Coronation

by Paul Gallico

  ‘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.

  The owner of the voice was extraordinarily tall with an absolutely bald skull, the most astonishing shade of pink. His face seemed to have both the colour and texture of old, weathered parchment but containing most young-looking and piercingly light-coloured blue eyes surrounded by hundreds of fine, tiny wrinkles. His eyebrows were tufted snow-white and aggressive, and he had a moustache still faintly yellow.

  ‘Well now,’ said the gentleman, ‘that’s most kind and polite of you, my boy. Thank you.’ And thereupon, with an athletic ease and grace he took the chair opposite.

  Johnny for the moment experienced such a giddiness of relief that he thought almost that he was fainting. Although he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, he knew, he just knew that behind him and across the aisle Granny had half risen from her seat to come over and carry out her threat. Now it was too late. Major Clagg was safe.

  That was a meal that was never to be forgotten. The menu itself was an introduction to a whole new world, a world in w
hich one had a choice. Potage (whatever that was), grapefruit or tomato juice, announced the soup-flecked, gravy-spotted menu card. Fried fillet of plaice, sauce something-or-other, a real foreign word. And then once again one could linger and dally and debate and make up one’s mind between steak and kidney pie or roast pork with apple sauce. However was one to decide upon one or the other of these? Cheese and biscuits or a sweet! Ice-cream or apple tart!

  And every time the used plate was whisked away and a clean plate set before. Clean knives and forks. Waiters who regarded and addressed him not as a child but as a man. What an adventure!

  Even though he could see the trays approaching from afar as the attendants worked their way down the tables, the moment of decision for the main course still caught him undecided and unprepared. And when the server with the steak and kidney pie with the dark, flaky crust came to the table Johnny craved it, and yet across the aisle slices of white pork with brown, crispy crackling were being served. The waiter stood there with his spoon and fork poised and Johnny found himself speechless and looking up helplessly into his face.

  The man had children of his own; he understood the problem. ‘Can’t make up your mind, eh?’ he said. Johnny could only nod. ‘Have a bit of both, then.’ Before Johnny could reply he spooned out a generous portion of steak, crust and kidney, straightened up to murmur something to his colleague, and in the next instant there was a slice of crackling pork and apple sauce on the plate.

  Behind the backs of the waiters the family was out of sight and out of range of this marvel. No Granny to veto, no mother to fuss, no sister to be kept quiet. And then to cap the rightness of it all, the old gent opposite said to the attendant, ‘Hm, that looks good. I wonder if I might do the same?’

  After the main course there came a pause which permitted the meal to settle into place, shaken down nicely from side to side by the swaying of the train. Outside the windows, grimed with coal dust and rain, the twilight was at hand and lights were coming on in the houses, neons blinked in the towns through which they roared, and the headlamps of cars on the roads that sometimes paralleled the track were like the shafts of searchlights.

  Yet, oddly, with his new-found freedom which would so soon end Johnny had not yet lost himself in those dreams of grandeur which the adventure had promised. For one thing there had not been time. So much had been happening too quickly. Like many of the diners, he had been caught up by the rhythm of the ballet of the waiters, the sinuosity with which they avoided contact with one another as they glided to and fro, their narrow escapes from collision, clash and disaster, one tray high, one tray low, as they passed each other, accompanied by the music of the wheels over the rails and the shrieks and wails of the locomotive.

  And, truth to tell too, there had been something else occupying Johnny’s mind. It was the precious badge in his pocket which he could feel firm against his leg. He was experiencing an overwhelming desire to look upon it again and here was his chance, away from his family. Also he found himself entertaining half a wish to show it off before the old gentleman with the tufted eyebrows.

  Therefore, he slowly withdrew it from his pocket, holding it in his lap for a moment. Warmth and perspiration had dulled it somewhat and he took his napkin and polished it furiously until it shone again in the lamplight of the restaurant car. Then he put it on the table-cloth beside his plate and looked down, entranced by the beauty and content of it. The regimental badge, insignia of rank, courage and gallantry, lost from the cap of a proud officer, presented to him by a demigod on a white horse because for one moment their eyes had met in a thrall and there had been an understanding, was his.

  Old Tufted Eyebrows, too, was staring down at the shining metal and beneath the bald, pink skull there raced a thousand memories. ‘Where did you get that, boy?’ he rumbled.

  Johnny took his gaze from the glittering talisman and looked into the piercing, bright blue eyes of the old gentleman.

  ‘A gentleman – an officer gave it to me, sir.’

  ‘Hm,’ said the old gentleman, ‘that’s very strange. I can’t think of an officer who would part with a thing like that. Are you sure? Do you know what that is?’

  Johnny replied, ‘Yes, sir. It’s the badge of the Royal Wessex. I know them all.’ And then as understanding of what the old gentleman was driving at dawned on him, ‘Oh, it wasn’t one of them that gave it to me. It was another, but I don’t know what he was. He was on a white horse and wore a black uniform and there was a white feather in his cocked hat.’

  And when he saw how interested the old gentleman was, and the light in his young blue eyes, the story fairly tumbled out of Johnny: the expedition to the Coronation, the false tickets, their attempts to see at least something, his own love for soldiers and his wish to become one, the affair at the barricade, and the plumed, mounted officer who had upheld the policeman in his duty and then so strangely reached into his pocket and presented him with the badge.

  His companion listened to the narrative and seemed not at all surprised at it, merely nodding in agreement and saying, ‘That might be Archie.’ For he was a man of imagination who always saw things in pictures when stories were told to him, and in his mind he was seeing his friend, one of the Assistant Commissioners, as he noticed the glittering object lying in the street after the legions had passed and pocketed it in order to restore it to its regiment.

  He saw the eyes of the child wide upon him and corrected, or rather explained himself better. ‘I mean Sir Archibald Green, an Assistant Police Commissioner. Did you notice the number of stripes on his sleeve?’

  ‘Four,’ replied Johnny.

  The old gentleman nodded. ‘Well observed. He always rides about on occasions like this getting his nose into everything. That’s why things run as smoothly as they do, I imagine.’ He picked up the badge and held it in his palm for a moment. Colour came into his face and a certain odd mistiness to his eyes as though he were undergoing some strong emotional turmoil within himself; which indeed he was, namely that of unexpectedly encountering an old and cherished friend under extraordinary circumstances.

  ‘I was with them when I was a young man,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I miss them.’

  Johnny Clagg looked from the insignia reposing in the brown, veined hand to the blue eyes of the tall man. He understood that he and the ‘they’ represented by the badge had at one time meant a great deal to one another.

  ‘Was there a lot of fighting?’ Johnny asked. ‘I want to be an officer when I grow up.’

  Then came an interruption in the shape of the nagging voice of Granny Bonner, ‘Johnny, is that you doing all that talking? Be quiet, you’re disturbing the gentleman at his dinner.’

  Johnny flushed and turned around to endure the steel-rimmed, spectacled look. Tufted Eyebrows, too, looked across to the table from whence the admonition had come.

  Will Clagg, leaning backwards and turning around, took up the refrain. ‘I hope he’s not bothering you,’ he said. ‘He’s a bit of a talker, that one, when he gets going.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ replied the gentleman, ‘not at all. We have something in common and are having a most delightful chat.’

  For the second time that day Johnny Clagg felt his heart filled to overflowing. He seemed to have entered into a new world, one in which important grown-ups bothered with small boys and their needs.

  Satisfied, Clagg returned his attention to his own table; communications were cut; Johnny was once more safe and secure with his new friend. ‘Will I be able to be an officer one day?’ he asked again of the tall man opposite who still held his badge in the hollow of his hand.

  The gentleman looked across at the boy separated from him by no more than a foot or so, and at the same time by a gulf so wide that at one time he would have said it never could be bridged.

  In the moment of the small exchange with the group at the other table, the boy had become identified, labelled, classified. There was Mum and Dad, Granny and little sister, and the boy himself, stout oak for
the ribs of the gallant ship that was England, but never before material for the quarter-deck.

  In his own time, the gentleman remembered, chances for the son of such a family becoming an officer were one in ten million, or perhaps even no chance at all. Yet equally the chances were that in his day he never would have found himself sitting in a railway restaurant car opposite a dirty but endearing small boy who had produced from a grimy pocket the badge of the regiment that had once been his own, and with all the fervour and ambition of youth had demanded to know whether one day he might become an officer of this famous fighting unit.

  Yet he knew that his times were no more. Often he had regretted it; now he was pleased. A half a century had elapsed since he, a gentleman, had been made an officer as well. How old could this boy be? Eleven? Twelve? A decade might see him turned into an officer and a gentleman.

  That impassable gulf now seemed no wider than the eighteen inches or so of table that separated him from the boy, and the old man’s heart was gladdened that this was so. Along with so many millions of others that day, his spirit had been uplifted by the surge of feeling that had swept the country for the Queen who had been crowned. And it was now almost in the name of this young person that he replied to Johnny Clagg, ‘Yes, indeed. I believe that you will be, if you wish it strongly enough.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Then you must never relent,’ said the gentleman, and then repeated four times solemnly, ‘Never, never, never, never. The wish must always be with you battering at the gates like an army that doesn’t know the meaning of defeat. Against such an attack every defence must fail. Do you not agree?’

  The glory of being talked to like a man! ‘Yes, sir,’ said Johnny.