by Nicola Upson
3
By Tuesday evening, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose was heartily sick of the Coronation. He sat in the sprawling organisation room on the third floor of Scotland Yard, and did his best to concentrate on the final briefing before the ceremony the following day – the culmination of months of work, during which plans had been made, scrapped and remade until they were as perfect as humanly possible. Detailed models of the processional route, all carefully built to scale, took up most of the available desk space, and one enormous map stood on an easel at the far end of the room, dotted with hundreds of flags to identify areas of potential danger. The room was brightly lit, as if to bring a freshness and excitement to information which everyone present had heard a dozen times before, but he saw his own weary impatience to get to the real thing reflected in the faces of his colleagues. The forthcoming week of coronation events was the largest operation that any of them had ever been involved in, and if everything went smoothly there would be plenty to be proud of; right now, if someone were to grant Archie a wish, he would have had no hesitation in asking that kings might be made more quietly.
Nothing had been left to chance. He thought back to those meticulous rehearsals, held over the last three Sundays; to the strange sight of khaki-clad mountain troops moving through the streets at dawn and the empty carriages with their skeleton escorts – ageless silhouettes that seemed to stand for all the monarchs whom history had honoured in this way. Every movement was choreographed with the precision of the finest ballet, and even the King and Queen had been put through their paces, riding the grand coronation coach within the palace grounds to get used to its idiosyncrasies. Once word got out, the early morning starts had not deterred the crowds from taking part wholeheartedly, and half a million people had witnessed the final rehearsal, many of them paying threepence to watch the shadow show from the covered stands erected in the Mall and Parliament Square. The atmosphere had been both moving and a little dreamlike, and Archie wondered how many of the observers had, like him, felt the shadow of an uncrowned king hovering over the proceedings.
The Assistant Commissioner – a grey-haired, quietly spoken man who had grown up on London’s streets and had the respect of the entire force – finished his speech on crowd psychology, and Superintendent Day stood to run through the travel restrictions one last time. Like everyone else in the room, Archie could easily have done the job for him: central tube stations would be partially closed from nine o’clock that evening, allowing exit only and no admission from the streets; in the morning, a private tube would run from Kensington High Street to Westminster, taking peers and MPs to their coveted seats in the Abbey; taxis could drop people within walking distance of the route but were not allowed to loiter for return fares; and streets would be closed to pedestrians as well as traffic when their safety limits had been reached, and opened again only in an emergency. ‘Right, that’s it,’ Day said, smiling as he sensed the collective sigh of relief in the room. ‘Go home and get your heads down for a few hours. I want you back here bright and early in the morning. And good luck, everyone – let’s make it a day to remember.’
They could do no more now than sleep on it and hope for the best, and Archie went back to his office to collect his things. The wireless, which had been his constant companion for the last few days, giving him a valuable insight into celebrations all over the country, continued its murmured countdown in the background. At the moment, In Town Tonight was coming live from the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields, broadcasting to the crowds in Trafalgar Square. Archie stood by the window and looked out over the Thames, listening as Freddie Grisewood interviewed a patissier who had fashioned the crown jewels from sugar and a society girl who was to be waitress for a day at Westminster Hall. Darkness had come early, the natural successor to a dull afternoon, and the evening had an unseasonal, autumnal feel. Across the river, the buildings illuminated for the celebrations were already making their mark, casting greens and golds into the steel-grey canopy of the sky; and down below, the water moved peaceful and oblivious towards the sea, its blackness more mysterious than ever when contrasted with the myriad lights mirrored in its depths. There was a break in the showers, but Archie didn’t envy the crowds who would be sleeping on the streets or camping on rain-soaked grass in the parks. The city had made up its mind to enjoy every moment of the coronation holiday: restaurants would be open all night and cinemas until the early hours of the morning, but nothing seemed more enticing to him now than his own bed.
The Embankment was quieter than much of the city, with pavements reserved for thousands of school children – girls on the north side and boys on the south. It amused Archie that he could no longer bring any part of London to mind without mentally running through the arrangements that had been made for it, and he plotted his journey back to the Strand with an emphasis on peace rather than distance.
‘I knew if I waited long enough I’d be lucky.’
The soft, Donegal accent came out of the shadows to meet him, and he turned in surprise and delight. ‘Bridget! What on earth are you doing here? I thought you had plans for tonight.’
‘I wasn’t really in a Savoy mood. Richard was there, celebrating his bloody Radio Times cover, and I couldn’t stand it for longer than the first course. It’s not a bad effort, but I’d have done it better. God forbid they should give the commission to a woman, though.’ Archie smiled at the familiar tirade; Richard Nevinson was one of Bridget’s closest friends, but as artists they were bitter rivals. ‘So as I was just up the road, I thought I might as well come and look for you.’
‘How long have you been standing out here?’
‘Oh, a while, but the view’s nice and you’re worth it. How long have I got you for?’
‘A few hours. I’m needed back here at five. Until then, they’ve told us to go home and go to bed.’
Bridget laughed and took his arm, and he wondered for the thousandth time why it didn’t bother him more that he never knew where he stood with her. ‘Funny,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what I had in mind. Let’s go to yours – it’s closer.’
They walked along the Embankment, pausing at Richmond Terrace to look back down the river. County Hall was bathed in green light now, and across the bridge St Thomas’ Hospital offered proud horizontal bands of red, white and blue. ‘I’ll be pleased when we get back to normal,’ Bridget said.
‘We’ve gone to all this trouble and you’re not impressed? People have come for miles to see those lights.’
‘It’s pretty, I suppose, but it was perfect as it was. I love the way the night takes all the muddle out of it. Tell me, Archie, what could be more beautiful than the south of the river when it’s getting dark?’ Archie looked again and saw that she was right: on the distant horizon, beyond the reach of civic pride, the jumble of smaller buildings blended into one exquisite pattern whose jagged outline against the fading sky was both simple and dramatic. It reminded him of how much he loved the way she looked at the world, through an artist’s eyes – and of how she encouraged him to see things differently, too. So much of his work was brutal and bleak – the violence that erupted on the surface, the motivating darkness that lay beneath – but with Bridget he saw beauty more often. Just as she had once helped him face the horror of war, she now made the everyday violence of peacetime – more dreadful because it had no armistice – somehow easier to live with. He turned to kiss her, feeling her body move eagerly towards his own. ‘What was that for?’ Bridget asked.
‘It would take too long to explain. Come on.’
The comparative quiet of the Embankment was a luxury which they soon left behind. A vigil had begun in Whitehall: the crowds lining the street were already four or five deep, well-prepared with coats and blankets, knitting or playing cards to pass the time; in the distance, Archie could hear a rousing version of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ performed by the unlikely pairing of kettle drums and accordion. Trafalgar Square always seemed bigger to him at night, but this evening th
ere was barely an inch of space to spare on its pavements. The BBC had done its best, but no broadcast could do justice to the atmosphere of celebration and revelry under Nelson’s watchful eye as the illuminated fountains flung sprays of colour into the air and queues snaked from telephone kiosks, chains of happy people trying to make a rendezvous in the chaos or describing the scene to those left behind at home.
At last, they got to Maiden Lane, where Archie had a top floor flat in the same building as his cousins, Lettice and Ronnie Motley, and their long-suffering housekeeper, Dora Snipe. His heart sank when he saw the lights blazing from every window but his own. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go back to yours?’ he asked, looking hopefully at Bridget. ‘Coronation fever struck here weeks ago and it looks like it’s about to peak.’
‘It’ll take us hours to get to Hampstead in these crowds. Then you’ll be panicking about getting to work on time in the morning and I’ll have you to myself for twenty minutes if I’m lucky.’ She rifled through his pockets for the keys and smiled mischievously. ‘We can sneak up the stairs. If they’re that excited, they probably won’t even notice.’
Archie admired her optimism but had little faith in her plan. Ronnie, in particular, had an almost psychic ability to scupper any plans he made for an anonymous entrance or a fast exit, and he failed to see why tonight should be any different. He opened the front door as quietly as he could and ushered Bridget through, hoping that the dance music blaring from the gramophone downstairs would continue long enough to see them to safety. In the end, it was more than Jack Hylton could do to help him. ‘Archie! Perfect timing,’ Ronnie called, as a shaft of light from the ground-floor flat stopped him in his tracks. She beamed at him through a haze of Gauloises, and Archie knew he was lost. ‘Lettice and I can’t remember what you said about tomorrow morning. Do we have to be in the stand by six o’clock or seven?’
‘Seven,’ he said, relieved to escape with such a straightforward question. ‘All the instructions are with the ticket.’
His cousin looked a little awkward. ‘Yes, that’s what the Snipe said. The thing is, we can’t seem to find our tickets at the moment.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked in exasperation, forgetting all his good intentions not to be sidetracked. ‘Do you have any idea how precious those tickets are? If they get into the wrong hands and someone traces them back to me . . .’
‘We’ll all be fucked – yes, I know, but I’m sure they’ll turn up. It’s just a bit of a mess in here at the moment and we can’t quite remember who had them last.’ Ronnie looked past him up the stairs and saw the figure skulking in the shadows. ‘Bridget! How nice to see you. Come in for a moment, both of you, I’ve just made another round of drinks.’
Archie glanced through the open door into the chaos beyond. The ground-floor apartment actually belonged to Lettice, but tonight it could easily have been mistaken for the backstage area of HMS Pinafore: every surface was covered in colour-coded dresses; the rug in front of the fire seemed to have had Selfridges’ entire shoe department emptied onto it; and even Chaplin, Mrs Snipe’s Jack Russell, whom Archie had inherited from a past case, sported a hand-knitted coat of red, white and blue. But it was the human statue in the middle of it all that caught Archie’s attention: perched precariously on a footstool while Lettice pinned her hem, Dora Snipe was the very image of a modern-day Britannia, head held high and one arm raised in front of her. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and she wobbled a little as she nodded to him, and Archie decided that it really was time to go. ‘We’ll leave you to it,’ he said, leading Bridget firmly up the stairs. ‘I’ve got an early start in the morning.’
4
The vaudeville studio was in the basement of Broadcasting House, an imaginative foundation stone for the tower of recording rooms which rose up through the centre of the building. It was an unusual theatre in miniature, modern in style and intimate in scale, and had been designed specifically for the BBC’s popular programmes of comedy and revue. The audience – a select gathering of about sixty – sat on tubular metal chairs covered with an orange worsted fabric, and the walls were an unsettled mix of grey and tangerine, accentuated by lemon, blue and pale red stripes. Josephine couldn’t quite envisage the sort of person who had ever thought the colour scheme a good idea, but she admired their spirit.
The initial impact was soon dulled by the silky glow of stage lighting, and if the decor was a far cry from the West End, the entertainment onstage could hardly have been more traditional. The BBC’s coronation revue had been perfectly designed to reflect the party atmosphere of the streets outside, with a bill that featured the cream of the country’s most experienced variety stars. The spotlight fell on Cicely Courtneidge, and a huge cheer went up as she launched into her signature comic sketch, a complex, fast-paced series of elaborate tongue-twisters. The piece – so well-known that Josephine could see one or two members of the audience mouthing the lines almost as smoothly as the star herself – was delivered with charm and perfect timing, and it brought the house down; even Marta – the only person Josephine knew who actually meant it when she said she hated music hall – had tears streaming down her face. After an ensemble closing piece, where Courtneidge was rejoined onstage by George Robey, Frank Lawton and a full supporting cast, the audience had recovered sufficiently to join in a rendition of the national anthem, so rousing that it barely needed the resources of the BBC to carry to the listeners at home.
The on-air lights went out and the applause faded, and Josephine and Marta made their way back up to the entrance hall with the rest of the crowd. ‘Half past nine,’ Marta said, looking at her watch. ‘When are you due upstairs?’
‘Oh, any time now. Julian asked me to be there at the end of the final rehearsal in case they had any questions. We can hang around and listen if they haven’t quite finished.’
‘Are you sure I won’t be in the way?’
‘Of course not. It won’t take long, then we can go for dinner.’
Marta hesitated. ‘Or we could forget about dinner, and I could go back to Holly Place with Lydia and get it over with.’
Josephine looked at her in surprise. ‘We were going to wait until after the play,’ she said, her doubts obvious in her voice.
‘I know, but why? Are you worried she’ll say something indiscreet in the middle of a live broadcast?’ Josephine’s horror must have been written all over her face because Marta smiled. ‘That was a joke.’
‘Perhaps it was, but it would be a bloody good way of getting her own back.’
‘Lydia’s not like that. I don’t mean she wouldn’t be tempted to insult us to an audience of millions, but she’d never jeopardise her chances of regular work here by being unprofessional.’
That was true, but the familiarity which it implied and the speed with which Marta had jumped to Lydia’s defence grated on Josephine. ‘Are you having second thoughts about this, Marta? Is that why you want it over with – so you can’t change your mind?’
‘No, of course not. I just don’t like living a lie, even if it’s only for a few more days.’
Get used to it, Josephine felt like retorting, but she kept her silence. Marta’s uncompromising honesty about the way she chose to live her life impressed and frightened Josephine in equal measure; occasionally, she found herself craving a more human chink of cowardice or shame in the woman she loved, but it never came – and while she told herself that Marta’s attitude was unrealistic, sanctimonious even, when so many women of their generation felt compelled to hide or make excuses for their choices, really that was envy on her part; if she could choose to be more like Marta, she would. ‘Promise me you’ll wait,’ she asked, trying not to sound too anxious.
‘Of course, if that’s what you want.’
‘It is,’ Josephine said, bewildered as to how being together had so easily become a divisive issue, ‘but I don’t mind if you want to call it a night now. I’m not sure I’m in the mood for dinner with three place settings, either. Wou
ld you rather go home and I’ll see you tomorrow?’
Marta didn’t answer, and Josephine followed her gaze to the artists’ reception desk, where a tall, distinguished-looking woman was obviously waiting to be collected. ‘Look!’ Marta whispered. ‘You must know who that is?’
Josephine glanced at the noticeboard opposite the lifts which detailed the day’s programme schedules together with the studios from which they were to be broadcast. ‘Vita Sackville-West, at a guess. She’s giving a talk on the last Coronation in about twenty minutes. So what?’
‘So what? You’re staring at Orlando in the flesh and that’s all you can say?’
‘I’m not staring at anyone – you are. And it wasn’t one of my favourite books, if you remember. Hardly a great advert for historical accuracy.’ She smiled, amused to see that Marta – who was never star-struck – had a weakness after all, and some of the tension between them fell away. ‘Why don’t you go and say hello?’
‘Don’t be silly. I couldn’t possibly just go up and speak to her.’
‘Why on earth not? She looks almost human. Go on – I dare you,’ she added as Marta hesitated. ‘No? Well, I’ll leave you fearless lovers together while I freshen up.’ She headed for the ladies’ cloakroom, glad that something could shake Marta’s confidence, even if it wasn’t the thought of their future together. ‘I won’t be long.’
The cloakroom was a study in chic, art deco perfection, with walls of blackened mirror glass and a silky white Lincrusta ceiling that caught and played with the light. Josephine put her bag down by the sink and reapplied her lipstick, wondering if she should, after all, have let Marta do as she wished. It was a cliché, perhaps, but only eighteen months ago mirrors had held no fear for her because her conscience was clear; now, she could barely meet her own eye. Millicent Gray and Vivienne Beresford had never been far from her thoughts over the last few days, and she realised now how unconsciously she had divided other women into the sort who had affairs and the sort who were betrayed, always assuming that she had no place in either category. Unsettled by how wrong she was, she looked at her reflection in the glass, resenting the overly critical comparisons with Lydia but unable to stop herself making them; when the door of the cubicle behind her opened and her friend emerged as something more tangible than conscience, it was as if she had been summoned by guilt, and Josephine blushed with embarrassment.
