Twenty-four hours later, Josh was stationed by the entrance of the Exhibition on the newly glamorised South Bank. With him were John Booth, photographer; Joanna Biggs, fashion reporter; and Donald Herbert, who had been lunching at the Savoy with Harry Campbell and found himself suddenly dispatched in the middle of a superb fillet of beef to ‘keep an eye on this shoot at the Festival. Nobody senior there and I’m not entirely happy about it. Your protégé’s going, young Tom Knelston, and he’ll be glad to see you.’ As indeed Tom was.
Tom was interested in the Festival of Britain only in as far as it was known to be the brainchild of Attlee and another of his bids to cheer the nation up. He was fascinated by such public-relations enterprises. So far it had been a success, and this being a blessedly sunny warm day, it was already busy. They were all clutching copies of the South Bank Exhibition Guide with its jaunty logo incorporating Britannia, and a row of red, white and blue flags, designed at considerable cost. The two most famous segments of the exhibition (timed to coincide with the centenary of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition) were the Dome of Discovery which contained a series of exhibitions on such worthy subjects as the Land, the Earth and the Sea, and the Skylon, a slender steel needle-like construction almost 300 feet high. And the new Royal Festival Hall, acoustically perfect, it was said, and already booked to host the world’s finest musicians for months and even years ahead.
Gerald Barry, the festival’s director, had described the whole thing as a ‘tonic for the nation’, and while it perhaps lacked the sparkle normally associated with tonic, being for the most part grey and constructed in concrete, the nation, or such of it as spoke to Josh Curtis, seemed of a mind to agree with him. After two hours things became repetitive; there were, as Donald Herbert remarked, only so many ways for people to admire it, and was there nothing more exciting for Joanna to write about than the British uniform for outings of overcoat, hat, gloves, umbrella and nicely polished shoes?
Then Donald Herbert had the idea, which not only transformed the feature and the photographs, but propelled Joanna’s byline into sixteen-point, and tipped Tom Knelston’s comparatively ordered life into potential disarray for years to come.
‘What we should do,’ he said, ‘is head down to Battersea, to the Pleasure Gardens. Bet we’ll get a jollier crowd there.’
He was right: the Festival Pleasure Gardens, opened by Princess Margaret, were filled with people in much more holiday mood. A glorified funfair, it had attracted much controversy, felt to be not in keeping with the more serious purpose of the festival. There was particular criticism of the fact that it was open on Sundays. However, the public were determined to enjoy it, and indeed it much more closely resembled the tonic described by Gerald Barry than its more earnest neighbour up river. Its centrepiece was the big wheel and the queue to ride upon it extremely long. The inhabitants of the queue that day were young and, greatly to Joanna Biggs’s relief, more interestingly dressed, many of the young in jeans and that new phenomenon, the overgrown sweatshirt known as a ‘sloppy joe’, munching contentedly on toffee apples and candyfloss as they waited. Girls giggled and boys postured for John Booth’s camera, flashing tirelessly into the evening light; Joanna became increasingly inventive, pulling boys’ hats off and plonking them onto their girlfriends’ heads, and Donald Herbert, feeling his work done, was emboldened to pull out the whisky flask he kept permanently in his pocket and take increasingly frequent sips of it. They were all beginning to feel they had done their job when there was a sudden cry of ‘Tom! Tom Knelston, hello!’ and they all turned round to see a beautiful girl, tall, dark, aristocratic, wearing what only Donald Herbert could say for sure was mink, and extremely high-heeled shoes, waving at them from the hot dog stall.
The wave was followed by some imperious beckoning; obediently, they trooped towards her, Herbert looking at Tom with an entirely new expression on his face, veering between awe and irritation, and as they reached the stall another woman, also be-minked and high-heeled, came towards them holding out a gracious hand.
‘Do come over. How marvellous, just as we were giving up. My name is Blanche Ellis Brown from Style magazine.’ It really was too good to be true, Donald thought. ‘We’ve been shooting all afternoon. The other girl’s gone, but we wanted one last shot of Diana here, on the big wheel, or possibly the carousel, and needed a good-looking man to be beside her. Precious few of those here, I can tell you, but – well, you wouldn’t mind, would you?’ She addressed her remark to Tom, although Donald Herbert, Josh Curtis and even John Booth were all beaming hopefully at her. It wasn’t until she said, ‘Diana tells me you are old friends,’ that they were forced to realise it was Tom she was actually addressing.
Tom could only smile sheepishly and submit to having his raincoat removed by Joanna, who was beside herself with excitement. A study of his cheap suit saw the jacket of that removed as well, his tie loosened, his top shirt button undone and he was set beside Diana on a carousel horse smiling uncertainly into Booth’s camera. The proprietor of the carousel, who knew a publicity opportunity when he saw one, stopped and started it as often as required. Diana, a seasoned practitioner of the photo shoot, took command, and the final shot had Diana and Tom on the same horse, Diana side-saddle, her face turned to Tom and both of them laughing.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said Blanche, as they finally scrambled off. ‘Yes, please do use the pictures, as long as you credit Style. Thank you so much, Mr Knelston – you should get someone to sign you up, you’re a natural. Diana, what are you going to do now, darling? I have to get back to the office, get those coats locked up for the night, and that diamond bracelet and earrings, if you don’t mind.’
‘Pity, I was going to try and make off with them,’ said Diana. ‘Where’s the car? All my stuff’s in it. Look, Tom and the rest of you, why don’t we go for a drink, we’re so near the Savoy.’
‘Marvellous idea,’ said Donald Herbert. ‘I was having lunch there several hours ago, before the editor sent me off here. I can pick up where I left off. Halfway through a bottle of rather nice claret, I seem to remember.’