‘It’s the anointing with holy oil!’ Patricia’s voice squeals excitedly from upstairs, and Auntie Babs manages to persuade Bunty to leave the sausage rolls unanointed and come upstairs for what is, in the Daily Graphic’s words, ‘really the most solemn and important part of the ceremony’. So solemn and important that the Queen disappears inside a scrum of bishops, and her anointing is not witnessed Above the Shop.
‘That’s a lovely television set,’ Auntie Gladys says appreciatively to Bunty when Babs leads her back into the room and Bunty glows a little and simpers, ‘Thank you,’ as though she had been a handmaiden to Logie Baird in another life.
‘Nice bit of walnut veneer,’ Uncle Tom says and everyone murmurs in agreement. ‘That’s a grand dress you’re wearing, Bunty,’ Uncle Bill says suddenly, and Bunty flinches slightly because she doesn’t like Bill (an antipathy based entirely on the fact that he’s George’s brother) and if her brother-in-law thinks it’s a ‘grand dress’ – a man with no taste whatsoever (this much is true) – then Bunty thinks there must be something far wrong with it. It is a ghastly creation actually – a peculiar thing, knitted in stripes of brown and yellow with a faint lurex thread running through so that she looks like a party-going wasp.
‘Now comes the moment for which all the peoples of Britain, the Commonwealth and Empire have been waiting,’ Patricia reads.
‘The Supreme Moment,’ Uncle Ted says peering over her shoulder. His hand rests lightly on the back of her school blazer in a way that you might say was avuncular, but on the other hand, you might say was not. Anyway, he’s chosen the wrong person because Patricia can’t stand being touched and she succeeds in wriggling free very quickly.
Gillian bounces back into the room at this moment, desperate to show everyone her pirouettes, and flashes in front of the Ferguson just as the crown is being perched on the Queen’s head so that a resounding shout goes up of, ‘God Save the Queen!’ and ‘Get out of the bloody way, Gillian!’ Her lip pouts and trembles, her angel curls quiver with distress and Lucy-Vida stretches out a maternal hand and says, ‘Come along, pet – you come with me,’ and they both flounce off to do important things with their dolls. Neither Patricia nor I have a doll. Patricia doesn’t want one, although she often borrows Gillian’s to play schools with. Patricia plays schools a lot and she is a very strict teacher, believe me – I know because I have to stand in for a doll occasionally.
I have to admit, I would quite like a doll, even if they do all seem to have hard, sculpted plastic hair and unkind expressions. Gillian’s dolls have names like ‘Jemima’ and ‘Arabella’. Patricia has her panda (‘Panda’ – no fancy nomenclature for our Patricia) to which she’s very attached, and I have a teddy bear (‘Teddy’) that is closer to me than a relative. I already have an astonishingly mature vocabulary list of ten words: Teddy is on my list of vocabulary, along with: Mummy, Daddy, Pash (Patricia), Gug (Gillian), Gamma (Nell), Bye-bye, Shop!, Dotty (an all-purpose word that covers everything else) and – the most important word of all – Mobo.
Instinctively, I know where Mobo is at the moment – in the Back Yard. Bunty is in the kitchen again, putting the sausage rolls in the oven, and when Teddy and I totter towards the back door, she obligingly lets us out. I take a deep breath and – there he is! The light of my world! The Mobo horse is perhaps the most handsome creature ever manufactured by man. All of five-and-a-half hands to his withers, he is made from dappled grey and white tin, with a permanently scrolled mane and plumed tail. His eyes are friendly, his back is firm and he has a scarlet saddle, scarlet reins and scarlet pedals (also of tin). In the sunshine of the Back Yard (we are having much better weather than the poor Queen) he looks magnificent, you can almost see his nostrils flaring and his hoof about to paw the ground. Patricia, in her kindness and Coronation zeal, has decked him out with tartan ribbons and he looks as splendid as any horse that has trotted up the Mall that day.
He was bought for Gillian (that was her consolation for having to put up with me), but Gillian is now too big for him and I am his official rider. This makes no difference whatsoever to Gillian who guards him fiercely and never allows me anywhere near him unless forced to. But Gillian is inside with Lucy-Vida and here is my steed, roaming in the Back Yard, unguarded, unfettered and for a brief moment in space and time – all mine!
By a continuous and relentless incantation of ‘Dotty-dottydottydottydottydottydottydottyMobo!’ I force Bunty into helping me mount my heart’s desire and happily ride off at a canter around the Back Yard. Well, not strictly speaking, a canter exactly. Mobo’s means of locomotion are his pedals. When you sit on him, you press down hard with your feet and he moves along in a jerky, awkward fashion. I pump and pedal and lurch and pretend I’m pulling a golden coach for at least ten minutes before our nemesis appears.
A cold wind suddenly blows as the kitchen door is flung open dramatically and a dark shadow falls across the yard. The shadow is not merely dark, it contains the squid-inky evil of hatred, jealousy and murderous inclinations – yes, it’s our Gillian! She comes barrelling across the yard like a waddling torpedo, securely locked onto her target, accelerating all the while so that when she finally reaches the Mobo she can’t stop but continues – knocking him and me over and somersaulting over his back and landing on her frilly-knickered bottom on the hard paving slabs. The Mobo is sent skidding across the back yard, deep, unsightly scratches scored along his metal flanks. He lies panting on his side while I lie still looking up at the June sky and wondering if I’m dead. There is a throbbing bruise on the back of my skull but I’m too shocked to cry.
Not so our Gillian, who is screaming loud enough to wake the dead and even brings Bunty out to see what the matter is. Gillian’s grief-stricken response almost elicits sympathy from Bunty. ‘You should be more careful,’ she tells her – which may not sound very sympathetic, but it’s about the nearest she can get. Lucy-Vida buzzes around, executing a mournful tap – tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-TAP, and helps Gillian to her feet, lamenting all the while about the state of her frock – smears of Coronation-red blood have indeed sullied Gillian’s pristine whiteness and her torn and tattered coronet is round her neck like a flowery noose. ‘Ee, poor kid,’ Lucy-Vida sympathizes in her lush tones. ‘Come with me, we’ll get you cleaned up,’ and off they go, hand in hand, while Mobo and I are left to the ministrations of Dandy who licks and cleans us up as best he can with his hot, slobbery dog’s breath that smells vaguely of stolen sausage-rolls.
The rest of the day is a bit of a blur – I suspect I have concussion. Certainly when I next remember wandering back into the living-room it’s to meet a scene of genteel debauchery. The Brown Ale crowd are clearly drunk and playing poker in a corner of the room. Above their heads, Patricia’s Union Jack has migrated to the picture-rail where it droops over our framed Polyphotos, thirty-six tiny black and white photographs in each frame – thirty-six of Patricia, thirty-six of Gillian and, for some reason, seventy-two of me, so that it seems that Bunty does indeed have too many children, hundreds of miniature little girls all spitefully gobbling her up.
The Queen Mother clique has been joined by Uncle Tom and they are all wearing paper hats that they’ve produced from heaven knows where and are reminiscing about VE Day and street parties and Auntie Betty who is so far away across the Atlantic and reminds us of her existence by still sending us food parcels. The Queen Mother clique is also well acquainted with the sherry bottle by now and Bunty’s hostess duties have led her to wear a pirate hat and orchestrate a game of ‘I-Spy’ which has its participants gripped in hysteria. Adrian and Dandy are in the Back Yard playing throw and fetch, although who is doing what isn’t always entirely clear. Uncle Ted is upstairs with Lucy-Vida and Gillian playing a game called, ‘Surprise!’ The alcohol level Above the Shop is reaching critical levels and I’m quite relieved when Bunty looks at me, clasps her hand to her mouth in horror and says, ‘They’re not in bed yet!’
However, I fear our mother has drunk too deep of the sherry
barrel to do anything about this; her pirate hat is already tilted rakishly over one eye and she is having to use the support of Auntie Gladys’ broad back to stop her from sliding off the arm of the sofa.
Auntie Eliza clucks like a grown-up version of Lucy-Vida and, abandoning the ‘I-Spy’ (‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with “T S”’, answer – you’ve guessed – Television Set) gathers up children like a sheepdog and herds them up the stairs to bed. Auntie Eliza’s bedtime routine is more slovenly than Bunty’s. With Bunty, we have to line up in regimental fashion in the bathroom and scrub and brush and scrape until we’re almost rubbed away but a quick wipe with a flannel over the grubbier bits seems to be all that is expected by Auntie Eliza before we’re packed off to our light, summery bedrooms. Lucy-Vida and Gillian share a bed, top-to-toe like sardines. The twins have landed up in George and Bunty’s bed – heaven only knows what Bunty will think about that when she abandons the gun-deck of her pirate sloop and staggers up to bed. Adrian is bedded down in a kennel somewhere with Dandy. It seems the whole world is going to stay over and sleep in the Shop tonight. Nobody volunteers to share Patricia’s bedroom – even at seven, her lust for privacy is monumental and off-putting. Perhaps she roosts upside down, like a bat, her panda clinging on underneath one wing.
Hours later I wake suddenly, sit bolt upright in bed, and remember that Teddy is down in the Back Yard somewhere, carelessly abandoned in the wake of the equine disaster.
My bedroom looks over the Back Yard, so I go to the window to see if I can spot him. The sky is a magical dark blue colour, full of stars that look like Auntie Eliza’s earrings, and (considering how late it is) the yard is surprisingly full of life. Mobo remains on his side, perhaps he’s asleep – I hope so, although Patricia’s coronet placed at his head looks suspiciously like a wreath. Teddy is in the bed of marigolds that runs along one wall, his arms and legs spreadeagled like a dead soldier. Standing guard over him is Dandy, whose black eyes glisten in the dark. Leaning awkwardly against the back gate is George, locked in a thrusting embrace with an unseen woman, his trousers unbecomingly around his ankles. One bare, unstockinged leg pokes out from behind him and in a hoarse giggle a voice says, ‘Come on, pet, that’s the way.’ I suppose I must leave Teddy in this dubious company and rescue his dew-spangled body in the morning.
There is a tap-tap-tapping noise coming from Gillian’s bedroom. Perhaps Lucy-Vida sleep-taps.
Patricia is sitting up in her narrow little bed and reading by the light of her Bambi-and-Thumper nightlight. She has reached the final chapter, Chapter VII of the Daily Graphic Coronation Gift Book for Boys and Girls, the one entitled ‘The New Elizabethan Age’. This chapter outlines the duties of all the boys and girls who ‘will be the grown-up citizens of a new Elizabethan age’ in a country which is ‘still the leader of western civilization’. The exhortations of this chapter do not fall on stony ground. Patricia will join the Brownies and attempt to win every badge possible before graduating to the Girl Guides; she will go to Sunday School; she will work hard at school (despite this relentless group activity she will remain strangely friendless). And she will stick by her principles. The Daily Graphic’s blueprint for the future cannot, however, help Patricia with the twin strands of alienation and dejection which form her personal DNA, but its text is stirring, its exhortations noble –
‘You will have to grow up and when you have left childhood behind you must behave as a responsible man or woman. This may sound rather frightening, but you know as well as I do that although as a nation we have sometimes made mistakes we have never lacked courage.’
How proud we all are on this day! How we look forward to our magical journey into the future as citizens of a brave new world. Patricia falls asleep, royal benedictions on her lips. ‘God bless the Queen,’ she murmurs, ‘and God bless all the peoples of the United Kingdom,’ and an echoing murmur from the household ghosts vibrates on the evening air. They are celebrating in their own ghostly way, by the light of sooty flambeaux and greasy candelabra. They are dancing spectral minuets and gavottes – the ‘York Maggot’ and ‘Mrs Cartwright’s Delight’, learned perhaps from Mr Rochefort, the dancing master in rooms over the Sycamore Tree. They have seen much happen within these ancient city walls, sieges and air-raids, fires and massacres, the rise and fall of empires. They have witnessed the coronation of the Roman Emperor Constantine a stone’s throw away and the degradation of the great Railway King, George Hudson. They have seen poor Richard of York’s head spiked on the city gates and the valiant Royalists besieged within them. Yet still they summon the strength to join Patricia in one last ragged, yet valiant, cheer – glasses are raised in a toast, horns are blown and the great eagle of the Ninth is held aloft. God bless us all!
Footnote (iii) – Business as Usual
THE SECOND WORLD WAR FOR BUNTY WAS NOT SO MUCH a matter of getting a husband as a personality.
At the outbreak of war Bunty was working in a shop called ‘Modelia – Ladies’ Quality Fashions’. She’d been there ever since leaving school two years before and quite liked the unchallenging nature of each day, although she daydreamed furiously about all the exciting things that were going to happen to her in the future – like the charming, unbelievably handsome man who would appear from nowhere and sweep her away to a life of cocktails, cruises and fur coats.
Modelia was owned by Mr Simon but it was run by Mrs Carter. Mr Simon called Mrs Carter his ‘manageress’ and Bunty’s father said he’d never heard it called that before. Bunty wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by this, although there was no doubt that there was something slightly racy about her employers – Mr Simon was foreign for a start, Hungarian even, although when the war broke out he became very vocal about his British nationality. He was short and had a shiny bald head and was always immaculately dressed, with a big, gold fob-watch looped across his waistcoat. ‘He’s a Jewboy, isn’t he?’ Clifford, Bunty’s brother, asked when Bunty first got the job and Frank nodded and rubbed his thumb against his fingers.
Bunty couldn’t stand Clifford or his opinions. He was a cocky little so-and-so, Bunty and Betty agreed behind his back. ‘Jewboy’ was an odd word that didn’t really suit Mr Simon at all – he was never mean and he certainly wasn’t a boy and, if anything, reminded Bunty of a well-dressed seal.
He adored Mrs Carter, or Dolly, as he called her when there were no customers in the shop, and the amount of hand-kissing and eye-gazing that went on made Bunty feel quite uncomfortable sometimes. She couldn’t recall ever having seen her own mother and father do more than exchange a slight peck on the cheek. Clifford said that Mr Simon had a wife ‘locked up in the nut-house’, and that was why he didn’t marry Mrs Carter, although there was more ‘how’s-your-father’ went on in Mrs Carter’s flat above the shop (according to Clifford) than happened next door, where newly-weds Maurice and Ena Tetley could be heard exercising their bed-springs through the wall of the bedroom that Bunty shared with Betty. Bunty and Betty had many a late-night whispered discussion about what exactly Maurice could be doing to Ena to produce such a noise.
Bunty liked both Mr Simon and Mrs Carter, especially Mrs Carter who was a large woman about the same age as Bunty’s mother but without the drab patina that Nell had acquired over the years. Mrs Carter was blonde – very blonde – and wore her hair in big rolls and laid her make-up on ‘with a trowel’ according to Frank. She also possessed a huge bosom that looked as though it would burst if it was pricked with a pin. She was a real mother-hen to Bunty, though, cluck-clucking around after her and saying things like, ‘How’s our little Bunty, today?’ and giving her discreet hints about her appearance so that Bunty no longer wore ankle socks, flat shoes, and the bob that she’d had from the age of five to fifteen, but was quite the thing nowadays in heels and stockings and even lipstick. ‘Our young lady,’ Mr Simon said approvingly when Mrs Carter made Bunty do a twirl for him in her first grown-up frock.
Nell wasn’t a great one for compliments, she didn’t l
ike people getting above themselves. Nell had adopted the philosophy that, generally speaking, things tended always to get worse, rather than better. This pessimistic outlook was a source of considerable comfort to her – after all, unhappiness could be relied upon in a way that happiness never could. Nell preferred the extremities of her family – the eldest and youngest, Clifford and Ted – Ted in particular, which was strange, Bunty and Betty agreed, because he was the most obnoxious little weasel that ever lived. Babs had managed to gain a little prestige within the family from being the eldest girl and from being a no-nonsense, practical sort and Betty had found a place as Frank’s baby, but poor Bunty was stuck right in the middle with nothing to mark her out as special.
‘Where’s our little Bunty, then?’
‘I’m in the back, Mr Simon, brewing up. One for you?’
‘Yes please, dear!’
Bunty was currently trying out a personality based on Deanna Durbin, which involved adopting a sweet and kind-but-plucky sort of persona. It went down very well with Mrs Carter and Mr Simon but was totally overlooked at home.
‘I’ve got my sugar through here, Bunty!’ Mrs Carter’s ladylike tones cracked into indecorous Yorkshire when she tried to shout.
‘Rightio!’ Bunty yelled back.
The shop was deserted. It was a Sunday and Bunty had offered to come in and help with the stocktaking. They sat round the wireless with their cups and saucers on their laps, listening to a programme called ‘How to Make the Most of Tinned Food’ while they waited for the Prime Minister to make his ‘statement of national importance’. When Mr Chamberlain said I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received and consequently this country is at war with Germany a little shiver ran down the back of Bunty’s neck. Mrs Carter sniffed noisily; she had lost a husband in the Great War and her son, Dick, was just the right age to be killed in this one.