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.’
CHAPTER 4
‘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 i
nto 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?
They were still whispering anxiously together when the clock struck four and the sky was quite blue, and they whispered again when they woke four hours later after a ragged sleep.
Mum was up and about. They could hear her setting the table and talking to Baby. Fancy Baby being up before they were.
‘Perhaps he’s back,’ Peggy hoped, as they rushed to wash and dress.
But when they got downstairs there was no sign of him, no boots by the hearth, no coat on the hook, no morning paper, nothing. His chair had been moved from the fire and set against the wall and, what was worse, there was no place laid for him at the table. Oh where was he? Wherever was he?
‘Sit up to the table,’ Mum said, speaking sternly as if they’d done something wrong. The swelling of the previous night had all gone down but her face was set as if it were made of concrete. ‘We’re all behind this morning and I’ve got to be out by ten o’clock.’
They sat down subdued and anxious, wondering whether they could ask her where she was going, as she filled the teapot and set it on the trivet. Neither of them could ever remember eating a meal at that table without their father and worry was taking away what little appetite they had.
It was Baby who said what they were all thinking. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she piped as her mother put a plateful of eggs and bacon in front of her.
Being Baby she got an answer. ‘Your Dad’s ill,’ Mum said flatly as she forked two rashers of bacon out of the pan for Peggy. ‘He was took bad yesterday evening at the Club. He’s in the hospital block.’
‘What’s he got?’ Joan asked, her foxy face peaking with concern. ‘Is it the flu?’
‘No, it’s not. It’s pneumonia,’ Mum said, still speaking flatly as though it wasn’t important. ‘Now eat your breakfast and don’t let’s hear any more about it, if you please.’
‘When you go to hospital you’re very ill, aren’t you?’ Baby said. ‘Is he very ill?’
But she got no answer to that. ‘Eat your breakfast,’ Mum ordered. And went off into the larder.
The three girls looked at one another in alarm and warning.
New monia, Peggy was thinking. Perhaps that wasn’t so bad whatever it was. New things were usually better than old ones. At least it wasn’t the flu. But if it wasn’t bad why had Mum cried so? And what about that raven? It had been on their roof and it had croaked. Oh if only it hadn’t croaked. Perhaps Mum would tell them a bit more when she’d been to the hospital block and seen him. That must be where she’s got to go at ten o’clock. I don’t suppose she’d let us go and see him too.
She was right on the last count at least. The moment the breakfast things had been washed and put back on the dresser all three girls were sent out to play.
‘It’s lovely weather,’ Mum said too briskly. ‘You can play out all day. It’ll do you good.’
‘Me too?’ Baby said, very surprised.
‘Peggy’ll look after you,’ Mum said. ‘You stay by Peggy, you’ll be all right.’
Baby stayed by Peggy all morning and a horrible nuisance she was. For a start she wanted to play all the games and grizzled when she couldn’t, and then she was perpetually whining for something or other, for a hanky or a drink of water or for her socks to be pulled up or to go back home because she wanted a wee-wee. Megan was ever so good about her and said the baby next door was just the same, but Peggy was too worried about Dad to see her as anything other than a burden. She hoped she wouldn’t have to look after her all afternoon too.
But she did. All afternoon, and all day Sunday, until her grizzling presence in the Green was an established fact and Peggy her acknowledged keeper. And Mum went to the hospital block three more times without telling them anything about it. Joan and Peggy knew because although she walked the long way round so as to avoid coming through the Green where they’d see her, they’d kept a sharp look-out for her and spied on all her comings and goings. And Dad didn’t come home.
The next day was Monday and school and the hope that he’d be home for dinner. Or supper. Or breakfast next morning. But he wasn’t and the week went by with the unreality of nightmare, with life at school humdrum and normal and life at home fraught with unanswered questions. Mum never mentioned their father, even though she visited him every day, and her face was always so stern when she came back they didn’t dare to ask how he was, partly because they didn’t want to provoke an outbreak of nerves but mostly because they were afraid of what she might tell them.
Uncle Charlie and Aunty Connie came round nearly every night and she talked to them for hours and hours but in voices too low for the listeners above them to catch more than the odd word or two. ‘After the crisis …’ ‘It must go one way or the other …’ ‘Poor old Joe …’
The only time they heard anything clearly was on the second Thursday night, when Dad had been in the hospital block for thirteen days. Uncle Charlie was in the hall saying goodbye. ‘If there’s anything we can do, Flossie,’ he said, ‘you’ve only to ask. You know that, don’t you?’
And Mum’s answer was clear too, clear and weary. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do now except wait. Oh Charlie, I don’t know what will become of us.’
The cold wind blew icy into Peggy’s heart again. ‘I wish that raven hadn’t croaked on our roof,’ she said.
‘Shut up about that raven,’ Joan said furiously. ‘You make me sick, always on about it. I don’t want to hear about it ever again.’
‘I wish she’d tell us what’s going on,’ Peggy mourned. ‘You ask her, Joanie.’
‘No, you,’ Joan said. ‘She wouldn’t tell me.’
‘She wouldn’t tell me neither.’
‘She’s coming upstairs,’ Joan warned. ‘Pretend to be asleep.’
So Peggy closed her eyes obediently, resigning herself to sleep and continued ignorance.
The next day when she and Joan came home to dinner they found Mum and Baby waiting in the hall in their outdoor clothes, hats, gloves and all. And Mum had something to tell them.
‘Your Dad’s asked to see you,’ she said. ‘We’ll have dinner when we get back. I shan’t send you back to school this afternoon. We’ll go the long way round. We don’t want everyone gawping.’
‘Is he better?’ Peggy said as they followed her out of the house again.
‘We’ll see when we get there,’ Mum said. But she looked so stern it wasn’t an encouraging answer.
They walked between the great stones of the inner and outer walls, and the sun was warm on their heads and shoulders, as a fearful ice expanded in Peggy’s chest. Please don’t let him be worse, she prayed. He can’t be worse. Not here. Not in the Tower. People are protected in the Tower. Please dear God, protect my dad. Make him be better.
The porter on duty at the hospital block that morning was an old friend. He used to throw balls back for them when they were playing on the Green and sometimes, when he wasn’t too busy, he could be persuaded to take one end of the long rope for skipping. But now he looked as solemn as Mum.
�
��Come to see your poor Dad ‘ave yer?’ he said to the girls. ‘Sister Turner’ll be along presently.’
They stood together in the unfamiliar hall, shuffling and embarrassed and growing steadily colder now that they were out of the sunshine. Sister Turner was a long time coming and every second diminished the hope of good news. Joan and Peggy shifted from foot to foot and tried not to look at one another or their mother, and Baby sat on the bench by the wall feeling small and staring at the floor. But at last Sister Turner approached, skirts swishing. It was a surprise to all three children when she took Peggy and Baby by the hand, signalled with her eyes that Joan was to follow, and led them away, leaving Mum on her own in the hall.
But they didn’t say anything because you didn’t argue with doctors and nurses. They simply followed her meekly up the stairs and along a corridor smelling of disinfectant and gleaming with floor polish and full of brown doors, each with its own neat label and some open enough to allow them a glimpse of a heaped bed and a pale face against a pillow. They knew that they were foreigners in this place, interlopers who had to be on their best behaviour to survive, so when Sister Turner opened one of the closed doors, they hesitated, unsure whether they were supposed to go in or not. She smiled at them quite kindly and as they still didn’t move, she ushered them round the edge of the door with one hand placed briefly but firmly against their necks.
They were in a white brightly-lit space with white curtains and a table with a spittoon on it and a dish full of cotton wool and a plain, glass jug full of water, and a white bed with three red cylinders standing beside it like bombs.
It was a few seconds before any of them realized that the person in the bed was their father, even though they were expecting to see him. He’d changed so much.
He was lying limply against a triangular mound of pillows, with his hands resting on the coverlet and his eyes shut tight, and he looked frail and small as though he’d shrunk. His skin was greyish-yellow, his cheeks had caved in, his hair and moustache looked like dried grass, and there was an angry cold sore at the corner of his mouth oozing into the pepper and salt stubble on his chin. But worst of all was the awful noise he was making as he breathed. It was a sort of knocking and bubbling and wheezing, like a kettle boiling, or as if he had pebbles in his chest, and they could see that every breath pained him for even though his eyes were closed they were wincing at every rattle.
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