“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth!” I don’t quite know why this line from John Magee’s poem has haunted me since the news of Peggy’s death. I do not think that she saw the bonds of earth’ – however you interpret them – as surly.’ Those things of the earth which Peggy encountered in her life were – amongst others – the chance to perform what she did exceedingly well, and to be justly acclaimed for it. Few can ask for more. This is not to say that she didn’t have her full share of pain and sorrow, but the legacy of her life is a positive and happy one.
But the line still stays, and I think because the time I knew Peggy well (and happily) was in the later years of her life, a time inevitably, of winding down. Though she never lost interest in the world of politics, who’s in, who’s out,’ and the state of her fellow man, whether in Hampstead, or in far and threatened places, she was beginning to be aware of a different voice, a whisper of quiet. The cut and thrust of public life, the battles – sometimes lost, more frequently won – were fading now. She would recall them from time to time, but with a trace of amused detachment, as if she spoke of travels in a country which she would not see again. She was rightly proud of her achievements and would have been delighted with the chorus of praise in the media which followed the end of her life, but the compass needle of interest was moving a different way.
The country where she now moved was an unfamiliar one in which she found herself an uncertain explorer (as we all are). Her uncertainty made her the more loveable, for she became the person who asked questions, rather than the one who (necessarily) knew the answers. But this country was a welcoming one, she was becoming prepared for it. On one of the last occasions when I saw her, with Father Stephen, she had beside her a photograph of her twelfth great- grandchild, recently born in Australia. Her family meant a great deal to her, but our children belong to the future, and as she proudly showed us the photograph she seemed to be at ease with the knowledge that this child would live beyond her into an unknown world.
There is a part of Peggy which would go on protecting the amenities of Hampstead, and would fight (fist clenched, as in the picture on the Order of Service) for those endangered by Estate agents or Developers of any kind. But there was another part, coming clear, who would rise above the pressures of battle, who would rest, who would hear the still small voice of calm’ and relish it.