The Audience (9 page)

The Queen notes Eden’s increasingly agitated condition.

You seem – if you don’t mind me saying – a little tired. Are you sleeping, Prime Minister?

Eden
I’m fine. They’ve given me some stuff. To keep me going. Keep me sharp. On my feet.

Elizabeth
Maybe they should give you some stuff to calm you down.

Eden
They’ve given me some of that, too.

He looks at the Queen.

This is the right thing, you know. I was right about Hitler. I’m right about this fella.

Elizabeth
You don’t want to give it more time? And see if a diplomatic solution can be reached at the UN?

Eden
No, Ma’am. The right thing is to go in now. And go in hard. (
A beat
.) Do I have your support?

The Queen stares at Eden.

Elizabeth
The Prime Minister will always have my support.

Eden
Thank you. Now, if Her Majesty will excuse me …

Eden bows, turns and goes.
  
The Queen is left alone. She closes her eyes. Lost in thought. Her lips begins to mouth silent words.

Presently, the sound of a voice.

Young Elizabeth
What are you doing?

It’s the eleven-year-old Young Elizabeth, wearing a Girl Guide uniform, who has appeared on stage.

Elizabeth
Praying. Or trying to.

Young Elizabeth
Why don’t you get on your knees?

Elizabeth
Someone might walk in.

Young Elizabeth
You get on your knees in your bedroom every morning, and every night.

Elizabeth
That’s my
bedroom
. It’s private.

Young Elizabeth
So is this room. It’s even called the
Private
Audience Room.

Elizabeth
No room with three doors and three windows should ever be called ‘private’.

Young Elizabeth
You’re just proud! The Queen of England doesn’t want to be seen on her knees.

Elizabeth
Nonsense. Now shoo.

The Queen goes behind a mirror to change.

Why aren’t you with the others, anyway?

Young Elizabeth
It started raining, so we came inside. Do we
have
to have the troop meetings here at the Palace?

Elizabeth
Yes.

Young Elizabeth
And does there
have
to be a detective hovering
all
the time?

Elizabeth
Yes.

Young Elizabeth
And why can’t the other girls just call me by my name?

Elizabeth
No one will ever call you by your name. Nor look you in the eye when you’re with them. Nor ask you what you think. Or believe. Or care about. They just expect you to do exactly as they want. Now, go on. Go back to the others. And don’t show anyone you were sad.

Young Elizabeth
I wasn’t.

Elizabeth
Yes, you were. But your secret’s safe with me.

The Queen makes a three-fingered salute.

I promise.

Young Elizabeth goes. The Queen looks left and right, then gets on her knees …

Elizabeth
Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread …

A figure in the doorway. It’s the Queen’s Private Secretary. He clears his throat.

Private Secretary
Ma’am …? I just had a phone call from Downing Street to give us a bit of a heads-up.

Elizabeth
About what?

Private Secretary
It seems the Prime Minister left Number Ten somewhat troubled. Actually a little more than troubled. The word they used was ‘vibrating’ …

Elizabeth
Oh.

Private Secretary
Anyway they felt unable to predict with any degree of confidence the precise temperature of today’s audience.

Elizabeth
Are we for the high jump, do you suppose?

Private Secretary
It’s possible we are. Might be. (
Clears throat
.) Slightly.

At that moment, the Private Secretary’s vast mobile telephone (the size of a book) rings. He excuses himself, then answers.

Hello? (
Listens
.) Yup. (
Listens
.) Right. (
Listens
.) Yup. (
Listens
.) Golly. (
Listens
.) Okay. Understood.

‘Click’: he hangs it up.

That was the guard from the King’s Door, Ma’am, who says the Prime Minister has arrived.

Elizabeth
What was the ‘Golly’?

Private Secretary
Ma’am?

Elizabeth
You said ‘Golly’!

Private Secretary
Apparently the PM was out of the car before it had come to a halt, and stormed right past the Private Secretary in a fury.

Elizabeth
(
raised eyebrow
) Golly.

A beat.

Well, then you’d better scram because if she’s moving at that kind of speed by my reckoning she’ll be here in …

Too late. A knock at the door. A breathless Equerry arrives, visibly terrified.
  
The door opens to reveal Margaret Thatcher,
sixty-one
, a woman at the height of her political career, a woman of almost equal iconic power to the Queen, and of near-identical age, born just six months before Elizabeth.
  
In the company of two such women, the two men, Equerry and Private Secretary, look at one another, then scarper for the exit in haste
…
  
Mrs Thatcher and the Queen are left alone.
  
Mrs Thatcher curtsies slowly – exaggeratedly deeply, in a contrived, teeth-clenched gesture of reluctant deference.

Thatcher
Your Majesty.

Elizabeth
Prime Minister.

A silence. The Queen takes her seat. Mrs Thatcher remains standing. Vibrating.

Thatcher
Before coming today I checked with the Cabinet Secretary and it turns out in the seven years since I have been Prime Minister we have had one hundred and thirty-three audiences – always the model of cordiality, productivity and mutual respect – so seen within a context like that it’s perhaps not unreasonable to expect an isolated hiccup.

Elizabeth
What ‘hiccup?’

Thatcher
I was under the impression that Her Majesty never expressed her political views in public …

Elizabeth
I don’t.

Thatcher
That there was an unbreakable code of silence between Sovereign and First Minister.

Elizabeth
There is. One, I should tell you, I have never broken. Not once in thirty-four years.

Thatcher
Until now.

Elizabeth
If you’re referring to the
Sunday Times
, I had nothing to do with that story. I’ve always advised my Prime Ministers against reading newspapers …

Thatcher
I
don’t,
Ma’am –

Elizabeth
They misunderstand, misquote, and
misrepresent
. Then everyone gets in a fluster.

Thatcher
– but my Press Secretary does. And has working relationships with all the editors. And the editor in this case assured him the sources were ‘unimpeachable’. (
A beat
.) ‘Close to the Queen.’ (
A beat
.) ‘
Very
close.’ (
A beat
.) ‘
Unprecedentedly
close.’

The Queen averts her eyes.

And of course before running a story like this – a story with huge constitutional ramifications – the editor checked the story word by incriminating word, and it seems the ‘
unprecedentedly
close’ sources ‘inside the Palace’ didn’t backtrack
at all
! On the contrary, they offered one or two additions, encouraging the paper to go further!

Silence.

Elizabeth
Well, I have no idea who is behind it all, but assure you a clarification will soon be forthcoming … along with the name of a culprit. In the meantime, should we not make a start on the business of the week? (
Checking watch
.) Only I’m mindful of the time …

Thatcher
This
is
the business of the week, Ma’am. The
only
business – unless, that is, you’d prefer to focus on the latest revisions of the Airport Authority act of 1975, or the latest proposals by the Department of Education to bring the distribution of government grants to polytechnics more in line with the tax calendar …?

Silence.

I didn’t think so.

The Queen averts her eyes.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Just for once? To break with tradition, and shed the straitjacket of our protocol to ask ourselves some of the bigger questions? I think we have enough respect for the institutions we both represent and for one another personally to do that. Once. Woman to woman. (
A beat
.) We are the same age, after all.

Elizabeth
Are we?

Thatcher
Just six months between us.

Elizabeth
Who’s the senior?

Thatcher
(
an icy smile
) I am. Ma’am.

She opens her handbag, and produces a folded copy of the front page of the
Sunday Times
from two days earlier.

(
Reading
.) ‘Uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive.’ That’s how these sources close to the Queen described me …

Elizabeth
Prime Minister …

Thatcher
That I … ‘lack compassion and would be well advised to be more caring towards the less privileged in British society’.

She looks up.

I’m curious. If these ‘sources’ were pressed as to where this lack of compassion particularly caused offence, what would they say, do you imagine?

Elizabeth
(
keen to change subject
) Couldn’t we return to polytechnics, Prime Minister?

Thatcher
The miners’ strike, perhaps? The
Sunday Times
suggested ‘some in the Palace’ held that the policies of my government had done ‘irretrievable damage to the country’s social fabric’ …

Silence.

Let me remind Her Majesty, that she may remind the ‘sources’ so close to her, when we came to power, the dead lay unburied and the sick languished in corridors on hospital trolleys unattended because unelected union leaders had called their workers out on strike in an attempt to bring down a government … substituting the rule of the
mob
for the rule of the law. I made the pledge then that
no
union leaders would
ever
succeed in holding this great country to ransom again. And they
have
not succeeded.

Elizabeth
Prime Minister …

Thatcher
It takes a very special kind of courage to cross a hostile picket line every day to feed your family – men like that are what we are proud to call ‘the best of British’ …