by William Kuhn
Their being entirely of one mind about most of the films they saw together was what brought William up short one day when he proposed their seeing another together one Saturday. It was called The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It was about three drag queens in the Australian outback, and the elaborate rituals of makeup and dressing-up that went into their performances. William never talked about being gay with Shirley. He assumed she knew. Nor did he discuss his dressing up as a boy in front of his mother’s mirror. He’d had reason to believe she wouldn’t be shocked. That’s why he was surprised that when he proposed it, Shirley had said abruptly, “No.”
“But why not? It sounds fun.”
“No, definitely not. Horrid. Disgusting. I’m not seeing it,” said Shirley in a voice that brooked no further discussion.
It was as if his closest friend had just slapped him in the face.
Rebecca Rinaldi grew up in the country and went to a comprehensive school that had no claim to distinction whatsoever. Few of its students went on to university, and Rebecca herself knew from an early age that her own talents lay elsewhere than in reading books or studying for research degrees. She brought up bantams that lived under the iron roof of a dilapidated shed on her parents’ farm. There were no fences, and the whole property was easily accessible to foxes, which quite regularly made off with one of the birds. Suffering this loss, even though it happened often, was like losing a member of her family for the first twenty-four hours, but then she was fascinated to see how the loss of one hen or cock led to a rearrangement of the pecking order of the entire roost. She also looked after a flock of geese, a group of nearly feral cats, a pony, and a thoroughbred horse that had been retired and put out in the Rinaldis’ pasture for a small rental fee by their much richer racing neighbors. Each one of these animals inspired greater respect and affection in Rebecca than any human being she’d ever met outside her mother and father.
Even her parents were a trial sometimes. They were vegetable farmers who considered themselves above the law. They discovered early on the value of fresh manure in increasing the yield of their small holdings of carrots, onions, turnips, and beets. So they took their rusting van to the stables at the racecourse, to the neighboring pig farm, and even to the man who provided port-a-loos to the outdoor concerts at Glastonbury, collected the fragrant soil in plastic tubs and stacked the tubs in the back of their van. This was completely against the health and safety regulations which governed the fertilization of foods raised for human consumption, but Rebecca’s parents gloried in their flouting of the law and in their embrace of what they saw as the most natural, sustainable, and organic way possible of raising root vegetables.
One by-product of this carting of so much manure was that the family van, in which Rebecca was also driven to school, smelled pungently of dung and, downwind, could be scented coming a hundred yards away. This led to merciless teasing of Rebecca by her schoolmates, who, with adolescent lack of imagination and infant fascination with feces, called her “Poo.” In school she was as untouchable as the member of a leper colony. Even the kindest of her fellow students hesitated to reach out to her. If they had, her fierce pride would have made her issue a rebuff.
When she finished school, she had no idea what she would do next. Because her parents were active proponents of organic farming, they’d happened to meet the Prince of Wales who, like them, cared about sustainable agriculture. They mentioned Rebecca’s love of riding and her excellence at taking care of the retired thoroughbred, whose owners the Prince also knew. There happened to be a vacancy at the Royal Mews and Rebecca was appointed via the influence of the heir to the throne. She got on well there. There was a tiny studio flat, what used to be called a bedsitter, with a sink, a small fridge in the corner, and a shared shower down the hall that went with the job. No one in the Mews cared or remarked upon her smell, as the care and disposal of horse manure was a pretty constant part of the job. She didn’t have friends in the Mews, nor did she keep everyone there at such angry arm’s length as she had in school. It was one of the contrasts of her young life, too young for her to remark on it even, that although no one had addressed more than three or four friendly words to her at school, she now occasionally had casual conversations with The Queen. Her only threatened humiliation was that her parents were convinced that manure from the royal stables was likely to be even richer than what they currently collected, and they were always devising schemes, which Rebecca had to thwart, of taking it away with them when they visited her.
Although she had lost many of her bantams to foxes, she was not a friend to foxhunting, which she thought of as giving license to privileged people to engage in cruelty to animals. Three years before she began working at the Mews, while she was still in school, she had attended an antihunting demonstration in Trafalgar Square, where she happened to meet one of the speakers. He denounced the methods used by those who facilitated foxhunting by killing badgers. The badgers themselves sometimes killed fox cubs, so they were considered enemies by friends of the hunt. He was a passionate speaker. He had a young badger which got the crowd’s attention, and Rebecca met him when he came off the platform after his speech. Or, rather, she got over her fear of him and slight attraction to his passionate way of denouncing the slaughter of badgers, by wanting to meet the badger he had in his arms. The young man with the badger thought Rebecca was beautiful. Her red hair and shyness and unconcealed delight at holding the animal made it difficult for him to ignore her.
Rebecca knew how to hold the badger, but she had no idea how to handle the young man. He was ten years older than her, and he was the first man who’d ever paid her any attention. Some kind of instinct, which she thought it was better to obey, made her curious about why he found her so fascinating. She was more than a little wary of him, but she could answer the questions he put to her by dwelling on the animal in her arms. He had an alert way of looking at her that she half suspected, from watching the mating behavior of cocks and hens, would lead to his trying to mount her. They’d gone to his flat. He’d served her wine with supper. She saw by the way he started touching her, more than was strictly necessary, that he wanted to have sex. A better-socialized young woman might have resisted more. Rebecca gave in easily because she was unsure of the rules that governed human romantic interaction. She’d been told by her mother that her extensive experience on horseback would make her first sexual experience easy, but the encounter was physically painful, made more unpleasant because she hadn’t expected it. He could see she was in distress and was gentle with her, but the damage was done, and she drew away from him to the edge of the bed. This was something he would not allow. He murmured apologies and encouragement into her ear, wrapped her in a white sheet and put his arm around her middle, spooning her protectively from behind, until he could hear her breathing become less frightened and more regular. She awoke a few hours later and briefly forgot his brutality at this first feeling she’d ever had of human intimacy with a man who was not of her own family. It was nearly like being returned to the warmth and security of the cradle. It was marvelous.
Then she recollected where she was and what had happened. She felt like a trapped mink that must gnaw off its paw to escape from an iron trap. She couldn’t even conceive of wanting to do ever again what they’d done a few hours before. She disengaged herself from the man as stealthily as was possible. Once free, she slipped back into her discarded clothes. She collected her backpack and crept out of the door, still under the cover of night. She walked all the way from the Elephant to Waterloo, where she still had time to catch the last train to a village near enough to her parents’ farm that she could walk there when she arrived. She was sure she would never hear from him again. She was relieved to be escaping without a trace. She forgot she’d signed his petition to ban foxhunting and written down her mobile phone number on the form for submission to Parliament.
To be The Queen’s senior dresser was, along with the seni
or butler, housekeeper, and cook, to be among the four most elevated positions anyone could reach on the royal staff. Shirley MacDonald’s grandmother and mother were proud of her, but it sometimes embarrassed her. Her granny had been a maid of all work, a kind of dogsbody, who toward the end of her career looked after linens. Her mother had worked in the royal kitchens, and though she too had served long, she never rose high in the outmoded Victorian hierarchy of servants, which still held sway at the palace. They were now all called “members of staff,” but their history of being servants was still very much just under the surface of their daily lives.
Shirley’s mother had died relatively young, overcome by smoking, long hours, and a series of husbands and boyfriends who had disappointed her. Shirley had no other siblings and her relationship to her granny was the last remaining tie she had to her family. She would occasionally go for holidays at the cottage on the Balmoral estate that her grandmother had been given as part of her retiring benefit. Although she was well into her seventies, her grandmother insisted on doing extra duty at the Castle. Shirley was aware, from staying with her granny, that she was neither as sharp nor as able as she’d once been. All the kitchen surfaces were sticky. The plastic flowers had a permanent layer of dust on them. The cotton bathroom mats in cheerful colors smelled faintly of pee. Shirley would do what she could to clean up when she went to visit, but she had to do it discreetly, because if she were discovered doing spot cleaning, her grandmother would take offense.
Shirley would also accompany her granny to the Castle to do a few hours of work, because she knew that she could not do the work she once could. Shirley had also heard via the palace grapevine that the serving full-time staff sometimes had to redo her grandmother’s work and were annoyed by it. So one summer day, in the run-up to The Queen’s arrival in mid-August, with the Castle gearing up for the longest formal residence of the year, Shirley and her grandmother drove up the South Deeside Road, parked in the staff car park, and went upstairs to complete an inventory of the bedsheets, pillow slips, and towels. Shirley was on a stepladder counting the sets of sheets that were folded into crisp, symmetrical squares on one of the top shelves in the linen cupboard. Her grandmother was standing below, making small checks on a folded piece of paper. The first Shirley knew that something was wrong was when she heard her grandmother say, “Oof,” and saw her lean back heavily on the doorjamb.
“What’s the matter, Granny?”
“Nothing’s the matter. Carry on. Where are we? Six top sheets. All Queen Victoria? Or some King George V?” The sheets had embroidered monograms in the corners and had been folded in such a way as to make the monogram easy to locate. These monograms identified the reign in which the sheets had been acquired. The staff had been trained always to preface the sovereign’s name with “King” or “Queen,” even though many of these figures were long dead. It was an instinctive sign of respect mixed with a practice that was as antique and old-fashioned as the sheets themselves.
“Look at your forehead, Granny. You’re all wet. And it’s not even hot in here.”
“Never you mind, Shirley. It’s the work. Want to get this right.”
“Let’s have a small break, shall we, Granny?”
“Break? Break! We have to get on. The Queen’s coming in two days.”
“This can wait, Granny.”
Shirley’s grandmother now began panting slightly, put down the paper and pencil that had been in her hand, and reached around to rub her shoulder. “Must have put out this joint reaching up to the third shelf just now. Ow.”
Men and women of her grandmother’s generation never admitted pain or ill health unless they had no time consciously to suppress involuntary groans. If possible, this was even truer of the women than the men, and of Scottish old ladies more than the English. So Shirley knew her grandmother was seriously unwell. “Come, now,” she said to her grandmother in a stern voice that allowed no argument, “let’s rest a moment here on this bench.” She had to be severe with her grandmother because when The Queen was in residence this was a corridor off which the upper members of the Household and guests would be staying, and the bench, strictly speaking, was for them. Ordinarily, if her grandmother had been feeling entirely well, she would have refused to sit there.
The bench had worn tartan cushions supported by deer antlers which served as arms and legs. If you didn’t sit carefully, the bench looked as if it might gore you. Shirley and her grandmother sat on the bench, with the old lady still holding her shoulder and unable to get her breath. Shirley massaged her other shoulder, feeling that the bones underneath the blouse and skin were more like those of a bird than of a human skeleton.
Suddenly, to their surprise, a lady-in-waiting appeared, coming down the corridor, wearing a brown corduroy jacket and matching skirt with unflattering cut. “Ah, taking a break, I see. Things always a bit slack here before Her Majesty arrives.” She said this as if she were trying to make pleasant conversation, but it sounded like a rebuke, with a swallowed “Tsk, tsk,” at the end of it, just barely audible. The lady-in-waiting had arrived two days early, before her waiting actually started, to go and see some friends in the neighborhood and to make use of the free accommodation she could claim from the imminent start of her duty.
“My grandmother’s not feeling well,” said Shirley, looking up from the bench with a combination of explanation and appeal.
“Ah, do you know, in my grandmother’s time you never saw the serv—I mean staff in the corridors. They got up and did the work so early in the morning that it was all done by the time you appeared. My God they were good.” She then turned to look at Shirley and said with a slight narrowing of her eyes, “That’s all changed now, of course.”
“Perhaps when you go downstairs, Mrs d’Arlancourt, you could send us up some help, please,” said Shirley. “I don’t think I should leave her.”
Her grandmother just looked up at the lady-in-waiting with frightened eyes, knowing that something was badly wrong, but unable to say exactly what.
“Oh, yes. Of course, I will. I’ll send someone up right away.” Then the lady-in-waiting leaned menacingly over Shirley’s grandmother and said, “Had a nip too many with your coffee this morning, did you, dear? Don’t you worry. Help’s on the way!” With that she went on down the staircase at a leisurely pace. The lady-in-waiting had the old English suspicion that most Scots were drunks and thieves, a prejudice that went back as far as Shakespeare, but which, in the circumstances, made Shirley’s heart thump with rage.
Help arrived and Shirley’s grandmother was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Aberdeen, where she died the next day. A young doctor came and told Shirley, “It was a myocardial infarction. She had hypertension. Her cholesterol was very high,” as if that explained the loss of the last living family member whom she had ever loved. Some weeks later, there was a memorial service for Shirley’s grandmother at the little Victorian church over the river from the Castle and up a slight rise. The Queen came to this service and sat in the front pew. Letitia d’Arlancourt, whose waiting had begun, sat next to The Queen. Shirley, who sat across the aisle from them as the principal mourner, did not know whether to give in to her anger, or to acknowledge the considerable honor The Queen was bestowing on her. High-colored and angry gratitude was the emotion she managed to convey when The Queen and Letitia d’Arlancourt spoke a few words to her at the door on their way to one of the black Range Rovers drawn up in front of the church.
That was the only moment, fifteen years ago, in which Shirley had ever considered leaving the Royal Household. She was furious with The Queen for tolerating someone like Letitia d’Arlancourt. She blamed not only this particular lady-in-waiting for her bad behavior, but also began to see all the upper levels of the Household as being in league with such as Letitia d’Arlancourt. Rather than take her fury and use it to find a new position, Shirley used it to redouble her efforts on behalf of The Queen. Although she would
have been eminently employable elsewhere, Shirley felt a kind of inertia when it came to looking for other work. What came to her more naturally was to take her constant, seldom-abating wrath and to put it into pressing and packing The Queen’s clothes, attending her mistress early and late, in a defiant spirit illegible to The Queen herself but which would have read: “I’ll be damned if you’ll have anything but the best of me even though one of your ladies once did me wrong and I will never forget.”
Part III
Child’s Pose
A single lamb chop with a thimble full of mint jelly. Three Brussels sprouts. A steamed carrot. A glass of burgundy. That had been The Queen’s solitary Monday lunch. The afternoon now stretched ahead of her, unusually free of engagements, but with plenty to attend to on her desk. She stood at the window, looking out on to Buckingham Palace Gardens with the light fast diminishing into the west of the wet December afternoon. She had briefing papers to read for Tuesday, but in the midst of her unusual melancholy, she couldn’t bring herself to look at them. It had occurred to her to ask the apothecary whether he might not prescribe some antidepressants. She recalled with shame how little she’d taken it seriously when Diana Wales was suffering from depression. None of them had. In her generation depression was really only something that soldiers returning from battle suffered, “shell shock,” yes, but everyone felt dejected every now and again. You didn’t take medicine for it. You pulled up your socks. You went for a walk. The whole Diana business had taught her that depression was an illness and that there were drugs that would help if it didn’t lift after a month or two of feeling unhappy. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to ask the attending physician for these pills. It would have been too humiliating, much worse than asking for more help on the computer. So she fell back on her usual tricks to try and feel better.