Free London Pride by Beryl Kingston Page B

daughters had washed the dishes and returned borrowed crockery to their neighbours and swept the house clean, and now they were alone together in a curiously empty kitchen. Peggy felt completely exhausted.
    â€˜We’ll just enter it in the Bible,’ Mum said, ‘and then we can get to bed.’ She spoke sharply as if she was crosswith them. ‘Lift it down if you please, Joan.’
    So Joan put the family Bible on the kitchen table, and Mum got the ink stand and took up the pen and wrote: Company Sergeant-Major Joseph Furnival died Thursday 27 July 1922. ‘Ah well,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Off to bed all of you.’
    They went to bed obediently but none of them could sleep and Peggy cried all night. Watching his death being entered in the Bible had upset her terribly. It was all so final and it made her realize that she would never see him again. Oh Dad! she mourned inside her head. How are we going to manage without you?

CHAPTER 5
    The fortnight that followed was very subdued. The three girls ran errands and helped with the housework and kept out of the house as much as they could, although there wasn’t anywhere particular for them to go because they’d broken up for the summer holidays. And gradually, day by miserable day, they got used to living without their father even though his absence was a perpetual numbness in their minds.
    And then one day they came home at dinner time to find a travelling trunk in the kitchen.
    â€˜What’s that?’ Joan asked.
    Mum answered her brusquely. ‘We’re packing,’ she said.
    â€˜What for?’ Joan said, scowling at her.
    â€˜We’re going to live in the country with your grandpa and your Aunty Maud. It’s all arranged.’
    â€˜Leave the Tower?’ Peggy said. Oh they couldn’t leave the Tower. They couldn’t possibly.
    â€˜Don’t start!’ Mum said. ‘If I say we’re going to the country, we’re going to the country.’
    â€˜But why?’ Joan said.
    â€˜Your father’s gone an’ they’ll need the house for the next Yeoman Warder,’ Mum said. ‘We’ve had a fortnight’s grace. Now it’s up.’
    â€˜But…’ Joan began again.
    â€˜Set the table,’ Mum said. ‘Can’t you see my nerves arein shreds? D’you want to make
me
ill next? Is that what you want, you horrible girl? You just set the table.’ And she banged out of the room and up the stairs.
    Joan and Peggy laid the table quickly.
    â€˜I don’t want to live in the country,’ Joan said.
    â€˜Nor do I,’ Peggy said miserably. This sudden news was so dreadful she could hardly bear to think about it. To have no Dad to look after them and then to be told they were going to leave the Tower. It was as if the earth had been snatched away from under her feet. All safety and security was gone.
    â€˜Nor do I either,’ Baby echoed.
    They sat round the table unhappily and waited.
    â€˜It was your birthday,’ Baby said to Peggy. ‘You was eight, only you never had it.’
    Peggy had forgotten all about birthdays. During the last two weeks there’d only been Dad and that awful empty feeling. ‘When?’ she said.
    â€˜On the Saturday,’ Baby told her. ‘After the funeral.’
    Peggy tried to remember dates and couldn’t do it, but Baby was probably right. It was certainly well into August by now. ‘Perhaps you don’t have birthdays when your Dad’s dead,’ she said reasonably.
    They all thought that very likely. But it didn’t solve the problem of their banishment to the country.
    â€˜We shall hate it,’ Joan said. ‘I don’t think we ought to go:
    But young though she was, Peggy knew they would have to put up with it no matter what they might think. ‘Perhaps it’ll be all right,’ she said, trying to look on the bright side.
    But it wasn’t. It