Charlie's Model Shop had become a sort of club, where the Gang met most evenings to exchange chat about model-making, wargaming and other military subjects, although football came into the conversation sometimes when the Rangers in the stadium up the road did well - or badly. And of course we met regularly on Sunday afternoons for the wargame in the Tomb we'd dug beneath the shop. It was a loosely-knit club because virtually any customer who came into the shop could stay to browse or talk, and if our activities helped bring customers into the shop then it repaid Charlie for letting us hang around there. He never pushed it at all and sometimes we felt he could have been a bit more business-like, but he seemed happy with' the way things were. We made it a point of honour never to'freeze' any one out, everyone who came in was made welcome even if we did not particularly take to them, for Charlie's sake we made ourselves pleasant to even the most awkward guys - and that included Cecil Paget. Now there was someone who got under everyone's skin without even really trying, perhaps because he was everything the rest of us weren't. Older than any of us in his midfifties, he had a plummy public school accent, was an executive at the electronics factory on the Industrial Estate, a justice of the Peace, and had been commissioned in a well-known cavairy regiment. His hobby was military history and he was very well-read so that he could put you right on anything and was always infuriatingly ready to do so - battles, commanders, uniforms, weapons, he was familiar with them all. In a very highlevel sort of way, he conclucted Exercises (he wouldn't call them wargames) using big 54mm figures that cost the earth, which Charlie got for him from makers all over the world. To the Gang - and behind his back - he was known as Mr. Know-It-All.
Then there were the youngsters, kids who hung around the shop sometimes making themselves a nuisance; Charlie put up with a lot from them and was only ever known to bar one of them, that was when the kid they called Knuckles, the one with the pink Punk hairstyle, was featured in the local paper for biting the ear of a Liverpool supporter when they came to play the Rangers. Perhaps the best of the younger element was Wayne Beale, who brought his great-grandfather into the shop on Saturday mornings, when the old fellow would tell us about when he was a cavalryman in the Warwickshire Yeomanry in Palestine with Allenby during World War One - "We were covered in white dust, skin tanned a deep mahogany... we never wore tunics an'cut our shirt sleeves short... carried two waterbotties an' an old fruit-tin for a billy-can." It was sad, this old man nearing 90, tall and shrunken, and fingers twitching with Parkinson's Disease, blind too so he sat staring straight ahead all the time as he talked. "
It were the 20th of November 1917 Johnny Turk were retiring from Gaza and made a stand with some artillery near a village called EI Huj our C.O. ... Colonel Cheape it was... quickly got together three squadrons two from the Warwicks and one from the Worcestershire Yeomanry, and led us in a mad charge across half a mile of open plain. Machine-guns, rifles and artillery opened upon us an I remember thinking it sounded like hailstones on a tin roof... a whole heap of men and horses went clown about thirty yards from the muzzles of the guns and the squadron seemed to melt away... for a moment I thought I was the only man left alive but we got in among' em with the old sabre an saw em off. It were the 1908 Pattern sword, the last and best sword British cavalry every had... it sat in your hand as though it were part of you... I loved my sabre and nearly cried the day we had to hand em in. We took eleven guns and about eighty prisoners... but we lost all three squadron commanders and more'n half the 180 lads who began the charge."
One day, moving to where old Ted couldn't hear, young Wayne asked us if we would go with him to the Auction Rooms as he'd heard there was one of them cavalry swords for sale, he'd been saving his paper-round money and wanted to buy it for the old man's 90th birthday. Well, we went but the lad was never in with a chance as it fetched about five times more than he'd got. Then Toby roles said he knew a guy who made reproduction weapons, so we went round there and. he said he'd make one for twenty pounds. We wondered if the old man would realize it was an imitation 1908 Pattern sword, but reassured Wayne (and ourselves) by recalling it was about seventy years since Ted Beale had handled one, and as he was blind he wouldn't be able to see it anyway.
All the Gang were there when Wayne brought old Ted in on his birthday morning, flourishing this big three feet long sword - made Charlie a bit worried when it whistled past showcases and stacks of model kits. "Look what I've got... a real '08 Pattern sword like I had in Palestine." Crowding round, we were wishing him Happy Birthday when the worst thing happened - into the shop walked Cecil Paget, Mr. Know-lt-All. We all knew he wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity of showing his knowledge by declaring the sword a cheap imitation, and break the boy's heart while humiliating the old man. "Hello, Mr. Beale" he says: "What's that you've got there?"
Turning his head in the direction of the voice, old Ted says: "It's an '08 Pattern cavalry sword... my grandson's given it to me for my 90th birthday!" Amid a deathly silence Pagel took the sword and examined it closely, then looked around until his eyes lit on the agonized face of young Wayne Beale. Hefting the sword experimentally, Cecil Pagel coughed: "My, but it is a lovely piece of work, isn't it? So beautifully balanced... see how the narrow 35 inch blade makes it a thrusting weapon... and the ugly sheet steel bowl-guard protecting the hand and the pistolgrip shaped so the hand naturally grasps the weapon in the correct way... yes, it's a fine example alright!"
Still looking at the sword, Cecil Pagel pretended not to hear the gasp that arose Mr. Know-It-All had revealed that he did not know everything and was as fallible as the rest of us! Shaking heads in wonder, we saw him sit down with the old man, talking intently and at one time they laughed as though at some private joke. Then old Ted stood up, cradling the sword in his arms, saying loudly to the room: "Theses words had a great morale effect both on us an' the enemy ... we rode knowing we had a first-class weapon in our hands... better than anything the enemy could throw against us!" Thinking of machine-guns and the like, you had to admire his misplaced confidence that must have got a lot of good cavalrymen killed.
Later Charlie, who owned the Model Shop, told us that he had said to Cecil Paget - "You know that sword isn't genuine, don't you?" We pictured the aristocratic face topped by well-trimmed grey hair and clipped moustache turning towards Charlie and saying: "Did you see the look on the boy's face... I had a son like him once but he died of Leukemia... anyway, we fellow -cavalrymen stick together and keep our secrets!"
Charlie stared:" Do you mean to tell me that old Ted knows it's imitation?" And he swears that Cecil winked at him, but you can't imagine a man like Mr. Pagel winking, can you? Funny though, he seems to have become much more one of the Gang these days.
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