by William Kuhn
“Yes.”
“The Queen’s dresser?”
“Yes.”
“ ‘Raindrops on roses’?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Not what Her Majesty usually speaks to me about.”
“Nor me. But she and Mrs MacDonald have been together for a very long time.”
“And what has that got to do with Britannia?”
“Don’t be so dim. If The Queen has not been feeling entirely herself, she may have gone to Britannia to cheer herself up, as it were.”
“She might have told the equerry first.” Luke gave Anne a resentful look. “I could have arranged the transport.”
“It’s not about you, darling. Don’t take it personally. Now, look here. Mrs MacDonald is in The Queen’s confidence. More than we are. We have to face it. And I believe you found a Scottish railway timetable?”
“Yes, on her computer.”
“Well, then, that’s enough to suggest where she might have gone. Mrs MacDonald and I are going to Edinburgh as soon as possible. I’ve spoken to my nephew. He won’t give us the company plane. Don’t see why not. I suppose an elderly aunt is not important enough.” This time it was Anne’s turn to shoot Luke a resentful glance. He was, after all, a young man of about her nephew’s age, and sometimes she wondered whether all young men weren’t in league against all old ladies. Young men hadn’t looked at her on the street for a long time and she still minded. “However, he’s offered two seats on the last flight to Edinburgh. British Airways, leaving at 2100 from Heathrow. Also a car to the airport. And the use of the flat in Charlotte Square when we get there. So the two of us are off.”
With a somewhat guilty flash, Luke saw for the first time that there was sense in sharing the news. Lady Anne had discovered evidence of where precisely in Scotland The Queen might be headed. She had also devised a strategy for finding her and taking care of her once they arrived.
“Well, under the circumstances, that does seem the best plan,” admitted Luke. “Perhaps I’d better stay here until we’re sure there are no further reports. If there’s nothing, we’ll follow you later tonight and be there first thing to arrange transport for the return. Assuming that’s where she is. And assuming she’s willing to return.”
“We’ll follow?”
“William de Morgan and I.”
“The butler?”
“Yes, Lady Anne,” said Luke, drawing himself up to his full height. “The butler. Any questions?”
“None whatsoever, Major Thomason. Not a moment for questions, I shouldn’t think. Not a time like this,” she said, looking at him steadily in the eye.
Just at that moment a double ring from the telephone sitting on The Queen’s desk interrupted them. Luke looked at the phone with alarm.
“I think you’d better pick that up,” Anne said levelly.
“But it’s The Queen’s private line.”
“Nevertheless . . .” Anne said, raising her eyebrows.
“Her Majesty’s Sitting Room,” said Luke tentatively.
“Ah, Major Thomason. Arabella Tyringham-Rode here.”
Luke prevented himself from taking a sharp breath. He knew the name. Anyone who read the papers would have known it. Arabella Tyringham-Rode had been appointed a month previously as the first woman head of the internal security service, MI5. “Lady Spy Numero Uno!” the headline in one paper had cried. “Spooks Get First Female Chief” said another. Luke was fully accustomed to dealing with The Queen and members of the royal family. Since coming to the palace a few months previously, he’d also met several senior officers in the army, but the head of MI5, perhaps one of the most powerful members of the entire civil service, still intimidated him. He was determined not to show it. He thought saying as little as possible was the ticket. But what to call her? Better to keep it simple. “Um, hello.”
“Can you please tell me what’s happened to The Queen?” Her voice was Oxbridge and indicated brisk efficiency.
“Well, I believe she has just stepped away.”
“Major Thomason. No nonsense, please. We have audiotapes of your asking Sandringham and Windsor and St James’s if they know where she is. Also your call to security asking about her.”
“You’ve tapped Her Majesty’s phone!” said Luke indignantly. “How dare you?” For a moment his chivalric notions of honor and fair play got the better of him.
“Look here, Major,” she said, emphasizing his comparatively junior rank, “The Queen is one of the nation’s most important assets. We have to use all available means to protect that asset. If she’s been taken—I believe ‘kidnapped’ is the more old-fashioned term—the security service will need to assume command of retrieving her.”
Luke heard only the word “kidnapped.” He hadn’t even conceived of that until now.
“She has not been kidnapped.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, we’ve got a few items here, that, um, suggest otherwise.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Now, Major,” Tyringham-Rode said, using a smoother and more propitiating tone of voice. “We have some trying circumstances before us, do we not?” She could tell he was rattled and needed to be calmed down. “MI5 is prepared to take the burden off your shoulders.”
“No,” repeated Luke.
“Perhaps you don’t understand, Major. Losing Her Majesty is a threat to the integrity of the state of serious proportions. We have a Parliament. We have a Prime Minister. We have a judiciary and courts of law. But The Queen represents us. She is our history. She is the emblem of everything we associate with continuity and correctness. In a secular era, she is the last thing that is sacred.” She paused a moment as if considering a philosophical question. “Not in a doctrinal sense, of course, but informally, yes, sacred. And that’s just for the United Kingdom. She is, of course, a figure of global significance too. If anything were to happen to her, it would be a blow not only to us, but to people everywhere. You do recognize that this may be not unconnected to the war on terror, don’t you?”
Luke listened to this lecture with beads of sweat beginning to trickle down his sides under his shirt. Still he said nothing.
“So you see, Major, it’s better if you hand off to us, because the search for her has to be made quietly, quickly, and with all the technological facilities we have at our disposal.”
“I quite understand what you’re saying, Miss, um, Ms . . .” Luke knew that the palace convention of avoiding “Ms” probably didn’t apply here, but he was also momentarily confused.
“Roadie. Nickname since school. Everyone calls me that. Tyringham-Rode’s such a mouthful. Why don’t you call me ‘Roadie’ too?” She thought this might be one way of reassuring the frightened major, calming him down, putting him at ease.
Luke was not going to call one of the most important officials in the country “Roadie.” “Look here, Ms Roadie, um, sir, um, I mean, ma’am.” He breathed heavily outward, angry with himself, and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t dare look at Lady Anne, a mixture of apprehension and sympathy in her eyes as she watched him on the phone. “Here in the Household, we have a notion where Her Majesty may have gone. We’d like to bring her back on our own without alarming her. She won’t be happy to disturb MI5. That would displease her very much. So why don’t you let me handle this? I think I may be able to find her and have her back here within twenty-four hours.” Luke had no idea whether that was possible or not. The number had just stuck in his head from William’s having mentioned it earlier.
“No, Major, twenty-four hours is too long. I can give you thirty minutes.”
“Half an hour?” said Luke incredulously.
“Look here, Major, I have your details in front of me. Decorated for bravery in the Middle East. Well done. You better than anyone will understand. I can give you thirty m
inutes. And if nothing then, you will hand over to us.” She hung up the phone without saying goodbye.
Luke quietly put down the telephone.
“Oh, Luke. Was that Arabella Tyringham-Rode?” Anne had heard and guessed that much. “Poor boy. She gave you a rough time. I’m so sorry. But Her Majesty will not like it, wherever she is, if MI5 are the ones who turn up to find her.”
“No,” assented Luke, still dazed by the telephone call. “No, she won’t.” In agreeing with Anne, and thinking of The Queen’s likely reaction to half a dozen men in dark coats with tiny audio phones in their ears turning up out of nowhere, he found some strength he didn’t have the moment before. “And if we get there before them, she won’t have to know about them. We can protect her from them.” Then he turned to Anne, more indignant still, and said, “Do you know she actually wanted me to call her ‘Roadie.’ ”
“Unbelievable,” said Anne. Then she paused a moment, wrinkled her nose, and said, “What is a roadie, by the way?”
“Road crew. Set up the speakers and things for a rock concert.”
“Oh dear, no, we can’t have The Queen being interfered with by Roadie and her crew.” She gave an involuntary shudder. “Why, she’d rather give Mr Putin a pedicure than go to a rock concert. But look at the time. Mrs MacDonald and I have to get to Heathrow. You and William will . . . ?”
“We’ll follow. When we’re sure there’s nothing more to be learned here. Yes.”
“Good,” said Lady Anne, walking out the door, “Household versus Roadies. I know which side I’m on.”
Luke smiled wanly and then fished his mobile phone out of his pocket to check the time.
Rajiv hopped into the taxi after The Queen because he was worried about her. When he flagged down the taxi, and told the driver she was going to King’s Cross, he just jumped in beside her without asking. The Queen protested. “Wouldn’t a bus be more economical? I’m sure you should be staying to look after the shop. But thank you nevertheless.” She noticed for the first time the intoxicating cheesy smell of his jacket, the beautiful contrast of his brown hands on his blue jeans. “What part of India is your family from?” She thought it safer to ask whether his family was from India, as he might have been born in Britain himself, and might be touchy to be called “Indian” rather than “British.” She did not make the same mistake as the senior courtier at the dinner in the Castle.
He appreciated the distinction. “Ahmedabad, Ma’am. My great-grandfather was a doctor there. My grandparents came here after the war.”
“Ah, just like Queen Victoria’s munshi.”
“Pardon me, Ma’am?”
“Well, Queen Victoria had two Indian servants. She grew rather fond of one of them, Abdul Karim. His father was said to have been a doctor too.” She paused to look with interest out the window. How different busy London looked when the police hadn’t cleared the road for her car. “I don’t blame her. He was quite handsome. She had herself photographed with him working on dispatch boxes. He started as someone who waited at table. Then she asked him to give her lessons in Hindustani. She ended by giving him Frogmore Cottage to live in for his lifetime, and a title that was something like Indian secretary, or munshi. The Household loathed him, of course. They were all quite, quite conscious of skin color in those days, weren’t they? I suppose we are still, aren’t we?”
Rajiv didn’t know quite how to speak to the sovereign about race. Many of his friends whose families had begun in India some generations earlier, though well-integrated Londoners in every other respect, still felt that they were looked down upon as “black.” “I suppose we are, Ma’am,” Rajiv said evenly.
[© Illustrated London News/Mary Evans]
“Have you experienced any unpleasantness?”
“I have, Ma’am.”
“Would you like to tell me?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“Let’s see if we can’t start, here and now, to make things better together, shall we?” She slipped her arm, clad in its blue sweatshirt material, through the corner of his arm in its army jacket and held on to the roundness of his bicep.
Inwardly, Rajiv began to radiate with the heat of this honor she’d done him, partly as the sovereign, but even more than that as a strange elderly lady who trusted him and who was grateful for whatever small services he could provide for her. He would have died for her at that moment. He glowed.
“He grew quite fat later on.”
“Ma’am?”
“The munshi. Mind you don’t.”
“No, Ma’am.” Rajiv felt he’d just been engaged to do something, he wasn’t sure what. He was ready to do anything she required of him.
“What do you know about yoga?”
“Nothing, Ma’am.”
“Well, then, perhaps you could tell me a little about Swami Vivekananda.”
“Swami who?”
“He brought yoga to this country. I thought you would know him. You see, I thought yoga was Hindu in its origins?”
“Well, it may well be, Ma’am, but I was born here. I’m Marmite-on-toast in origins.”
“Oh, yes, Marmite. Lovely.” The Queen thought a moment and then circled back. “But, you do practice yoga now, don’t you? I was under the impression that all the young did. Just as they all have mobile phones.”
“Well, I have a mobile phone, Ma’am, but I’ve never practiced yoga.”
“Really?” said The Queen with some incredulity. “But even I practice yoga.”
Now it was Rajiv’s turn to look at her and express surprise. “Really?”
“Yes. Quite hard work it is too. Not as easy as it looks. But I’m getting better. I was quite stiff at first. I find it relaxes me, stretches me out, helps clear my mind.”
“It does?” said Rajiv, still skeptical.
“Well, I know I don’t look flexible, but actually I am. Very. I find the balasana very relaxing indeed.”
Rajiv looked at her curiously. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Child’s pose,” said The Queen proudly. “It’s one of the basics. I couldn’t do it at first. You kneel down and then lean forward over your knees, holding your arms out. Rather hard on the knees to start out with, but lovely for the lower back. Now I can do it,” she said, looking him in the eye and smiling.
“Good for you, Ma’am.”
“I think so.”
They were soon at King’s Cross and standing beneath the digital screen listing the impending departures of intercity trains. The Queen pointed up to one that said Edinburgh Waverley departing at 1700. “That one, five o’clock,” she said. “Now, we haven’t much time, perhaps you could help me find the platform.” He found the platform, but they were stopped at the closed ticket barrier. He thought it was beneath her dignity to have a train ticket, so he brought her to where the guard was standing. The guard looked at this young man helping a pensioner in a scarf under her blue hoodie, smiled at them, and then pressed a button releasing the barrier. She gave him her usual percussive “Thank you” as she walked slowly past him on Rajiv’s arm. It sounded familiar to him. He looked at her curiously, but he could not place her.
It was already just minutes before the hour as Rajiv helped The Queen into the last carriage and found a seat for her at a table for four where there was one space free. The carriage was crowded, as everyone who was boarding the train at the last minute had been finding their seats in this carriage closest to the barrier. The Queen settled down into her seat and then turned up to him an appealing face. “Now, you’ve done more than enough. You’ve got to get back to the shop or they’ll give away your post, you know?” There was something slightly hectoring about her concern, as if she were his nanny, but he appreciated the fact that she was thinking of him rather than herself. “You must get off the train before it goes. We’ll be in touch,” said The Queen, turning to survey the th
ree people sitting at her table. He knew that he’d been dismissed. The other passengers at her table seemed relatively harmless. She’d ordered him to go, so Rajiv turned on his heel to get off the train. Just as he arrived back at the doorway from the carriage to the platform, he heard the electronic signal sounding. The door was flung open. Rebecca jumped onto the train, slammed the door, and looked back out the window at an angry guard who was blowing his whistle at her. Then the signal stopped sounding and the door locked.
Part IV
Pranayama
The Queen came back from her drive in the pony cart with the Prime Minister. She mulled over the loss of the royal train. First it had been the dedicated aeroplanes, then Britannia, and now this. She looked back ten or fifteen years earlier and recalled 1992, her annus horribilis. It was a bad year for a number of reasons, really the crisis of the modern monarchy in her recollection, and she thought, quite secretly, for she wouldn’t admit this even to the Duke of Edinburgh, that it was her fault. Above all she believed she’d been a failure because she couldn’t find the right words. Everything that she was now suffering through, not just this proposal to get rid of the royal train, but even the sadness she could see around her eyes when she looked at herself in the mirror in the morning, followed from that year, and from what had happened then.
The marriages of all three of her married children had broken apart. Anne had been divorced from Mark Phillips. Andrew had separated from Sarah Ferguson. Most spectacularly of all, the Morton book about Diana had led to her separation from the Prince of Wales. How had this happened, all in a matter of months? The monarchy seemed to do well when the marriages were rubbing along all right. It was when marriages went foul, when divorce, and divorcées, came into the picture, that the throne wobbled, as in 1936, when her Uncle David caused so much trouble by wanting to marry Mrs Simpson. And what was the secret to a happy marriage? She didn’t know. Her own marriage was based on putting up with a cantankerous old man who shouted and blustered and bullied, who disappeared for months at a time to Australia or New Zealand just when she wanted him most, who made her laugh during the Braemar Games by muttering sotto voce on a windy day, “Keep your kilts down, lads. The Sovereign’s watching.”