Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (36 page)

“And?”

“Well, they put one of those balloon thingys in her femoral artery. It cleared the blockage near the heart. Then they put in something to prop open the vessel, so it won’t collapse. If she gives up cigarettes,
and
cheese, the prognosis is good. A pity about the cheese. The doctors think she will make a full recovery.”

“Thank God.”

“Quite.”

“A scare, though.”

“Yes, well, I couldn’t tell which of you was the more frightened when we put her in the ambulance.”

Anne let this pass. She wasn’t entirely sure what The Queen meant by this. “On the left, Ma’am. Up ahead.”

The Queen turned to acknowledge a knot of pedestrians on a paved island in the roadway. They weren’t actually waiting to see her. They’d just paused in crossing the street to find out why the motorcycle outriders were stopping the traffic. The Queen raised her hand and waved. The people on the island gawked. Waving at her, let alone cheering “Hooray!” was not their first instinct.

“Well, you see,” began Anne, “Mrs MacDonald is thinking of retiring before too long. I thought of letting her have one of my spare bedrooms in Tite Street . . .”

“I know all about it. I think it’s an excellent plan.”

Anne was surprised. She didn’t think even she and Shirley had got down to agreeing upon the details, and already The Queen was ready to write “Approved” in her distinctive rounded hand on the deal. She said nothing.

“You’ll both want looking after. Shirley will need to convalesce. And then you and I, we’ll both be hobbling around ourselves before too long. I’ve set aside one of Queen Elizabeth’s sticks for you. As a way of saying thank you. Perhaps Shirley can help you when you begin to keel over.”

“On the right, Ma’am,” said Anne, as they approached a crowd of tourists in Parliament Square.

The Queen leaned forward and smiled at them. They looked back at her as if she were an alien. Only a little girl cried, “The Queen! The Queen!” and waved both arms frantically.

“That’s it,” said The Queen to Anne as she smiled at the little girl.

“Very kind of you, indeed, Ma’am,” said Anne formally, though she was touched, and knew that a gift of anything that had once belonged to her mother was a rare mark of favor from The Queen. “I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve it.”

“Of course you have. You’ve been many years with me now. And then coming all that way last night.”

“It was nothing, Ma’am.”

“Nonsense. Wasn’t nothing. And I’ve had a little discovery. Don’t need the royal train or
Britannia
to do what I do.”

“No, Ma’am. Of course not.”

“It’s given me a little boost. Done me a world of good. Can’t say why.”

“I’m so pleased, Ma’am.”

“And I’ve asked the apothecary to prescribe some pills.”

“What pills, Ma’am?”

“You know. The ones to cure worrying too much. I want to give them a try. Being unhappy takes up too much time. I’ve got a lot to do.”

Anne was aware how big a step this was for The Queen. Her mother was well known for describing aspirin as “that dangerous drug.” For The Queen even to consider taking antidepressants was virtually a revolution in her thinking. Before Anne could come up with the proper remark to acknowledge what The Queen had just said, they were pulling up to the theatre. “Here we are. To work, Lady Anne! To work,” said The Queen, grimly and almost gaily.

L
uke had requested, and The Queen had approved, a small alteration in the programme that had been decided upon months earlier for her attendance at the Old Vic gala. Ordinarily, only Lady Anne and he would have been in attendance, sitting with her in the royal box, with an officer from the Royal Protection outside the door in the corridor. William had asked Luke to find out whether an extra seat could be found for him in the theatre; and Rajiv had applied for two more on behalf of himself and Rebecca. Under the circumstances, and as the Old Vic was one of The Queen’s charities, to which she subscribed annually out of the Privy Purse, Luke had asked whether the theatre couldn’t find three additional seats for “The Queen’s guests.” The theatre management provided three seats in the center stalls on the ground floor within view of the royal box.

The Queen arrived at the front of the theatre, the big car coming to a slow, infinitesimal halt. As soon as her car door was opened, she got out and then stood for a moment, pretending to admire the front of the building. This was in fact so that the press photographers could get a good shot. She wouldn’t pose for them directly, or look at them head-on, but she would hold still while they photographed her doing something else. Afterwards, she went up the red carpeted steps to find the American actor first in the receiving line. “Thank you for all you’re doing for the London theatre,” she said to him as she took both his hands in both of hers. She would have given him only one hand ordinarily, but she felt she was inaugurating a new regime. The question had struck her as she was going up the steps to meet him. What did a little extra warmth cost her? Very little. It seemed to mean so much to the tea lady on Waverley railway station. So she gave him two hands. Then, swinging his hands deliberately to her left in the direction of Lady Anne, whom he was meant to greet next, she moved on to the next person in the line. It was the most effective way of indicating their conversation was over. Nevertheless, the Hollywood actor was radiant. He turned to Lady Anne and said, “Isn’t she cute?”

“Um, yes. Certainly,” she said doubtfully. “We’re so happy to be here tonight. I can’t tell you.” He didn’t understand that her “Certainly” meant “Stop behaving like an idiot,” or that “I can’t tell you” actually referred to the last twenty-four hours, when it sometimes looked as if they might never have made it to the Old Vic at all.

For the gala performance, the Old Vic had commissioned a Bollywood version of Shakespeare. The idea was to take his most patriotic play,
Henry V
, and set it to Indian music with a large cast as well as a full orchestra. The theatre had imported two of India’s best-known film actors to play the leads. Although the play itself was about a medieval English king warring with France, and reached its climax at the Battle of Agincourt, the costuming, the personnel, and the instruments were all Indian. The cross-pollination of cultures had the effect of universalizing the text, as well as slightly sending up some parts of the play that might otherwise be a little too nationalistic had they not been set to elaborately upbeat song-and-dance routines. The play’s memorable words had been preserved, however, and The Queen followed along in her copy of the play’s text, which the theatre had helpfully provided for her and all her party. She thought of it as a kind of timetable rather than a work of art. She could see by following along when it would all be over. She walked into the box and without hesitating went to the edge, where she acknowledged the applause of the audience. As she surveyed the crowd, she looked down and saw Rajiv giving her a comically deferential bow from the waist. William’s eye sparkled as he gave her a mild nod of the head. Rebecca just smiled shyly and lowered her eyes. She acknowledged them with a flicker of her eyelash, which all of them saw, but which went unnoticed by the rest of the audience.

A handsome young actor who played Chorus came out to ask the audience to conjure up entire mounted armies onstage. “Think when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth.” At this, Rajiv looked over at Rebecca, and, holding up his two hands as if they were a horse’s front hoofs, he made a little cantering motion, smiling broadly. At first she refused to look at him, but when he continued cantering, she looked at him and put her finger on her lips emphatically. He didn’t mind. Any attention from her he counted as a kind of victory.

After the introduction from Chorus, the Archbishop of Canterbury came onstage to conspire with another bishop. They needed to distract the king or he would impose a heavy tax on the Church. They hit upon the idea of advising Henry that he had the right to go to war with France to claim territory there. Henry replied skeptically to their advice, “Never two such kingdoms did contend without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops are every one a woe.”

Anne, who was sitting in the front row of the box with The Queen, turned around, looked at Luke, who was sitting behind them, and then reached out her hand to him. He reached forward with his hand and the two of them held hands for an instant.

The Queen, to her surprise, found herself enjoying the performance. Usually Shakespeare was rather heavy going and she would cast covert glances at the number of pages until the end of the act to see how many more minutes until the interval. But something about the music and dancing of the Bollywood
Henry V
made her enjoy the play more than she would have ordinarily. She discovered new resonance in the lines as she read along in her text.

The Queen and everyone in her box had coffee and sandwiches at the interval. “No wine!” she’d said when a waiter brought a tray of drinks to the box. “It will put me to sleep. Don’t want to miss anything. Coffee, please.” Neither Luke nor Anne felt they could take a glass if The Queen wasn’t having any, so they had coffee too. They’d all then retaken their seats to watch the play’s conclusion. Just as the play was reaching its climax, with Henry about to speak to his sodden, bedraggled men, vastly outnumbered by the opposing French army, before the battle at Agincourt, a police inspector in uniform came out onto the stage. At the same moment a quiet knock on the door to The Queen’s box made Luke step out into the corridor.

“Pardon me. Sorry! Apologize for the interruption! Sorry,” said the inspector on the stage.

The Bollywood actors looked at him in shock and fell in disarray from their carefully blocked positions on the stage. The orchestra, which had begun playing music to accompany Henry’s Agincourt speech, the most famous lines in the play, grew silent with an unplanned crash of cymbals and a ghostly sitar tailing off in a minor key.

The police inspector then walked out to center stage and turned first to address The Queen’s box, saying, “Your Majesty,” with a crisp nod of his head, before turning to the main audience in front and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry for this interruption to the performance. But I have to announce that there has been an incident, close by the theatre, at Waterloo.”

At this, murmuring rose from the stalls to the dress circle to the upper balconies.

“May I have quiet, please, ladies and gentlemen?” resumed the police inspector. “A bomb was discovered. It was defused before it could explode, but we have reason to believe that this was a terrorist event, and we are not completely certain that it is over. It may well have been aimed at Her Majesty’s presence here in the theatre, no more than a hundred paces from the railway station. The South Bank has been sealed off. We believe that it is unsafe for the public to leave the theatre at this time, so the Metropolitan Police would like to request your remaining here, in your seats, until we can give the all clear. Our duty is to protect the safety of the public, and given the nature of what has just occurred, we do not think it is safe for you to leave the building at this time. As soon as our investigations are complete, I will return and make an announcement to you all. It would assist us if you were to keep your seats until our investigations finish. We anticipate your being free to go before the evening is over, but at this time, we cannot allow you, for your own safety, to leave the premises.” The inspector then nodded to the audience, bowed once again to The Queen, and left the stage, walking quickly.

As soon as the inspector finished his speech and walked off the stage, the former quiet murmuring of the audience turned into agitation. The actors broke from their characters and grouped in clusters to discuss what they’d just heard. A woman in the front row fainted. Her husband poured a little water from his Evian bottle on her forehead. Others just faced forward in shock. The sound of a hundred different worried conversations rose into a muffled roar. Many looked up to the royal box for a cue about how to behave, what to do.

The Queen was not in the least surprised or frightened. She’d lived through the blitz of the Second World War. She could recall vividly the Irish Republican Army bombing London railway stations and murdering Lord Mountbatten when he was on his boat with his grandchildren in the 1970s. More recently she’d joined in the memorial service for those who died from the bombs of Islamic terrorists on the Tube and on several buses on the seventh of July 2007, 7/7/07, Britain’s own 9/11. During the memorial, she’d stood alone, silent, in front of the palace. She was fully prepared for more trouble. What the police inspector had described at Waterloo was not far different from the sort of terrorist attack that had been anticipated in briefing papers that had been circulated to her by the secret services.

Luke stepped back inside the box. He leaned over to whisper in The Queen’s ear. “Your Majesty, the police and secret services would like you to leave the theatre. They think there’s a small possibility that you are in danger and they would like to take you to safety.”

The Queen looked out into the theatre. She could see that members of the audience were upset and that order needed to be restored. “No, Major Thomason. We’re staying right here. We will wait with the others for the all clear signal. We face whatever it is together. If I go, they should all be allowed to go. If they must stay, I must stay too.”

“But, Ma’am . . .”

“Tell the police. Thank you.” Luke knew he had been dismissed and went back out to the corridor to convey The Queen’s decision.

The Queen resumed her survey of the audience and the groups of actors onstage. She picked up her copy of
Henry V
and slowly rose to her feet at the edge of the box.

The audience, through some archaic collective memory of right behavior, seeing The Queen on her feet, struggled to rise to their feet too. Anne quickly followed her example. With all the audience now standing, The Queen looked at them gravely, and then looked at Rajiv. She wanted the play to recommence. It was the only way to calm everyone down, and there was no point in sitting there doing nothing while they waited for the police to come back and let them go. Just as she’d expected, Rajiv had his copy of the play open too, and was following along. She looked at him directly, made eye contact, and then gently nodded her head in the direction of the stage. By a kind of sympathetic telepathy between them, he instantly knew what she wanted.