Queen Camilla (18 page)

Paris said, ‘You’re not supposed to be alone with me, not in Slapper Alley.’

‘I’m not alone,’ said Dwayne. ‘He’s here, aren’t you, Fifty-cents?’

Fifty-cents didn’t respond to his name; he kept his gaze on the television screen.

‘He likes his telly,’ said Dwayne.

‘He does,’ said Paris, adding proudly, ‘he knows all the adverts.’

‘He’s the same colour as me,’ said Dwayne. ‘Is his dad black?’

‘Yes, his dad is Carlton Williams. Do you know him?’

‘No,’ said Dwayne.

‘No!’ exclaimed Paris. ‘You must know him.’

‘Just ’cause I’m black,’ said Dwayne, ‘it don’t mean I know everybody in the town who’s black.’

They looked at each other, and then looked quickly away. Dwayne thought he now knew what a heartshaped face was like. She could have modelled for Valentine’s Day cards. He said, ‘That poem you wrote.’

Paris looked away. ‘Yeah.’

‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it, didn’t she?’

‘’Ow did you know that?’ she asked in amazement.

‘I’m a policeman,’ said Dwayne. ‘I know everything. Can I have a look at your tag, then?’

She pulled off a cat’s head and extended her thin white leg. Dwayne took the weight of her bare foot, holding it by the heel. He stared at the blue veins, which crossed the foot like a faded road map. She had painted her toenails a pearlized pink. He gently turned the metal tag on her ankle.

She said, ‘I have wrote some poems. But they’re crap.’

‘I bet they’re not,’ he said.

‘They are,’ she said. ‘Trouble is, I don’t get no time. I’ve got ’im to look after, an’ he’s a mardy-arse when he wants to be. It was all right for Elizabeth Barrett Browning, all she had to do was lie around on a settee all day, being ill an’ playing with ’er dog.’

Dwayne said, ‘You did her for a project at school, didn’t you?’

‘No,’ said Paris. ‘I did her dog, Flush.’

Dwayne took out the battered Penguin edition of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
and put it on the coffee table, saying, ‘Will you read this, please, Julia?’

‘Who’s Julia?’ asked Paris.

Camilla said, ‘What do policemen eat for lunch, Charles?’

Charles said, in one of his Goon-like voices, ‘I don’t know, what do policemen eat for lunch?’

Camilla said, ‘No, I’m not telling you a joke, Charles. I’m asking you what policemen eat for lunch, because I have invited a policeman to lunch.’

Charles thought hard before saying, ‘Don’t they eat bangers and mashy-type stuff? Sardines, perhaps.’

Camilla loved entertaining, but in the past there had always been other people to do the hard work: the invitations, the shopping, the cooking, the table-setting and the washing-up.

Charles said, as she hoped he would, ‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll see that your policeman is fed and watered.’

He opened a tin of sardines and arranged them in a criss-cross pattern on a small white plate, then went into the garden and picked a trug full of distorted root and salad vegetables that he had grown according to organic principles. A blackbird flew on to the razor wire surmounting the metal boundary fence and serenaded Charles as he knocked clods of mud off a bunch of twisted carrots. Camilla sat on an upturned flowerpot, smoking her second cigarette of the day.

‘Oh, darling,’ said Charles, looking around the garden. ‘Isn’t it
heavenly
here, doesn’t your heart swell with happiness to hear the song of a blackbird?’

Camilla said, guardedly, looking at the razor wire, the CCTV cameras and the Threadgolds’ broken bedroom window, smashed during a midnight altercation, ‘It’s sort of heavenly, but sometimes I long for the proper countryside.’

Charles pulled up a leek that was covered in tiny scurrying creatures and said, ‘But we have built our own paradise here, haven’t we?’

Camilla thought about the outside world and imagined herself walking through woodland and alongside a river. She envisaged hills in the distance and shafts of burnished sunlight glowing through a vast cloud-dotted sky. She began to cry. She tried desperately to stop, knowing that tears and a contorted face did not flatter a woman of late middle age.

Charles threw the leek into the trug and knelt beside her. ‘Please, darling,’ he said. ‘Please, don’t cry. I simply cannot bear it.’

‘Sorry, darling, but I can’t bear this place either.’

The doorbell rang. Camilla blew her nose, and wiped her eyes with the hem of her flowered skirt. ‘That’s our policeman,’ she said. ‘Do I look hag-like?’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘To me, you will always be beautiful.’

His qualifying phrase, ‘To me,’ was not lost on Camilla.

Camilla and Dwayne were sitting at the kitchen table. Charles was washing up at the sink. Camilla stifled a yawn. Charles and Dwayne had been talking almost non-stop about a wretched book she’d never read, written by a man she’d never met.

Charles said to Dwayne, ‘When Laurens and I were in the Kalahari, we washed our cooking pots, plates and utensils in sand.’

‘Sand!’ said Dwayne politely.

‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘It’s nature’s Fairy Liquid.’

Camilla said, ‘And you’d never run out. Of sand,
I mean. There’s a
huge
amount of sand in the desert.’

Even Dwayne was beginning to weary of the Kalahari. He felt as though he’d been staggering across it in the midday sun without a hat. Charles’s intensity had drained him. He had quite enjoyed his lunch of sardines and strange-looking vegetables, but he was ready to leave now. He stood up and scraped his chair back, and said, ‘Well, thank you very much for everything, but duty calls.’

‘Yes, you must go,’ said Prince Charles. ‘I know about duty.’

Camilla whispered, ‘I wonder if you’d mind posting this?’ She handed him a letter with a Ruislip address.

He thought, I can hardly say no, can I? and put it in his pocket.

Camilla walked with him to the garden gate and said, ‘Is it terribly difficult to remove one’s tag? I mean, do people do it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Dwayne. ‘There’s people been on holiday before now.’

‘Really,’ said Camilla. ‘Do they use a special sort of tool?’

Dwayne said, ‘Mrs Windsor, you’re better off here in the Fez.’ He hesitated. How could he break it to her that she was not that popular in the outside world? Eventually he said, ‘Everybody knows your face, you’d soon be spotted.’

When Dwayne got back to the Lilliputian studio flat he rented in the town, he steamed open the letter and read the contents.

16 Hellebore Close

Flowers Exclusion Zone

East Midlands Region

EZ 951

Dear Graham,

One wonders how to reply to one's long-lost son, a son whose existence one was unaware of until yesterday, when we received your letter. Your mother confirmed that she did in fact give birth to you in Zurich, on 21st July 1965.

We both send our condolences on your recent double bereavement. To lose one parent is a misfortune; to lose two is a catastrophe.

Naturally, we are both absolutely longing to see you. However, we are confined at present to the Exclusion Zone and, sadly, we are not allowed visitors from outside, though I understand that visiting orders can be issued to certain government officials, so a meeting may not be possible in the immediate future. But we must not lose contact.

It was quite extraordinary to discover that your mother and I have a forty-one-year-old son together. I wonder, do you resemble either of us physically in any way? When you next write, would you please enclose a photograph?

As I write, I feel the hand of history on my shoulder.

Adieu, my son.

I send you the warmest of wishes.

Your father,

Charles

PS. Your mother and I would be terribly grateful if you would keep our relationship confidential, for the moment.

Please reply

c/o PC Dwayne Lockhart

Flat 31, The Old Abattoir

Leicester

East Midlands Region

Dwayne’s first thought was, What a cheek! They might have asked me first. He was ashamed of his second thought, which was, I’m holding an historical document here. I wonder how much it would fetch on eBay?

He took the letter with him when he went to the library and photocopied it on the ancient machine that seemed to be used only by mad people copying their epic poems. On his way home, he posted the original letter in a postbox, pausing for a few seconds before he allowed the letter to drop from his hand.

Freddie was in the kitchen having his overlong claws clipped. It was taking the combined strength of Charles and Camilla to hold the little dog down. He had been barking, ‘Help! Help!’ throughout the procedure. Freddie remembered the time Camilla had cut into his pad and made him bleed.

Charles said, ‘Oh, Freddie, do cooperate. Your claws are terribly long, you must be awfully uncomfortable.’

Camilla said, ‘If you were human, Freddie, you’d be Edward Scissorhands.’

Upstairs on the small landing, taking advantage of Freddie’s absence, were Leo and Tosca. Leo was telling
Tosca about the miserable time he’d had as a puppy before being saved by Spiggy and then adopted by Prince Charles.

‘There were nine of us in the litter an’ I was the runt. I could hardly get near my mum’s teats. I could’ve starved to death.’

‘Who were your parents?’ yapped Tosca, who could trace her pedigree back nineteen generations.

‘I dunno who my dad was,’ said Leo mournfully. ‘My mum was a total
dog
when she came on heat, she had half the bleedin’ estate after ’er! She’d take on anything with four legs an’ a tail.’

‘Is she still alive?’ barked Tosca.

‘No, she went under a Grice delivery lorry,’ whimpered Leo. ‘She’s buried in Lee Butterworth’s back garden. She was a
pig
of a mother. Before she’d finished whelping, she was out every night. I used to cry my bleedin’ eyes out for ’er.’

‘What happened to your brothers and sisters?’ asked Tosca.

Leo whimpered, ‘All I know is that Lee Butterworth put ’em all in a sack an’ told ’is kids that the pups was goin’ to live on a farm in Wales. As if.’

‘Perhaps they did,’ said Tosca.

Leo barked, ‘No. Butterworth was back in ’alf an hour. I don’t know where Wales is, but it ain’t around the corner, is it?’

Tosca barked, ‘Why weren’t you put in the sack?’

Leo whimpered, ‘I were upstairs being dressed up in dolls’ clothes by one of Maddo’s kids. My life was ’ell in that ’ouse.’

Tosca was growing weary of Leo’s self-pity. ‘You were obviously saved for a purpose, Leo. The hand of destiny intervened to bring you to this house, to live with the future King of England.’

Leo looked at Tosca with new eyes. She wasn’t bad looking and she had a lovely glossy coat. He could overlook her short legs; what did it matter that she was half his size? They were equals when they were lying down. Leo edged near to Tosca and sniffed her hind quarters. Instead of snapping at him, like she usually did, Tosca allowed him to take his time.

When Freddie came bounding up the stairs to find Tosca, he was less than pleased to find Leo with his nose up her bum.

Freddie snarled, ‘Get away from my bitch, you low-life mongrel.’ He launched himself at Leo, expecting the bigger dog to slink away and hide as usual.

But Leo snarled, ‘Back off, short-arse,’ and bared his large yellow teeth.

Freddie yelped, ‘Who do you think you are?’

‘I’m somethink special,’ growled Leo. ‘I’m the future King of England’s best friend.’

When it was Tosca’s turn for a pedicure she submitted to the procedure with uncharacteristic good grace.

Camilla said, ‘Tosca’s not herself at all, Charles. Do you think she’s unwell?’

Charles answered, ‘Perhaps she needs worming.’

Tosca barked, ‘I haven’t got worms. You’re obsessed with worms. If I did have worms I’d be scooting my bum along the ground, wouldn’t I?’

Charles said, ‘I’ll put a worm tablet in their food tonight. It’s better to be safe than sorry.’

‘No,’ snarled Tosca, ‘it’s better to be sorry than safe. There’s nothing wrong with me, I’ve never been happier.’

To divert Charles and Camilla from any more worming talk she held out her paw, offering it up to be clipped.

Camilla said, ‘She’s adorable. Isn’t she adorable, darling?’

It didn’t take long for Camilla to remove her tag: a few minutes of torsion with a pair of secateurs in the bathroom and she was free. She waited until Charles had gone to his Resistible Materials class at the One-Stop Centre, where he was halfway through building an elaborate bird-feeding table. All three dogs were waiting for her outside the bathroom door.

She said, ‘I’m going to get into frightful trouble, darlings. But I don’t bloody care.’

The dogs gathered around her as she put on her waxed coat and tied her headscarf round her head. When she went out of the front door, slamming it behind her and leaving the dogs in the hall, they barked in protest.

Camilla dawdled through the estate, enjoying the warm autumn sunshine and the knowledge that she was not tagged and had no ID card. She thought, I could be anybody and nobody. When she approached the Control Centre, she quickened her pace and without looking right or left walked straight through. No alarms sounded, nobody shouted after her and Dwayne Lockhart, who had seen her approaching through the window, excused himself to Inspector Lancer and went into the lavatory until he judged that Camilla would be out of sight.

Camilla ambled down the road leading into the town, marvelling at the goods in the shop windows, wishing she had money to spend. But it was the countryside she had wanted to see. She asked an elderly woman with a walking frame, who was standing at a bus stop, where the countryside was.

‘The countryside?’ the woman repeated. ‘What, fields and trees and things like that?’

‘Yes,’ said Camilla. ‘Is there a bus that will take me there?’

‘You want a forty-seven,’ the woman said. She was staring at Camilla as if she knew her, taking in the waxed coat, the sensible shoes and the Hermès headscarf printed with horseshoes.