The Queen and I (19 page)

The Queen nodded her head gratefully. She would do her best to get some nourishment down him tonight and then tomorrow he should be in the safe hands of the professionals. She wondered what Grimstone Towers was like. It sounded horrid, like the establishments one saw lit up by lightning in the opening moments of a British-made horror film.

33 Swanning About

Two hours before the trial was due to begin the coachload of policemen cleared the immediate area around the Crown Court. All the print journalists and radio and television reporters who had come to cover the case were taken to an ex-RAF camp just outside Market Harborough and spent the day locked inside a large room, where they were encouraged to consume the contents of too many bottles of British wine.

PC Ludlow was now in the witness box, trying desperately to remember the lies he had told during the previous hearing at the Magistrates’ Court.

The QC for the prosecution, a fierce fat man called Alexander Roach, was leading Ludlow through his evidence.

“And,” he was saying, wobbling his jowls towards the dock, “do you see the accused,” he pretended to refer to his notes, “Charlie Teck, in this court?”

“Yes,” Ludlow said, also turning towards the dock. “He’s the one in the shell suit and pony tail.”

The Queen was furious with Charles, she had told, no
ordered
him, to have a short back and sides and wear his blazer and flannels, but he had stubbornly refused. He looked like, well, a
poor
, uneducated person.

Ludlow stumbled through his evidence without the benefit of his police notebook, the Queen noticed. Ian Livingstone-Chalk, the barrister representing Charles rose to his feet. He smiled cruelly at Ludlow in the witness box.

Ian Livingstone-Chalk had been an only child. In youth his reflection in the mirror had been his closest companion. He was all style but no substance, being too concerned with the impression he thought he was making to listen properly to the clues given by his witnesses.

“Police Constable Ludlow, did you take contemporaneous notes on the day in question?”

“Yes sir,” said Ludlow quietly.

“Ah good,” said Livingstone-Chalk. “Do you have the notebook in which you made these notes in your possession?”

“No sir,” said Ludlow, even more quietly.

“No!” barked Livingstone-Chalk. “Pray, why not?”

“Because I dropped it into the canal, sir!”

Livingstone-Chalk turned to the jury, and once again smiled his carefully adopted cruel smile. “You-dropped-it-into-the-canal,” he said, spacing out the words, inviting scepticism to fill the gaps. “And pray, Constable Ludlow, do tell the jury what you were doing
at
,
on
or
in
the canal.”

Ludlow said in a whisper, “I was rescuing a distressed swan, sir.”

Livingstone-Chalk looked blank.

Two jurors sighed, “Ah” and looked at Ludlow with new eyes.

Charles said, “Ridiculous!”

The judge ordered Charles to be quiet, saying: “I’m surprised you should find the rescuing of a swan to be a ridiculous pastime, Teck, considering that until very recently your mother owned the entire British swan population. Proceed, Mr Livingstone-Chalk.”

The Queen glowered at Charles, willing him to be silent. Then she turned her eyes on Livingstone-Chalk and willed him to cross-question Ludlow about his fictitious swan-rescuing activities, but he ignored the heaven-sent opportunity and instead got bogged down in the minutiae of the fight. The jury got bored and stopped listening.

When Livingstone-Chalk eventually sat down, Alexander Roach QC leapt opportunistically to his feet. “One last question,” he said to Ludlow. “Did the distressed swan live?”

Ludlow knew he had to answer carefully. He took his time. “Despite my best efforts at mouth to mouth resuscitation and heart massage, sir, I’m afraid the swan expired in my arms.”

The Queen laughed out loud, and the whole court turned to stare. When the Queen had regained control of herself, the case proceeded. Charles, Beverley and Violet gave their evidence in turn, each of their stories corroborating the others.

“It was a silly misunderstanding,” said Charles, when accused by Roach of inciting the Hell Close mob to kill PC Ludlow.

“It may have been a
misunderstanding
to you, Teck, but PC Ludlow here, a man who is capable of showing tenderness to a swan, was grievously harmed by you, was he not?”

“No,” said Charles, red in the face. “He was not grievously harmed by me, or anybody else. Police Constable Ludlow scratched his chin when he fell on the road.”

The whole court turned to look at PC Ludlow’s bearded chin.

Roach said dramatically, “A chin so scarred that PC Ludlow will need to wear a beard for the rest of his life.”

The clean shaven jurors nodded sympathetically.

As they left the court room at the luncheon recess, Margaret said, “Where did Charles find Ian Livingstone-Chalk – chained to the railings outside the Law Society?”

Anne said, “Charles is from Dorksville, USA, but even he could defend himself better than Livingstone-Chalk.”

Over bacon sandwiches in the court cafeteria, Diana asked the Queen, “How do
you
think it’s going for Charles?”

The Queen daintily removed a piece of gristle from her mouth, placed it on the side of her disposable plate and said, “How did it go for Joan of Arc, after the taper was applied to the faggots?”

It was in his closing speech to the jury that Ian Livingstone-Chalk finally ruined any chances Charles might have had of being acquitted. He had turned to Charles’s character and background, saying, “And finally, members of the jury, consider the man before you. A man from a deprived background.” (A few jurors rolled their eyes here.) “Yes,
deprived
. He saw little of his parents. His mother worked and often travelled abroad. And at a tender age he was sent away to endure the privations and humiliations of, first, an English prep school and then, the ultimate horror, a Scottish public school. The regime was cruel, the food inadequate, the dormitories unheated. Every night he wept into his pillow, longing for his home.”

(It was here the case was lost – one juror, an ironmonger, later to be elected Foreman of the Jury, whispered to another, “Pass me a violin.”) But Livingstone-Chalk continued, oblivious to the antagonistic atmosphere emanating from the judge and jury. “Is it any wonder that this homesick boy turned to drink? Will any of us forget the shock when it was revealed that the heir to the throne was escorted out of a public house after consuming unknown quantities of cherry brandy?” (Charles was heard to mutter, “I say, it was only one,” and was told to be quiet by the judge.)

Livingstone-Chalk continued, with the doomed flamboyance of a man executing a spectacular dive into an empty swimming pool, “This pathetic, wretched man deserves our pity, our understanding, our justice. What he did
was
wrong, yes, it can
never
be right to shout, ‘Kill the pig,’ and to attack a policeman. No, most certainly not …”

Charles muttered, “But I
didn’t
. Whose side are you on, Livingstone-Chalk?”

The judge ordered him to be quiet or face further charges for contempt of court.

Livingstone-Chalk wound up by saying, “Show him mercy, members of the jury. Think of that little boy sobbing in the dorm for his mummy and daddy.”

There was not a wet eye in the court. One female juror stuck two fingers down her throat in an “I want to vomit” gesture. As Livingstone-Chalk returned to his seat in the court, the Queen had to be restrained by Anne and Diana from leaping to her feet and squeezing on his adam’s apple until he was dead. Beverley had taken Charles’s hand and pressed it sympathetically, and Violet had said out of the corner of her mouth, “They’ve got better briefs than him in Marks and Sparks, Charlie.”

Charles smiled politely at Violet’s joke and was again rebuked by the judge, who said, “The least you could do is to show some contrition, but no, you appear to find this case amusing. I doubt if the jury agrees with you.”

This monstrous leading-the-jury statement went unnoticed and unchecked by Ian Livingstone-Chalk, who was adding up his expenses in his bulging Filofax.

The Queen had showed no emotion when sentence was passed. Diana had burst into tears. Princess Anne had made an obscene gesture towards the jury and Princess Margaret had slipped a Nicorette tablet into her mouth. As Charles was led away to the cells below he mouthed something to Diana. She mouthed back, “What?” but he had already disappeared.

Later, in the early evening the former Royal Family were gathered around the Queen Mother’s bed, watching Philomena Toussaint spoon soup into the Queen Mother’s mouth.

“Open you lips, woman,” grumbled Philomena. “I h’ain’t got all day y’know.”

The Queen Mother opened her lips and her eyes and drank the soup until Philomena scraped the bowl with the spoon and said, “H’OK.”

The Queen said, “I’m awfully grateful. I couldn’t get her to eat a thing.”

Philomena wiped the Queen Mother’s chin with the side of her hand and said, “It’s a shock to she, to learn she’s grandchild has been sent to prison, with all the ragamuffins and riffraff.”

Diana was finding the heat oppressive in the small crowded bedroom. She went out and opened the front door. William and Harry were playing in the street with a gang of shaven-headed boys, who were rolling a tyre towards Violet Toby’s bit of pavement. A small boy was hanging from inside the tyre.

Diana heard William shout, “It’s my cowin’ turn nex’.” Her sons were now fluent in the local dialect. It was only their long hair that distinguished them from the other boys in the Close. And every day they beseeched her for a “bullet-head” haircut.

Diana watched as Violet Toby propelled herself out of her front door, shouting, “If that bleedin’ tyre touches my bleedin’ fence, I’ll tan your bleedin’ arses.”

Disaster was averted when the small boy fell out of the tyre and scraped his knees and palms on the road. Violet waved to Diana, yanked the screaming boy to his feet and took him inside her house to dab iodine on his wounds. Diana felt she ought to stop William, who was now climbing inside the tyre, but she had no strength for an argument, so she shouted, “Bedtime at eight, Wills … Harry,” and went back inside the Queen Mother’s bungalow.

As she adjusted her make-up in front of the small mirror over the kitchen sink, she tried once more to decipher the message that Charles had mouthed to her as he was being led away to prison. It had looked like, “Water the Gro-Bags,” but he couldn’t have been thinking about his stupid
garden
could he? Not at such a tragic moment.

Diana mouthed “Water the Gro-Bags” in the mirror several times, then turned away in disappointment, for whatever else it
could
have been, it certainly wasn’t, “I love you, Diana,” or “Be brave, my love,” or anything else that people said in films to their loved ones as they were taken from the dock to the cells below. She thought enviously of the scenes of jubilation when the jury had announced that they found Beverley Threadgold and Violet Toby not guilty of the charges brought against them. Tony Threadgold had run towards his wife and lifted her out of the dock. Wilf Toby had gone to Violet and kissed her, full on the mouth, put his arm around her thick waist and led her outside where she was cheered by other, less important, Toby relations, who’d been unable to get into the small public gallery. The Threadgold and Toby clans had gone off together in an excited group to celebrate in the Scales of Justice pub over the road.

The Royal Family had simply climbed into the back of Spiggy’s van and been driven back to Hell Close.

34 All Together Boys

Lee Christmas was cleaning under his toenails with the clean end of a dead match when he heard the singing.

God save our gracious King

Long live our noble King

God save the King.

Da da da da

Send him victorious …

Lee got up from his bunk and peered sideways through the barred window of the cell door. His cellmate, Fat Oswald, turned the page of his book: Madhur Jaffrey’s
Far Eastern Cookery
. He was on page 156, “Fish poached in aromatic tamarind broth”. It was better than pornography any day, he thought, as he salivated over the list of ingredients.

Keys crashed at the lock and the cell door swung open. Gordon Fossdyke, the Governor of the prison, came into the cell accompanied by Mr Pike, the prison officer in charge of the landing, who bellowed, “Stand for the Governor.”

Lee was already standing, but it took Fat Oswald some sweating moments to climb down from the bunk.

Gordon Fossdyke had once enjoyed a whole week of fame when he had suggested, in a speech at a Conference of the Association of Prison Governors, that there was such a thing as good and evil. Criminals fell into the evil category, he claimed. During Fossdyke’s glorious week, the Archbishop of Canterbury had given seventeen telephone interviews.

The Governor stepped up to Fat Oswald and poked his belly. Folds of flab looking like a porcine waterfall cascaded down his front.

“This man is grotesquely overweight. Why is that, Mr Pike?”

“Dunno, sir. He came in fat, sir.”

“Why are you so fat, Oswald?” demanded the Governor.

“I’ve always been a big lad, sir,” said Oswald. “I was eleven pound, eight ounces at birth, sir.” Fat Oswald smiled proudly, but he received no smile in return.

Lee Christmas’s heart was beating fast under his blue and white striped prison shirt. Were they intending to strip the cell? Would they find the poems hidden inside his pillowcase? He would top himself if they did. Mr Pike was not above reading aloud one of Lee’s poems in the association period. Lee sweated, thinking of his most recent poem, “Fluffy the Kitten”. People had been murdered for less.