Coronation (3 page)

Granny, too, had been having second thoughts on the validity of giving up all of the pleasant features lumped under the one heading of ‘change of air’ for one day of excitement which probably included being trampled underfoot or getting lost. Each time she passed the envelope on the mantelpiece she would mutter something to herself which Violet could not quite catch, but by the tone of her voice and her mother’s more than usually sour expression she knew that it was disapproving. It seemed as though the day would never draw to a close.

Yet at last evening had come, bringing the accustomed heavy footfalls on the pavement approaching the house.

Granny said, ‘Late, isn’t he?’

Violet glanced at the clock. ‘He’ll have stopped for one at the George and Dragon.’ The children at their homework heard him and came rushing into the front room, shouting, ‘It’s Dad! Will he open it? Can we see them now?’ And then as he made his entrance, ‘Dad, they’ve come, they’ve come! Open it!’

This Will Clagg had done, after a suitable moment’s pause to assert dignity and authority and examine the exterior of the registered envelope to his satisfaction.

With the children watching impatiently and even Granny looking over her spectacles and stretching her neck from her corner, he had slit the envelope and withdrawn the wonderful, miraculous and wholly unexpected blue and gold tickets which he had now been showing around so proudly in the compartment of the Coronation Special.

At first there had been some moments of confusion as they had gaped at the pasteboards, their twenty-five guinea price mark, the location and the things promised thereon. It seemed that there must have been a mistake of some kind until Clagg noticed that in addition to the five tickets the envelope contained a letter from Bert, which he now unfolded and read aloud:

‘Dear Cousin Will, here are your tickets. They are not where you wrote, they are better than where you thought because I have had a bit of luck which I am glad to pass along to you. One of the fellows in our company here has a friend who knew someone who works in the same place as a man who has the inside on what was going on with the tickets for the Coronation he said. They are marked down and I could get them because the company selling them was over-stocked and I suppose 25 guineas even here in London is pretty high and they wanted to sell them. Anyway I have got them for you for the fifty quid which is what you wanted to pay like you wrote only if it rains you will be sitting in a window drinking champagne like a toff and letting the world go by. Good luck. I wish I was with you. Sorry you are going back the same day I’d have liked to see the kiddies, give them and Vi my love. Yours Bert.’

Now all was clear at last and the wonder and the glory of it fairly dazzled them. Seats in a window! Row A! Hyde Park Corner! (The location was later checked on a map of the procession route printed in the newspapers and found to be absolutely marvellous.) Breakfast! Buffet lunch! Champagne!!!

‘Champagne,’ Violet Clagg whispered to herself and then repeated it out loud: ‘Champagne! I’ve never tasted bubbly.’ And in that moment the two weeks, the very necessary, needed and longed-for two weeks at the Shore View Hotel were wiped from her mind as if a sponge had passed across a chalked slate. It was replaced immediately by a new picture, one plagiarised from scenes from a number of films: the uniformed, dignified-looking butler in the drawing-room holding the napkin-wrapped bottle: ‘More champagne, m’lady?’ Only this time the person holding the thin-stemmed glass waiting for the froth of the high-priced wine to gush into it was not the Countess of Kissmefoot, but Violet Clagg sitting in Row A of the window in Wellington Crescent, Hyde Park Corner. As the Queen went by she would be sipping her first glass of champagne. The years had fallen away from her and suddenly she was like her own children. She had found that bright bit of something that attracts and sells, and every feminine fibre of her was reaching for it.

Even Granny was impressed and found the excitement infectious, though she would have preferred gin to champagne. She had to get in her nasty remark, of course, saying, ‘If I know Bert the seats will be behind a pillar, or Row A will be the last row instead of the first.’ Yet she grudgingly admitted that with breakfast and lunch being served they would not have to take along any sandwiches or fruit for the children and that would save a lot of bother.

And so all of them were gathered there now in the compartment of the Coronation Special, the Clagg family basking in the admiration of their fellow travellers, each one cherishing the particular fancy or dream to which the blue and gold tickets would admit them. The wheels sang their dickety-clax, dickety-clax, and with each turn brought them all closer to the manner in which they were to realise them.

*

Promptly at seven o’clock that morning the engine of the Coronation Special snaked its way into St Pancras Station, where it came to a halt, sighing steam and panting as though out of breath from the trip’s exertions. London that morning was enveloped in a chill, grey drizzle, though the real and memorable Coronation Day downpour had not yet commenced in earnest. A bitter wind whipped the flags and bunting on the buildings and set the gay banners strung across the streets dancing an early-morning tarantella.

The Clagg family emerging from the station kept close together, for never before had they found themselves in such a welter of hurrying humanity, cars, taxis and buses.

Further greeting their astonished and excited eyes were the scrawled placards of the news-vendors: ‘Queen’s Day! Everest conquered! Hillary reaches Top.’

‘What’s Everest, Dad?’ Johnny Clagg asked. Anything conquered was in his domain.

‘A mountain,’ replied his father. ‘The highest mountain in the world. Someone has climbed it,’ and bought a paper.

Johnny’s interest cooled at once. Mountains and mountain-climbing were not his dish unless one took them by storm in the face of devastating enemy fire. But Will Clagg, dipping into the front-page news, felt the thrill of pride and an oddly kindred feeling for a man named Hillary who had accomplished the feat with such pat and extraordinary timing. Obviously he had made a do-or-die effort for his Queen to present her with this hitherto unclimbed peak as a gift for her Coronation Day. Well, he, Will Clagg, could climb no mountains, but he could bring his family to London for her. And there they all were.

He had the simple good sense to ask a policeman about buses and produced the tickets, which the constable examined with respect and admiration. It seemed, according to the officer, that there was no problem at all; a No. 73 bus, that one right over there, would take them all the way, travelling down Tottenham Court Road into Oxford Street and thence down Park Lane and round Hyde Park Corner. He was not sure whether the buses would still be running through that area, but they should not have too far to walk and at any rate there would be plenty of police to direct them to their proper destination.

In spite of the drizzle and the damp, their first glimpse of London that early morning fulfilled every expectation. As they bowled down Oxford Street there were ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs’ and ‘Look there!’ and ‘Oh, Daddy, see that?’ or ‘Oh, Mummy, isn’t it beautiful?’ when they passed beneath triumphal archways in gold and blue, topped with the Royal Arms, or rode by shop fronts draped from top to bottom with red, white and blue bunting with colourful pennants and streamers or decked out with rich, armorial banners.

Selfridge’s alone was worth coming far to see, emblazoned and bedecked with flags and heraldry. The streets packed with crowds were a sight in themselves, and as they proceeded down Park Lane their bus sometimes was blocked by the swarms of people endlessly streaming in the direction of Hyde Park Corner before the barrier gates were shut. When the bus was stopped the whispering susurration and shuffling of their feet could be heard, for inner London was a silent city that day.

The vehicle on which they were travelling managed to be one of the last permitted near the area of Wellington Place, and halted at St George’s Hospital on the corner of Knightsbridge. The bus conductor, who had been alerted to the destination of the Clagg family, tapped Will on the shoulder and said, ‘Your stop, sir. Go straight along down past the ’orspital if you can make your way, and you’ll come to Wellington Crescent.’ And he added, ‘You ought to have a good view.’

They dismounted and were engulfed at once in a tumultuous ocean of humanity, and Clagg understood what the bus conductor had meant by saying, ‘If you can make your way.’ For here were thousands upon thousands of people pushing, shoving, thronging, rubbing shoulders through the area of the great square, some trying to reach the stands, others attempting to get closer to the front ranks already packed solid along the route of procession, roped off and kept clear by the police. Everyone was in the grip of Coronation fever and the very density of the packed crowd and its gaiety made it the most thrilling experience the Claggs had ever known. This was what they had come for and they were now a part of it.

But even more enthralling as they tried, at times almost in vain, to press their way through the throngs in the direction indicated by the bus conductor, was the magic worked by the tickets they possessed, which Will Clagg now held in his hand as he led the way.

‘Tickets? This way, sir! Wellington Crescent? Down there, sir. Open up, please, and let these people through. They’re ticket-holders.’

There were police lines within police lines and lanes roped off and forbidden areas, and others marked ‘Ticket-holders only’, and the talisman pasteboards clutched by Clagg melted them through every barrier, visible and invisible. Never before in their lives had any of them been ‘special’ or deferred to in anything. When there were queues, they queued; when there were ‘Keep Out’ signs, they kept out. And here they were among the favoured. It was heady wine which gave them all the sweetest sensation and made Will Clagg a most proud and happy man.

‘Tickets, sir?’ said another constable. ‘Let’s have a look at them. Wellington Crescent, that’s just below there, sir. First on your right. Come round this way, you’ll find it easier going.’

He led them round the corner of a huge wooden grandstand slanting row upon row to the sky, the front covered with red, white and blue bunting already limp and soaked. Many people were sitting on the narrow wooden planks under blankets or with newspapers over their heads, huddled against the chilly rain.

Will Clagg experienced an even greater satisfaction. ‘There, see,’ he pointed out, ‘that might be us if it weren’t for Cousin Bert. Out in the wet and cold. In a minute we’ll all be dry and snug.’

They marched along the rows of stands and for once Granny had nothing unpleasant to contribute. She, too, had succumbed to the flattery of the treatment they had been receiving as well as to the contagion of mounting excitement from the crowds, the flags and the spirit of festival.

Thus afforded a short cut, they moved along more rapidly until they reached the far side of the square, where once more they found themselves bucking a human tide flowing in the other direction, and again friendly and helpful constables eased their way through until Clagg, looking up at a street-sign posted on the corner house, raised his arm and shouted to them, ‘There! There it is!’ The sign read: ‘Wellington Crescent, S.W.1’ to match the address on the wonderful tickets.

The Crescent was just what its name implied, a scimitar of a street sweeping up from Wellington Square towards Belgravia, and because of its shape the first dozen or so houses had a view of the traffic circle, or a part of it; though, of course, as one moved further west the angle increased and the area of view diminished.

‘Come along then!’ Will Clagg cried, herding and hustling his brood in front of him, noting with satisfaction that the corner house of the Crescent was No. 1, that in its windows on the first and second floors were arranged seats of planking where people were sitting or standing about with their coats off, and some of them appeared to be eating and drinking. ‘Let’s get in out of the wet. We could all do with a bit of breakfast, couldn’t we?’

They passed Nos. 2 and 3. People holding tickets that appeared to be similar to theirs were passing in through the front doors. In a first-floor window was a whole row of children in party dress, their faces shining with excitement, each clutching either a small pennant or a stick on which were fastened red, white and blue streamers, which they waved even though there was nothing to wave at. Behind them a maid was pouring something and another passing buns. This was exactly as described, word for word, on their own admissions. Clagg’s stomach could already feel the warmth and comfort of the hot tea descending.

Clagg now quickly turned to look towards the great open plaza whence they had come. The angle and the view were still perfect, and thus he didn’t quite take in the fact that after No. 3 there occurred a gap in the buildings, crossed by heavy black beams stretching from the wall of No. 3 to where they supported that of the next house. But when he reached this further house and looked up to see, its number was not 4 but 6. And beyond 6 were Nos. 7, 8 and 9, still affording a view. 10 and 11 were beyond the angle. The windows were shuttered. Since they could not see they appeared to have closed their eyes.

‘Wait,’ Will said, ‘We must have passed it. Stay here.’ He retraced his steps quickly and counted again to make certain. 1, 2, 3, and then only that gaping space crossed by beams of timber; no numbers 4 or 5.

The wind, perishingly cold, seemed to have increased; the rain as well; the outside of his mack was wet and now suddenly Will Clagg found himself damp within as well, as perspiration began to ooze from his arm-pits. He quickly counted again, and then, in alarm and half in relief at having been such a fool, he rushed to the other side of the street. But there were no houses there at all, only the long stretch of set-back buildings of the hospital biting deeply into the Crescent. He returned whence he had come, running almost blindly past his family in the grip of panic.