London Pride (10 page)

For a start it reminded her of the Tower, because it wasn't just one school but three, infants, juniors and seniors, in three separate buildings standing side by side behind a long fence in an asphalt playground where trees and bushes grew. Two of the schools were made of sand-coloured stone and red brick like the barracks and the one she went to was exactly like the Beauchamp Tower. She felt at home straight away.

And her teacher was lovely. She was called Miss Butt and she had nice smiling eyes and smelled of lavender and wore her hair in two thick mounds piled on top of her head like a cottage loaf.

‘We shan't be stayin' long,' Peggy told her, when she'd hung her coat on a peg and had her name written in the register. ‘We're Londoners you see, Miss. We got to go back to London soon.'

‘Yes,' Miss Butt said kindly, ‘of course. However while you're here perhaps you wouldn't mind writing your name on this book.'

The autumn days grew shorter and colder and the cross-country trek to school longer and more mud spattered. Joan wrote a letter from Tillingbourne Manor to say that she was ‘working hard and hoped it found them as it left her', and Grandpa started ‘the ploughin” with the result that he came home every evening chilled and mudcaked and ready to find fault with the least little thing. And Mum suffered torments with her nerves.

But Peggy could endure all these things now because she had school to look forward to. She made friends with two girls called Rose and Lily, she learned to play the local games, and her classroom was a warm, welcoming place that felt more like a home to her than her grandfather's cottage. There was a fire in every classroom in the building where wet gloves and boots were set to dry and where she and the other farm children were allowed to sit and eat their bread and cheese at dinner time. And the school was full of familiar reassuring sounds, the drone of prayers, and the sing-song chant of times tables, and the gaslight being lit in the middle of the afternoon with its lovely reassuring plop. Oh so much nicer than those smelly old oil lamps.

‘School is alright,' she wrote to Joan. ‘I like Miss Butt.'

‘Tillingbourne Manor is alright,' Joan wrote back. ‘The work is hard. Cook is alright. Food is good. There are four of us in my room but I would rather it was you. I have a bed of my own. Cook says I can have a day off Wednesday week to come and see the Carnival. See you then.'

She arrived at the cottage just as they were dishing up dinner. It was lovely to see her again. She was wearing her uniform and black stockings and black lace-up shoes that made her look ever so grown-up, and she smelled different, of carbolic soap and greasy dishes and starched cotton, and there was a long red burn not quite hidden on her right forearm, which everybody saw and nobody mentioned. But she kissed them all most lovingly and said she was getting on all right.

After dinner they all went down to Tillingbourne to
watch the procession, except for Grandpa who said he was too long in the tooth for that sort of caper. It was a very cold day and they got quite chilled while they waited, but the procession got going eventually. There were decorated trade carts and shire horses rattling their brasses, and floats from the Women's Institute and the pubs and all the village shops, and a fairy-tale coach painted red and gold for the Carnival Princess who sat huddled on her throne in the middle of her shivering attendants, red nosed but smiling bravely. The only trouble was it reminded Peggy and Joan of the last procession they'd seen, when Dad had walked beside the State Coach and they'd all been so happy. And that cast them both down into unhappiness again.

When the streets were empty again, and Mum and Aunt Maud and Baby and all their new neighbours went rushing back home as fast as they could, Joan and Peggy dawdled behind the rest. They walked arm in arm for comfort along the footpath from Tillingbourne and although the wind was blowing in their faces they paid no attention to it, for now at last they would have a chance to talk to one another again. Half-way up they stopped by the hawthorn hedge where there was a clear view across the valley to Tillingbourne Manor, neat as a doll's house on the opposite hillside.

‘I look out for you every morning, you know,' Joan said, squeezing Peggy's arm.

‘Do you?'

‘Every morning.'

‘Can you see us?' Peggy said, amazed by the thought.

‘I can see your red beret walking along behind the hedge.' And every time she saw it she felt weak with homesickness. But she couldn't tell Peggy that because she was only little and it would upset her.

‘I shall wave tomorrow,' Peggy promised. ‘An' every morning after. Right here. By this big tree.'

‘That's an oak,' Joan said. ‘Cook's been teaching me. How are things at home?'

‘All right,' Peggy said. ‘Mum gets shirty sometimes.' It was cold in the cottage and uncomfortable and full of tensions she didn't like and couldn't understand, but she
didn't think she ought to say so. Not now that Joan was in service because it might upset her, and that wouldn't be kind. ‘What's it like working in a kitchen?'

‘It's not so bad,' Joan said, but she had to change that subject quickly too in case talking about it made her cry. Now that she was home again she realized there was rather a lot she couldn't say. ‘Tell me about school. I bet they don't learn you much.'

‘There's a swimming-pool in the field at the back,' Peggy said, glad to find a topic that wouldn't upset either of them. ‘You pay a shillin' when it opens, which is May, I think, an' they let you go swimming all through the summer. What d'you think a' that? If we're still here after Christmas I'm going to run errands with the others and save up for it. Only I don't suppose we shall still be here, shall we?' And she looked up hopefully at her big sister.

‘If you ask me we shall still be here the Christmas
after
next,' Joan said. ‘She don't mean to move, does she?'

That was too awful for Peggy to contemplate so she changed the subject. ‘Will they let you home for Christmas?' she asked.

‘Shouldn't think so,' Joan said importantly. ‘The whole Bromwich family's coming down, the Captain and his wife and Miss Amelia and Master Toby and everybody. We're cooking a turkey an' a goose an' a sirloin a' beef. I ‘spect they'll let us off afterwards though. In the New Year.'

It made Peggy feel sad to think that they would be apart at Christmas time, but she didn't say anything about that either, because she could see that Joan was putting on a brave face.

‘I shall see you at midnight mass,' Joan promised. ‘We're all coming down to the church at Tillingbourne for that.'

But it wouldn't be the same, Peggy thought sadly, because they wouldn't be in the Tower, and they wouldn't be with Dad. It would be sad like it had been at the procession. And she missed him with the same dreadful lurching sensation she'd felt so terribly when he died. Dear, dear Dad. Christmas would be awful without him. ‘It's ever so cold,' she said, shivering.

‘Let's make tracks,' Joan said.

The family pig lived in a sty behind the chicken run. Actually, according to Aunt Maud he was only half theirs because they owned him jointly with Mr and Mrs Matthews next door, which seemed rather odd, but he was an amiable animal however much they owned of him. At first Peggy had been rather wary of him because he had mean little eyes like Grandpa and an enormous chomping mouth and a habit of barging the side of the sty as though he was going to knock it down, but as the days passed, she realized there was no malice in him at all and she became quite fond of him. She and Baby were sent off every day to gather buckets full of acorns for him, which he scrunched up with ridiculous pleasure, dribbling and snuffling and watching them eagerly in case there was more to come, and when they'd fed him they leaned over the side of the sty and scratched his back with a stick and talked to him.

‘He's a funny sort of pet really,' Baby observed. ‘I'd rather have one you could keep in the house, like a cat or a puppy.'

‘It's different in the country,' Peggy said. The farm cats lived in the barn and the dog was kept in a kennel when she wasn't working the sheep. ‘He's jolly useful though, aren't you, Pig? He eats up all the scraps.'

The pig snuffed the toes of her shoes, leaving a trail of white slobber across the leather.

‘D'you think we could take him for a walk?' Baby asked, trying to unwind his tail with her stick.

‘No. I don't', Peggy said, sensibly. ‘You don't take animals for walks in the country. Come on. Time we were off to school.'

It was half a mile from Grandpa's cottage to Tillingbourne school and the darker the days became the further it felt. The fields were full of alien creatures, tatty sheep with peculiar eyes, pale blue with a black stripe down the middle, rooks strutting aggressively or sawing the air with malevolent cries, massive cows with grey tongues and eyelashes like brushes, the great concave bones of their haunches as sharp as cleavers under their mud-caked skin.

All this was bad enough in the daytime, but it was worse when Peggy was lugging her sister back home in the lessening light of a winter dusk, for then the half-seen animals were at their most threatening and the hedges creaked and glittered with little watching eyes. She walked as quickly as she could, half trotting, half afraid, with her senses at full stretch, ready for anything.

Even so, the sudden noise she heard that evening in November was so awful it made her heart jump with fear. It was a high-pitched terrified squeal, and it went on and on, getting higher and higher and more and more terrible.

‘It's Pig,' she said, grabbing Baby's hand. ‘Run! It's Pig!'

They skimmed over the rough earth as quickly as they could, stumbling and panting, and now they could hear shouts and roars, and see the flicker of lanterns behind the hedge, and at that she dropped Baby's hand and ran on ahead without her, struggling through into the clearing, and there was Pig running madly from side to side as though he was being pulled between two ropes, with Mum and Aunt Maud and all their neighbours chasing him and shouting at him, their long shadows leaping beside them on the trampled grass.

‘I'll get you some acorns,' Peggy shouted into the hubbub. ‘You could catch him with acorns as easy as pie.'

And a strange man rose up behind the pig, tall and black as an avenging angel, and hit the frantic animal on the side of the head with a huge sledge hammer.

The sickening thud of the blow reverberated in Peggy's
skull as though she'd been struck down herself. She was so shocked she couldn't move. They're killing him, she thought. They're killing our pig. And she knew they wanted to kill the poor thing, that they'd planned it, because they were laughing and cheering as though they'd done something wonderful. And the butcher lifted Pig by his snout and slit his throat. The gush of bright red blood from that awful slit was too much. With a strangled cry of horror and compassion, Peggy ran from the scene into the bushes where she was violently sick.

When she came back, the poor pink corpse was lying on a trestle table surrounded by women, who were scalding him with boiling water and scraping him with long knives and as little concern as if they were scraping earth from new potatoes. Baby had joined the group and was standing beside their mother watching the proceedings with great interest.

‘There you are,' Mum said happily. ‘Ain't he a fine fat Pig?'

‘You killed him,' Peggy said, with disbelief and revulsion.

‘A' course,' Aunt Maud said. ‘That's what pigs are for.'

‘We got to eat,' Mum said. ‘No good bein' sentimental when you live on a farm. We always kill off old stock in the autumn. Old stock and young pigs. We don't breed 'em for old age. Bred for the table they are. He's had a good life.'

‘We shall live off this pig all winter,' Aunt Maud said. ‘Us and the Matthews. Pig's fry, trotters, chitterlins, lard, pig's head, roast pork, nice salt bacon. Won't be a thing go to waste, you'll see. He'll last till the spring. Wait till you taste the bacon he'll make.'

But Peggy was still white with shock.

‘You've bred a townie,' Aunt Maud said to Flossie.

‘She'll prefer the spring,' Flossie said, scraping vigorously, ‘won't you, Peggy? All those pretty new lambs. An' Easter eggs. She likes Easter eggs.'

Then we're not going back to London after Christmas, Peggy thought, but she was too numb with shock to do more than register the fact. It was something she ought to have known, just as she ought to have known they were going to kill the pig. Oh Dad, she grieved, if only you were
still alive none of this would have happened. And she took Baby by the hand and walked miserably into the cottage away from the nightmare.

Spring was a long time coming that year. The footpaths were still slippery with mud when the first primroses appeared, pale and hesitant and vulnerable beneath the rough claws of the hedges. And the little new lambs were vulnerable too, huddled beside the dirty fleeces of the ewes, like little heaps of unmelted snow. Peggy felt sorry for them, bred for the table, and when the first balmy days stirred warm air along the hillside and they began to jump and frisk on their stiff little legs, she felt sorrier than ever.

‘It's ever such a cruel world,' she said to Joan when she was home one Sunday afternoon and all three girls were walking down to evening service together.

‘Yes,' Joan said easily. ‘Course it is.'

‘I wish it wasn't.'

‘Well it is,' Joan said, ‘so there's no use fretting about it is there?' She'd had a very bad week in the kitchens, with two dinner parties that hadn't gone as well as they should have done and Cook bad-tempered as a result, and on Friday she'd gashed her finger when she was chopping carrots, and had then been sent to mash spinach through a hair sieve, which was a job she really hated.