by Sue Townsend
So, over the meat course (lark and pigeon pie) I suggested that Windsor could be utilized as a living history exhibit, saying that the Royal Family could live there and the public would be allowed in to gawp three times a week.
Barker said, ‘Fatty, your attempts to inveigle the Royal Family back into public life are pathetically obvious.’
I think you would have been proud of my reaction, Charles. I stood up and said, ‘Firstly, sir, only my friends call me Fatty. Secondly, sir, I do not know what I find more deplorable, your table manners or your politics.’
His security people hustled me away from the table before I could finish my pudding, a rather scrumptious spotted dick.
Not much else to report here. The traffic is foul, four and a half hours from Gloucestershire to town. Scandalous!
My housekeeper tells me she has failed to find an English replacement for Baines, my old butler. A new chap starts next week, a Chinese chap called Keith Woo. As you know, Charles, I’m not a racialist and I will give this Woo chap a fair crack of the whip, but I can’t help feeling that it’s a bad day at Bad Man’s Gulch when we can’t even manufacture our own butlers but have to import them from China.
By the way, my dear old friend, it would be delightful to hear from you. I sometimes wonder if you are getting these letters.
Yours truly,
Nick
PS. I don’t suppose you get to see The Daily Telegraph, so I am enclosing a clipping from last Monday’s edition.
WPC Birch unfolded the clipping and saw a photograph of Princess Michael of Kent, posed dramatically against a backdrop of the graffiti-sprayed house front of Maddo Clarke. A wheel-less wrecked car standing on bricks was in the background, flanked by four of Maddo’s seven sons, who were all pulling gruesome faces for the camera.
Birch read:
Ex-Princess Michael (61), the wife of Prince Michael of Kent (64), who is believed to be living in Dubai, spoke out yesterday against what she called her ‘cruel and inhuman exile’ in the Flowers Exclusion Zone.
In her first interview in thirteen years she told our undercover reporter, Tom Cuttlefish (posing as a British Telecom engineer), of her missing years living on state benefits, surrounded by hostile neighbours.
‘The shops are appalling,’ she said. ‘They do not stock asparagus or Helena Rubinstein lipstick, for instance – things that other people take for granted.’
Looking drawn and older than her years, she wept, ‘I urge the country to vote New Con and release me from my living hell.’
Soames had written in the margin, in a bold hand, ‘Christ! Pass the sick bag, Mabel!’
WPC Birch tore Soames’s letter in half and passed it through a shredder. She then took the letters out of the tray and gave them to Peter Penny, saying, ‘More letters from nutters to the future King of England. See that they get delivered, will you?’
Zachary Stein was a celebrity dentist. His waiting room was full of modish Italian furniture. Some of the chairs were so stylish that patients could not work out how to sit on them. On the walls were signed photographs of major and minor celebrities from the worlds of show business, politics and the seriously rich. The one thing these disparate people had in common was their dazzling, perfect teeth. Ken Dodd’s photograph hung over the fireplace. Across his famous buck teeth, Dodd had scrawled in marker pen, ‘To Zach, who saved my career.’
Zachary considered himself to be an artiste. He was a temperamental and acerbic practitioner. In a recent Sunday Times profile, he had admitted to being totally obsessed with teeth. He told the interviewer, ‘I visited the Grand Canyon recently and my first thought was: My God! It would take a shitload of dental cement to fill that gap.’
Boy was three minutes late for his appointment; Duncan, his driver, a bull-necked morose man with childcare problems, had taken them on a circuitous route from Kennington to Harley Street in an attempt to beat the traffic. On the way Duncan had received several phone calls from distraught-sounding women. Boy, feeling the need to comment, had said, ‘Women, eh?’
Duncan had unleashed a torrent of misogynistic vitriol that had alarmed Boy and made him think that it would be no bad thing if Duncan were to be kept away from women, preferably behind a locked cell door. When they finally arrived, a nervous receptionist told Boy that a fine of one hundred and eighty pounds would be added to his bill. With pretended nonchalance Boy said, ‘No matter.’
From behind the door of the surgery, Boy heard the sound of a drill and a man shouting, ‘Wider! Wider!’
‘He’s with a patient at the moment,’ said the receptionist.
‘If you’d like to take a seat in the waiting room.’
Boy was yawning his way through an article in The Economist about EU farming subsidies when an actress he vaguely recognized from a TV series he could not name gushed into the waiting room.
‘It’s official, we now live in a police state! I was stopped twice on my way here, by absolute fascists! Each time I showed my ID, and the bloody card would not register due to some ludicrous cock-up! I told them I had an appointment with Stein, but they affected never to have heard of him.’ She looked closer at Boy and said, ‘Omi-god, you’re Boy whatsisname.’
Boy gave her a modest closed-mouth smile and said, ‘I loved you in that thing…’
‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘My best scenes were cut.’
‘But you were jolly good in those remaining,’ said Boy.
‘Is Stein in a good mood?’ she asked anxiously. ‘He was absolute hell at my last appointment – he’s a complete diva!’
Boy began to feel a little anxious himself.
After he’d been shown into the surgery, Boy held out his hand towards the masked dentist.
‘No time for that,’ said Stein brusquely. ‘Get in the chair, lie back and open your mouth.’
He pressed a foot pedal and the chair turned into a bed.
Stein shouted at the dental nurse hovering nearby and said, ‘For Christ’s sake! Stop breathing, Angela, you’re distracting me!’
Boy opened his mouth. Stein shouted, ‘Wider,’ and began to examine Boy’s teeth. ‘Christ, it’s like the ruins of an ancient city in here,’ he said. ‘Have you been to Pompeii?’
Boy shook his head.
‘Keep still,’ yelled Stein. Then, ‘It’s how I’d like to see all Eyeties: encased in volcanic rock.’
Boy stared up at the ceiling, where tropical fish swam in a huge suspended aquarium. As he watched, a big purple fish ate an orange tiddler. Stein stamped on the foot pedal and Boy jerked back upright in the chair.
Boy said, ‘So, is much work needed?’
‘Did London need work after the Blitz?’ said Stein, whose own teeth, Boy noticed, were yellowish and unremarkable.
‘Smile,’ ordered Stein. ‘Give me your politician’s “I’ve just kissed a baby” smile.’
Boy drew his mouth back.
‘Yeah, I thought so,’ said Stein. ‘You’re wolf boy in pinstripe. Those incisors look like they’ve just torn a small animal apart.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Boy, weakly.
‘Angela, you’re breathing again,’ yelled Stein. ‘I’m trying to fucking think here.’
Angela said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Stein, but I… need to breathe.’
‘But do I have to hear it?’ said Stein.
‘I’ll try not to…’
Stein said to Boy, ‘Watch and listen.’ He shoved his face up to Angela’s and said, ‘What’s the population of Reykjavik?’
Angela said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘The circumference of the moon?’
Again Angela answered, ‘I don’t know.’
‘The hibernation period of the American brown bear?’
Once more she answered, ‘I don’t know.’
Zachary turned triumphantly to Boy and said, ‘See! See! This girl has spent eleven years in British Education and she knows nothing.’
Angela said falteringly, ‘I’ve got three “A
” levels, Mr Stein.’
‘“A” levels,’ scoffed Stein. ‘A fucking wardrobe can get “A” levels nowadays.’
Boy slumped uncomfortably in the chair. He had been a signatory to a parliamentary anti-bullying campaign recently, but he was too afraid of Zachary Stein to come to Angela’s defence. Instead, he said, ‘A New Con Government will revolutionize education. Every child leaving school will, er… know the population of Reykjavik.’
Stein bellowed, ‘You’re breathing again!’
Angela said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Stein, but I…’ She left the room on the verge of tears.
‘None of them stay for long,’ said Stein. ‘I blame the Government. Did you know that teeth are not on the national curriculum? So when these girls come to me, they are dentally ignorant. Perhaps when you’re running things, you’ll do something about it.’
‘Can we get back to my teeth?’
‘Thirty grand,’ said Zachary.
‘Did you say thirty grand, as in thirty thousand pounds?’ asked Boy.
‘I dare say you could go to another Harley Street dentist and they’d do a moderately good job, but you wouldn’t have Zachary Stein teeth, unlike the Prime Minister.’
‘You do Jack Barker’s teeth?’ asked Boy.
Stein said, ‘I remodelled his mouth. Before he came to me he was living on soup and slops, his gums were rotting, he was in constant pain. I gave him a smile, made him human and got him elected for two further terms.’
Boy said, ‘So, you’re taking the credit for Jack Barker’s electoral success, are you?’
Stein said, modestly, ‘Only the last two terms.’
‘Won’t there be a conflict of interests?’ asked Boy.
‘No,’ said Stein, ‘I have no interests outside dentistry.’
‘But thirty thousand pounds,’ said Boy.
‘Legitimate election expenses,’ said Stein, who was growing impatient. ‘Do you want Zachary Stein teeth or not?’
Boy imagined himself smiling on the election posters, baring his teeth to Jeremy Paxman, grinning for the cameras as he entered the front door of Number Ten as prime minister. ‘When can you start?’ he said.
18
Dwayne was in Hell Close knocking on doors and doing spot checks to make sure that the residents had valid ID cards and had not tampered with, or even removed, their tags. It was deeply embarrassing work, and on days like this he wished he were employed elsewhere: digging out a cesspit or taming grizzly bears. He had known from his first day on duty that he was not cut out to police other people. He remembered the time, not so long ago, when he’d had to submit to having the despised metal tag on his own ankle inspected by a condescending official.
When he knocked on the door of Number Sixteen, it was Camilla who answered. It seemed to Dwayne that the narrow hallway was filled with barking dogs, though when they had settled down a bit he could see that there were only three of them.
‘Good morning,’ said Dwayne. ‘Tag and ID check. Do you mind?’
Camilla led Dwayne into the sitting room and said, ‘Please sit down. I’ll call my husband, he’s in the garden.’ When she had left the room, Dwayne went to the bookcase and quickly ran his fingers over the mostly leather-bound books: Shakespeare, Dickens, Homer, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nikolaus Pevsner, Churchill, Jilly Cooper, Laurens Van der Post…
When Camilla returned with Charles, Dwayne said, ‘Sorry about this.’
Charles said, ‘Please don’t apologize, officer. Camilla, darling, where are our ID cards?’
She said, ‘Aren’t they in the usual place, in the jug on the kitchen dresser?’
Charles went to see, then shouted, ‘No, they’re not here.’
Camilla said, ‘We’re dreadfully absent-minded lately. Charles blames Grice’s horrid food. He says it’s packed full of toxins that rot the brain.’
As he watched Charles and Camilla search for their cards, Dwayne said, ‘I left my card at home yesterday. They wouldn’t give me any books at the library, I had to go home empty-handed.’
‘You must borrow some of our books,’ said Charles, gesturing towards the bookcases.
‘If you want a jolly good laugh, take a Jilly Cooper,’ said Camilla. ‘She’s terribly wicked, but awfully good fun.’
But Charles could see that Dwayne was not looking for fun in his reading matter. He said, ‘Darling, let the officer choose something for himself, while we look for those wretched cards.’
Dwayne took down Laurens Van der Post’s The Lost World of the Kalahari and saw that written on the title page was: ‘The dogs bark and the caravan moves on. LVdP.’
Looking over Dwayne’s shoulder, Charles said, ‘I take great comfort from that inscription.’
When Camilla came in with the ID cards, having found them in a cardigan pocket in the washing machine, Dwayne gave them a cursory glance. Much more interesting was the conversation he was having with Charles about the meaning of life. Charles, who considered himself the Flowers Estate’s foremost intellectual, was delighted to have Dwayne hanging on his every word.
Eventually, conscious that they might be watching him on CCTV back at the Control Centre, Dwayne said, ‘It would be lovely to stay talking but… if I could see your tags?’
Charles rolled his right trouser leg up and pulled his sock down, and Dwayne gave the exposed metal tag a quick inspection, saying, ‘Thank you, sir.’
Camilla sat down and extended her left leg towards Dwayne. As he inspected the tag, to ease his obvious embarrassment, she said, ‘I used to loathe the beastly thing, but now I think I’d miss it, were it not there.’
Dwayne was offered and accepted a cup of tea; it was served by Charles in delicate china cups decorated with roses.
When Charles had gone out of the room to look for biscuits, Camilla said, ‘Charlie must like you, Dwayne. Not everybody gets a china cup.’
Charles said, returning with Grice’s Chinese shortcake biscuits, ‘Dwayne is a chap with fine sensibilities, Camilla. I’m going to lend him my copy of The Heart of the Hunter.’
‘No,’ said Dwayne, ‘I couldn’t.’
‘No! No! I absolutely insist,’ said Charles, pressing the book into Dwayne’s hands.
So, when Camilla whispered to Dwayne, ‘We’re experiencing a few difficulties with our correspondence lately,’ and slipped Dwayne the envelope addressed to Mr Nicholas Soames, Dwayne could not possibly refuse to post it, avoiding the censorship that all mail received, both in and out of the Flowers Exclusion Zone. He pushed the letter deep into his trouser pocket.
Camilla said to him, ‘This is so sweet of you, Dwayne. Why don’t you call round tomorrow, perhaps we could give you lunch?’
At the Arthur Grice Academy, fifteen-year-old Chanel Toby was being taught about the English kings by a nervous supply teacher called Gordon Wall. It was halfway through the lesson and so far all Chanel had written in her rough book was, ‘King Alfred was a minger with a beer’d who cun’t even watch a cake in the oven.’
As Wall droned on, Chanel had lost concentration and had allowed her thoughts to meander along familiar byways. Who should she give her virginity to? There were a few contenders; Prince William, who was nice an’ that, but he wouldn’t do it until she was sixteen; Prince Harry, who were a right laugh but were a proper ginga. Chanel didn’t mind the ethnicity of a person, or their size or shape. She was a big girl herself. She’d messed about with boys with acne and those with aggressive and delinquent personalities, but she drew the line at gingas. To be a natural redhead was to be a social pariah, a target for the happy slappy gangs who patrolled the streets.
Chantelle, Chanel’s older sister, had swapped her virginity for hair straighteners and a Grice’s food voucher, but Chanel was a romantic girl who wanted the rupturing of her hymen to take place in lovely surroundings. The loveliest place she’d ever seen was the island flower bed in the school drive that spelt out ‘Grice’s Scaffolding’ in red, white and blue flowers. Chantelle had lost her virginity in the bac
k of a transit van parked behind Grice’s Chinese Chip Shop. She had complained that her lover had stopped halfway through her ordeal and said, ‘I really fancy a battered sausage, do you?’
Chantelle had said, ‘Oh, I thought that’s what I was getting.’
Chanel didn’t want that; she had aspirations. She was going to get five GCSEs, which would mean automatic release from the tag around her ankle. She would then be free to study floristry at the college in the town.
When she looked up, Gordon Wall was talking about a king she’d never heard of. In January 956, Edwyn the Fair was crowned King of the English at Kingston-upon-Thames. On the day of the coronation, Edwyn left the celebration banquet and was later discovered by St Dunston (later the Archbishop of Canterbury) sandwiched between two women: ‘His mistress and her mother; wallowing between the two of them in evil fashion, as if in a vile sty!’
As instructed by Gordon Wall, Chanel wrote a summation of this in her rough book.
Towards the end of the lesson, when shafts of sunlight had reached Chanel’s desk and had almost lulled her to sleep, the classroom door opened and Arthur Grice came in with a school inspector, Ms Abigail Pike. The class rose at once to their feet and droned, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grice.’
Grice boomed, ‘Ms Pike ’ere is ’aving a good look round to make sure we’re up to scratch, so just carry on.’ Gordon Wall’s throat tightened, he managed to stammer out that they were doing the English kings.
Ms Pike addressed the class. ‘So, what have you learnt about the English kings this afternoon?’
A few hands flew up, but it was Ms Pike’s policy to ignore the eager beavers. It was more the reluctant students in the back row she was interested in. She looked around the class and noticed Chanel playing with her hair, a look of studied indifference on her face.
She walked to Chanel’s side and said, ‘May I have a look at your work?’