Read Online London Pride by Beryl Kingston - Free Book Online

wasn’t important. ‘Now eat your breakfast and don’t let’s hear any more about it, if you please.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜It’s lovely weather,’ Mum said too briskly. ‘You can play out all day. It’ll do you good.’
    â€˜Me too?’ Baby said, very surprised.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Shut
up
about that raven,’ Joan said furiously.