The Queen and I

  “At Buckingham Palace,” answered the Queen.

  “Sure you did,” laughed the youth, looking at the Queen’s coat covered in muddy paw prints, at her grimy nails, her wet straggling hair. Honest. He had heard all sorts of stories. He could write a book! Two books. Honest.

  “And why were you living in Buckingham Palace?” he asked, raising his voice so that his fellow workers would be able to share the joke.

  “Because I was the Queen,” said the Queen.

  The youth pressed a buzzer under his counter and a security guard took the Queen’s arm and led her and Harris out into the dark evening. She stood on the pavement, not knowing what to do or where to go for help. She tried all her pockets, searching for a coin for the telephone, though she knew perfectly well that her pockets were completely empty apart from a sheet of lavatory paper torn from a roll. She didn’t know that it was possible to make a reverse charge call through the operator.

  It was Friday night, the DSS would be closed for two days. They had money, she had none.

  Dragging Harris behind her, she ran back into the office. The staff were wearing their coats. The clock said that it was five twenty-nine and thirty seconds. Claimants were being escorted from the room. The Queen noticed that number thirty-eight had a five pound note in her hand and was talking to her baby: telling the child that she was going to buy milk and bread and nappies. Forty was refusing to leave, “I was at Bluff Cove,” he was shouting.

  The Queen picked Harris up and put him under her arm. “My dog is starving,” she announced to the room.

  Clerk number two lived with her mother, three dogs and five cats. She had wanted to be a vet but couldn’t get the ‘A’ levels. She looked at Harris, who lay languidly in the Queen’s arms as though he were in the last stages of malnutrition. The clerk sat down behind her desk. She unbuttoned her coat, reached for a pen and invited the Queen to sit down. First she lectured the Queen on the responsibilities of dog ownership, saying, “You shouldn’t really keep a dog unless you’re prepared to, well, keep it properly.”

  Harris whimpered pitifully and allowed his ears to droop. The clerk continued her lecture. “He looks in very bad condition. I’m going to give you enough for a couple of tins of dog food and some conditioning tablets Bob Martin’s are good.”

  The Queen took the money, signed the receipt and left the office. She thanked God that the English were a nation of dog lovers.

  ∨ The Queen and I ∧

  20

  A BAG OF BONES

  The bogus beast followed her. As she left the office, he prayed that she was not planning to walk home. His feet were raw lumps of meat. He couldn’t wait to take his shoes off. The Queen clutched the three pound coins tightly in her hand. How much was a loaf of bread? A pound of potatoes? A jar of coffee? She had no intention of buying dog food or conditioning tablets for Harris.

  Crawfie used to make broth whenever the Queen was ill as a child. The Queen remembered that bones were involved. She passed a butcher’s shop. A man in a white coat and striped apron was scrubbing the shelves in the display cabinet. Small bunches of plastic parsley were piled up on the shop counter, waiting to be replaced in order to beautify the shelves. The Queen tied Harris up outside and pushed the door open.

  “We’re closed,” said the butcher.

  “Could you sell me some bones?” asked the Queen.

  “I’m closed,” he said.

  The Queen pleaded, “Please. They’re for my dog.”

  The butcher sighed, went out to the back and returned with a collection of gruesome bones which he slung on to the scales.

  “Thirty pence,” he said, brusquely, wrapping them loosely in a sheet of paper. The Queen handed him a pound coin and he took the change from a bag of coins and handed it to her without a smile.

  “May I have a carrier bag?” the Queen asked.

  “No, not for thirty pence,” said the butcher.

  “Oh well, thank you and goodnight,” said the Queen. She didn’t know how much it would cost to buy a carrier. She couldn’t risk spending perhaps twenty or thirty pence more.

  The Queen said again, “Goodnight.”

  The butcher turned his back and began to place the plastic parsley around the edge of the display shelves.

  The Queen said, “Have I offended you in some way?”

  The butcher said, “Look, you’ve got your thirty pence worth, just close the door behind you.”

  Before she could do as she was told, a well-dressed man came into the shop and said, “I can see you’re closed, but will you sell me three pounds of fillet steak?”

  The butcher smiled and said, “Certainly, sir, won’t be a tick.”

  The Queen took her bones and left. As she untied Harris, she watched the butcher through the window as he sliced fat slices of steak from a large lump of beef. He was now all jollity, like a butcher on a playing card.

  Harris was maddened by the smell of the bones. He leapt up toward the parcel which was tucked under the Queen’s arm. When they got to the bus stop, she threw a small knuckle bone onto the pavement and he attacked it ferociously; holding it in his front paws and tearing at the wisps of flesh with guttural, greedy sounds.

  The bone was stripped bare by the time the bus arrived. The town centre was almost deserted. The Queen dreaded the weekend ahead. How did one feed oneself, one’s husband and one’s dog on two pounds and ten pence, which was all she had, after paying her bus fare? She simply could not borrow any more. She would pray that her pension book came in the post tomorrow.

  The Queen said, “One to the Flowers Estate, please.”

  She put sixty pence in the driver’s black scoop bowl and waited for her ticket. The driver said, “I want ninety pee. It’s ‘alf fare for the dog.”

  The Queen was horrified, “Surely not?”

  “Dog’s ‘alf fare,” repeated the driver.

  The Queen gave Harris a venomous look. For two pins, she’d make him run behind the bus. He’d been nothing but a nuisance all day. However, she paid up and, as instructed by the driver, carried Harris upstairs to the top deck. She counted and recounted her money, but always came to the same total: one pound and eighty pence. She closed her eyes and prayed for a miracle of the loaves and fishes variety.

  The Queen got off the bus and went into the Food-U-R the supermarket that served the Flowers Estate. The manager and owner was Victor Berryman. He stood at the door greeting customers and watching out for shoplifters.

  “Evening, madam. Settling in all right?”

  The Queen smiled and nodded. “Yes, finding one’s way.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Sorry to hear about your husband.”

  “My husband?”

  “Yes, I hear he’s bad.”

  “Bad?”

  “Poorly, off his head.”

  “He’s depressed, certainly.”

  “I know how he feels. I used to have a chain of these, you know. There were Food-U-Rs all over the East Midlands. Adverts on the telly. The hula girls? Food-U-R a Paradise for Shoppers?” He sang the jingle and swayed his bulky hips.

  Food-U-R!

  A Paradise for Shoppers.

  Food-U-R!

  “I tried to get the girls to go with the Polynesian theme you know, grass skirts, garlands, but there was nothing but complaints.”

  He looked bitterly towards the checkouts where two dumpy, middle-aged women were passing groceries in front of electronic scanners: “Yes, I was once head of a dynasty, so I know how your husband feels having it snatched away.”

  The Queen scowled. “My husband was not the head of the dynasty. I was.”

  Victor Berryman snatched a Mars Bar from the inside jacket pocket of a departing boy, clipped him round the ear and kicked him out of the shop.

  “Anyway, madam, if there’s anything I can do to help,” said Victor, shaking his fist at the boy.

  The Queen explained that she wished to make a broth.

  “A brawth?” repeated Victor
.

  “A broth a thin stew,” the Queen explained. “I have the bones what else does one need?”

  Victor looked baffled, the kitchen was a place of mystery to him. All he knew was that cold ingredients were taken in and hot food came out, at more or less regular intervals. He called to one of the women at the checkout, “Mrs Maundy, help this lady out, will you? I’ll take over the till.”

  Mrs Maundy gave the Queen a half curtsey and a wire basket and they promenaded up and down the aisles. The Queen bought one onion, two carrots, one turnip, one pound of potatoes, a large loaf of bread, a jar of strawberry jam (small) and two Oxo cubes.

  Victor Berryman passed the Queen’s groceries over the magic eye and said, “One pound fifty-eight pence.”

  “Oh dear.”

  The Queen looked at the pound and eighty pence in her hand.

  “I will have to put something back,” she said. “I need fifty pence for the meter.”

  Between them, they worked out that if she discarded one carrot and one Oxo cube, and swapped a large loaf for a small one…

  The Queen left the shop carrying a Food-U-R bag. Victor held the door open for her and said he hoped he would see her again, perhaps she would recommend him to her family and, if she had a spare crest hanging around doing nothing, he’d be pleased to hang it up over the front door.

  The Queen had been trained to ask questions, so, as she untied Harris’s lead from a concrete bollard, she asked Victor how he had lost his dynasty of Food-U-R stores.

  “The Bank,” he answered as he checked the padlocks on the metal grilles that covered the windows. “They hassled me to borrow money to expand. Then interest rates went up an’ I couldn’t make the payments. Serves me right, really, I lost the lot. The wife took it hard; house was sold, cars. Nobody wanted to buy this place on the Flowers Estate who would, ‘part from a maniac? We live above the shop now.” The Queen looked up and saw a woman whom she took to be Mrs Berryman, looking sadly out of an uncurtained window.

  “Still,” said Victor, “it’s nothing to what you’ve lost, is it?”

  The Queen, who had lost palaces, property, land, jewels, paintings, houses, a yacht, a plane, a train, over a thousand servants and billions of pounds, nodded her agreement.

  Victor took out a comb and drew it across his bald head. “Next time you’re here, come up and see the wife. Have a cup of tea she’s always in; she’s an agoraphobic.” The Queen looked up again, but the sad face at the window had gone.

  Clutching her fifty pence coin in her hand, the Queen walked back to Hell Close. Behind her, keeping his distance, limped the bogus beast. If this is plain clothes duty, give me a uniform any day, he thought.

  As the Queen let herself into her house, she heard a familiar cough. Margaret was there. Yes, there she sat, smoking and tapping ash into a coffee cup.

  “Lilibet, you look absolutely ghastly! And what have you got in that horrid smelly plastic bag?”

  “Bones, for our dinner.”

  Margaret said: “I’ve had the most appalling time this afternoon with a ghastly little man from the Social Security. He was unspeakably vile.”

  They moved into the kitchen. The Queen half-filled a saucepan with water and threw the bones into it. Margaret watched intently as though the Queen were Paul Daniels about to perform a magic trick.

  “Are you good at peeling potatoes, Margaret?”

  “No, of course not, are you?”

  “No, but one has to try.”

  “Go ahead, try,” yawned Margaret. “I’m going out to dinner tonight. I telephoned Bobo Criche-Hutchinson, he’s got a house in the county. He’s picking me up at 8.30.”

  A scum formed on the saucepan, then the water boiled over and extinguished the gas flame. The Queen relit the gas ring and said, “You know we aren’t allowed to go out to dinner; we’re still under curfew. You’d better ring Bobo and put him off. You haven’t read Jack Barker’s sheet of instructions, have you?”

  “No, I tore it into pieces.”

  “Better read mine,” said the Queen, as she hacked at a King Edward with a table knife. “In my handbag.”

  When she had finished reading, Margaret inserted another cigarette inside a holder and said, “I’ll kill myself.”

  “That is one option,” said the Queen. “But what would Crawfie think if you did?”

  “Who cares what that evil old witch thinks about anything? Anyway, she’s dead,” burst out Margaret.

  “Not for me, she’s not. She’s with me at all times, Margaret.”

  “She hated me,” said Margaret. “She made no secret of it.”

  “You were a hateful little girl, that’s why. Bossy, arrogant and sly,” said the Queen. “Crawfie said you’d make a mess of your life and she was right you have.”

  After half an hour of silence, the Queen apologised for her outburst. She explained that Hell Close had that effect on one. One got used to speaking one’s mind. It was inconvenient at times, but one felt strangely good afterwards.

  Margaret went into the living room to telephone Bobo Criche-Hutchinson, leaving the Queen to throw the root vegetables and the Oxo cube into the saucepan. Mrs Maundy had told her that broth has to simmer on a low heat for hours ‘to draw the goodness out’ but the Queen was ravenous, she needed to eat now, at once. Something tasty and filling and sweet. She reached for the bread and jam and made herself a pile of sandwiches. She ate standing at the worktop without a plate or napkin.

  She had once been reassured by a senior politician a woman that the reason the poor could not manage on their state benefits was because “they hadn’t the aptitude to cook good, simple, nutritious meals.”

  The Queen looked at her good, simple, nutritious broth bubbling in the pan and reached for another slice of bread and jam.

  That evening, Prince Philip prowled around the bedroom muttering to himself. He stared out of the window. The street teemed with relations. He saw his wife and his sister-in-law coming out of his daughter-in-law’s house. They crossed the road leading towards his mother-in-law’s bungalow. He could see his son digging the front garden, in the dark, the bloody fool! Philip felt trapped by his relations. The buggers were everywhere. Anne, hanging curtains, helped by Peter and Zara. William and Harry yelling from inside a wrecked car. He felt like a beleaguered cowboy in the middle of a wagon train with the bloody Indians closing in.

  He got back into bed. The vile broth, now cold, which his wife had earlier brought him, slopped over onto the silver tray and then onto the counterpane. He did nothing to stem the flow. He was too tired. He pulled the sheet over his head and wished himself somewhere else. Anywhere but here.

  ∨ The Queen and I ∧

  21

  WINGING IT

  The Yeoman Raven Master passed the White Tower, then retraced his steps. Something was wrong, he couldn’t put his finger on it immediately. He stood still, the better to think. Japanese tourists took his photograph. A party of German adolescents sniggered at his silly hat. Americans asked if it was really true, that the Queen of England was living on a public housing project.

  The Yeoman Raven Master remembered what was wrong at precisely the same time as a schoolgirl from Tokyo pressed the button on her Nikon. When the photograph was developed, it showed the Yeoman Raven Master with his mouth open in horror, his eyes wide with primeval fear.

  The Ravens had gone from the Tower: the kingdom would fall.

  ∨ The Queen and I ∧

  22

  THIN ON THE GROUND

  It was Harry’s first day at his new school. Marigold Road Junior. Charles stood outside the headmistress’s office, wondering whether or not to go in. An argument of some kind was going on inside. He could hear raised female voices, but not what was being said.

  Harry said, “Eh up, Dad, what’s goin’ on?”

  Charles yanked Harry’s hand and said: “Harry, for goodness’ sake, speak properly.”

  Harry said, “If I speak proper I get my cowin’ face smashed i
n.”

  “By whom?” asked Charles, looking concerned.

  “By who,” corrected Harry. “By the kids in ‘Ell Close, tha’s who.”

  Violet Toby came out of the headmistress’s office, closely followed by the headmistress, Mrs Strickland.

  Violet shouted, “You lay a finger on one a my grandkids again and I’ll ‘ave you up, you ‘ard-faced cow.”

  Mrs Strickland did have rather a determined face, thought Charles. He felt the old familiar fear that schools always induced in him. He held even tighter onto Harry’s hand poor little blighter.

  Mrs Strickland smiled icily at Charles and said: “I’m sorry about that unfortunate scene. It was necessary to punish Chantelle Toby on Friday and her grandmother rather took exception to it. Indeed, she seems to have brooded on it over the weekend.”

  Charles said, “Ah! Well, I hope it won’t be necessary to punish Harry, he’s quite a sensitive little chap.”

  “No I ain’t,” said Harry.

  Charles winced at Harry’s ungrammatical protestation and said, “If you tell me which class Harry is to join, I’ll take him along…” A drop of water fell onto Charles’s head. He wiped it away and, as he did so, felt another splash onto his hand.

  “Oh dear, it’s started to rain,” said Mrs Strickland. Charles looked up and saw water splashing down from cracks in the ceiling. A bell rang urgently throughout the school.

  “Is that the fire alarm?” asked Charles.

  “No, it’s the rain alarm,” said Mrs Strickland. “The bucket monitors will be along soon, excuse me.”

  And sure enough, as Charles and Harry watched, children came from all directions and lined up outside Mrs Strickland’s office. Mrs Strickland appeared at the door with a heap of plastic buckets which she doled out to the children, who took them and placed them strategically underneath the drips in the corridor. Other buckets were borne away into the classrooms. Charles was impressed with the calm efficiency of the operation. He remarked on it to Mrs Strickland.