Night of Triumph by Peter Bradshaw Page A

looks fun,’ said Margaret, her face now set. ‘I think it would be very jolly.’
    Both Hugh and Peter felt their faces contract and pulse with competing needs: to deny the Princess this unwise request, and a need to placate her, to placate the crowd and to withhold from the
crowd the Princess’s identity.
    ‘Should we not, um,
rejoin the conga line?
’ The fatuity of this last remark from Peter went fortunately unnoticed, being timidly inaudible.
    One of the men belched, another laughed, and a third stretched, put his palms behind his head and flexed his upper arms, revealing symmetrical tattoos of birds. Peter and Hugh could see Margaret
changing her mind.
    ‘I don’t mean me doing it,’ she then said, crisply. ‘I mean one of you doing it.’
    ‘Well now,’ began Peter, in the sad, worldly tone of one forced by circumstance to deny a reasonable request.
    ‘Oh, all right then, Peter!’ interrupted Hugh genially, gesturing to him with an open palm, and both he and the Princess stood back, to give Peter a clear path to the tarpaulin,
which was being picked up again by the men who shuffled around and pulled it into a roughly circular shape, like firemen preparing to catch someone jumping from a burning building. It was
apparently a groundsheet.
    ‘Come on, mate!’
    ‘Come on, if you’re coming!’
    ‘Come
on!
’
    The men, Hugh and the Princess herself had instantly assumed the manner of people who were granting Peter’s request, though a little impatient at his puppyish immaturity.
    Peter felt his face sag, though it snapped into a fleeting grimace of resentment at Hugh as he walked past him – Hugh met it with a bland smirk – and then into the good-sport grin he
knew was expected of him. Everyone in the vicinity persisted in behaving as if they were indulging his whim.
    Peter climbed onto the taut material, wondering if he should take his shoes off. He expected a ragged, supportive cheer. Disconcertingly, there was a sudden, weird quiet. To initiate the
proceedings, Margaret began to sing:
    Ooo-ay and UP he rises!
    They started to throw Peter into the air, and instead of a rhythmic, invigorating trampoline bounce, Peter experienced a series of brutal wrenches. As he was flung skywards, he felt the blood
rush unpleasantly into his head; only after two or three times did he think to close his eyes.
    ‘Wait!’ he shouted, or perhaps it was ‘Stop!’ or ‘Help!’
    The fun continued.
    After half a dozen throws, Peter opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of faces, grinning faces, jeering faces, blank faces, that all suddenly turned upwards.
    There was a massive roar overhead. Peter thought that something had exploded, or that the Germans had finally achieved a last-gasp success with a new, undreamt-of secret weapon. But no, it was
some sort of fly-past, a salute from RAF aircraft whose pilots on any other day would have been subject to court martial. Were they Lancasters?
    The entire crowd gasped and cheered; the men all let go of the tarpaulin as Peter was on his eighth and final descent. He landed, very hard, on his left shoulder and elbow, and felt the tin
can’s sharp edge under his back.
    ‘Hooray!’ cheered the crowd.
    ‘Argh,’ said Peter, whose arm was broken.
    ‘Wha-hay!’ shouted the crowd.
    ‘Ow, I, ah ...’ said Peter. His face was the colour of chalk.
    Zoom
, went the Lancasters as they headed off.
    ‘Well, jolly good,’ said Margaret. ‘Where’s Lilibet?’
    ‘Your Royal Highness,’ said Peter, for whom pain had extinguished the need to keep secrets, ‘I can’t move my arm.’
    ‘Where’s Lilibet?’
    ‘I think my arm is broken.’
    ‘Your Highness,’ said Hugh.
    ‘Lilibet? Lilibet! Where is Lilibet?’
    ‘Your Highness?’
    ‘Where are you, Lilibet?’
    ‘Your Highness?’
    ‘I can’t see her anywhere. Where is the conga line?’
    ‘She might be further ahead, towards Trafalgar Square.’
    ‘Lilibet! Lilibet!’
    ‘My arm.’
    ‘Oh my