artlessness and directness itself. He simply said, one Sunday afternoon early in April at the dinner table of their semi-detached house at No. 52 Imperial Road, Little Pudney, ‘Look here, what would you say to all of us going to London for the Coronation?’
The query had shattered, staggered, uplifted, hypnotised, terrified and enthralled his family. He had thrown it on to the table like a live fuse, where it burned and sputtered, throwing out the smoke and flame of adventure.
Not that they weren’t already Coronation-minded; the newspapers and magazines had been full of it for months with articles and photographs, and the tension and excitement was already beginning to mount and spread to the farthest corner of the United Kingdom and across the seas to the Commonwealth.
Violet Clagg was the first to react to the glory that had been proffered, the prospect so rich, so glamorous and so deeply craved by her person starved for change and excitement. She echoed his words: ‘Go to London! For the Coronation! All of us? Oh, Will!’ And the depth of her desire was expressed in the way she spoke the last two words. But thereafter all of the old fears and frustrations and disappointments took over. ‘But we couldn’t manage standing in the street with the children all night. They couldn’t possibly.’ For there had already been stories that people were planning to reserve places by the kerbside where the procession would pass by establishing squatters’ rights and sleeping there for nights before.
Johnny had cried, ‘Who’d care? I could see the soldiers!’
Violet continued, as though anxious as quickly as possible to voice all of the things against: ‘And Mother’s too ol . . . I mean, her feet swell when she stands.’
‘Bother my feet!’ Granny had snapped. ‘Do you want the children to catch their death of cold? What if it rains? You want them sitting out there all night catching pneumonia? You must be out of your mind, Will Clagg.’
‘No, no, no!’ Will had shouted. ‘You never let a man get in a word in his own house. Who said anything about sitting up all night or standing in the streets? We could have seats in a stand. A stand with a cover over it—’
‘Never get ’em this late,’ Granny had mumbled.
Gwendoline had cried out, ‘Could I see the Queen really, Daddy? Daddy, would we see the Queen in her gold carriage?’
Clagg regarded her fondly for a moment, ignoring his mother-in-law, and then said, ‘Right up close enough to wave to and she’d wave straight back.’ He turned to the others. ‘That’s how it would be. There was an article in the paper this morning how you could get tickets. We could manage it—’
‘Hmpf!’ Granny had snorted. ‘If what? I read the article myself. Ten pounds apiece. That’s for millionaires.’
‘If,’ Will concluded, ‘we went without our summer hols.’
This, for an instant, stilled the clamour within their breasts as well as their excited outcries. Their annual two weeks’ holiday at Morecambe Bay was something wonderful and treasured, and was looked forward to by each of them.
To begin with, Clagg’s status and salary as foreman made it possible. For Violet Clagg it meant two precious weeks of boarding out, eating food cooked by someone else from dishes washed by another, walking on floors scrubbed by a person paid to do it and sleeping in beds she hadn’t had to make.
For Granny it provided whole new sets of ears into which to pour her views on the decadence of everything, the awfulness of modern times and the uselessness of the present generation. And to the children it promised two weeks of heaven: paddling, puddling, swimming, splashing, digging and shrimping, plus all the marvellous and unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells and foods of the seaside. The beach and pier with its games and booths, shops and donkey rides, were paradise itself. Things were there to be bought and tried or tasted with pocket money which their father
Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins