Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (15 page)

“I mean only that now that you mention it, Mrs MacDonald, it doesn’t seem all that preposterous. She mentioned Leith, did she?”

“Yes, Lady Anne.” Shirley was not about to allow herself to be cross-examined by a bad-tempered lady-in-waiting at this sort of crisis. She’d noticed The Queen not entirely herself in the last several weeks, more absentminded, abstracted. She was afraid it might be that thing President Reagan had had. The prospect of it was too unappealing to consider at length, but it wasn’t something Shirley wanted people finding out about. She had an intense protective instinct and she was willing to put herself forward as the human barrier against an outside world that would regard The Queen’s slight absence of mind as an illness. She knew that Lady Anne was an old palace fixture, but she didn’t intend to confide in her either. She was silently determining how she might get up to Leith at this hour to look for The Queen, and where she would stay, and how she might pay for this if she were travelling on her own limited pocketbook.

“Now, look here,” said Anne in her bossiest regimental tone. “I have the use of a flat in Edinburgh. Charlotte Square. My nephew’s. Used to belong to me, but it doesn’t anymore. Still, he’ll let me use it. What if the two of us were to go up and look for her? We could stay in Charlotte Square. My nephew has a small plane. He’ll pay to fly us up there. It’s the least that young man can do for us.”

“No, thank you, Lady Anne,” said Shirley stiffly. She operated on the principle of no excess information to the upper servants that they didn’t need to know, and she wouldn’t rely on Lady Anne any more than she would on the private secretaries or the Mistress of the Robes, or even the Prime Minister, as of course he was, technically speaking, an upper servant too.

Anne detected her error in addressing Shirley MacDonald as if she were a private soldier. “What I meant, Mrs MacDonald,” she said changing to a friendlier tone of voice, “is that we won’t serve her well if we’re at cross-purposes. You have a sense of where she might have gone. Leith. I can get us there with the minimum of fuss. Shan’t we join forces?”

“Shan’t,” said Shirley to herself, inwardly harrumphing at the words. Shall not. Sounded biblical. Still, what Lady Anne had said was sensible. She had no idea how to get to Leith at this hour, and a place to stay in Edinburgh would be useful. The Queen might not be at Leith, after all. There might have to be some hunting and searching.

“Very well, let’s go together.” There was then an awkward pause. She drew herself up to her greatest height and tightened the belt on her housecoat. “On one condition. I’m Shirley.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Shirley,” said Anne, her eye twinkling. She didn’t put out her hand. “I’m Anne, as you know.” A pause while the two women sized one another up for the first time as women rather than as coworkers in an unusual and antique hierarchical order. “Shall we meet out here in fifteen minutes? Pair of jeans and a headscarf?”

Shirley rolled her eyes. “
No headscarf
. You might as well wear a name badge saying, ‘I’m Her Majesty’s Lady-in-Waiting.’ We don’t want people to
know
she’s gone. We’re winging up there on the q.t. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Anne meekly, newly aware of a gruff habit of command that she’d never noticed in Shirley MacDonald before. “But it
is
raining. What are we to wear?”

“I’ve a baseball cap. Pulls down right over the eyes. Have one for you too.”

“A
baseball
cap? Really.”

“Do you want your picture on the front page of
The Scotsman
? ‘Her Majesty’s Lady-in-Waiting Found Trawling Around Leith After Midnight’ ”?

“No, of course not. You’re right. We must keep this hush-hush.”

Shirley sighed with exasperation. “Now, go and dress yourself. Meet me back here in a quarter of an hour.”

R
ajiv had returned to the cheese shop feeling a little disconsolate after his coffee with Rebecca. He found that his colleagues now wanted their breaks. So he was left alone on the darkened afternoon with no customers and no one beside him behind the counter. When the tiny woman with a blue hoodie and a headscarf came through the door, he could see immediately who she was. He’d photographed her before. Her coming through the doorway now, alone, told him that something unusual was up, so grabbing his phone to take her picture didn’t occur to him. There was something that touched him about her vulnerability, an old woman out by herself on a wet afternoon three weeks before Christmas.

He also saw instinctively that, if she weren’t exactly wishing to appear
incognita
, that she wasn’t at Paxton & Whitfield on an official visit either. He was a polite young man and he thought at the very least a bow was probably necessary, but he wasn’t sure how, or whether it came before speaking to her or afterwards. What was he meant to call her? Instead, he just addressed her as he would any other customer. “A very wet afternoon, Ma’am.”

The Queen had forgotten the weather as she’d tried to remember how to find Jermyn Street. She didn’t mind actually. It was quite fun looking for places on your own rather than being driven straight to the door by someone who knew precisely where he was going. “Yes,” she said, turning around to look back out at the street. “I suppose it is.”

Rajiv could see that she was distracted. He thought keeping her in conversation until someone came inside to attend her might be best. “Sleet too.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Looking at the shop windows? Fortnum’s has wonderful windows this time of year.”

“No, you see, I couldn’t remember quite where you were. So I came along here, not sure if the shop were still here. Jermyn Street in my grandmother’s day, now, was quite disreputable.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I believe there was a famous madam at the Cavendish Hotel.”

“I didn’t know, Ma’am. It’s all men’s shirts along here now.”

“Yes, I see that. But whenever anyone calls me ‘Madam’ now, you know, instead of ‘
Ma’am
-rhymes-with-ham,’ I always laugh to myself and think of that madam of the Cavendish Hotel.” Rajiv’s politeness and his being smoothly unsurprised by her visit to the shop made The Queen forget for the moment that she was absent without leave from the palace.

She might be distracted, thought Rajiv, but she still had a sense of humor. She was good even at telling a little harmlessly wicked story. “I don’t think the Cavendish is quite so
louche
now.”

“No, I expect it isn’t.”

“Saudi princes, I imagine.”

The Queen heard the slight dismissiveness in Rajiv’s voice and thought she’d better stick up for the Saudis and multicultural Britain, of which she was rather proud. “Well, they’re wonderful breeders.”

“Breeders?”

“Horseflesh, I mean,” said The Queen.

“Of course.”

“Which brings me to my errand.”

“Can I help, Ma’am?”

“Yes. I’m sure you can. Now, there’s a very peculiar horse. Born on the same day as me, it turns out. Not the same year, of course. But we share a birthday.” The Queen said this as if she expected him to congratulate her.

“What fun.”

“Yes, I think so.” The Queen looked with a momentary brightening off over Rajiv’s shoulder.

“And this particular horse likes cheese?” offered Rajiv.

“
Yes.
How did you know?” The Queen was surprised that this young man should have so quickly divined the purpose of her excursion.

“Well, I have a friend . . . well, not a friend, more of an acquaintance really. She’s, well, we’ve only just had coffee once. This afternoon, but . . .”

The Queen could see the change that had taken place in Rajiv’s face. He was speaking of something that caused him both pleasure and embarrassment. Made him hopeful and disappointed at the same time. “I see,” she said, raising her eyebrows to him in an encouraging way. “Do go on.”

Rajiv thought she was the one who needed help, but now she was helping him, and he was grateful. “Well, she has flame-colored hair. Looks after horses somewhere. She first came in a little while ago, a month or so back, about a horse of hers that liked cheddar, a particular cheddar I think we have here, and maybe, well, I doubt it can be found anywhere else.”

“Rebecca,” said The Queen.

“God, do you know her?”

“Well, there can’t be many flame-haired girls who look after horses in London, can there be? I think I know the one you mean.”

“Rebecca is her name right enough,” said Rajiv, still amazed.

“Rinaldi. Yes, well she’s at the Mews.”

“Oh, well, she wouldn’t tell me where she worked.”

“Good girl.”

“Yes, I expect she has to keep it confidential.”

“Oh, you can’t imagine. If anyone so much as finds Queen Victoria’s nail file at a car boot sale, they all run to the papers with it right away. You can’t come near the palace these days without signing fourteen legal forms. Fees to lawyers are the biggest claim on the Privy Purse. Costs us much more than Princess Michael of Kent.”

Rajiv was uncomfortably aware that he’d twice in recent months submitted his photographs to a newspaper and been paid handsomely for them. So he started in a little defensively, “Well, Ma’am, don’t you think that as long as there’s curiosity, as long as people still want to know about what goes on inside the palace, that, well, basically the monarchy generates interest. And that must be a good thing. Wouldn’t apathy be worse?”

“A little apathy might be welcome now and again,” said The Queen quickly. “Would certainly lead to a quieter life,” she said, snorting. “But you see that interest, ‘curiosity’ I think you called it, can easily turn to its opposite. Just as extreme love, in a marriage, for example, can turn to hate. They’re the same coin, just different sides.”

Rajiv had no direct, firsthand experience of either love or marriage. These were big, unexplored continents for him, though he did hope to go there one day himself, soon if possible. He was aware that the woman for whom he’d felt such sympathy when she walked in the door had experience of all these big countries, not only love and marriage, but the monarchy, popularity, and getting up every day not to write a poem, or come to work on Jermyn Street, but to be sovereign. To embody the state. He took a step backward, and addressed her a touch more deferentially. “I see what you mean.”

“Oh, but the papers, now, they’re not all bad, are they?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Free speech. It’s what a democracy’s all about, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And one of them, I can’t remember which one, well, when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was here in the autumn, published some pictures,
quite
illegally, of the state banquet.” The Queen looked angry for a moment.

Rajiv immediately looked away in embarrassment. It had never occurred to him that The Queen herself would be looking at his photos. Did he now have to confess that he’d been smuggled into the palace by one of the under chefs? For the second time since she’d walked in the shop, he felt badly confused.

The Queen’s look of annoyance passed off as she remembered something brighter. “Some of those cheeses at the banquet might have been sent over from here, mightn’t they? And the carvings were so clever. Queen Beatrix loved them. All the Dutch tradesmen were so jealous. They’re so proud of their cheese export, you know. We quite showed them up. Score one for Britain, eh? Holland, nil,” said The Queen, chuckling.

The Queen paused and once again seemed to drift away from the conversation into some reverie that it would have been rude to interrupt. The trouble was that Rajiv didn’t really want to tell her how he’d also taken her picture in the rain in the Lake District, even though he thought that too was a very good picture. He’d recognized her, but she hadn’t recognized him. She was more smiling then, he noticed. So to prevent her reverting to photography he circled back to why she’d come in the first place. “I expect you’d like some cheese, Ma’am. Particularly cheddar that appeals to horses?”

“Yes, please,” said The Queen, returning to earth. “I expect if Rebecca were in here before, you know the one I want.”

“I do, Ma’am,” and Rajiv then proceeded to show The Queen the orange round and to ask her how much she’d like. That she left to him, so he cut her a generous wedge, wrapped it up, and offered to have it sent over to the Mews for her.

“Oh no, it’s not entirely for them,” said The Queen quickly. “Some’s for me. If Elizabeth pulls a little better with a taste of that cheese, I thought it might work for me too, you see.”

Rajiv was a little shocked, but he disguised this as well as he could. “Of course, Ma’am. And shall I have it put on your account?” He wasn’t sure if the palace had an account, but he wasn’t going to ask her to hand over a banknote or a credit card.

“Yes, please,” said The Queen, taking the parcel into her hands. “Now, is there a bus to King’s Cross from here?” she asked him.

For the first time Rajiv felt genuine alarm on her behalf. It’s true she had come in alone, but he somehow expected that there must be security people, or a car, outside the door. Now it was clear she was entirely on her own and planning to head for one of London’s busiest railway stations at the moment the evening rush was about to get under way.

“Well, I think there’s the number 38 on Piccadilly that will take you to the Angel, but then you’d have to take another bus from there to King’s Cross. Or the Victoria Line from Green Park would probably be faster.

“I see. Number 38. Then change at the Angel. Don’t like the Tube,” said The Queen, holding her parcel of cheddar in both hands, and looking as if she ought to be accompanied by two or three burly policemen at the very least.

“Look, Ma’am, why don’t I shut up the shop and come with you to King’s Cross? I could show you the way.”

“But you’re meant to be open much later, aren’t you? You can’t just go against the rules,” she said with a semi-guilty twinge that she was doing just that herself.

“Well, my colleagues will be back from their breaks shortly. I’ll just run you over in a taxi, shall I, and then pop right back here?”