Queen Camilla

by Sue Townsend

  Half an hour later, the villagers from Emmerdale lay trapped inside the wreckage of their coach as an express train hurtled towards them. The Queen was still thinking about Boy’s loyal statement. Even the melodramatic death of the village idiot, played by an actor she had never liked, could not engage her full attention.

  Camilla was at the bottom of the garden, in the dark, poking at a smouldering bonfire of wet leaves with a long stick. She had always loved the autumn. She was glad to put away her summer clothes and throw on a baggy sweater, jeans and wellingtons. In the old days, when her affair with Charles was still a secret from the public, she had lived for fox-hunting days. She would rise early to begin the ritual of dressing: in the tight jodhpurs, the white high-necked shirt, the fitted red coat with the brass buttons. And last, but best of all, the tight, black knee-high riding boots.

  She knew she looked good in the saddle and was regarded by her fellow huntsmen as a fearless rider. When she strode from the house towards the stables, whip in hand, her breath visible in the frosty air, she felt contained and powerful, and if she was honest with herself, there was the tiniest frisson of sexual excitement. With a horse between her legs and the open countryside in front of her, surrounded by friends she could trust with her life, she experienced a sort of ecstasy; and how wonderful it was to return to a warm house at twilight, to lie in a hot bath with a drink and a fag and, occasionally, Charles.

  She heard a noise and looked up from the fire to see a pair of black and gold eyes staring into her own. The fox was back. She waved the blackened end of the stick towards it and shouted, ‘Bugger off.’ Then she saw that it had a companion.

  Beverley Threadgold shouted from her back door, ‘Camilla, we’re all coughin’ our bleedin’ lungs up in ’ere.’

  The foxes turned their backs and disappeared into the night.

  When Camilla went indoors, after dousing the bonfire, Charles was sitting in the front room, composing a letter at the small writing bureau. She could see from the wastepaper basket next to him that he had already gone through several drafts.

  She decided not to mention the foxes; he was obviously in a state of anxiety. Instead, she asked, ‘Who are you writing to, darling?’

  ‘The milkman,’ said Charles. ‘I’ve been through several drafts, I’ve written and rewritten the damn thing so many times, and don’t know how to end it.’

  Camilla picked up the last draft and read:

  Dear Milkman,

  Awfully sorry to inconvenience you, but would it be at all possible to change our order for today (Thursday) and have two bottles of semi-skimmed instead of our usual one?

  If this addition to our usual order leaves you in the ghastly position of being overstretched as far as your stock is concerned, then please do not worry. I would be simply devastated if my request gave you a moment’s anxiety or inconvenienced you in the slightest.

  May I just add that your cheery whistle in the morning, and in all weathers, somehow exemplifies the very essence of the indomitable British character.

  When she finished reading, Charles said, ‘Do I sign it “Sincerely, Charles”, or “With best wishes”, or “Yours respectfully”, because I do respect him, or what?’

  Camilla tore a strip of paper off the bottom of the letter and quickly scrawled, ‘One extra pint please.’ She rolled the scrap of paper up, pushed it in the neck of an empty Grice’s milk bottle and took the bottle out and put it on the doorstep.

  The telephone rang. It was William, telling his father that he was back from Swindon.

  Charles said, ‘Darling boy, was it horrid putting those scaffold thingies together?’

  William said, ‘No, it was kind of, satisfying. How’s Leo?’

  ‘He’s simply enormous,’ said Prince Charles. He looked down at the dogs at his feet, he was a little disappointed that William had asked after the dog and hadn’t mentioned Camilla. Charles furrowed his brow: was this significant?

  William went on, ‘Pa, what do you think about the Tories’ promise to bring us back if they get elected?’

  This came as a surprise to Charles. He had been in the garden reinforcing the fence when the news broke and he hadn’t got what he called an ‘idiot box’, believing that television was nearly one hundred per cent responsible for the nation’s moral decline.

  William explained that Boy English, the new leader of the Conservative Party, was an ardent monarchist and had promised to reinstate the Royal Family if he was elected. ‘Just think, Pa,’ he said, ‘we could be spending Christmas at Sandringham.’

  Hearing this, Freddie barked to Tosca, ‘Hear that, Liebling? Christmas at Sandringham!’

  Tosca rolled on to her back and displayed her hind quarters to Leo. She growled, ‘Leo, you’ll love the pinewoods and the log fires.’

  Freddie yapped, ‘Your oversized mongrel friend won’t be going with us, Tosca, he’ll stay behind here with the other proles.’

  Charles shouted, ‘Quiet, you little beasts, I’m trying to speak on the telephone!’ He said into the mouthpiece, ‘I don’t think Freddie is getting on frightfully well with Leo, Wills.’

  ‘Too right!’ barked Freddie. ‘He’s a lump of Kot.’

  ‘What am I a lump of?’ Leo whined to Tosca.

  ‘Literal translation, excrement,’ Tosca barked.

  Leo didn’t like to ask what excrement was, all he knew was that it didn’t sound very nice.

  5

  The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, Bill Brazier, were having a pre-cabinet meeting in Jack’s sitting room at Number Ten Downing Street. Brazier had requested the meeting, telling Jack’s Private Secretary that he needed to see the Prime Minister urgently. Brazier was a corpulent man whose tailor had told him recently that the price of his bespoke suits would have to ‘be adjusted due to the extra volume of cloth required’. He sat on the sofa, panting from the stairs, while the Prime Minister prowled round the room fidgeting with various objects as he passed.

  ‘So, what’s so urgent?’ Jack asked, touching the gilt frame of a painting of Oliver Cromwell, which hung over the fireplace.

  ‘Boy English,’ said Brazier.

  ‘I know almost nothing about him,’ said Jack.

  Brazier said, ‘That’s because you take no bloody interest in anything much lately.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Jack. ‘Thirteen years is a long time.’

  Brazier scowled and said, ‘Well, unless you get your bloody finger out, Boy English’ll be moving his dainty arse on to this bloody sofa before Christmas.’

  ‘What do we know about him?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He’s a toff lite,’ said Bill Brazier. ‘Eton, Oxford, his dad owns half of Devon, and his wife knows her way round an artichoke.’

  Jack said, ‘Hardly toff lite.’

  Brazier said, ‘Yeah, but him and his missus have both had their belly buttons pierced and are in the darts team at their local pub.’

  ‘How is he on fox-hunting?’

  ‘Abstained.’

  ‘National Health Service?’

  ‘Clued up, worked as a porter for three months, donated his wages to bloody Amnesty International!’

  Jack laughed. ‘And he’s still a Tory boy?’

  Brazier said, ‘Since yesterday, he’s the leader of the New Conservatives, says he wants less government, thinks people should be allowed to smoke themselves into an early grave if they want to. Says it will save the National Health Service money in the long run. Wants to ditch the Human Rights Act.’

  ‘What’s he like on the monarchy?’

  ‘He wants to bring them back.’

  ‘All of ’em? Princes and all?’

  ‘Immediate family. Queen, the Duke, kids, Charles, Camilla, William, Harry.’

  ‘He’s on a loser, Bill. The people will never stand for that. It’d be like voting to bring back boy chimney sweeps or the poll tax, they belong to another age.’

  Bill said, ‘My own wife would be made up if the Royals came back. She�
�s partial to a bit of pomp and ceremony.’

  ‘You should take her out more,’ said Jack. ‘How’s the Stepladder Bill doing?’

  Bill Brazier took great satisfaction in saying, ‘Badly, Jack, I doubt if it’ll get past the committee stage. Folk like their stepladders, they don’t want to call in a qualified operator every time they paint a ceiling or change a bleedin’ light bulb.’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, bitterly. ‘They want to fall off their bloody ladders and break their bloody necks, and arms, and legs, and collar bones, and give themselves concussion, then demand an ambulance and a bloody hospital bed, and sick pay, and physiotherapy.’

  Bill Brazier said, ‘You can’t legislate for every eventuality, Jack. People must be allowed to fall off stepladders. You’d legislate against death if you could…’

  ‘I would,’ said Jack, who since a boy had been afraid of the nothingness, the black abyss that death represented. Men were supposed to think about sex every ten seconds, weren’t they? Well, he thought about death. ‘So, do you reckon that Boy English is a serious contender, Bill?’

  ‘I reckon he is,’ answered Bill. ‘He’s just agreed to pay fifteen thousand quid to have his teeth seen to, and according to my wife – who’s a connoisseur of these things – he’s got lovely hair, and kind eyes and he relaxes by watching the soaps while he’s ironing.’

  ‘Ironing?’ Jack didn’t understand at first. Was it some kind of medieval sport?

  ‘Ironing!’ said Bill. ‘As in, ironing clothes.’

  ‘Oh, ironing,’ said Jack. ‘The sad bastard.’

  Jack, whose hair was falling out at an alarming rate and whose eyes were red through lack of sleep, said, ‘We’ll see how pretty he looks after he’s been in office a few years.’

  Bill said, ‘You’re talking as if he’s already beat us.’

  Jack asked, ‘Have we got anything on him?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Bill. ‘He got cautioned for nicking a traffic cone when he was at Oxford, and a ticket in 1987 for speeding on the M1.’

  ‘How fast was he going?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Seventy-five.’

  Jack said dreamily, ‘Seventy-five… it was a golden age. You’re lucky to get up to fifty nowadays, it’ll soon be quicker to walk to the bloody North.’

  Bill said, ‘Yeah. Disgusting, isn’t it? I blame the Government.’

  Jack appeared to join in Bill’s laughter, that is, he opened his mouth in a sort of grin and made a laughing noise. But he could just as well have burst into tears.

  Bill said, ‘I’ll ask ’em to dig a bit deeper, shall I?’

  Bill lumbered towards the door when Jack stopped him, saying, ‘Do you want us to win the next election, Bill? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a turn at opposition? Sit on the subs benches for a few years?’

  Bill said, ‘And let the New Cons in to undo everything we’ve achieved?’

  Jack said, ‘Just testing.’

  He should have spent the next hour reading briefing papers and consulting by telephone with the Leader of the House in a bid to set a date to talk about setting a date to talk about Peace, but he pushed the papers away, disconnected the telephone and switched the television on. He watched Anna and the King of Siam dancing a polka in a Siamese ballroom. And despite several entreaties from his Private Secretary and the knowledge that the Cabinet had assembled downstairs, Jack kept them waiting until Anna had sung a sad farewell to Yul and the titles were rolling.

  6

  When Mr Anwar saw on the news that novelty slippers would soon become unlawful, he waited for the price to drop and then ordered an articulated lorry load of them. Bundles of novelty slippers filled the shop. There were lions, tigers, giraffes, cats, dogs, elephants and other more difficult to determine animals. Then there were slippers whose design was based on the human form, iconic politicians or film stars. There were modes of transport: cars, planes, lorries, boats, Thomas the Tank Engine, and the Apollo spacecraft.

  Unruly queues of eager purchasers formed outside, waiting for the door to open at 10 a.m. Mr and Mrs Anwar could be seen inside, frantically cutting open cardboard boxes, removing the lurid slippers from their plastic bags and handing them to their podgy daughters who arranged them on racks in order of size, small, medium and large, rather than category or gender suitability.

  Mr Anwar said to his wife, ‘All of Allah’s creatures are here.’

  She said, taking out a pair of George Bush slippers, ‘And also the Devil’s.’

  There was outrage when the first few customers emerged with their outsized slippers saying that Mr Anwar was selling the slippers for one pound each or two pounds a pair. The only person to think that this was fair was Prince Andrew’s neighbour Feroza Amiz, who had lost a leg in mysterious circumstances in Kurdistan. Charles and Camilla joined the queue too late to buy the most popular slippers. The Simpsons, the Teletubbies and the dogs with their squeaking noses had all gone, as had the wiry-whiskered cats. Charles dithered over a pair of elephant slippers, which had uplifted foam trunks and rubber tusks. He tried them on and shuffled across the shop floor to Camilla who was trying to decide between Stalin and King Kong, which were the only slippers remaining in her size.

  ‘What do you think of these, darling?’ said Charles. ‘Are they too ridiculous?’

  Camilla said, lowering her voice, ‘Aren’t the trunks a little, well, phallic, darling?’

  Charles blushed and quickly pulled the spongy slippers off his feet.

  Mrs Anwar said, ‘I have just the thing for you, Mr Saxa-Cobury-Gatha, and for your lady wife also.’ She rummaged around inside a carton and said, ‘I will sell them to you at cost price, fifty pence a pair, to make room for more popular lines.’

  The hard-to-sell slippers were gross caricatures of Charles and Camilla. Charles’s prominent ears had been painted red and his brow was deeply furrowed. Camilla’s caricature was equally unflattering.

  Mr Anwar said, ‘They are very amusing, perhaps I will keep a pair for myself.’

  Charles said, angrily, ‘I will buy your entire stock of Charles and Camilla slippers. I will not have my wife’s face trampled underfoot by some ghastly oik.’

  Some of the ghastly oiks in the shop looked over at the sound of raised voices and Maddo Clarke squashed over in his foam-filled Fred Flintstone slippers to involve himself in the argument.

  Mr Anwar shouted, ‘You didn’t object to Lady Di’s blessed face appearing on a cloth to dry dishes.’

  Charles said, ‘I had no control of the merchandising, including the tea towels.’

  Mr Anwar said emotionally, ‘Every day I think about her, the beautiful Princess of Hearts. If she were still with us there would be world peace.’

  ‘No kids would ’ave to go to bed ’ungry,’ added Maddo Clarke. ‘Not if Di was still alive.’ A resident of Hell Close, Maddo, though in his early forties, still wore the uniform of his hero, Sid Vicious.

  Mr Anwar addressed the growing crowd in the shop. ‘Remind yourselves who she perished with. Was he a Christian? A Catholic? A Jew? No, he was a Muslim! And for that she was killed.’

  Somebody in the crowd shouted, ‘Murdered, more like.’

  Camilla said, with as much dignity as a person wearing King Kong slippers could summon, ‘We’ll leave these people to their shopping, Charles.’

  Mr Anwar shouted as Charles and Camilla left the shop, ‘You will never be Queen Camilla. The people don’t want you.’

  Camilla untied the dogs from the railings, saying, ‘You love us, don’t you, darlings?’

  As they walked home, the dogs were unusually obedient, conscious that their master and mistress had been humiliated and deeply wounded.

  Tosca whimpered, ‘It’s at times like this that I wish I could say something to them.’

  Freddie growled, ‘Don’t feel too sorry for them, Tosca. Remember, we dogs live in a permanent state of subjugation. They’re constantly ordering us about.’

  Leo extended his tongue and licked Charles�
�s hand. It was meant to be a gesture of comfort and support, but Charles grumbled, ‘For God’s sake, Leo! Keep your bloody slobber to yourself.’

  7

  The Cabinet had been in crisis session for over six hours. Sustained only by mineral water and Rich Tea biscuits, they had been discussing the balance of payments, again. The Government had been in power for thirteen long years, having won three general elections, the last by a small majority. Introducing the Exclusion Zones had won them short-term popularity, but water rationing, hospital closures and monumental mistakes by Vulcan – 13,000 paediatricians had been erroneously placed on the paedophile register – had resulted in the pound faltering and falling like a novice ice skater.

  The Chancellor was saying to his exhausted, and in some cases tearful, colleagues, ‘I warned you that losing the cigarette duty would leave a big financial hole. We have to find another source of revenue.’

  Jack Barker, who had been kept awake half the night listening to the Chancellor’s dog, Mitzie, yapping through the party wall, said, ‘There’s plenty of disposable income out there. If the taxpayer can afford bloody aromatherapy candles and grooming products for men, they can afford another tax. I reckon we ought to bring dog licences back.’

  There was general laughter. Even the Chancellor smiled.

  Jack waited for the laughter to die down, then said, ‘There are too many dogs in this country. Did you know there’s six million one hundred thousand of them? Or that people spend over three billion quid on feeding the spoilt bastards? And four hundred million a year on buying the yapping flea-bitten hairy-faced ball-lickers Christmas presents? Four hundred million!’

  The Chancellor looked down and shuffled his papers. Last Christmas he had bought Mitzie a pink latex bone, and a hairbrush and comb set. He’d had them gift-wrapped, at Harrods.

  Jack continued, ‘And did you know that their combined turds, if laid end to end, would go to the moon and back twice?’