London Pride by Beryl Kingston Page B

group and was standing beside their mother watching the proceedings with great interest.
    â€˜There you are,’ Mum said happily. ‘Ain’t he a fine fat Pig?’
    â€˜You killed him,’ Peggy said, with disbelief and revulsion.
    â€˜A’ course,’ Aunt Maud said. ‘That’s what pigs are for.’
    â€˜We got to eat,’ Mum said. ‘No good bein’ sentimental when you live on a farm. We always kill off old stock in the autumn. Old stock and young pigs. We don’t breed ’em for old age. Bred for the table they are. He’s had a good life.’
    â€˜We shall live off this pig all winter,’ Aunt Maud said. ‘Us and the Matthews. Pig’s fry, trotters, chitterlins, lard, pig’s head, roast pork, nice salt bacon. Won’t be a thing go to waste, you’ll see. He’ll last till the spring. Wait till you taste the bacon he’ll make.’
    But Peggy was still white with shock.
    â€˜You’ve bred a townie,’ Aunt Maud said to Flossie.
    â€˜She’ll prefer the spring,’ Flossie said, scraping vigorously, ‘won’t you, Peggy? All those pretty new lambs. An’ Easter eggs. She likes Easter eggs.’
    Then we’re not going back to London after Christmas, Peggy thought, but she was too numb with shock to do more than register the fact. It was something she ought to have known, just as she ought to have known they were going to kill the pig. Oh Dad, she grieved, if only you werestill alive none of this would have happened. And she took Baby by the hand and walked miserably into the cottage away from the nightmare.
    Spring was a long time coming that year. The footpaths were still slippery with mud when the first primroses appeared, pale and hesitant and vulnerable beneath the rough claws of the hedges. And the little new lambs were vulnerable too, huddled beside the dirty fleeces of the ewes, like little heaps of unmelted snow. Peggy felt sorry for them, bred for the table, and when the first balmy days stirred warm air along the hillside and they began to jump and frisk on their stiff little legs, she felt sorrier than ever.
    â€˜It’s ever such a cruel world,’ she said to Joan when she was home one Sunday afternoon and all three girls were walking down to evening service together.
    â€˜Yes,’ Joan said easily. ‘Course it is.’
    â€˜I wish it wasn’t.’
    â€˜Well it is,’ Joan said, ‘so there’s no use fretting about it is there?’ She’d had a very bad week in the kitchens, with two dinner parties that hadn’t gone as well as they should have done and Cook bad-tempered as a result, and on Friday she’d gashed her finger when she was chopping carrots, and had then been sent to mash spinach through a hair sieve, which was a job she really hated.
    â€˜One of the cats had kittens this morning,’ Baby told them. ‘They’re ever so pretty.’
    â€˜We’ll go an’ see ’em after church,’ Joan decided. ‘How many’s she got?’
    There were four, one black, one ginger and two tabby like their mother, who was lying in the nest of straw she’d made herself at the far end of the barn, purring and contented as the little creatures squeaked and suckled, their tiny bodies trembling with pleasure.
    Peggy was enraptured by them. ‘They’re so soft,’ she said, stroking the velvety fur on the black kitten’s tremulous back. Soft and defenceless with their tiny scrabbling paws and their eyes shut tight. ‘I can feel his spine. All the little bones. Could we pick them up?’
    â€˜I don’t see why not?’ Joan said. ‘She don’t seem to mind.’
    So they each picked up a kitten to cuddle and Peggyhad one of the tabby ones, which she held right up under her chin, thrilled by its tiny warmth and the way its little paws scrabbled into her neck. ‘It’s trying to climb,’