Queen Camilla (8 page)

At that moment, having ruined his daughter’s wedding day and humiliated himself in front of the world, Jack vowed to rid England of dogs.

When the Queen emerged from the pliers woman’s house, holding a clean white handkerchief against her jaw, she saw, with some disgust, that Harris and Britney were mating in the middle of the road, and were holding up the traffic.

Susan ran up to the Queen and howled, ‘He’s gone too far this time. He’s humiliated me for the last time.’

The Queen made several futile attempts to separate the conjoined dogs, but nothing would disconnect them. A van driver at the head of the queue of traffic sounded his horn and shouted, ‘If that was ’umans doing it in the middle of the road, they’d be arrested.’

Seeing the Queen’s distress, Violet went into the house and came out moments later with a bucket of water, which she threw over the two trysting dogs. They flew apart immediately and the Queen angrily clipped the lead on Harris’s collar and dragged him back to Hell Close.

Several people had stopped her on the way to say that they would be sorry to see her leaving the Fez. Maddo Clarke, skunk dealer and single father of seven unruly boys, said, ‘We seen it on the news, ’ow you might be going home to Buckingham Palace like. I said to one of my customers, ’ow you brung a bit of class to the neighbourhood like.’

Violet said, after Maddo had lurched away, ‘I know it’s not the done thing to talk about why we’re all in the Exclusion Zone, but do you know why Maddo got sent here?’

The Queen bent her head to hear Violet’s story.

Everyone in Hell Close had at least one dog, except for Maddo Clarke, who had been forbidden by a magistrates court after the five dogs he’d owned at the time had destroyed the council house he rented and made it unfit for human habitation. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had brought a prosecution, claiming that Maddo’s dogs were emaciated and covered in sores caused by untreated flea bites. Maddo had defended himself in court, maintaining that a thin dog was a fit dog and that fleas were nature’s natural parasites. When the five dogs had been rounded up and taken away, Maddo was bereft; he started drinking heavily and then stumbled into the brotherhood of the drug-dependent.

Finally, when to his great disappointment, his wife Hazel gave birth to a seventh boy, Maddo cracked, and under the influence of drugs and drink tried to snatch a baby girl from a maternity-ward nursery and substitute his newborn son for the day-old child. He was caught trying to remove the kidnapped child’s plastic identity bracelet with his teeth, earning him the sobriquet of ‘Wolf Man’ after a headline in the popular press: ‘WOLF MAN GNAWS ON BABY’S ARM.’

For some reason, Maddo had always blamed his five-year prison sentence and subsequent banishment to an Exclusion Zone on dogs.

As Violet and the Queen turned into Hell Close, the Queen saw Camilla in her front garden planting bulbs. Camilla looked up and said, ‘Beverley Threadgold told me you were having a tooth pulled by the pliers woman. Was it wretched?’

The Queen prodded the gap where the molar had been with the tip of her tongue and said, ‘Not as wretched as watching one’s dog copulate in public.’

Later, after a rest on the sofa, the Queen was cleaning her front-room windows when she saw Arthur Grice’s yellow Rolls-Royce draw up outside her house. Grice’s Dobermann, Rocky, could be seen snarling on the back seat. The Queen ducked out of sight and hoped that Grice was not about to call on her; she was not dressed for company. She was wearing an apron and slippers and had two plastic rollers in the front of her hair.

To her great annoyance, she heard an aggressive knock on the front door. Harris and Susan ran into the hallway and barked their usual hysterical warning. The Queen tore her apron off, snatched the rollers out of her hair and stuffed them into a drawer of the Chippendale bureau in the hall. As she reluctantly opened the door, Arthur Grice removed his custom-made baseball cap and swept it in front of his bulky body with a theatrical gesture, reminiscent of a bad actor in a Restoration drama. He then gave a deep bow and waited for the Queen to speak first.

Arthur had ordered Sandra, his wife, to download and print out a few pages on royal etiquette from the Web. The pages had told him he must not address the Queen first, but must wait until she had spoken to him.
He must not touch her on any part of her body. He must call her ‘Your Majesty’ the first time he spoke to her, and thereafter call her ‘Ma’am’.

After a brief silence, the Queen said, ‘Mr Grice, how do you do?’

Grice lifted his head and gave the Queen one of his rarely seen smiles. ‘I’m all right, Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m champion.’

The Queen led him into the front room; it was the closest she had ever been to Grice. His face and scalp showed the evidence of a life lived in violent confrontation; knives, knuckles and broken bottles had embedded themselves in Grice as he had battled and cheated his way to riches. The Queen did not ask him to sit down and they stood facing each other, Grice’s bulk towering over the Queen’s slight frame.

The Queen said, ‘How may I help you, Mr Grice?’

Grice said, ‘It’s not so much me I’ve come about, Ma’am. It’s my wife, Sandra.’

The Queen nodded.

Grice rumbled on. ‘I don’t know if you are aware, Ma’am, but Sandra runs herself ragged for ’er charities.’

‘And what are your wife’s charities?’ asked the Queen.

Grice said, ‘She’s the one what started VOICE.’

‘Voice?’ queried the Queen.

Grice said, slowly and carefully, ‘Victims Of Incompetent Silicone Enhancement.’ He then added, ‘She ’ad a boob job what went wrong. One of ’er boobs is twice the size of the other. She’s lopsided for life.’

Grice dropped his head and stared gloomily at the floor.

The Queen murmured, ‘How very unfortunate.’

Grice said, ‘An’ she does a lot of work with teenage boys.’

‘Very admirable,’ said the Queen, who had often seen Mrs Grice driving around the estate playing pounding music in her cabriolet with various louts in the front passenger seat. Mrs Grice had been cosmetically enhanced to such a degree that she looked like a suntanned trainee astronaut undergoing G-force training.

The Queen said, ‘And your point is, Mr Grice?’

Grice said, ‘You wun’t believe the grief she gets from some people. They’re jealous of course, she’s a beautiful woman an’ she ain’t ashamed to show her body off. Some people put it about that she’s a slag. I had ’em dealt with, but if she was Lady Grice she’d feel a bit better about herself.’

The Queen muttered, ‘No doubt.’

Grice said, ‘So if you could see yourself honouring her like.’

The Queen played for time, saying, ‘Perhaps, in the future…’

Grice said, ‘Couldn’t you give me a knighthood, now, while I’m here. I’ve gotta sword in the boot of the Rolls.’

The Queen said, ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Grice. There is a procedure to be followed… advisory committees.’

Grice said, ‘But you’ll be the Queen again soon. If you wanted to honour a local philanthropist what’s overcome all the odds to run the biggest scaffolding business in the Midlands an’ who owns an Exclusion Zone, who could stop you?’

The Queen looked up into Grice’s scarred face and said, ‘I’m afraid my answer is no, Mr Grice.’

‘No?’ said Grice, who rarely heard the word. ‘But I’m the biggest employer on this estate. I break my back for charity. It was me what funded the academy.’

The Queen said, ‘We live in an age when every citizen is of equal worth, Mr Grice. I no longer have the power or, quite frankly, the inclination to grant your wish.’

Grice said, ‘But I set your grandson on as a scaffolder.’

The Queen said, ‘I’m sure William is an excellent scaffolder. He’s a very conscientious boy.’

Grice said, more to himself than to the Queen, ‘She’s ordered new address cards with Sir Arthur and Lady Grice and a coat of arms on ’em. Three scaffolding poles in a triangular configuration with a rampant lion and a panda bear in the centre; she loves pandas.’

The Queen said, ‘It was somewhat premature of your wife to have ordered new stationery, Mr Grice.’

‘She’s an impulsive woman,’ said Grice.

He was not looking forward to going home to his restored watermill and telling his wife that he had failed to secure her an honour. She was high maintenance, he thought. He’d spent two hundred and fifty grand on doing the Old Mill up, and his wife was already banging on that the sound of the water got on her nerves.

‘Well, perhaps when you leave ’ere, you’ll visit me and my wife at home, Your Majesty. We’ve got a glass floor in the living room so you can watch the water
going by. We’re both nature lovers,’ he said, ‘like yourself.’

The Queen gave him one of her frosty smiles but he did not respond. She walked to the front door and opened it, giving Grice no option but to leave the house. Harris and Susan stood on the doorstep barking at the Dobermann on the back seat.

‘
Heil
, Rocky, we hope you fall through the glass floor and drown!’ barked Harris. Rocky threw himself against the car window in a frenzy of frustrated anger.

Grice shouted, ‘Get down, you stupid bleeder!’ Once inside the car he added, ‘Another do like that, Rocky, and I’ll have your balls cut off and fried up for me tea.’

Rocky lay down on the back seat and calmed himself. Grice didn’t make idle threats.

The Queen realized she could no longer ignore the possibility that she would have to once again take up her royal duties, and decided that the Royal Family should have a meeting to discuss the possibility of their return to public life. But first she would visit her husband and ask him for advice.

HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, had been confined to bed for two years after suffering a stroke that snatched away his vision, memory and mobility. He was a long-stay resident in the Frank Bruno House nursing home at the far end of Arthur Road, which ran through the centre of the Fez, a fifteen-minute walk from Hell Close. He languished in a dark back room that he shared with a garrulous former trade union official – the wheelchair-bound Harold Bunion,
aka ‘Bolshie’ Bunion. Bolshie talked in his sleep with the same aggrieved tone he used in the day, when he was fully, aggressively, awake.

The Duke of Edinburgh was confined to his bed and considered himself a prisoner of Bolshie’s. He constantly complained to the staff that he had been moved from Heaven, the royal palaces, into Hell, the Fez, and was now living in Purgatory.

Dogs were not allowed inside Frank Bruno House, so the Queen tied Harris and Susan by their leads to a wooden bench bearing a little bronze plaque, on which was written ‘This seat is dedicated to the memory of Wilf Toby: 1922–1997’. Until recently, residents of Frank Bruno House had been allowed, even encouraged, to sit on the bench. Others had sat nearby in their wheelchairs, to take the air and watch life on the estate pass by. However, the new manager, Mrs Cynthia Hedge, had stopped this practice. She was a firm-jawed woman who maintained that she was introducing a ‘locked-door policy’, to protect the residents from a possible terrorist attack.

The Queen pressed the intercom at the side of the door and waited in the cold wind for it to be answered. Eventually a voice crackled something incomprehensible. The Queen shouted, ‘It’s Elizabeth Windsor,’ into the intercom.

Several long minutes passed, during which an old lady in a nightgown, with hair like a dandelion gone to seed, made obscene gestures at the Queen through the plate-glass door. Eventually, Mrs Hedge herself, not often to be seen in contact with the residents, led the
old lady away, then returned and opened the door to the Queen.

Mrs Hedge said brusquely, ‘Identity card, please.’

The Queen said, ‘I’m terribly sorry but I have temporarily mislaid my card.’

‘Then I can’t let you in,’ said Mrs Hedge. ‘Now you’ll have to excuse me, we are short-staffed. Three of the Somalis have not turned up for work.’

The Queen laughed. She said, ‘But you know who I am, Mrs Hedge.’ She laughed again and tried to pass through the door.

Mrs Hedge barred her way, saying, ‘I’m sorry you have such a light-hearted attitude towards security and the war against terror, Mrs Windsor.’

The Queen said, ‘Mrs Hedge, I do not think that Frank Bruno House is a likely target for Hamas or Al Qaeda.’

Mrs Hedge said, ‘If I were to let you in without a valid ID card, it would invalidate our insurance.’

Harris jumped up at the Queen and barked, ‘Your card is down the back of the sofa! How many more times, woman!’

Susan joined in, barking, ‘Take us home and we’ll find it for you!’

The Queen shouted, ‘Quiet! Quiet! You silly dogs.’

They stopped barking and fell into a sulk. Harris said, ‘You try to help them out and what do you get? Abuse.’

Mrs Hedge closed the door. The Queen untied the dogs and dragged them home.

When they arrived at the house Harris and Susan ran
into the sitting room and began to drag the cushions off the sofa. Harris forgot for a moment that he was burrowing into soft upholstery and imagined himself feral, out in the field, digging for a small warm-blooded creature that he could savage, kill and then eat.

The Queen was appalled at Harris and Susan’s behaviour. ‘You horrid little dogs,’ she shouted. ‘Look what you’ve done to my sofa.’

She smacked the dogs away from the torn upholstery. A few goose feathers had escaped from the tapestry cushions and were floating, like tiny feathered gliders, in the air.

Harris growled to Susan, ‘Shall I risk another slap and go for it?’

Susan growled, ‘If you find her the card there’ll be something in it for us. There’s a box of mint-flavoured Bonios on the top shelf.’

Before the Queen could replace the cushions, Harris leapt on to the sofa and stuck his muzzle down the back. Ignoring the blows the Queen was raining on him, he pulled out a black Mont Blanc pen, a handkerchief and the mislaid identity card.

The Queen was delighted and said, ‘Clever boy, Harris, clever boy!’

Harris and Susan ran into the kitchen and looked up at the top shelf in the small pantry where the Queen kept the dog treats.