Coronation (10 page)

Later on that night the assault of the home-going mobs upon transportation was to become more desperate, less good-tempered, wilder and out of all proportion in numbers to the available space on trains or station platforms. But at that hour of half-past six there were not yet so many, only the early birds with a long way to go, or the sensible ones who were passing up the fireworks and a tour of the illuminated decorations in favour of a more comfortable passage homeward. Still, the station was jammed, but cheerfully so and passable. And through the ruck Will Clagg steered his family in the direction of the 6.58 Midland Express.

Like the others, they fought and thrust and pushed their way against counter-thrusts and counter-pushes, propelling, whirling and batting them from all sides until at last they fell or were sucked into the colony of their brother and sister ants all bound in the same direction, and there-after progress was automatic. Through the gates, down the platform, into the empty and waiting compartments, and there, by virtue of their decision to be early, all five found seats, Johnny and Gwendoline by the window, Will and Elsie and Violet by their sides. With a great sigh of relief, they sagged or moulded themselves into the stiff bristles of the grimy carriage seats and backs. They had not realised how tired they were.

Young Johnny’s place was on the platform side of the carriage, and, as he looked out of the window at the seemingly endless streams of people pouring into the trains, a gleam of excitement replaced the fatigue in his young eyes at the sight of the occasional uniform of a soldier, red or green or blue in the drab of the crowd. His right hand was pressed deep into his trouser-pocket, clutching his talisman, and his index finger wandered about the contours of the wonderful metal badge, now hot from contact with his flesh. He felt the initials, the crest, the lion and the unicorn rampant. He would have liked to have drawn it forth to inspect it, to have added the testimony of his eyes to the fact that it was really there and his very own to keep for ever. But he felt that if he did so now one of his family would be sure to ask to see it. They might even take it from him. It would have to wait until he was alone.

Gwendoline was dreaming with her hands in her lap. Whatever the dream was, it curled the corners of her mouth with mystery. Her eyes were sleepy, but there was a hint of wonder in them.

Grandma Bonner had quietly come apart with old age and fatigue approaching exhaustion. She was collapsed in her seat, unmindful of the three strangers who had piled in to conclude the eight of the compartment. Untidy wisps of her hair were straggled over her eyes; her spectacles had slipped down; the colour of her face was grey and ashen; she looked ten years older than she was.

Violet Clagg’s countenance was a mirror of the bitterness and apathy that had overwhelmed her in the warmth of the compartment. She had taken off her shoes and sat listening to the ache of her feet as well as to those voices of despondency and surrender that were whispering that it was always like this; it had always been, it always would be. Things never turned out as promised or advertised. Yet one never ceased to be taken in by the promises or broken by the disillusionments.

It was nothing new for Will Clagg to have been on the go from early morn till dusk; there was no complaint from his iron muscles, though the soft of the seat felt good under his hams, but the canker of the fiasco continued to gnaw him. Try as he would, there was no escape from the abysmal failure of the day, the loss of his money, his prestige as head of the family, and, above all, the pain caused by the disappointment of his children.

His mind searched for and brought up the small ameliorating incidents that had happened. There was that badge so strangely handed to Johnny by the high official on the white horse and which in some way had appeared to compensate the boy for the loss of the sight of the procession. And Gwenny seemingly had seen something that had satisfied her – perhaps indeed the Queen. But for himself there was only remembering that he had been a trusting fool, and as husband, father and son-in-law had let all of them down. He felt himself weakened as a man, and worried whether it would show on the broad earth floor of the rolling mill when the furnace gates were opened and the glowing metal was poured. He wondered whether the men under his command would notice it.

On the way from the street to the train Clagg had managed to pick up the evening papers, and now, in an attempt to escape from these self-recriminations which filled him, he leafed through to see in black and white all that they had missed that day in life and colour.

He turned page upon page of pictures: Grenadiers, Life Guards, Horse Guards, Dragoons, Scots, Irish and Welsh. There were Indian troops in turbans, Africans in fezzes, officers on chargers, potentates in carriages, the young Queen crowned in the Abbey, peers paying homage. The colour of the newsprint was the colour of ashes, like the taste of the day left in his mouth.

Clagg turned to the text to try to drive other thoughts from his head and read the account of the morning’s happenings, or rather only half read them. The gnawing of the worm, it seemed, could not be ignored.

Yet in the next moment he did find his attention caught as, his eyes passing over the surface of a column headed ‘Coronation Miscellany’, he came upon the following item:

‘Petty thievery, pilfering, and the minor rackets of spivdom were held to a minimum by alert flying squads, according to Detective-Inspector Magillevray of the Metropolitan Police. Nevertheless, pickpockets flourished in certain areas where crowds were the thickest. Several stores were looted and counterfeit tickets to the Abbey, as well as to certain well placed positions on the route of procession, were much in evidence.

‘One of the nastiest of such swindles to come to the attention of the police were tickets sold at twenty-five guineas for a window-seat with breakfast, lunch and champagne at an address in Wellington Crescent, which turned out to be nothing but a bombed-out site. Among those who had bought tickets to this non-existent house were Sir Nigel and Lady Alladryn of Perth, Australia – Sir Nigel, who is Chairman of the West Australia Linseed Oil Company, arrived in London late and secured the fake tickets at the last minute from a stranger in the lobby of his hotel – Mr and Mrs Marshall Fess, American millionaires of Sioux Falls, Idaho, and William Clagg, Executive Foreman of the Pudney Steel Mills, Great Pudney, Sheffield, and his family.

‘Police working on the case have seized upon the superior engraving and printing of the fake tickets as a clue in their search for those responsible for them. “They would have fooled anyone,” said Detective-Sergeant Hayes in charge of the enquiry, “but we hope to be able to report progress before very long.”’

‘Violet! Granny!’ Will Clagg’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘I’ve got my name in the paper. Look here! Here it is! We weren’t the only ones who got stung. Sir Somebody or Other got it too. The Inspector said anybody could have been fooled.’

That wakened them out of their lethargies and self-pities and disappointments, and the two women leaned across the compartment to look where Clagg had his finger and, marvelling, read his name there, ‘William Clagg’ – the reporter had seen fit to promote him to keep company with the nobleman and the millionaire – ‘
Executive
Foreman of the Pudney Steel Mills.’

The children, too, pushed close to see, and then the other three passengers in the compartment, a husband and wife and a travelling salesman.

Will Clagg suddenly found himself suffused with a strange and wild exultation, and in his breast a curious sensation of sweetness. He had been touched unexpectedly by the divine lightning of publicity; fifty-three years of anonymity had been dispelled. William Clagg, Executive Foreman of the Pudney Steel Mills – there he was in black print on white paper in the
Evening Standard
. There were similar
Evening Standards
throughout the train no doubt, hundreds of them, and double hundreds of eyes at that moment would be looking upon the account and learning that he was an executive foreman in one of the greatest steel combines in Britain.

And, moreover, he suddenly discovered that he was a hero. His name was not only linked in a twenty-five-guinea swindle with an Australian knight and an American millionaire, but the fact that he had been a mark and a poor fool was now utterly denied and for ever demolished on the word of no less than Detective-Sergeant Hayes in charge of the case, who had uttered a dictum that the fake tickets would have deceived anyone.

Clagg sat back in the compartment amidst the murmurs of marvel from his family and fellow passengers, and gave himself up to the warm and wonderful feeling that had stolen over him. Now the story of their adventures had to be retold, but somehow it was no longer a tale of disaster and catastrophe, but one of drama which had reached the end it deserved: his name in the papers.

In his mind’s eye he already saw himself passing the news item around at the George and Dragon back home, not once but many times. The story would be retold whenever a stranger appeared in the bar or an old friend turned up. The cutting would grow creased and yellow with handling. And perhaps the police
would
return him the counterfeit tickets as they had promised and he would exhibit those along with the bit from the paper. Then visitors would pass their fingers over the gold embossing and agree with Detective-Sergeant Hayes that they might have fooled anyone, as indeed they had, the toffs as well as himself, and goodness knows how many others who had not been so fortunate as to be identified in newsprint.

The grandeur of the revelation lay like a spell upon the adults in the compartment. Thus it caused them all to jump when the sliding door was ripped open and the uniformed restaurant car attendant thrust his head inside shouting, ‘Tickets for dinner, anyone? Only second sitting left—’

The no longer anonymous Executive Foreman of the Pudney Steel Mills raised his square head from the delectable page where his identity stood revealed for all who cared to read, and the sound and import of his own voice astonished him as he said, ‘We’ll have five, please.’

This brought Granny out of her state of fatigue and shock. ‘Will!’ she cried. ‘Have you lost your senses? Haven’t you thrown out enough money as it is? We can have a cup of tea and some biscuits when we get home.’

Violet Clagg said, ‘Oh, Will, do you think we ought?’ And then sighed, ‘I could do with a bite to eat.’

‘And a bite of something you shall have, old girl,’ said Will Clagg. The urge to celebrate was irrepressible. ‘Yes, five for the second sitting,’ he repeated. The attendant handed over the tickets.

*

It was perhaps more instinct than intent that had led Clagg to decree that Johnny should occupy a seat at one of the tables for two across the aisle from them in the restaurant car. The father was not entirely unaware of the look of pure, unbelieving bliss that his son bestowed upon him, or the fact that with this gesture he had for ever annulled whatever lingering disappointment might have remained in the boy at the way things had turned out that day. To have a real and proper meal aboard a train roaring at more than a mile a minute through the countryside while there was still light to see out was a treat enough; but to be able to enjoy this by himself at another table, unsupervised, unobserved, unrestricted, so that no limits could be placed upon the soaring of his imagination – this was too good to be true.

The restaurant car consisted of tables for four on one side and smaller ones for two opposite on the other side of the narrow passage through which waiters threaded their way, performing the most incredible balancing acts with trays of food and drink.

Bliss indeed! The table for two opposite where the Claggs – Mum and Dad, Gwenny and Gran – had established themselves was occupied, but there was another two-placer one down from them still empty, and here Johnny seated himself facing the engine, his back to his family and most fortuitously out of their direct line of observation and contact.

Yet this wonderful moment, this unexpected, totally miraculous situation came so close to being blasted. Busybody, fusspot Granny, of course! Johnny had hardly seated himself and taken the menu in his hands when he heard over the rackety-rack and clickety-click of the wheels her querulous voice, ‘Ought the boy be there by himself, Will?’ He heard his mother say, ‘I don’t know, Granny,’ and then didn’t hear his father’s reply, only Granny’s continued plaintive note.

The iridescent bubble of the wonderful projected dreams he meant to enjoy during the course of the meal he was about to consume now as Major John Clagg, M.C., D.S.O. of the Royal Wessex, threatened to burst. Clickety-clack went the wheels. The brown-clad hips of a waiter whizzed past his head at a speed almost faster than that of the train. ‘Oughtn’t I go and sit with him?’ came the insistent voice of Granny.

Young Johnny screwed his eyes closed and took his lip between his teeth. He made hot, sweaty fists with nails digging into his palms, and with all the force of his being he tried to will it not to happen. Oh, please not to let Granny sit opposite him. Her mouth formed into that small, ever disapproving ‘o’, destroying Major Clagg for ever, making him into only Johnny Clagg, too young to be allowed to sit by himself.

Then there was a darkening shadow and the button of a pepper-and-salt tweed jacket before his eyes and a deep voice rumbled, ‘Is this seat occupied, young man?’

‘Oh no, please, sir, do have it,’ replied Johnny with such entreating earnestness and invitation in his voice that the man looked down upon him in surprise.