Coronation Read Free Page A

allowed them for their holiday and which were, of course, never encountered in Little Pudney. Rain or shine made no difference to the boat rides or the band concerts, or for that matter to anything. Christmas and birthdays were secondary festivals. Weeks were counted from 29 August, when they packed up and went home, until the next glorious and seemingly never-arriving 15 August, when once more they would pile into the family car at Little Pudney, Morecambe-bound.
    ‘That’s it,’ Clagg threw into the stunned silence. ‘I’ve worked it out. We can’t do both. We’d all have to make a sacrifice. Which do you want?’ And then unable to resist the temptation to turn the scales just a trifle in the direction of his own desires, he added, ‘It isn’t often there’s a Coronation, is it – and a Queen?’
    The magic of the word ‘Queen’ ran through all of them, even stirring old Granny a little, for she remembered Queen Victoria in her last years.
    Yet Clagg had no need to coax the rest of his family on to his side, for the Coronation fever was burning in them and had been for weeks. Already they had put up decorations in the living-room – red, white and blue paper ribbon from the four corners to the chandelier and thence to the fireplace over which hung a picture of the Queen. They had expected on the day the Queen was crowned they would take some part in the celebrations that were being planned in Little Pudney. Now suddenly, unexpectedly and stirringly, the head of the family proposed to move them to the very centre of things, and to Gwendoline Clagg this meant seeing with her own eyes, the adored figure of the Queen.
    ‘Daddy, Daddy, I want to see the Queen!’ She had not even thought or reflected over the choice. She didn’t know what she expected from this transformation of the nightly going-to-sleep dream into the reality of a person, she only knew that she yearned for it. She would look upon the face of the Queen, her eyes, her hair, and her golden crown.
    If Gwendoline craved to see her fantasies thus turned into reality, it was quite the opposite with her brother, who was prone to abandon this same reality for the glory of dreams. Johnny Clagg, aged eleven, was outwardly a most ordinary little boy. He was ordinary in size and looks, at his studies, at kicking a football or bowling at stumps, but the achievements of the John Clagg who lived within this undistinguished person were limitless and magnificent.
    They were mostly of a military nature. He had already left Sherwood Forest behind him; he was done with knights in armour. World War II and its soldiers, which was in full tide when he had been born, had captured his lively imagination. His consuming obsession was the Army, and his recurring daydream was winning promotion from Private to Captain Clagg on the field of battle. He was Rifleman, Grenadier, Sapper, Engineer, Dispatch Rider, Tank Commander, Artilleryman, indestructible and heroic. Backing these dreams were picture-books and coloured cards of soldiers and their implements. In his toy cupboard were lead troops and a miniature tank, jeep and field-piece to deploy on the living-room floor. But outside the occasional uniformed soldier home on leave and an obsolete World War I cannon mounted in the main square of Great Pudney, Johnny had never seen the real thing. Now the glorious glittering pageant of the military might of Great Britain and the Commonwealth was offered to be paraded before his eyes. The two weeks by the sea faded into insignificance.
    For Violet Clagg the dilemma was more severe. The two weeks were her rest and her recovery, to be weighed against the thrill, glamour and excitement of being in London on that day. It was she, more than any of them, who knew how right her husband had been when he used the word ‘sacrifice’. And then in her mind she made it, not for herself so much as for the children. When Johnny and Gwendoline grew up they would be able to say that they had been