Morning constitutional on Hampstead Heath.

(Daughters presented at court, while I’m at it.)

1920 –

THE PAST framed itself into a child-crowded doorway,

Peggy’s seven siblings looked up at her through the years,

There she was, fourteen years in her, the obedient eldest,

whitening her knuckles against a washboard with soap,

cleaning windows with scrunched-up newspaper and vinegar,

plaiting newspaper to start coal fires, scraping the grate,

fetching the coal from the hole four floors down

in the basement, bathing the smallest in a tin tub

of hand-me-down, tepid water, checking

for lice, dirt behind ears, under fingernails, toenails,

boiling soiled nappies and towels on the stove, peeling

innumerable spuds for stew, the peelings for compost

to be dug into the vegetable patch in spring’s softer soil.

Between chores Peggy hemmed herself out of adolescence,

apprenticed to her mother’s pernickety tuition, making

velvet evening gowns, elaborate lacy wedding dresses.

She imagined balls and finery, envied the porcelain dolls’

hands of the la-di-dahs who came for fittings, rejected

her station in life; aspired to a husband, a child, a home

of her own, and entry to the middle classes.

PEGGY

‘THE SKY’S a bowl of dirty washing-up water.

I have to crane my neck forty-five degrees and squint

up past grimy buildings to see some tainted blue.

I want to see a lovely bird-span of sky where I live.’

Peggy cut a pattern out of newspaper with large scissors,

hands moving steadily across the wooden floor,

voice light with a whispery, breathless wistfulness.

‘Everything I do keeps my head down, fixed on work

but when Leslie and I marry we’ll share a sky together.’

Mary Jane responded to her eldest’s fancies, a grim smile

as she threaded cotton through a miniscule hole,

her voice once lyrical as a trickling stream, hardened

by stunted desires, nasalised by city concrete.

‘You’ll do better than I did, then, and you could do worse.

He’s of business stock, not the wondering type, reliable,

and he can probably take a good tongue-lashing.

A husband who can be jollied along is best.’

‘One thing’s for sure, Ma, I won’t end up in pokey rooms

sharing your neighbour’s washing line and smelly toilet.’

‘You’re a cheeky wretch, aren’t you. Love’s a ladder, Peggy.

He’s suitable, first and foremost. Just work hard

so’s your children enter the professions or marry

into them. I don’t want any grandchildren of mine

rolling about in the gutter.’

CHAPTER 6

Abbey Wood, London, 1939 –

PEGGY

THE SIRENS sounded, an eerie deafening wail,

and we prepared for war. We got blue ration cards

and gas masks which made us look like deep sea-horses.

Blackouts, sandbags and shelters became daily words

but the planes didn’t come, we called it the Phoney War.

Ellen was upset, ‘Why didn’t we have the war today, Mummy?’

she moaned as if war was a present from Father Christmas.