The Autobiography of The Queen (5 page)

With these intoxicating visions taking up his thoughts, Austin at first failed to recognise the small, snowy-haired woman who was just leaving the main door of the Joli Hilton as he walked up under palms towards it. But the description from Jolene was right – so if this was his new client, why had she not waited for him? Was she aware that what seemed an easy sloping road down to the beach was actually an exhausting effort for those from northern climes, in this heat? It was fortunate
indeed that her escort, Mr Austin Ford – for now he bowed, took the lady's hand and introduced himself with great formality – had come just in time to prevent the consequences of walking all the way down.

The Queen, aka Mrs Gloria Smith, once she had firmly removed her hand from his, paid no more attention to Austin than she would to an equerry long in the royal household. A shuttle bus pulled up; and, indicating that she should mount and enter it, Austin was relieved that she did. It was only when the bus had stopped at Windsor Village and the new arrival at Joli Bay was ushered through the bamboo gate, that Austin Ford realised there was something missing in his client's get-up, for Mrs Smith, like any well-bred lady out for an evening stroll on her country estate, had not brought her handbag. And for a moment or two, Austin had no idea of what he should now do.

The Queen had been quite surprised to find herself deserted by Austin Ford almost as soon as they stepped down from the shuttle bus and walked across a small stretch of artificial sand to the half-built houses by the sea. Used as she was to her name being used for all manner of pubs and unsuitable souvenirs, the words Windsor Village, inscribed on what was clearly a piece of flotsam washed up in a recent storm, seemed an unnecessary reminder of the family – and in particular the Castle – which she had left on the other side of the world. She concentrated instead on the notice, clearly by the same signwriter, which proclaimed Rum Shop on the rickety building where she had been told to wait by the ‘escort' provided. Like most of the equerries and courtiers she had known, Ford was someone with no idea of the needs of a royal personage: uncouth, unpleasantly smarmy,
and on the verge of being totally uneducated, Austin Ford had not made a good first impression.

Now the sun sank in the sky with a rapidity to which the Queen was not accustomed. Apart from a single bulb hanging in the dining room of the nearly-finished restaurant, there would be no light soon. The Queen, feeling the wings of the first mosquito of the evening as it skimmed her cheek, began to fidget, a habit long ago trained out of her by the royal governess Crawfie – and, thinking for a moment of a far-distant childhood before Crawfie had dared to sell her innocent story to the press, the polite, firm girl she had been returned to show herself to the old lady abandoned here in an empty mock-village by a darkening sea. Where
was
one supposed to go next? Had her real identity been guessed: was this a horribly mismanaged walkabout? If so, where were the crush barriers and the balloons and streamers always present when there was a visit from the Queen? Austin Ford was more of an idiot than she had considered him to be.

While the sovereign pushed away a sudden longing for tea and crumpets with the dogs at Balmoral, she made a silent reminder to herself that her house would be built soon, even if its present appearance as no more than a hole in the ground was far from promising. Nothing had ever not been finished in time for the Queen, however inept or stupid those who constructed, repaired or drew architectural plans, happened to be. One way or
another, a project had to be ready in time for the monarch's occupation, or for a royal visit: even if the building in question would be seen only once and then consigned to the lady-in-waiting's list of places called on and people seen there, it would, triumphantly new or refurbished, be ready for the Queen. Now at Windsor Village nothing was ready for her, there weren't even signs of preparation. And the escort, she had been informed by Jolene, would demand a deposit for his services to Mrs Gloria Smith (the Queen had reluctantly agreed and handed over ten dollars from the travel folder in her handbag). The escort or equerry or whatever he was had already vanished into thin air. It was all most unsatisfactory, especially as the Queen had paid a deposit through Westminster Travel for the house bought off-plan on the Joli Estate. Was this the new life the Queen had promised herself: a series of unrefundable deposits for a non-existent house and a disappeared escort? It was really too bad.

Austin Ford was also suffering from feelings of extreme dissatisfaction. The fact of his client's coming down here for an evening out with no handbag (or any other visible sign of support: she clearly didn't have room in the pockets of the lavender tweed to stow a wallet and he very much doubted that dollar bills were tucked into her underwear) had led him to rush back to the Joli Hilton and demand of Jolene that she go with him to Mrs Smith's room to retrieve the white handbag. He had been a fool, of course, not to have noticed on the way down to the beach that Mrs Smith had no bag; but it was hard to think of a lady of that age without one, and it had simply not occurred to him that his new customer did not expect to incur expenses during an evening on the town (as Austin grandly put it to himself, even if nothing more
than a takeaway was involved). Envisaging the worst, Austin reminded himself that he was the possessor of the ten-dollar note extracted from Mrs Smith by Jolene. Something grimly told him, however, that this was all he would see.

This turned out to be the case. Jolene gave a little shriek as they entered Room 209 and saw the shiny white bag lying on its side on the bed, clasps pulled rudely apart, and empty.

‘Omigod!' said Jolene, who liked to copy the ridiculous things tourists on the beach came out with. ‘Omi …'

‘Passport, money, tickets,' Austin intoned. And it was true; the travel folder had gone, with its consignment of US dollars. There was no little purple fake-leather book with the royal coat of arms on the cover and there were no signs of a ticket which would enable Mrs Smith to leave the island when what Austin imagined to be her fortnight's ‘inclusive' holiday was over.

‘And the necklace!' Jolene cried. In rapid patois, she explained to Ford that she had seen the big, green stones in Mrs Smith's bag, and that there had been diamonds twinkling all round them.

‘We go back down to the village,' announced Austin, as the (American) floor manager strolled past the room, paused and walked on.

Jolene carried the Queen's handbag on to the shuttle and down to a moonless sea. Only a nineteen-year-old girl on the bus had stared at the
unlikely accessory – otherwise unmolested, Jolene and Ford slipped in the darkness down through the gate to find the Queen.

The beach at Joli Bay made for difficult walking, especially in the court shoes from the long-defunct shop in Bond Street where upper-class ladies were shod (in the Queen's case, of course, footwear was despatched to the palace for approval); and it was only when the first lights could be spotted through the thatched mini-huts and coconut fronds, these accompanied by large notices warning against falling coconuts and stern advice on swimming ‘at your own risk' interspersed with the hulls of long-abandoned boats which proved particularly painful to the walker – it was only then, when it became possible to leave the edge of the sea and rise towards a long, glass building, that the way through became easier for the Queen. The lights grew more numerous and brighter as she approached: people could now be seen packed in behind the glass, and
a door was open on to an AstroTurf lawn bordered by plumbago and tea roses.

‘Who on earth is that?' A strident voice emanated from the Rainforest Bar of the Joli Hilton and the Queen stopped in her tracks. A spotlight and CCTV camera were trained on her – though she did not know this, all matters of security having been deliberately screened from her since her accession to the throne fifty-five years before – and a silence fell on the drinkers gathered round the bar and over-spilling into a marquee at the side which announced itself as ‘Restaurant. Tonight's buffet: Latin.' Then the raucous party noise started up again: those who could see out on to the beach noticed only an elderly lady in a tweed suit which took the silver members of the holiday group back to the much-missed days of Norman Hartnell and Barbara Goalen; the rest, seeing there could be no danger involved, turned up the stereo and continued with the party mood.

‘It is – yes it is –' said Sir Martyn Bostock, who could be seen by the Queen to be standing right up against the plate-glass window with his wife, frozen daiquiri in hand, at his side.

‘That peculiar little woman who was on the plane. What on earth is she doing out there at this time of night?' demanded Lady Bostock. ‘She's' – and here she tapped the side of her head and opened watery blue eyes very wide, as if to indicate madness. ‘Don't you think we ought to tell someone?'

‘Tell someone?' Sir Martyn pondered over a banana and Bacardi cocktail and shook his head. He didn't like to be reminded, when his wife made these accusations, of the streak of insanity in her own family, and he was forced to remember the time when his brother-in-law, owner of large swathes of Central London, had attempted to climb Nelson's column and had had to be locked up for several weeks in the Priory.

‘Leave well alone,' Sir Martyn advised.

But management, warned about the CCTV camera, was now picking its way through the revellers, and huge security spotlights lit up the beach and artificial garden just outside the Rainforest Bar. The Queen, blinded at first, made her way instinctively towards the window where she had seen Sir Martyn clear as day, and his dotty wife, before the alarm went up. ‘Arise Sir Martyn!' A vague picture of the House of Commons and then of a sewage works in somewhere like Reading, came to mind. But surely, now his monarch needed him, he would help her gain entry to the Rainforest Bar and then on to a shuttle back to the main portion of the Joli Hotel. A knight in shining armour he might not be, but …

The Queen had never been shut out of a place before. Had she wished it, she could visit every stately home in Great Britain and be accorded the most rapturous and respectful welcome. High security prisons, the inner enclosures at the most exclusive racecourses, four-star restaurants with
waiting lists of several years would all fling open their doors for her. (Possibly, only White's Club in St James's would demur at permitting the reigning sovereign to enter their portals. But this was probably due more to anti-Hanoverian sentiment on the part of the dukes and ancient lines of earls and the rest who were members of the club and not due to the Queen's gender. As it stood, she could change neither her genetic provenance nor her sex.)

For the Queen suffered the humiliation of walking right up to the glass door, only to find it closed in her face. Worse, in her long experience of doors opened by bowing flunkeys, she had no way of dealing with this unexpected snub. She walked on – and, like a child outside a sweet shop, found her nose pressed up against the plate glass. Management, in the shape of three dark-suited personnel – two men and a woman – opened the door a crack and slipped out to interrogate the Queen.

Austin Ford and Jolene, after exploring the interior of The Rum Shop (but it was most unlikely, they both knew, that the respectable Mrs Smith had been boozing in their absence and had fallen unconscious in there) – and once they realised that Windsor Village had no occupant at present – set off across the beach. Ford had a regular job after sundown every evening – but a curiosity about his client drove him to make for the Rainforest Bar: he had her handbag with him, for one thing, and a feeling of compassion and sadism mixed made him wonder what she would do when she discovered it had been emptied of all that was valuable, in her absence. Why the old lady had left her hotel room door open was one of the unanswerable questions pertaining to Mrs Smith: Jolene said it was like Auntie May's dementia where she never recognised people and forgot dates; Austin, puzzled on a deeper level,
thought maybe the elderly Englishwoman had escaped from an institution. But then how did she manage to get to St Lucia? It was all very baffling.

The Rainforest Bar had fewer drinkers than earlier: no one liked to be reminded by the dark-suited presence of security personnel that this ‘dream holiday' was actually set on an island where terrible poverty and vastly wealthy yacht and villa owners mingled little. The trained friendliness of Joli Hotel staff, once they had disembarked from the shuttle carrying native islanders down from their poky accommodation high up the valley (guests travelled in buses containing all white passengers) convinced many of those staying at the hotel that a happy relationship between staff and visitor was possible: that this might have a false and over-optimistic bias reminded Joli clientele of the reality of life here. So when Austin and Jolene strolled up to the plate-glass windows of the bar, it was possible to see a thinning crowd. There was a sense of restlessness and displeasure at the intrusion – as they saw it – of a suspicious person such as the old lady outside trying to gatecrash an evening of salsa dancing followed by a Latin buffet in the marquee beyond the bar. People streamed out, to wait for a shuttle that would take them to the taxi rank outside the main reception. Soufrière might have its shabbiness and its dangers – but there was a hotel there where inclusive holidaymakers were catered for and most of the hotel guests decided to
go to the Hummingbird, thus losing restaurant and bar a considerable sum of money.

Only one couple lingered by the glass door; a late middle-aged couple Austin had never seen before, and therefore new arrivals at the Joli Hotel. He hoped they might be friends of Mrs Smith – although he doubted this: she seemed an independent sort and he was surprised she had agreed to the escort service in the first place. Besides this, the lady was staring out through the now guarded glass door with an expression of disgust on her face. And it was because the subject of Security's investigations was of such modest stature that Austin, seeing the gaze now transferring to the husband of the couple, had to assume a haughty air – most of the guards were cousins and understood Austin's facial comments on a situation – and push past Security to save his client.