Down an English Lane (31 page)

‘The Underground is very simple, Dad,’ said Tim. ‘Each line has a different colour, you see, and where they cross, that is where you have to change to a different line. The Central Line is red, and the Circle Line is yellow…’

‘Well, it’s good to know that one of us will know the way around,’ laughed Patience. ‘It’s years and years since I was in London. As a matter of fact, I’ve only been there once, and Luke has been twice, haven’t you, dear? We thought it would be a nice treat for all of us. You girls have been working so hard with your exams, and so has Timothy. And Johnny will be starting school in September, won’t you, love? Anyway, we thought a visit to our capital city would be a very good idea. Apparently the city is just beginning to get on its feet again, after the war. The Londoners have been so very brave and they deserve our support.’

‘Thank you ever so much for inviting me, Aunty Patience,’ said Maisie, finding her voice at last. ‘When are we going? Is it soon?’

‘Yes; just as soon as you break up from school in July. I know it will be hot in London at this time of the year, but never mind; I know we will enjoy every
minute of it. We’re going by train, of course. Change at Leeds, and then it’s straight through to London.’

‘To King’s Cross,’ added Timothy. ‘That’s the station we will arrive at.’

The first adventure in an exciting week was to travel in a taxi from the station through the busy streets of London. But busy was not really the word for it, thought Maisie. It was much more than busy; it was hectic, tumultuous, with the noise of taxi horns blaring, the revving of engines and the screech of brakes, and all around were hordes of people, thronging the pavements and taking their lives in their hands as they dashed across the roads. She had never seen so many people or so much traffic. It was far busier than Leeds, which she had not visited for several years. Living in sleepy Middlebeck for so long she had forgotten about the hubbub of city life. To be catapulted into it so suddenly was a shock, but she knew it was all going to be so thrilling.

They found that finding their way around London was not really difficult, provided that you had a good map with all the main streets and the places of interest clearly marked; and it was easier, they soon discovered, to walk rather than use the buses or the Underground. To appease Timothy, however, they did take a few journeys on the Tube,
so that he could show off his prowess with the multi-coloured map. And he was as good as his word; not once did he get them lost, or get on a train going the wrong way which, apparently, was a common mistake made by strangers to the city.

And to please Johnny they had a ride on one of the big red buses. He had a Dinky bus in his toy box at home, but it could not compare with the real thing. He sat on the front seat of the upper deck staring out delightedly at Nelson’s Column in the middle of Trafalgar Square, where hundreds of pigeons were pecking at the nuts thrown to them by tourists. Timothy tried to give a running commentary to his little brother, but he eventually gave up when he realised his words were going in one ear and out of the other. He, too, just stared, taking in the wonderful sights and storing the memories in his mind to be mulled over later.

Every evening when they had finished their sightseeing and returned to the hotel, Tim retired to the bedroom he was sharing with Luke, Patience and Johnny, to write up his diary. When they got back home he would make a journal, he had decided, including the postcards he had bought and some of the snapshots that Luke had taken.

Maisie and Audrey had no such good intentions. They had already done quite enough writing during the exam fortnight. But the memories of this holiday would be lasting and very precious ones, they were sure of that. The two of them were
sharing a bedroom and they lay awake for hours each night, discussing the events of the day. As Patience had predicted, it was hot in London, very hot; and the hotel, tucked away in a corner of one of the busiest parts of the city and surrounded by tall buildings, retained the heat of the day, even with the windows flung wide open. And when the girls finally fell asleep they were often awakened in the early hours of the next day by the dustcart collecting the refuse from the hotel and the others nearby. Their window overlooked a back alley, but even the dinginess of the view or the clang of dustbins and smashing of bottles at two o’clock in the morning could not detract from their delight in all the new experiences they were enjoying.

‘What have you enjoyed the best of all?’ asked Maisie as they lay in bed on the very last night. They had returned rather later than usual after having a final meal at what had become their favourite eating place: Lyon’s Corner House on the Strand. They had had a slap-up meal of steak and chips that evening, followed by apple pie and cream. Maisie had, again, been fascinated by the Nippies, as they were called, in their neat white aprons and caps, dashing hither and thither with their laden silver trays held high aloft.

‘Oh… I don’t know,’ replied Audrey. ‘What a difficult question. There’s so much to remember, isn’t there? I enjoyed the trip on the river boat, seeing all the sights from a different angle. St Paul’s
dome – d’you remember how it shone in the sunlight? And going under Tower Bridge and seeing all the cargo boats unloading in the Pool of London. And the Angel Inn; I thought it was amazing to think that it was there in Tudor times and that it’s still here. Just think, perhaps even William Shakespeare had a drink there.’ The captain of the boat had given a running commentary and had told them that the Angel Inn in Bermondsey was the oldest inn on that bank of the Thames. They had learned all sorts of gems of information this last week.

‘And the Changing of the Guard,’ Audrey continued. ‘I know it’s put on for tourists, for folk like us who want to stare, but it’s exciting all the same. And wasn’t Johnny thrilled?’

The little boy had stared, mesmerised, at the troop of Life Guards with their helmets shining in the sun and their gleaming bayonets pointing upwards at their side. Their red tunics had glowed as brightly as the geraniums in the flower beds near to Buckingham Palace, and the regimental music had made them feel ‘so proud to be British’, as Patience had remarked. Timothy had informed them that the Royal Standard flying – somewhat limply on that very hot day – from the palace flagpole meant that the King was at home. And how thrilling that was, to feel that King George the Sixth was actually so near to them.

‘I enjoyed the view from the Monument,’ said
Maisie. ‘It was a bit scary at first, looking down all that way…’

‘Scary! I was terrified!’ said Audrey. It had taken a while for Maisie to persuade her to take in the view, and she had kept her arm around her all the time. It had been a breathtaking view; the dome of St Paul’s was the focal point, then, further away, the Tower and the River Thames, like a broad greyish-blue ribbon running under its myriad bridges towards Westminster, an endless panorama of roofs, chimneys, spires, towers and domes. It was like that poem by Wordsworth, written on Westminster Bridge, Maisie had thought.

Timothy had reminded them, when they returned to terra firma, that the Monument was Sir Christopher Wren’s memorial to the Great Fire of London, and that the view that they had seen from the top that day was almost exactly the same as the one seen by Samuel Pepys and those who had lived in the city at that time, apart from the rebuilding of St Paul’s. For not only were some of the well-known sights visible from the Monument, but also a scene of destruction, the legacy of the Blitz; a scene such as would have been viewed following the devastating fire three hundred years before.

‘What a miracle it was that St Paul’s was not bombed,’ Luke had remarked when they had paid a visit to the cathedral, and had seen how it stood like a sentinel amidst the vast areas of rubbish and rubble which still surrounded it. In the patches of
earth the rose-bay willow-herb plant had grown up and flourished, covering stretches of ground with its bright pinky-purplish flowers. It had come to be known as London Pride by the inhabitants of the city.

‘Perhaps the next time we go they might have rebuilt the area around St Paul’s,’ said Maisie, recalling Luke’s words. ‘It’s said that London was rebuilt within three years of the Great Fire, but I don’t believe that, do you? It looks as though it may take much longer this time. War is dreadful, isn’t it, Audrey? I hope there will never, ever be another one.’ She stopped suddenly, realising that Audrey might find her remark tactless, considering that the girl had lost both her parents during the war. But Audrey did not appear to be affected by her friend’s words.

‘Yes…’ she agreed. ‘It is dreadful… But we have to look to the future now, as my father is always reminding us.’ It was amazing, really, how Audrey could refer to Luke as her father in such a forthright way. It had not always been so, certainly not at first, when she had been adopted by the rector and his wife, but now she seemed very proud of the fact. ‘And the future for you and me, Maisie, is exams and more exams,’ she went on. ‘We’ll start studying for our Higher in September.’

‘For goodness sake, give it a rest!’ retorted Maisie, laughing. ‘It’s ages and ages till September. Let’s try and think of something more cheerful…
Are you looking forward to seeing Brian again? Have you missed him?’

‘Mmm…sort of,’ said Audrey. ‘Yes, it’ll be nice to see him again. Actually, I’ve hardly thought about him at all; we’ve been so busy. What about you…and Ted?’

‘Same here,’ replied Maisie. ‘I must admit I’ve hardly given him a thought all week.’ She surprised herself by her admission, but it was true. ‘I sent him a card, but it seems as though out of sight has been out of mind as well. Isn’t that awful?’

‘Not really,’ said Audrey. ‘Middlebeck seems a long way away, doesn’t it? But I expect we’ll settle down again.’

‘We will have to, I suppose…’ said Maisie thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, we’d better try and go to sleep. Goodnight, love. Sleep tight…’

‘Goodnight, Maisie…’ her friend replied.

Maisie did not go to sleep for a while. Middlebeck did, indeed, seem to be a very long way away from London, not only in distance but in its way of life; the steady day to day existence endured – or maybe even enjoyed – by its inhabitants, who had no desire to live elsewhere or to seek a different kind of lifestyle. She had realised this past week that there was a whole world waiting for her away from the northern dales, not only in Britain but much further afield. She had never before been out of her native Yorkshire, and London was only the start. There were other parts of the British Isles to
explore; Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Lake District, the Cotswolds, or the far western counties of Devon and Cornwall. She had seen pictures in the windows of travel agencies they had passed, and these yet unseen places had beckoned to her enticingly.

In the windows of the airline agencies in the Strand or Regent Street – BOAC, KLM, or Pan American Airways, names which were starting to sound familiar, even to ordinary untravelled folk – there were models of aeroplanes with great silver wings, advertising flights to Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, or the United States of America.

And in the windows of the Cunard Company were models of the two great British ocean going liners, the Queen Elizabeth and her sister ship, the Queen Mary, which were now making the journey each week between Southampton and New York. There were adverts for cruise ships, too, visiting such wondrous places as the Mediterranean ports, the Norwegian fjords, or the islands of the South Seas.

Only for the rich, of course, excursions such as these, but that did not stop Maisie from wishing and hoping.

They arrived back in Middlebeck on Thursday afternoon, and the same evening Maisie had a surprise visit from Ted. Lily and Arthur, tactfully, left them alone in the living room to talk. Lily had
noticed the rather hangdog expression on the young man’s face, she had told Maisie later, and had guessed that he might want to speak to her privately.

‘This is a surprise,’ said Maisie. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you till after choir practice. I thought you might meet me out tomorrow night, like you sometimes do.’