The Queen and I (16 page)

The King is dead. Long live the King! thought Harris.

On Monday morning by the second post an airmail letter arrived.

Stage Door

Theatre Royal

Dunfermline Bay

South Island

New Zealand

Dearest Mummy,

I could hardly believe my
ears
when I heard the election result. Is it
too
foul, living on a council estate?

I said to Craig, the director, “I shall
have
to go home, Mummy needs support.” But Craig said, “Eddy, think about it, what can you
do
?”

And I
did
think about it and, as usual, Craig was right. It would be terribly unprofessional to leave a show halfway through a tour, wouldn’t it?

Sheep!
is doing great business. Many bums on many seats. It
is
a good show. And they are
such
a brilliant cast, Mummy! Real troupers. The sheep costumes are horribly hot to wear, let alone sing and dance in, but I have never heard a
word
of complaint from anybody in the company.

New Zealand is a little dull and a trifle behind the times. I saw a wedding party coming out of church yesterday and the bridegroom was wearing
flares
and a kipper tie. It was a hoot!

Craig has been a little depressed, but then he is never at his best in the rain. He needs the sun on his body in order to feel
whole
.

It was frightfully funny yesterday, one of the leads – Jenny Love – lost her sheep mask during her big number before the first act finale, “Lift the Wool from your Eyes”. She completely
corpsed
and could hardly bleat a word. Well, Craig and I were on the floor but the audience didn’t seem to notice that Jenny’s mask had fallen off. To tell the truth Jenny has got rather an
ovine
looking face.

We’re leaving for Australia next week. Advance bookings are very good, I wish you could see
Sheep!
, Mummy. The tunes are lovely and the dancing is terrific. We did have a few problems with the author, Verity Lawson. She and Craig had a major artistic disagreement about the slaughtering scene. Verity wanted a dead sheep to be lowered on a hook from the back of the stage, and Craig wanted the Ram (played by Marcus Lavender of
The Bill
) to perform a dance of death. In the end Craig won, but not until Verity had called in the Writers’ Union and made things generally unpleasant. Well, enough of this theatrical chit-chat, I’m sending you a
Sheep!
baseball cap, and also a programme. As you will see under “Tour Manager” I’ve changed my name to Ed Windmount. Ever the peacemaker, eh?

Love from Ed.

P.S. I have had a strange letter from Grandma telling me to rejoice because Everest has been conquered!

27 The Queen and I

The Queen met the daft teenager in the street as she was about to open Violet Toby’s gate. He was wearing a baseball cap with “E” written on the front. The Queen thought that “E” must stand for “Enjoyment” or possibly “Elton”, the popular singer. She asked about Leslie, his baby half-sister.

“She screams all night,” he said, and the Queen noticed that he had black circles under his eyes. “She’s wicked,” he added.

The Queen thought it was a little harsh to call a baby wicked. “Is that her dummy?” she said, pointing to the huge rubber dummy he was wearing on a ribbon around his neck.

“No, it’s mine,” he said.

“But aren’t you rather old for a dummy?” puzzled the Queen.

“No, it’s the business,” said the daft teenager, and he took a nasal block from amongst the voluminous folds of his trousers and stuffed it up his nostrils, and then, to the Queen’s surprise, smeared it over his face. “Have you got sinus trouble?” asked the Queen. “No,” said the daft one. “It gives me a buzz.”

As he walked away sucking on his dummy, the Queen warned, “The laces in your shoes are undone!”

The daft teenager shouted back: “They ain’t
shoes
; they’re trainers. An’
nobody
does the laces up no more, ’cept dorks!”

The Queen called for Violet Toby and the two women walked to the bus stop, talking about the latest crisis in Violet’s family. It was a sad story, involving marital disharmony, adultery and fractured bones. When they got on the bus they each grumbled about the fare.

“Sixty cowin’ pee,” said Violet.

Half an hour later they were in the huge covered market picking up vegetables and fruit from off the cobbled floor and putting them into their shopping bags.

“Right as rain when they’ve had a wash,” said Violet, examining some large pears which were only slightly puckered.

They were surrounded by shouting market traders who were dismantling their stalls. Expensive foreign-made vans waited at the kerb with their engines running. Traffic wardens prowled like big cats at feeding time. The poor were scavenging what they could before the Council cleaning squads arrived. The Queen bent down to retrieve brown speckled cooking apples that had collected around a drain cover and she thought, what am I
doing
? I could be in Calcutta. She picked the apples up and dropped them into her bag.

When Violet and the Queen got onto the bus they held out their sixty pences to the driver, but he said, “It’s a flat fare of fifteen pee now, regardless of journey.”

“Since when?” said Violet, incredulously.

“Since Mr Barker announced it an hour ago,” said the driver.

“Good for Mr Barker,” said the Queen, as she put the unexpected gift of forty-five pence back in her purse.

The driver said, “So it’s two fifteen pees, is it?”

“Yes,” said Violet, throwing thirty pence into the little black scoop next to the ticket machine. “For the Queen and I.”

28 Stepping Out

On Monday evening the Queen sat downstairs in Anne’s living room, talking to Spiggy about scrap metal. Anne was upstairs getting ready to go out to the Working Men’s Club and her mother had come round to babysit. Spiggy was dressed in his best, a new white shirt, a tie with a horses’ heads design and black crimplene trousers, held up with a wide leather belt with a lion’s head buckle. His cowboy boots had been reheeled and resoled. Earlier he had presented Anne with a single red plastic rose in a cone-shaped cellophane wrapper. The rose stood now, veering to the right, in a Lalique glass vase on Anne’s side table.

Spiggy had taken enormous trouble with his toilet. He had cleaned out the dirt under his fingernails with his penknife. He’d bought a new battery for his razor. He had gone to his mother’s for a bath and had washed and conditioned his long, shoulder-length hair. He had gone into a chemist’s and bought a bottle of aftershave, “Young Turk”, and had splashed it around his armpits and groin. He had selected his jewellery carefully, he didn’t want to look
too
flashy. He settled on wearing one thick gold chain around his neck, his chrome identity bracelet on his left wrist and just the three rings. The chunky silver with the skull and crossbones, the ruby signet and the gold sovereign.

Anne had dressed carefully in a figure-concealing A-line dress and flat shoes. She didn’t want to encourage Spiggy into thinking that their friendship was to become a sexual affair. Spiggy wasn’t her type; she preferred dark, slim, delicate-looking men. Spiggy’s rampant masculinity scared her a little. Anne needed to feel that she was in control.

The Queen saw them to the door and watched as they got into the van. She thought, if Philip knew about his only daughter’s assignation, it would
kill
him. She switched on the television and watched the news. According to the BBC, the country was about to undergo an exciting rejuvenation. All manner of things were to be changed. There would be cheaper gas and electricity and cleaner rivers. Trident was to be cancelled. There would be a maximum of twenty children to a classroom. There would be more money for schoolbooks, more doctors trained. New engineering colleges could open. Social security would be doubled. Late or missing giros were apparently to be a thing of the past.

The Queen watched as film footage was shown of out-of-work building workers as they besieged recruitment centres for what the BBC’s industrial correspondent said was to be “the largest public housing construction and renovation programme attempted in the country”.

Damp, cold houses were to be mere memories. The BBC’s medical correspondent confirmed that the economies due to the reduction of damp-related illnesses (bronchitis, pneumonia, some types of asthma) would save a fortune for the National Health Service. Then the outside broadcast unit took over and Jack Barker was seen on the steps of Number Ten Downing Street, waving the document that foresaw all these miraculous changes. The close-up showed the tide to be “The People’s Britain!” Multi-ethnic faces, smiling ecstatically, surrounded the royal blue lettering of the title on the pamphlet.

Another camera angle showed the gates at the bottom of Downing Street. Shot from below, the gates appeared to dwarf the pressing crowds standing behind. Jack stepped up to a microphone which was placed in front of Number Ten.

“This Government keeps its promises. We promised to build half a million new houses this year and we have already given jobs to a hundred thousand construction workers! Off the dole for the first time in years!”

The crowd yelled and whistled and stamped its feet.

“We promised to cut the price of public transport and we did.”

Once again the crowd went mad. Many of them had travelled in by train, tube and bus, leaving their cars at home.

Jack went on: “We promised to abolish the monarchy and we did. Buckingham Palace has been swept clean of parasites!”

A cut-away shot showed the crowd behind the barrier cheering louder than ever. Hats were literally thrown into the air.

The Queen shifted uneasily in her chair, discomfited by the enthusiasm shown by her former subjects for this particular achievement.

When the cheers had died away, Jack continued with fervour: “We promised you more open government and we will give you more open government. So let us now, together, remove the barrier that separates the Government from its people. Down with the barriers!”

And Jack left the microphone and in the growing darkness strode along Downing Street towards the crowd. “Jerusalem” blared out from preset speakers and men and women emerged from a parked van wearing fire-proof overalls and welding hoods. The crowd drew back as the men and women lit their oxyacetylene torches and proceeded to burn through the metal bars of the gates. Jack was handed a hood and welding equipment and began to burn through his own section. The outside broadcast continued even though darkness had fallen and the blue flame of the torches provided the only illumination in Downing Street.

The Queen watched the extended news programme with growing excitement. She also admired Jack’s sense of drama and his obvious flair for public relations. If only
she
had been able to call on the skills of somebody like Jack in the Buckingham Palace Press Office!

When the gates were brought down in a dramatic synchronised gesture, the crowd trampled them underfoot and surged into Downing Street, sweeping Jack along with them, and surrounded the front door of Number Ten. Fireworks exploded overhead and the faces that turned toward the sky carried expressions of happiness and hope.

Like the citizens in the crowd and those watching at home, the Queen fervently hoped that Jack’s expensive-sounding plans for Britain would come to fruition. There was a damp patch on her bedroom wall that was growing daily; her giro was never on time; and was it right that there should be thirty-nine pupils in William’s class and never enough books to go round?

The studio discussion that followed the news centred on the Thatcher years. The Queen found it too depressing to watch, so she turned over and watched John Wayne defending the weak against the powerful in the American Midwest. She wondered if she should call at the Christmases next door, where Zara and Peter were playing on the latest Sega game, Desert Storm, but she decided to leave them. She liked to watch cowboy films alone, without interruption.

When Peter and Zara returned they found their grandmother asleep in her chair. They switched off the television, quietly closed the living room door and put themselves to bed.

29 Apple Pie

Chief Inspector Holyland was on duty when the American television crew turned up at the barrier at Hell Close. The crew consisted of a cameraperson called Randy Fox, a cropped-haired individual of indeterminate sex wearing blue jeans, Nike running shoes, white tee-shirt and black leather jacket. Randy wore no make-up, but breasts were discernible. The presenter was an excitable young woman in a pink suit called Mary Jane Wokulski. Her golden hair blew in the wind like a pennant. The sound man, Bruno O’Flynn, held his microphone on high over the Chief Inspector’s head. He hated England and couldn’t understand why anybody
stayed
. For Chrissake,
look
at the place and the
people
. They all looked terminally ill. The director stepped forward. It was company policy that, when working in England, he should wear a suit, shirt and tie. It would open doors, he was told.

He spoke to the Inspector: “Hi there, we’re from NTV and we’d like to interview the Queen of England. I understand we have to check in here first. My name is Tom Dix.”

Holyland glanced at the ID card hanging from Dix’s navy pin stripe. “There is nobody called the Queen of England living in Hellebore Close.”