by William Kuhn
“Yes, well, that’s where the bug bit me.”
“Excellent,” said The Queen, smiling her approval. “Well, I just go along because they ask me to, but I’m afraid quite a lot of it leaves me cold. Perhaps I didn’t have the right teacher.” The Queen hadn’t been allowed to go to school at all. Fine nannies and eminent private tutors, she’d had those, yes, but no school, no rough-and-tumble with other children. Something she regretted. Something she’d missed.
“Oh, but Ma’am! Henry V. It’s one of Shakespeare’s most royal plays. It’s about your life, surely. It’s about the things you know better than anyone,” said Rajiv with some disappointment in his voice.
Luke and Anne, who’d both been monitoring this conversation from across the aisle, sprang into action. One thing not allowed in conversation with the sovereign was to refer to her position, to mention that she is the sovereign, in such a full-frontal, unambiguous way.
“Look! Out the window. Isn’t the Firth of Forth beautiful this morning?” asked Anne brightly.
Luke also stood up and pointed to the rear of the aircraft. “Oh dear, Miss Rinaldi is sitting all by herself!”
For a moment Rajiv looked confused. Then The Queen interrupted Luke, “Do sit down. I’ve said it’s all right.” Then she looked back to Rajiv. “Now, Cheddar. ‘About your life.’ Carry on. What do you mean?”
“Well, right before the Battle of Agincourt, Henry goes disguised among the men, see, in a cloak, you know, sort of anonymously, to find out whether they’re ready to fight or not.”
She nodded at Rajiv to continue.
“And he comes across several people, one or two of them love him, and are ready to die for him, but there’s another who’s not. He blames Henry for all the bloodshed that’s going to come along with the battle. Henry gets into a fight with him and argues with him.”
“I see. And?”
“They go away and Henry’s all by himself afterwards, thinking about the life of an ordinary soldier and the life of a king. What has he got that they haven’t got? He’s just a man, just like they’re men, but at least they get to sleep at night. He doesn’t. They don’t have to worry about battles, and the welfare of armies, and diplomacy, like he does. Private men enjoy ‘heart’s ease.’ ‘What infinite heart’s ease must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!’ ”
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a reliable supply of ‘heart’s ease.’ Sounds like a fine remedy. From dandelion blossom perhaps, or sorrel. I’ve felt the lack of it myself, sometimes.”
“There you are, Ma’am!”
“Go on, what else?”
“Well, then the King, Henry, that is, thinks about what he’s got that private soldiers don’t. What has he got to compensate him for not having heart’s ease?”
“And? What does he have?”
“He’s got nuffink, Ma’am,” said Rajiv, using a Cockney pronunciation to try and make her laugh. He would have offered her a Mars bar if he had one in his pocket, but he didn’t.
“Nothing? Really,” said The Queen, smiling.
“No. All he has is ‘idle ceremony,’ and that’s not going to help him when he’s down. It only makes people afraid of him.”
The Queen did know that feeling of being feared, and her own inability to reach out to the public over the barrier. All she had to offer was small talk and a supply of questions she repeated mechanically over and over. And the ceremonies themselves: the coronation in 1953, the first jubilee in 1977, the next in 2002. Those big parades through the streets with everyone cheering at her. Everyone expected her to be so pleased when they were over. She was content in a way that they went with such military precision, no mishaps, everything according to plan. But they didn’t give her heart’s ease. Riding by in the carriage and being waved at. It was comforting. All must be well if they’re waving flags and not throwing stones, but she wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t temporary. The mood could easily shift again, just as it had before. No, Henry was right. Ceremony didn’t provide heart’s ease.
“And . . .” began The Queen tentatively.
“Ma’am?” said Rajiv.
“Does King Henry find anything that helps him feel better? Give him ‘heart’s ease’?”
While this conversation was going on at the front of the helicopter, William and Shirley were exchanging a few words at the back.
“Hot in here today,” said Shirley, shivering.
“No, it’s not. It’s okay. Why, Shirley, your forehead’s all damp.” He took out his silk pocket square and began to dab around her temples. “And you’re shuddering too, darling. What’s wrong with you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Shirley. “Leave off.” She could not conceal that she was suffering from shortness of breath too, and she felt the occasional sharp pang in her upper back. She reached up to rub her shoulder. She was very pale.
“Something’s wrong. Hang on a minute.”
William was out of his seat in a single leap. He went forward to tell Luke. Anne overheard. They both got out of their seats to come back and look at Shirley. William brought her a paper cup of water from the steward in the galley. Anne surveyed the situation, put her knuckles gently against Shirley’s cheek to comfort her and gauge her temperature. She then stood up and brought Luke forward with her. She’d had a small amount of medical training in connection with her work on the army helpline. They both stopped in the aisle next to The Queen. Anne bent over to say, “Ma’am, I think Mrs MacDonald may be having a heart attack.”
“My God!” said The Queen, who was, however, not altogether surprised. She knew the genealogy and medical history of all her members of staff. “It’s how her grandmother died. Major Thomason, go to the cockpit. Have the pilot radio ahead. Tell them we’ll need an ambulance and a cardiac specialist to meet us.” The Queen then got up and took her tartan blanket back to Shirley, who sat stricken and immobile in her seat. “Hang on now, Shirley! Only twenty more minutes. You’re not leaving us now, you’re too young. You’ve got a lot more work in you yet,” she said as she tucked in the blanket around Shirley’s waist. “Just have this rug. It’ll keep you warm.”
Anne sat down in William’s empty seat and held Shirley’s hand.
The Old Vic was a theatre that had first been built in the early 1800s and it was now approaching a major anniversary. During its life it had been a music hall, a school, the base of an ambitious Shakespeare company, and the first home of Britain’s National Theatre. There was inadequate funding of the company from ticket sales, and the theatre’s director, a Hollywood actor who longed for the artistic respectability—and creative stimulus—that only performing on stage in Britain would bring, had devised a gala to which many American actors and philanthropists had been invited. Because of the theatre’s historic importance to the London stage, The Queen’s private secretary had advised in favor of her accepting the invitation to the gala that had been sent to her.
[© Steve Fareham]
Two cars were on their way to the Old Vic from Buckingham Palace, preceded by motorcycle outriders from the Metropolitan Police. The Queen and Lady Anne rode in the palace’s newest limousine, with big windows and special interior lighting so The Queen could be seen by onlookers and others who had gathered in a few strategic points along her route. Luke was in a second car, an undistinguished 1980s Rover sedan, with the Royal Protection officer. The drill was that although The Queen would arrive in the first, grander car, she could slip away in the Rover afterwards, for a quicker and more anonymous return to the palace.
Anne asked The Queen, not looking at her, as they were sitting in the back of the car and both sets of their eyes were forward in case of spotting knots of public who required waving to, “What is the news?”
“She’s in the cardiac unit at St Thomas’s.”
“And?”
“Well, they put one of those balloon thin
gys in her femoral artery. It cleared the blockage near the heart. Then they put in something to prop open the vessel, so it won’t collapse. If she gives up cigarettes, and cheese, the prognosis is good. A pity about the cheese. The doctors think she will make a full recovery.”
“Thank God.”
“Quite.”
“A scare, though.”
“Yes, well, I couldn’t tell which of you was the more frightened when we put her in the ambulance.”
Anne let this pass. She wasn’t entirely sure what The Queen meant by this. “On the left, Ma’am. Up ahead.”
The Queen turned to acknowledge a knot of pedestrians on a paved island in the roadway. They weren’t actually waiting to see her. They’d just paused in crossing the street to find out why the motorcycle outriders were stopping the traffic. The Queen raised her hand and waved. The people on the island gawked. Waving at her, let alone cheering “Hooray!” was not their first instinct.
“Well, you see,” began Anne, “Mrs MacDonald is thinking of retiring before too long. I thought of letting her have one of my spare bedrooms in Tite Street . . .”
“I know all about it. I think it’s an excellent plan.”
Anne was surprised. She didn’t think even she and Shirley had got down to agreeing upon the details, and already The Queen was ready to write “Approved” in her distinctive rounded hand on the deal. She said nothing.
“You’ll both want looking after. Shirley will need to convalesce. And then you and I, we’ll both be hobbling around ourselves before too long. I’ve set aside one of Queen Elizabeth’s sticks for you. As a way of saying thank you. Perhaps Shirley can help you when you begin to keel over.”
“On the right, Ma’am,” said Anne, as they approached a crowd of tourists in Parliament Square.
The Queen leaned forward and smiled at them. They looked back at her as if she were an alien. Only a little girl cried, “The Queen! The Queen!” and waved both arms frantically.
“That’s it,” said The Queen to Anne as she smiled at the little girl.
“Very kind of you, indeed, Ma’am,” said Anne formally, though she was touched, and knew that a gift of anything that had once belonged to her mother was a rare mark of favor from The Queen. “I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve it.”
“Of course you have. You’ve been many years with me now. And then coming all that way last night.”
“It was nothing, Ma’am.”
“Nonsense. Wasn’t nothing. And I’ve had a little discovery. Don’t need the royal train or Britannia to do what I do.”
“No, Ma’am. Of course not.”
“It’s given me a little boost. Done me a world of good. Can’t say why.”
“I’m so pleased, Ma’am.”
“And I’ve asked the apothecary to prescribe some pills.”
“What pills, Ma’am?”
“You know. The ones to cure worrying too much. I want to give them a try. Being unhappy takes up too much time. I’ve got a lot to do.”
Anne was aware how big a step this was for The Queen. Her mother was well known for describing aspirin as “that dangerous drug.” For The Queen even to consider taking antidepressants was virtually a revolution in her thinking. Before Anne could come up with the proper remark to acknowledge what The Queen had just said, they were pulling up to the theatre. “Here we are. To work, Lady Anne! To work,” said The Queen, grimly and almost gaily.
Luke had requested, and The Queen had approved, a small alteration in the programme that had been decided upon months earlier for her attendance at the Old Vic gala. Ordinarily, only Lady Anne and he would have been in attendance, sitting with her in the royal box, with an officer from the Royal Protection outside the door in the corridor. William had asked Luke to find out whether an extra seat could be found for him in the theatre; and Rajiv had applied for two more on behalf of himself and Rebecca. Under the circumstances, and as the Old Vic was one of The Queen’s charities, to which she subscribed annually out of the Privy Purse, Luke had asked whether the theatre couldn’t find three additional seats for “The Queen’s guests.” The theatre management provided three seats in the center stalls on the ground floor within view of the royal box.
The Queen arrived at the front of the theatre, the big car coming to a slow, infinitesimal halt. As soon as her car door was opened, she got out and then stood for a moment, pretending to admire the front of the building. This was in fact so that the press photographers could get a good shot. She wouldn’t pose for them directly, or look at them head-on, but she would hold still while they photographed her doing something else. Afterwards, she went up the red carpeted steps to find the American actor first in the receiving line. “Thank you for all you’re doing for the London theatre,” she said to him as she took both his hands in both of hers. She would have given him only one hand ordinarily, but she felt she was inaugurating a new regime. The question had struck her as she was going up the steps to meet him. What did a little extra warmth cost her? Very little. It seemed to mean so much to the tea lady on Waverley railway station. So she gave him two hands. Then, swinging his hands deliberately to her left in the direction of Lady Anne, whom he was meant to greet next, she moved on to the next person in the line. It was the most effective way of indicating their conversation was over. Nevertheless, the Hollywood actor was radiant. He turned to Lady Anne and said, “Isn’t she cute?”
“Um, yes. Certainly,” she said doubtfully. “We’re so happy to be here tonight. I can’t tell you.” He didn’t understand that her “Certainly” meant “Stop behaving like an idiot,” or that “I can’t tell you” actually referred to the last twenty-four hours, when it sometimes looked as if they might never have made it to the Old Vic at all.
For the gala performance, the Old Vic had commissioned a Bollywood version of Shakespeare. The idea was to take his most patriotic play, Henry V, and set it to Indian music with a large cast as well as a full orchestra. The theatre had imported two of India’s best-known film actors to play the leads. Although the play itself was about a medieval English king warring with France, and reached its climax at the Battle of Agincourt, the costuming, the personnel, and the instruments were all Indian. The cross-pollination of cultures had the effect of universalizing the text, as well as slightly sending up some parts of the play that might otherwise be a little too nationalistic had they not been set to elaborately upbeat song-and-dance routines. The play’s memorable words had been preserved, however, and The Queen followed along in her copy of the play’s text, which the theatre had helpfully provided for her and all her party. She thought of it as a kind of timetable rather than a work of art. She could see by following along when it would all be over. She walked into the box and without hesitating went to the edge, where she acknowledged the applause of the audience. As she surveyed the crowd, she looked down and saw Rajiv giving her a comically deferential bow from the waist. William’s eye sparkled as he gave her a mild nod of the head. Rebecca just smiled shyly and lowered her eyes. She acknowledged them with a flicker of her eyelash, which all of them saw, but which went unnoticed by the rest of the audience.
A handsome young actor who played Chorus came out to ask the audience to conjure up entire mounted armies onstage. “Think when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth.” At this, Rajiv looked over at Rebecca, and, holding up his two hands as if they were a horse’s front hoofs, he made a little cantering motion, smiling broadly. At first she refused to look at him, but when he continued cantering, she looked at him and put her finger on her lips emphatically. He didn’t mind. Any attention from her he counted as a kind of victory.
After the introduction from Chorus, the Archbishop of Canterbury came onstage to conspire with another bishop. They needed to distract the king or he would impose a heavy tax on the Church. They hit upon the idea of advising Henry that he had the right
to go to war with France to claim territory there. Henry replied skeptically to their advice, “Never two such kingdoms did contend without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops are every one a woe.”
Anne, who was sitting in the front row of the box with The Queen, turned around, looked at Luke, who was sitting behind them, and then reached out her hand to him. He reached forward with his hand and the two of them held hands for an instant.
The Queen, to her surprise, found herself enjoying the performance. Usually Shakespeare was rather heavy going and she would cast covert glances at the number of pages until the end of the act to see how many more minutes until the interval. But something about the music and dancing of the Bollywood Henry V made her enjoy the play more than she would have ordinarily. She discovered new resonance in the lines as she read along in her text.
The Queen and everyone in her box had coffee and sandwiches at the interval. “No wine!” she’d said when a waiter brought a tray of drinks to the box. “It will put me to sleep. Don’t want to miss anything. Coffee, please.” Neither Luke nor Anne felt they could take a glass if The Queen wasn’t having any, so they had coffee too. They’d all then retaken their seats to watch the play’s conclusion. Just as the play was reaching its climax, with Henry about to speak to his sodden, bedraggled men, vastly outnumbered by the opposing French army, before the battle at Agincourt, a police inspector in uniform came out onto the stage. At the same moment a quiet knock on the door to The Queen’s box made Luke step out into the corridor.
“Pardon me. Sorry! Apologize for the interruption! Sorry,” said the inspector on the stage.
The Bollywood actors looked at him in shock and fell in disarray from their carefully blocked positions on the stage. The orchestra, which had begun playing music to accompany Henry’s Agincourt speech, the most famous lines in the play, grew silent with an unplanned crash of cymbals and a ghostly sitar tailing off in a minor key.
The police inspector then walked out to center stage and turned first to address The Queen’s box, saying, “Your Majesty,” with a crisp nod of his head, before turning to the main audience in front and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry for this interruption to the performance. But I have to announce that there has been an incident, close by the theatre, at Waterloo.”