Night of Triumph

by Peter Bradshaw

  ‘I said – do you have the time?’ said the man evenly, still there, his smile still in place, as if easy-going and tolerant of Peter’s caprice.

  Peter pushed past him, suppressing a thin squeak of anxiety, and began to wash his hands. This he made take longer than usual, and when he looked up, the man had gone. Sternly resolving to leave this place, and worrying that both their uniforms were going to get stained in some way, Peter marched back up the stairs and into the crush by the bar. ‘Jerusalem’ was now being played on the piano, to a storm of whistling. He mambo-ed back round to their table, to discover the very same man again, seated with his back to him, and in intimate conversation with Hugh.

  ‘Ah, Peter,’ said Hugh cheerily, ‘this is Colin Erskine-Jones. A capital fellow I’ve just met.’

  Colin turned and rose to shake Peter’s hand. His manner had changed, perceptibly. The ingratiating manner had been removed; in its place was a smooth condescension.

  ‘We’ve not been introduced,’ he said, ambiguously.

  ‘How do you do?’ said Peter.

  Without replying directly to this, Colin turned back to Hugh.

  ‘Well, war work, you know,’ he said, evidently in answer to a previous question. ‘I actually volunteered for the ARP.’

  ‘Really?’ It was unusual for Hugh to appear surprised at anything, and Peter noted it.

  ‘Oh yes. Really.’

  ‘Clearing bomb damage and so forth?’

  ‘Quite. Some of the chaps used to come straight from the regular jobs, work all night, and then go back to the office the next day with never a wink of sleep.’

  ‘Marvellous. But wasn’t it frightfully dangerous?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But rewarding.’

  Colin accompanied this last remark with an enigmatic smile, that both men found supercilious.

  ‘Can I get you another?’

  ‘Oh now, Hugh, surely we have to push on, rather?’

  The extraordinary honour that had been conferred on them by this evening’s ‘chaperoning’ duty, and the necessity of not making a mess of things, pressed on Peter’s mind.

  ‘Oh, Peter, don’t be a wet blanket. We’re in no great rush.’

  ‘It’s already twenty past.’

  ‘So you do have the time.’

  Simply to get away from Colin, Peter glumly volunteered to get three gins, threaded his way back to the bar, and made a fat and grimy tube with his coins while waiting to be served. A thin man with a pink face – the colouring was, on closer inspection, caused by a widespread latticework of infinitesimally fine broken veins – listened to his order with a lizardly flick of his eyes in Peter’s direction and then, without making any effort to pour out the drinks, resumed his conversation.

  ‘We mustn’t let our guard down. We mustn’t just slack off.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have to continue the battle in the Far East. The Japanese.’

  ‘It makes my blood boil to think how they treated our chaps.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have treated them like that.’

  ‘Ah well, it’ll soon come. Victory in Japan. And then this will all be over.’

  ‘Victory in Japan ...’ murmured someone into his Guinness.

  ‘Victory in Japan,’ said someone else, raising his glass, as if proposing a toast.

  ‘Ah, yes. It’s a good life, you know, as long as you don’t weaken.’

  This was an unfortunate moment for Peter to feel slightly dizzy, and to slump against the bar. He should have had something more to eat before he came out. A good life if you didn’t weaken? What on earth did that mean? In what sense did being strong make it a good life? How?

  ‘Shall I carry the gins for you?’ said the pink-faced man suddenly, and his open contempt, and that of his fellows, made Peter pull himself together and refuse the request. He still did not quite understand that his uniform was triggering conversations about the war everywhere within earshot.

  Peter returned to his table, to find a girl on Hugh’s knee, talking to an older woman. Colin was in tears, having apparently broached the subject of what on earth he was going to do in peacetime. It was a melancholy theme, and Peter was to discover that a good deal of that night’s merry-making was being indulged in all over London to avoid thinking about it.

  ‘The wine business is in an awful state, old chap.’ Colin had been a wine importer before the war.

  ‘Mm,’ said Hugh.

  ‘The disruption on the Continent has of course wrought havoc with supply, and that naturally has taken prices up.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘But this only benefits those chaps with a serious holding of stock, a wide client base, or a good deal of capital. Or all three. I’ve got none.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll chuck it in, and go in for importing lightbulbs. Yet that, as you probably know,’ he added, with infinite, tender sadness, ‘has its own potential for heartbreak.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter.

  ‘I see you were admiring my cigarette case,’ Colin then said, producing the case and waving it about. ‘I don’t mind telling you I won’t really need it for much longer, because – starting tomorrow – I am giving up smoking. Would you like to buy it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My cigarette case. Solid silver, you know. Make me an offer.’

  ‘I don’t really ...’

  ‘I say,’ said Hugh, decisively changing the subject. ‘Let’s sing a song. Here’s one I’ve learned from other ranks!’ He started to joggle his knees up and down, which made the girl on his knee and her friend splutter and giggle:

  Bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bump,

  As if I was riding me charger!

  Bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bump,

  Just like an Indian Rajah!

  All the girls declare,

  He’s a gay old stager.

  Hey! Hey! Clear the way,

  Here comes the galloping Major!

  Hugh concluded by giving his girl a candid and passionate kiss, which went on for some time; this appeared neither to interest nor to scandalise the company. Peter looked at his watch.

  ‘I say, Colin,’ said Hugh, breaking off from his kiss, struck by a sudden thought, ‘were you saying something about getting married?’

  This was another disagreeable subject, evidently, although it made their guest testy and defensive, rather than maudlin.

  ‘I was; I mean, I am,’ he replied. ‘But my fiancée became rather a bore about my interests here in town.’

  ‘She would rather live in the country?’ inquired Peter, politely.

  ‘It’s partly that. I wouldn’t mind. I could come up to town every week or so and stay at the Club. But she became very silly about some of my ... some of my haunts, you know.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hugh, and winked.

  ‘Ah,’ said the girl on his knee, and winked as well, causing a gust of laughter among her friends.

  ‘Some of my interests,’ continued Colin gloomily, as if to himself, ‘ ... some of the things a chap has to do to blow off steam. My artistic side.’

  With a deafening crash, a woman dressed as Britannia carrying a papier-maché trident, and accompanied by a man in a mangy fur and a lion’s head, entered the pub and began to sing ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’. Through the open door, Peter could see how extraordinarily crowded the streets now were. He wondered if this would impede their journey to the Palace. For the first time, he wondered if Hugh had simply made up this story for a prank. Did he want to go somewhere else, in uniform like this? Peter felt a chill.

  ‘Of course, the war has offered some opportunities,’ Colin went on, in a confiding tone. ‘One has had some chances to make money. In fact, I have a chance tonight to make rather a lot of money. One hardly likes to talk about it, and I probably wouldn’t talk about it if I wasn’t so tight.’

  Peter was entirely indifferent to this man’s financial problems, and could only nod, sipping joylessly at his gin and despe
rately trying to catch the eye of Hugh, who was now showing his girl a silver fob watch, periodically returning it to his pocket and inviting her to retrieve it, all as if emphasising his staggeringly casual attitude to the time. But then Hugh glanced sharply up at Peter and Colin.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t be so wet. We’re going now. We won’t be late.’

  He turned back to his girl and apologetically began the process of dislodging her from his lap.

  ‘Salvage work, you might call it,’ continued Colin dully.

  ‘Shipping, you mean?’ enquired Peter.

  Hugh was now standing up, brushing his uniform with his fingertips; guiltily, Peter began to do the same thing.

  ‘Time to be off, ladies,’ said Hugh, and shrugged off the chorus of disappointment. Standing, both men continued to command the same attention as before. It was such an extraordinary thing to see men of their rank here, and the entire company took it as proof that anything went on this remarkable day.

  Outside, the crowds were even more densely packed. There was bunting hung up everywhere and slogans. ‘God Save The King’ read one, and another, evidently an old placard, showed a picture of Marshal Stalin with the words, ‘Second Front Now’. The men were, as before, cheered and clapped on the back as they passed through. They would certainly have to walk to the Palace now.

  Everywhere, faces: drawn faces, pale faces, lined faces, fat faces, like faces of an underground race temporarily permitted to take the air, in return for millennia of passivity. They sang, they whistled and laughed, they coughed and unselfconsciously spat on the ground. People gave each other the thumbs-up and seized upon the diversion that Hugh and Peter provided as they walked along. Some couples gazed into each other’s eyes; others kissed. Everywhere, total strangers were hugging each other. Peter was quite certain that Hugh had insisted on their uniforms precisely to deter this kind of embrace.

  Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion. Hugh’s face went pale and taut, and so did everyone else’s in the vicinity. But it was just a firework, let off in a doorway. The perpetrator grinned, and everyone cheered. Nobody was the least bit angry with him.

  Four

  Elizabeth’s governess Bobo said that she had never seen so many people. Elizabeth said solemnly that she agreed, though in her heart she did not. There was indeed a sea of people outside the Palace and all the way down the Mall, but Elizabeth had witnessed the amazing spectacle before, after her father’s Coronation, and two years before that, for her grandfather’s silver jubilee; in fact, it seemed to her that there had been an enormous crowd out there in the Mall all her life. She assumed that a packed mass was its natural condition, which for some reason it somehow rarely achieved, and the usual lesser throng was just a dilution of its truer, denser state. They were like the crowds following Moses in the Book of Exodus which she had read and re-read as a girl.

  Her mother took Elizabeth’s hand quite sharply, almost pinching her palm, and did the same to Margaret on the other side.

  ‘Ready?’ she asked.

  Four abreast, they walked forward and their formation straggled diagonally out into a line as they went through a heavy curtained canopy, and then reassembled into a single rank on the balcony to wave to the crowds. The response was not immediate. Her mother began to wave, and then her father, and then, shyly, the two daughters.

  As the throng realised that what they had longed for had come to pass, a wave of cheering swept forward, although the actual volume did not seem to increase by very much. Elizabeth fancied she could see some in the crowds with telescopes and field glasses.

  Elizabeth was not very used to acclaim. In the nursery, good behaviour was rewarded only with relatively curt and restrained gestures of approval from Bobo and the girls’ nanny Crawfie, and it did not take Elizabeth long to work out that they themselves were soliciting approval from her mother. In the Auxiliary Territorial Service, her skills at driving and examining an engine were greeted with brisk and solemn nods and the occasional, excruciatingly self-conscious ‘jolly good’ from her instructors, wary of being accused by their fellows of sucking up – as she soon realised. Now, in her young womanhood, both her parents seemed cautious with her, as if with a racehorse in which they had over-invested. And as for Philip, her overt demand for his approval, for his love, had been badly misjudged. The memory of it snagged at her mind, like a thorn at her skirt. How could she keep thinking of that, on today of all days?

  The crowd swarmed and fizzed and bubbled. What were they all thinking? One year ago, while her father was in Italy on a visit to the Eighth Army, Elizabeth’s duties as a Counsellor had included signing the reprieve for a murderer. She wondered if that man was out there at this moment waving at her, now leading an entirely blameless and reformed life.

  Her father, she knew, was nervous of both heights and crowds. Was this an awful trial for him? Austerely, Elizabeth severed the indulgent line of thinking as irrelevant. His Majesty was entirely indifferent to personal discomfort. This was a glorious day. She wondered if she might look around and smile at him, but had been warned that was incorrect; the proper form for balcony appearances was to keep facing outwards, as if for a portrait.

  Elizabeth made some discreet adjustments to her uniform. She smoothed her skirt, pulled at the jacket sleeves, and with two little flicks at her hair, fully revealed the new earrings that Philip had bought for her. This had been some months ago. So far, he had got her nothing on the occasion of her engagement, and there was no question of a ring, because the understanding was not public yet. Now the earrings were fully visible, and the crowd gave a deafening throaty roar. Elizabeth was most gratified. She always knew that her earrings were attractive, and rather special, but never guessed that they would go down so well with the crowd. Beamingly, she turned to the left, and then to the right, to showcase each in turn; the crowd almost screamed and Elizabeth was thrilled that London adored them so much. She leaned over and was about to murmur something to this effect to her mother – who had in fact advised against wearing these earrings – when she saw Mr Churchill standing on the balcony next to her father.

  He was wearing a bow tie, and had one arm aloft, an unlit cigar wedged into his middle and index finger, which were in the characteristic ‘V’ form. Instantly, Elizabeth and the rest of her family assumed benign, indulgent expressions which were invisible to the crowd, and indeed to Mr Churchill himself who appeared indifferent to those who had accorded him this singular honour. He was plainly ecstatic. He looked tired and very old to Elizabeth, but somehow also quite rejuvenated by the experience, like a character in a book by H. Rider Haggard that she had once read in the nursery.

  Elizabeth knew how keenly her mother must have felt the discomfort of having the Prime Minister appear next to them out here, however admired he was by the people, by the Americans, and in the press. She did not care to appear on stage in a supporting role, and perhaps Mr Churchill himself realised this, because with a deep bow both to her father, and then to her mother, he absented himself from the balcony, and Elizabeth fancied his rejuvenation-thrill was heightened as the crowd’s roar unmistakably lessened on his departure. She could see the jaunty spring in his step.

  They carried on waving. Elizabeth knew that they must go in soon, and unlike Mr Churchill, did not particularly want to stay out there: no longer than was necessary, at any rate. They might need to go back out in an hour or so.

  Elizabeth was wondering what she might do for the rest of the evening. Perhaps supper with Margaret, and then listen to a concert on the wireless. She was actually rather tired.

  When they came back inside, Mr Churchill was there again, talking to one of his ministers, a taller man who had to bow a little to maintain the intimate, gossipy, murmuring exchange that Elizabeth knew all politicians liked to affect, even or especially if they had nothing of consequence to say: a display of importance and intrigue for other people’s benefit. They broke off as the family re-entered the room and looked at them with
a courtier-like attention: smiling, expectant, ready to speak if called upon and yet not forcing their presence on Their Majesties in any way. The cheering from outside was still entirely audible.

  The Queen approached the Prime Minister, whose companion instantly withdrew.

  ‘Well, Mr Churchill,’ said the Queen in a high, clear, pleasant voice, ‘you are one of the political immortals now!’

  ‘Anyone who has suffered from insomnia will already know what immortality is, ma’am,’ replied Churchill smilingly, with a bow.

  The Queen was displeased with this conceited riposte; surely what was required of the Prime Minister was a simple and gracious thank you for the remarkable compliment she had just paid him, and which she had spent some minutes thinking up. There was an uncomfortable silence, which the King cheerfully interrupted.

  ‘Jolly good! Jolly good! I can’t think of a night like it!’ he beamed around at the company. Mr Churchill and others bowed again. ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘not a night like it. What a wonderful day in our history. And I believe we owe it all to you, Prime Minister.’

  Churchill bowed again and his cadences then assumed the rise and fall which the King had praised earlier: ‘Sir, I believe we owe it all to the lion-hearted fighting men and women of land, sea and air, who ...’

  ‘All to you,’ repeated the King happily. ‘To think, it might have been Hitler and Eva Braun out there on the balcony – can you imagine? – or, or Von Ribbentrop, or ...’

  Nobody cared to imagine. If things had been different, if things had gone another way ... it was an ugly and futile line of thought.

  The King was distracted by a murmured comment in his ear from the Queen, who had apparently been petitioned on a personal matter by her younger daughter. He listened with the cheery facial expression left over from his previous comment; presently, his face became blank as he considered this new topic and then became cheery again.

  ‘Yes. Yes! Why on earth not? Lilibet!’

  ‘Yes, Papa?’