Queen Camilla (22 page)

Violet said, ‘I can’t tell our Chantelle to look out for ’im either. She tried to go to work this morning, but the police turned ’er back. So I’ve got ’er and Chanel moping round the ’ouse, an’ Barry talkin’ to ’imself in ’is bedroom. They’re as wound up as a milkman’s alarm clock.’

The Queen said, ‘Stay here, Violet. We’ll have some lunch and watch the afternoon film.’

Violet said, ‘With a bit of luck, it’ll be in black and white.’

Both women believed that films had deteriorated since colour was introduced.

Panic broke out among the residents when the Grice grocery van pulled into Hell Close. Earlier that morning a rumour had swept from house to house that there would not be enough food to go round. Beverley Threadgold claimed she had heard on the grapevine that the residents were to be given British army rations earmarked for Afghanistan. She had told Maddo Clarke, who had in turn passed it on to Chantelle Toby, that they were expected to live on dehydration salts and dry biscuits.

Grice security police, in riot gear, had bellowed at the residents to form a queue. But panicked by the thought of going hungry, several people, including Prince Andrew, pushed to the front and were beaten back with batons. Camilla watched from the doorstep as Charles was pushed further and further back until he was at the very end of the agitated queue.

When Princess Anne walked by with a cardboard box full of groceries, she said, ‘Camilla, if I were you I’d go inside and close the door. People are blaming you for this and things could turn nasty.’

Camilla took Anne’s advice.

The Hell Close dogs were also in a state of agitation; examination of the first food box carried away by
Barry Toby revealed that there was no dog food among the tins, packets and bottles.

Micky said to Leo, ‘It’s gonna be dog eat dog,’ as he followed Barry back to the house.

When Charles finally arrived home, he and Camilla unpacked the groceries on to the kitchen table. They were far from being army rations, which are meticulously assembled for nutritional and calorific value. These foods were devoid of minerals, vitamins, fibre, goodness and taste. Most of them had been processed from dubious ingredients in eastern European industrial units.

Camilla said, ‘We’ve run out of loo roll and there’s none here.’

Grice’s groceries included a tin of pink sausages in brine, two ‘Mexican-style’ pot noodles, a box of economy tea bags, a chicken and mushroom pie (three days past its sell-by date), a tin of spam, a tin of grey mince, two tired leeks, a bag of defrosted oven chips, a block of margarine and one of lard, a white sliced loaf, a pot of Slovenian jam, a two-pound bag of granulated sugar, and surprisingly, in the bottom of the box, under a packet of Vesta chow mein, an envelope bearing the House of Commons portcullis.

Dwayne Lockhart had lifted the visor on his helmet as he handed Charles his provisions, and whispered, ‘There’s a bit of a treat for you in the bottom of the box.’

Charles opened the envelope and read:

Sir Nicholas Soames

House of Commons

Westminster

To His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales

c/o PC Dwayne Lockhart

Flat 31, The Old Abattoir

Leicester

East Midlands Region

My Dearest Charles,

How could you think that I would desert you in your hour of need? I confess myself hurt that you think me capable of such calumny.

I was knocked sideways when my man brought your letter to me in bed this morning. I recognized your distinctive hand and almost choked on my Cumberland sausage.

I am somewhat baffled myself as to why you have not received my numerous letters. I curse myself now for not having made copies; mes belles lettres would have transmogrified into a decent little book, ‘Letters to a Prince in Exile’. What do you think, eh?

I managed to get some shooting in at Buffy Haight-Fernemore’s place in Northampton – a couple of dozen brace of partridge and, as a special request from Buffy’s Mallorcan cook, a dozen larks for a pie.

Did you see the television footage of our illustrious Prime Minister, Mr Barker, stepping into the dog poo? It was priceless. Goofy Guggenheim, who was there at the Abbey in an aisle seat, said the smell was so foul that he almost retched into his top hat.

Buffy tells me that Boy English is so confident of winning
the election that he has already contracted Colefax and Fowler to do up Number Ten. He also advised me to put money on it. Apparently the odds are extremely favourable on him winning. It will be simply marvellous to have you back in London.

I consulted the top chap at Burke’s Peerage and there is no sound constitutional reason why Camilla cannot be your queen. The public are a little lukewarm, but they could, I think, be made to learn to love Camilla as you and I do. Anyway, that’s far into the future, as your mama will undoubtedly live to be a hundred!!!

Must dash, I’m speaking against the Stepladder Bill in twenty minutes but I wanted to get back to you asap.

Love to Camilla and your mother, Her Majesty, of course.

Yours, as always

Nick

Charles passed the letter to Camilla and said, ‘Fatty seems to think we could be back in London in only six weeks. It’s terribly exciting, isn’t it, darling?’

Camilla said, faintly, ‘Yes, terribly,’ and turned away from him as she began to put the groceries away.

Charles asked, ‘Is anything wrong, darling? You seem a little, er… distracted.’

Camilla said, ‘It’s nothing. I’m worried about the loo paper. How will I blow my nose?’

Charles said, ‘It’s not like you to let a small problem, such as a lack of loo paper, get you down. What is it, darling?’

‘The people hate me,’ she burst out. ‘I don’t want to be queen.’

Charles said, ‘How could anybody hate you? You’re utterly adorable.’

Camilla said, sadly, ‘There are three people in our marriage, Charlie. She’s still around in people’s memories. They loved her because she was beautiful.’

Charles said, comfortingly, ‘At a certain angle, in a flattering light, with professional make-up and an expert hairdresser, I admit she could sometimes look beautiful.’

Camilla shouted. ‘What do they expect? I’m fifteen years older than her.’

‘But,
I
think you’re beautiful,’ said Charles.

Camilla shouted back, ‘Have you any idea how insulting that is?’ She opened the back door and was about to run down the garden when she remembered that she was under house arrest.

Beverley Threadgold shouted through the party wall, ‘Ay oop, Camilla, I’ll swap you a toilet roll for a bag of sugar. And don’t beat yourself up about ’is first wife, she would only have got ’ard-faced, running around wi’ them Eurotrash gangsters.’

Later that evening, Charles went out to talk to the hens. He explained to them that food was in short supply and that he would be awfully grateful if they could manage to produce a few eggs. The creatures did not seemingly pay any attention to his entreaties; they continued to cluck and scratch at the earth inside their wire compound. At the bottom of the garden the fox had scrambled through the narrow gap it had burrowed under the wire fence and stood quite brazenly watching
Charles. It was some time before Charles saw the pair of glittering eyes that appeared to be assessing him.

The fox said, ‘We have a family connection, Your Royal Highness. You, together with your wife and friends, hunted down and tore apart my great-great-great-grandmother in a copse in Leicestershire. Family legend has it that the hounds followed her scent for miles across the Vale of Belvoir.

‘At dusk, exhausted and terrified, she ran from the fields into a private garden to seek sanctuary from a sympathetic householder. The hounds maddened and encouraged by the humans following on horseback, jumped over the garden fence and corralled my ancestor, forcing her through the open door of a greenhouse. A witness reported that my great-great-great-grandmother begged the hounds for mercy, telling them that she had cubs at home that needed her milk. She cried that if the hounds killed her, they would also kill her cubs, who would die slowly and painfully of starvation.

‘She appealed to them, saying, “You and I are the same species, we owe allegiance to each other, not to humankind.” But the hounds were baying with bloodlust and few heard her appeal. Before the first dog could sink his teeth into her fur and flesh, her heart burst. Again, legend has it that in the few moments remaining of her life, my great-great-great-grandmother cursed you and your kind, and predicted that there would be great tragedy in your life. I am here now to witness events as you and your family tear yourselves apart.’

As Charles and the fox stared into each other’s eyes, Charles had a terrible
sense of foreboding and shouted, ‘Be away with you.’ But the fox stood his ground. Charles picked up a terracotta flowerpot and threw it at the fox, but before it landed the fox had disappeared.

Camilla was waiting to listen to
The Archers
– there had been another suicide in Ambridge due to an organic sausage business failure – but before the familiar music played, she shouted from the back doorstep, ‘I’ve just heard the seven o’clock news. Avian flu has been found along the M1 corridor; we have to bring the poultry indoors.’

‘Indoors?’ queried Charles. ‘Are you sure, darling?’

‘Quite sure,’ she said. ‘The minister from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said quite explicitly that all poultry are to be brought indoors.’

It seemed to take forever to capture the two hens. Eccles escaped from Charles’s hands and flew on to the Threadgolds’ fence, causing Vince Threadgold to shout from his back door that, ‘If me or Bev gets avian flu, I’ll torch your house and destroy your family, fair enough?’

Charles said, ‘Certainly, fair enough.’ Eventually he managed to grab both of the hens and throw them into the kitchen.

With dogs and hens milling around their feet, Camilla said, ‘They’re going to make a dreadful mess.’

Charles said, ‘Darling, it’s a peasant tradition to share one’s living quarters with animals.’

Camilla said, with more vehemence than she’d
intended, ‘But we are
not
peasants, Charles. You’re
certainly
not; you listen to the Reith Lectures and own a pair of black velvet evening slippers.’ She went into the sitting room, closing the kitchen door firmly behind her.

Charles began to clean the floor of hen droppings. Freddie stood by the pantry door, assessing the contents, and thought, by my estimation the dog food will run out by tomorrow evening. He growled and snapped at the hens, who were already pecking at the few remaining crumbs of biscuits in the three dog-feeding bowls. The hens fluttered up to the draining board, giving Freddie the opportunity to inspect them more carefully. He reckoned that, of the two, Moriarty would provide the better meal.

Later that night, after listening more carefully to the news, a shamefaced Charles rounded up the hens and took them back to their coop and locked them inside their nesting shed. On his return, he said to Camilla, ‘They’re going to miss their freedom dreadfully.’

Camilla said, ‘I know exactly how they feel.’

Dwayne kept his eye on Paris Butterworth by watching her on CCTV. He was delighted when she finally picked up
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. He didn’t mind that she moved her lips when she read; it proved to him that she was a diligent reader. He was immensely proud of her when, only a few days later, she reached the notoriously difficult middle section of the book, where Orwell lectures the reader about the nature of totalitarianism. Dwayne had skipped a few of the more impenetrable passages,
but Paris had ploughed on through the scholarly text, stopping only to look up a few words in the dictionary she had borrowed from school and never taken back. Sometimes, when Fifty-cents was fretful and tired of the television, Paris turned his pushchair around to face her and read aloud to him from the book. Fifty-cents seemed to be entertained by
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, though Dwayne suspected that it was his mother’s attention he really enjoyed.

Dwayne couldn’t wait to see Paris again and have a literary discussion. The last time he had talked about books to his colleagues, it had resulted in them calling him Dorky Dwayne. Afterwards, Inspector Lancer had taken him aside and confided in him that he, himself, had read several books in the fifteen years since leaving school and had ‘quite enjoyed them’. Dwayne was preoccupied with how he could visit Paris without it being noticed. It was not only that he wanted to talk about
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. He suspected that the strange ache he had around his heart might be caused by love. He was too young for it to be angina.

There was an atmosphere of barely controlled hysteria in the chamber of the House of Commons as the elected members waited for the entrance of the Prime Minister. Boy English, flanked by a handsome black woman, the Member for Grimsby North, and the famously flamboyant gay Member for Shropshire South, was looking happy and relaxed in his ‘man of the people’ Marks and Spencer’s dark-blue ‘Italian’ suit, white shirt and pink tie.

The colour of the tie had been the subject of an acrimonious row between Boy’s media adviser and his team of stylists. Baby blue had been rejected by some because it ‘lacked gravitas’, olive green because it was ‘militaristic’; red was ‘bolshie’, maroon ‘old fart’, silver ‘bride’s father’; brown could signify ‘depression’; yellow indicated ‘cowardice’; lilac, purple and lime green were considered by some as ‘opportunistic’; royal blue was rejected as being ‘a bit Harold Macmillanish’. Eventually, as the clock ticked remorselessly towards noon, the choice came down to baby pink – non-threatening, women love pink, pink is optimistic and fun – or pistachio green, a colour that many people painted their walls. With five minutes to go, Boy chose the pink and, pausing only to allow a stylist to tease a curly lock of hair over his forehead, he left his office.