The Queen and I (5 page)

Harris eyed the tins greedily, but the Queen said, “Nothing for you, old boy.” She picked up the tin of corned beef. It looks quite like dog food, she thought, but how does one gain access to it?

She read the instructions: “Use key,” it said. She located the key which was flattened against the tin like a sentry in a box. But now, having found it, what did one
do
with it? Harris barked irritably as he watched the Queen fumbling with the corned beef tin: trying to fit the key into a raised metal strip at the base. The Queen said, “Please Harris, do be patient, I’m doing my best: I’m hungry and cold and you’re not helping me at all.” And she thought (but did not say aloud), and my husband is upstairs in bed and
he’s
not helping me either.

She turned the key and Harris leaped towards the tin as the stale blood smell of the corned beef was released into the air. He barked frantically and even the Queen, whose tolerance of noisy barking was legendary, lost her temper and slapped Harris’s nose. Harris retreated glowering under the sink. After a long struggle the Queen removed the base of the tin. The speckled pink block was clearly seen but however hard she shook the tin it refused to move. Perhaps if she tried to grasp the meat with her fingers … ?

When Charles returned through the window, proudly holding the fifty pence piece aloft as though it were a trophy, he found his mother leaning against a semi-circular William Gates cabinet, which now served as a hall table. A pool of blood gathered on the exquisite surface. Harris was under the cabinet attacking a tin and issuing primeval guttural growls. From upstairs came the fearful sound of his father in a rage. Charles had been taught how to cope with his paternal terror by a Gestalt therapist, so he blocked out his father’s obscenities by dating the William Gates cabinet.

“1781,” he said. “Built for George IV.”

“Yes, very clever, darling, but I rather think I may be bleeding to death. Would you ask my doctor to attend to me?”

The Queen took the scarf from around her head and bound it around her bleeding fingers. Philip came to the top of the stairs, shivering in a silk dressing gown.

They waited four and a half hours before the Queen was seen by a doctor at the Royal Hospital. There was fog on the motorway and road hogs and their victims cluttered the casualty department of the Royal Hospital.

Charles, the Queen and an armed, but plain-clothed, policeman had driven past the barrier at the end of Hell Close just as Princess Margaret’s pantechnicon had driven in. Princess Margaret had looked down into the police car and seen her sister’s blood stained cashmere jumper and her closed eyes and had immediately had hysterics, shrieking, “They are going to kill us all!”

The driver of the pantechnicon had turned murderous eyes onto her. After enduring three hours of her company he could cheerfully have put her up against a wall, a scarf around her eyes, a bullet in her heart. He would have denied her a last cigarette.

All through the afternoon, Charles and his mother sat behind a thin curtain in a cubicle at the Royal Hospital, listening to the almost unbearable sounds of human suffering. They heard death, agony and the desperate laughter of teenage nurses as they tried to remove a withered rubber doll from the penis of a middle-aged man. The Queen almost laughed herself when she heard the man’s wife say to the nurses, “I
knew
there was someone else.”

But she didn’t laugh. She pulled her features into a scowl. Crawfie had taught her to control her emotions, and the Queen was grateful for Crawfie’s wise guidance. How else could she have borne all those interminable speeches of welcome, in languages she didn’t understand, knowing that she must sit through the translation into English. Then to have to rise and read out her own banalities, and then to inspect the troops, knowing that each man or woman dreaded her stopping at
them
. And what did she say when she did stop? “Where are you from? How long have you been in the Army?” It was painful to watch them stammering a reply. Once she had asked, “Do you like the Navy?” of a young sailor of eighteen. He had instantly replied, “No, Your Majesty.” She had scowled and moved on. But she had wanted to smile and thank him for his rare honesty. She had given instructions that he was not to be punished.

“I am sorry to keep you, Mrs Windsor. I’m Doctor Animba.” The doctor had been warned, but he felt his blood pressure rise as he took the Queen’s injured hand in his own. Tenderly he removed the bloodstained dressing and inspected the deep cuts on the thumb and two fingers.

“And how did you do this, Your Maj – … Mrs Windsor?”

“On a corned beef tin.”

“A very common injury. Legislation is called for. Those tins should be outlawed.”

Doctor Animba was a serious young man who believed that the law could cure most social ills.

Charles said, “Dr Animba, my mother has waited nearly
five hours
for medical attention.”

“Yes, this is normal.” Doctor Animba rose to his feet.

“Normal?”

“Oh yes. Your mother is lucky she did not choose to eat corned beef on a Saturday night. On Saturday nights we are extremely busy. Now I must go. A nurse will be coming along soon.” With a swish of the curtain he was gone. The Queen sank back onto the hospital trolley and closed her eyes tightly against the prickling of tears gathering behind the lids. She
must
control herself at all costs.

Charles said, “It’s another world.”

The Queen said, “Another country, at least.”

They heard Doctor Animba go into the cubicle containing the rubber doll and her victim. They heard his vigorous struggle as he endeavoured to part rubber from flesh. They heard him say, “There should be legislation.”

Red with embarrassment, Charles said, “I was supposed to be opening a new hospital in Taunton tomorrow.”

The Queen said, “I expect the populace of Taunton will cope with your absence.”

They waited in silence for the promised nurse. Eventually, the Queen fell asleep. Prince Charles looked at his mother, her untidy hair, her bloodstained jumper. He took her uninjured hand in his hand and vowed to take care of her.

9 Faux Pas

That afternoon, Diana’s tiny living room was full of visitors, all women. Some of them had brought autograph books. The room reeked of Christmas present perfume. Perfume that had been manufactured in industrial units in the Far East. Violet Toby, one of Diana’s next-door neighbours, was telling Diana the story of her long life. The other women fidgeted, lit cigarettes, tugged on their skirts. They had heard this story many times before.

“So, when I seen this letter, I
knew
. So when he came home from work I said to ’im, who’s this bleedin’
Yvonne
when she’s at home? Well, ’is face went white. I said, You can gerrout and stay out. So that was number two.”

Diana prompted, as she had been taught to do, “And did you marry again?”

Violet, who hadn’t needed prompting, laughed. “I’m on my fifth.”

All the women in the room laughed.

“Five husbands. Eleven children, fifteen grandchildren, six great grandchildren, and there’s a bloke at the British Legion I’ve set me cap at.” Violet applied scarlet lipstick to her mouth using the mirror on the inside of her plastic snakeskin handbag.

“You’re a dirty bugger, Violet,” said Mandy Carter, Diana’s other next-door neighbour, whose fence Prince William had brought down the night before. Mandy nursed her new baby, called Shadow, on her shoulder. Diana looked at Mandy’s clothes and barely suppressed a shudder. Stretch denim jeans with white stilettoes – ugh. And that blonde candy-floss hair with more split ends than a Chinese spring onion – gross. And those pale breasts spilling from that pink acrylic scooped neck top – mega vulgaris.

“Your ’usband and ’is mam ’ave bin a long time,” said Violet.

“Ya,” said Diana. “Is the hospital far away?”

“Two mile down the road,” said a young woman with a spider tattooed on her neck.

“I were there six ’n ’alf hours that time Clive broke me jaw,” said Mandy.

“Gracious,” said Diana. “Who’s Clive?”

“’Is dad,” said Mandy, darkly, pointing to Shadow.

“I cun’t eat, cun’t smoke, cun’t drink.”

“Din’t stop yer shagging though, did it?” said Violet. “I ’eard you – and I’m two doors away.”

Diana blushed. Gracious, she was no prude, but she hated to hear a woman swear. She looked up just as Inspector Holyland passed by the dripping privet hedge. He glowered into the crowded living room. The women catcalled and the tattooed woman whistled, as though calling a taxi in London.

Holyland marched down the path. Diana picked her way through the women and answered her front door. Inspector Holyland coughed to give himself time. He had forgotten what he was supposed to call her. Was it Mrs Windsor? Mrs Spencer? Mrs Charles?

Diana waited until the policeman had recovered from his coughing fit. Eventually he spluttered, “They shouldn’t be in there,” pointing to the women in the living room. “You’re not supposed to receive any special attention.” He had got a grip on himself now. “So I’d be obliged if you’d ask them to go, madam.”

“I couldn’t possibly. It would be so rude.”

A cheer came from the living room and Violet bustled to the front door, hands in the pockets of her satin bomber jacket, an imperious expression on her wrinkled face. “We ain’t payin’ her any special attention; we’re ’er neighbours. We’ve come to see if she needs owt doin’.”

“Oh yes,” sneered Holyland. “Do the same for
anybody
, do you?”

“’S matter of fact, yes, we do,” said Violet, truthfully. “We stick together in Hell Close.”

She turned to Diana. “Right, shall we start on them cupboards?”

Holyland turned away. The records showed that Violet, her husband Wilf and seven of their adult children had not yet paid this year’s poll tax – in fact, they had not yet paid
last
year’s poll tax. He would get his revenge.

Just then, Diana saw the shape of Princess Margaret running down the middle of the road, high heels clacking, fur coat flying, hair escaping from its elaborate top knot. She ran up to the barrier and began to grapple with a young policeman. Inspector Holyland spoke into his radio and seconds later a klaxon sounded and the street was suddenly illuminated by harsh white light.

“Christ!” said Violet. “It’s like bleedin’ Colditz.”

“It’s Margo trying to break the seven o’clock curfew,” said Diana, watching from her doorstep. It was Inspector Holyland himself who escorted Princess Margaret back to her house.

Diana heard her say, “But I
must
get to Marks and Spencer before they close. I can’t cook.”

Diana shut her front door and went back to her neighbours. She looked forward to putting on an apron, getting into the kitchen and rattlin’ those pots and pans, just like Little Richard ordered. She would borrow Violet’s chip-pan tonight and cook egg, chips and beans for the family. Charles would have to compromise his dietary rules until she could organise a supply of pulses. She doubted if Violet had a jar of lentils she could borrow.

As they worked, Mandy asked, “What will you miss most?”

Diana answered instantly, “My Merc”

“Merc?”

“Mercedes-Benz 500 SL. It’s metallic red and it does one hundred-and-fifty-seven miles an hour.”

“Bet that cost a bit,” said Mandy.

“Well, about seventy thousand pounds,” confessed Diana. The room went quiet.

“An’ who paid for that?”

“The Duchy of Cornwall,” said Diana.

“Who’s that?” asked Mandy.

“My husband, actually,” said Diana.

“Did you say
seventeen
thousand?” said Violet as she adjusted her pink hearing aid.

“
Seventy
thousand,” bellowed Philomena Toussaint, the only black woman in the room. There was silence.

“For a car?” Violet’s chins wobbled in indignation. Diana dropped her eyes. She didn’t yet know that the women cleaning her kitchen, whose clothes she despised, had bought those clothes in charity shops. Violet’s 38 DD bra had been bought for twenty-five pence at Help the Aged.

Mandy broke the silence by saying, “I’d miss the bleedin’ nanny.”

This reminded Diana that she hadn’t seen William or Harry since her visitors had arrived. She called upstairs but there was no answer. She looked outside into the sad-looking back garden, but the only sign of life was Harris ingratiating himself with a cross-breed alsatian belonging to Mandy Carter. The two dogs circled each other. The little and the large, the commoner and the aristocrat. The alsatian was called “King”. Diana ran outside, calling, “William, Harry.” It was nearly dark. Bare bulbs showed as Hell Close prepared for night.

“The boys have never been out in the dark before,” said Diana. The women laughed at this new evidence of the boys’ pampered existence. They regularly sent their small children to the Indian shop for late night groceries. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

“They’ll be playing somewhere,” comforted Violet. But Diana would not be placated. Throwing on a silk parka, she strode out in her cowboy boots to search Hell Close. She finally located them playing battleships in front of the gas fire with their grandfather at Number Nine. She watched through the window until Harry saw her and waved. Prince Philip was wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. He hadn’t shaved and his hair hung over his ears in sparse strands. A tin of baked beans with a jagged open lid stood on the William III silver table.

“Charles telephoned,” Philip shouted through the window. “They’re still at the hospital. Can’t ask you in; bloody front door won’t open. Bloody back door key’s lost.”

Diana took the hint and went back to her domestic tasks. When the kitchen cupboards had been thoroughly cleaned out, the women broke for tea and Silk Cuts.

“That should keep them at bay for a bit,” said Violet.

“Keep
what
at bay?” asked Diana.

“The cockroaches. We’ve all got ’em. Nothin’ gets rid of ’em. You could fire a Polaris missile at ’em an’ the buggers’d still come back three days later.” Violet shifted gear. “Right, what you need now is linin’ paper, before you put your food in.”