Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (25 page)

“I’m not talking about having his boots polished. I’m talking about friendship, real genuine friendship between two men who like and respect one another.”

“They have to make their own way, Anne, there’s nothing we can do for them.”

“Well, we can wish them the best and we can tell them so. Acknowledge them. They want our blessing.”

Shirley did not immediately reply to this. She saw the truth of what Anne had just said, but she’d grown up in a Scottish household that was austere on the emotional front. Love between men and women was barely mentioned. Between man and man, well, that was off the map.

Shirley cleared her throat and put in a word for her colleague. “William seems a bit flighty, but that boy is tough. The queer ones often are. They have to be to survive. I can’t imagine he’ll have much to contribute to a talk about life in the army, but if Major Thomason needs some protection, he couldn’t have anyone fiercer than William.”

“No, what I’m saying, Shirley, is that they might both need for us to recognize them. Give our approval.”

“They’re grown louts. They don’t need anything from us.”

“Ah, you don’t think your opinion counts with William, then?”

Shirley knew that it did. They were more than coworkers. They were allies, they were co-conspirators, they were friends. Yes, if William were to be having some sort of, what was it,
relationship
(the word sounded like California, Islington, and Sigmund Freud all rolled into one) with the equerry, he would want to know she thought it was okay.

Shirley looked over at Anne, caught her eye, and gave a quick affirmative nod of her head. The two women then sat back into their seats, lightly closed their eyes, and were blanketed by the roar of the engines.

“A
re you okay?” Rajiv was worried that Rebecca refused to speak, or even to look at him, after the guard left them alone in the vestibule once more.

“Look. We’re here together. I’ll put up with that. We may as well try and look out for Her Majesty together, as she’s just on the other side of the partition from us. But that doesn’t mean you’re my boyfriend. I’ve told you about the man in Trafalgar Square. But I didn’t tell you that as a way of saying we should be together, as a pair. I told you, in fact, because he upset me. And I’m not about to let another man do it again. Probably there’s something wrong with me.” The flickering darkness, relieved only occasionally by the train’s whizzing through small towns, emboldened her to be more truthful than she would have been otherwise. “I don’t entirely know who I am or what I want.”

“I do.”

“You do what?”

“Know what you are.”

“What, then?”

“A beautiful woman who once had a tryst with a badger and a man somewhere near the Elephant.”

She smiled at him.

“And who frankly liked the badger best of all.”

She gave an involuntary snort through her nose.

“Look, let’s just enjoy it. We don’t have to define what you are or what we are, you and me. We’re going on a little trip. That’s all.” He looked appealingly into her eyes.

She returned his gaze for a split second longer than was normal before looking down to dig in her pocket.

He felt a rush of blood to his face. That was her consent.

“I’ve got to call the equerry.”

“Strange word. Second time you’ve said it. What’s that?”

“Man who works for The Queen.”

“What’s he do, then?”

“Look, I’m not here to answer all your questions. The equerry needs to know we’re with her. If we’re going to keep The Queen from being harmed, we’ve got to stick by her, bring her back. She might not be totally . . . herself. Why else would she have got into a taxi with someone from behind the till at Paxton & Whitfield.”

Rajiv chose to regard this as a playful insult and did not take offense.

Rebecca found a signal on her mobile phone and reached Luke. She told him she was on the 1700 from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley and The Queen was also on board. She thought she could keep an eye on Her Majesty and when they got to Edinburgh, well, she’d look after her as best she could. Luke wanted to keep The Queen’s journey as secret as possible. He hadn’t wanted to raise any alarm by having the police get on the train, or having the train met in Scotland. If he could get up there quickly enough himself, perhaps he and William and Anne and Shirley, and now Rebecca, could persuade her to turn around and come back. The women would all be there before him, and as The Queen was more influenced by the women than by the men of the Household, perhaps it was as well that she should be shepherded on the train by the Mews and met in Edinburgh by the Mistress of the Robes’s department.

“What do we do now?” Rajiv asked, the paparazzo in him hoping for some disclosure of the palace’s plans. When he was with The Queen, he felt he had to look out for her. When he was with Rebecca, he began to hatch a plan to capture The Queen’s unusual excursion with the camera in his mobile phone.

“We keep an eye on her and make sure nothing happens to her.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. Nosy Parker. Now move to the side and let me see if she’s still there.”

Rebecca got up and cautiously looked through the glass doorway. The Queen was still at the table, facing forward in the direction the train was traveling, talking to a blind man and a woman with thick glasses. A man with some piercings was across from her. The Queen’s hood was still up. No one seemed to have recognized her. Nobody was paying her serious attention but the blind.

Rebecca slid back down against the partition wall to sit on the floor next to Rajiv. “Still there.”

Rajiv had his phone in his hands. “Um. Perhaps I should just take a picture of her. For record keeping’s sake.”

“Take her picture?” Rebecca said incredulously. “We’re trying to keep this a secret, mate. Not publish it in the papers. That’s what we’re trying to
avoid
. I thought you brought her to King’s Cross in the taxi because you were looking out for her?” Rebecca was really angry with him.

“Look, pictures don’t always do harm. Did you see those pictures of her and the Dutch Queen in front of the carved Gouda? People liked those. They didn’t do harm.”

“Didn’t see them, but heard about them. Taken by some undercover chef who wasn’t a chef. The papers are trying to smuggle people in all the time. That time, it worked.”

“I was the chef,” said Rajiv proudly. “I took those pictures.”

“I can’t believe it. You?”

“Yes, me,” he said, beaming.

“Then you are an absolute shit and I don’t even know why I’m here with you.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” he said quickly. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll follow your lead. I’ll do everything you say.” A pause. Then he put in mischievously, “But what about your picture, then?”

As she whipped up her head to look at him in disbelief, he already had his phone positioned to take a close shot of her face. And he captured her, hair flying, and anger around the eyebrows.

O
ne of the silent side effects of Luke’s service in the Middle East was his heightened suspicion of everyone outside his immediate circle. Indeed, aside from the men he’d served with, most of whom were not in London, or not free at the limited times he was, his immediate circle sometimes diminished to a circle of one. Himself alone. He had to rely on people in the Household to get things done, but they were not his friends. Evenings and weekends he spent quite a lot of time alone in his Bayswater flat, going to bed early and sleeping late. He slept more since returning from the Middle East, aware that it probably wasn’t a sign of good mental health, but aware that sleep was effective in reducing his vague distress. He had few people with whom he could talk over his anxieties and problems, so they were slow to dissolve and disappear. This sometimes impaired his judgment and heightened his misgivings about the people around him. Had he confided what he knew to MI5 following the phone call from Rebecca, the train might have been met at an intermediate stop and The Queen whisked away in a car behind darkened windows. At the very least, Holyrood might have been alerted, so The Queen could have a place to stay in Edinburgh.

After Rebecca’s telephone call, he was relieved. The Queen had been found. Yes, she was on a public train to Edinburgh without proper security, but at least she could now be followed. He’d agreed to Shirley and Anne getting on a plane to Edinburgh, the last commercial flight of the evening out of Heathrow, but he hadn’t thought to ask for either of their mobile numbers, so he couldn’t tell them what he’d learned from Rebecca. The problem was somehow to have The Queen taken care of in Edinburgh, and he didn’t quite know how to manage that. The last fast trains had gone. He imagined there would only be buses now, and he silently determined to catch one of these. Victoria Coach Station was not far away. It would take longer than a train or a plane. But the night buses would be there by the first thing in the morning and then he could supervise whatever The Queen needed in Edinburgh himself, ideally persuading her to come back as quickly and quietly as possible. Beyond these vague calculations, he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do, other than run immediately for the bus.

Luke told William, when he returned to the sitting room, that The Queen had been found on the 1700 from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley. “You’re off the hook, mate.” He was going to get on a night bus to Scotland by himself as soon as possible. It would be better if William could “hold the fort,” as it were, at BP. “Hang on a minute,” William had said, hands on hips. “Who is meeting Her Majesty at Edinburgh Waverley?”

“Well, Mrs MacDonald and Lady Anne are on their way to Edinburgh and will be there shortly after she arrives.”

“But not in time to receive her?”

“No. But Rebecca from the Mews is with her.”

“Who is Rebecca?” said William with some incredulity.

“Works with the horses. Last to see Her Majesty before she left.”

“What you’re telling me is that The Queen is by herself on a public train, unattended by anyone other than a girl who forks hay in the stables. No police. No security. And no one to meet her when she gets there. You have
got
to be joking.”

It surprised Luke to find William really rather impatient with him, both in terms of the shaky intimacy they’d recently established and of the palace hierarchy, where, technically speaking, William ranked fairly far beneath him.

“I’ll arrange The Queen’s reception on the bus. I’ve my mobile with me. But I’m not telling the secret services that The Queen’s left.” He then remarked, separating the words as he said them, “They cannot be trusted.”

William could see that Luke was a little mad. He liked Luke. He thought he was handsome. He respected Luke’s experience in the army and his having fought in Iraq. He looked fantastic in his clothes. But he was still a little off. The look in his eye at that moment was of a person who was talking to himself on the street, and to whom you would automatically give a wide berth. William’s own protective instincts now kicked in. “Well, I’m going with you. We’ll settle it together. On the bus.”

“No.” Luke had decided to retreat from his earlier position that they should go together. He now thought he should address only one of his problems at a time.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Look, I’ve been at the palace longer than you. I’ll be here long after you’re gone. It’s my job to look after her too, as I think you went out of your way to remark earlier,” added William drily. “You’re not all there, and you’re going to need some looking after yourself. I’m coming. Quit. I’ll just go and tell the page that Her Majesty has retired early with a head cold. He’ll have to mind the dogs.”

Luke shot William an angry look mixed with something that might have been gratitude or an appeal. Just then the telephone on The Queen’s desk rang again.

“Oh God,” said Luke glancing at the clock.

“Go on, pick it up. It might be some news.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Arabella Tyringham-Rode.”

“MI5? Good. They’ll help us.”

The phone continued to ring.

“They will
not
help us,” Luke said, his eyes blazing. “She told me earlier that if I hadn’t found The Queen in thirty minutes I had to hand over to them.”

“Nothing here at SW1A 1AA happens as quickly as that,” said William. “She knows that.” He then went impatiently to the phone, picked it up, and said, “Yes?”

“To whom am I speaking?” asked Arabella Tyringham-Rode coolly.

“William de Morgan, Senior Page of the Chambers,” answered William, using his formal palace title.

“Ah, one of Her Majesty’s legendary members of staff. Look here, Morgan,” she said, guessing instinctively that the “de” was probably fake and that he needed to be put in his place. “This is a crisis. Major Thomason agreed to hand over to MI5 half an hour ago if he hadn’t found Her Majesty. Time’s up.”

“No, you listen.” William was incensed at her high-handedness. “Major Thomason is a decorated soldier. Saw action. Fought for us, you and me.” He summoned a little bravado for his own performance. “I will not allow you to intimidate a serving member of the armed forces. The Queen is still head of the army and in command of her own Household. Word has not been left me to follow any instructions other than hers. I’m sure we shall be in touch in due course.” With that, he hung up the phone.

Luke looked at William in silent horror.

“Come now, bright eyes,” said William. “We’ve a bus to catch. Let’s go.”

“A
nd did you see
The Queen
?” asked the woman with thick spectacles after her husband’s little joke about Helen Mirren. “We loved it.”

The Queen wasn’t accustomed to being asked such direct questions, and certainly not on subjects that might prove awkward. She became uncomfortably aware that what had started out as a little impromptu sidestepping of her usual routine and responsibilities, perhaps rather desperate, but from which she hoped for a little relief nevertheless, might be harder work than she expected. Usually, the courtiers protected her from awkwardness. The people they allowed her to meet were generally too afraid of her to ask her anything that couldn’t be answered easily and smoothly, as she’d done a thousand times before. “How are the corgis?” “Is your Mother well?” That last one still made a lump come to her throat, as, even though her mother had died several years ago, people did still bring her up, and The Queen hadn’t entirely accustomed herself to not being able to telephone her in the morning as had been their usual habit.