“Of course.”
She watched him take a deep breath before he turned to Peggy.
“Thank you so much for sharing Percy’s story,” he said. “She led quite a life.”
Peggy opened her eyes. “She did indeed.”
“Can I ask you one more question before I go?”
“ ’Course.”
“Did she ever...” Frank paused, and Libby could see him searching for the right words. “I’ve thought so much about her over the years. And I can’t help wondering if she ever remembered me once she’d got off the bus that day.”
He was looking at Peggy with such intensity that Libby found she was holding her breath. Please, Peggy, tell him she did. Even if it’s a lie.
Peggy leaned back against the bench. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Frank. She didn’t spend the past sixty years searching for you on the 88, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, of course. But did she ever mention me, back at the time?”
“She never told me about meeting you on the bus, no.”
Frank let out a small sigh, his shoulders sagging.
“But let me tell you one more story before you go,” Peggy said. “I can remember this quite clearly, because of what happened to me.
“It must have been spring of 1962, ’cos we were in the summer term of our second year at art college. This was after I’d started seeing Arthur, and it must have been a Sunday, ’cos he’d taken me to the flicks. I can’t remember what we went to see, I’m afraid. But I do remember that I was wearing a new blue dress I’d made myself, using this lovely fabric I’d got from Petticoat Lane Market, and I’d had to let the waistline out ’cos I’d put on a bit of weight since I started making it.”
Libby bit her tongue. Peggy was a wonderful storyteller, but as they’d discovered over the past two hours, she did have something of a tendency to disappear off on a tangent. Earlier,she’d spent a good fifteen minutes telling them all about her son, David, which, while interesting, had had nothing whatsoever to do with Percy’s story. Now it seemed as though Peggy might be about to go off on another one.
“The reason I remember this day so clearly is because halfway through the film, I was violently sick all over the back row of the Clapham Grand. Arthur was furious, ’cos I got some on his new shoes, and we ended up having a big fight and him disappearing off and leaving me to get home on my own.”
She tutted and shook her head as if annoyed at young Peggy for putting up with such behavior.
“I remember getting back to the house, all upset about the fight, and waiting for Percy to come back. I knew she’d been meeting some lad that morning, but by three o’clock, she still wasn’t home. I was sick another two or three times in our shared bathroom, all the other girls moaning at me to get out, when finally, around five o’clock, Percy gets back.
“Well, she takes one look at me, and she just knows. I mean, I told you we were thick as thieves, and she looks at me and goes, ‘Oh, no, Peg, you’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ At which point I burst into tears, ’cos I’d been fearing as much myself, what with the weight gain and the sickness. And Percy gets down on the floor next to me and wraps me in her arms, and she holds me while I sob, whispering that it’s going to be all right, she’ll look after me.”
Peggy was quiet for a moment, her eyes damp. Libby remembered her own pregnancy discovery, the day she and Frank had gone to the National Gallery. How she’d gone home alone, scared and overwhelmed, without a friend like Percy to hug her and reassure her. The memory made goose bumps prickle on Libby’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” Peggy said. “It’s strange to do all this remembering. It brings up... well, it brings up lots of feelings, doesn’t it?”
“I understand,” Frank said, nodding.
Peggy wiped the back of her hand across her eyes before she continued.
“The reason I’m telling you all this is that later, once Percy had tucked me up in bed with a hot Bovril, I said to her it must have been a good date she’d had, seeing as she’d been gone all day. And I remember this so clearly, Frank. She gave a little smile and shook her head and said it was a funny thing, but the lad she was meeting had never turned up. She said they were meant to go to the National Gallery, and she’d been so sure he’d come that she’d sat there all day in front of that bloodyBacchus and Ariadnepainting, but he never came.”
“Oh, no,” Frank said, his face turning pale.
“But here’s the strange thing. Percy, as you’ve probably gathered by now, was not the kind of girl who’d sit there waiting for a boy all day. She was fierce and independent and bloody-minded, and boys chased her round seven days a week, but she never usually gave them the time of day. So her saying she’d sat there from ten in the morning till gone four in the afternoon, waiting for some lad to come meet her—well, I’d never heard anything like it. And I said as much, asked her why she’d waited so long. And she said something like ‘I don’t know, Pegs. I just had a good feeling about this one.’ And then she shrugged, picked up her book, and never talked about him again.”
Libby watched Frank, waiting for his reaction. His eyes were glazed, and for a horrible moment, Libby wondered if he’d gone into one of his confused states. Eventually he spoke.
“She waited all day.” His voice was faint. “She waited for me at the gallery all day, while I waited for her at the bus stop.”
Peggy nodded. “I always wondered who the boy was who could make Percy Fitzgerald sit there all day. And now I know.”
“I lost her number,” Frank said, his voice still quiet. “I was so sure I’d catch her at the bus stop.”