The Queen and I

  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.

  ∨ The Queen and I ∧

  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.

  The Governor said, “You’re having two new cellmates. You’ll be a little crowded, but you’ll have to put up with that, won’t you?” He paced the small cell. “As you know, we show no favouritism in this prison. One of the prisoners is our erstwhile future King. The other is Carlton Moses, who will protect him from any undue harassment from his fellow prisoners. I have met our erstwhile future King and I found him to be a charming, civilised man. Learn from him, he has much to teach you.”

  The door slammed shut and Lee and Fat Oswald were once again alone.

  “Christ,” said Lee. “Carlton Moses in our cell. ‘E’s seven feet tall, ain’t ‘e? What with ‘im and you, there ain’t gonna be room to bleedin’ breathe.”

  Ten minutes later, another double bunk was brought into the cell. Fat Oswald could hardly move in the narrow space between the two. Lee bragged to Fat Oswald about his short acquaintance with Charlie Teck. He was less enthusiastic about Carlton Moses, how ever. Rumour had it that Carlton had actually sold his grandmother, or rather, had exchanged her for a Ford Cabriolet XRI. Fat Oswald thought the rumour must be false. In his opinion it was hardly a fair swap. What use was someone else’s grandmother to anybody?

  Their speculation was cut short by the arrival of Charles and Carlton, who were holding sharp cornered piles of bedding in their arms.

  It was the worst day of Charles’s life. He hadn’t expected to go to prison. But here he was. He’d been subjected to several gross humiliations since arriving: having his buttocks parted in the search for illegal drugs had possibly been the worst. The door slammed and the four men looked at each other.

  Charles looked at Fat Oswald and thought, my God, that man is simply grossly fat.

  Lee looked at Carlton and thought, he did swap his grandma for a car.

  Fat Oswald looked at Charles and thought, I’ll get him to talk about all them banquets he’s been to.

  Carlton looked at the cell and thought, this is serious overcrowding, man. I’m writing to the European Parliament ‘bout this.

  “How long you get, Charlie?” asked Lee.

  “Six months.” Charles already felt he couldn’t breathe in the cramped cell.

  “Out in four then,” said Lee.

  “If he behaves,” said Carlton, as he stowed his belongings on to the vacant top bunk.
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br />   Oswald turned his attention back to Madhur Jaffrey. He didn’t know how to address royalty. Was it ‘Sir’ or ‘Your Royal Highness’? He would get another book out of the prison library tomorrow, an etiquette book.

  Charles stood on tiptoe and looked out of the little barred window. All he could see was a patch of reddish sky and the top branches of a tree which was covered in new lime green leaves. A sycamore, he said to himself. He thought about his garden waiting for him. The new shoots, sprouting seeds and pricked out plants would miss him. He feared that Diana would allow the compost to dry out in the seed trays and hanging baskets. Would she remember to remove the side shoots from his tomatoes as he had begged her to do? Would she give the Gro-bags a litre and a half a day? Would she continue to throw her vegetable peelings onto his compost heap? He must write to her immediately with full instructions.

  “Do any of you chaps have some paper to spare?” he asked.

  “Pepper?” Lee looked baffled.

  “Writing paper,” explained Charles. “Stationery.”

  “You wanna write a letter?” asked Carlton.

  “Yes,” said Charles, who had wondered if he had actually been speaking English or had slipped into the French or Welsh language unconsciously.

  “You have to be issued with a letter,” explained Carlton. “One a week.”

  “Only one?” said Charles. “But that’s simply absurd. I’ve got masses of people to write to. I promised my mother…”

  But he became aware of a new, pressing problem. He needed to go to the lavatory. He touched the bell next to the cell door. His cellmates watched in silence as Charles waited for the door to be opened. Two minutes later Charles was jabbing at the bell frantically. His need was now urgent. One agonising minute later, the door was opened by Mr Pike. Charles forgot where he was.

  “About time,” he said. “I need to go to the lavatory; where is it?”

  Pike’s brow darkened under his peaked cap. “About time?” he repeated, mocking Charles’s accent. “I’ll tell you where the lavatory is, Teck. It’s there.” He pointed to a container on the floor. “You’re in prison now, you piss in a pot.”

  Charles appealed to his three cellmates, “Would you step outside for a moment while I…?” Their answer was unrestrained laughter. Mr Pike grabbed Charles’s shoulder and led him to the pot. He knocked the plastic lid off with a shiny-booted foot and said, “Urination and defecation takes place here, Teck.”

  “But it’s barbaric,” protested Charles.

  “You’re coming dangerously close to infringing the rules of this prison,” said Pike.

  “What are the rules?” Charles asked anxiously.

  “You’ll find out what they are when you break them,” said Pike with great satisfaction.

  “But that’s Kafkaesque.”

  “It might be,” said Pike, who had no idea what the word meant. “But a rule is a rule and just because you used to be the heir to the throne, don’t expect no favours from me.”

  “But I wasn’t, I…”

  Pike slammed the door shut and Charles, unable to contain himself any longer, hurried back to the plastic pot and added his own urine to that of Oswald and Lee.

  Oswald said shyly, “I’ve read a book by Kafka. The Trial it was called. This bloke is up for something, he don’t know what. Anyway, he gets done. It were dead boring.”

  To divert attention away from the thunderous sound of his own urination, Charles said, “But didn’t you find the atmosphere tremendously evocative?”

  Fat Oswald repeated, “No, it were dead boring.”

  Charles adjusted his dress and once again went to the bell and pressed it, explaining to Lee, Carlton and Oswald that he had forgotten to ask Pike for a letter. But Pike had given instructions that the bell to Cell 17 was not to be answered. Eventually the sky darkened, the sycamore branch vanished and Charles removed his finger from the bell. He declined Lee’s offer to lend him a book, saying, “Fast Car is not a book, Lee, it is a magazine.”

  Carlton was writing to his wife and stopped frequently to ask Charles the spellings of the words: ‘enough’, ‘lubrication’, ‘because’, ‘nipples’, ‘recreation’, ‘Tuesday’ and ‘parole’.

  Oswald ate a whole packet of Nice biscuits himself, sliding each biscuit surreptitiously out of the packet without disturbing the wrapping or the other occupants of the cell.

  When the overhead light went out, leaving only the red nightlight, the men prepared to sleep. Yet the prison was not quiet. Shouts and the sounds of metal on metal reverberated and somebody with a high tenor voice began to sing, ‘God Bless The Prince of Wales’. Charles closed his eyes, thought of his garden, and slept.

  ∨ The Queen and I ∧

  35

  PLATINUM

  Sayako came out of the changing room in Sloane Street wearing this season’s suit, as featured on the cover of English Vogue. Last season’s suit lay on the changing room floor in an untidy heap. She surveyed herself in the full-length mirror. The manageress, svelte in black, stood behind her.

  “That colour’s very good on you,” she said, smiling professionally.

  Sayako said, “I take it and also I take it in strawberry and navy and primrose.”

  The manageress inwardly rejoiced. She would now reach this week’s sales target. Her job would be safe for at least another month. God bless the Japanese!

  Sayako walked over on stockinged feet to a display of suede loafers. “And these shoes to match all suits in size four,” she said. Her role model was the fibreglass mannequin which lolled convincingly against the shop counter, wearing the same cream suit that Sayako was wearing, the loafers that Sayako had just ordered and a bag that Sayako was about to order in navy, strawberry, cream and primrose. The mannequin’s blonde nylon wig shone under the spotlights. Her blue eyes were half closed as though she were enraptured by her own Caucasian beauty.

  She is so beautiful, thought Sayako. She took the wig from the mannequin’s head and placed it on her own. It fitted perfectly. “And I take this,” she said.

  She then handed over a platinum card which bore the name of her father, the Emperor of Japan.

  As the manageress tapped in the magic numbers from the card, Sayako tried on a soft green-coloured suede coat which was also being worn by a red-haired mannequin, who was doing the splits on the shop floor. The suede coat cost one penny less than a thousand pounds.

  “What other colour do you have this in?” asked Sayako of the assistants, who were packing her suits, loafers, bags and wig.

  “Just one other colour,” said an assistant (who thought, Jeezus, we’ll have a drink after work tonight). She hurried to the back of the shop and quickly returned with a toffee-brown version of the sumptuous coat.

  “Yes,” said Sayako. “I take both and, of course, boots to match, size four.” She pointed to the boots worn by the red-haired mannequin.

  The pile on the counter grew. Her bodyguard standing inside the shop door shifted impatiently. The limousine parked outside the shop had already attracted the attention of a traffic warden. He and the driver were glaring at each other, but both knew that the Diplomatic plates on the car precluded any possibility that a parking ticket would be attached to the windscreen.

  When the Princess and her purchases had been driven away, the manageress and her assistants screamed and yelled and hugged each other for joy.

  Sayako sat in the back of the limousine and looked at London and its people. How funny English people are, she thought, with their wobbly faces and big noses and their skin! She laughed behind her hand. So white and pink and red. What bodies they had! So tall. It wasn’t necessary to have so much height, was it? Her father was a small man and he was an Emperor.

  As the car set off on its journey towards Windsor, where she was staying at the newly opened Royal Castle Hotel, Sayako’s eyes closed. Shopping was so tiring. She had started at 10.30 in Harrods’ lingerie department and now it was 6.15 and she had only taken an hour off for lunch.
And when she got home she had that puzzling book to read, Three Men in a Boat. She had promised her father she would read at least five pages a day. It would improve her English, he said, and help her to understand the English psyche.

  She had already ploughed through The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland and most of Jemima Puddleduck but she had found these books very difficult, full of talking animals dressed in the clothes of human beings. The strangest of all had been The House at Pooh Comer, about a retarded bear who was befriended by a boy called Christopher Robin. Sayako had been told by her tutor in Colloquial English that the English had many words for shit. ‘Pooh’ was one of them.

  At Hyde Park Corner the car stopped suddenly, the driver swore and Sayako opened her eyes. The bodyguard turned around to face her.

  “A demonstration,” he said. “Nothing to fear.”

  She looked out of the window and saw a long line of middle-aged people crossing the road in front of the car. Many of them were wearing beige anoraks that Sayako, a devoted shopper, identified as coming from Marks and Spencer. A few were carrying signs on sticks, on which the letters B.O.M.B. were written in red, white and blue.

  Nobody appeared to take any notice of them, apart from a few impatient motorists.

  ∨ The Queen and I ∧

  36

  GIFT HORSE

  Spiggy rode into Hell Close on the bare back of a chestnut horse called Gilbert. When the horse drew alongside Anne’s house, Spiggy cried: “Ay oop!” and Gilbert stopped and began to eat the couch grass which grew alongside the kerb. Spiggy dismounted and led Gilbert down the path and up to Anne’s front door.

  “Wait ‘til she sees you,” he told the horse. “She’ll be cowin’ gob smacked!”

  When Anne opened the door and saw Gilbert’s gentle brown eyes looking into her own, she thought she would melt into a pool on the doorstep. She reached her arms out and embraced the horse’s neck.