London Pride (30 page)

Grandpa Potter was asleep in the corner with his jaw dropped and his mouth wide open, Aunt Maud was nowhere to be seen, Baby was eating something out of a crumpled paper-bag, and Mum and Mrs Roderick were head to head in the corner reminiscing about their long-dead husbands. It was all rather melancholy. But over by the window an argument had begun between Mr Brown, old Mr Allnutt, Bertie Allnutt and Mrs Geary and as that at least sounded lively she wandered over to the edge of it, intrigued by the noise they were making.

Mr Brown was holding forth about the unemployed. What a peculiar thing to be talking about at a wedding. ‘The government ought to do something,' he said. Three million! It's a bloody scandal!' His little, seedy face was pink with passion.

‘I don't see what they could do, Cyril,' Mrs Geary said. ‘If there ain't work there ain't work. It's a terrible time to get married.'

‘You see, what it is,' Mr Allnutt argued in his reasonable way, ‘what it is it's an international problem. No one government will ever be able to solve it.'

‘Don't talk to me about the government,' Bertie Allnutt said. ‘They oughter be shot, the lot of 'em. Putting on dress suits and sucking up to the nobs. And they was supposed ter be Socialists.'

‘That Macdonald's the worst,' Mr O'Donavan put in. ‘We elected him to lead a Labour government an' what does he do? He goes an' joins the Tories.'

‘They don't know how to run things in this country,' Mr Brown said scathingly. ‘None of 'em. They should go over to Germany. Take a leaf out of their book. There's a chap there knows exactly what ter do. Put the nation first he says. Put people to work building roads. Get rid of all the Jewboys. They're half the trouble.'

‘Is that a fact?' Mr Cooper said, mocking him.

Mr Brown bristled. ‘He's got the right idea, you ask me.'

‘Who has?' Mrs Geary said.

‘This German chap, What's-'is-name. Adolf Hitler.'

‘Never heard of him,' Mrs Geary said. ‘Look at that, Peggy, my glass is empty.'

Changes began at number six Paradise Row as soon as the ding-dong was over and the wedding guests had departed.

‘You two girls can sleep in the double now,' Mum said, ‘and that'll leave the single for me.'

Baby was annoyed. ‘But that's my bed,' she protested.

‘Don't be stupid,' Flossie said wearily. It had been a long day and she was drooping with fatigue. ‘You don't own beds.' It would be a relief not to have to keep putting the camp bed up and down every morning and evening. ‘Anyway, just think. Now we can have a proper front room for company.

‘I know all about front rooms for company,' Baby complained. ‘Nobody ever goes in them.' But she had to accept the new arrangement just the same.

In the months that followed the wedding, Peggy was often rather lonely when she was at home. She missed Joan's company very much, and especially at night, for that was when they'd always talked to one another. And the mornings were made tense by Mum's nerves, which were often particularly fragile when she woke.

The newspapers were full of gloomy reports too, only in their case it was the health of the national economy that was causing concern. There were between six and seven million people living on the dole because their breadwinners were unemployed, and the editors all declared that ‘something had to be done about it.' In November the newly-elected National Government took action. They
introduced a ‘means test' which was designed to ensure that only the most poverty-stricken families would be allowed to receive what the posh papers were calling ‘State charity'.

‘Fat lot a' good that'll be,' Mr Allnutt said bitterly. ‘They won't make jobs appear by starving the unemployed, poor beggars. If there ain't work, there ain't work. Look at John Cooper. Now the pictures are all talking they give
him
the sack. Supposed to be progress that is. Well progress for the film stars I dare say but it ain't done much for him.'

So many people were unemployed, or like Mr Boxall only offered work on rare occasions, that Peggy felt quite guilty to be holding down a job of her own, even though it was a very poorly-paid one. But she wouldn't have given it up for the world, because the time she spent behind the counter at Aimee's was the most enjoyable part of her day. The hours were long and sometimes her back ached with so much standing, and sometimes she found it hard to be patient when one of the wealthy customers was particularly pernickety, but despite all that she and Megan had a lot of fun in the shop. And most of it stemmed in one way or another from Mr MacFarlane.

The shop was owned and named by Mrs Aimee MacFarlane who was tall and determined with iron-grey hair and a will to match. But her husband was a different creature altogether. For a start he was more than a head shorter than Madame Aimee, a small, dapper, kindly man, and what was even better, a man without the slightest trace of a sense of humour. He did all the day-to-day work of running the establishment and lived in constant awe and occasional terror of his formidable wife. Consequently he was a figure of fun to his young assistants, and his appearance first thing in the morning, bouncing down the carpeted staircase in the middle of the shop beaming his greetings at them, was enough to set all five of them giggling.

‘Currrtesy and efficiency, gurrrls!' he would cry in his burring Scots.

And they would all chorus back at him, ‘Yes, Mr MacFarlane. Currrtesy and efficiency.'

He didn't seem to mind when they mimicked his accent, and he seemed impervious to all the tricks they played on him. Once they put all the drawers in the wrong places in their neat glass-fronted cabinets and he spent the rest of the morning patiently setting them to rights and worried sick in case his wife came in and caught him at it. On another occasion they blacked out Megan's front teeth with soot and had the poor man pale with anxiety on her account for the rest of the day.

They put salt in his tea and drawing pins on his chair. When the shop was closed for the night and the goods were being covered, they hid under the dust-sheets and crawled behind the counters and pretended to faint when he was passing. And their laughter bubbled and welled in the empty spaces the customers had left behind, echoing along the panelled walls and between the high mahogany counters.

‘It's being so cheerful as keeps us going,' they said to one another. And the silly catch phrase set them giggling all over again.

And of course, Mr MacFarlane was the first person they rushed to tell whenever Megan fell in love, which she did with quite amazing regularity. She was an entertainment for them too, because her pashes were so short-lived and yet she claimed each one as ‘the real thing' and spent her every spare moment in a dewy-eyed day-dream about her current beloved.

‘Who is it this time?' their amiable employer would ask. And when he was told, he would shake his head and suck his teeth and say it was ‘Extrrraordinarrry!' which delighted them all the more.

After that first brief pash for the handsome Tom, Peggy had remained heart-whole. Whenever she saw the young man nowadays she thought how insipid and silly he was and felt ashamed of herself for weaving such a stupid fantasy about his empty-headed innocence. In fact she was beginning to wonder whether the whole business of being in love wasn't simply a figment of an overheated imagination. She couldn't imagine any of the married couples in Paradise Row ever behaving like Megan. The O'Donavans were always weighed down by babies, the
Browns were a joke, Mr Boxall was a thug who terrified his wife, even Bertie Allnutt and his wife were quiet and prosaic although they seemed quite fond of one another. Sometimes when she saw a courting couple walking hand-in-hand, she wondered whether some people managed to sustain that lovely light-hearted feeling for longer than others, but it was impossible to be sure.

She would have liked to ask Joan what she thought about it, but although her sister came to visit every early closing day, love was the one thing they never talked about, and Peggy didn't like to open the subject because that might have looked like prying into her sister's private life, and she didn't want to pry.

Actually like so many girls who marry young to get away from home the new Mrs Joan Owen was preoccupied by the discovery that there was a price to pay for her freedom, and that ironically the price was a sudden and total dependence on a stranger. Sometimes it alarmed her to realize how very little she knew about Sid Owen. The teasing and daring that had attracted her to him in the first place was still in evidence but now she was seeing other and less attractive sides to his nature. It was one thing to sit in the pictures together laughing and flirting, and to kiss under the trees on the way home, safe in the languorous knowledge that they couldn't ‘go any further', quite another to have to endure ‘going all the way' when she wasn't really in the mood for it, and then get up at three next morning to light the stove so as to cook him breakfast before he went down to the bakehouse.

He was so particular about everything, that was the trouble, and he could go roaring off into a temper at the least little thing. The table had to be set according to his specifications, his dinner had to be ready on the stroke of twelve, with a bottle of Watney's pale ale beside his place, and woe betide her if she'd bought him some other brew. She'd made that mistake once and had the bottle hurled across the room at her, and although she'd ducked out of the way, it had broken against the wall and spattered the curtains, and that had meant hours of cleaning and scrubbing afterwards.

As the months passed she learned how to placate him,
thinking ahead so as to forestall a row. But even so she was often caught out by a temper she hadn't foreseen, and sometimes she was slapped or punched or thrown across the room. And when the spring came and she knew for certain that she was pregnant she made a mistake that could have had even more serious consequences.

She'd been so happy about her condition it hadn't occurred to her that he wouldn't welcome it too. He'd taken her to the pictures that night to see
I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
, which he'd enjoyed very much, and as they walked home through the buzzing streets she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and told him the news.

‘You're what?' he said.

She mistook his annoyance for surprise and told him again.

‘I'm expecting,' she said happily. ‘Ain't it grand?'

‘No it ain't,' he said, shaking off her hand. ‘What was you thinking of you stupid woman? We can't afford a baby. You'll have to get rid of it.'

She drew herself away from him, remembering the pain and humiliation of that awful abortion, the horror of killing that poor fragile baby. ‘No,' she said. ‘I won't.'

‘You will if I say so,' he said, threatening her with his face.

Anything else, she thought, but not that. ‘It's
my
body,' she said. ‘You can't tell me what to do with my own body.' She was trembling with the fear of what she might provoke but she had to make a stand.

‘Yes I can,' he said, still threatening. ‘You're
my
wife. You belong to me. If I say you'll get rid of it, you'll get rid of it, unless you want a walloping.'

Could he make her do it? she wondered, looking sideways at his glowering expression and feeling more and more afraid of him. He was cruel enough to hit her, but did he have the right to force her to get rid of her baby? She knew enough now to realize that abortions were illegal but fear was confusing her.

‘Well?' he asked, as she'd been silent for a long time.

‘All right,' she said. ‘But don't let's talk about it now, eh?'

He took that as agreement and instantly became his
charming teasing self again. ‘How about some fish an' chips?' he said. ‘I could just go a pennorth, couldn't you?'

She carried that conversation about in her mind for the next three weeks like a great cold stone weighing her down. She could imagine his fury if she didn't do as she was told, but she knew she couldn't do as she was told even so, and especially when the child wriggled inside her. ‘Don't you worry, my darling,' she said to it. ‘I won't let anyone hurt you. Ever. You're much too precious, I'll think of something.'

In the end she decided she would make a public announcement to the family. She and Sid and old Mrs Geary were invited to high tea every other Sunday now that Mum had a front room for entertaining in. So there was the ideal opportunity ready made. She persuaded her mother to invite Mr Owen to their next high tea, explaining that she'd ‘got something to tell you all', and Flossie, who had a pretty good idea what that something would be, was quick to arrange it. Now it was simply a matter of choosing her words.

She waited until they'd all been served and the tea was poured and they were all enjoying Mum's meat pie and pickles, and laughing at Peggy's tale of the latest high jinks in ‘Aimee's Quality Haberdashery', then she took a deep breath and began.

‘Mum,' she said, ‘Mr Owen, what would you say if I told you you were going to be grandparents?'

Sid sucked in his breath in an ominous whistle, and old Mr Owen made a grimace, but before either of them could say anything Peggy was on her feet, and rushing round the table to throw her arms round her sister's neck and hug her rapturously. ‘Oh Joan!' she said. ‘How gorgeous! I'm so happy for you. When's it going to be?'

‘September,' Joan said, hugging her and beaming at Mum. And then Mum and Baby got up to hug her too.

‘Wonderful news,' old Mrs Geary said, putting down her teacup and smacking her lips. ‘Wonderful! Nothink like a baby to cheer you all up, that's what I always say. Warms the cockles of yer heart, don't it Mr Owen?'

After that, there wasn't very much that either of the Mr Owens could do or say, except agree.