by Sue Townsend
Camilla said, ‘Charles, darling, I’m not at all bothered about not being a queen.’
‘I am,’ said Charles with a surge of anger. ‘Unless you are Queen, I will not be King!’
Anne said, ‘Don’t lose your bloody rag.’
Charles shouted, ‘If I had been allowed to marry Camilla when we were young and first in love, there would have been no question about her status in this family. But I was not allowed to marry her because, er… well… she was not without carnal knowledge, that is, she had lain with a man. She was not exactly virgo intacta.’
Camilla disengaged her hand from Charles’s and said, ‘It was the sixties.’
The Queen bent down and picked up Harris, and buried her embarrassment in his grizzled neck.
Princess Michael said, ‘If I may defend your mother, it would not have been fitting for the heir to the throne to have married a woman who had been around the block a bit. Or in Camilla’s case, around several blocks.’
Andrew said, ‘Steady on, Pushy. You’d been round a few blocks yourself before you married Prince Michael.’
Anne muttered, ‘Including the Eastern bloc.’
Charles said, ‘Mummy, we will be King Charles and Queen Camilla, or nothing.’
William said, his voice shaking with emotion, ‘Grand-mama, if my father refuses to carry out his duty then as his eldest son and heir I offer myself.’
William brushed the biscuit crumbs from his trousers and knelt before the Queen. The Queen did not know what to do or say. She thought, he has a taste for melodrama, obviously inherited from his mother. She patted him on the shoulder and said what mothers and grandmothers all over the world say at times of indecision, ‘We’ll see.’
Harris struggled off the Queen’s lap, waddled round the side of William and began to lick the future king’s boots.
16
Walking home from the family meeting, Harry said, ‘You was well out of order, kneeling an’ sayin’ you was gonna be king.’
William said, ‘It’s what Mum would have wanted, Harry.’
Harry pulled up his sweatshirt hood so that it partly obscured his face. They rarely talked about their mother, both of them were aware of the pain her absence caused the other.
Harry said, ‘Mum would have been a well top Queen.’
The police helicopter suddenly clattered over Hell Close and descended to such a height that William and Harry ducked, fearing decapitation. The powerful beam of the helicopter searchlight rolled over William and Harry many times, then an amplified voice boomed out. ‘This is an official police announcement: three minutes to curfew. Will residents please return to their homes and stay there.’
William and Harry quickened their pace. They were almost home, when a happy slappy gang turned the corner and came towards them. It wasn’t long before the taunting began. One of Maddo’s sons, Lee, shouted, ‘Hey, Ginger, is your knob hair red an’ all?’
William said, ‘Let’s not run this time, Harry.’
William and Harry stood their ground and the happy slappies passed them with only a few pushes and shoves.
William said, ‘When I’m king, I’ll solve the problem of violent gangs.’
Harry said, ‘Cool. How will you do it?’
William answered, ‘I’ll have them all rounded up and then I’ll have them dispatched.’
‘What, like kill them?’ said Harry.
‘No,’ said William. ‘I shall be a kind and fair king and my subjects will love me and there will be much hysteria when I die. Women will throw themselves on my coffin.’
Harry said, ‘When you die, I’ll be king. Wicked.’
William thought to himself that he owed it to the nation to produce an heir to the throne, soon.
At the other end of the close, Camilla and Charles were hurrying down the road to their front gate. Camilla said, ‘Darling, I don’t care in the least about being queen; the most important thing to me is that I’m your wife.’
She put her arm around his waist and turned her face to be kissed, but he was too angry with himself, his mother and the world to be placated.
He said, ‘At the age of nearly fifty-eight I’m still being treated like a boy.’
When they arrived indoors, Charles immediately went to his writing desk and began to scrawl a letter to his best friend.
My dearest Nick,
Why have you stopped replying to my letters? I am tremendously upset by your baffling failure to reply. This has hurt me deeply, I had thought that we would be friends for life.
I am simply desperate for inside news of the current political situation. Do you think Boy will pull it off? It would be absolutely marvellous if he did.
Mummyhas abdicated and expects me to be king, however she does not approve of Camilla being my queen. I have said, in no uncertain terms, that Camilla and I reign as a couple, or we do not reign at all.
Nick, I am seeking your counsel. Will the people accept Camilla? Does the present constitution allow her to be queen? If not, could you put your not inconsiderable weight behind a constitutional change?
Please forgive the lined notepaper. I send you, as always, my love.
Charles
PS: Please reply care of Dwayne Lockhart, at the attached address.
By nine thirty the streets of the Flowers Exclusion Zone were deserted, save for a few policemen and the entire dog population.
Dwayne found himself patrolling Slapper Alley; he walked past Paris Butterworth’s house four times. He could hear Fifty-cents crying in an upstairs bedroom. He wanted to knock on the door and ask if the baby was all right, but ever conscious that his movements were being watched back at the Control Centre, he walked on.
He had wanted to give Paris a book he had just finished reading, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was very far-fetched, because it was set in the future when a totalitarian government controlled the population using a television screen. But at the heart of the book was a romance between the hero, Winston Smith, and a girl called Julia.
Dwayne would have liked to discuss the book with Paris, whose sweet face he could not forget.
The Queen had been escorted to her front door by Spiggy, who had said, ‘I don’t want you bumping into them happy slappies, Liz.’
Now she sat by the gas fire in her favourite Louis XVI armchair, brought with her from Buckingham Palace thirteen years before. Like everything else in the tiny sitting room, it was showing signs of wear. The Aubusson carpet had lost its glow thanks to heavy-duty wear by Harris and Susan, and the weighty brocade curtains at the sash windows had come unfastened in a few places from the hooks that held them on to the filigreed curtain pole, giving a slovenly appearance that offended the Queen’s sense of order.
The Queen was writing her journal, a habit she had developed in childhood. Her nanny Marion Crawford, ‘Crawfie’, had said, ‘Elizabeth, you are going to meet many interesting people and visit exciting and exotic countries. It behoves you to keep a note of your thoughts and feelings.’
The young Elizabeth, barely able to write her own name, had asked Crawfie what ‘feelings’ were. Crawfie had said, ‘A good feeling is how happy you are when Mama comes into the nursery to kiss you goodnight.’
‘And a bad feeling is when Mama doesn’t come?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘You mustn’t have a bad feeling when Mama doesn’t come. She is a very busy woman; she’s the wife of the King of England’s brother.’
‘Papa is the King’s brother?’
‘He most certainly is,’ said Crawfie.
‘Why?’
‘Because he has the blue blood. You have it too.’
But the next day Elizabeth had fallen on gravel and scraped her knee, and the blood that seeped out was unmistakably red. She had to keep quiet about her injury; nobody must find out that she had red blood.
The Queen closed her eyes for a moment, savouring the peace, the warmth from the fire and the glorious realization that once she had written in her journal about the day’s events, she had absolutel
y nothing to do.
She opened her journal and wrote:
A busy day. Had tooth pulled out by pliers woman, visited Philip, had row with manager of Frank Bruno House, called family meeting. Abdicated.
Charles making ridiculous fuss about Camilla being queen. William offered himself but he is too young and I thought him a little too eager.
A rumour circulated around the estate, apparently started by Beverley Threadgold, that I was dying. Well, in a sense Queen Elizabeth is dead, long live Elizabeth Windsor!
The weather is autumnal, as one would expect in late summer.
She closed her journal and switched on the television, where she watched the daughter of an ex-prime minister eating a kangaroo’s testicle in an equatorial jungle in Australia.
As she waited for the milk to boil for cocoa she thought, never again will I have to be presented to the ghastly line-ups of obsequious actors, singers and comedians at charity events. My God, she thought, I’ve certainly done my porridge! She shuddered when she reflected on the sheer bloody embarrassment of having to read the Queen’s Speech. Turning the pages while wearing white gloves was bad enough, then there was the vacuous content of the speech itself…
As she sat sipping her cocoa with her feet resting on the sleeping Susan, she said to Harris, ‘Where shall we live when we leave this place, boy? I understand that most of the palaces have been turned into places of public entertainment. Poor boy, you’ve never known anything but the Flowers Estate, have you? You’ve never ridden in a Rolls-Royce, have you? You don’t know what it’s like to fly in a private aeroplane or to be surrounded at all times by lovely things, do you? You’re my bit of rough, aren’t you, lad?’
Harris growled, ‘Aye, I’m as rough as a whore’s dirty laugh, but I’m nae stupid.’
Before she went to bed, the Queen thumped three times on the party wall, and Violet Toby thumped back. It was an arrangement they had; it signified that all was well.
*
Marcia Boycott was a woman who could not live in disorder. Unkind friends and colleagues had described her as ‘the control freak’s control freak’.
When Prince Andrew arrived home, he hardly recognized the place. Marcia had filled four black bin bags with rubbish and had transformed the rooms downstairs beyond recognition. A delicious smell was seeping from the kitchen, a smell so aromatic that it made his mouth water. Marcia had arranged his CDs in alphabetical order, cleaned the food stains off the sofa, swept and mopped the floors and bleached all the surfaces in the kitchen.
‘Crikey,’ Andrew said, ‘you’ve been busy, Marcia.’
She said, ‘The mince and onion pie will need another ten minutes in the oven. Why don’t I fix us a drink and you can tell me all about the meeting.’
Andrew took his shoes off and sprawled across the sofa, from where he could see Marcia constructing cocktails in two highball glasses. She was a bit on the scrawny side, he thought. He usually liked a woman to have a bit more meat on her, but she had been amazing in bed that afternoon. Abso-bloody-lutely amazing.
Marcia handed him a pinkish drink and said, ‘So, how did it go?’
Andrew said, ‘It was dullsville. Mummy abdicated, Charlie got into a strop, and Princess Michael’s dog bit Camilla’s finger.’
Marcia, an ardent monarchist, whose parents ran a dry-cleaning business and never raised their voices, was enthralled. She said, ‘Andy, more detail, please. Start from when you arrived at your sister’s house.’
*
When Edward and Sophie arrived home, they found their daughter, Louise, asleep in front of the television. Their babysitter, Chanel Toby, was watching I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
Chanel said, ‘Some woman ’as just ate a kangaroo’s ball. I’ve gave a few blow jobs in my life, but I wouldn’t eat a animal’s ball. That’s disgustin’.’
After she had been paid, and had hurried home to beat the curfew, they put Louise to bed. As they were tucking her in, the little girl woke and said, ‘Ay oop, our Mam. Ay oop, our Dad.’
Sophie said, ‘Louise, we may be leaving this house soon and going to live in a place called London, somewhere with a beautiful garden.’
‘I don’t want to leave ’ere, Mam,’ said Louise. ‘We’ve gotta nice ’ouse ’ere in ’Ell Close. I don’t wanna nice garden. I like playin’ in the street wi’ Courtney Toby.’
Sophie felt her throat tightening at the mention of Courtney, a seven-year-old harpy in mini-slapper gear with a precocious foul mouth, whose imaginative play included drive-by shootings and domestic violence involving the intervention of social workers.
After they had crept out of Louise’s bedroom, Sophie said, ‘If we don’t get away from here soon, she’ll be stuck with that accent for life, Ed.’
17
The transcript of the Royal Family’s meeting was emailed to Boy English at his breakfast table the next morning. Boy read it on his laptop. With a mouth full of toast he said to Cordelia, ‘Christ! The Queen’s going to abdicate.’
Cordelia said, ‘Boy, you’re spitting crumbs all over the fucking table.’
Boy said, ‘Fuck the crumbs! My whole monarchy thingy is centred around the bloody Queen. I need her, that indomitable little figurehead that everybody respects, doing her bloody duty, keeping her gob shut and her upper lip stiff.’
Cordelia said, ‘But it isn’t as though the Queen ever did anything remarkable or said anything particularly memorable when she was on the throne.’
Boy said, ‘She doesn’t have to do or say anything, she just has to be there.’
Cordelia said, ‘But mobs haven’t taken to the streets demanding her return. Have they, sweetness?’
Boy said, ‘Not yet. But the monarchy is the same as any other commodity, we must create a demand.’
Cordelia laughed. ‘Can’t you buy a cheap queen from China?’
Boy didn’t laugh; he dipped the butter knife into a jar of coarse-cut Oxford marmalade and smeared the orange jelly across his toast.
Cordelia said, ‘How many times do I have to ask you not to do that? Your habits are truly disgusting.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Boy. ‘I went to Eton, I lived among savages.’
‘So you can’t play your Queen card, then?’ said Cordelia.
‘No,’ said Boy, slurping his coffee. ‘I’m left with the fucking Joker, Prince Charles.’
‘And isn’t Charles popular?’ asked Cordelia.
‘Is he popular with you and your set?’ asked Boy sarcastically.
‘No, my set think he’s a bit of a bed-wetter,’ drawled Cordelia.
‘And Camilla?’
‘Oh, Camilla’s all right, but the proles would sooner see Jordan on the throne showing her pants than Camilla in the full queen regalia.’
‘The public will learn to love her,’ said Boy.
Cordelia said, ‘And perhaps one day you’ll learn to love your brats.’
Boy said, ‘I wish now I hadn’t told you how I feel about the children. I do love them in the abstract, it’s just their physical presence I can’t cope with.’ He put his hand out to his wife. ‘Come on, Cordelia, admit you find their conversation repetitive and childish.’
Cordelia said dully, ‘Hugo is three and Dora is five. They’re not going to chat to you about Keynesian economics, are they?’
From upstairs, in the nursery, came the sound of little feet stamping out an angry tattoo.
Cordelia said, ‘They’ll have to be sent away to school. There’s a place in Surrey that will take boarders at three and a half. It would be for their own good, Boy. We’re awful parents.’
Boy said, ‘After the election, honeybun. I’m Mr
Family Man, heterosexual and potent.’
‘But most importantly,’ said Cordelia, ‘you’ve got a lovely head of hair.’
Boy said, ‘I could be a fucking model for Head and Shoulders and it wouldn’t do me any good unless I can get the great electorate to learn to love Camilla.’
Boy’s mobile phone played ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, a voice said, ‘I’m outside, Mr English, on double yellows.’
Boy said, ‘One minute.’ He kissed the top of Cordelia’s head and said, ‘I must go, that bloody dentist charges sixty quid for every minute you’re late for an appointment.’
The letters from Graham Cracknall and Lawrence Krill arrived in the same post as one from Sir Nicholas Soames at the Flowers Control Centre, and were being read with some amusement by WPC Virginia Birch, a youngish woman who in her spare time attended Star Trek conventions dressed as Admiral Kathryn Janeway. She put Cracknall’s and Krill’s letters in a wire ‘In’ tray marked ‘Nutters correspondence’ and opened the Soames letter. It read:
Dearest Charles,
How are you, sir? I am exceedingly well. I dined with the Prime Minister at the club recently, what an oik he is. My blood boils when I think that he represents our great country. The fellow holds his fork as though he were pitching hay – as, no doubt, his ancestors did.
I fabricated a reason for the meeting, saying, when asked by his Private Secretary, that I wished to talk to him, post foot and mouth, in my capacity as Vice Deputy Chairman of the Sussex Cattle Society.
But my true agenda was to discuss with him the possibility of allowing you and your family to draw stumps and leave your present vile locale and relocate, perhaps to Windsor, which has yet to be turned into a People’s Palace.
Incidentally, one of the Ruthermere girls went to Buckingham Palace the other day to see The History of the Working Class Exhibition. She reported back that everything fine and of beauty had gone and had been replaced by grim depictions of labour – women down mines, boys up chimneys, etc. She said it was terribly distressing to see the Throne Room transformed into a Lancashire Cotton Mill with barefoot children in rags asleep under the looms.
There’s an almighty row going on about Windsor Castle. Hilton Hotels welshed on their deal to turn it into a country house hotel and golf course when they realized that it lay under a direct flight path to Heathrow.
Now the Department of Health is after it to house the alarming number of madmen and madwomen who are at present roaming the streets making life thoroughly unpleasant for the rest of us. (Apparently the Exclusion Zones are full to overflowing.) Another possible use for Windsor is as HQ for the Scientologist Movement.