London Pride Read online

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said. ‘It’ll be ever so warm in the winter.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ her mother said, setting the teapot down on its trivet at last, ‘the hours it’s took me.’ But despite the querulous tone of her voice, they all knew she was pleased by the answer, because she was patting the tea cosy, and she always patted things when she was pleased. ‘You can wear it tonight,’ she said, ‘when you watch the Keys.’

  ‘You got another present yet,’ Dad said, handing his across the table.

  It was a pencil box absolutely crammed with lovely coloured pencils.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, quite breathless with the pleasure of it. ‘Oh Dad! It’s just what I wanted.’ And she slipped from her seat to kiss him rapturously, over and over again.

  ‘Do you mean to eat this breakfast, Joe Furnivall, or don’t you?’ Mum said, quite crossly. ‘You muck about any longer an’ it’ll all go cold on you.’

  Peggy tidied her presents onto the dresser at once, and Dad looked a bit sheepish, and they all settled down to breakfast. There were meals to eat and chores to do no matter what sort of day it was.

  The chores took quite a long time that morning, because their usual supper was going to be a birthday tea, so Mum was hard at work in the kitchen, and Joan and Peggy had to see to the bedrooms on their own, turning beds and airing bedding, emptying heavy slop buckets, polishing basins, beating rugs and sweeping into all the corners, tidying and dusting. As Joan said, rather wearily, there was no end to it.

  ‘We shan’t neither of us get out before dinner at this rate,’ she complained.

  ‘Never mind,’ Peggy said, smoothing a pillow case. ‘We got all the afternoon.’ They were always allowed to play out in the afternoons.

  ‘Eileen’ll ‘ave been waiting hours,’ Joan said, tweaking the counterpane. ‘If I don’t look sharp she’ll have something to say, I can tell you.’ Eileen was her best friend and not one to wait with much patience.

  Peggy’s friends always waited for her without complaining at all. She had lots of friends because there weren’t many children living in the Tower and they all went to the school in the Casemates so you could be friends with everyone. It was nice living in the Tower of London, like being in a village only right in the middle of the City. They had their own hospital in the Barracks and their own church on the Green and there were lots of wonderful places to play, out in the Casemates when it was dry, sitting in one of the arrow slit windows when it was wet, on the Green before the visitors arrived and even in the gun park on the Wharf overlooking the River Thames where you could strut about lording it over the visitors like anything because they were never allowed there. You weren’t really supposed to be there either but that made it all the better.

  That afternoon they played in the Casemates, British Bulldog and long rope skipping and ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ until heat and exertion finally slowed them down. Then they paired for gentler games like tops and dabs and hoops, and Peggy and her very best friend Megan found a quiet corner down by the archway that led to the Green where they could chalk out a game of hopscotch.

  The chalking out took longer than the game because both little girls were very particular about it. The squares had to be perfectly straight before they were satisfied with them, so there was much spitting on fingers and rubbing out, and they’d only just hopped the first round when Megan scrambled to her feet and put her grubby hand to her mouth in alarm.

  ‘Oh lor’!’ she said. ‘Here comes the Bully boys. I’m off out of it.’ And she went at once, trotting through the arch into the Casemates before Peggy had time to pick up the pebble for the next go.

  The Bully boys were Fred and Sam the ten-year-old twins of Sergeant-Major Bullough, and most people ran away from them. They were rather undersize for their age, but what they lacked in inches they more than made up for in aggression. They had rough red hands and big booted feet and the fair hair that could have redeemed their faces with some softness if only it had been allowed to grow was cut back to a mere eighth of an inch of stubble so that their skulls looked misshapen and brutal. They walked like battering rams, bent forward from the waist, fists clenched and bullet heads to the fore, squat faces scowling.

  Just the sight of them made Peggy feel uneasy, but she stood her ground and put on a bold face, because she was seven years old now, wasn’t she, and a soldier’s daughter and born in the Tower, and she had to be brave.

  Even so, Fred, who was the first to reach her, looked horribly fierce. He came straight to the point. ‘Stinko says you’re staying up fer the Keys ternight. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, standing defensively, her body turned away from him as though they were fencing, and her toes flexed just in case she had to run.

  ‘Yeh. Stinko said,’ he nodded. ‘That’s all right then.’

  She felt vaguely glad that it was all right, but she remained alert because the words were more ominous than their meaning.

  ‘Me an’ Sam are going on a ghost hunt after the Keys,’ he said prowling round her so that they were face to face again. ‘You game?’

  ‘A ghost hunt?’ she said, her heart quaking at the idea.

  ‘Take you with us if yer like,’ Sam said. ‘Our mum’s cleaning the Salt Tower. We got the keys.’ He had such an eager expression on his face, he looked as though he was barking.

  Peggy didn’t want to go on a ghost hunt at all. She knew there were lots of ghosts in the Tower, because everybody who lived there knew that, but until that moment, being a sensible child, she had managed to avoid thinking about them.

  She tried to temporize, using her mother’s formula. ‘Don’t know,’ she said, staring him out. ‘Depends.’

  ‘What on?’ Sam said.

  She didn’t know the answer to that, because nobody had ever queried her mother when she said such a thing. ‘Why don’t you take Stinko?’ she suggested. ‘He’d like it.’

  ‘Give over!’ Sam mocked. ‘He’ll be in bed, same as all the others. We’ll be the only ones up that time a’ night. Are you game?’

  They had argued her into a corner. What could she say? She blinked at them in the strong sunlight. ‘I don’t think I want to.’

  Her answer aggravated them. That wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Nor what they expected, because she was renowned for being a sport and good for a dare. Look at the way she’d balanced along the wall that time. Oh no! She was to come with them, that’s what. It wouldn’t be half so much fun without a girl to frighten. They turned their combined powers upon her at once.

  ‘What sort of answer d’you call that?’ Sam said scornfully.

  ‘She’s scared,’ Fred said, thrusting his bullet head at her. ‘She’s nothing but an old scaredy-cat.’

  She defended herself at once. ‘No I ain’t.’

  ‘You are!’

  ‘I ain’t!’

  ‘If you don’t come with us,’ Sam said, ‘you’re a scaredy-cat. Proven.’

  Faced with such crushing logic there was nothing she could do but agree to join them. She couldn’t admit to being a coward, and specially not today. ‘All right then,’ she said. ‘Only …’

  But they’d taken her agreement and were already walking away with it.

  ‘Ten o’clock sharp,’ Fred called back to her. ‘By the Bloody Tower.’

  She stood where she was in the sunlight, turning the pebble round and round in her fingers, calm and still even though her heart was throbbing with alarm at what she’d agreed to do. A ghost hunt. She couldn’t go on a ghost hunt. What if they actually saw one? It made her blood run cold even to think of it. Imagine being touched by a ghost. And what if it had no head? She’d heard enough about them to know that lots of ghosts were people who’d been beheaded. Imagine seeing a ghost walking towards you, ready to touch you, and with no head. Oh, she couldn’t go. She just couldn’t. But how was she going to get out of it, now she’d given her word?

  ‘What did they want?’ Megan said, shadowing up beside her. />
  ‘Nothing much,’ Peggy said. But then as Megan continued to look curious and she felt she had to offer some sort of explanation, she added, ‘Just if I was staying up for the Keys.’

  ‘Did you tell ’em you was?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peggy said, thinking, if only I hadn’t.

  ‘Lucky you!’ Megan said with some envy. ‘I wish it was me.’

  ‘Your go,’ Peggy said, handing her the pebble. Their conversation was making her feel uncomfortable, keeping thoughts of the ghost hunt prickling in her mind when she would rather have been cheering herself up by thinking about something else. As Megan went hopping through the squares with her skirts and apron swinging, she looked back across the cobbles at the Green, where two ravens were strutting and a Yeoman Warder was lecturing a party of elderly ladies.

  The White Tower rose confidently before her on its high green mound, its rough stonework as yellow as sand and the dressed stone at every corner a quite dazzling white in the sunshine, battlemented, solid and dependable. It made her think of her father. I’ll tell Dad, she thought. I’ll tell Dad at teatime. I’ll drop a sort of hint and then he’ll say I mustn’t go. That was the answer to the Bully boys.

  But it was easier planned than done.

  For a start there was a ritual to a birthday tea that couldn’t be interrupted, and certainly not by stories about a ghost hunt. Mum’s meat pie had to be properly admired before it was eaten with the customary green salad and chips and pickles, and the pie had to be followed by the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’, and then there were candles to be blown out and the cake to be cut, in carefully equal sections, except for Dad’s. But when the last portion had been handed across the table and they were all contentedly munching, the moment seemed to have arrived.

  ‘When me and Megan was playing out…’ she began.

  But Baby was speaking too and her voice was a lot louder. ‘I want to stay up and see the Keys with Peggy,’ she said, giving her father the benefit of her wide open eyes.

  Dad went on munching and didn’t say anything.

  ‘When me and Megan was playing …’ Peggy tried again.

  ‘Well you can’t,’ Joan said, scowling at Baby. ‘Because it ain’t your birthday.’

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ Baby pouted, tossing her curls. ‘I’m a big girl now.’

  ‘So you are, darling,’ her mother agreed, spearing her next mouthful of cake with a deft fork. ‘I don’t see why she shouldn’t, Joe. She’s plenty big enough and she’d love it.’

  Joe Furnivall raised his great head from his double slice of cake and munched for a while, contemplating his family with the placid gentleness of all grazing beasts. ‘Yes, she’s big enough,’ he said peaceably, ‘I’ll grant that, Mother. The point is, she ain’t old enough. Seven is when you see the Keys in this house. Our Joan was seven, weren’t you, Joanie? And now Peggy’s seven. And in three years our Baby’ll be seven and then it’ll be her turn. But not before. Fair’s fair.’

  Peggy made her third attempt. ‘When me and Megan…’

  ‘Hush!’ her mother said, flicking the word sideways at her before she turned her full attention to her husband. ‘It wouldn’t hurt,’ she said. ‘She’d be ever so good. After all she’s nearly old enough, and if you let her go, we could all go. All the family.’

  ‘Seven,’ Joe Furnivall said. ‘Seven’s old enough. And in any case it ain’t a family treat. It’s my treat for my daughters on the day they’re seven.’ And he closed the subject and ended the meal, standing up with an abruptness that showed that any further attempt at argument or conversation would be quite impossible.

  ‘Time I was off,’ he said, polishing his moustache with his napkin. ‘Get to bed sharpish, you girls. You too, Peggy. Three hours, shut-eye under the coverlet, there’s a good girl, same as Joanie did. I’ll be back for you at twenty-five to ten. Lovely tea, Mother.’ And he was walking away.

  ‘Dad!’ Peggy called after him. But he’d already reached the door.

  ‘Twenty-five to ten,’ he said, putting on his blue jacket. ‘Make sure you’re ready,’ setting his cap on that salt and pepper hair. And then he was gone.

  Oh dear, Peggy thought, now what shall I do? The lamplighter was lighting the gas in the street outside the parlour window. She could hear the pop of the gas, and then his feet clomping away along the cobbles. Then two Yeoman Warders passed in their everyday clothes on their way to the Club, chattering companionably. What was it Dad always said, when you were worried things might go wrong? ‘Never trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you.’ That was it. I won’t think about it, she decided, for the second time that day. I’ll think about the Keys. But it was the key to the Salt Tower that kept swinging into her mind, held up in the tough fingers of Sam Bullough.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘This way,’ Joe Furnivall said, leading his little daughter through the arch and into the Tower green. It was twenty-five to ten and the ceremony of the Keys was about to begin.

  Peggy walked beside him, holding his hand for protection. She had never been out in the Tower at night before, and even though there was a full white moon in the black sky above her head, it was very dark out there beneath the White Tower and now that the visitors had all gone home the place looked enormous and strange and threatening. During the day it had been a village green surrounded by familiar houses, now it was a place of menacing shadows flickering against the walls and patches of terrifying darkness breathing in doorways and arrow slit windows squinting down at her like sharp little eyes. Oh there were certainly ghosts about tonight.

  ‘Is it far?’ she said, and her voice was no more than a whisper.

  ‘Traitors’ Gate,’ he said cheerfully, bounding down Broad Walk Steps.

  ‘When me and Megan was playing…’ she said, making yet another effort.

  But he wasn’t listening to her. His mind was set on the treat ahead of them and he was striding towards it so quickly that she had to trot to keep up with him. Down the steps, along the path, under the Bloody Tower. No sign of the Bully boys yet, which was a relief, but once they were through the archway and into Water Lane she could see a group of toffs standing about in front of the terrible bars of Traitors’ Gate. That was a surprise. Had they come to see the Keys too? She thought she’d be the only one.

  They were making ever such a noise. The ladies kept giving little high-pitched laughs like rooks cawing, and flicking their fur stoles over their shoulders, and shifting about on the cobbles in their high-heeled shoes. And the gentlemen were all going ‘Waw-waw-waw’ like bloodhounds baying, when they weren’t sucking at their cigars. Oh dear, she thought, he’ll never hear me in all that row, even if I speak up as loud as I can, and in any case she couldn’t do that, because it was a bit private really, not something to go shouting about in front of strangers.

  ‘Here we are,’ her father said, walking right up to the group and standing beside them. ‘And here’s the others, and your Uncle Charlie.’

  Uncle Charlie was really called Yeoman Warder Macpherson and he wasn’t her uncle at all, only her godfather. He was a very loud man who smelt of snuff and brass polish, and had a nasty habit of pulling your hair or tweaking your ears when you weren’t looking, but for once Peggy was quite glad to see him, striding up Water Lane towards them with three other yeoman warders all in their ordinary clothes. If she couldn’t get Dad to forbid it, then the more people she had round her tonight the better.

  ‘Right on time,’ Uncle Charlie said, rolling his R’s in that Scottish way of his. ‘Looking forward to it eh, girlie?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, because she was looking forward to the ceremony.

  ‘Been going on four hundred years,’ Uncle Charlie said. ‘Every evening the same. Never stops. Not for war or plague or peasants’ revolts or anything. While we’ve ravens in the Tower and the Ceremony of the Keys every night, we’ve no need to worry about the safety of the nation, eh?’

  Peggy tried to look impressed, but it was difficult because it w
asn’t the safety of the nation she was worried about.

  ‘Here they come,’ her father said. ‘Not a sound now.’

  There was a little procession marching towards them along the lane. The toffs stopped talking and turned towards it, craning their necks, and in the sudden silence, Peggy could hear the crunch of boots and something jangling rhythmically. Then peering round her father’s bulk, she saw a lighted lantern bobbing towards her and above its light two ranks of scarlet jackets and a gleam of rifles. And there was the Chief Yeoman Warder in his lovely red uniform marching along between two rows of guardsmen and looking really rather short and stout between their tight-fitting jackets and the great furry height of their bearskins.

  She watched absorbed as the procession marched down Water Lane and through the gate beneath the Byward Tower and on through the darkness towards the outer gate in the Middle Tower, the lantern flickering and diminishing but the sound of boots as strong as ever. Keys rattled and clicked, an invisible sergeant-major sang orders, boots stamped, their steel tips sparking quick flashes of fire against the cobbles, and they all came marching back again, as everybody in the little watching crowd stood still, listening and waiting.

  And then, when they were no more than fifty feet away, a sentry sprang out of his box by the Bloody Tower and challenged them.

  ‘Halt! Who comes there?’

  It was very dramatic. Several of the ladies jumped, as though the challenge had been directed at them.

  But the Chief Yeoman Warder took it all calmly, singing back the answer. ‘King George’s Keys.’

  Not the Keys to the Tower of London, Peggy thought, nor the Keys to the Middle Tower, but King George’s Keys, no less. King George’s Keys. It sounded marvellously important.