Free London Pride by Beryl Kingston Page A

said.
    Joan knew the answer to that. ‘To save the gas,’ she said.
    It was only when they were out of the parlour and back in the kitchen with Mum and Aunty Connie that Peggy knew how much she missed her father. She suddenly remembered him alive and full of vigour sitting by the stove and showing her the Bible and telling her how she’d been born in the Tower. And she missed him with a raw aching pain in her stomach that made her feel as though someone had been hitting her there, and she had to go upstairs quickly so that she could cry on her own and not upset Mum, because Mum was upset enough already without her making things worse.
    For the rest of the day the house was full of Yeomen Warders. They came in one after the other, with their shoulders hunched and their bonnets in their hands, to ‘pay their respects’. Mum sat in the corner of the kitchen and cried and cried, and the three girls kept out of the way as well as they could, retreating into their bedroom or sitting on the stairs, because it made them feel so awful to see Mum in such a state and because there really wasn’t room for so many people in such a small house. But more visitors kept arriving, all that day and all that evening and all the day after, in a never-ending procession of sorrow and mumbled admiration. And Aunty Connie and Uncle Charlie came in and out to whisper to Mum about ‘arrangements’ and Mrs Jonson from next door took them all in to her house every evening for supper, which was just as well because Mum seemed to have forgotten all about meals.
    But after two more bewildered days Mum told them it was ‘the funeral’ and that they were all to be as good as gold. By mid morning the house was full of people again, only this time a lot of them were strangers, all dressed in black and most of them smelling of mothballs. Wreaths arrived and were dangled into the candlelit parlour, and then six Yeomen Warders were at the door in their black cloaks and between them they carried Dad’s coffin out of the house in a waft of ferns and roses and carnations.
    Peggy couldn’t understand much of the funeral serviceexcept that the chaplain said how brave Dad was, ‘Valiant in war and dependable in peace’ were the words he used, and they sounded lovely even though she wasn’t quite sure what they meant. And then their black visitors shuffled out of the church, looking solemn, and they were all driven off to a churchyard in a parade of black cars and stood round the grave like black crows making silly remarks, and afterwards they all came home again and Aunty Connie produced cups of tea and plates and plates full of sandwiches to feed them. Which Joan said was downright unnecessary.
    Peggy was most upset by them, because they were all talking such nonsense and none of them were thinking about Dad at all and some of them were laughing in a horrible high-pitched way. But she tried to be sensible. I mustn’t cry, she told herself, even if they
are
horrid, because someone’s got to hand round the sandwiches. But they were horrid, just the same.
    There was a bad-tempered old man that Mum said was their grandfather, and a woman with hardly any teeth, who was their Aunt Maud, and a large man with a red face and sandy hair who was their Uncle Gideon. He was a very jolly man with a booming voice, but to Peggy’s horror he’d lost the top joints of the two middle fingers on his left hand.
    â€˜Chopped ’em off fer sausage meat,’ he said cheerfully when he saw her looking at the stumps.
    â€˜Really?’ Baby said, most impressed.
    â€˜Gideon!’ Aunt Maud warned. ‘That’s quite ènough, if you please!’
    What a nasty man, Peggy thought. Fancy chopping off his own fingers. And she went off at once to serve sandwiches to the people on the other side of the room.
    But at last the long peculiar day was over and all the guests had gone away and Flossie and her