London Pride (6 page)

‘Very
y la
!' Mum said putting it on and admiring her reflection in the looking glass. ‘Thank you, Joe. It's lovely. Where are we going?'

‘London's got their new County Hall finished at last,' Dad said, putting a programme down on the kitchen table beside the empty hat box. It was a very grand programme with the LCC coat of arms on the cover. ‘The King and Queen are going to open it. Date's all set, see? Tuesday 17 July.'

‘I suppose you'll be on duty,' Mum said, still admiring herself. For an occasion like that they'd need all the Yeomen Warders.

‘Course,' Dad said. ‘Every man jack of us, but I've got the best job of the lot this time. I'm to be a wheelman and walk beside the State Coach. What d'yer think a' that, eh girls?'

‘Right by the King and Queen?' Baby asked, much impressed.

‘As near to 'em as I am to you.'

‘Gosh!' Baby said.

‘Can we help you to dress?' Peggy said. ‘As it's special.' She'd always wanted to help him into his ceremonial uniform, but Mum always said she was too young.

‘Yes you can,' Dad said confidently, ‘and so can Joan and Baby. It's about time they did, don't you think so, Mum? I shall need all hands to the pump, bein' it's London we're honouring an' we're all Londoners.'

Mum was still admiring herself. ‘Well I suppose so,' she said.

‘And then,' Dad went on, ‘you can put on your best bibs an' tuckers, and Mum can wear her new hat, – won't she look a swell? and you can all come down to Westminster Bridge and see the procession. How about that?'

Mum smiled at him through the mirror. ‘We could have a special supper afterwards,' she said. ‘I could make a meat pie.'

Joan and Peggy were so excited they could hardly keep still.

‘Will there be flags?' Baby wanted to know.

‘Flags an' bands an' guardsmen an' cavalry an' all sorts,' Dad said happily. ‘Not every day a' the week the capital of the world gets a new seat a' government. You'll be seeing hist'ry made that day I can tell you.'

‘Oh,' Peggy said. ‘I can't wait.'

‘Twenty days,' Joan declared, having counted it up. ‘That's all. Twenty days.'

Dad gave them both a grin of pure delight. ‘What's for supper?' he said.

Getting a Yeoman Warder dressed in his ceremonial uniform is like preparing an actor for a play by Shakespeare. The costume is so complicated it is almost impossible to dress without help. Joe Furnivall could manage to get into his shirt and breeches and to fasten the statutory red, white and blue rosettes just below the knees of his red stockings but the ruff was beyond him. For a start Flossie always starched it so stiffly that it was very difficult to fasten, and once it was round his neck he couldn't look down or even move his head with any degree of comfort.

On that special day in July he stood in the middle of the kitchen while his women completed the rest of his preparations for him, lowering his heavy scarlet and gold doublet over his head, arranging the skirt so that it hung neatly, fastening his sword belt, brushing the gold embroidery on his chest before they slung the red, black and gold cross belt over his left shoulder, slipping his black shoes on the red stockinged feet he could no longer see, handing him his white gloves, and finally, while he watched them in the mirror, arranging his black velvet hat on his head, its red white and blue ribbons giving a dazzling finish to his peacock display.

‘Very nice,' he said, twirling the waxed ends of his moustache. ‘Many hands make light work, eh?'

‘You look a treat, Dad,' Peggy told him. Oh it was lovely to look after him and help him dress. ‘Don't he, Mum?'

‘Very handsome,' Mum agreed, because he really did look very fine. ‘If it don't rain.'

But it didn't rain. At least not when the procession was passing. It was a marvellous day.

The Furnivall family took up their positions on the south side of Westminster Bridge where they had a good view of the new County Hall and they could see the carriages arriving for the opening ceremony and driving off again for the second procession afterwards.

There was so much to see it made Peggy's head spin. It was really quite hard to realize that she was looking at the same embankment that had been under water last November. But that was what was so nice about London. It was never the same two days running. There was always something different happening. Today the Thames was like a beautiful sky-blue pond shimmering in the sunshine and full of pleasure boats and barges all neatly lined up to watch the ceremony. There were crowds and crowds of people everywhere you looked, three or four deep on either side of the bridge, and shoulder to shoulder along the embankment, all in their best hats and waving little Union Jacks made of paper, just like she was doing.

County Hall was ever so grand now that the scaffolding was off and you could see it properly. It was made of white stone with lots and lots of windows and the middle bit was
curved like a shell and had white pillars all round it. The roof was covered in bright red tiles and the windows on the top floor were painted duck-egg blue to match the little tower in the middle so it was red, white and blue really, which was very appropriate. All along the terrace in front of the building there were rows and rows of empty chairs, and they'd set up an orange canopy where the King and Queen were going to sit. The capital city of the world, Peggy thought, remembering what Dad had said, and she felt herself swelling with pride to be part of it.

Presently they could hear cheering to the north of the bridge and they knew the opening procession had begun. Viscount Lascelles and Princess Mary arrived first and in a motor car, which caused quite a stir, but the King and Queen did things in the old style, driven slowly in the State coach and bowing and waving to the crowds right and left, with a troop of guardsmen following them, breastplates shining, and Dad marching beside them.

Joan said she thought the coach looked gorgeous, because the King was in a Field Marshal's scarlet uniform and the Queen was all in white, in a long white coat embroidered in gold, with a white fox stole on her shoulders, and one of her cream-coloured toques on her head with three white ostrich feathers fluttering to one side of it.

And Baby said she wished she could ride in a carriage and wear diamonds all day.

But Peggy only had eyes for her father, striding along beside the coach and winking at them as he passed. ‘I think we're ever so lucky,' she said, ‘to have a Dad like our Dad.'

‘There's a raven on your roof, missus,' Sam Bullough said as Peggy and her sisters followed their mum up the Casemates after the ceremony. They'd come home in a hurry because Mum suddenly said it was going to rain and it certainly looked as though it would, for the sky above their sooty row of houses was a menacing colour, like bruised plums. ‘That's a bad omen, a raven on yer roof.'

‘Clear off out of it,' Mum said, waving her arms indiscriminately at bird and boy.

‘What's an omen?' Baby asked as Sam ran off.

‘It means somebody's going to die,' Joan said heartlessly. ‘When a raven croaks on the roof, somebody croaks in the house.'

‘One of us?' Baby asked fearfully.

‘It's a lot of superstitious nonsense,' Mum said, speaking quickly before Joan could enlighten them any further. The raven was still strutting along their roof and now it was squawking. ‘Clear off,' she shouted at it. ‘Go and annoy someone else.'

Peggy looked at it fearfully, hoping it wasn't an omen, or that if it was, it wouldn't turn out to be true. After that ghost on the stairs she wasn't sure whether to believe things like that or not. And they did say a raven always knew when somebody in the house was going to die. ‘It must have flown up,' she said, trying to be reasonable about it. ‘I thought they had their feathers cut so's they couldn't fly.'

The raven hopped to the parapet where it perched, looking down at them malevolently, its thick beak axe-blue in the afternoon sun.

‘I'll give it fly,' Mum said, opening the front door. ‘If it's not gone by the time I've got the kettle on I'll fetch a broom to it. Vile thing.'

‘Does it mean one of us is going to die?' Baby persisted.

‘No it don't,' Mum said. ‘Look sharp inside all of you. We got a pie to bake.'

Fortunately they were soon very busy preparing the supper and making sandwiches for their dinner because it was too late to fry anything and they were all extremely hungry. And then the rain came torrenting down and not long after that Dad arrived home sopping wet and had to be skinned out of his finery and wrapped in two bath towels and sat by the stove with his feet in a mustard bath until he stopped shivering. So they soon forgot their unwanted visitor and none of them had any cause to remember it until three days later.

Dad had been on guard duty all afternoon, and after his supper he'd changed his clothes and gone whistling off to the Club as usual, leaving his womenfolk to a quiet evening. There was nothing remarkable about it, Mum tackled the mending, Joan darned her socks, and Peggy helped Baby to stick the latest cuttings in her album. They were making a collection of all the newspaper pictures of the opening of County Hall, especially those that showed the State Coach, with their father's diminutive figure beside it ringed in red crayon and labelled OUR DAD in letters taller than he was.

They went to bed a little later than usual because it was Friday and they didn't have to get up for school in the morning. Baby slept at once and her sisters didn't talk for long. They were sleepy and easy, listening to the familiar sounds of the house, the stairs creaking as they cooled, the tick of the tin clock on their mantelpiece, Mum downstairs lighting the gaslight beside the stove and moving her chair so that she could sit beneath it and finish her mending, sleepy and easy, oh very very sleepy. So when somebody knocked at the door the sudden, unexpected sound made them jump awake with alarm.

It was Uncle Charlie. They knew at once from the burring sound of his voice and the strong smell of snuff that was rising to them from the hall. And he was worried about something. He was speaking in such a low hesitant way and Mum's reply was like a startled bark.

Peggy was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding, as if an icy wind had blown straight into her body and locked there. ‘It's Dad,' she whispered. ‘There's something up with Dad.'

‘Shush!' Joan said fiercely, straining her ears to hear what was being said. Uncle Charlie's voice had stopped and now his wife was speaking, not in her usual stern voice but as though she was patting somebody with her words. And Mum was wailing, ‘Oh my dear good God! What shall I do? What shall I do?'

‘I know it's Dad,' Peggy said again. ‘Did we oughter go down?'

There was movement in the hall, doors being opened and shut, feet scuffling, a renewed smell of snuff. And then the front door was opened again and closed quietly and the house was suddenly still. Both girls skimmed from the bed to the window to see who had left. It was Mum and Uncle Charlie and they were heading towards the Green. They were both walking very quickly and Mum had one hand at her throat as if she was trying to strangle herself.

‘Shall we go down?' Peggy whispered.

‘No,' Joan whispered back. ‘Let's wait till Mum gets back.'

It was a long vigil, hours and hours of it. They stood by the window and watched until they were shivering with cold, and they crept back to bed and cuddled together for warmth and comfort, and dozed and woke and dozed again, to hear the clock striking once, twice, three times, and the light was still on in the hall and Mum still hadn't come home.

But at last, when the sky was definitely getting lighter, they heard the scrape of a key in the lock and sat up achingly to listen. It
was
Mum. They were sure of that, because Aunty Connie was talking to her, ‘Did you …? Flossie dear … Poor …' But she was answering so quietly
they couldn't hear what she was saying and presently all three grown-ups went into the kitchen and shut the door behind them.

They talked for ever such a long time. It wasn't until the sky was quite bright that Uncle Charlie took Aunty Connie home at last and Mum came slowly up the stairs to her bedroom.

Joan and Peggy tiptoed out onto the landing to meet her, peering at her in the half light. Her face was puffy with weeping.

‘What is it?' Peggy asked.

She turned on them as though they'd attacked her, her sagging face lifted into a blaze of fury. ‘Go back to bed this instant!' she said. ‘Don't you dare ask me! Don't you dare!'

‘Is it Dad?' Joan said, made bold by fear.

But persistence only made their mother worse. ‘Go back to bed!' she screamed, stamping her feet. ‘Can't you see what a state I'm in? Do as you're told!' And she pushed Joan away and blundered into her bedroom slamming the door behind her.

The two girls retreated into their own high double bed, hearts pounding, shocked and afraid.

‘It
is
Dad,' Joan whispered. ‘He's ill, that's what it is. I'll bet she went to the hospital block.'

‘Or hurt,' Peggy whispered. ‘He might be hurt.'

But they couldn't believe either possibility. Dad couldn't be ill. He was
never
ill. Look how strong he was, the way he carried them all about. Even Joan and she was nearly grown up and ever so heavy. And he couldn't be hurt either. Who would want to hurt him? They couldn't think of anyone. Unless it was an accident.

‘It was that raven,' Peggy said.

‘Shut up!' Joan spat. ‘Shut up! Shut up! I don't want to hear about ravens.'

Peggy shut up at once, because she could see that Joan was getting shirty. But it
was
the raven. It
had
warned them. Ravens always knew. But what had that one known? That was the thing. Oh what
was
the matter?