|
It was a very English affair, like a village fete with extra posh
brass bands, but no jumble stalls. There was a good turn-out, the sun
shone, and the Queen Mother’s grand herbaceous border was much
admired. When the band switched from light entertainment to the
National Anthem we knew the Queen and her entourage had joined us.
Across the great lawn, a tiny figure was moving slowly down the palace
steps towards the parting waves of her guests. I came over reticent
and simply could not bear to to hare across a cricket-pitch expanse of
lawn to stare from close quarters, so all I ever saw of my hostess
that afternoon was an extremely small person concealed beneath a very
large hat. Later on, crossing to the tea tent, I caught a glimpse
between morning coats of Prince Philip talking to a group of people as
animatedly as though this brief encounter was what he had been waiting
for all his life. His listeners radiated pleasure. The only chill that
summer day was what I took to be sharp-shooters on the palace roof
with gunsights trained on party-frocked guests; a reminder that, in
these circles every sunlit day is clouded with dreadful possibility.
It was a pleasure to see that most secret garden; the great old London
trees that have survived urban pollution, hurricanes and the blitz, a
mulberry tree old enough to have known Samuel Pepys, an unassuming
summerhouse with faded well-worn garden chairs, even the giant
classical urn used as a prop for Cecil Beaton’s romantic pre-war
images of a Queen Consort with parasol; the fairytale before the
storm.
But my mind’s eye strayed beyond the garden. I saw myself, aged
fourteen, sitting on a groundsheet with my grown-up sister in a rainy
Mall, waiting all day for the coronation coach to pass to the ecstatic
roar of the crowd. Then further back in time to mum and me under the
stairs during an air-raid; no fear, just the fusty, spicy smell of old
raincoats, brooms and candles. This is mixed up in my mind’s eye with
newsreel images of the King and Queen in war-time London and the Queen
Mother’s hand patting a piece of fallen masonry after a bit of her
palace was bombed.
Then when I saw her daughter, that distant figure across the garden, I
remembered another image; a tiny, slightly faded black and white
photograph of the little princesses, Elisabeth and Margaret Rose, cut
out of some magazine and drawing-pinned to the wall of a dingy attic
room in Amsterdam. Such a very small detail in that saddest of private
places, and yet that frayed image of two utterly nice and normal
little girls, all sweetness and bedtime stories, may have helped Anne
Frank forget, just for a moment, that other world of legitimised
terror waiting for her outside her family’s hiding place.
Outside the royal garden the whole world has changed. I cannot expect
a younger generation to understand how, for me, with the weight of my
life’s history heavy in my mind, that palace, and its occupant, still
has a significance more potent than its bland facade would suggest.
Jenny Lucas is an an award winning documentary film maker. In 1999 she
was commissioned to devise and direct a Millennium project for the
small village of Laughton in Sussex. Her concept of a community
pageant-play and twenty three projects involving all age and interest
groups was awarded major Millennium funding.
|
|
laterlife interest
The above article is part of the features section of
laterlife.com called laterlife interest.
laterlife interest
contains a variety of articles of interest for visitors
to laterlife.com written by a number of experienced and
new journalists.
It includes both one off articles and
also regular columns of a more specialist nature such
as healthwise, reports
from the REACH files, and a beauty section called
looking good in later life.
Also don't forget to take a look at our
regular IT question and answer section called YoucandoIT
by IT trainer and author Jackie Sherman.
To view the latest articles and indexes to
previous articles click on laterlife
interest here or above. To search for
articles about a certain topic, use the site search
feature below.
|
