Peace, Perfect Peace by Josephine Kamm

Author:Josephine Kamm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2019-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

The next day started badly, for Frances overslept. June, who refused to be hurried, ate porridge, bacon, and toast with the leisure of one for whom nine-o’clock school meant less than nothing. “Don’t worry,” she said, as she accepted a cup of milk, “lots of the children are late always. Their mothers don’t wake up or have to buy something on the way just like you do.”

“I don’t approve of being late for school or anything else,” said Frances with her A.T.S. training and experience behind her, “so hurry up.”

June wiped her mouth and got down from her chair at the card-table, which would have to serve as a dining-table until the other was mended. “As I’m late, need I go to the lav.?”

“Of course you must. I’m sure Gran would never have let you off.”

“No, she wouldn’t, but I thought you mightn’t take it so seriously. It never seems important to me and it’s such a waste of time.”

“Shoo!” said Frances, who was piling crockery on to a tray. “We must start in five minutes.”

Having broken a shoelace, mislaid her pencil-box, and forgotten a clean handkerchief, June took rather longer than five minutes to get ready. She was inclined to dawdle on the short walk to school, wondering and exclaiming at each fresh evidence of post-war London life. “Why do people stand in a long line outside a shop instead of going in and buying what they want?”

“Because there isn’t enough food in the shops to go round and there aren’t enough shop assistants to serve what there is,” said Frances, conscious that she had given a most inadequate explanation.

“I don’t see,” June began, but at that moment her attention was caught by a very small pony harnessed to a cartload of logs. “What’s all that wood for, Mummy? I’m sure it’s too heavy for the pony.”

“I expect it will be sold pretty quickly.” A cross-eyed man, wearing a check cap with the peak over the back of his head, was stuffing logs into a sack and shouting unintelligible instructions to the boy who was helping him load. Then the two of them staggered down the area steps of a house scattering wood as they went. “Come along,” said Frances, tugging at June’s hand, “and I’ll tell you what the logs are for as we go.”

“Are they something to do with Christmas? We’ll have to be doing our Christmas shopping soon.”

At Bayswater Road the traffic swirled past them, and Frances clutched at June as though she expected her to fling herself under a bus. It was so long since she had taken the children walking in London that she was nervously apprehensive of what might happen to them.

“It’s all right, Mummy, I won’t run away.” June gently disengaged her hand. “Now tell me about the wood,” she said, as they reached the other side of the road.

“Most people won’t have enough coal this winter so they will have to burn wood to eke out what they’ve got. Wood has a very nice smell and looks good when it’s burning, but doesn’t give out so much heat as coal.

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