them.'

Peggy was impressed by his knowledge and even more impressed to see how quickly his sister obeyed him. ‘Is that true?' she asked.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I read about it.'

He sounded completely sure of himself. How amazing for a boy to know about such things.

He opened the lavvy door very gently. ‘They're hidden in the corner,' he whispered, ‘just there, see, in among the newspapers.'

There was a pile of kindling and an untidy heap of newspapers in the corner of the lavvy. Peggy could just see the tips of Tabby's ears sticking out of the papers and the furry outline of her striped back against the grey-brown of the wood. ‘She's very well hidden,' she whispered back.

‘I wouldn't have seen her if I hadn't gone for the wood,' Jim said. ‘How many's she got?'

‘Haven't you looked?'

‘No. I waited for you.'

There were five, three tabby, one black and one tortoise-shell, all with the same sleek round heads, the same funny little scrabbling paws, the same scrunched-up faces and tightly-shut eyes that she remembered so passionately from that first awful time. All five were sucking vigorously and Tabby herself was purring like an engine.

‘If we each took hold of one end of this paper,' Jim suggested, ‘we could lift them all into the box together without disturbing any of them.'

She was impressed again to think that he could be so tender. ‘This is the first litter she's ever been allowed to keep,' she said, stroking Tabby's head, and as he looked interested she told him all about the way the kittens had been drowned.

He was horrified. ‘How could they be so cruel?' he said. ‘Poor cat! That's inhuman.'

‘Yes,' Peggy agreed. ‘It is. I thought so anyhow. That's why I brought her with me. Shall we lift them now?'

The transfer was surprisingly easy.

‘I'll get her some fish tonight,' Jim promised, as they carried the heavy box gently through the house. ‘She'll need feeding up.'

‘Now can we see?' Lily demanded, standing before them arms akimbo and blue eyes determined.

So they rewarded both the girls with a quick peep before they continued on their careful way. But when they reached Peggy's front door, Jim stopped and looked thoughtful.

‘What is it?' Peggy asked, because it was plainly something important.

‘Could I ask you a favour? Before we go in.'

‘Yes. Course. What is it?'

‘Mr Gurton says I've got to do a lot of reading. I've got to join the library. Two books a week he says. The only trouble is …'

‘Yes?' she encouraged.

He hesitated for quite a long time before he spoke. ‘Well it's my Dad,' he confessed at last. ‘It ain't just cats he don't like. He don't think much of reading neither. Says
it's sissy. And he gets in tempers sometimes.'

Yes, Peggy thought, we've heard him, but she didn't say so, because you weren't supposed to know what went on in other people's houses.

‘And when he gets in a temper – well – he throws things about. Sometimes.'

‘You'd like to keep the books in our house,' Peggy said, understanding. ‘Oh that's all right. They can stay in my bedroom. On the chest a' drawers. No one'll throw 'em about in there.'

So the arrangement was made. Fish-heads for shelf-space. And the cats were carried through into Flossie's neat kitchen.

‘What on earth have you got there?' she asked. It was a rhetorical question because she could see exactly what they'd got.

‘Oh!' Baby said. ‘Kittens. How smashing!'

‘Hum!' Flossie disapproved. ‘Well you can take them straight upstairs and give them to
her
. They're no concern of ours. I got enough to contend with without having kittens all over my kitchen. Well go on. What are you waiting for?'

I've got to tell the truth now, Peggy thought, and she wished she'd told it in the first place, aware of her mother's gathering displeasure. Jim Boxall was standing just behind her and she glanced back at him quickly, wondering what he would say if a row broke out or Mum had an attack of nerves in front of him. He was splendidly calm, looking straight at her with those fine blue eyes of his, half smiling as if he meant to encourage her.

‘Well…' she said, taking courage from him. ‘It's just… she don't belong to Mrs Geary, you see. She's my cat. I brought her with us from the farm.'

‘Oh for heaven's sake!' Flossie said crossly. ‘Whatever for?'