Coronation Read Online Free PDF Page A

small pennant or a stick on which were fastened red, white and blue streamers, which they waved even though there was nothing to wave at. Behind them a maid was pouring something and another passing buns. This was exactly as described, word for word, on their own admissions. Clagg’s stomach could already feel the warmth and comfort of the hot tea descending.
    Clagg now quickly turned to look towards the great open plaza whence they had come. The angle and the view were still perfect, and thus he didn’t quite take in the fact that after No. 3 there occurred a gap in the buildings, crossed by heavy black beams stretching from the wall of No. 3 to where they supported that of the next house. But when he reached this further house and looked up to see, its number was not 4 but 6. And beyond 6 were Nos. 7, 8 and 9, still affording a view. 10 and 11 were beyond the angle. The windows were shuttered. Since they could not see they appeared to have closed their eyes.
    ‘Wait,’ Will said, ‘We must have passed it. Stay here.’ He retraced his steps quickly and counted again to make certain. 1, 2, 3, and then only that gaping space crossed by beams of timber; no numbers 4 or 5.
    The wind, perishingly cold, seemed to have increased; the rain as well; the outside of his mack was wet and now suddenly Will Clagg found himself damp within as well, as perspiration began to ooze from his arm-pits. He quickly counted again, and then, in alarm and half in relief at having been such a fool, he rushed to the other side of the street. But there were no houses there at all, only the long stretch of set-back buildings of the hospital biting deeply into the Crescent. He returned whence he had come, running almost blindly past his family in the grip of panic.
    A police constable was standing on the pavement talking with two thick-set men in the drab, unmistakable garb that proclaimed them plain-clothes detectives. Will stepped up to the policeman. ‘Beg your pardon, but could you tell me where No. 4 might be, Officer?’
    The constable eyed him gravely; his two companions stirred inside their mackintoshes and moved just that fraction of an inch nearer.
    Fear came to Clagg in a sickening wave. There was something familiar in these attitudes. He had seen groups such as these on street corners in Little Pudney, and had observed just such grave concentration as some shady-looking stranger had passed by.
    ‘Now why would you be wanting No. 4?’ asked the constable.
    Clagg produced his blue and gold embossed tickets, and suddenly the feel of them was no longer a comfort to him as they had been from the time he had first possessed them. Now, as he held them in his fingers, it was as though, quite suddenly, they had been drained of all their beauty and virtue.
    One of the men in plain clothes said, ‘Here’s another.’ His eyes travelled to the group surrounding Will – the wife, the children, the obvious grandmother – and he added, half under his breath, ‘And the family too, that’s rotten!’ The two men came closer to inspect the tickets.
    ‘Well, now,’ the P.C. said gently, ‘if there was a No. 4 it would be here. But as you see –’
    As they could all see indeed! They turned to follow the line of the constable’s look and saw what he saw, and what they had seen before, and what no amount of looking or staring or fearing or wishing or hoping could change. There was no house there at all, only a gap in which grew the ubiquitous fireweed where once had stood the bombed and burned out Nos. 4 and 5.
    Mrs. Clagg did not yet understand and her gaze wandered, uncomprehending, from the policeman to the empty space, to her husband’s face which had now gone quite white with an alarm that could no longer be conquered. Granny Bonner’s mouth was falling into a grim line and the wrinkles crossing her brow doubled. There was no doubt in her mind as to what was afoot. In the thickening atmosphere of apprehension the children began to look