Queen Camilla Read online

  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.

  ‘There,’ she said, giving each dog a greenish bone-shaped biscuit. ‘Eat these and go to your baskets.’

  The Queen herself would have liked to rest for a while, she was feeling every one of her eighty years, and her jaw was throbbing, but she had not visited her husband for two consecutive days and she knew that he would be fretting for her. So, after placing her ID card carefully in her handbag, she left the house again, and leaving the dogs to sleep, retraced her steps to Frank Bruno House.

  The light was fading when Chantelle Toby, trainee care assistant and sister of Chanel, opened the door to the Queen.

  Chantelle said, ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Liz. We’ve ’ad a right do with ’im. He says ’e’s got to go to the trooping of the colour – whatever that is. ’E’s asking us to saddle ’is ’orse an’ polish the buttons on his uniform.’

  The Queen was struck again by Chantelle’s beauty; she really does have an exquisite face, thought the Queen. Some genetic malfunction had given her sculpted bones and long limbs, unlike the rest of the Toby clan, who were stumpy and coarse-featured.

  The Queen asked, ‘For how long has my husband been agitated?’

  ‘I dunno, I’ve only just come back on duty. I’ve been off for three days with stress,’ Chantelle said.

  They passed through the residents’ lounge where elderly people with dead eyes were watching Tele-tubbies cavorting on a flickering television. The smell of urine and cheap disinfectant was overwhelming.

  ‘Why are you stressed?’ asked the Queen as they jerked slowly to the second floor, inside a lift only just big enough to take a coffin and two undertakers.

  Chantelle sighed and said, ‘Sometimes I think I’ll never leave the Flowers. I don’t think it’s fair that I’ve got to live ’ere just ’cause my family’s a nightmare. I ain’t done nothing wrong.’

  The Queen said, ‘I agree, it is terribly unfair.’

  ‘An’ this job is the pits,’ said Chantelle, lowering her voice as they neared the second floor. ‘There ain’t enough of us to look after the old people properly, an’ Mrs Hedge is a right cow.’

  They came out of the lift and passed the open door of Mrs Hedge’s office, where she could be heard on the phone giving the weekly food order, ‘…and don’t send custard creams again. I’m not made of money.’

  Chantelle said, ‘This was a lovely place when Granddad was ’ere. ’E ’ad a budgie in ’is room and ’e could stay up an’ watch the late film.’

  The Queen had visited Wilf, Violet’s husband, after a stroke had paralysed him and taken his speech. A kinder regime had prevailed then. Wilf’s dog, Micky, had been a frequent visitor.

  The Queen had been hoping that Harold Bunion would be out; a member of staff occasionally wheeled him to the One-Stop Centre where he borrowed talking books from the small visual impairment section. But Bunion was sitting in his wheelchair in his usual place, by the window. He was dressed in a heavy overcoat, a green woolly hat and a matching scarf. He was listening to an actor reading Stalin. When he saw the Queen and Chantelle, he sighed and pressed the pause button on his tape recorder.

  The Queen said, ‘Are you about to go out, Mr Bunion?’

  ‘No,’ said the old man. ‘I’m dressed like this because it’s as cold as an Eskimo’s dick in here.’

  ‘You shouldn’t use words like that,’ said Chantelle.

  ‘I’m sure the Queen has heard the word “dick” before,’ said Bunion.

  ‘No,’ Chantelle said. ‘You shouldn’t use words like “Eskimo”, it’s against the law. You have to say “Inuit people”.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Bunion savagely. ‘I meant, of course, to say that it’s as cold as an Inuit person’s dick in here.’

  The Queen sat next to her husband’s bed and watched him sleeping. She recalled a visit to Baffin Island, part of northern Canada, when Prince Philip had recited part of ‘Eskimo Nell’ after an official dinner. He had caused a diplomatic incident and British imports to Canada had dropped by five per cent.

  His duvet cover was printed with: ‘Property of FBH. Not to be removed from the premises.’ As if anybody would want to steal the horrid thing, thought the Queen, smoothing the worn grey cotton.

  Prince Philip opened his eyes. ‘He’s been torturing me wit
h Stalin’s biography, Lilibet,’ he groaned.

  Bunion shouted. ‘By talking when I’m trying to listen ’e’s infringing my ’uman rights. I’ll take it to the European Parliament if ’e don’t stop.’

  ‘Oh, my dearest darling,’ whispered the Queen, looking at her husband’s gaunt face and skeletal fingers. ‘Have you been eating?’

  ‘Can’t eat,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘He can’t hold a knife or fork an’ ’e struggles with a spoon,’ said Bunion.

  There was a tray on Prince Philip’s bedside table. The Queen lifted the metal cover from a plate of food. In the middle of the plate were a few spoonfuls of congealed grey mince, and two scoops of off-white potato. A few soggy diced vegetables were scattered around the edge of the plate. The Queen shuddered and replaced the metal cover. She took her husband’s cold hands between her own and examined him closely. He hadn’t been shaved and he was still wearing the pyjamas he’d been in three days before, when she had last seen him.

  Bunion said, ‘I tried to get some water down him last night, but I can’t get near enough in my wheelchair.’

  ‘Did you ring the bell?’ asked the Queen, alarmed at the implications behind Bunion’s statement.

  Bunion said, ‘I rang the bell, but nobody came. Nobody ever comes.’

  Chantelle looked up from making Bunion’s bed and said, ‘The night staff are lazy bleeders.’

  The Queen peeled back the sheets and blankets and saw at once that her husband’s pyjamas were wet. She tried to soothe his agitation by saying, ‘I’m going to change your pyjamas, darling. You seem to have spilt water in your bed.’

  In the narrow wardrobe allocated to him she found a collection of mismatched pyjama tops and bottoms. None of them belonged to him. When she and Chantelle removed his wet pyjamas, both of them were shocked by the angry-looking bedsores that had developed on the pressure points of his body. His heels, buttocks and elbows were fiery red.

  Bunion said, ‘This is a care home, Mrs Windsor. But nobody cares.’

  Chantelle said, ‘That ain’t fair, Harold. I fetched you that Stalin tape from the library, didn’t I?’

  Bunion shouted back, ‘I asked for a biography of Marx.’

  Chantelle said, ‘The woman in the library said they was both Commies and that you wouldn’t mind.’

  The Queen said, ‘Please ask Mrs Hedge to come here, would you, Chantelle? And bring some clean bed linen back with you.’

  As the Queen washed and creamed her husband’s emaciated body, Bunion said, ‘We live in harsh times, Mrs Windsor. Do you remember the fifties?’ Without waiting for an answer, he continued. ‘The summers were hot, the winters were cold. We children had free milk and orange juice. The National Health Service looked after us from the cradle to the grave. There was plenty of work for your dad and your mam. There were songs on the radio that you could dance to. There was no such thing as bloody teenagers. We’d never heard of stress. If you were a clever-clogs you could go to university and it wouldn’t cost your mam and dad a penny. They scrapped national service, and if you went into hospital the matron would make bloody certain that none of her patients got bedsores.’

  Mrs Hedge stood half in and half out of the doorway as though matters of great importance and urgency would not allow her to fully enter the room. She said, ‘You wanted to see me?’

  The Queen said, ‘My husband’s condition has deteriorated, Mrs Hedge.’

  ‘How?’ she asked.

  Bunion said, ‘If this was the fifties, you’d have been out on your arse, Mrs Hedge.’

  Chantelle came into the room holding freshly laundered white linen.

  When Mrs Hedge looked at Prince Philip’s bedsores, she said, ‘I’m not responsible for nursing care. I’ll ask our duty doctor, Dr Goodman, to call in.’

  The Queen said, ‘As you must know, Mrs Hedge, Dr Goodman was struck off for gross incompetence. I saw him only a few days ago, sitting on the doorstep of Grice’s Off-Licence, drinking from a bottle of Burgundy.’

  Chantelle put her arm around the Queen and said, ‘I’ll look after Prince Philip. I’ll make sure he gets fed an’ I’ll put cream on ’is bum an’ that.’

  Mrs Hedge said, ‘I shall record in the incident book that your husband was offered medical assistance but you declined on his behalf.’

  When Mrs Hedge left the room, the Queen and Chantelle dressed Prince Philip in clean pyjamas, and stripped and remade his bed.

  The Queen said, ‘I would love to take him home, Chantelle, but as you can see, it took two of us to lift him. He’s a tall man, and I’m a short woman.’

  Chantelle turned the thermostat up on the radiator and wheeled Bunion out of the room, saying, ‘Come and sit in the lounge until the room warms up.’

  When they were alone, the Queen said to her husband, ‘Darling, I need your advice. Would you mind terribly if I were to abdicate?’

  Prince Philip moved his head slightly. It was not a definitive no, but then neither was it a definite yes.

  The Queen waited until he had gone to sleep before she felt able to go home.

  11

  Boy English had been holed up in a conference room at New Con headquarters for most of the morning, with a team of advisers hammering out the script of his first party political broadcast. The room was low-ceilinged and brightly lit. The windows were sealed shut and the air conditioning was too cold for comfort. Sandwiches had been sent for, and to Boy’s disgust each one had been contaminated with mayonnaise. Eventually, at twelve thirty, the script had been printed out and copies were handed around for a final edit.

  PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST

  The film opens with Boy and his wife in their IKEA bed

  romping with their young children.

  Voice-over Boy: I care deeply about the future of this wonderful country. I care even more about my family.

  Cut to Boy bathing the children.

  Voice-over Boy: I’m a hands-on kinda dad. I cut the umbilical cords for both my kids.

  Close shot: Boy has bubbles on nose.

  Voice-over Boy: My children bring me down to earth.

  Close shot: kid laughing in the bath.

  Voice-over Boy: They keep me in touch with what really matters.

  Cut to Boy taking wife a cup of tea in bed.

  Voice-over Boy: I believe that women have had a rough deal over the years.

  Cut to Boy walking a dog in an urban street and stopping

  to talk to a pensioner.

  Voice-over Boy: My constituency is also my community. Walking the dog keeps me in touch. I’m always willing to talk to my constituents.

  Cut to Boy riding his bike while listening to rock music on

  his iPod.

  Voice-over Boy: The bike keeps me fit, it gets me to work, and

  I can listen to some of my music at the same time.

  Cut to Boy laughing with a black policeman at the House

  of Commons.

  Voice-over Boy: I love this place, it truly is the Mother of all

  Parliaments.

  Cut to Boy in his office at Westminster with his secretary

  in a wheelchair.

  Voice-over Boy: My staff are more than my employees, they’ve become friends I can trust. Trust is everything.

  Cut to a recording of Boy at Prime Minister’s Questions,

  asking the PM why the Government is banning novelty

  slippers, confirming that his wife bought him novelty reindeer

  slippers for Christmas.

  Boy: Mr Speaker, why, when the country is facing unprecedented economic challenges is the Government fiddling around with legislation to ban stepladders and novelty slippers? My wife bought me a pair of reindeer slippers for Christmas and I’m rather fond of them.

  Cut to laughter of New Cons and shot of Speaker laughing –

  calling for order. Then cut to Boy on a football pitch coaching

  multi-ethnics, both boys and girls (background sound).

  Voice
-over Boy: Football is a major passion of mine; my team is Tower Hamlets Juniors.

  Cut to Boy and his wife entering a pub with a dog. They

  go into the public bar.

  Voice-over Boy: Once a week my wife and I leave our children in the capable hands of my mother-in-law and we have a night out together. We’ve made some good mates in our local pub.

  Close shot: Boy drinking a pint with an Asian man in a turban.

  Voice-over Boy: I want to live in a society…

  Close shot: Boy’s wife and Asian women in saris playing

  darts.

  Voice-over Boy:… that embraces multi-ethnicity…

  Cut to Boy walking in a gay and lesbian parade with a

  gay Chelsea Pensioner who is carrying a placard reading

  ‘Gay and Proud’.

  Voice-over Boy:… and sexual tolerance.

  Cut to footage of the Royal Family on the balcony at

  Buckingham Palace.

  Voice-over Boy: Above all, I love our Royal Family.

  Fade in soundtrack of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.

  Fade out music and dissolve into Boy addressing the viewer.

  Boy: I give you this promise. If you vote New Con, we will bring our Royal Family back from their cruel exile and place them where they belong, at the head and heart of our country.

  Bring music back up. Closing shot of Boy wiping tears from

  his eyes.

  When Boy finished reading, he looked around at his advisers and said, ‘I love all that stuff about my dog. The problem is, I haven’t got a fucking dog.’

  ‘Even better,’ said an excited media adviser. ‘We’ll film you saving one from a rescue centre.’

  ‘Not Battersea,’ said another adviser, ‘the Chancellor has already done that, the opportunistic bastard.’

  ‘I’ll get one from my constituency,’ said Boy. ‘All politics is local.’

  The script was adjusted accordingly and a visit to Norfolk was hastily arranged for later that afternoon.