Jamie was happy. He was sitting on a tall stool, staring owl-eyed at the cake the cook was decorating, and now and again he would ask a question in his own strange way, and listen very solemnly to the answer.
‘What means royal icing, Cooky? Do it be just for kings and queens? Ain’t it just
stiff
, then? And sweet,
lovely and sweet! How d’you make it pink? What if you wanted it yeller to be?’
It was lovely on the balcony, only Anna didn’t like heights and had no desire to hang over the balustrade and exchange remarks with Nancy about the people gathering below. But she guessed that if she let on she would be thought a little ninny, so she took quick peeps, crunched her biscuit as slowly as she dared, sipped at her squash and enjoyed the warm air spiralling up from the ground and lifting her fringe from her hot forehead every time she took a look below. When the drink and the biscuit were finished, she was taken to Nancy’s room, which was smaller than hers and a good deal fancier, with pink and white wallpaper, lots of frills on everything and very educational looking pictures on the walls. Many of them, Nancy explained loftily, were reproductions from the big London galleries. Nancy also explained that the spare bed was for Anna and Anna, who had never shared a room until now, was both pleased and dismayed that she and Nancy would, as Nancy put it, be able to talk till ever so late. I bet I fall asleep and then Nancy will think I’m a baby as well as a country mouse, she thought dismally.
Nancy got out her scrap-book and the two children pored over the pages.
‘I’m collecting royalty, especially Queen Elizabeth,’ Nancy said proudly. ‘Not only photographs from the papers but any little bits about her. I started at Christmas, and look how many I’ve got already! It’s much more fun than racing cars and aeroplanes – they’re what the boys collect. Do you have a scrap-book?’
‘Yes,’ Anna said truthfully. ‘But it isn’t very full yet.’
‘What do you collect? Or is it who?’
Thus challenged, Anna made a lightning decision. ‘Oh, the Princesses, particularly Elizabeth,’ she said airily and completely untruthfully. ‘I haven’t got a lot yet, but I’m sure I’ll get heaps soon.’
‘The Princesses!’ Nancy looked almost chagrined, Anna saw. ‘Now that’s a good idea. We must help each other, Anna; I’ll send you the Princess ones I get and you can send me Queen Elizabeth.’
‘What a good idea,’ Anna said and found, to her surprise, that she meant it. It would be fun to exchange cuttings with her cousin and to have a collection. ‘Lots of the photographs have the Queen and the Princesses on, though. Perhaps we could cut them apart?’
Nancy thought this would not be necessary; you could always get another copy of the newspaper or magazine, she explained. And then she produced the chart, which proved to be a chart on one side and a wonderful panorama of the 1911 coronation on the other. They had a fine time poring over it while Nancy explained who was who and what was what and Anna said she understood everything now, even the abdication. And indeed she did understand the abdication because it had been almost the sole subject of conversation among the servants, everyone at school and all her mother’s friends for the past six months; one would have had to be deaf and an idiot not to know that King Edward had refused to take the crown unless Mrs Simpson could share it, and that some mysterious person, probably Mr Baldwin, had said that since Mrs Simpson was a divorcée having her as queen was impossible. So now Prince Albert, who had been Duke of York, was to become King George VI, and the dear Duchess would be Queen Elizabeth.
But Nancy was still explaining about the monarchy.
‘You understand then, that a woman can be queen in her own right? It’s called …’
Nancy went on and on and Anna nodded now and then and let her mind wander off into dreams; she would go downstairs to watch the procession and Princess Elizabeth
would see her and they would smile, each divining that the other was someone special. And Princess Elizabeth would invite her to hop up into her golden coach and of course Anna would do so and they would have a long talk and the Princess would quite understand about Anna’s weight problem, why Jamie didn’t talk properly yet, like other boys who were his age, and how very precious and wonderful was Anna’s dear Daddy. And she would nod understandingly and say she was just the same when Anna told her how troubling sums were and how she wanted to be pretty for Daddy’s sake, and when Anna explained about Jamie talking badly she would nod again and say that Jamie was only young and would talk just like everyone else when he was ready.
‘So you see?’ Nancy ended triumphantly. ‘It’s all quite easy really; if the Duchess of York – the queen now of course – doesn’t have a baby boy then Princess Elizabeth will be queen one day. When Prince Alb – I mean King George dies, of course.’
‘What about the one who’s queen now?’ Anna ventured as the two of them left the bedroom and headed back to the balcony room. ‘Won’t she be Queen still?’
Nancy thought, a frown marring her clever little face.
‘She’ll be so old when the king dies that she’ll be advised to abdicate,’ she pronounced finally. ‘Really, Anna, you ought to be able to work things like that out for yourself – you’re eleven, aren’t you?’
‘Just eleven,’ Anna said humbly. ‘Sorry, Nancy.’
‘When you’re old, really old, chick, there are certain things you’ll remember. The first is the abdication – you’ll remember what you were doing on that day when you’ve forgotten your best friend’s name – and the second is the coronation. And it’s nicer for you because you and Princess Elizabeth are exactly the same age, you even share the same birthday, so make the great day memorable for yourself; take everything in.’ Hester, doing their washing in an old enamel bath, twisted around to smile at Nell,
who was putting the linen through the mangle while little Fleur strained to turn the handle. ‘And you, Fleur, you’ll remember the coronation when you’re old and grey!’
The fair was in London, in a grimy suburb, set up on the green so that the revellers could patronise it when they tired of watching processions and cheering. The Gullivers had never got nearer to London than Essex before, but this was different. London was the hub, and they wanted to be there. And despite the fact that the coronation was not until the following day, Tom’s feeling that they should make the effort had been right; the fair had been buzzing ever since it opened.
The previous evening Hester and Cissie had walked along the route the royal procession would take, or a part of it rather, with their children, Hester doing her best to explain what would take place.
‘Look at the height of the stands – people pay good money, a great deal of it, to climb up there and watch,’ she had explained. ‘And see those big office windows overlooking the route? You can hire a whole window if you’ve got enough money.’
‘How much money?’ Fleur had asked hopefully. She clung to Nell’s hand, looking around her with wide eyes. More’n we’ve got?’
‘Much more. Probably hundreds of pounds,’ Hester admitted. ‘Only the really rich can afford to hire windows, you’ve got to be pretty well-to-do even to have a stand-seat, I believe. But there’ll be no flatties around the fair till evening, so we’ll go up west then and I daresay we’ll see as much as most.’
Nell had only recently learned that she and the Princess shared the same birthday and she was much more interested in the coronation as a result. How strange but wonderful it must be to have the king of England for your father and the queen for your mother! Not that I’d swop, she told herself resolutely, heaving a sheet out
of the rinsing water. I really like being myself and living in a trailer and having Fleur for my little sister. Princess Elizabeth has a little sister, too, the Princess Margaret Rose – and I’m to see them both tomorrow!
‘Mum, if we’re really to remember the coronation when we’re old, couldn’t we drive up in one of the lorries?’ Nell said craftily, feeding a folded sheet into the rollers and giving Fleur a hand with the difficult part, the first six inches or so. ‘Wouldn’t it be a grand thing, to be right above the crowds, seeing every mortal thing with our own eyes? Or we could pretend we’d paid and squiggle through to the front of one of those windows – that would be all right, too.’
Hester laughed and scooped the last sheet out of the suds. She began to wring it, the soap bubbles running down her arms and soaking the old grey shirt she wore. She was paid for her washing and ironing and deserved every penny, Nell thought, because she did a thorough job even in winter when the water got cold so quickly and it rained on her lines of wet linen.
‘You and Fleur may wriggle and squiggle through the crowds and end up right at the front; the beautiful queen will wave specially to you and the little Princesses will blow you kisses and the guardsmen in their grand uniforms will wink at you. But I’m too big, I’ll be stuck at the back, seeing nothing but heads and the backs of necks.’
‘You could ask Ugly Jack to sit you on his shoulder,’ Fleur remarked. ‘He wouldn’t mind – he’d like it, I ’spect. He’ll come with us, won’t he?’
Nell was watching her mother and saw the rose-pink tide wash up over Hester’s pale face. Hester heaved at the sheet, wrung it as hard as though she were wringing a neck and not a sheet at all, then threw it into the cold-water tub, pushing her wet hands into her thick, springy hair as though to dry them off that way.
‘Jack? Oh, I don’t know, probably he’ll be too busy
to take time off,’ she said with a studied casualness which did not fool either child, Nell thought, seeing Fleur’s thoughtful expression. ‘But we’ll go anyway, shall we? I’m sure Cissie will want to come; it’s not every day we get the chance to see a king crowned.’
‘And we’ll make it a day to remember, like you said,’ Nell remarked, picking up another sheet and beginning to fold it for the mangle. ‘You’ll remember it too, Mummy, when you’re old.’
Hester, rinsing in the cold water tub, shot her daughter a quick glance, then smiled at her.
‘I’m old already,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll be twenty-eight in August. But you’re right, chick, I do want tomorrow to be a memorable day for us all. We’ll leave at the crack of dawn and maybe we’ll manage to get a decent place if we steer clear of the area nearest the palace and the abbey. We’ll take sandwiches and a drink, and we’ll have a lovely day I’m sure.’
It rained, of course. Probably every major event in British history had been accompanied by squalls of rain, Hester thought, but with Ugly Jack lifting her up to see over the heads of the crowd while the little girls, true to their promise, wriggled and squiggled their way to the front, she had never enjoyed herself more.
The pageantry of it! The colour, the excitement, the goodwill of the crowd! It was like nothing she had ever experienced, and she laughed and cried, drank cold tea and ate soggy sandwiches, stood on tiptoe until her calf muscles screamed and then collapsed back against Jack, just so happy, so thrilled with every tiny glimpse that she could scarcely put her feelings into words.
‘I’ll never forget it, never, never!’ she vowed, smiling up into Jack’s craggy, sun-browned face. It was a long way up, for Jack was six feet six inches and built like a prize-fighter, with a strength that he used carefully,
as though aware that he could easily cause an injury by mistake.
‘I doubt anyone who’s here today will forget a moment of it,’ Jack assured her. They had been standing at the side of the road but now they were being carried along by the crush of people, all following the procession to Buckingham Palace. ‘I know I shan’t. We’ll be at the palace quite soon at this rate and no doubt the royals will come out on to the balcony and wave, but after that we might just fight our way out. So what would you like to do next?’
‘I want chips,’ Fleur said. ‘Where’s me mam?’
‘Your mother’s safe enough,’ Hester said guardedly. When last seen, Cissie had been wrapped in the embrace of an upstanding young clerk, and responding to the commandment to love thy neighbour with considerable enthusiasm. When Hester remembered the bitter things Cissie had said about her missing husband and about men in general, it seemed strange, but today was a day for kissing and hugging, for joy and exuberance. Hester had been comprehensively kissed by Jack, and had not tried to push him away.
‘Hang on to my skirt though, love – and you, Nell darling.’
They surged across Piccadilly Circus, Hester glancing affectionately up at Eros as they circled him. A boy had scrambled over the great board fence which surrounded the statue and was clinging to Eros’s foot. He must have had just about the best view of the procession possible and Hester was about to comment that kids could do anything when Nell jerked at her skirt.
‘Mummy … that’s Snip on the statue’s foot! Can I go up to him?’
‘So it is and no you can’t,’ Hester panted. ‘How on earth did that little monkey get up there? We’re moving again. Keep up with me, there’s a good girl.’
‘Sni-ip!’ shrieked Nell. ‘Snip, we’re down here!’
‘No use, love,’ Ugly Jack said, smiling down at her. ‘He can’t hear you, the band’s makin’ too much row. Come along, we’re gettin’ near the palace!’
The crowd pressed onwards, carrying the little party with it, and soon they passed the Queen Victoria Memorial and into the open space before the palace. They were just in time to see the state coach disappearing between the huge wrought-iron gates and even as it did, the heavens opened. Rain poured down as though it had waited until the new king reached home but could wait no longer. Umbrellas went up, heads snuggled into collars, but Hester just leaned against Ugly Jack and occasionally wiped at the rain which ran down her face and watched and cheered with the rest.
Late that night, with the children sleeping soundly, Hester and Cissie sat on their double bed and brushed their hair and talked about their wonderful day.
‘You said it would be unforgettable, gel, an’ I reckon you was right,’ Cissie remarked, inserting a curling rag into a strand of limp brown hair and tying it tightly to her scalp. ‘I met a soldier on the gondolas … he’s comin’ back tomorrer to take me out on the spree. But it ain’t that, it was, oh, the feel of everything, the jolly way everyone acted. That’s what I’ll remember when I’m old and grey, the way you said.’ She looked curiously across at Hester, placidly brushing. ‘What’ll you remember, Hes?’