London Pride (20 page)

‘I don't suppose any of your ladies are looking for a general servant by any chance,' she asked Mrs Roderick.

‘Live-in or daily?' Mrs Roderick inquired.

‘Oh daily.' We don't want any more living-in nonsense. She can sleep at home where I can keep an eye on her.

‘Well,' Mrs Roderick said. ‘As it happens I do know someone. Your girl, was it?'

Flossie nodded because speech had suddenly become inaudible. The wheezing had stopped while they were talking and the sing-song had begun again with a roaring, cynical ditty about the dreaded workhouse:

‘Come inside yer silly bugger, come inside,

I thought you ‘ad a bit more sense.

Working fer yer living? Take my tip:

Act a bit stupid and become a lunatic.

You get your meals quite regular

And three new suits beside:

Thirty bob a week, no wife and kids to keep.

Come inside yer silly bugger, come inside.'

Flossie paid no attention at all, either to the song or its cynicism. I'll have them both at work the minute I can, she thought, looking round the room for Peggy. They needn't think I'm going to keep them in idleness, oh dear no. That's not going to be the way of it at all. Joan can start the minute I can find a job for her and in three years time Peggy can follow her. I'm not having any more trouble from either of them.

Fortunately, as they strolled happily back to number six in the early hours of Sunday morning, with Mrs Geary still humming their goodnight song, and Mr Allnutt carrying the exhausted parrot, and all the Boxall children chattering into the house between them, neither of the girls knew that their lives had been planned for them.

‘See yer next Sat'day,' Mr Allnutt said as they reached the doorstep.

‘Yes please!' they said in chorus.

‘Glad you come ter London then?' Mrs Geary asked as they carried the parrot upstairs.

‘Oh yes!' Peggy said rapturously. ‘It's the best place in the whole wide world.'

‘Nice lie-in tomorrer,' Mrs Geary said.

‘It's tomorrow already,' Peggy said.

‘So it is,' Mrs Geary agreed. ‘Nice lie-in terday then.'

The entire street had a lie-in on Sundays. Bedroom curtains stayed drawn until well after ten o'clock and then it was only the women who were up and about getting the Sunday dinner. By midday the street was savoury with the smell of roasting meat or rich stews, for even the poorest inhabitants managed some meat on a Sunday. Mrs Geary cooked hers on the hob beside her fire, and ate every last mouthful. When Peggy came upstairs in answer to her knock on the ceiling she found her sitting beside a tray full of dirty dishes.

‘Be a dear,' Mrs Geary begged, ‘an' ask yer ma if she wouldn't mind just rinsing these through with your things. I'd do it mesself only I got these legs. I'd be ever so grateful, tell her.'

‘We shall have to watch her,' Flossie told her daughters as Joan put the landlady's dirty plate in the washing-up
bowl. ‘She's too crafty by half. If we don't look out we shall be looking after her, cleaning and cooking and I don't know what-all.'

‘It's only a plate,' Joan said, cleaning it.

‘That's how they start,' Flossie said. ‘First it's a plate, an' then before you know where you are, you're doing all their work for them. Clear this table will you, Peggy.'

The next morning was wash-day and Flossie's first row with her landlady, who came downstairs before they'd finished breakfast bearing a pillow case full of dirty washing.

‘I have the scullery Monday, Mrs Furnivall,' she said to Flossie, ‘ter do me bits an' bobs.'

‘I've just this minute lit the copper,' Flossie said, feeling she had to make a stand over this.

‘Well how kind,' Mrs Geary said, hobbling towards the scullery door.

‘I've just this minute lit the copper for my wash,' Flossie said, explaining her position as firmly and unequivocably as she could. ‘For
my
wash, Mrs Geary. I always wash on a Monday.'

‘Well my dear,' Mrs Geary said, speaking quite kindly, ‘you'll ‘ave to change that now, won't you. You got all the rest a' the week, when all's said an' done.'

‘I always wash on a Monday,' Flossie repeated.

‘Well there you are,' Mrs Geary said imperturbably. ‘We all got ter make changes sometime or other. I'll put your soaps an' things up on this shelf, then we shan't get in a muddle.'

Flossie was seething with anger at such humiliation. She
always
washed on a Monday. All respectable women washed on a Monday. To leave it till Tuesday would be absolutely dreadful. How could this woman be so unkind? It was enough to bring on her nerves. Particularly as she couldn't say what she thought about it, being a subtenant. An outright row could lose them the house. Oh it was too bad! It really was! ‘Get your hat and coat on,' she said crossly to Joan. ‘We're going to get you a job.'

‘Now?' Joan said, looking at the rasher of bacon still on her plate.

‘Now! Leave that!'

Her years at Tillingbourne Manor had taught Joan to eat on the trot whenever it was necessary, and never to waste food. She put the rasher into her mouth whole, grabbed the remains of her bread and marge, and chewed them both quickly while she put on her hat and coat. She and Peggy managed to exchange grimaces while their mother wasn't looking at them, then there was nothing for it but to walk obediently to the front door. She went willingly enough, they all had to work, and she could hardly expect to be allowed to stay at home much longer, not after – that. And anyway, a job was only a job.

But the job her mother chose for her this time was more unpleasant than the last. By the end of that morning she was maid-of-all-work to a certain Miss Margeryson and her brother, who claimed to be ‘something in the City' and was actually a poorly-paid junior clerk. They lived in penny-pinching discomfort and intense respectability on the other side of the railway tracks in a sour house in a jerry-built terrace that had been run up in a hurry by a speculator with city clerks in mind. Consequently nothing in it was quite as it should be, the chimneys smoked, the sash-frames stuck, the range was temperamental and the kitchen floor was so badly buckled it was a nightmare to clean. By the end of her first week Joan was grey with fatigue.

‘I've only got one pair of hands,' she complained to Peggy on Saturday night as the two of them were getting ready for the ding-dong. ‘She's on at me all the time. Polish the stair-rods, brush the curtains, pumice the doorstep, do this, do that. An' then Mum wants me to wash the supper things when I get home.'

‘I'll wash the supper things,' Peggy said. ‘I don't mind.' She was almost as tired as her sister, because in addition to doing a lot of housework during the day, she was running up and down stairs attending to Mrs Geary.

‘Ta,' Joan said gratefully. ‘You're a love.'

‘You going to wear your silk stockings again?' Peggy asked, leaning her head sideways so that she could brush the tangles out of her long hair.

‘No,' Joan said opening the drawer to look at them. Everything had changed so much since last Saturday she
didn't feel entitled to luxury any more. ‘They're not suitable. Not really.'

‘Why not? They was suitable last Saturday.'

‘I wasn't a skivvy last Saturday,' Joan explained, buttoning her blouse. ‘Silk stockings are for toffs. People who roll around all day doing nothing. Like Miss Amelia or Miss Margeryson, if she could afford 'em, which I very much doubt seein' the state of her larder. 'T anyrate they ain't for skivvies. They don't look right on skivvies.'

‘They looked lovely on you,' Peggy said. ‘Ever so pretty. Why shouldn't a skivvy wear silk stockings if she's got 'em?'

‘You ready?' Baby called up the stairs. ‘Mr Allnutt's come for Polly.'

And so their lives acquired a new London pattern, repetitive housework all through the week, an afternoon at the pictures for Flossie, an occasional visit to the wedding cake church of a Sunday whenever Flossie was feeling particularly religious, daily adventures in the little local park for Baby and her new friend Marie, shopping for bargains in the market late on a Saturday night and the ding-dong to end the week with a roar.

The Furnivalls grew accustomed to their new neighbours. They learned how to make themselves scarce when Mrs Roderick and Nonnie Brown were having one of their rows, and how to persuade Mr Grunewald in the corner shop to let them have ‘tick till Friday when Mum's money comes', and they all discovered various ways to let dear old Mr Allnutt help them without recourse to any of his disastrous carpentry.

They learned that Mrs Geary's legs were bandaged because she had something called ‘varicose veins' which were peculiar purple knobs and lumps that stuck out of her skin like deformed grapes, and they made rude jokes about Mrs Roderick's rich ladies and their corsets, and once, on an exciting occasion when she was safely out of the house, they took it in turns to climb on an upturned orange box and peer through the gap in her net curtains to view her formidable creations, hanging stiffly from a long rail in her front parlour, like pink tubes with laces.

There were bad days too, when they listened to Mr Boxall roaring at his family because he hadn't been taken on at the docks and he'd come home unemployed and belligerently drunk. Flossie said she wouldn't be a bit surprised if he wasn't knocking them about, the noise he made, and Peggy quaked to think of Lily and Pearl being knocked about. She discovered that Jim Boxall often did more work than his father, with a paper round every morning, chores to help his mother and Saturday at the market. But unlike his father he was good-tempered and predictable. He always always provided shrimps for the ding-dong and fish heads for Tabby whenever he could. And the little cat grew fat and contented, sleeping in her box beside Peggy's bed like a plump cushion.

And so August passed. It was too hot and the street was always dusty. The drains smelled worse every day and the market stalls were plagued by flies. But although Mum and Joan and Mrs Geary complained about such things, and Mrs Roderick said that life under such conditions was hardly worth living, Peggy didn't mind them at all. She was back in her native city.

Jim Boxall had never been late to school in his life. It was a matter of pride to him. He was never late and he was never absent, except for the times when he had mumps and measles and chicken-pox and things like that, and that didn't count, because you couldn't help catching things. But on the first day of the new school year in 1925 he was the very last pupil to enter the building. The shame of having to go back to the senior boys when he should have been taking up his rightful place at Roan Grammar was so acute he couldn't bear to be seen doing it. In fact if it hadn't been for the fact that he had to look after his mother and his two younger sisters, he'd have been tempted to run away.

He'd been so happy last term when the results of the scholarship came through, walking up to the headmaster's room for the news, knowing it was good because he was going with Polly Smith and Johnny Foster, who were the other scholarship hopes, and the teachers were all beaming and nodding at them. He'd stood on the headmaster's little patch of carpet, smelling the roses on the desk, with the sun slanting in through the high window like a spotlight straight onto his face, and he'd listened to the lovely rewarding words, ‘A scholarship to Roan's, Boxall. Well done! We're very proud of you', and pride had swollen in his chest until he felt twice the size. It had been the best moment of his life.

At the end of the afternoon he'd run all the way home,
clutching his precious letter and glowing with excitement and success. He'd been so happy he hadn't really understood his mother's muted reaction.

‘Yes,' she'd said, doubtfully, ‘it's ever so good, Jimmy. You're a good boy. I've always said that, ain't I?'

‘Roans!' he said, seizing her round the waist and hugging her rapturously. ‘I'm going to Roan's, Mum. Think a' that.'

‘Is he really, Mum?' Lily said, beaming at him. ‘Really an' truly?'

‘Well he's got the scholarship,' Mum said, still laying the table in her awkward way, sidling from chair to chair with the plates held in her good left hand, using her weak right one like a flipper to set them on the table. She did everything slowly, hampered by the crippled shoulder that made her body tip sideways as if she was about to fall, and her expressions were slow too. A smile took ages to spread from her eyes to her mouth, and sometimes it never got there at all. But this should do it, Jim thought, putting the cruet on the table for her. This really should. After all it isn't every day of the week your son wins a scholarship.

‘There was only three of us,' he said proudly. ‘Me an' Polly Smith and Johnny Foster. And we all passed.'

‘Will you have to wear a uniform?' Pearl wanted to know.

‘Course. An' I shall learn French and Science an' take matriculation. You'll see.'

‘Yes, well lovey,' his mother said, balancing the loaf against her chest before she started to cut it. ‘We shall have ter see what yer Dad says.'

‘Bloody lot a' nonsense!' Mr Boxall had said, rough with beer and bad temper after two days without work. ‘Send it back. Roan's ain't fer the likes of us.'

‘But it's a scholarship!' Jim said, fighting back despite his mother's mute appeal. ‘I've won a scholarship.'

‘You heard what I said. Send it back. We can't afford it. Where's my bloody tea, woman?'

‘It's a scholarship to Roan's,' Jim persisted. ‘The chance of a lifetime Mr Jones said. The chance to get on. To learn French and Science and History and Geography. Don't you want me to get on?'

‘I know all about Roan's,' Mr Boxall said. ‘Poncin' about in a bloody uniform that costs the bloody earth. Goin' all la-di-da on yer family. No bloody fear. You turn it down.'