Queen Camilla (23 page)

When the Prime Minister entered and took his place on the Government Front Bench, there were cries and laughter from the New Cons opposite: ‘Poo, poo, poo, what’s that on your shoe?’

This jibe reduced some Opposition MPs to tears of laughter. The Prime Minister allowed himself a wintry smile. Jack had not enjoyed his schooldays. Whenever his name had been called out in registration it was inevitably followed by some wag muttering ‘woof-woof ’. Sometimes, if the teacher was unable to keep discipline, the whole class would bark in unison. Jack would grin at his classmates to show that he didn’t care, but when he was thirteen he had looked up ‘deed poll’ in the dictionary and considered changing his name.

The first few questions were more or less a formality, asked by tame MPs who had to pretend that they were interested in the Prime Minister’s appointments for the day. Then Boy English stood up and congratulated the Prime Minister on his daughter’s marriage. Once again, there were cries of, ‘Poo, poo, poo, what’s that on your shoe?’

Hysteria broke out again, which was mostly halted by the Speaker shouting, ‘Order! Order!’ A few MPs remained convulsed.

Boy rose and said, ‘Prime Minister, can you confirm that according to figures released today by the Home Office, there are now six million, five hundred thousand and eighty-two persons currently living in Exclusion Zones?’

Jack stood up and said, ‘The honourable gentleman
is correct: six million, five hundred thousand plus antisocial criminals, suspected terrorists, drug addicts and social incompetents have been taken off the streets and are now living in restricted areas, enabling stakeholders and decent hard-working families to get on with their lives in peace.’ There were loud Government cheers as Jack sat down.

Boy stood up again, ‘Prime Minister, these figures are rising at an alarming rate. How long will it be before there are more people
inside
the Exclusion Zones than there are
outside
?’ There was loud laughter, during which the Speaker called for order.

The Prime Minister rose and jabbed his finger at Boy across the Dispatch Box. ‘The courts decide who is excluded from our society. Does the honourable gentleman question the probity of our legal system?’

Boy stood up and said, ‘I do question the impartiality of our present system of justice, yes! Since all magistrates and judges are now appointed by your Government, I ask you this: Are you aware that a constituent of mine, a Mrs Lucinda Haddock, was sentenced by a Guildford magistrates court to three years in an Exclusion Zone for the heinous crime of posting a letter without a stamp?’

There were shouts of, ‘Disgraceful! Shame!’ A few Government backbenchers shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

Jack rose and read from the folder in front of him, ‘Post Office fraud is a very serious crime, one that this Government takes
very
seriously. Such fraud deprives the Post Office of hundreds of millions of pounds
each year. Revenue that could go towards life-saving equipment for cancer patients.’

There were some half-hearted cheers and a few muted ‘hear, hear’s.

Boy fingered his pink tie and licked his lips, relishing his next question, ‘Prime Minister, are you aware that Mrs Haddock is suffering from a virulent form of cancer herself, and that the prognosis for her survival is poor?’

The House fell quiet. Jack glanced at the folder, but there was no help there, and it was some time before his instinctive political acumen took over. ‘I deplore the honourable gentleman’s naked opportunism in seeking to exploit Mrs Haddock’s tragic medical condition. I wish Mrs Haddock and her family well and would seek to reassure them that excellent palliative care is available to all English citizens, whatever their circumstances.’

Government backbenchers released their tension with prolonged cheering until quietened by the Speaker. A Government backbencher stood and asked, ‘Does the Prime Minister agree with me that this is the finest Government of all time?’

Jack agreed.

A New Con backbencher, the member for Windsor Central, asked, ‘Does the Government have any plans to release the Royal Family from exile, bearing in mind that a recent opinion poll concluded that seventy per cent of the English public supported the reinstatement of the monarchy?’

There was long and sustained cheering from the Opposition benches.

Jack shouted, ‘The survey the honourable gentleman
is quoting has been discredited by all political analysts. The questions in this specious questionnaire were, and I quote,’ Jack put on the horn-rimmed glasses that he only ever wore at Prime Minister’s Questions, and read, ‘who would you rather see as head of state? a) Sir Elton John, b) Dame Judi Dench, or c) the Queen?’ To loud Government laughter, he went on, ‘Fifteen per cent voted for Sir Elton John, fifteen per cent for Dame Judi, seventy per cent for the Queen, but…
but
fifty per cent of those polled did not understand the meaning of the word “prefer”.’

Tom Bass, the Minister for Education, frowned. If it were true that half of those surveyed did not understand the meaning of the word ‘prefer’, it reflected badly on him and his department. He scribbled a note in his diary to have the words, prefer, preferred, preferring and preferment added to the National Curriculum.

A few mundane questions followed: the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight West asked if the Prime Minister would join him in congratulating the Needles Academy for their achievement in gaining several bronze medals in the Isle of Wight non-competitive sports challenge.

Jack did.

Another, the Member for Chelsea, asked, ‘Is the Prime Minister aware that three of my constituents have fallen from stepladders during the last financial year, at a cost of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds to the National Health Service, and can he confirm that the Stepladder Bill will be made law before the dissolution of this parliament?’

Jack confirmed that it would.

Then, in the final few minutes, a New Con MP, the Member for Cheltenham East, Marjorie Coddington, rose to her sensibly shod feet and said, ‘Is it true that the Government is proposing to rush through new legislation reintroducing dog licences, and is planning to charge dog owners five hundred pounds a year…?’

There were cries of dismay from both sides of the House. The Chancellor stared down at his pinstriped trousers and removed several of Mitzie’s hairs. He had brushed her coat earlier that morning.

After the Speaker had intervened, Mrs Coddington continued, saying, ‘…and will the Prime Minister confirm that only one dog is to be allowed per household?’

Jack glanced quickly along the row of Cabinet Ministers. Some bastard has been talking, he thought. The details of the proposed dog legislation were meant to be a secret. The Queen, watching at home with Harris and Susan, waited anxiously for the Prime Minister’s reply. Harris and Susan nuzzled closer to their mistress.

Jack thought, in the seconds before he answered Mrs Coddington’s question, thank God, I’ll soon be out of here, out of office and out of politics. ‘Yes,’ he said.

The Queen looked from Harris to Susan and back. How could she possibly choose between them?

Harris whimpered, ‘She’ll keep me, I’m her favourite.’

Susan said, ‘I’m her mother’s dog, she promised to look after me.’

The Queen looked away from the dogs and stared down at her hands resting on her lap. She was unable to look either dog in the eye.

Graham found Prince Charles’s letter on the coconut-fibre doormat when he arrived home from his work as a health and safety officer. Gin and Tonic, having very little to do all day, had been speculating since the post had been delivered that morning about the contents of the letter.

‘The envelope is cheap,’ said Tonic.

‘But the pen used is a Mont Blanc,’ said Gin. ‘And if I’m not mistaken, the ink is Quink, India black.’

‘The handwriting belongs to somebody confident and of high status,’ said Tonic. ‘Although the down strokes indicate that the confidence is only skin-deep.’

The dogs waited impatiently for Graham to put his umbrella in the stand by the back door, take off his anorak and hang it on a coat hanger in the cloakroom.

Gin said, ‘Let’s fetch his slippers.’

Tonic said, ‘Sod him, let him fetch his own slippers. He leaves us here all day with bugger all to do. Not even a squeaky toy to lighten our futile existence.’

Gin said, ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re in one of your nihilistic moods.’

Graham was pleasantly surprised when Gin waddled into the living room dragging one of the huge Bart Simpson novelty slippers that Graham had bought for himself as a recent birthday present. ‘Good boy, Gin,’
he said. He would have died of embarrassment if anybody had come to the door while he was wearing the slippers, but as nobody ever did come to the door, he felt fairly safe. When Gin dragged the second slipper up to him, he said, ‘You’re my best dog, Gin. Yes you are, yes you are. You’re my friend, aren’t you? My bestest friend.’

From the doorway, Tonic barked, ‘Bestest friend? If I had fingers I’d be sticking them down my throat. Why don’t you have human friends, Graham? Could it be because you’re a social pariah?’

Graham took off a Bart Simpson slipper and hurled it at Tonic’s head, shouting, ‘Shut the fuck up!’

Tonic slunk off to the kitchen to avoid being hit by the other slipper. As he passed Gin, he growled, ‘I’ll get the bastard back for that.’

Graham opened the envelope and took out the letter from his parents, Charles and Camilla. He read it with growing excitement, and at the end he said to the little dog at his feet, ‘I’m the heir to the throne, Gin, and that means that one day, you’ll be top dog.’

He went to the cupboard and pulled out a photograph album, saying to Gin, ‘They want a photograph of me. Which one should I send?’ As Graham turned the pages, he said, ‘How about the one that was on the front page of the
Ruislip Trumpet
, recording my third successive victory in the Ruislip Tiddlywinks Championship, captioned “The Tiddlywink King”?’

Gin looked at the photograph and remembered that even Graham’s adoring adoptive mother had said, ‘My God, Graham, I can’t put this in a frame.’ His less
adoring father had looked at the newspaper and laughed.

But he did have a short video of himself filmed at the Hardtopleeze Dating Agency offices earlier in the year. In Graham’s opinion it gave an absorbing and fascinating portrait of his life and character. After editing out a few glitches (at one point Graham had nervously blurted out, ‘I usually eat serial killers for breakfast,’ when, of course, what he meant to say was ‘cereal’) he had shown the film to his parents and asked them for their opinion.

‘Be honest,’ he’d said.

His father had lowered
The Daily Telegraph
and watched the video without changing his expression, only saying at the end, ‘You shouldn’t have asked for somebody “bubbly”. In my experience, women who start out bubbly end up crying in public and wearing red shoes.’

Graham’s mother had said, ‘You can’t have it all, Graham. Your dream woman can’t be financially secure
and
like board games. The two are incompatible.’

At the end of the video, Gin muttered to Tonic, ‘So that’s a mystery solved.’

Gin and Tonic had often speculated about the precise nature of Graham’s sexuality. Graham had never brought a girl home, but Gin didn’t think he was gay. Gin was sometimes allowed into Graham’s bedroom and he had seen Graham leafing through copies of
Playboy
, cutting out the photographs of women and pasting them into a scrapbook that he kept on the top shelf of his wardrobe, underneath a pile of winter-weight sweaters.

Tonic said, ‘So what? I’m gay, but I’m still attracted to bitches.’

Gin and Tonic had been gay lovers ever since they came to sexual maturity, at the age of eighteen months. Gin was the submissive partner; Tonic sometimes complained about that, saying, ‘You’re too bloody lazy to get up off your front legs. You just
stand
there and let me do all the work.’

Graham had ignored the advice of his parents and posted the video on the Net. He received two hits almost immediately, one from a lady-boy in Bangkok and the other from an 89-year-old Mantovani fan, Clarice Witherspoon of Rugby. Mrs Witherspoon had sent an attachment back to Graham at
[email protected]
with a photograph of herself in corsets, wearing a red fez. ‘I’m a bit of a character,’ wrote Mrs Witherspoon. ‘I’m young at heart and own my own house, love
OFAH
and think David Jason is a dish! You tick most of my boxes. Do I tick yours?’

Over the next few months, Graham checked his email many times a day, hoping for the right woman to appear on his screen. But the ones who described themselves as being mad about board games did not look as though they had ever washed their hair, and the bubbly ones looked slightly mad. He had replied with great excitement to a woman who was staggeringly beautiful and claimed to be a backgammon champion. However, when Graham showed the beauty’s photograph to his mother she pointed out that Graham had been hoaxed. The photograph was of Gina Lollobrigida, a film star that Graham had never heard of.

With both parents dead, there was now nobody to advise him otherwise. So he found a Jiffy bag, took four first-class stamps from his purse and posted the package in the postbox on the corner.

Mitzie, a King Charles spaniel, was lying under Chancellor Stephen Fletcher’s desk with her pretty muzzle resting on the Chancellor’s highly polished black brogues. One of her silky ears was cocked, listening to an alarming conversation between her master and the Prime Minister.

‘Please, Jack, don’t ask me to get rid of Mitzie.’

‘We have to lead by example, Chancellor. How can we fight the war on dogs if you’re harbouring one in the very heart of government?’

‘But Mitzie’s so docile, so well behaved.’

‘She’s still a dog, Chancellor.’

‘But she’s all I’ve got since Veronica refused to leave the bloody constituency.’

The call was abruptly disconnected; the Prime Minister rarely said goodbye on the telephone. Mitzie crawled out from under the desk and stood at the Chancellor’s side. She had been glad to see the back of the neurotic Veronica, who had constantly complained about dog hair and the occasional flea bite. Mitzie was glad the poor cow preferred rural isolation.