The Queen and I (4 page)

“Titian,” said the Queen. “Goodnight.”

The atmosphere between the Queen and Prince Philip was awkward as they washed and undressed for bed. Furniture filled every room. They had to squeeze past each other with frequent apologies for touching. Finally, they lay in bed in the grey light of morning, thinking about the horrors of the previous day and of the horrors to come.

From outside came the sound of shouting as a milkman tried to defend his float from a Hell Close milk thief. The Queen turned towards her husband. He was still a handsome man, she thought.

7 Little Treasures

The Yeoman of the Silver Plate scrutinised Jack Barker, the new Prime Minister.

Very
nice, he thought. Smaller than he looked on the telly, but very
nice
. Clothes a bit Top Man and shoes a touch Freeman Hardyish, but a good, fine-boned face,
adorable
eyes – violet, and lashes like spiders’ legs. Yum yum.

It was 9 am. They were going down in the lift of the disused air-raid shelter which was situated in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Jack stifled a yawn. He’d been up all night doing his sums. “I expect you’re glad to get out of those daft clothes at night, aren’t you?” he said to the Yeoman, looking at the gaiters and buckles and the jacket with its complicated froggings and fastenings.

“Oh, I like a bit of glitz, me,” said the Yeoman, producing a key from his waistcoat pocket. The lift stopped.

“How deep are we?” asked Jack.

“Forty feet, but we’re not there yet.”

They left the lift and walked along a U-shaped corridor.

“What’s your name?” asked Jack.

“Officially I’m the Yeoman of the Silver Plate.”

“Unofficially?” said Jack.

“Malcolm Bultitude Bostock.”

“Worked here long, Mr Bostock?”

“Since leaving school, Mr Barker.”

“Like it?”

“Oh yes, I like nice things. I miss the daylight in the summer, but I’ve got a sun-bed at home.”

They came up to the fourteen-inch thick steel door which was protected by an intricate combination lock. Mr Bostock inserted the key and after a series of clicks the door swung open. “Just a mo,” he said, and switched the lights on. They were in an area the size of a football pitch which was divided into a series of doorless rooms. Each room was lined with shelves covered in industrial plastic sheeting.

Mr Bostock asked, “Anything in particular you want to see, Mr Barker?”

“Everything,” said Jack.

“Most of the collection’s at Sandringham, of course,” said Bostock, pulling the sheeting away and revealing an array of exquisitely carved animals. Jack picked up a jewelled cat.

“Pretty.”

“Fabergé.”

“How much do you reckon they’re worth?” asked Jack, indicating the twinkling menagerie.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly say, Mr Barker,” said Mr Bostock, replacing the cat.

“Guess.”

“Well, something in the paper
did
catch my eye last year. A Fabergé tortoise it was, fetched £250,000 at auction.”

Jack looked again at the little animals. He counted them under his breath.

Mr Bostock said. “There are four hundred and eleven of them.”

“Enough to build a hospital,” Jack muttered.

“
Several
hospitals,” corrected Mr Bostock, huffily.

They moved on. Jack was amazed at the insouciant manner in which the treasure was stored and displayed.

“Oh dear, we could do with a bit of a tidy up here,” said Mr Bostock, scooping up a few emeralds that had escaped from their plastic box. “Takes four strong men to lift that,” he said, pointing out a massive silver soup tureen. And, further on, “Gold is a bugger to clean,” as he parted the plastic sheeting to reveal a tower of gold plates, bowls and serving dishes.

Jack whispered, “
Real
gold?”

“Eighteen carat.”

Jack remembered that his wife’s fourteen carat wedding ring had cost him £115 ten years ago and
that
had a hole in it.

“Does anybody come down here?” he asked Mr Bostock.

“She comes, about twice a year, but it’s more of a personnel exercise, if you get my drift. She doesn’t
gloat
. The last time she was here, she asked if the temperature couldn’t be turned down; she doesn’t like wasting money.”

“No, well, I can see how she’d have to be careful,” said Jack as he fingered a scabbard presented to Queen Victoria by an Arabian prince. He had given up asking the value of the treasures. The figures became meaningless and Mr Bostock was clearly uncomfortable talking about money.

“So, this is only a part of the collection, is it?” Jack asked when they had visited each wondrous room.

“Tip of the iceberg.”

As they ascended in the lift, back to the daylight and the birdsong and the murmur of traffic, Jack thanked Mr Bostock and said, “There’ll be some foreign gentlemen to show round later this week. I’ll be in touch directly.”

“Might I ask what type of foreign gentlemen?” said Mr Bostock, tilting his face towards the sun.

“Japanese,” said Jack Barker.

“And might I ask if I’m to keep my present position, Mr Barker?”

Jack repeated one of his election slogans: “In Barker’s Britain everything and everyone will work.”

They crossed the dew-covered lawn together, discussing Japanese protocol and precisely how low the Yeoman of the Silver Plate should bow when he greeted the visitors who came, not bearing gifts, but buying them.

8 Client Resistant

The cold woke her and she was enveloped in misery before her strength and resources could be summoned. Harris scrabbled at the bedroom door, desperate to get out. The Queen put a cashmere cardigan on over her nightdress, went downstairs and let the dog out into the back garden. The April air was raw and as she watched him lift his leg in the frosty grass, her breath puffed out, white and visible in front of her. A heap of empty Magnolia paint tins lay in the garden. Somebody had tried to set fire to them, lost heart and left them. The Queen called the little dog inside, but he wanted to explore this new territory and ran on his ridiculous little legs to the end of the garden, where he disappeared into the mist.

When Harris reappeared he was carrying a dead rat in his mouth. The rat was frozen into an attitude of extreme agony. It took a sharp crack on the head with a wooden spoon before Harris would release his gift to the Queen. She had once eaten a mouthful of rat at a banquet in Belize. To have refused would have caused great offence. The RAF were anxious to retain the use of Belize as a refuelling stop.

“Mornin’. Sleep all right?”

It was Beverley in an orange dressing gown taking frozen washing off the line. Tony’s jeans stood to attention as though Tony were still inside them. “’E’s got an interview for a job ’s afternoon, so I’ve gotta get ’is best clothes dry.”

Beverley’s heart pounded as she spoke. How did you talk to someone whose head you were used to licking and sticking on an envelope? She unpegged Tony’s best jumper which was frozen into an attitude of arms-raised triumph.

“Harris found a rat,” said the Queen.

“A ret?”

“A
rat
, look!” Beverley looked down at the dead rodent at the Queen’s feet. “Am I to expect more?”

“Don’t worry,” said Beverley. “They don’t come in the houses. Well, not often. They’ve got their own complex at the bottom of the gardens.”

Beverley made it sound as though the rats inhabited a timeshare village, frolicked in a kidney-shaped swimming pool and argued over sun-loungers.

Somebody was knocking on the front door. The Queen excused herself and went through the little hall. She put a coat on over her nightdress and cardigan and tried to open the door. It was extraordinarily difficult. True, it was years since she’d opened the front door of any house, but surely it had been easier than this? She pulled with all her weight. Meanwhile, the person on the other side of the door had opened the letter-box. The Queen saw a pair of soulful brown eyes and heard a sympathetic female voice.

“Hi, I’m Trish McPherson. I’m your social worker. Look, I know it’s difficult for you, but it’s not going to help the situation if you won’t let me in, is it?”

The Queen recoiled from the words “social worker” and stepped back from the door. Trish remembered her training; it was important to be non-confrontational. She tried again, “C’mon now, Mrs Windsor, open the door and we’ll have a nice chat. I’m here to help you with your trauma. We’ll put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea, shall we?”

The Queen said, “I am not dressed. I cannot receive visitors until I am dressed.”

Trish laughed gaily, “Don’t worry about me; I take folks as I find them. Most of my clients are still in bed when I call.”

Trish knew that she was a good person and she was convinced that most of her clients were good, deep down. She felt truly sorry for the Queen. Her fellow social workers had refused to take on the Windsor case file but, as Trish had said in the intake office this morning, “They may be royal, but they are human. To me, they are just two displaced pensioners who will need a great deal of support.”

Not wishing to antagonise her client, Trish withdrew, wrote a note on Social Services notepaper and pushed it through the door. It said, “I will call round this afternoon, about three. Yours, Trish.”

The Queen went upstairs, scraped the ice from the inside of the window and looked down at Trish, who was scraping ice off the windscreen of her car with what looked like a kitchen spatula, the sort the Queen occasionally used at barbecues at Balmoral. Trish was dressed in Aztec-styled clothes and could easily have strayed off the stage during a performance of
The Royal Hunt of the Sun
. She appeared to be wearing parts of a dead goat on her feet. She sat in the car and made notes, “Client resistant; not dressed at 10 am.”

When the Queen heard the car draw away she went to her husband, who was lying on his back in a deep sleep. A dewdrop hung from his craggy nose. The Queen took a handkerchief from her handbag and wiped the dewdrop away. She didn’t know how to continue with her day: bathing, dressing and doing her own hair seemed to be insurmountable problems. I couldn’t even open my own front
door
, she thought. The only thing she was certain of was that she wouldn’t be at home to visitors at 3 pm.

There was no hot water in the icy bathroom, so she washed in cold. Her hair was impossible; it had lost its set. She did the best she could and eventually tied a scarf, gypsy-fashion, around her head. How very awkward it was to dress oneself, how fiddly buttons were! Why did zips stick so? How on earth did one choose what went with what? She thought of the corridors lined with closets where her clothes used to hang in colour co-ordinated rows. She missed the deft fingers of her dresser fastening her brassiere. What a ludicrous device a brassiere was! How did other women cope with those hooks and eyes? One needed to be a contortionist to bring the two together without assistance.

When the Queen was dressed, she had a terrific sense of achievement. She wanted to tell somebody, like the day she had tied her shoelaces for the first time. Crawfie had been so pleased. “Guid girrl. You’ll never have to do it for yourself, of course, but it’s as well to know – much like logarithms.”

The only source of heat in the house was the gas fire in the living room. Beverley had turned it on last night, but now the Queen was baffled. She turned the knob to full, held a match to the ceramic element, but nothing happened. She was anxious to have at least one warm room before Philip woke and (perhaps she was being over-ambitious) she planned to make breakfast: tea and toast. She imagined Philip and herself sitting by the gas fire planning their new lives. She had always had to placate Philip, he had resented walking one step behind her. His personality was not in tune with playing second fiddle. He was a whole quarreling orchestra.

Harris came in as she was holding the last match to the recalcitrant gas fire. He was hungry and cold and there was nobody to give him food, apart from herself. She was torn between the fire and Harris. There is so much to
do
, thought the Queen. So many tasks. How do ordinary people
manage
?

“The secret is one puts a fifty pence piece in the slot,” said Prince Charles. He had gained access to his mother’s house by knocking on the living room window and climbing through. He opened the meter cupboard and showed his mother the metal slot.

“But I haven’t got a fifty pence piece,” said the Queen.

“Neither have I. Would Papa have one?”

“Why would Papa have one?”

“Quite. William may have one in his piggy bank. Should I … er … go and …?”

“Yes, tell him I’ll pay him back.”

The Queen was struck by the change in her son. He started to climb out of the front window, then came back for a moment.

“Mama?”

“Yes, darling?”

“A social worker called on us this morning.”

“Trish McPherson?”

“Yes. She was awfully nice. She told me that I could have my ears fixed on the National Health. She told me that I have been damaged psychologically … er … and I think she’s … well … sort of, er … right. Diana’s thinking about having her nose done. She’s always hated it.” As Charles bounded past her living room window, the Queen thought: how happy he looks on what should be the most miserable day of his life!

Upstairs, Prince Philip stirred. There was something disagreeable on the end of his nose. He said, “Fetch me a handkerchief, quickly!” to a non-existent servant. After a few seconds, he remembered where he was. Looking around helplessly, he capitulated to his present circumstances and wiped his nose himself on the bed sheet. He then turned over and went back to sleep; preferring royal dreamland to the hideous reality of being a commoner in a cold house.

The Queen unpacked the cardboard box stamped “FOOD”. In it she found a loaf of bread labelled “THICK SLICED MOTHER’S PRIDE”, a half pound of Anchor butter, a jar of strawberry jam, a tin of corned beef, a tin of Heinz tomato soup, a tin of stewed steak, a tin of new potatoes, a tin of marrowfat peas, a tin of peaches (sliced) in syrup, a packet of digestive biscuits, a packet of Mr Kipling jam tarts, a jar of Nescafé, a packet of Typhoo tea bags, a box of Long-Life milk, a bag of white sugar, a small box of cornflakes, a packet of salt, a bottle of HP sauce, a Birds Eye trifle kit, a packet of Kraft cheese slices, and six eggs (presumably laid by the battery method since there was nothing on the box boasting that the chickens led a healthy outdoor life).