Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (30 page)

She struggled to find another memory of the ship. Yes, that night at the party, there’d been fireworks after dinner and they’d all gone aft to watch them on deck in the humid air. The Wales marriage had already grown difficult then, but she’d managed to keep her mind off it while they were on
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. Her own marriage was not perfect. They’d started out blissfully happy together. She was keenly aware of the sacrifice Philip had made. Without her he might have had a successful career in the navy. Proved that he was more than a penniless Greek. Instead, he married her, stuck by her side. She was grateful. She knew there had been other women, perhaps a good many. She tried to rise above it, not to let it bother her. His philanthropies suddenly required long trips around the world. Long separations with a few happy reunions. They’d rode it out and had real affection for one another. Their having made it through together was a real matter of pride for both of them. They both had the nicks and scars to prove it. She thought that was how most successful marriages were arranged. But the Princess of Wales hadn’t been willing to put up with that sort of arrangement, had she? She’d done one desperate thing after another, and The Queen, now feeling and having done something rather desperate herself, had some shafts of sympathy pass through her heart, some flickers of understanding, that she hadn’t felt before.

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The Queen kept being drawn back to what had been bothering her even though her whole purpose in coming to
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was to think of happier days. “Let’s see, where did we go after Florida?” The Queen thought they went to Mustique to see Princess Margaret for a night or two. Not too long, as her sister had a way of getting on her nerves, but she was curious to see what kind of life she had down there. Margaret had built a house which had been decorated with about thirty varieties of bamboo. Someone had snapped The Queen’s picture on the beach. In a straw hat. Wearing trousers! Almost as outlandish as the private secretary in his shirtsleeves. She remembered the photo, and, yes, she had been happy then. The dogs hadn’t liked it, though. Sand too fine for their paws, and being at sea often disagreed with them. She was forever cleaning up after their seasickness in a way she rarely had to do elsewhere. But this also made her feel useful.

She’d read antimonarchist articles in the paper that called her “useless,” and even constitutional experts tended to agree. She was an ornament and by definition useless. She was there to lend a sense of occasion, and to provide the official seal of approval to all sorts of business that had been negotiated elsewhere. All different words for “useless” really, she thought, pulling off her pearl earrings.

“Is this all there is?” The Queen thought to herself. She’d begun her adventure in such high spirits and now she sat next to a sign directing visitors to the gift shop on her decommissioned yacht where once had stood an ebonized side table. Possibly it had been Uncle David’s from Fort Belvedere. She believed his wife went in for that sort of thing. Where it was now, she didn’t know.

She realized that despite all the ship’s happy memories, she wasn’t as confident as she once had been about whether she’d done any good. Or was doing any good. When she was young, all she had to do was smile, and stand through the presentation of troops, and listen to anthems. That seemed to be enough to swell people with pride. Perhaps she was having children and that’s what people liked about her. Yes, they’d liked the two late little boys. But it had not recently been the same. She hadn’t changed, but she saw that things had changed around her. People were usually polite; but even republicans had ceased to attack her. It distressed her that she’d let this weigh on her mind. She’d prided herself for so long on keeping her chin up and going right through with the programme assigned to her in all weathers, feeling well or not, that it surprised her to be so powerlessly unable to deal with her feelings of disappointment.

[Courtesy of Oona Räisänen]

She thought, perhaps a cup of tea. She wandered down to the galley, found a light switch by the door and an electric kettle on one of the counters. She went over to the sink to fill it up and found it full of dirty bowls, tea mugs, spoons, glasses, and smeared plates.

“What’s this?” she thought, rather annoyed. What sort of staff had they that they would leave such a mess behind? Instinctively she switched on the hot tap to fill the sink and pulled on some rubber gloves she noticed on the rim of a bucket in the cupboard. In a moment her mood had changed from elderly hopelessness to grim determination. She was happy.

W
hen they arrived at the airport in Edinburgh, Anne took charge. She found a taxi and told the driver they were going to
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berthed in Leith. She also said they might need him to drive them onwards after that. She admitted right away she didn’t know where. She said all this in a tone of voice that brooked no objections, and made it evident she would accept no questions. Shirley had to do nothing but sit back in her seat. Her passion was looking after The Queen, but here, for the first time in a palace career of many decades, she was being looked after herself. There was nothing she had to do. Anne attended to all the details.

“I don’t expect any of this looks familiar,” said Anne surveying the side of the highway leading away from the airport. It was an acknowledgment that Shirley, though born in Scotland, would regard Edinburgh as foreign.

“No, no, it’s not familiar. I’m a country girl, really. Born near Ballater. My grandmother was in service, as you know. So was my mother. When Mum went south, well, she was very young, and she left me with Granny.”

“I believe they have some cottages for the retirees round Balmoral somewhere.”

“Well, this was before the Jubilee Cottages were built, but yes, there were some places. Not that Granny spent much time at home. She was always up at the Castle, helping with the laundry, keeping things up, you know. Even at home, in the evenings, she mended sheets. Some of them went back to Queen Victoria’s time. Proper linen sheets.”

“Don’t bring it up. Sleeping on that linen is no fun. I have fabric burn on my legs if I don’t dress properly for bed there.”

This made Shirley angry. She couldn’t forget Letitia d’Arlancourt, or forgive her, either. “Oh, how difficult your life is, isn’t it, Anne?” she remarked bitterly.

“I’m not saying I haven’t been lucky.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“Just that sleeping on plain cotton sheets from the British Home Stores is sometimes more comfortable than on Queen Victoria’s linens.”

With a sniff of disapproval, Shirley said, “There are many who would change places with the likes of you.”

“ ‘Likes of me. Likes of me’? I thought we were working together? And might even be friends. Eventually.”

“It’s not for me to offer the hand of friendship.”

“Well, that’s just because you and I have lived in or near the palace all our lives. It has warped us. Such as us are seldom friends, no, inside the palace; but outside the palace, women like us have no trouble setting up shop, mucking in together. The world outside the palace has moved on, Shirley. And one day you’ll want to retire. Under the new rules from the Privy Purse, they won’t automatically give you a cottage anymore, and you’re going to have to move in that world.”

Anne was right. She was no longer owed a place in retirement as her grandmother and mother had been. The retirement allowances hadn’t been overgenerous in previous generations, but at least you had a place to stay. In the current reign, the accountants had taken over The Queen’s finances. There was more supervision from the Government, and the older arrangements had been cancelled. She would have a somewhat larger pension than her mother and grandmother when they retired, but she would have no place to stay. She could participate in a lottery to stay in one of the cottages at Balmoral for several weeks in the off-season, when The Queen wasn’t there, but she still had to pay for it. This rankled. But there was little she could do. None of the Household ever walked out on strike or set up pickets in front of the palace railing.

“Well, I expect it’s fine for the daughter of a lord. Your nephew must have half a dozen houses to give you.”

“Pardon me, but if you don’t think my nephew runs the estate on exactly the same lines as the Privy Purse you’re quite mistaken. I have my London flat and a tiny widow’s pension from my husband. It’s a place to hang my hat, but I can’t afford to pay a cleaner anymore. Why do you think I still do these waitings? For two weeks at a time I save on the food bills. There’s a clothing allowance. And there’s some travel money, which I’m going to use to pay for this taxi, thank you very much. It’s not what I imagined for myself at age seventy. You might be able to retire soon, but I can’t. As for my nephew, I’m only invited at Christmas, and that’s all. He gave us our aeroplane tickets because he’s on the board and he gets a certain number of free flights during the year.”

Shirley was used to overhearing rich people complaining about being poor, but there was something about Anne’s quiet urgency that made her sense that what she’d just been told was the truth. Her instinct was to change the subject. In the old-fashioned system to which they both still belonged, raw displays of resentment were not allowed.

“Oh, well, as long as you’ve got that flat, you could do a bit of bed-and-breakfast, couldn’t you?”

Both women burst out laughing. The sodium glow of the lights over the motorway cast their unnatural light on the taxi’s passengers, who began to feel that the prospects for their journey were not as dismal as they’d once imagined.

H
aving finished the washing up, The Queen saw no point in hanging about. She was used to doing one thing and then going on to another in rapid succession. She knew she was off her schedule, but not out of her mind. Visiting
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had certainly reminded her of happier days, but it had also convinced her there was no point in going back.

Returning to London was another question altogether. As it was now late, she doubted there were any more buses. There was nothing for it but to hitch a lift. She knew people had done this all the time in the last war and never got into trouble. She’d also seen people with signs saying where they were going standing by the side of the motorway when she was on her way to engagements. They seemed, generally speaking, cheerful. She thought this was the only way back to Waverley station.

She came down the gangplank, waved at the young man in the security kiosk when he waved at her—it was instinct, really—and then wandered out to the main road where the bus had dropped her off. Not much traffic this time of night. Several cars passed by her at great speed. They didn’t seem to pay the least attention, or even to have seen her by the side of the road. She didn’t know if they didn’t wave back when she waved at them because they hated the monarchy, or because they couldn’t see her. At this she reached into her handbag and squeezed the rabbit’s foot. “Now hang on, Little Bit. It’s nothing to do with the Crown. It’s dark and they can’t see you, darling.” She felt better when she called herself “darling.” It meant she was on better terms with her conscience. Eventually she took off the scarf she had on over her head under the hoodie and began waving it at the next motor that came along the road.

Success. It was a young woman who pulled to the side. She opened the passenger side door, and in the flurry of getting in, The Queen dropped her scarf. Its luxurious silk folds carried it off in a cold gust of wind along the gutter. The Queen didn’t notice. She was happy to have a ride. The driver immediately began taxing her, though in affectionate tones, for being out so late. “Have you any idea what time it is? Not a time to be wandering the streets, my dear.”

The Queen felt safe to be with a young woman who called her “my dear.” She cleared her throat. “I expect you’re right.”

“No buses at this hour, my love.”

“Yes, I thought that might be so.” The Queen felt the ghost of a maternal pang herself. “And you, young lady . . . aren’t you out rather late yourself?”