Queen Camilla

by Sue Townsend

  He ignored his advisers and speechwriters and made short, off-the-cuff speeches that were frequently interrupted by wild cheering and applause. He debated with the audiences who flocked to see him. Sometimes he was fantastically indiscreet, confiding to a meeting in Hull that he missed Pat, his first wife. Caroline, sitting behind him on the stage, had no time in which to arrange her face; photographs of her angry expression appeared on most front pages the next morning.

  Pat was interviewed by Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour and confessed that she still cared for the Prime Minister.

  ‘I didn’t want to divorce him,’ Pat said in a choked voice, ‘but I didn’t want to stand in his way. He couldn’t help falling in love with somebody else.’

  Jenni Murray said, sounding as though she wanted to give Pat a good shake, ‘Well, thank you, Pat Barker. Coming up next, women saxophonists, why are there so few?’

  50

  It was Roy Hattersley’s dog, Buster, famous among dogs as a wit and author, who was credited with starting the civil disobedience movement that swept through the canine population of England like a fire through a hayfield. At first, unofficial meetings were held in parks, recreation grounds and inner-city alleyways. A few of the more neurotic dogs volunteered for suicide missions, but were told by their pack leaders that martyrdom would not be necessary.

  At twilight, the dogs of the Flowers Exclusion Zone met by arrangement inside the walls and padlocked gates of the long-abandoned adventure playground. Earlier in the day, a little terrier called Eddie had tunnelled an entrance sufficiently deep to allow Rocky, the tallest dog on the estate, to pass through.

  Micky Toby looked round fondly. His eyes were bright and his tongue lolled out of his grinning face. He remembered when the playground had been full of dogs and children, before the health and safety laws had meant that dogs were banned, and children were forbidden to climb the trees or use a hammer and nails to knock up a rudimentary den. A risk assessment form had to be filled in before a child was allowed to play. Soon the children had stopped coming and the playground was closed.

  A truce had been called between the mongrels and the pedigrees, and individuals from both classes were intermingled in the crowd. Harris, flanked by bodyguards Spike and Rocky, jumped up on a rotting climbing frame and barked for attention. A golden retriever called Nelson, who had been asleep in the front row, sat to attention and pricked up his ears. Other dogs ceased their conversations and waited for Harris to speak; a few puppies were cuffed into silence by their mothers.

  ‘Mein fellow dogs,’ Harris barked, ‘We come together as dogs, regardless of breed or breeding.’

  Princess Michael’s dog, Zsa-Zsa, said, ‘But we pedigree dogs, those of us who have been carefully and expertly bred, cannot possibly associate with mongrels. We barely speak the same language.’

  Harris said, ‘The anti-dog laws apply to all dogs regardless of the purity of their bloodline.’

  ‘But,’ continued Zsa-Zsa, ‘a mongrel has never won Best Dog at Cruft’s.’

  Micky Toby barked, ‘Only because we ain’t allowed to enter.’

  Rocky growled for silence and Harris continued, ‘Many of the more intelligent breeds among you will have heard about the threat posed to our canine world by this dog-hating Government. However, the more stupid dogs, and I think you know who you are, Dummkopf…’

  There was gruff laughter; several heads turned to look at the runts of litters.

  ‘…and the dogs who take no interest in human affairs, may not be aware of the implications of these draconian proposals. I will touch briefly on each.

  ‘One: the Government is proposing to charge our feeders five hundred pounds annually for a licence fee, for each of us.’

  Britney howled, ‘That’s me out on the street. The pliers woman ain’t got that sorta money.’

  Susan yapped, ‘Quiet, you slag!’

  Althorp and Carling began to play-fight and were separated by Freddie, who had appointed himself as chief steward.

  ‘Two: only one dog is to be allowed per household.’

  Leo whined, ‘I’m the youngest of three. Will it be last in, first out?’

  ‘Three: flat dwellers are barred from keeping a dog. Although…’ Harris said, bitterly, ‘…cats will be allowed.’

  There was an outbreak of angry barking at this news. After they had quietened down, Harris resumed.

  ‘Four: our ablutions can only take place in designated areas, which will be sited far away from human habitation.

  ‘Five: any dog exercising its right to bark after ten o’clock in the evening will be taken to a government centre, and killed!’

  An angry Dobermann snarled, ‘I’m a watchdog. How can I do my job if I can’t bark in the night?’

  There was sustained and angry barking, which only stopped when Rocky and Spike called for order.

  Harris continued, ‘Our enemy is the Cromwell Party and their supporters. For now, we do nothing but watch and listen. We have spies in high places who have promised to keep us informed of any new developments. Are there any questions?’

  Zsa-Zsa yelped, ‘I do not have a question, but I want you all to know zat I am here under duress. I was bullied into coming here tonight by the horrid dogs of Hell Close. I am not a political animal, none of the issues you are getting yourselves excited about affect me. I am an only dog, I hardly leave my garden, and I do not bark after ten o’clock at night.’

  Tosca growled, ‘What about the dogs in multi-dog households? Think about our situation.’

  A mongrel from the back whimpered, ‘We’re going to die, we’re going to die.’

  Some of the more sensitive dogs began to howl.

  Harris barked, ‘Control yourselves, we will fight back, and destroy our enemies.’

  A mongrel called Scarlet, whose recent ancestor was a New Guinea singing dog, jumped gracefully on to the climbing frame and stood next to Harris. She lifted her wedge-shaped head and began to croon, and the dogs in the audience fell silent, entranced by her voice as she sang:

  Dogs of England see the light,

  Leave your homes and join the fight.

  For too long we have slept,

  Always willing to accept.

  Now’s the time to show our teeth,

  Hail to Harris, he’s our chief.

  Humans, hear our battle cry,

  We will not lie down and die.

  Humans, hear our battle cry,

  We will not lie down and die.

  At the end of the song there was wild barking; Scarlet bowed her head modestly.

  Spike growled, ‘Again, sing it again.’

  The little dog raised her head once more and sang, louder and more confidently this time. Soon, thanks to the stirring melody and the simple lyric, even the most stupid of dogs were word perfect. Outside on the Flowers Estate, residents were alarmed when they heard the eerie howling emanating from the abandoned playground. Charles and Camilla turned the volume down on the radio and listened at the front door to the unearthly-sounding canine song.

  ‘Darling, where are the dogs?’ Charles asked Camilla.

  ‘They haven’t come home for their tea,’ said Camilla. ‘Should we worry?’

  After the howling had stopped, Charles said, ‘Listen to that.’

  Camilla said, ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Charles. ‘I can’t hear a single dog barking.’

  They both strained their ears, but the dogs in the playground had agreed that they would travel to their homes in silence, and under cover of darkness.

  When Leo, Freddie and Tosca had scratched at their front door and been let in, Camilla said, ‘You’re late for your tea, darlings.’

  Leo growled, ‘So?’

  ‘What have you been doing?’ she asked.

  Freddie snarled, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Nowhere,’ snapped Tosca.

  All three dogs walked by Charles without greet
ing him, and went into the kitchen.

  Charles and Camilla exchanged a worried glance: why were their dogs exhibiting such coldness towards them? What had they done to deserve such treatment? For the rest of the evening the dogs preferred to keep their own company, lying together under the kitchen table. When Charles let them out into the back garden to pee, before he went to his own bed, the dogs ran to the back fence barking. The two foxes joined them and all five sang ‘Dogs of England’ together.

  On the other side of the close, the Queen turned her television down; Harris and Susan were howling in the bedroom, where they had been since coming home late for their tea.

  The Queen shouted upstairs, ‘What is it, darlings? Are you hurt?’

  The dogs ignored her and carried on singing until the end of the song. When the Queen went up to bed, the dogs left the bedroom without acknowledging her in any way. Without their comforting presence on the end of the bed, the Queen could not easily get to sleep. She lay awake wondering what she had done to elicit their disapproval.

  51

  Boy English and his advisers were in his office at the New Con party headquarters watching their party political broadcast, which was due to go out in a few days on all terrestrial channels simultaneously. It featured Boy’s dog, Billy, for at least a quarter of the film’s content. An adviser had said, as they watched the DVD, ‘Can we rejig the dog digitally, turn it into a cat?’

  ‘There’s no way you can turn a Labrador retriever into a fucking moggy,’ said one shirt-sleeved young man. ‘Why don’t you stand up for dog owners, Boy, and oppose the Government?’

  Others urged Boy to steer clear of any kind of support for dogs. ‘It’s not as if the fuckers have a vote,’ said a young woman with fashionably tangled hair.

  Boy played for time, steering the discussion away from dogs and towards plans to meet the exiled Royal Family.

  ‘The request is in,’ said one of his young team, ‘but I doubt if Vulcan will grant you access to them.’

  ‘I’ll play the civil liberties card,’ said Boy. There was laughter from the team; they all knew that civil liberties were old school.

  It was Boy’s driver, Duncan, who finally made up Boy’s mind regarding his position on the anti-dog legislation. The driver conducted his conversation with Boy through the use of the rear-view mirror.

  ‘What do you make of all this dog malarkey, Mr English?’ he asked. ‘How come it was all right to have a dog a few months ago, and now it ain’t, and what’s with all these posters?’ He gestured to a billboard outside in the Euston Road, where two toy poodles appeared to be tearing a teddy bear apart. ‘I bought my mum, eighty-seven she is, one of them Jack Russells, for company like. She’s called it Gloria, after Gloria Hunniford. Done my old mum the world of good, it has. She dotes on that dog, takes it for a long walk twice a day, feeds it Werther’s Originals. Is this what my granddad fought in the war for?’

  ‘Did your grandfather survive the war?’ asked Boy.

  ‘Yeah, but when he came back he’d lost an arm.’

  Boy muttered, ‘Brave man.’

  ‘No,’ said the driver, who was a pedant of the highest order, ‘he weren’t brave. He moaned every bleedin’ day about that missing arm, complaining he couldn’t open a tin. He drove us all bleedin’ mad.’

  Boy asked his driver for his opinion on the Royal Family.

  ‘I’d ’ave the Queen back termorrer,’ said the driver, ‘but I’d make the others work for their bleedin’ living.’

  When Boy was next in a radio studio, he converted the driver’s opinion into more or less proper English, and was encouraged by the positive feedback from listeners who were relieved that somebody was standing up for dogs. The telephone lines were blocked with dog lovers promising Boy their votes.

  When Vulcan issued him and a film crew with a visiting order for the Flowers Exclusion Zone, he was not to know that it was Jack Barker, his supposed rival, who had signed the order.

  It looked to Boy as though he wouldn’t need Graham after all. He was tempted to cancel Graham’s last session with Rip. The bar bill at the Savoy was exorbitant and Rip was constantly on the room phone to America, clocking up even more expense.

  Rip Spitzenburger was, in fact, in a TV studio in Soho, conducting a mock interview with Graham, trying to get him familiar with the type of media attention he would receive when Boy unveiled him to the public.

  Rip said, ‘So, I’m the interviewer, you’re the interviewee. OK, so first you check your appearance: zipper up, hair smooth, no spinach on teeth. Smile even though your fucking heart is aching, smile though it’s fucking breaking… And remember, Gray, flatter the interviewer. Say “That’s a very interesting question”, or “I’m glad you asked me that, Rip”, or whatever their goddamn name is.’

  Graham seated himself on the chair opposite Rip and waited for the mock interview to begin. He had never felt so uncomfortable. He had a mouthful of newly capped teeth, his scalp still tingled from an allergic reaction to the peroxide highlights, and he was wearing the sort of clothes that homosexuals wore on television. As soon as the camera lights were switched on, Graham twisted himself in knots, rolled his eyes back and compulsively checked his flies.

  Rip shouted, ‘Forchrissake! Take your bloody hands away from your crotch! You look as though you’re pleasuring your goddamn self!’ He sighed; a week of intensive training had been for nothing.

  In his role as interviewer he asked, ‘Prince Graham, how did you feel when you found out you were second in line to the throne of England?’

  Graham said, ‘I was over the moon.’

  Rip shouted, ‘What did I tell you about clichés? You were not over the goddamn, mother-fucking moon!’

  Graham leapt out of his chair and tore the tiny microphone from the lapel of his jacket.

  He said imperiously, ‘I am the future King of England. You will not speak to me with such disrespect. My ancestors were conquering the world when yours were eating their own kith and kin.’

  Later, after Graham had left the studio, Rip blamed himself. He had tried to put Graham at ease by telling him about the Spitzenburgers’ humble origins in Estonia, and about the Great Freeze in the winter of 1795 when the Spitzenburgers had been forced to eat a fat aunt before the Great Thaw.

  Graham ran from the building in Wardour Street and was swallowed up by the crowds of workers and tourists jostling for pavement space. He was sick of being circumspect about his true birth parents. Why should he be used as a political pawn? Why didn’t he take his life in his own hands and tell the world that, one day, he would be the King of England? The thought excited him; he sat at a pavement café in Old Compton Street and ordered a ‘milky coffee’.

  The waiter said, in an over-familiar tone that Graham didn’t care for, ‘Milky coffee? How delightfully retro.’

  As he sipped his coffee, Graham noticed that many of the men passing on the pavement were blatantly what his adoptive father had called ‘of the other persuasion’. When a young man wearing mascara asked if he could join him, Graham left the café and hailed a black cab, telling the driver to take him to the offices of the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper his adoptive father had read. He knew he could trust the Daily Telegraph; it supported the monarchy and the English institutions. He was confident that the editor would give him a sympathetic hearing.

  Graham had never been to Canary Wharf before. A lesser man might have been intimidated by the towering buildings and acres of reflective glass, but Graham strode into the building housing the Daily Telegraph like the king he would one day be. After telling the receptionist that he had the story of the century, an editorial assistant, India Knightly, came down in the lift to speak to him. She was a languid, well-spoken girl who didn’t blink when Graham informed her in a whisper that he was the love child of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

  ‘Really,’ she drawled. Only last week she had listened to a woman who had claimed to be the Pope’s current mistress.

 
Graham said, ‘Yes, really. I have the papers to prove it.’

  ‘May I see them?’ India was bored with having to deal with the nutters who seemed to haunt newspaper offices. She wanted her own column where she could write about the amusing things her cats did and how infuriating it was to choose a squeaky trolley in the supermarket.

  When Graham told her that the papers proving he was the future King of England were at home in Ruislip, India signalled to the two security men lounging against the reception desk, and they each took one of Graham’s arms and steered him towards the door. He should, of course, have left it at that and gone home on the tube to Ruislip, but consumed by a need to claim his true identity, he shouted, ‘I am your future king. Unhand me!’ The ensuing struggle resulted in a damaged potted palm, a splintered glass coffee table and an alarming and illegal amount of arterial blood.

  When Miranda returned to Boy’s election campaign headquarters and confessed that Graham was on the loose, somewhere in London, Boy shrugged it off. The latest opinion poll had just been published and showed that only twelve per cent of voters cared about the monarchy. However, sixty-seven per cent had strong opinions about dogs.

  At the end of Front Row on Radio Four, Gin began to worry; Tonic needed his insulin.

  ‘It’s infuriating that we are so dependent on humans,’ yapped Gin, as he prowled in front of the fridge where the insulin was kept.

  Tonic barked, ‘If only we had fingers, Gin. Think how our lives would be transformed.’

  They looked at their paws in disgust.

  When the cuckoo in the clock had ratcheted out of its nest twelve times and Graham was still not home, Tonic crawled into his basket, whining, ‘He won’t come now, he’s never out after midnight.’

  Both dogs were hungry and thirsty and needed to relieve themselves. Gin made many valiant attempts to jump up to the sink to a slowly dripping tap, but his age and his small stature meant that he could only watch as each precious drop of water dripped into the sink. After peeing in a corner, he went to lie alongside Tonic and talked of their lives together, stressing the happy times they’d had when Mr and Mrs Cracknall had been alive.