London Pride (45 page)

‘My children,' Joan said, scowling at his idiocy. ‘Yvonne and Norman Owen. My children.'

Understanding dawned visibly. The expression changed from unctuous to guarded, and then, after a quick glance at Jim's uniformed belligerence, with equal rapidity from guarded to welcoming. ‘My dear Mrs Owen, of course.'

‘Where are they?' Joan said, setting her arms akimbo.

‘Oh,' Mr Ray said vaguely, his watery eyes flickering, ‘somewhere or other. Out at play you know. We don't proscribe them in any way. Come in, why don't you, Mrs Owen? I'll send someone out to find them.'

‘We'll look for 'em,' Joan said to Jim and Peggy, ‘and we'll all come back when we've found 'em.'

‘Where to?' Jim asked. As a townie he was lost among all these fields.

Fortunately Joan and Peggy knew where to look. ‘Water's our best bet,' Joan said. ‘There's got to be a stream or a river somewhere.'

And sure enough there was a group of scruffy children paddling in a rather muddy stream just below the undertaker's house.

‘Yvey?' their leader said. ‘No, Miss. She ain't here.'

‘Probably got the stick,' another urchin offered.

Joan's heart contracted with rage and misery. The stick. She knew it. Hadn't she always known it? ‘Who gives her the stick?'

‘Her foster mum.'

Oh she does, does she? Joan thought. I'll see about her. But first things first. ‘Where does she go when she's had the stick?' she asked.

‘Up the barn most times,' the urchin told her, pointing at a distant building covered in decaying thatch.

They ran to the barn, stumbling through the weeds and willows at the water's edge, tripping over fallen branches, leaping forward along the slippery path.

But at the barn door, Joan stopped and signalled to the others not to make a sound because she could see her children squatting among the straw. They had a jam-jar full of water set between them and Yvonne was bathing her brother's legs with a dock leaf. Even from the door and
in the half light of the barn Joan could see the red weals and purple bruises on their arms and legs.

There was no doubt now what had to be done. No doubt at all.

‘Yvey! Norman!' she called. ‘It's Mummy. I've come to take you home.'

They hurled themselves into her arms, weeping with relief, and soon all five of them were sitting on the straw cuddling and kissing and examining injuries, talking and weeping and laughing all at once.

‘Take 'em to the station,' Jim said to Joan when the first flush of the reunion was over. ‘Me an' Peg'll pick up their things.'

‘I've got a score to settle with that old humbug and his wife,' Joan said.

‘You stay with the kids,' Jim told her. ‘We'll settle the score, won't we, Peggy?'

But settling scores with Mr Ray was like picking up jelly in a sieve. He oozed away from every accusation.

‘All children need discipline, as I'm sure you'll agree,' he said, when he'd ushered them both into his sitting room and Jim had told him they'd seen the results of his caning.

‘Discipline's one thing,' Jim said angrily. ‘Brutality's another.'

‘Oh come now, not brutality,' Mr Ray demurred. ‘You make me sound like a Nazi.'

‘We shall need their ration books,' Peggy said, practical as ever.

‘Oh come now,' Mr Ray said again. ‘There's no need for that. Is there, Mother?' For Mrs Ray had walked into the sitting room to see what was going on.

‘The children are going home,' Peggy told them. ‘If you'll get their ration books. Mrs Ray, we'll pack their bags.'

That news put both the Rays into an obvious panic. ‘No, no,' Mrs Ray said, her long face twitching as she searched through a drawer in the sideboard. ‘We'll pack, won't we, Father? We wouldn't dream of putting you to the trouble. Here's the ration books.'

‘No trouble,' Jim said, walking straight past them and out into the corridor towards the stairs. ‘Up here is it?'

‘No,' Mr Ray said, following him. ‘No, no. I forbid it.'

I'll bet you do, Jim thought pounding up the stairs. ‘In here is it?' he asked his hand on the nearest doorknob.

‘No it is not,' Mrs Ray said icily. ‘That's our room. You can't do this.'

But Jim was throwing open the other two doors on the landing. Bathroom. Lumber room. Up the next flight with Peggy at his heels and the Rays puffing protestations after them. One door. That's it.

The sight and smell of that dark attic room shocked him so much that he stood where he was for a second just taking it in, stained mattress, stinking pot, naked light bulb, dirty brown blankets, no furniture, no sheets or pillow cases, just their two pathetic suitcases full of dirty clothes that the poor kids had obviously tried to keep as tidy as they could for they were all folded up. ‘No wonder you didn't want us to see this,' he said to Mr Ray.

‘They're very naughty children,' Mr Ray said. ‘Always dirty, aren't they, Mother? We've done our best.'

‘We'll pack for you,' Mrs Ray said, trying to put her body between Jim and the sight of the bed. ‘You don't want to do that.'

‘Hop it,' he said to her. ‘Come on, Peggy. The sooner they're out a' this the better.' And he began to fling the few clothes that had been left on the bed into the nearest case. ‘I've never seen such a pig heap. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, letting kids live like this.'

Mr Ray tried to draw himself up to his full height, always a difficult thing for a stout man to do. His jowls were quivering with outrage. ‘You dare to come in here,' he shouted, ‘breaking in, accusing us. You don't stop to think what we've had to put up with. We took your filthy children in when nobody else would have them, let me tell you. Slum children, that's all they are. Worse than animals. More than any decent God-fearing people could stand. You ask anyone in the village.'

‘Out my way,' Jim ordered as he and Peggy put the last of the smelly clothes in the cases. ‘There's a jersey in the corner, Peg. And what's this?'

There was a piece of rock-hard pastry under the pillow.

‘That's his gingerbread man, poor kid,' Peggy said.
‘Must bring that. It's his treasure.'

‘I forbid this,' Mr Ray said, and he blundered forward as though he was going to barge them both out of the room with his belly.

It was a great mistake. Jim seized him by the scruff of his neck and flung him to one side. It was such a sudden and violent movement that the older man was caught off balance and fell backwards right into the damp centre of the mattress.

‘Mother!' he yelled. ‘Stop them! Mother! Do something!'

But Mrs Ray was crouching by the window with her hands over her mouth.

‘Look what you've done,' her husband shouted. ‘I'm soaking wet. My trousers are ruined. You've got piddle all over my best trousers.'

‘Think yourself bloody lucky it ain't rammed down your throat,' Jim said, closing the second case.

‘I'll have the law on you.'

‘No you won't,' Jim said calmly picking up the cases. ‘Because if you do we'll report you to the NSPCC for assault and battery. Come on, Peggy. We're finished here.'

It was a marvellous journey home, so full of relief and happiness and excitement, it was over almost before they were aware it had begun. Jim was purring with the success of their expedition, Joan sat between her two smelly children and cuddled them all the way, and Peggy put her head on Jim's shoulder and took her cat-nap in satisfied exhaustion.

‘Bath,' Joan promised happily when they all arrived at New Cross Gate. ‘Clean clothes, a nice meal. What d'yer fancy?'

‘Fish an' chips,' they said with one voice.

‘Thanks ever so much for coming with me,' she said to Jim and Peggy.

‘What are neighbours for?' Jim said, and Peggy kissed her and hugged the kids.

By now Peggy was looking very tired. ‘Bed for you,' Jim said, as they climbed aboard the Greenwich train.

‘You got a one-track mind,' she teased him sleepily.

‘Who's fault's that?'

It was true, Peggy thought, as she settled her head on the rough cloth of his tunic and began to drift to sleep again. I was wrong about sending the kids away. She knew that now and was pained by the knowledge, because she'd been so free with her advice and Joan had taken it so trustingly. I
have
been smug, she thought, as the train rocked her soothingly against his chest. Smug and wrong. Wrong about the kids, wrong about us. And before sleep sucked her downwards she made up her mind to put things right.

‘We'll have a ding-dong,' Mr Allnutt said. ‘A welcome-home ding-dong. Poor little beggars. We can keep the doors shut an' nail the black-out down.'

‘An' invite the Warden,' his wife said, smiling at him. A ding-dong would be lovely. Just the right thing. They hadn't had a get-together for months. Not since the war broke out. High time they started up again.

It was a riot. John Cooper said he'd never heard such a noise and the parrot was so happy it nearly choked itself trying to squawk, sing and swear at the same time. They sang ‘The more we are together' and ‘Knees up Mother Brown' and ‘The Lambeth Walk' and Mr Brown played ‘There'll always be an England' on his mouth organ and because there were so many people singing the words the tune was almost recognizable, and they ‘Rolled out the Barrel' and Percy was allowed to stay up late to be with Norman and Yvonne who were the guests of honour and the heroes of the hour.

‘You can 'ave whatever you like,' Mr Allnutt promised them. ‘Top brick off the chimney.'

But they both said they'd rather have shrimps and Uncle Gideon said he'd cut off and get them directly.

‘Be a treat to get some air,' he grinned. With the windows blacked out, the door tightly shut, and so many people singing and dancing, the heat in the little room was unbearable. ‘Turn out the light. I'm going to open the door. Anyone else want ter get out?'

There was a scramble at the open door as dark figures emerged into the street, and two of them were Peggy and Jim.

‘Where's our lovebirds off to?' Mrs Roderick's voice said out of the darkness.

‘Same as you, Mrs R,' Jim said. ‘Breath a' fresh air.'

‘I'm off home to get me glass,' Mrs Roderick said. ‘I don't like drinking out of other people's. Mind how you go. Don't forget the shelter.' It was pitch dark out in the street, and their little pocket torches only gave a pool of faint light immediately in front of their feet.

Jim and Peggy walked arm-in-arm down the inky street until they came to the boot scraper beside the front door of number two.

‘Has she gone?' Jim asked, peering back for the flicker of Mrs Roderick's torch. There was no light in the street at all. ‘Good,' he said, fishing the key through the letter-box. ‘We've got the house to ourselves.'

And a bed to spread out on in the back room he rented from his sister, and a lock on the door to keep the world at bay.

‘You had this all planned, didn't you?' she teased as he drew the lock to. They'd kissed all the way up the stairs and they were both breathless with a heady combination of desire and anticipation.

‘Correction,' he said, ‘I had it all hoped.'

She put her arms round his waist and kissed him lovingly. When they drew apart the question on his face was too clear to need words.

‘Yes,' she said, switching out the light.

Afterwards he opened the black-out curtains and they lay side by side on his crumpled bed and smoked in lazy contentment, watching the burning tips of their two cigarettes swimming gently up and down like two red fireflies in the darkness. They could hear the ding-dong below them, the piano sounding quite clear above the babble of cheerful voices.

‘OK?' he asked.

‘Yes, very OK. Hunky-dory.'

‘I love you so much,' he said, stroking her hair with his free hand.

‘More than you did before?'

‘Much much more.'

Lying like this, so warm and easy, with her head on his shoulder and his finger in her hair, she couldn't think why she'd made them both wait so long. Reason told her she ought to have waited until they were married, that she ought to feel ashamed, but she didn't, she felt wonderful, with that amazing pleasure still echoing, spreading languorous waves of well-being all through her.

‘If I stay here much longer I shall go to sleep,' she said.

‘Go to sleep then. I'll let you.'

‘They'll miss us.'

‘No they won't. Not in that crush.'

‘I can't stay here all night.'

‘You could. All night and every night if you wanted.'

It was a tempting idea but it had to be resisted. ‘If we did
that
they'd all know. I couldn't bear anyone to know, Jim.'

‘They won't,' he assured her. ‘We'll be so discreet they won't know a thing. Like spies.'

‘You'd make a lousy spy,' she laughed.

He pretended to be annoyed. ‘I'd make a first-rate spy.'

‘With your face?'

‘What's wrong with my face?'

‘Nothing,' she said, kissing it. ‘I love it. Not very good at hiding your feelings though, is it? Even old Mrs Roderick calls us the lovebirds. God! I wouldn't want Mrs Roderick to find out. Think how
she'd
gossip.'

‘No one'll find out,' he said, sitting up reluctantly. ‘We'll go back to the ding-dong in a minute. When they're making a racket. They're a bit quiet just now.'

So they knocked at Mr Allnutt's door when the company were in full voice singing, ‘If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between.' And just as he'd predicted, nobody paid any attention to their return. Percy was fast asleep on his father's shoulder, Joan was cuddling both her nice clean sweet-smelling children, Mrs Roderick and Flossie were on their third port and lemon, ‘Well if you can't run to a bit of extravagance in wartime when can you?' and Cyril Brown was arguing with Mr Allnutt and Uncle Gideon and John Cooper.