London Pride (3 page)

‘What did they want?' Megan said, shadowing up beside her.

‘Nothing much,' Peggy said. But then as Megan continued to look curious and she felt she had to offer some sort of explanation, she added, ‘Just if I was staying up for the Keys.'

‘Did you tell 'em you was?'

‘Yes,' Peggy said, thinking, if only I hadn't.

‘Lucky you!' Megan said with some envy. ‘I wish it was me.'

‘Your go,' Peggy said, handing her the pebble. Their conversation was making her feel uncomfortable, keeping thoughts of the ghost hunt prickling in her mind when she would rather have been cheering herself up by thinking about something else. As Megan went hopping through the squares with her skirts and apron swinging, she looked back across the cobbles at the Green, where two ravens were strutting and a Yeoman Warder was lecturing a party of elderly ladies.

The White Tower rose confidently before her on its high green mound, its rough stonework as yellow as sand and the dressed stone at every corner a quite dazzling white in the sunshine, battlemented, solid and dependable. It made her think of her father. I'll tell Dad, she thought. I'll tell Dad at teatime. I'll drop a sort of hint and then he'll
say I mustn't go. That was the answer to the Bully boys.

But it was easier planned than done.

For a start there was a ritual to a birthday tea that couldn't be interrupted, and certainly not by stories about a ghost hunt. Mum's meat pie had to be properly admired before it was eaten with the customary green salad and chips and pickles, and the pie had to be followed by the singing of ‘Happy Birthday', and then there were candles to be blown out and the cake to be cut, in carefully equal sections, except for Dad's. But when the last portion had been handed across the table and they were all contentedly munching, the moment seemed to have arrived.

‘When me and Megan was playing out…' she began.

But Baby was speaking too and her voice was a lot louder. ‘I want to stay up and see the Keys with Peggy,' she said, giving her father the benefit of her wide open eyes.

Dad went on munching and didn't say anything.

‘When me and Megan was playing …' Peggy tried again.

‘Well you can't,' Joan said, scowling at Baby. ‘Because it ain't your birthday.'

‘Don't see why not,' Baby pouted, tossing her curls. ‘I'm a big girl now.'

‘So you are, darling,' her mother agreed, spearing her next mouthful of cake with a deft fork. ‘I don't see why she shouldn't, Joe. She's plenty big enough and she'd love it.'

Joe Furnivall raised his great head from his double slice of cake and munched for a while, contemplating his family with the placid gentleness of all grazing beasts. ‘Yes, she's big enough,' he said peaceably, ‘I'll grant that, Mother. The point is, she ain't
old
enough. Seven is when you see the Keys in this house. Our Joan was seven, weren't you, Joanie? And now Peggy's seven. And in three years our Baby'll be seven and
then
it'll be her turn. But not before. Fair's fair.'

Peggy made her third attempt. ‘When me and Megan…'

‘Hush!' her mother said, flicking the word sideways at her before she turned her full attention to her husband. ‘It
wouldn't hurt,' she said. ‘She'd be ever so good. After all she's nearly old enough, and if you let her go, we could all go. All the family.'

‘Seven,' Joe Furnivall said. ‘Seven's old enough. And in any case it ain't a family treat. It's my treat for my daughters on the day they're seven.' And he closed the subject and ended the meal, standing up with an abruptness that showed that any further attempt at argument or conversation would be quite impossible.

‘Time I was off,' he said, polishing his moustache with his napkin. ‘Get to bed sharpish, you girls. You too, Peggy. Three hours, shut-eye under the coverlet, there's a good girl, same as Joanie did. I'll be back for you at twenty-five to ten. Lovely tea, Mother.' And he was walking away.

‘Dad!' Peggy called after him. But he'd already reached the door.

‘Twenty-five to ten,' he said, putting on his blue jacket. ‘Make sure you're ready,' setting his cap on that salt and pepper hair. And then he was gone.

Oh dear, Peggy thought, now what shall I do? The lamplighter was lighting the gas in the street outside the parlour window. She could hear the pop of the gas, and then his feet clomping away along the cobbles. Then two Yeoman Warders passed in their everyday clothes on their way to the Club, chattering companionably. What was it Dad always said, when you were worried things might go wrong? ‘Never trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you.' That was it. I won't think about it, she decided, for the second time that day. I'll think about the Keys. But it was the key to the Salt Tower that kept swinging into her mind, held up in the tough fingers of Sam Bullough.

‘This way,' Joe Furnivall said, leading his little daughter through the arch and into the Tower green. It was twenty-five to ten and the ceremony of the Keys was about to begin.

Peggy walked beside him, holding his hand for protection. She had never been out in the Tower at night before, and even though there was a full white moon in the black sky above her head, it was very dark out there beneath the White Tower and now that the visitors had all gone home the place looked enormous and strange and threatening. During the day it had been a village green surrounded by familiar houses, now it was a place of menacing shadows flickering against the walls and patches of terrifying darkness breathing in doorways and arrow slit windows squinting down at her like sharp little eyes. Oh there were certainly ghosts about tonight.

‘Is it far?' she said, and her voice was no more than a whisper.

‘Traitors' Gate,' he said cheerfully, bounding down Broad Walk Steps.

‘When me and Megan was playing…' she said, making yet another effort.

But he wasn't listening to her. His mind was set on the treat ahead of them and he was striding towards it so quickly that she had to trot to keep up with him. Down the steps, along the path, under the Bloody Tower. No sign of the Bully boys yet, which was a relief, but once they were
through the archway and into Water Lane she could see a group of toffs standing about in front of the terrible bars of Traitors' Gate. That was a surprise. Had they come to see the Keys too? She thought she'd be the only one.

They were making ever such a noise. The ladies kept giving little high-pitched laughs like rooks cawing, and flicking their fur stoles over their shoulders, and shifting about on the cobbles in their high-heeled shoes. And the gentlemen were all going ‘Waw-waw-waw' like bloodhounds baying, when they weren't sucking at their cigars. Oh dear, she thought, he'll never hear me in all that row, even if I speak up as loud as I can, and in any case she couldn't do that, because it was a bit private really, not something to go shouting about in front of strangers.

‘Here we are,' her father said, walking right up to the group and standing beside them. ‘And here's the others, and your Uncle Charlie.'

Uncle Charlie was really called Yeoman Warder Macpherson and he wasn't her uncle at all, only her godfather. He was a very loud man who smelt of snuff and brass polish, and had a nasty habit of pulling your hair or tweaking your ears when you weren't looking, but for once Peggy was quite glad to see him, striding up Water Lane towards them with three other yeoman warders all in their ordinary clothes. If she couldn't get Dad to forbid it, then the more people she had round her tonight the better.

‘Right on time,' Uncle Charlie said, rolling his R's in that Scottish way of his. ‘Looking forward to it eh, girlie?'

‘Oh yes,' she said, because she
was
looking forward to the ceremony.

‘Been going on four hundred years,' Uncle Charlie said. ‘Every evening the same. Never stops. Not for war or plague or peasants' revolts or anything. While we've ravens in the Tower and the Ceremony of the Keys every night, we've no need to worry about the safety of the nation, eh?'

Peggy tried to look impressed, but it was difficult because it wasn't the safety of the nation she was worried about.

‘Here they come,' her father said. ‘Not a sound now.'

There was a little procession marching towards them
along the lane. The toffs stopped talking and turned towards it, craning their necks, and in the sudden silence, Peggy could hear the crunch of boots and something jangling rhythmically. Then peering round her father's bulk, she saw a lighted lantern bobbing towards her and above its light two ranks of scarlet jackets and a gleam of rifles. And there was the Chief Yeoman Warder in his lovely red uniform marching along between two rows of guardsmen and looking really rather short and stout between their tight-fitting jackets and the great furry height of their bearskins.

She watched absorbed as the procession marched down Water Lane and through the gate beneath the Byward Tower and on through the darkness towards the outer gate in the Middle Tower, the lantern flickering and diminishing but the sound of boots as strong as ever. Keys rattled and clicked, an invisible sergeant-major sang orders, boots stamped, their steel tips sparking quick flashes of fire against the cobbles, and they all came marching back again, as everybody in the little watching crowd stood still, listening and waiting.

And then, when they were no more than fifty feet away, a sentry sprang out of his box by the Bloody Tower and challenged them.

‘Halt! Who comes there?'

It was very dramatic. Several of the ladies jumped, as though the challenge had been directed at them.

But the Chief Yeoman Warder took it all calmly, singing back the answer. ‘King George's Keys.'

Not the Keys to the Tower of London, Peggy thought, nor the Keys to the Middle Tower, but King George's Keys, no less. King George's Keys. It sounded marvellously important.

And it satisfied the sentry, because he was allowing them to march back through the Bloody Tower the way they'd come.

‘Is that it?' Peggy asked her father. The rich people were following the procession through the arch. Now perhaps she could tell him about the ghost hunt.

‘No,' he said happily. ‘The best bit's to come.' And he took her hand and led her through the arch and through
the toffs until they were standing at the foot of the steps leading up to the Green.

It was like the pantomime she'd seen in the theatre last Christmas, when the curtains opened and you saw the stage full of beautiful people in lovely bright costumes all lit up with lots and lots of bright lights. The gaslights on either side of the Broad Walk Steps had been turned right up and the steps themselves were full of guardsmen standing to attention, jackets scarlet, buttons gleaming, bearskins ruffling in the night breeze. There was a trumpeter standing on the top step just above them, and the Keys and their escort had come to a halt at the bottom of the steps and were plainly waiting for something. Now what?

The watchers stood quite still, the guardsmen were motionless, and the trumpeter raised the golden bowl of his trumpet into the night air and sounded the Last Post. As the last sad note drifted away, the Chief Yeoman doffed his Tudor bonnet and called out in a loud clear voice, ‘God Preserve King George.' And all the guardsmen answered ‘Amen', their mouths dark O's in the gaslit pallor of their faces. And at the very same moment the clock began to strike ten, the long notes licking the silent air as the guardsmen stood to attention. Peggy was so moved that she felt tears pricking underneath her eyelids. To live here, in the middle of the great city of London, at the heart of the British Empire, with all the brave men who guarded the king, it
was
an honour.

‘There,' her father said when the clock was silent and the crowd began to disperse, ‘what did you think a' that?'

‘It was like magic,' she said.

‘Glad I brought you?'

‘Oh yes! Thanks ever so much, Dad.'

‘There you are then, little Peggy. You're a real Londoner now you've seen the Ceremony of the Keys. Never forget it.'

Uncle Charlie was standing in front of them breathing snuff-sour all over them. ‘Are you coming to the Club, Joe?'

‘In a minute,' her father said amiably. ‘When I've seen the child to the door.'

‘We'll walk with you,' Uncle Charlie said. ‘We'll escort
you, girlie, as though you were the Keys. How's about that?'

It was a very fast-moving escort. This time she had to run to keep up, but she was very glad of their presence. Even if the Bully boys were already waiting for her under the arch they could hardly expect her to slip away with five Yeoman Warders guarding her.

‘There you are,' her father said, when they'd crossed the Green and tramped through the arch into the Casemates.‘Off you go. There's a good girl. Kiss your old Dad goodnight.'

She kissed him happily. They were in sight of her front door. Almost home. She only had to run a few steps and she'd be safe.

‘Night night. Sleep tight. Pray the Lord the bugs don't bite,' Uncle Charlie said, waving as they all marched back through the archway.

Silly old thing, Peggy thought. We don't have bugs in
our
house. Just as if Mum would allow
that
. But she smiled at him politely as she waved goodbye. Then she turned to run home.

And the Bully boys were standing right in front of her.

‘They gone?' Sam said, squinting in the poor light.

She was so frightened she couldn't answer.

‘Still on the Green,' Fred said, peering round the corner of the archway.

‘We'll go the other way,' Sam decided. ‘Come on.'

And he was off along the Casemates at a loping trot, with Fred beside him.

What can I do? Peggy thought. If I made a bolt for it and ran home they might….