by Paul Theroux
"He wasn't seriously injured," the man said.
"That does happen," Her Majesty said. "Yes."
What was this, horses again? Even with Her Majesty's famous love for the creatures, she displayed just the slightest tic of impatience. And why not? Throughout this evening I had seen no evidence of the Queen's being told something that she did not already know.
"Your Majesty," I said. "I have been planning a trip to New Guinea. I understand you visited some years ago."
"Papua New Guinea," she said, giving the place its correct name. "Marvelous country. The prime minister visited the palace just last week. He had splendid hair. Fuzzy-wuzzy hair!"
There was a scream of laughter from us at hearing this description—we were nervous, eager to approve; it jarred the room.
"Yes," Her Majesty said, looking solemn yet knowing she had our complete attention. "There is no other way to describe it. And his wife. Didn't speak a word of English. Just sat next to him, smiling away in her splendid gown. And she had fuzzy-wuzzy hair too."
"This would be Rabbie Namaliu," a man said.
"Yes," Her Majesty said.
"The Scottish name is so reassuring," I said.
She shrugged. She said, "Perhaps there was some Scottish missionary in the picture."
Over the disbelieving laughter, I said, "But your speech—"
She glanced at me in a suddenly wintry way—was it because in my haste I had left off "Your Majesty"? the way a child playing a game who forgets to say "Simon says" is sent to the back of the line? But perhaps not. I saw that her normal mode of discourse was the monologue: you did not converse, you did not give Her Majesty information, you did not hurry Her Majesty. My cuffs were showing, my shoes were still damp.
"The state visit took us to the highlands," she said. "We drove to a clearing some distance from the town. And there were the people, several thousand of them. Some of them had walked three or four days to be there. They had feathers in their hair, and lovely costumes. They wore paint on their faces. They came in families. I stood on a platform to begin my speech."
"When you were introduced, Your Majesty, did they refer to you as 'Missis Kwin'?"
And you definitely did not interrupt Her Majesty. She blinked at me, ignoring what I said, and went on, "I saw all the families. Mud family. Feather family. Shell family. Children, wives, old grannies, with marvelous painted faces."
We smiled, imagining the families looking up at their Queen.
"When I opened my mouth there was a great clap of thunder. At once, all the people ran under the trees. I had hardly said one word. The rain was next. I imagine they didn't want to spoil their feathers. They wore such lovely costumes, you see. There was no point in continuing. Somehow we got back to the car, and that was when the hail came down. Hailstones so large they crashed against the windows—actually cracked the glass. It was amazing. We didn't get far. The car was a huge Rolls not made for those conditions and it quickly got stuck in the mud. The driver tried to move it, but it skidded and tilted onto its side. And there we were—couldn't go forward or back, with the hail smashing into it."
"Weren't you absolutely terrified, Your Majesty?" a woman said with actressy passion.
"No, actually. But it was a bother."
She savored our reaction to this while we waited for her to tell us what happened next.
"A man came towards us, an Australian by the look of him, soaking wet and smiling. He was wearing one of those funny Australian hats. He had obviously had a bit to drink. He leaned over and put his face against the window and looked in at me." She hesitated a moment, then pursed her lips and in a vulgar Australian accent said loudly, '"Hile to the Quoin!'"
The unexpected accent, the shock of it from Her Majesty in diamonds, caused another howl of pleasure.
"I could have strangled him," Her Majesty said.
I was thinking: Yes, God the Mother would look something like this—muffin-faced, crinkly, twinkling, small and dumpy, but also diamond-studded, bossy, and appreciative and willing to please. She could not control everything—there was such a thing as free will. Take her diamonds away and she was Old Auntie Beth. You didn't converse with her, and yet she gave good advice.
I said, "Your Majesty seems to have visited most of the Pacific."
She did not reply directly, but I had succeeded in prompting her. You didn't converse, you gave her cues.
"I was at one of these Commonwealth prime ministers' conferences in London and I looked at the menu. On the back cover it listed all the Commonwealth countries. I got a pen. I ticked them off." Using both hands, one holding an imaginary menu, the other gripping an imaginary pen, she flicked with the pen and said, '"Been there. Been there. Been there. Haven't been there. Been there. Haven't been there. Haven't been there." Went through the whole list. I gave the list to my secretary and said, 'I want to go to all the places I haven't been.' That's how it happened."
"It's much the best way to keep up," a man said.
Her Majesty did not agree, though she did not say so directly. She said, "There was a very bad hurricane in Samoa."
"When you were there, Your Majesty?"
"No, yesterday!" she said with force. It was the nearest she had come to being impatient. She added, "Western Samoa has all the bad luck. Your chaps in American Samoa always miss those terrible storms."
"I want to go to the Pacific," I said.
Her Majesty said, "But you must go—"
I wanted more. A voice in my ear—it was Birdwood, I knew—said, "No one's talking to Prince Philip. Will you go over and talk to him?"
Birdwood introduced me to the tall man who stood aloof, his hands behind his back, and then Birdwood withdrew. Prince Philip did not ask me what I was working on. He did not say anything. His smile was that of a man who is not comfortable. Now he was the one looking hemorrhoidal.
"The Queen was just telling us a story about her speech in New Guinea," I said. Prince Philip said nothing. "When it rained," I said. Still nothing. "And those hailstones," I said. '"Hail to the Queen." So amusing."
He looked unbelieving. With the deepest skepticism he said, "Do you really think so?"
"I imagine you were there," I said.
"Nowhere near it," he said in a tone of tetchy surprise.
"But you've been to New Guinea, Your Highness?"
He shrugged, and his deliberate snort, using both nostrils, meant, Of course.
"Fascinating place."
He shrugged again. This was a man who knew how to express boredom. In order to show me how utterly uninterested he was, he worked his mouth, savoring, tasted something foul, pulled a face, then made an effort of swallowing.
He said with a show of reluctance, "First time. I was in a village. Young girls got up to dance. Bare-breasted, of course—all smiles. Splendid. Next time—went back. Same village. And they all had these ridiculous ruffles and silly dresses. Appalling."
"You didn't approve, Your Highness?"
"It's a hot country!" he said. "Missionaries covered them up."
"I'm told Vanuatu is an interesting place."
"Do you think so?" he said, accusing me.
"I don't know," I said. "But apparently there's a group of people in Vanuatu who keep portraits of you in their huts."
"I don't want to hear about it," Prince Philip said.
"It seems they admire you."
"I don't want to know this," he said. He was not smiling. Another sound came out of his mouth.
He had a mirthless barking laugh that seemed intended to threaten me. He continued to stand, looking away from me, and so I never got his gaze but only his profile, that nose that looked like a handle on the front of his face.
"I was thinking of going there, Your Highness."
"Well, what's stopping you," he demanded.
"It seems far."
He said, disbelieving again, "You think so?"
"Something like ten thousand miles away."
"Don't be silly," he muttered, st
ill giving me his profile.
I wanted to twist his nose.
"You think I should go, then?"
"Why in heaven would you want to go all that way?"
His relentless negativity and unhelpfulness baffled me. I could not say anything without his raising an objection in the form of a rude reply or a dismissal.
"Where do you suggest I go, Your Highness?"
"How should I know?"
"I was just asking, sir. I thought you might be a wealth of information."
"You did, did you."
He frowned, and more negative noises came out of his nostrils. It was very clear to me why no one had been talking to him and why Birdwood had ushered me over here.
"I've got one of these computers," he said. "I generally ask my computer questions like that."
"Does that work?"
"Of course not. They're useless. Can hardly get the damned thing to work. Better off with a pencil."
"I've never used a computer."
"So you don't have the slightest idea, do you?"
I let this pass. I wanted to walk away. I remembered that he was president of the World Wildlife Fund.
"The World Wildlife Fund must take you to some wonderful places."
"First I've heard of it."
"You're the president of it, sir."
"Are you telling me that?"
"Isn't it true?"
"Who told you that?"
Still he was asking questions without looking at me.
"I think I read it somewhere," I said. "Weren't you on a tour of Africa? Looking at animals?"
"I haven't the slightest idea."
"So you're not the president?"
"If you say I am," he said.
Saying so, he turned away entirely and seemed to signal, semaphoring with his nose across the room. But Her Majesty no longer stood in the center of a congenial group.
Prince Philip's height helped him. His signal was seen by Laird Birdwood, who approached and began effusively to thank him for coming. Prince Philip only smiled in that negative disbelieving way of his. I slipped aside and was so eager to get away from that maddening man I stepped into another room, and came face to face with the Queen, who was adjusting her dress. She looked up at me, surprised at her plucking, then raised her chin in the postage stamp pose and seemed to remember me.
"You're in a frightful muddle, aren't you?" she said.
"Yes," I said, because what use was there in denying it? She obviously knew.
I was afraid. I did not know why, and as she stepped closer to me I felt even more trembly.
"You will get nowhere if you simply moon around, feeling sorry for yourself." She tilted her head to scowl at me, and as she did so her defiant bosom swelled against the stiff gauze of her beaded dress, offering me a wink of cleavage. "What you want, young man, is purpose."
"Yes, Mum," I said, catching my breath. I was afraid that I was on the point of recklessly touching her.
"What is happening to you happens to many people. I ought to know!" she said. "Don't think you're special just because of your muddle."
I could not look her in the face and yet I was more afraid, with my eyes on her full bosom.
"You're in books, aren't you?"
"Yes, Mum."
"Go back to books, then."
Moving her hand to where mine trembled clawlike near her dress, she touched me—no more than that—and something like a bee sting made me involuntarily splay my fingers.
"Yes, Mum."
The door swung open, Prince Philip's hand on the knob. He was followed by the Earl and Countess of Airlie, and behind them the Birdwoods.
"Oh, Lord," Prince Philip said.
"I was just saying goodbye," I said.
"He's in books," Her Majesty said.
"Good night, Your Majesty," I said. "Good night, Your Highness."
"What earthly good is that?" Prince Philip demanded. I did not know what to say. He smiled his dreadful smile. "You're in the way!"
Passing me, the Queen said, "Don't put it off' —orf— "you must see the Pacific."
I promised I would. To myself I said: Keep this promise.
"You might never come back," Her Majesty said.
Then, as though a valve had been twisted in the ceiling, the air pressure in the room began to diminish, finally returning to normal, as side by side the royal couple became a procession of two. Little Mrs. God and her tall consort. They seemed a bit foolish and vulnerable walking away, their backs to me. They were very powerful and yet britde; if you were not gentle with them they might shatter, like antiques. I liked her and felt superior to him.
There were no other goodbyes. The Birdwoods thanked me for coming. I went out and looked for a bus, but the drizzle defeated me again. I hailed a taxi to Earl's Court and the Sandringham House, where there were voices in the corridor—every door had a complaint tonight. And inside my room the walls were speaking.
—But don't you see? It's too late. I don't want you back now, from one room.
—Because you make me sick, that's why, from another.
Lying in bed I heard a familiar voice.
—I don't want it to end this way.
—Oh, shut up. Get out of my life. See how you like it. You'll be sorry.
—I'll manage.
Behind the other wall there was a woman on the telephone. I recognized this voice too.
—You bastard, don't you ever call me again.
She hung up. There was a chuckle of laughter—a man. So she had someone with her. She was confident, but I could tell from the rest of the murmurs that she was uneasy with this man.
The walls were soon silent. There was a finality in the silence. I left the next morning, hurrying to the airport. And there remained a warm spot where the Queen had put her hand on my pen-holding fingers. It was the cauterizing pinch of a recent bee sting. It did not hurt, yet it was tender. It was also as though she had made my fingers sentient, and given them a memory; as though flesh could not forget.
SIXTEEN
George and Me
1
THE MEDFORD SHIPBUILDER Thatcher Magoun (his more famous father and namesake started the firm) gave the family mansion on Main Street to the town in 1875, two years after his last Medford ship was launched. This magnificent old house, "with all the expensive bronze gas fixtures, marble statues and vases" (as Magoun described the furnishings in his presentation letter), became the Medford Public Library.
When I was in high school, I did all my homework, all my writing, and most of my reading there. Shelves and stacks had been put up in the mansion, but the rooms were preserved; no remodel-ing, no walls torn down, no moldings removed; all the grandeur, including the fireplaces, the gas fixtures, the statues, the vases, the paintings, the French windows, the communicating doors, the window seats, the enormous columns and portico in front—it was all kept.
And it can only have been the same Magoun floor, because one of the things I remember best about the library was the sound of the floorboards, a creaking in sudden distinct phrases. A walk from the stacks to your chair, and it was usually a venerable wing chair, uttered a whole tortured statement. My own feet on the creaking floors made me anxious, because the sound of my footsteps seemed out of all proportion to my size, and I feared it called attention to my puny body and my restlessness.
The fireplaces were an agreeable feature. It was not until after I left Medford that I realized that libraries seldom had fireplaces. I had never seen fireplaces this big—they had cavernous hearth openings, with fire dogs inside, and a mantelpiece, and wood surrounds. There was a fireplace in each room and comfortable armchairs on either side of each one.
One winter afternoon in 1957 I sat with my friend George Davis at one of those fireplaces under a loudly ticking clock. George used the library for the same reasons I did—big family, busy household, no room. He was also one of my best friends. We were tenth-graders at Medford High School. We had been assigned a book report. My book
was The White Tower, by James Ramsey Ullman—mountain climbing, and danger, and love, and even some sex.
I looked up from my writing. "What's your book, George?"
He took a long breath, and nodded, and looked into the middle distance, as though remembering.
He said, "It's about this guy, who goes to Mexico to sell cats, because," he paused, "they got mice in the village. And they call him the Cat Man. A woman there, she falls in love with him. She's like a mouse, see, and he's the cat. He cures the village of mice and they get married and, um," he laughed, "that's as far as I got."
"What's the name of it?"
He compressed his face into Don't know.
"Is this a novel or what?"
"I think I'll call it just The Cat Man."
It seemed bold and dangerous to invent a book, a title, a whole book report. I said, "Why don't you just read one?"
"What's wrong with my story?"
It was a good story. But this was such a sideways method for doing a book report. I said, "What if he asks to see the book?"
George had not thought of that. He frowned.
"Here's one you could read."
The shelf was nearby. The book was The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy.
"You think so?"
Because he had spent so much time inventing his own story he did not have time to read The Scarlet Pimpernel. And so he claimed in his book report that it was a fairly boring story. The Scarlet Pimpernel was one of the teacher's favorite books. George got a C for his book report. He angrily showed me the mark on his paper. It was all my fault. If I had left him to use his made-up story, he would probably have earned an A.
He soon forgave me—he did not bear grudges. He was a very funny and confident person. Inventing a fascinating story rather than reading a dull one was typical of him. He seemed to get anything he wanted. He thought for himself, often saying unexpected things, and his skepticism made him seem rebellious. He had his own car; few others did. Never mind that his car was a small, misshapen vehicle, which George himself had painted purple—he had wheels. This made it possible for me to go out on a date and, double-dating with George and his girl, not be humiliated by having to take the bus. We went to jazz clubs. We were sixteen and then seventeen; we were served soft drinks while everyone else was drinking alcohol in the smoky room; we listened to Thelonious Monk and Maynard Ferguson and the Four Freshmen.
