placed over the roof. It looked as if it had grown out of the ground like a giant and rather menacing molehill.
She moved closer and gingerly followed the muddy steps down to the door. There was a dank pool beneath her feet, and the back wall and tin roof were already coldly damp to the touch. As she tried to imagine what it would be like to sit in here for possibly hours during an air raid, the door swung shut behind her, plunging her into earthy, smothering blackness. It was like being buried alive.
With rising panic, she fumbled her way out and took deep breaths of the clean salty air that blew off the sea. If she was going to persuade anyone to spend time in there, she would have to get Jim to make it more habitable. Though getting her rogue of a husband to do anything practical around the place was something she hadn’t yet managed in their twenty-three years of marriage. Jim was always far too busy getting into mischief, and she suspected he was rather looking forward to the prospect of doing even more shady deals now war had been declared.
Peggy firmly dismissed her suspicions. She’d known he was a scallywag when she’d married him, and had long since learnt to turn a blind eye to his nefarious ways. As long as it didn’t affect her family, or her marriage, she was prepared to accept he would never change, for she still loved her dark-eyed handsome husband whose smile could make her feel fifteen again.
She pulled her meandering thoughts into order and made a mental note that the steps and floor would have to be concreted, a bench fixed to the wall so they had somewhere to sit, and a hook placed on the roof to hold a lantern. She could bring down the old oil heater to chase away the damp and chill, and put together some blankets and pillows which they could take in with them when needed. It would be a terrible squash, though, with so many people in the house – for, apart from her own family of seven, she had two lodgers, with an evacuee due to arrive later today.
With that thought, she glanced at her watch. The day was half gone, and there was a lot to do before she had to be at the station. She walked down the path that ran through Ron’s vegetable garden, and hurried past the outside lav, concrete coal bunker and ramshackle shed until she reached the double doors that led into the two-bedroom basement flat, which Ron shared with twelve-year-old Bob and eight-year-old Charlie.
On passing, she shot a glance into the bedrooms, noting they were untidy as usual, and that the ferrets were absent from their cage beneath the scullery sink. Ron must have them in the pocket of his poacher’s coat.
She quickly made the beds, tidied up and scrubbed the stone sink in the scullery before climbing the concrete steps that led into her kitchen on the first floor.
Beach View Boarding House had been in her family for three generations; when Peggy’s parents retired to a bungalow in Margate, she and Jim had moved to Cliffehaven and taken it over. Peggy had run it as a successful bed-and-breakfast establishment until the news came from Europe. The impending declaration of war had put an end to holidaymakers coming to the seaside.
Money was tight and now only two of her five guest rooms were occupied. The Polish airman whose name she could never pronounce was in one, and dear little Mrs Finch was in the other. The evacuee from London would go in the smallest of the three rooms in the attic, next to that shared by her two daughters.
Beach View was a tall Victorian terraced house set on a hill three streets back from the promenade. Surrounded by many similar terraces, there was only a glimpse of the sea from the top right-hand window. Arranged on four floors, the large rooms had been divided up to provide five guest rooms and a bathroom on the top two floors, her bedroom on the hall floor, along with the kitchen and guest dining room. The square entrance hall led through a glass-panelled front door to a flight of stone steps which overshadowed the basement window and ran down to the pavement.
Peggy bustled about her kitchen, aware of the time passing as she peeled carrots, onions and potatoes for the stew they would have tonight.