Coronation

by Paul Gallico

  There was not much choice in his basket – two small dolls with red, white and blue rosettes, a sodden Union Jack on a stick, several balloons and a periscope, one of those small elongated white boxes with mirrors at each end.

  ‘Here, wait a minute,’ said Clagg. ‘Let’s have a look at that.’

  ‘Just the thing, guv’ner,’ the vendor said, handing over the periscope. ‘Makes you eight feet tall. Look over anybody’s ’ead. Fun for the kiddies afterwards. Last one, guv’ner. Five bob to you.’

  Will Clagg raised the instrument and applied his eye to the bottom. It might have worked inside to see over the heads of taller people, but here it just barely reached to the top of the barrier, giving a glimpse of the upper part of the archway and some foliage. It was hopeless, and of course when he held it higher he could no longer get his eye to it. The affair was beginning to assume the qualities of a nightmare, one of those dreams where one is always missing buses or trying to escape from danger in shoes made of lead.

  Clagg handed the periscope back to the vendor, who grinned at him cheerfully, showing his broken teeth, and said, ‘Bit of short measure there, guv’ner. You should have growed some more. What about something for the kiddies?’

  ‘Shut your bloody trap! Here, let’s see what you’ve got.’ He bought a doll for Gwendoline and the wet flag for Johnny.

  Violet said, ‘Say thank you to Daddy,’ and Gwendoline did, but her mind was elsewhere, on the Queen. She was wondering how ever she could manage to put all of her love into one smile and one wave when the moment came that she would see the Queen drive by in her golden carriage. She thought perhaps she would wave both hands at once.

  As for Johnny he was old enough, and by now sufficiently wise to know that his Union Jack was not for waving, that it would never join the sea of fluttering pennons which would be set in motion on the other side of the barrier. Instead, therefore, he planted it upon the escarpment topping Hill No. 5 and with the survivors of his regiment prepared to defend it to the death. Below he could see the enemy troops massing for the assault. With no thought for his own safety, he marched back and forth along the line, pistol in hand, encouraging his force. ‘Stand firm, men! We’ll never surrender! Let them come, we’re more than a match for them!’

  Shortly after noon, a squabble broke out among the young people who owned the radio, or rather between the actual owner, who appeared to be named Lionel, and the others. Lionel was a stringy boy with sideburns who was enjoying the dance music from France and was snapping his fingers and wriggling his hips to it. The girls wanted to come back to the Coronation.

  ‘Oh, come on, Lionel,’ they kept saying, ‘turn it back. We want to hear when the Queen is crowned.’

  ‘Ah, da-da, de-di, da-da,’ sang Lionel, clicked his fingers and bumped his hips.

  The Claggs united in hating Lionel and rooting for the girls. They too wanted to hear the Coronation. Granny muttered, ‘Humph, the young people of today!’

  Clagg said, ‘Young squirt! If he was mine I’d teach him something.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Lionel. Do turn it back. It’s time.’

  The impasse was broken by the other boy, who simply pushed Lionel out of the way and twirled the knob of the little box, and once more the soft voice of the commentator came through, and all those close to the little circle bent closer to hear him say that the moment of crowning was at hand.

  *

  And far off in the Abbey the Archbishop crowned the Queen and, with the placing of the heavily jewelled, awkwardly balanced and weighty crown on to the light brown hair of the head bent slightly forward to receive it, set off such a peal of bells and thudding of cannon-fire as to reach to the farthest ends of the earth.

  This was the moment of the priest, the intermediary between God and man, the Archbishop of Canterbury, charged with the transfer of spiritual power to the temporal hand and anointing her as God’s representative in her realm.

  Yet, too, it was the gesture and movement of a good, kindly human, an old man of experience and understanding of the frailties of the body as well as the spirit. St. Edward’s crown of gold was heavy, ungainly and cumbersome. It could hurt, pressing upon the skull and forehead.

  It seemed impossible almost that so many ends could be embodied in one smooth, simple gesture compounded of fatherly solicitude and the awful symbolism of majesty. There was his care and forethought for her dignity: the crown was too large for the small head beneath it, top-heavy and precarious in its seat; it must be balanced just so that it would not slip or slide or alter its position, once placed, during the long and arduous ceremony that was to follow until it was removed.

  And as he lowered the shining object on to her head, he held to it for a moment yet, as though to make sure that it was comfortable and had settled firmly and securely. One felt the sigh in the heart of the old man that such a burden of responsibility should be put upon one so young, such a fearful inheritance handed on to one so gentle and frail. He was endowing her with grandeur and simultaneously bestowing upon her endless cares.

  Then with a fine and paternal flourish of both hands he released it and stepped back. The great act of the Crowning was completed.

  *

  The sharp crack of saluting charges fired from mobile artillery stationed in nearby Hyde Park startled them all. The shots were echoed by the distant thudding of guns from the Tower of London. Bells pealed and jangled wildly from all quarters.

  Will Clagg looked at his watch. It was 12.32. The cannon and the bell-ringing and the full-throated cheers from the throngs massed on the other side of the wall drowned out the little radio. He took off his hat and let the rain fall on to his head. ‘The Queen has been crowned,’ he said. And for a moment it didn’t matter that he was standing bareheaded behind the barrier. He felt a pride and a thrust of gladness through his heart that he was there.

  Violet Clagg murmured, ‘God bless her,’ and dabbed at her eyes with a sopping handkerchief with which she had been wiping the moisture from her neck.

  Granny Bonner sniffed and said, ‘Good luck to her.’

  Those gathered around the wireless set cheered too, and Johnny waved his flag. But Gwendoline cried, ‘Daddy, is she coming now? Daddy, I can’t see anything!’

  ‘No, no,’ Clagg soothed, ‘not yet, Gwenny. There’s lots of time still. We’ll be there when she does.’ But he didn’t know how.

  *

  Granny Bonner’s feet were beginning to hurt her in her wet shoes. Her thighs ached from standing. She was hungry. Her hair was soaked. But of all things she was wishing that it would rain even harder and that somehow before the day was done even more dreadful things would happen to them than had already occurred.

  For the truth was that she was having the time of her life and expected to collect from exposure to the weather such a catalogue of ills, aches and pains as would keep the Clagg family in total subjugation to her for the next six months.

  Indulging Granny’s miseries was a part of the ritual of living at the Claggs. To hear her tell it, she suffered from rheumatism, arthritis, sciatica, hardening of the arteries, stiffening of the joints, inflammation of the tendons, and anything else she happened to read about in the newspaper advertisements for patent medicines. One had to ask her in the morning whether she felt better, and before going to bed at night whether she thought she was going to be able to sleep. The Claggs never questioned her right to these ills, since she was an aged person and so entitled to them.

  Thus she wished for thunder, lightning and hail, Ossa piled upon Pelion, did Granny, for the sake of the delicious concessions she would wring from Will Clagg, now already reduced to a worm’s level by the catastrophe that she had had the good fortune to forecast.

  True, the old lady also would have liked to have had a glimpse of the Queen for the very reason that her son-in-law had pointed out: she would then have seen two of the great queens of England, one deceased, the other crowned, and remained herself the living link between them. But over and aga
inst this disappointment was balanced the perverse delight she would take in telling the story of Will’s idiocy. She was aware that, had all the promises of the day been kept, and she had sat in her window-seat, or even managed to stand along the route of procession with the throng, she would only have seen what everybody else saw. And what was there to tell in that? The narration of this misadventure and of its undoubted consequence would take hours to unfold and would last her as a tea-time topic to her cronies at Morecambe and Little Pudney to her dying day.

  In the meantime, with no objections from either Will Clagg or Violet, who was suffering from the collapse of her husband’s ego as well as everything else, Granny had elected herself captain of the children. She was bossing them unmercifully, yanking at their clothes, pulling them about one moment, commiserating with them the next, fondling and spoiling them with loud and pointed remarks about poor babes brought upon such an expedition, and doling out the small ration of chocolate she had brought along and which was all they had to quiet their hunger.

  The wireless was still their link with the solemn ceremony continuing in the Abbey, and Lionel, succumbing to the will of the majority, was content to leave the instrument tuned to the B.B.C., and in fact was now basking in the attention of all those crowded around trying to hear and in the reflected glory of owning the set. From the expression on his face one might have thought that he had invented radio communication.

  Thus they heard from that great church to which the voice of the commentator transported them momentarily, how the peers of the realm came and knelt at the feet of the woman who a few minutes before had undergone the mystical change that made her for ever a person apart from them all.

  Not only did they kneel, but they performed a gesture symbolic of submission. They folded their hands in an attitude of prayer and placed them between hers, and by so doing bound themselves to her in loyalty everlasting.

  Led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed then by her own husband and the father of her children, Prince Philip, great names remembered from centuries of history bent the knee before her, grey heads bowed and paid their homage. Empty and archaic the ceremony might have seemed in this day and age, but there was still an exquisite and throat-catching beauty connected with it.

  But the procession of peers entitled thus to swear their fealty seemed endless as the lesser ones took their turn, and Lionel said, ‘Ah, it just goes on like that. Come on, let’s go.’ This time he found acquiescence among his friends. He turned the dial again. Debussy emerged from the box and to his dissonants the five of them all moved off, to the regret of those remaining, for with them went their one contact with the Coronation.

  What chocolate the Claggs had with them had been consumed by the children. There was no sign of any change in the order of the day or of the gates being opened to admit them. Standing there had become a habit. No one had the initiative to leave for fear they might miss something, and when inevitably the children made known their need to go to the lavatory, the Claggs proceeded to do so in relays. Fortunately they were in reach of the underground public convenience at Hyde Park Corner. Violet went first with Granny and Gwenny. Then Will trailed thither with Johnny. When they returned, somewhat refreshed, they simply continued to stand. It was as though they were all under some kind of spell which fixed them into eternity to that spot.

  Will Clagg, it is true, made a half-hearted attempt to break out of the cocoon of inertia that surrounded them, but he was too beaten morally to make a job of it. He mumbled something to the effect that maybe they had all best go home and get into something warm and dry. No one answered him. To Violet home was the end of the adventure, such as it was, and, as for Granny, the day of suffering was only half over. There were still four or five hours of discomfort and misery to be banked for the future. She was in no hurry to call it off.

  There was no way of knowing whether Clagg would have pursued the subject in spite of being ignored, for at that moment – and it was then shortly after two o’clock – came the sound of the thump-thump-thump of distant drums and the wind-wafted oompah of the military brasses. The procession was on its way.

  The effect was immediate, electric and revivifying upon all those caught behind the barrier. The martial music stiffened their backs and brought new life into eyes dulled with fatigue and weariness. They began to chivvy the constable. ‘Come on now. Are you going to let us through or not?’

  The young policeman, himself moved by the distant sounds, grinned uncomfortably. It felt as though something ought to be happening, yet the situation had not changed. ‘I got no orders to do so,’ he reiterated. ‘I can’t see no more myself than you can.’

  ‘You’re pyed to stand there. What abaht those kiddies come all the way from Sheffield to see the Queen?’

  The constable turned his back. Nearer and nearer approached the first of the bands, thumping, shrilling and blaring forth a blood-stirring military air. The music waxed in brazen volume as the marchers emerged from the canyon of Piccadilly and burst into the square, turning the corner with the squealing of fifes, braying of brasses and the solid beating of wet drum-skins. ‘Boom, boom, boompety-boom’ went the rhythms and in one’s mind’s eye one could picture the proud drummers in their leopard aprons twirling their sticks over their heads before they brought them down to crash once more into the sides of their instruments. ‘Tee-boom, tee-boom, tee-boom!’ Cymbals crashed, shivered and shimmered, shaking the air with their vibrations.

  To the thrilling swing of the music was now added the endless throp-throp-throp-throp of marching feet and the mournful, high-pitched, long-drawn-out cries of command from the officers to right wheel as they turned around the triangle past Hyde Park Corner, divided and passed through the arches leading to the East Carriage Drive.

  From then on, none of those remaining behind the barrier thought any more of leaving. The sound filled their ears, heated the blood in their veins and shook their bones. It was tantalising to the point of madness, but there was no escape from it. Without realising it, they were settling for half the loaf. If they could not see, at least they could hear. Several of those near the Claggs close to the little door were jigging up and down in time to the music. It warmed them and pleased them. In a way it was like listening to the radio as band followed band, and if there were not the tread of marchers then there would be the rhythmic clopping of the hooves of cavalry horses on asphalt streets, accompanied by the merry, metallic jingling of harness and accoutrement.

  They heard the heavy trundling roll of artillery pieces hauled by half tracks and motor lorries, and later the characteristic clanking rumble and thunder of the tanks. Music never ceased now. Fife and drum calls interspersed with the brass of the military bands, to be replaced by the drone and squeal of the pipers, or the bugles and kettle-drums of Lancer or Hussar.

  Sometimes there would be a pause and to the listeners penetrated the whap-whap-WHAP of arms being grounded as the parade came to a temporary halt. Then the cries of the officers would come floating across, fading into the distance, each command igniting the one behind it. Again there would be the slap and rattle of rifles being shouldered, another mournful call and the threshing rhythm of trained feet stepping in unison.

  In this manner, regiment by regiment, the sounds made by the armed might of Great Britain and the Commonwealth on parade crested the wall, while overhead the bombers and fighters of the Air Force added their blasting, crackling roar of the fly-past to the grand military symphony.

  And through it all a small boy, hidden and unnoticed by those packed closely about him, endured torment unspeakable.

  For this was what Johnny Clagg had come for, a glimpse of those uniformed and glittering marchers on the other side of the barrier. For this he had willingly surrendered his cherished holiday. Never again during his childhood would all of the soldiers, sailors and airmen of what had once been the greatest empire the world had known be gathered to march together.

  They were passing by now, steel-helmete
d, pith-helmeted, bearskin-topped, capped or cuirassed, in uniforms of white, blue, green, khaki or scarlet with skins of every shade from northern white to golden tan to tropic black.

  Besides the smashing British regiments where Johnny’s heart lay, there would be Fiji and Solomon Islanders, brown men from Borneo, Jamaica, Ceylon, Malay and Somaliland, regiments from Sarawak, the Bahamas, Kenya and Pakistan and the West, East and South of Africa. He should be looking upon contingents from Hong-Kong, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Rhodesia. When ever again would a boy be able to gaze upon the famous green-uniformed Gurkhas with their kukris, or the red coats and stetsons of the equally famous North-West Mounted Police?

  With them would be rolling the mechanical monsters to enchant the heart of a boy, all the enthralling hardware of war: howitzers with black, gaping mouths, anti-aircraft cannon pointing admonishing fingers to the sky, Long Tom rifles capable of hurling an atom charge, machine-gun and mortar batteries, Bren-carriers, half tracks, field and mountain artillery, flame- and rocket-throwers, and the great land battleships, the monster tanks. All these were passing by now while Johnny stood silent and shivering in the cold and rain.

  Will Clagg dared not look at his son. Another day, he promised himself, he would take him to the pictures, where he would see in colour, to be sure, what he was missing now. Yet the father knew that it wouldn’t be the same, could never be the same for the child as seeing it accompanied by all the noise and thundering of reality.