London Pride (25 page)

‘Poor old you, Jim,' she said as she stood up. ‘Does it hurt much?'

He shook his head, but being reminded of his pain seemed to renew it, and the effort it cost him to deny it was movingly obvious, for tears welled into his eyes and his swollen lips began to tremble.

‘Course it hurts,' Peggy said lightly, turning the moment and the awkward question aside. ‘You are soppy, Lily. Ain't she soppy, Jim? I don't know how she ever got to be so soppy.'

This time he nodded, eased by the teasing note in her voice, and managed to control the trembling.

He's so brave, Peggy thought. It hurts him terribly but he won't let on. And she was torn with admiring pity for him. ‘We'll be back tomorrow,' she promised.

‘Not me,' Lily said, as they walked off along the corridor. ‘You can come if you like but you count me out. I seen enough. Don't he look awful!'

‘All right then,' Peggy said easily. ‘I'll come on my own.'

And did, bearing a pile of cotton rags from Mrs Geary, a copy of
Nicholas Nickleby
from Mr Cooper, and a battered toothbrush and a message from Mrs Boxall.

‘Your Mum says she'll try an' get in tomorrow,' she said. ‘You look a lot better.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Feel a lot better.'

‘I got lots a' messages for you,' she said. She'd made it her business to gather them so as to have something to talk about. ‘Mr Allnutt says would you like some writing paper. I think he wants you to write him a letter.'

This time she sat beside him for the full hour and entertained him so well that he missed her when she left.

By Saturday evening he was waiting quite eagerly for her arrival. She was his only visitor that evening and the only one he was likely to have, as he knew with resignation. Now that his mother had talked to the sister and understood that he wasn't going to die and that it was simply a matter of waiting for the plaster on his broken
arm to come off, his cracked ribs to mend and his cuts and bruises to heal, she was content to leave him where he was.

‘Perhaps they'll feed you up a bit,' she'd said hopefully as she left the ward that afternoon. ‘I'll come in if you want me for anything.'

‘No,' he'd said. ‘I'm all right Mum.' And he'd thought of Peggy as he spoke. Dependable Peggy, the good neighbour.
She'd
visit him.

That evening they talked about Mrs Roderick and her hideous corsets, or to be more accurate Peggy talked and Jim listened and laughed as often as he dared, for speech and laughter were both too painful to be attempted too often.

‘How's Tabby?' he asked, when they'd criticized most of their neighbours.

‘Missing your fish.'

‘I'll be home soon, tell her,' he said.

‘Will you?'

‘In about a week, they say. When they've took the stitches out. An' then I'll go straight down the market and scrounge some pieces. It'll be the first thing I do.'

‘She'll like that,' Peggy said. ‘She missed 'em this evening.'

He suddenly realized what day it was and what else was being missed. ‘You ought to be at the ding-dong,' he said, feeling remorseful because she'd foregone it on his account. Now that really
was
friendship.

‘I'm going straight there when I get back, don't you worry,' she said. ‘They're all waiting to hear how you are.'

She's taken responsibility for me, Jim thought, but it didn't surprise him. It seemed a perfectly natural thing for her to do.

And so the visits and the conversations continued. By Wednesday he had recovered enough to tell her about his injuries and to describe what little he could remember of the accident. On Thursday he told her about the nightmare he'd had the night before.

‘I was falling through the air,' he said, ‘and there was this pit full a' snakes all hissing and writhing. I can't stand snakes. Never could.'

‘I know how you feel,' she said, and exchanging confidence for confidence, she told him about the ghost in the Tower, who ‘must have been buried alive to walk like that', and the Tillingbourne anchorite, ‘bricked into a tiny cell with no windows or light or anything, imagine it', and how her greatest fear was the thought of being bricked up alive like they were.

He was amazed by the story and by her confession of fear. ‘Not likely to happen nowadays though,' he said, to bring them back into comfortable territory.

‘No, thank heavens,' she agreed.‘They was horrible in them days:'

‘Changed a bit now,' he said. ‘
You
wouldn't want to be an anchorite, would you?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I would not. And I wouldn't ha' wanted to be one then neither.'

He looked at her, sitting so steadfastly beside him, and it occurred to him that until this week he'd never really looked at her before. She'd been one of his neighbours, that was all, a short brown-haired girl with the sort of bland, chubby-cheeked London face that he saw over and over again in the streets and markets, and here in the hospital too. But now he was noticing other things.

‘You've got green eyes,' he said.

Such a personal observation made her blush. ‘They're like my Dad's,' she said, maintaining her composure with difficulty. ‘Greeny-brown with brown stripes.'

‘So they are,' he said, looking at them again. ‘You got a tabby cat and tabby eyes.'

And that pleased them both and the pleasure encouraged her to tell him all about her father and what a dear kind man he'd been and how much she'd loved him.

‘Lucky you,' Jim said, when she stopped to draw breath. ‘My old man's not … Well you know what he's like.'

‘Yes,' she admitted. ‘I do.' In the curtained privacy of a hospital ward, under the buzz of other people's conversations, it was possible to say such things.

‘He's rotten to the old gel sometimes,' he said. ‘He don't treat her right. When I've finished my apprenticeship there's gonna be some changes I can tell you.'

‘What will you do?' she asked.

‘Give her enough money to feed us fer a start,' he said, quite fiercely. ‘Then I shall get out of that house. Find her a flat with a bath and running water and an indoor lavvy.'

‘Leave Paradise Row you mean?'

‘Yes. Course. Wouldn't you?'

She hadn't thought about it. ‘No,' she said. ‘I don't think so. I like it there. It's nice. What about the ding-dong?'

‘Don't you want to change things?' he asked. It didn't seem possible that anyone would go on enduring life in Paradise Row if they had a chance to escape from it.

‘We had a rector in the country,' she said, remembering him, ‘used to preach about making changes. Always on about it he was. He used to say, God give us the grace, or something or other, to … what was it?… change those things that ought to be changed and endure those things that ought to be endured, and know the one from the other.'

‘That's right,' he said, delighted by the quotation. ‘Change things, you see. That's what we all ought to do. Why should a rich man live in luxury up Blackheath and the poor pig it in Paradise Row? Why shouldn't we all have baths and a bedroom of our own and plenty to eat?'

‘I don't know,' she said. She'd always taken the prayer to mean that they were supposed to put up with things. What can't be cured must be endured, as Dad used to say. It was odd that he should interpret it so differently.

The sister was ringing her bell to mark the end of the visiting hour.

‘See you tomorrow,' Peggy said, rising to go. And in an attempt to end their conversation on a lighter note. ‘I'll change your library book. That's a change I
can
manage.'

‘Goodbye, Peg,' he said, smiling at her gratefully. ‘Thanks for coming.'

‘Soon be home,' she said.

But by the time his stitches were out and his ribs were sufficiently healed to be allowed home to a riotous reception at the next Saturday night ding-dong, nine more days had passed and they had established a friendship that had become so intimate it was quite a relief to be relinquishing
it and returning to the light of common day. But her admiration for his endurance and courage and his gratitude for her good sense and reliability continued unabated, and long after they both thought they had forgotten them, they were still putting down stronger and stronger roots.

There were times when Baby Furnivall found herself wondering whether it was really a good thing to be so spoilt. She knew how spoilt she was, of course. How could she be off knowing when she always got the best of everything? First in the bathtub before the kitchen fire of a Sunday evening, best cut off the joint every Sunday lunch-time, a new frock when Joan and Peggy both had theirs turned, ha'pennies for sweets, going to the pictures every school holiday with Mum and Mrs Roderick. Although to be honest that was difficult sometimes because Mrs Roderick was so sticky. Not that she could ever get Joan and Peggy to understand that. They thought it was unfair, because Mum had never taken them when they were at school. And Mum made matters worse by some of the things she said.

Take that first time, when they'd gone to see Al Jolson in
The Singing Fool
. Peggy had just started work as a housemaid at Miss Jones' over on Blackheath, and she'd come home with her hands all cracked and bleeding from the soda she had to use for cleaning, just at the very moment when she and Mum had their hats and coats on ready to go out. So it wasn't really the best of times. But Mum couldn't see that.

‘We're just off,' she'd said. ‘Your supper's dished up. It's on the stove.'

‘Off where?' Peggy asked, rubbing her hands.

‘To the pictures. It's the first talking picture. Al Jolson.'

‘Is she going?' Peggy said, glaring at her sister.

The glare had put Mum's back up. ‘And why not?' she said. ‘We can afford it now.'

‘Now that I'm working,' Peggy said bitterly. ‘Oh don't say it. Now that I'm working.'

‘If you're going to be unpleasant we shall go all the quicker,' Mum said. ‘It's not nice to be jealous of your sister. You should try and control it. We all have to work, you know.'

Peggy walked across to Baby and held out her chapped hands right in front of her eyes. ‘Take a look,' she ordered. ‘That's what work does. That's what'll happen to
your
hands when the time comes. Take a good look.'

It was really upsetting. She didn't have to do that. There was no call to be so nasty. Fortunately Mum soon put a stop to it.

‘Come along, Baby,' she said, heading for the door. ‘We can't stop here listening to spiteful nonsense. Put your hat on.'

So they went off to the pictures which was ever so good and soon made her forget about Peggy's unkindness.

And Peggy was left to eat her supper in the empty kitchen with only the cat for company. Serve her right.

But there were other things too. When Mum first bought her a bed of her own she'd been ever so pleased. But she soon discovered that there was a snag to it. Once she was out of the way, Peggy and Joan lay awake at night whispering together in that great bed of theirs, and when she asked them what they were talking about, they told her she was too young and ordered her to go back to sleep, which was horrid of them because it made her feel ever so left out.

She often felt left out, if the truth were told. It was hard for her to make friends. Marie O'Donavan played with her now and then and at school she drifted from group to group, but she was always on the edge of things and never accepted by anyone, and although she took pains to be bright and cheerful and to look as pretty as she could, because she knew how important it was for a girl to look pretty, she never found herself a best friend. Joan went off to the pictures with all sorts of friends, servants like her
and nannies that she met in the park, and Peggy had Megan from the Tower, and Lily next door and even Pearl now that they were all out at work, but she had no one. Even the cat didn't like her. It never sat on her lap, at least never of its own accord, and yet it jumped up to make a fuss of Peggy every time she sat down. It wasn't fair. Sometimes she felt so sorry for herself she sat down and cried.

But at other times she wondered whether being spoilt wasn't half the problem. Last year, when they were all making special New Year resolutions because 1 January was going to be 1930 and the start of a new decade, she'd decided to make a special effort not to ask for favours. And she'd done it. For a jolly long time. Nearly three months. Well, two and a half anyway. But it didn't make any difference because Mum offered her treats anyway and she couldn't refuse without looking ungrateful and running the risk of upsetting Mum or bringing on her nerves. And the new decade was just the same as the old one had been. Worse if anything. People were still being laid off work and there was never enough money. Even the banks were in trouble. There been a slump or something over in America and after that shops went bust and closed down nearly every week. Even nice ones like Cleavers where they sold hats. And now it was the second spring of the thirties, the early leavers were already off to work and she was faced with a dilemma.

In July she would have to start work too, and she was dreading it. She really couldn't bear to go into service like Joan and Peggy. They always looked tired, positively grey sometimes, and their hands were awful, red and swollen and scored with cracks and lines, awful. She'd known that without having them pushed right under her eyes. What she wanted was a nice clean job in a shop, like Amy Jennings, where she could look pretty and she wouldn't have to work until her back ached. But that wouldn't be easy. If she got herself a shop job Joan and Peggy might get cross. And they'd certainly say she was spoilt, because that's what it would look like. It was all very difficult.