by Sue Townsend
Chanel closed the page of her rough book.
Grice said, ‘This is Chanel Toby. We’ve had our difficulties, ’aven’t we, Chanel? But she’s kept ’er nose clean lately, ’aven’t you?’
Chanel muttered, ‘Yes, sir.’
Ms Pike picked up Chanel’s book and read: ‘Edwyn the Fair was a filthy bastard who was found by a vicar being the meat in a fuck sandwich. The bread was his mistress and her mam. I wonder what the papers said about that in January 956!!!’
Chanel was suspended and ordered to leave the school immediately. Some say that blinded by tears she inadvertently trampled over the floral island in the school’s drive. Others say that she went out of her way to flatten as many flowers as she could before being restrained by Arthur Grice.
Later, in Grice’s office at the school, Ms Pike asked, ‘How many students have been suspended this term, Mr Grice? Would you look the figure up for me?’
Grice said, ‘No need to look owt up, Ms Pike. I keep it all up ’ere in me ’ead.’ He tapped the side of his head. It made a hollow sound. ‘This term, we’ve ’ad to expel sixteen students. Twenty-seven ’ave been suspended, nine of them for a week or longer.’
Ms Pike murmured, ‘But if you carry on shedding students at this rate, you’ll be down to single figures, Mr Grice.’
Grice gestured towards the window that looked out over the Flowers Exclusion Zone. ‘It’s the catchment area,’ he said. ‘Our students are taken from the shallow end of the gene pool. Some of ’em arrive ’ere at the age of eleven, not knowing ’ow to tie a shoelace; they’re totally reliant on Velcro.’
‘You don’t appear to have a head teacher, Mr Grice.’
Grice frowned. The furrows in his brow resembled a freshly ploughed field. ‘We ’ave trouble ’anging on to an ’ead teacher,’ he confided. ‘So I’ve took it on myself to fill in, like.’
‘But you have no teaching qualifications, Mr Grice,’ said Ms Pike.
‘I teach basic and advanced scaffolding Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ he said.
‘But not any academic subjects?’ asked Ms Pike.
‘Listen,’ said Grice, menacingly, ‘it ain’t airy-fairy, let’s-talk-about-civilization-in-Latin bollocks what this country needs, it’s more scaffolders. Where would your cathedrals be without scaffolding? Nowhere. ’Ow do you think the Seven Wonders of the World was built? With scaffolding!
‘If it weren’t for scaffolding, you wouldn’t ’ave no civilization. We’d still be savages living in the bleedin’ caves.’
Ms Pike stood up and gathered her bag and coat together. ‘What will happen to Chanel Toby now?’ she asked.
Grice reached for the school registration book, turned to the letter T in the index, found Toby and drew a line through Chanel Toby’s name.
‘She’s gone,’ he said to Ms Pike. ‘She’s dead meat.’
As Chanel ran home to Hell Close, she passed her grandmother and the Queen walking back from the shops.
Violet said, ‘What you doing out of school, Chanel?’
Chanel sobbed, ‘I’ve been suspended for writing the truth about that dirty bleeder Edwyn the Fair.’ She looked at the Queen accusingly. ‘One of your relatives,’ she said. ‘That ponce, Grice, has said I can’t do my GCSEs. Now I’ll never be a florist.’
Violet said, ‘We’ll see about that,’ and turned round and began to march towards the Grice Academy.
The Queen called, ‘Shall I come with you, Violet?’
Violet shouted over her shoulder, ‘No, Liz, I’m going to use language. And I know you don’t like language. Walk ’ome with our Chanel.’
19
The Queen was holding the loft ladder steady as William climbed up the last few rungs and clambered into the attic. He stretched out an arm and the Queen handed him a Maglite torch and said, ‘Somewhere up there is a large cardboard box marked “Glassware this way up”, next to your grandfather’s box of ceremonial swords.’
After a few moments, during which the beam of the torch flickered across the opening, William shouted, ‘Found it!’
The Queen said, ‘Splendid. Bring it down, will you?’ With some difficulty William scrambled down the ladder, carrying the heavy box. When the ladder had been retracted, the Queen and William went downstairs carrying the box between them. William had come straight from work and was still wearing his working clothes: boots with steel toecaps, ragged jeans, a plaid shirt and an orange fluorescent waistcoat. His hands and face were not entirely clean, the Queen noticed. William was impatient to find out what was inside the box. All the Queen had said to him had been, ‘There’s something in the attic I’d rather like you to see.’
The Queen took the bread knife from out of a drawer and began to cut through the parcel tape that sealed the lid. She opened the cardboard flaps and took out an object wrapped in a black plastic bin liner. She pulled away the plastic and revealed a large dark-blue velvet casket. She said tactfully, ‘I think, perhaps, before we go any further, we should both wash our hands.’ They washed their hands at the kitchen sink. The Queen said, ‘Dry them thoroughly,’ and handed William a clean tea towel.
When she had washed and dried her own hands, the Queen lifted the lid of the casket. Inside, standing on a base of white satin was the Imperial State Crown; its jewelled magnificence made William gasp. There was only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling, but it seemed to find every facet of every precious gemstone that covered the surface of the crown.
The Queen said, ‘This is the Imperial State Crown. I hope that you will wear it one day.’
She used the corner of her apron to polish a glowing ruby. William had often watched the black and white film of his grandmother’s coronation; he and Harry had laughed at the sight of their four-year-old father in white satin knickerbockers and girly shoes. However many times William watched the film, he still felt nervous at the moment the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown on his grandmother’s young head. The crown looked heavy and his grandmother’s fragile neck looked as though it would snap under the weight.
‘It looks heavy,’ said William.
‘I hardly slept the week before,’ said the Queen. ‘I was terrified it would fall off, and so was the Archbishop. Would you like to try it on?’
William sat down on a kitchen chair. The Queen braced herself and hoisted the crown free of its sumptuous packing. She held it against herself for a moment, remembering the triumphant peal of the bells and the shouts of ‘Long live the Queen’ that celebrated her crowning. As she placed the crown on William’s head, a presenter on the television in the next room said, ‘It was the first time our vet had performed a Caesarean on a mongoose.’ The crown was a little too small for William’s head; he sat very still, not daring to move.
The Queen stepped back and said, ‘It suits you. How does it feel?’
‘It feels brilliant, actually,’ said William.
The Queen said, ‘Sit very still and I’ll bring you a looking glass.’ When she had left the room, William raised his arms to imaginary cheers and patriotic shouts of, ‘Long live the King. Long live King William.’
The Queen returned with a looking glass she’d taken from a wall in the hallway. When she lifted it, and he saw his reflection, he had a pang of longing for his mother, and it was only by using rigid self-control that he was able to hide his emotions.
The Queen said, ‘I think you will be a very good king, William.’
William said, ‘Yes, but it will be a sad day for me. It will mean that Dad is dead.’
‘Not necessarily,’ murmured the Queen. ‘Your father could renounce his succession and pass it on to you. Are you prepared for that eventuality?’
William stiffened his back, as though he were on the parade ground at Sandhurst, and said, ‘I am, Your Majesty, I have to be the King. I promised Mum I’d do it. It was what she wanted.’
‘And you?’ asked the Queen.
‘I promised her,’ William replied.
‘I repeat, and you?’ the Queen asked aga
in.
‘She brought me up to be a new kind of king. “King Lite”, she called it,’ said William.
‘“King Lite”?’ asked the Queen.
‘Y’know, like Coke Lite,’ said William.
‘Ah! The drink?’ asked the Queen.
‘Yeah. She thought I could, sort of, mix with the people more. Visit the homeless at their, well, not homes, obviously, but their doorways and hostels and things,’ said William.
‘Very noble,’ said the Queen. ‘But to what purpose?’
‘To find out about their problems,’ said William, who was getting a little exasperated with his grandmother. Why was she questioning such a noble act of charity?
‘And when you ascertain what the problems of the destitute are, what will you do?’ asked the Queen.
William said, ‘I’ll try to help them, like my mum did.’
‘Will you throw open the doors of Buckingham Palace, then?’ the Queen asked.
William said, ‘Well, not all the doors.’
The Queen said, ‘You’re a very kind boy and I’m extremely fond of you. Please think carefully before you sacrifice your life to an institution that is increasingly irrelevant. I think it’s time we thought less of the Royal and more of the Family.’
20
Charles was reading aloud to Camilla from Macbeth. He was characterizing the speeches and reading the stage directions in his own voice. His only piece of costume was a Hermeès silk scarf, which he used ingeniously to denote character. He had tried to interest his first wife in Shakespeare by performing Richard III to her, but she had ruined his concentration by flipping through Cosmopolitan and yawning.
Camilla, on the other hand, was giving every appearance of being thrilled by Macbeth and his performance; commenting occasionally on the action, saying, ‘How horrid!’ when Macduff’s children were killed and, ‘Mad cow!’ when Lady Macbeth/Charles was screeching during the hand-washing scene. At one point Charles’s performance grew to Donald Sinden-like proportions, causing Vince Threadgold to thump on the party wall and shout, ‘Keep the bleedin’ noise down!’
Camilla was trying to love Shakespeare as Charles did, but she simply could not make sense of the old-fashioned language. Why didn’t the people in his plays simply say what they meant, instead of beating around the bush? And honestly, did Shakespeare think his audiences were stupid or something? She had been to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford as a child and the costumes were lovely, but it was terribly far-fetched. How did Shakespeare expect his audiences to believe that a sleeping girl would wake up and fall in love with a donkey? I mean, she adored her pony, but not romantically. That was bestiality, wasn’t it? Similar to what Prince Philip had told her that the Welsh did with sheep.
Charles swirled the silk scarf and began the final scene. Camilla was longing for Macbeth to come to an end, but she sat as though enraptured, as she had done so many times at cocktail parties when trapped by some dreadful bore droning on about a third party she did not know. She heard letters drop through the letterbox and said to Charles, who was halfway through a long speech, ‘I’ll pick the letters up before the dogs get to them.’
As it was, she was only just in time. Freddie and Tosca were playing at tug of war with one letter and Leo had slobbered over the other. Charles had draped the silk scarf over his head as one of the witches and was eagerly awaiting her return. She resumed her seat on the sofa and the performance continued. At the end she applauded until her hands smarted. Charles took several bows and allowed himself to laugh with pleasure. Perhaps the demons associated with Gordonstoun School’s production of Macbeth would finally leave him.
When he was a boy he had played Macduff and had been directed to fall to the floor and wriggle around the stage in his death agonies. There had been a deathly silence in the school auditorium, apart from the sound of one person laughing very loudly. That person was his father, The Duke of Edinburgh. In the dressing room later, the English teacher who had directed the play congratulated the other boys on their performances but said to Charles, ‘Well, Wales, I’m glad your father found your portrayal in our tragedy so amusing. Perhaps we should forget Shakespeare and do Charlie’s Aunt next time.’ Charles had taken this to be not only a rebuke to himself but also a reference to his louche aunt, Princess Margaret. His cheeks had burned with shame.
His mother had been kind, saying, ‘I think you did awfully well to have learnt all those lines. However did you do it?’
His father had cuffed him on the side of the head, in what was probably meant to be an affectionate gesture, and said, ‘Why didn’t you play Macbeth, eh? Not good enough?’
Charles opened Lawrence Krill’s letter first, then threw it over to Camilla saying, ‘Another poor devil with mental health problems.’
Charles then opened Graham’s letter, scanned it quickly and said, ‘Extraordinary the lengths that some of these poor lunatics will go to. This one claims to be our love child.’ He laughed. ‘Graham from Ruislip.’
Camilla reached for her cigarettes, then remembered she was forbidden to light up in the house. Nevertheless, she took one out of the packet and held it in her right hand. ‘What else does he say?’ she asked quietly.
Charles was looking through the three enclosures he’d pulled out of the envelope with the Ruislip postmark. ‘It all looks terribly authentic,’ said Charles. ‘He’s been to enormous trouble: there’s a DNA certificate, a codicil letter and a copy of a birth certificate. It seems that Graham was born in Zurich. You were at finishing school in Zurich, weren’t you, darling?’
‘Yes, in 1965,’ she said.
‘Graham was born in 1965, on July 21st,’ said Charles.
There was a long pause. Charles felt like a character in a Pinter play.
‘Yes,’ said Camilla. ‘It was awfully hot that July, all the windows were open in the delivery room, but it was still stifling. I could hear the cowbells ringing outside.’
Charles said, ‘Delivery room? Were you on a school visit? Was it part of your conversational French course?’
‘No,’ said Camilla. ‘I was definitely screaming in English.’ She began to weep. ‘ I didn’t call him Graham, I called him Rory. Rory George Windsor.’
Charles looked at the letter and the papers in his hand and said, ‘So are you telling me, darling, that this Graham is our son?’
Camilla nodded.
Charles asked, ‘How did it happen?’
Camilla said, ‘You remember, darling. We got carried away after that food fight at Nicky’s place.’
‘No!’ said Charles, irritably. ‘What I mean is, why didn’t you have the, er… operation? The, er… procedure. You must have been desperate to get rid of the, er… er… foetus… Why didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t get round to it in time,’ she replied.
‘You are a dreadful procrastinator, darling,’ he said. ‘But you really should have told me.’
‘Once I was back in England it sort of slipped my mind,’ she said. She put her arms around his neck and said, ‘Are you frightfully angry with me, my little prince?’
Charles thought, I’m a character in Shakespeare. Charles said, ‘Allow me to read the letter again in the sure knowledge that my son be the scribe and not some gibbering fool whose jest it be to claim false kinship.’
Camilla absented herself. She hated it when Charles slipped into what she called his pompous language. She went outside and sat on the back doorstep and lit the cigarette she’d been longing for. It was not that Camilla had completely forgotten about the baby she had given birth to in Zurich. She certainly remembered the event; it was just that she wasn’t a woman who dwelt on things that could not be changed. What was the point of crying on the unknown child’s birthday? She occasionally thought about the boy, wondered about him, but when she did so, she imagined him happy, strong, living in Ruislip where she understood his adoptive parents had a socially prominent position. She had not enquired any further. She wasn’t the only girl at he
r finishing school to ‘fall from grace’, as the nuns in the nursing home called it. But she was the least neurotic about it. Camilla simply couldn’t understand why people beat themselves up about the beastly things that happened in life.
When she went back to the sitting room, Charles said, ‘Graham wants to come and see us.’
‘Oh, does he?’ said Camilla unenthusiastically.
‘We must see him, darling,’ said Charles. ‘He is our son, our only child. And he’s older than William, which makes him second in line to the throne.’
‘But bastards don’t count, they can’t inherit,’ said Camilla.
‘Those old laws were thrown out with the Dissolution of the Monarchy Act,’ said Charles.
Freddie and Tosca were pretending to be asleep on the rag rug that Charles had made out of old cardigans using a clothes peg and an old sack for the base. They had heard the conversation between their mistress and master.
Freddie growled to Tosca, ‘As if Macbeth wasn’t bad enough, now we’re into melodrama.’
Leo came into the room panting, after running away from Spike. ‘What you laughing at?’ he barked.
Freddie growled, ‘It’s a private pedigree joke.’
‘Right,’ yapped Leo, who never questioned the implicit suggestion that he was in every respect inferior to Freddie and Tosca. He always allowed them to feed first and get nearer to the fire.
When Charles had finished writing to Graham he read the letter aloud:
My dear Graham,
First allow me to commiserate with you on the loss of Mr and Mrs Cracknall, your adoptive parents. You must be simply devastated by their deaths. Then to discover that you were not their flesh and blood must have caused you enormous anguish.
Camilla, your mother, and i would terribly like to see you.
‘Terribly like to see you?’ queried Camilla.
‘Well, I would terribly like to see my son,’ said Charles with a flash of anger.
Camilla said tearfully, ‘I’m not questioning your sentiment, darling, just your way of expressing it. “Terribly” sounds wrong, couldn’t you drop the “terribly”?’