London Pride by Beryl Kingston

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 wascurved 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
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Clear off out of it,’ Mum said, waving her arms indiscriminately at bird and boy.
    â€˜What’s an omen?’ Baby asked as Sam ran off.
    â€˜It means somebody’s going to die,’ Joan said heartlessly. ‘When a raven croaks on the roof, somebody croaks in the house.’
    â€˜One of us?’ Baby asked fearfully.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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