Queen Camilla (11 page)

Arthur’s mother, Nora, was downstairs preparing food for the cocktail party. She lived in the granny annexe that had been converted from a building where sacks of grain were once stored. Arthur worshipped his mother, and she worshipped him. In Nora’s eyes Arthur had thrown himself away on Sandra, who she considered to be ‘as spoilt as a sailor’s arse’.

‘You could go on a “Find Your Inner Princess” course,’ said Arthur. ‘The Queen’s butler is running one at Cavendish Manor. We done a scaffolding job there. You could learn to talk better and how to lay a table and ’ow to geddout of a car without showing your fanny.’

Sandra said unenthusiastically, ‘I went on a course once and I ended up on probation.’

Arthur said, placatingly, ‘Yeah, but that yoga wanker was asking to be duffed up. This course is a different barrel of monkeys, it’s five grand a week, and you’d be mixing with near aristocracy.’

Nora Grice slid open the glass doors and shouted, ‘I’ve done the cheese an’ pineapple, and the chipolatas are in the oven. I’ll get off now, I’ve got to change the bandages on me legs.’

Arthur said, ‘Thanks, Mam.’

Sandra said, ‘Nora, if you’re thinking of joining us later, have a shave first, will you?’

Nora stomped away on her ulcerated legs.

Arthur said, ‘I’ll ring that butler bloke tomorrow and get you a place.’

Sandra said, despondently, ‘Don’t bother, Arthur. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’

‘But you can!’ said Arthur. He called Rocky upstairs and tried to get the puzzled dog to sit upright on his hind legs.

When Rocky repeatedly fell over, Grice lost his temper and kicked Rocky across the decking, saying, ‘You’re neither use nor ornament.’

Rocky growled, ‘Kick me again and I’ll rip your throat out,’ then turned and ran downstairs.

Later that evening, as Arthur and Sandra were chatting to their guests, most of whom were drawn from the professional criminal classes, Arthur mentioned with apparent nonchalance that he had been talking to the Queen earlier in the day, in her own home. ‘A very nice lady,’ said Arthur, ‘very regal. I’d lay my life down for ’er.’

There was loud assent from the criminals, their wives and girlfriends, all of whom considered themselves to be true patriots.

Later, one of the criminals sidled up to Arthur and, putting his mouth close to Arthur’s ear, said, ‘There’s a story doing the rounds, that the Queen has got the Imperial State Crown ’idden somewhere in her ’ouse. It’s said by them in the know, that the crown is priceless, Arthur, and we all know how much that is, don’t we?’

Arthur said, ‘Anybody what even
thinks
of ’avin’ that crown away is already dead: ’is legs is in concrete
buckets. ’E’s ’anging from a meat hook. ’E’s falling from an ’igh building. In fact, I’m startin’ to feel very sorry for that bloke.’

After their guests had departed and Nora was washing up downstairs, Arthur said, ‘I think that went well, don’t you?’

Sandra yawned, ‘Apart from your mother’s shaving cuts. She might have wiped the blood off before she went round with the chipolatas.’

Camilla was having her hair coloured in Beverley Threadgold’s spectacularly untidy kitchen, where a small television was balanced precariously on a cluttered work surface. Camilla was slightly alarmed at the eye-watering strength of the peroxide solution that Beverley was sloshing on to her hair. She said, ‘Bev, are you an experienced colourist?’

Beverley bridled and said, ‘I’ve only ever had one client whose hair fell out.’

In her youth Beverley had been briefly apprenticed to a unisex salon in the town. She was still at the shampooing and sweeping-up stage when she had been dismissed for ‘gross insubordination’ after her malicious gossip caused two clients, the wife and the mistress of a third client, to fight among the washbasins in the salon. The subsequent car chase had escalated into tragedy: an attempted murder charge, a hospital admission and a botched suicide.

Camilla had been reluctant to entrust her hair to Beverley, but she couldn’t bring herself to go to Grice’s salon, Pauper’s, again. Not after the last time, when a sixteen-year-old boy stylist had minced up and told her that her hairstyle, the one she had kept for over thirty years, made her look like ‘one of them old women
what models thermal underwear on the back pages of pensioner magazines’.

Camilla was always careful what she said in front of Beverley, who had a gift for wheedling things out of one. Only yesterday Beverley had caused trouble on the estate by claiming she had seen Mr Anwar, the highly prudish owner of the ‘Everything A Pound’ shop, sneaking into the entrance of Grice-A-Go-Go, the pole-dancing club in the shopping parade. The gentleman in question had not been Mr Anwar, but a similar-looking, morbidly obese, middle-aged Hindu, an environmental health inspector, making a professional visit. Mrs Anwar had still not returned from her brother’s house, where she had fled to avoid the scandal.

Beverley had once auditioned to work in Grice-A-Go-Go, but Arthur Grice had laughed at her performance on the pole and told her to come back when she had lost four stone. Beverley had gone home and told Vince she’d got the job but couldn’t take it because she’d been allergic to the pole. ‘I forgot, I can only wear precious metal,’ she had lied.

Beverley stuffed Camilla’s dripping hair into a plastic shower cap and said, ‘Maddo Clarke told me he saw Princess Michael taking her Louis Vuitton luggage down from her attic.’

‘How would Maddo know?’ asked Camilla, who was certain that Maddo Clarke had never set foot inside Princess Michael’s house.

‘He’s a peeping Tom,’ said Beverley, matter-of-factly.

Camilla said, ‘What’s the significance of the luggage?’

Beverley said, ‘She’s planning to go back to London, after the election.’

Camilla said, ‘The New Cons don’t stand a chance of being elected.’

‘I dunno,’ said Beverley, looking at the television where Boy English was shown in flattering profile being interviewed on
Politics F’da Yoot
.

‘I wun’t climb over ’im to make a cup of cocoa,’ said Beverley.

Camilla said, ‘He’s terribly nice. I knew his mother, in the old days.’

Beverley said, ‘Do you miss your old life, Camilla?’

Camilla said, ‘Oh, I
ache
for it sometimes. But what else could I do? I was terribly in love with Charles.’

Beverley sighed and said, ‘An’ you gave it all up for love, like me. I’d have been a famous actress by now if I hadn’t bumped into Vince’s dodgem car an’ broke ’is nose.’

Beverley locked the door and drew the kitchen curtains against the snooping cameras, and they lit cigarettes.

Camilla said, ‘I hope Boy doesn’t get elected, Bev. I couldn’t bear to be the wife of the King of England.’

Beverley’s eyes widened, she pounced on to this titbit like a tiger leaping on to a soft-eyed antelope and said, ‘Charlie can’t be the King until the Queen is dead.’ She gasped. ‘Don’t tell me the Queen is dying! Oh, my God! What’s she got? A bad heart? Cancer? TB? How long’s she got to live?’

Camilla’s scalp felt as though it was on fire. She said,
‘Bev, I’m terribly sorry, but there’s something dreadfully wrong with my scalp.’

Beverley pulled up the shower cap and inspected Camilla’s scalp. ‘Fuckin’ ’ell,’ she said. ‘Get your head under that cold tap, quick.’

When Camilla’s hair had been towelled dry and the fire in her scalp had almost subsided, they watched the remainder of the Boy English interview.

As a concession to the young viewing audience Boy had left off his tie and was wearing jeans and an open-necked pink shirt. Together with his stylist he had agonized about trainers. Should he buy some, and if so, which brand? He had tried a few pairs on in the privacy of his office, but he decided that he looked ridiculous in them, and anyway, they made him feel as though he had bloody mattresses for feet. He much preferred to feel the hard ground when he walked.

The interviewer was a black girl called Nadine, who spoke in a form of ‘Yoof’ speak he could barely understand. He got through by doing a lot of quick summations but really, he thought, this is worse than doing bloody
Beowulf
at Oxford. He had just finished talking about his passion for Bob Marley and Puff Daddy when Nadine hit him below the belt by saying in very clear English indeed, ‘Boy, do you still have a serious cigarette habit?’

Boy had a split second in which to think. If he admitted he was a smoker, he was jeopardizing his chances of winning the next election. If he said he was a non-smoker, he might be exposed as a liar. Perhaps somebody had evidence; but he didn’t know how. He
only ever smoked in his own house these days, when his wife was out, with the blinds drawn and an extractor fan going. In the recent past he had visited Gasper’s, one of the private smoking clubs that had sprung up in Soho, but he could no longer take the risk, not now his face was so well known.

Boy put on his ‘I’m going to make a brave statement now’ expression and said, ‘Nadine, I’m going to be absolutely straight with you. In my youth I experimented with cigarettes, most people did. I was anxious to fit in with my peers.’ He ducked his head and gave a shy smile, ‘I was not a confident youngster, I thought that cigarettes would make me look cool. I got drawn into it when I was seventeen, in my last year at school.’

Beverley, watching at home, said, ‘What took him so long? I were on twenty a day by the time I was fourteen.’

In the studio, Boy was saying, ‘I bought an expensive lighter. Soon there were ashtrays in every room, then, before I knew it, I was up to ten a day.’

Beverley snarled, ‘Amateur.’

Boy lowered his eyes. His lashes, enhanced by a touch of midnight-black Maybelline, fluttered against his pale skin. This single gesture won him hundreds of thousands of votes from a particular demographic: women, ex-smokers.

‘What about the Exclusion Zones, will you keep them?’

Boy said carefully, ‘We are currently reviewing the situation. Exclusion Zones have undoubtedly had a part to play in making the streets safer for hard-working, taxpaying families.’

Nadine said, ‘OK. Now I’m gonna ask you to do our quick quiz. Which jeans, Levi’s or Wrangler?’

Boy answered, ‘Levi’s.’

Nadine asked, ‘Who’s your favourite slapper, Jordan or Jodie?’

Boy hesitated; he didn’t want to antagonize either slapper’s supporters.

‘Pass,’ he laughed.

Nadine’s next question was easier to answer, ‘Queen Elizabeth or Queen Camilla?’

‘Oh, I think Queen Camilla,’ he said, without hesitation.

Camilla could not help feeling pleased, though the thought of actually being the Queen of England horrified her.

Vince Threadgold almost fell through the kitchen door. King followed him in.

‘You’ve bin drinkin’,’ accused Beverley.

‘It’s our lad’s birthday,’ slurred Vince.

‘I know
that
,’ said Beverley savagely.

‘King’s birthday?’ asked Camilla, stretching her hand out to stroke the old Alsatian. ‘How old is he?’

There was an uncharacteristic silence from the Threadgolds, as both waited for the other to speak. Eventually Vince said, ‘We ’ad a lad, Aaron. He were born thirty years ago.’

‘’E was took off us by social services,’ said Beverley, lighting another cigarette even though the first was still smouldering in the ashtray.

‘’E kept breakin’ ’is bones,’ said Vince.

‘An’ they thought me an’ Vince was doin’ it,’ said Beverley.

‘I knew
I
weren’t,’ said Vince, ‘so I thought Bev must ’ave been.’

‘An’ I knew
I
weren’t,’ said Beverley, ‘so…’

‘So how
did
he break his bones?’ asked Camilla.

‘’E ’ad brittle bone disease,’ said Beverley with a ghastly smile, ‘but by the time social services found out, ’e’d bin adopted, an ’e didn’t know us.’

Beverley’s face crumpled, ‘An’ now ’e won’t want to know us, will ’e? Not living in an Exclusion Zone.’

Vince patted Beverley’s shoulder.

Camilla said, ‘Children always want to know their blood parents, Bev. He’ll come looking for you, one day.’ She left as soon as decency allowed.

By six o’clock in the evening, a story had spread around the estate that the Queen had six months/two weeks/days to live, because she was suffering from heart disease/leukaemia/tuberculosis. It took only a few hours for the rumour about the Queen’s imminent death to reach Prince Charles; Maddo Clarke told him at the frozen-food cabinet in Grice’s Food-Is-U.

‘Sorry to ’ear ’bout your mam,’ said Maddo. ‘I only seen her today, an’ I thought she looked a bit green round the gills.’

Charles took a step back from Maddo’s beery breath and said, ‘Yes, she’s been in dreadful pain, but she’ll be perfectly all right soon.’

‘Yeah,’ said Maddo, ‘it’ll be a merciful release.’

Charles frowned and thought, Mummy’s toothache can’t be pleasant but it hardly warrants the tears in Maddo’s eyes.

‘It must be ’ard for you,’ said Maddo. ‘Seeing as ’ow close you are to your mam.’

‘Well, I’ll certainly be glad when it’s all over,’ said Charles, as he searched fruitlessly through the cabinet for a frozen organic chicken.

‘Can’t bear to see ’er suffer, eh?’ Maddo put a tattooed hand on Charles’s shoulder.

Charles gave up looking for an organic chicken, and the cooking instructions on the battery chickens appeared to be written in Chinese anyway. He moved on down the aisle to the greengrocery section.

Maddo followed him, saying, ‘I never got over my mam’s passin’. When she took bad they ’ad to get the fire service to lift her out of the bedroom.’

‘Whatever for?’ asked Charles.

‘She were quite a
big
lady,’ said Maddo. ‘She were forty-two stone at the end.’

‘How appalling,’ said Charles.

‘It weren’t ’er fault!’ said Maddo angrily. ‘Nobody can ’elp their glands, can they?’

‘Indeed not,’ said Charles. ‘I meant, how appalling for you.’

‘I worshipped that woman,’ Maddo said, openly crying. ‘When we buried her, a pizza box blew into the grave. It were a sign from Mam that she were all right.’

Charles put his wire basket down and his arms around Maddo, who was now distraught and attracting attention from the other shoppers.