The Queen and I (23 page)

41 Reading the News

Next afternoon, Violet Toby knocked on the Queen’s back door and walked straight into the kitchen. She was holding that day’s edition of the
Middleton Mercury
. Harris poked his head out from under the kitchen table and growled at Violet, but she kicked out at him with the sharp point of a high-heeled shoe and he retreated. Violet found the Queen in the living room ironing a silk blouse. The Queen was having difficulty with the collar.

“Wretched thing keeps puckering,” she said.

Violet took the iron from the Queen, and checked the variable control switch. “You got it on linen,” she said. “Tha’s why.”

The Queen switched the iron off and invited Violet to sit down.

Violet said, “I wondered if you’ve seen this. It’s about your mam.”

She handed the Queen the open newspaper. On page seven, under a report that a white tee-shirt had been stolen from a washing line in the early hours of Sunday morning in Pigston Magna, was another small news item:

FORMER QUEEN MOTHER DIES

The former Queen Mother, who in 1967 opened the Casualty Department at Middleton Royal Hospital, has died in Hellebore Close, the Flowers Estate. She was 92.

The Queen gave the newspaper back to Violet who said, “Don’t you want to cut it out?”

“No,” said the Queen. “It’s hardly worth keeping, is it?” Then she noticed that the front page headline screamed: “LOAN CRISIS: JAPAN ISSUES ULTIMATUM.” She took the newspaper back from Violet and read that Jack Barker had been closeted in an eight-hour meeting with Treasury Officials, and the Japanese Finance Minister the previous day. No statement had been issued to the waiting media.

The
Middleton Mercury
’s financial correspondent, Marcus Moore, wrote that in his opinion, Britain faced its gravest crisis since the dark days of the War. He continued indignantly,

“No details about the precise collateral for the multi-billion yen loan have been made public. Mr Barker’s commitment to open government must now be seen as a sham. Why oh why, are we being kept in the dark? What has Britain pledged to give Japan? The
Middleton Mercury
insists, ‘WE MUST BE TOLD’.”

“Interesting, this Japanese loan thing,” said the Queen as she handed the paper back to Violet for the second time.

“Is it?” said Violet. “I couldn’t care less about politics myself. It don’t affect my life, does it?”

“But I thought you supported Jack Barker, Violet,” said the Queen.

“Yeah, I do,” said Violet, “But he’ll be out on ’is arse soon, won’t ’e?”

The Queen thought about the worsening financial crisis and agreed that Violet could be right. As she folded the ironing board away, and put it in the understairs cupboard, she wondered how she would feel about returning to Buckingham Palace. It would be awfully nice to have other, unseen hands to do her ironing for her of course, but the prospect of resuming her official duties made her shudder. She hoped that Jack would find a way out of his difficulties.

42 Working with Wood

The next day in Hell Close the Queen was watching as George Beresford knocked the last nail into the coffin.

“There,” he said. “Fit for a Queen, eh?”

“A beautiful job,” said the Queen. “How much do I owe you?”

George was offended. “Nowt,” he said. “It were only a few off-cuts and I already ’ad the nails.” He ran his hands over the coffin. Then he lifted the coffin lid away from where it leant against the garden fence and tried it for size.

“Lovely fit, though I shouldn’t say so myself.”

“I must pay you for your
time
,” insisted the Queen, who hoped that George’s time came cheap. The Social Services funeral grant was not extravagant.

George said, “I’m master of my own time now. If I can’t help a neighbour out, it’s a poor do.”

The Queen ran her hands over the lid of the coffin. “You’re a craftsman, George,” she said.

“I were apprenticed to a cabinet maker. I worked for Barlows for fifteen years,” he said.

The name meant nothing to the Queen, but she could tell from the proud tone of George’s voice that Barlows were a well-respected firm.

“Why did you leave Barlows?” she asked.

“I ’ad to look after the wife,” he said, his face clouding over.

“She was ill?” asked the Queen.

“She ’ad a stroke,” said George. “She were only thirty-three, never stopped talking. Anyroad, one minute she were waving me off to work, the next time I see ’er, she’s in hospital. Can’t talk, can’t move, can’t smile. She could cry though,” George said sadly. “Anyway,” he continued, still with his back to the Queen, “there were no one else to look after her. Wash ’er and feed ’er and stuff, and there were the little ’uns, our Tony and John, so I gave my job up. Then, after she’d passed on, Barlows had gone bust and all I could get was shopfittin’ work. I could do it with my eyes shut. Still it were work. I’m not happy if I’m not working. It’s not just the money,” he said. He turned round to face the Queen, anxious to make his point. “It’s just the feeling of … it’s somebody needin’ you … I mean, what
are
you if you’re not workin’? I ’ad some good mates at the shopfittin’,” he said. “I’ve lived on me own for three year and I’d be watchin’ a good telly programme and I’d be on me own and I’d think, in the morning I’ll tell me mates about this.” George laughed. “Pathetic really, i’n’t it?”

“Do you still see your mates?” asked the Queen.

“No, it don’t work like that,” said George. “I can’t
arrange
to see ’em; they’d think I’d gone soft.” He started to put his tools away into slots sewn inside a canvas bag. There was a home for each tool. The Queen noticed that “Barlows” was stamped in black ink inside the tool bag. She took a sweeping brush and started to sweep the curled wood shavings into a heap.

George took the brush from her, saying, “You shun’t be doin’ that.”

The Queen grabbed the brush back and said, “I’m perfectly capable of sweeping a few wood shavings …”

“No,” said George, regaining control of the brush. “You weren’t brought up to do the dirty work.”

“Then perhaps I should have been,” said the Queen, as she yanked the brush out of George’s hands again.

There was silence between them, each concentrated on their work. George polished the coffin and the Queen put the shavings into a black plastic bag. Then George said, “I’m sorry about your mam.”

“Thank you,” said the Queen, and burst into tears for the first time since her mother’s death. George put his cloth down and took the Queen in his arms, saying, “There, there, let it all out. Go on, you ’ave a good cry.”

The Queen did have a good cry. George led her inside his neat home, showed her the sofa, ordered her to lie down, gave her a toilet roll to mop her tears and left her to her own misery. He knew that she would prefer it if he wasn’t there to watch her abandon herself to her grief. After fifteen minutes, when her sobs had subsided a little, he carried a tray of tea into the living room. The Queen sat up and took the cup and saucer that he offered her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“I’m not,” said George.

As they drank their tea, the Queen tried to work out exactly how many cups of tea she had drunk since she’d moved to Hell Close. It must be hundreds.

“Such a comfort, a cup of tea,” she said aloud to George.

“It’s hot and cheap,” said George. “A bit of a treat when you’ve got nowt. An’ it breaks the day up, don’t it?”

The Queen emptied her cup and held it out to be refilled. She wanted to rest a while before tackling the other funeral arrangements.

Spiggy and Anne knocked on the back door and came through.

“Your mam’s ’ad a good cry,” said George to Anne.

“Good,” said Anne, and she sat on the arm of the sofa and patted her mother on the shoulder. Spiggy stood behind the Queen and squeezed her right arm in a clumsy gesture of condolence.

Anne said, “Spiggy and I have sorted out how to get Gran’s coffin to the church.”

“You’ve found somebody with an estate car?” asked the Queen, who had already worked out that a hearse and two cars for the mourners was financially impossible.

“No,” said Anne. “Gilbert can pull the coffin.”

“On what?”

“On Spiggy’s dad’s cart.”

“Only needs a lick of paint,” said Spiggy.

“I’ve got some tins out the back,” said George, warming to the idea.

The Queen said, “But Anne darling, Mummy
can’t
be buried from the back of a gypsy cart.”

Anne, who in her former life had been associated with Romany causes, bristled slightly at this slur. However, Spiggy, whose body coursed with Romany blood, took no offence. He said,

“I c’n see your mam’s point of view, Anne. I mean, it ain’t exactly a state funeral, is it?”

George said to the Queen, “Your mam wouldn’t mind. Whenever I saw ’er in a carriage she looked happy enough.”

The Queen was too sad and tired to raise any more objections, so preparations went ahead that afternoon for a Hell Close-style state funeral. Black and purple paint were considered to be suitable colours for the fresh paintwork on the cart and George, Spiggy and Anne began to rub off the old carnival colours and prepare the cart for its more sombre outing in two days’ time.

43 Indoor Pursuits

It was the night of the annual dinner of the Outdoor Pursuits Association of Great Britain at the National (formerly Royal) Geographical Society. The banqueting hall was full of men and women with weatherbeaten faces and hearty appetites. Canoeists chatted to mountaineers. Orienteers swapped anecdotes with proprietors of sports equipment shops. Most of the guests looked uncomfortable in their formal evening wear, as if they couldn’t wait to change back into their rugged outdoor clothes.

Jack Barker was the guest of honour. He sat at the top table, flanked by an official of the British Canoe Union and the Chairperson of the Caving Association of Great Britain. Jack was bored out of his brain. He hated the outdoors, but at this particular moment he would gladly have climbed Ben Nevis backwards and naked rather than endure yet another interminable story about being trapped in a flooded cave. He pushed his soup bowl away – the soup tasted fishy.

“What’s the soup?” he asked the Master of Ceremonies, who stood behind him.

“Fish, Prime Minister,” answered the flunkey.

By the time Jack was halfway through his Coronation Chicken he had begun to sweat and the colour had gone from his face.

The British Canoe Union official bent towards Jack and asked with concern, “Are you all right, sir?”

“I’m not sure,” answered Jack.

Eric Tremaine, who was attending the dinner in his role as a member of the Caravan and Camping Club of Great Britain, watched triumphantly from a more humbly placed table as Jack was led away by the Master of Ceremonies.

“Most undignified,” Eric remarked to his neighbour, a free-fall parachutist, as Jack vomited uncontrollably into the water jug that he clutched in his hands.

When the contents of Jack’s soup bowl were analysed in the laboratories of St Thomas’s Hospital, the liquid was found to contain elements of a common weedkiller and a tiny proportion of a liquidised slug pellet.

As no other guest at the dinner had suffered Jack’s fate, the conclusion drawn by the doctors at the hospital and the police forensic experts was that an amateurish attempt had been made to poison the Prime Minister.

Eric Tremaine sat inside his caravan in a layby near East Croydon next morning. He re-read the headline for the third time: “P.M. SURVIVES SLUG PELLET ASSAULT” and threw his paper down in disgust.

44 A Walk up Cowslip Hill

The Queen woke early on the morning of the funeral. She lay awake thinking about her mother, then got out of bed and looked out of the window. Hell Close was flooded in sunshine. She noticed that Fitzroy Toussaint’s car was parked outside Diana’s house.

The Queen searched through a tangled mass of flesh-coloured tights and eventually found a pair that were not too badly laddered. She dressed in a navy blue wool dress and rummaged around in the bottom of the wardrobe for her navy court shoes. She went into the box room and looked through the boxes until she found a suitable hat: navy with a white petersham ribbon. She tried the hat on in front of the bathroom mirror. How like my old self I look, she thought. Since moving into Hell Close she had lived in comfortable skirts and sweaters. She now felt stiff and over-formal in her funeral outfit.

She went downstairs and fed Harris, who was waiting outside the back kitchen door, then made herself a strong mug of tea, which she took outside into the back garden to drink. She noticed that Beverley Threadgold’s washing line was pegged out with children’s clothes, which swayed in the slight breeze. She could hear the scream of Beverley’s twin-tub as it built up to its spin cycle. Looking across to Anne’s garden she could see Gilbert munching on a bale of hay. Now, all around her, she could hear water running and doors slamming and voices calling to each other as the inhabitants of Hell Close left their beds and prepared for the early morning funeral.

The Queen went back into the house, brushed her hair, applied a little make-up, collected her handbag, gloves and hat, and left by the front door. She crossed the road and went into her mother’s bungalow. The curtains were closed, as was the custom in Hell Close, signifying that a death had occurred. Philomena was in the kitchen, buttering a heap of sliced white bread. Fillings for the sandwiches: orange grated cheese, slices of pink spam, and a block of beige meat paste lay on greaseproof paper, waiting to be inserted into the bread and made into sandwiches for the after-funeral reception. Violet Toby came in carrying a tray full of little cakes covered in various garish shades of icing.

“How kind,” said the Queen.

Beverley Threadgold was next, with a large fruit cake which was only a little burnt around the sides. Soon the little formica table in the centre of the kitchen was laden with food.