Chimes at Midnight
Tuesday, April 9th, 2002 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthIt wasn't something I would ordinarily have thought of doing. I am not in any sense a royalist, and I'm not generally interested in the sort of events that make headlines. Many people, seeing a crowd watching something, will join the crowd. I'll usually go the other way.
There are exceptions.
I was at my friend Maggy's for dinner on Friday. Maggy had been watching TV coverage of the procession of the Queen Mother's coffin through London. She'd intended to go and see it in person, but circumstances hadn't permitted. After dinner and a glass of wine, we were watching the News at Ten: they showed pictures of the queue, and told us it was dwindling. (On my way down to Maggy's, there was a sign at the tube station saying that the waiting time was 8 hours. That was at 6pm. They weren't turning anyone away).
"Members of the public may pay their respects at Westminster Hall from 2pm to 6pm on Friday and from 8am to 6pm from Saturday to Monday." ... the official memorial site, underestimating the scale of public feeling.
And we were in Kew, and it's only 40 minutes to Westminster on the Tube: and the roads were empty, so we drove up to Stamford Brook where the two branches of the District Line converge, and there are more trains. Everything flowed more smoothly than it ever usually does: the train was prompt and we found seats opposite a group of lads who were going clubbing.
The staff at Westminster station were directing people towards the queue: it tailed back along Millbank, though not as far as Lambeth Bridge. It was a warm evening, slightly breezy, smelling of spring (well, of exhaust fumes, and fried onions from the hotdog cart at the Tube: but also of new leaves and turned earth). The queue was good-natured, not as Blitz-spirit chatty as I'd feared, and the police patrols all looked young and remarkably cheerful.
It wasn't (we told one another) anything like the tragedy that Diana's death had been: no, this was well-deserved peace at the end of a long life. More and more people joined the queue behind us. "Ah, look," said somebody, "more people who saw the news and decided to come along while it was quiet". There were people who looked as though they were confirmed royalists, and people who looked like tourists, and people who looked as though they were on their way somewhere else, just stopping by to mark the occasion. The policeman nearest us was told he'd be on shift until 6am. He didn't stop smiling.
And the queue was moving surprisingly quickly, past the gardens and the gargoyled Victoria Tower - all Gothic perpendicular and honey-coloured stone. High above us, through the bud-encrusted branches, a Union Jack fluttered and flickered at half-mast, like flame in the golden light. It was quiet (quiet for London, at least) and the lawn across the road was lit much whiter than the buildings, so that it glowed like emerald.
The security was smooth and courteous and inescapable, airport-style. (When she was born, the Wright brothers hadn't made that first flight at Kittyhawk). "Please put any metal objects in these bags": "please switch off your mobile phones": and, very British, one line for gentlemen, one line for ladies. We were scanned and checked and smiled at, and waved on up the stairs. Dark wood everywhere, over pale stone. Banner-bright.
And then we were entering Westminster Hall, the heart of Britain. William Rufus built it in 1099: the roof timbers are older than America. A wide open space as suitable for a Saxon moot as a stately Parliament. (This is not, now, where Parliament convenes. But there is a chapel in the basement where Maggy has sung with the House of Commons choir). Electrical wiring looped under the ancient roof-timbers, cameras and lights and boom microphones amongst the elaborately-carved terminal figures.
And in the middle a corpse in a box.
The coffin, covered by her royal standard, rested on a high catafalque draped in Imperial purple: she was, after all, the last Empress of India. The platinum and diamond crown, carried atop the coffin in the funeral procession for anyone to see , scattered rainbow light. A Beefeater at each corner, pikes raised, looking astoundingly real and medieval at once. Two silent lines of commoners filing past, refraining from photography, solemn. Cameras were not prohibited, but there were no flashes. Occasionally a digital watch chirrupped, but not loudly enough to cover the shuffle of feet, the click of high heels, on stone and thin carpet.
We reached the top of the stairs leading down into the hall: and above us, outside, Big Ben struck midnight.
Everyone stopped. The moment hung, heavily: a sense of immanence as holy as any cathedral. Out from an anteroom came four bearskinned, red-tunicked Guards to replace the Beefeaters. They took their positions at the four corners of the coffin in silence, heads bowed, naked swords gleaming: more Victorian than medieval. I wondered what they were guarding against. Indignities being visited against the corpse? Mad bombers? A mystical intervention? It seemed a very frail sort of protection.
A moment's more silence, and then the slow processions past the catafalque resumed. Glancing to my right, I saw a soldier in modern fatigues and held a machine gun. He was no more out of place, no more an anachronism, than the Beefeater with his pike, or the Guard with his sword. Present and past intermingled: or maybe it was more as though the inside of the Hall was outside time.
Outside the Hall, the police were laughing at something someone had said, because respect doesn't rule out humour. We made a dash for the last tube. Back in time. At dawn, I heard, they closed the Hall until that morning's mourners came to queue.
There are exceptions.
I was at my friend Maggy's for dinner on Friday. Maggy had been watching TV coverage of the procession of the Queen Mother's coffin through London. She'd intended to go and see it in person, but circumstances hadn't permitted. After dinner and a glass of wine, we were watching the News at Ten: they showed pictures of the queue, and told us it was dwindling. (On my way down to Maggy's, there was a sign at the tube station saying that the waiting time was 8 hours. That was at 6pm. They weren't turning anyone away).
"Members of the public may pay their respects at Westminster Hall from 2pm to 6pm on Friday and from 8am to 6pm from Saturday to Monday." ... the official memorial site, underestimating the scale of public feeling.
And we were in Kew, and it's only 40 minutes to Westminster on the Tube: and the roads were empty, so we drove up to Stamford Brook where the two branches of the District Line converge, and there are more trains. Everything flowed more smoothly than it ever usually does: the train was prompt and we found seats opposite a group of lads who were going clubbing.
The staff at Westminster station were directing people towards the queue: it tailed back along Millbank, though not as far as Lambeth Bridge. It was a warm evening, slightly breezy, smelling of spring (well, of exhaust fumes, and fried onions from the hotdog cart at the Tube: but also of new leaves and turned earth). The queue was good-natured, not as Blitz-spirit chatty as I'd feared, and the police patrols all looked young and remarkably cheerful.
It wasn't (we told one another) anything like the tragedy that Diana's death had been: no, this was well-deserved peace at the end of a long life. More and more people joined the queue behind us. "Ah, look," said somebody, "more people who saw the news and decided to come along while it was quiet". There were people who looked as though they were confirmed royalists, and people who looked like tourists, and people who looked as though they were on their way somewhere else, just stopping by to mark the occasion. The policeman nearest us was told he'd be on shift until 6am. He didn't stop smiling.
And the queue was moving surprisingly quickly, past the gardens and the gargoyled Victoria Tower - all Gothic perpendicular and honey-coloured stone. High above us, through the bud-encrusted branches, a Union Jack fluttered and flickered at half-mast, like flame in the golden light. It was quiet (quiet for London, at least) and the lawn across the road was lit much whiter than the buildings, so that it glowed like emerald.
The security was smooth and courteous and inescapable, airport-style. (When she was born, the Wright brothers hadn't made that first flight at Kittyhawk). "Please put any metal objects in these bags": "please switch off your mobile phones": and, very British, one line for gentlemen, one line for ladies. We were scanned and checked and smiled at, and waved on up the stairs. Dark wood everywhere, over pale stone. Banner-bright.
And then we were entering Westminster Hall, the heart of Britain. William Rufus built it in 1099: the roof timbers are older than America. A wide open space as suitable for a Saxon moot as a stately Parliament. (This is not, now, where Parliament convenes. But there is a chapel in the basement where Maggy has sung with the House of Commons choir). Electrical wiring looped under the ancient roof-timbers, cameras and lights and boom microphones amongst the elaborately-carved terminal figures.
And in the middle a corpse in a box.
The coffin, covered by her royal standard, rested on a high catafalque draped in Imperial purple: she was, after all, the last Empress of India. The platinum and diamond crown, carried atop the coffin in the funeral procession for anyone to see , scattered rainbow light. A Beefeater at each corner, pikes raised, looking astoundingly real and medieval at once. Two silent lines of commoners filing past, refraining from photography, solemn. Cameras were not prohibited, but there were no flashes. Occasionally a digital watch chirrupped, but not loudly enough to cover the shuffle of feet, the click of high heels, on stone and thin carpet.
We reached the top of the stairs leading down into the hall: and above us, outside, Big Ben struck midnight.
Everyone stopped. The moment hung, heavily: a sense of immanence as holy as any cathedral. Out from an anteroom came four bearskinned, red-tunicked Guards to replace the Beefeaters. They took their positions at the four corners of the coffin in silence, heads bowed, naked swords gleaming: more Victorian than medieval. I wondered what they were guarding against. Indignities being visited against the corpse? Mad bombers? A mystical intervention? It seemed a very frail sort of protection.
A moment's more silence, and then the slow processions past the catafalque resumed. Glancing to my right, I saw a soldier in modern fatigues and held a machine gun. He was no more out of place, no more an anachronism, than the Beefeater with his pike, or the Guard with his sword. Present and past intermingled: or maybe it was more as though the inside of the Hall was outside time.
Outside the Hall, the police were laughing at something someone had said, because respect doesn't rule out humour. We made a dash for the last tube. Back in time. At dawn, I heard, they closed the Hall until that morning's mourners came to queue.
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More praise
Date: Monday, April 22nd, 2002 04:01 pm (UTC)