We get up at 5.45 to see the river pageant. The boys waking as if going on holiday, scrambling into their clothes while I make sandwiches. Outside the light has the grey speckle of underarm, warm and damp but not quite raining. I carry bags of activities and food, my sons carry the folding camping stools. We thought we would pitch up at the end of our street in the garden by the Houses of Parliament - we had done a recce the night before and there were toilets and a coffee kiosk setting up - with lots of room to run about until it got crowded. This morning in the gloom we can see the silhouettes of a few umbrellas already at the river side but vistas of free space under the trees. For a moment the plan seems to have gone ridiculously smoothly and my eldest insists we high five. At the gate however there are security men. 'We have to sweep the garden for bombs', they say, we can't let anyone in until 11am. But, there are people already here I say pointing at the draggle of umbrellas already on the front. 'They were here before we arrived' says the man. We can't do anything about them now. You should have got here 5 minutes ago - we weren't here. We plead for a while but they won't let us in. Let's keep walking, I say, we'll find a place. On Westminster Bridge there is a group of older women already set up with camping chairs and union jacks at the edge of the bridge under Big Ben and a gentle elderly lady with bulging feet in old lady sandals, a mac and a cheap umbrella. It has started to pour and the wind has picked up. Security guards give conflicting advice as to where we can be, allowing us onto the bridge and then herding us back. It is all women here someone observes, then notices my sons. For about 10 minutes we debate whether it would be better to be here with the best view or nearer to PSM's house on the South Bank with the obvious advantages of friends, toilets and cups of tea. My youngest needs a wee and the decision is made.
On the east side of Waterloo Bridge we choose our place on the railings, in view of St Paul's, almost as if standing where Canaletto painted the historic view of the Thames. It is pouring now and really cold. My youngest has retreated to PSM's to watch cartoons though my eldest is still at my side - I am going to sit with you all day he says. By 9am we have sat for 2 hours played a lot of games of travel Connect 4 and he has tooted a rather beautiful looking but tuneless brass horn that I bought for him on the internet loudly and repeatedly to tug boats and steam boats moving up river. We have spent the only money I have on hot drinks and a minescule bag of warm doughnuts and when he says 'how much longer' I have to say probably 7 hours. Understandably he decamps to PSMs for a break. I do wonder what giving up might feel like, the dirty damp bags a tide at my feet.
On one side there are now two old ladies from the North and on the other an East End family, of different generations - a nice young man and his girlfriend with smart cityessex (citisex?) accents, his cockney mum and grumpy cockney granny in high heeled flip flops with socks who says every now and then. 'I don't think I should have come.' coughs a bit, then sniffs the air and says longingly 'I can smell bacon.' Though the family try and jolly her on. The rest of us are smiley and stoic in waterproofs. At 9.30 it starts filling up and a posh older man with a booming voice, spots a gap between me and the east end granny and stakes a claim on the railings, phoning his family on the mobile, I have found a simply perfect spot he says. It is absolutely marvellous. For a while the original settlers bristle to the boom of him but then we all relax and get on. He is really nice to the grandchildren that he slots in around us, and the WAGs and sons or husbands of his family become the crowd behind us but retreat/duck under his well meaning Empire-running tone.
I am in the elderly women gang on the unsuitable footwear. I dithered in the hallway about wellies. Then plumped for ballet pumps and no socks and oh my goodness I am cold.
At 11am the children return with PSM's sons and PSM and her boyfriend. She takes one look at me and goes home bringing socks, wellies, a hot water bottle and a flask of hot sweet tea. She is a midwife and I feel I have been midwifed though it is lovely to feel so cared for.
The children settle down to a couple of hours Where's Wally and Tintin books while I stitch union jacks out of felt. When I thought I would be entertaining the boys for hours and hours on my own I packed craft material and bamboo sticks to make flags. I think I look a bit mad and a lot more patriotic than I actually am, doling out sandwiches and union jacks to four boys. Somehow though I don't know how exactly, it is assumed I am a single mum by the boomy grandad who is unable to hide his surprise I know who Canaletto is. PSM always more sensible than me has retreated to the warmth of her house, to drink cava and wait for some friends. Though it is no longer actually raining now just damp. There are dark inflatable speed boats patrolling the sides of the river, low in the water but skimming fast, men with guns shadowy in black. The boys watch them through binoculars, sing songs and talk nonsense - with intermittant bursts on the golden horn. When they turn to me and ask how much longer they look disbelieving when I say probably 4 hours.
About 1 o'clock the crowds are 9 or 10 deep but a procession of small children in bone dry cashmere breton jumpers process in a line like a scene from a stylish french children's book to our vantage point at the railings propelled by a professionally blow dried mother hissing in their ear - 'well done' and 'keep going'. At the railings she is showy and loud pointing out London landmarks, herding the children and staking a claim with her body language, hogging the view of the older women next to us. I feel tired and angry. 'I am really sorry we have all been here a very long time, it isn't fair if you take our space. 'MY MOTHER HAS BEEN HERE SINCE 10! she says shrilly, waving to a woman 5 back in the crowd. But she isn't at the front I say. I hate being rude or mean but I don't want to let her take our place, can't stand the air of entitlement. We have been here since 7 I say dourly, like a toad on a camping stool, guarding something momentarily precious. 'These nice people have been here since 7 she says in a shiny voice to the children, not catching my unblinking hooded eye under the green waterproof - though there is a tinge of incredulity, as if only fools would make the effort. And that's why we are at the front. I say. She stays. I glower. She stays. I glower. In pique I use my son's camera to take a picture of her. In a town on the border of Mexico and America I once saw grids of poloroid pictures of shoplifters pinned to the pound shops door. In the small hazy focus of the bare backroom they had been taken to, powerful portraits of fear, defiance and sulky resentment. Though I am still surprised by how much authority a camera has - as if there is a central 'badly behaved' shop door pictures could be sent to for the mother turns back her party from the railings. Oh I just wanted my children to see the pageant she says in a little girl voice as they depart. The children cry on the retreat, like little pink mice, their tails tucked behind them. I feel like someone wicked in a nursery rhyme though a woman on the other side of the northern women say she had asked them to move too.
At 2pm PSM texts me to say she will never get through the crowd to the front but can I have two of her friends children please. Small boys are despatched to collect them, squeezing back between the crowds legs as if amoebas splitting and doubling. PSM's eldest son carries a clingfilmed glass of cava for me. With six children I feel we are a rowdy pack, but the Grandad says - leave them - they are enjoying themselves, they have done very well, but in a benevolent 'isn't it jolly what things under microscopes do when you watch them' tone. My eldest and PSM's youngest, sing the National Anthem at the top of their voices, which should be charming but isn't. The cashmere breton jumpered children have been packed at the feet of the Grandad's family. Only writing this do I realise this wasn't just kindness - they were a part of it.
By 3pm excitement is high - across the river we can see the flicker of screens between trees and know the Queen has embarked, that the boats are on their way. Every 10 minutes the boys ( and one girl ) say - how much longer - and I guess 10 minutes. Then they ask again. 10 minutes I guess again. But suddenly it is nearly happening and I feel tired and cold and need a wee.
The Bell boat is first, careering rather madly, through the choppy water, the bells ringing out, tipping back and forth on wheels like something put together from the making box. Then the Venetian style Gloriana, very beautiful, men in time powering the boat cleanly through the currents. Behind with the the flurry of oars and paddles, and punts the little boats pour under Waterloo Bridge - comical and beautiful in their pell mell dash and endeavour. Red, blue, yellow, gold, orange, - flashes of colour and rich details - canoes and skiffs, gondalas, row boats, kayaks, fishing boats, the rhythm of oars in and out and in and out, shoulders moving together. I hear myself just saying, oh, it is lovely, repeatedly. Like a Richard Scary children's book page full of crazy animals in crazy vehicles spread out infront of us the boys and I point out to each other different boats and flags The gondala' we say, to the elegant arc of a white and golden boat. The little long boat! for there is a mini Viking boat with shields and a dragon masthead. The willow pattern plate boat - a low slung boat with a braided canopy But the scene does look like the Canaletto - it is absolutely beautiful. And we wave and wave and wave.
Infront of us though the boats have to funnel through a channel between moored boats packed with flag waving wellwishers and the currents of the Thames seem to pick up on this corner and we see the oarsmen, the canoeists, backing up, jamming into pockets, a little bit of panic then paddling through.
The Commonwealth boats glide in, jaunty, more controlled with their little motors powering their triangular formation. Flags fluttering, turquoise clad crew, padded and proud. The Grandad behind is listing the countries of each flag, to no one in particular. He wants his binoculars back from his grandchildren but everytime he nearly gets them another striped child lisps it is their turn. He is kind enough not to demand them but I feel he would like to. I am on his side. Oh it is beautiful I say again. A big pleasure boat with an orchestra playing Handel's water music in a plastic flapping gazebo on the top deck sails past, music in gusts, everyone cheering.
Is it the Queen? Is it the Queen? Is it the Queen? my youngest says.
A boat with some trumpeters dressed a bit like cards in Alice in Wonderland playing a fanfare comes under the bridge. Da da they say. Da da da da da da da da dahhhh! Then the royal barge - a big maroon thing ploughing through the water flanked by the drop shadow of the dark inflatable security boats, and backed up behind with matt grey warships, soldiers at attention, alert to attack. But after all that waiting I find it hard to remember anything and I confuse the snippets I have seen on tv with the not much I remember. I think it may have started really pouring at this time though that might happen shortly after. I remember people saying they couldn't see the thousands of flowers on the barge and I say - the flowers are in the swags - in the garlands. The Grandad snaps once or twice at my sons/charges to keep their heads down, but he still hasn't got his binoculars back and is feeling frustrated. I continually tap at the 6 children with my felt flag not to stand on the concrete of the railings so that other people can see. I feel briefly like I have turned into the grumpy east end granny though no one attends to my grumbling. A few people sing God Save the Queen but just like my son and his friend it sounds slightly ironic, a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit don't care and the woman leading it at the back just sounds drunk.
I think then it is odd - I have waited in the cold and rain for 9 hours for something I don't believe in - don't really give a shit about. Infront of us the big boat moored up and packed with well wishers tips precariously as everyone leans to wave. Our crowd keep laughing as the boat tips alarmingly further and further out of the water, the bottom of the boat, a muddy white, revealed.
No one says - god bless you ma am , no one says anything very much about the Queen at all apart from she works hard. I hear people say this will never happen again in out life time. Not even in your life time a woman points out to my sons, calculating the possible reign of Charles or William to not amount to much and I think most are just there for the sense of history. Though I wonder if a boat pageant might become the new royal pop concert - there is something so popular and spectacular to it.
But seeing the Queen as a vulnerable grainy fleck of white in the grey damp air waving on a boat floating on the Thames I think of my Mum. They have the same dogged duty, the same unfailing and unstinting duty to duty. Though what they are dutiful to is almost forgotten, a dry husk of whatever it is they were told was important to be as good little girls. The guarding has become the important thing, their determination and obedience almost the value itself. When I watch the tv I think the Queen has a few seconds when she looks up to the drip of her gazebo, the grey rain coming down and wonders just briefly why she is here, what on earth she is doing adrift on a tarty barge. But I also think Kate Middleton looks lonely. Stood a fraction behind William as he laughs with his brother she laughs too, but anxiously, looking to check if she laughed correctly. A family I supose. Just a flawed family.
Later I find out researching and watching endless youtube clips of the pageant to try and remember what happened that someone I went to college with, a friend's ex boyfriend was in charge of the look and dressing of the Royal barge which seems funny. He was then an energetic, beautiful but appropriately for art school, snarling young man. Though I like the idea of the banner at the stern decorated with more than half a million gold buttons in the shape of the royal coat of arms - though I am not sure anyone noticed it.
If it hadn't already started raining when the Queen passed by - it does now - a deluge as the cheery Dunkirk boats come through. The boats of different shapes and sizes are painted and polished with the spit and rub of pride and it is almost possible to smell the fresh paint and duraglit across the width of the Thames. The crowds cheer and cheer in the rain proud of the pluck, the spirit and bravery of boats that evacuated 338,226 troops from the shores of France. When those troops were cut off by the German Army on the shores of France in the early summer of 1940 the extent of the possible disastrous defeat was kept from the British public. However King George V1 ( the Queen's father) called for an unprecedented week of prayer - the Archbishop of Canterbury led prayers 'for our soldiers in dire peril in France' and the public knew something grave was up. These little boats - the fishing boats and pleasure craft alongside royal national lifeboats and British destroyers ferried the troops to safety 'a miracle of deliverance' as hailed Winston Churchill.
A military band packed onto a pleasure boat sails through, drummers drumming scottish songs, the grandad humming, a few of us snatching the words we know, good to jig a little in the sheeting rain. Then the toot of the historic boats, steam funnels puffing smoke. The boys take it in turn to play the golden horn in conversation to the boat whistles. The working boats following, life boats and fire boats spraying water.
The music is muddled in my mind and it seems not very well reported on tv or even youtube - though it was beautiful and there was a boat with an amazing eastern sounding choir, which I imagine must be the Shree Muktajeevan Pipe Banc and Dhol Ensemble.
Toot toot toot, the golden horn played right in my ear. I have had enough.
This is the end, the War and Peace moment, the moment when the French army retreat - when the crowds who have stood so long, came together into a collective of cheers and reasonably goodwill decide - everyone, all at the same time, without saying goodbye or even making a plan just ups and leaves. I think one of the boys says - I have had enough and rather than do the normal - just 10 minutes more - I just say yes. Let's go. Only then noticing the departing backs of the Grandad's family, the empty stretch of railings, just the movement of retreat. The recreation boats are coming through, endless white fibre glass boats that our gaze slide away from. And we run back through the rain and abandoned union jacks curled in puddles to PSM's house. And PSM and her friends cheer me when I come in as if the Queen herself has arrived - I am my mother's daughter with my ridiculous stoic duty to the task. Our children will remember this for ever they say, giving me soup and tea. Secretly I think I don't think the children really cared. Perhaps even I didn't really, though I had wanted to see the Thames swamped with colourful boats.
I am just saying I wish I had seen The London Philarmonic Orchestra when we hear it. PSM's house is just set back from the South bank ( though behind solid office blocks ) and we hear them loud and clearly. She runs out with her boyfriend into the rain to see, the rest of us stand in a the sea of a lego of a boys bedroom to hear them.
I will never get these tired damp boys home without a fuss I think looking out at the pouring rain, knowing I haven't got enough money for a taxi or even a bus as a back up plan and too proud to ask PSM to borrow some. But we walk back through the lash of wind and rain happily carrying our damp stools and bags. My youngest dancing on tip toes through the lakes of puddles, his face completely absorbed to the dance he makes.
I wonder what church could sit with the pageant but think I will just have to make it work - there aren't any specifically royal churches left that I know.
When I walk down Savoy Hill to the Savoy Chapel there are still metal barricades stacked up, left over from the pageant though I think by the time I get to the church it is a week later. The chapel is set back in a garden but there is building work going on and it looks closed up and a bit of a mess, though there are old gravestones skewed into the railings, as if the earth has just been turned over.
I have tried a few times to get into the church and it has always been shut ( even when it should have been open ) so I am pleased to see the door wide open. Inside a very plain and small village hall style porch there are flowers on a table and closed doors. Then a door opens revealing a glimpse of the chapel, a mother propelling a child as if to the toilet. I squeeze past their hurried exit into the small chapel where it looks like the congregation are just leaving. I think I'll just sit briefly, before realising the seemingly departing congregation are mainly a family gathered around the font with a baby. It is a christening and the baptism is about to take place. I lose my nerve and get only a quick look at the high narrow chapel with painted ceiling and anonymous plush decor and recognise the slightly anonymous royal chapel style. It doesn't seem anything to do with the hotel at all but The Queen's Chapel of Savoy. Completely unexpectedly it is a royal chapel. 'The chapel belongs to Her Majesy The Queen in her right as Duke of Lancaster'. In a glass case there is a signed book of the monarchs that have visited.
A church was originally built here in the Middle Ages as part of the Savoy Palace, the walled riverside mansion built by Count Peter of Savoy in 1246. He was given the riverside land between Westminster and the City of London when his niece married Henry 111. Later it became the home of John of Gaunt who inherited the title of Duke of Lancaster in 1351. With it came the rights of palatine giving his land the right to be ruled autonomously from the rest of the kingdom, indeed this area known as 'Savoy' kept many of these special judicial privileges until 1873. Under these laws someone being pursued for a debt in London could reside in the Savoy without fear of arrest by people acting under the King's authority. The vast palace where Chaucer ( a clerk of the palace ) began the Canterbury Tales was burnt down in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 fueled by the unpopularity of John O Gaunt's poll tax which taxed rich and poor alike. Later restored and rebuilt by Henry V11 it became a hospital for the homeless, a vast nave filled with a hundred beds, and the first to benefit from permanent medical staff. It closed in 1702, falling into disrepair. Though there is a Turner sketch of the ruins and I love the idea of this gothic crumbling pile in the heart of London.
The Chapel known as both St Mary in the Hospital and St John the Baptist in the Savoy was the only thing to survive a fire of 1860 and was later restored. In the 18th century it was a place where marriages without banns could legally occur and was referred to in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as the place where divorced couples got married - 'a poky little place'
The impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte bought the ruins of the Savoy Palace in 1880 initially to build the Savoy Theatre for the production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. It was the first public building to be lit entirely by electricity and so successful was the venture that it financed the building of the Savoy, most of the revenue coming from the Mikado.
Writing and researching this I was for a while worried that there was going to be no connection to the Savoy hotel. I had bought the brilliant The West End Front - The Wartime Secrets of London's Grand Hotels (if you know me and it is your birthday soon expect it as a present) after hearing extracts on R4 - and wanted to use the fascinating stories some of which show so clearly the divide between rich and poor during the war.
As the communist newspaper The Daily Worker asserted in September 194o campaigning against the lack of reasonable or indeed any shelter from the Blitz in Stepney,
'If you live in the Savoy Hotel you are called by telephone when the sirens sound and then tucked into bed by servants in a luxury bomb-proof shelter. But if you live in Paradise Court you may find yourself without a refuge of any kind.' Then in big bold print 'THE PEOPLE MUST ACT'.
On 14th September, the 8th night of the Blitz they did. Meeting in Embankment Gardens they waited for the air raid siren to begin, unfurled their banners and marched onto the Savoy. Why the Savoy? 'It was the nearest' was the straightforward reply. Mainly east end communists - dockers, clothing workers, bootmakers though a few recruits had been picked up on the night from the poor public east end air-raid facilities. Somewhere between 40 and 80 it is claimed, though memories seem uncertain. The group marched through the doors of the Savoy, making a speech for equality. Despite the panic button being pressed and the police being called unexpectedly and cleverly the assistant general manager Willy Hofflin answered simply, 'There is no reason why these people should not have the same shelter as the Savoy's guests.' Infact, with bombs coming down outside it was the law not to turn people away into danger.
In a padded, cavernous space with a dance floor on one side and a dormitory on the other, separate quarters for single men and women and camp beds with matching sheets and pillows in green and pink and blue, a snore warden and uniformed nurses - the invaders were heard to remark - 'Shelters....why we'd love to live in such places'.
They ordered tea, demanding to pay only what they would pay in a Lyons Corner House. The waiters huddled to debate the request seemingly sympathetic to the invaders for in minutes trolleys appeared with tea and bread and butter.
After that there are two versions of the night - that the all clear sounded just as tea was served or that they stayed a victorious night.
Barely reported in the British press the Savoy invasion gained more coverage in the Nazi 'Volkischer Beobachter' 'For ten days now eight million people have flown into the air raid shelters and the subway' 'Londoners have become cave dwellers. Life has stopped. The working population is fleeing from the east and south of the city to the West End. Desperate men and women have stormed the luxurious Savoy hotel. Only police have been able to evacuate them. The question comes into one's mind.....whether at all and for how long the English population will follow Churchill on this path....'
Only fuelling the suspicion that the Communists were working on behalf of the Nazis. When the Savoy invasion was discussed in parliament the matter was taken very seriously and Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary,
'agreed with the Prime Minister that it would be necessary to take strong action to prevent demonstrations of this kind, which if allowed to grow, might easily lead to serious difficulties.'
The communists kept going with their attempts to find safe places for people to shelter repeatedly targeted the tube stations - exhorting London Transport to keep the gates unlocked or getting a crowbar to the barriers when shut. Only a week after the Savoy invasion on 21st September London Transport switched off the electricity at Aldwych, chemical toilets were installed and 2,500 were finally allowed to shelter on the Piccadilly line track along with the Elgin Marbles which had already been stored there three weeks previously.
'We went to the Savoy to show the class position; to show how the rich lived with a great mass of stuff while the ordinary working man and woman had to live on the coupon books. And because of what we did, the Underground was opened, and people had somewhere to shelter from the bombs. I'm very proud of the part I played.' says Max Levitas who was part of the Savoy invasion to Matthew Sweet the author of 'The West End Front'.
Finally I look again at the Canaletto:
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/canaletto/the-river-thames-with-st-paul-s-cathedral-on-lord-mayor-s-day-
finding diarists Pepys and John Evelyn's description of the 1660 pageant when King Charles 11 took part in the pageant a year after the restoration of the monarchy. Pepys described the scene as the king and queen journeyed downriver from Hampton court to Whitehall 'under a canopy with 10,000 barges and boats, I think, for we could see no water for them.'
For Evelyn, the event 'was the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames.' He wrote admiringly of 'the innumerable boats and vessels dress'd and adorn'd with all imaginable pomp...the thrones, arches....stately barges...musiq and peals of ordnance both from ye vessels and the shore'
In the painting St Paul's dominates the skyline but surrounding it - under an egg blue sky are the many church spires of the city. The only secular interruption to the sky is the Monument. On the long wait at the side of the Thames when arguments broke out and distraction was needed I had said - let's count how many churches we can see but it wasn't a game that captured the imagination of the pack of occasionally unruly children and I don't remember the answer. The spires peered from behind office blocks, nudged the view from the layer of buildings. St Paul's still central but the Monument hidden from view. I thought I have become a church watcher - like a bird watcher - the sightings on a skyline or glimpsed down a side street, the observation of history, the peck of another time, the i spy thrill of spotting one I haven't seen before.
Amen.
