Two Weeks with the Queen

by Morris Gleitzman

  No cars.

  No people.

  He threw the lasso high up the wall. It hit a spike, slipped off and tumbled down.

  ‘Hurry up,’ hissed Alistair, trembling even more. ‘Pretend it’s one of those crocodiles you’re always roping.’

  Colin threw the lasso again and missed again. He wished he’d had more practice with Gaylene.

  He threw again.

  The lasso flopped over a spike.

  And stayed there.

  Colin yanked it tight and hauled on the rope.

  ‘OK,’ he said to Alistair, ‘give me a leg up.’

  Alistair obviously hadn’t given anybody a leg up before. It took him a while to grasp the concept. Then he started pushing Colin up the wall.

  Colin could feel him trembling.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Alistair.

  Here we go, thought Colin, this is where he panics and we’re history.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Alistair again.

  Colin glanced down at him, expecting to see a face white with panic. Instead he saw a face beaming with excitement.

  ‘We’re breaking into Buckingham Palace,’ squeaked Alistair. ‘Brilliant.’

  He gave Colin an extra big heave and Colin started to climb upwards, hand over hand on the rope, soles of his feet flat against the wall.

  ‘Sodding brill,’ piped up Alistair from below.

  Colin didn’t feel brill.

  Fears started ballooning up inside him.

  What if after the bloke had broken into her bedroom they’d got dogs?

  Or mines?

  Or a moat with sharks?

  Or run electricity through the spikes?

  The rope was cutting his hands and his back was nearly breaking. But he didn’t stop. Because stronger than all the fear was the vision of him getting off the plane in Sydney with the world’s best doctor, and the look on Mum and Dad’s faces.

  He climbed on, practising in his mind what he was going to say to the Queen. (‘Sorry to barge in like this Your Majesty . . . ‘)

  He climbed on and on.

  Until he was dazzled by a white and searing light.

  Colin knew Uncle Bob and Aunty Iris would chuck a mental and they did.

  They controlled themselves while the police lectured them on the sins of letting kids out at 3.30 at night and pointed out repeatedly to them how lucky everyone was that no one was being charged. This time.

  But when the police had gone they really let rip.

  ‘This is the thanks we get,’ yelled Aunty Iris, ‘for taking you into our home to give your mother and father a chance to cope with . . . things. Alistair, stop snivelling.’

  ‘We’re in the computer now,’ roared Uncle Bob, ‘this whole family, in the police computer. Alistair, use your hanky.’

  ‘You could both have been killed,’ yelled Aunty Iris. ‘Specially you, Alistair. Well, that’s it.

  You’re both staying in the house from now on. I’ll be locking the doors when I go to work and they’ll stay locked till I get back.’

  ‘That won’t stop me,’ yelled Colin. ‘The Queen’ll get to my letter eventually, then she’ll come round here with a tank and hash the door down.’

  ‘No she flippin’ won’t,’ roared Uncle Bob.

  You’re right, thought Colin, she won’t.

  Afterwards, when the shouting had stopped and Colin was lying on his bed, he was surprised to see Uncle Bob’s face appear round the door.

  ‘Forget the Queen,’ said Uncle Bob. ‘The likes of her hasn’t got time for the likes of us. In this world ordinary people have to solve their own problems.’

  ‘I was just thinking that,’ said Colin.

  Chapter Nine

  Colin started with the local doctor’s surgery. He got the number from Alistair and dialled.

  ‘G’day, could you tell me which is the best cancer hospital in London?’

  ‘How old are you?’ said a woman with a posh accent, which Colin could tell a mile off she was bunging on.

  He told her.

  ‘Sorry, we haven’t got time for school projects,’ she said and hung up.

  Colin put another 10p into Aunty Iris’s phone money tin and thought who to ring next.

  The City of London Information Centre? The Houses of Parliament? The Times?

  He rang the Royale Fish Bar in Peckham.

  ‘Cancer ’ospital?’ said the fish bar man, concerned. ‘You poorly are you, son?’

  ‘It’s my brother,’ said Colin.

  ‘Poor bleeder,’ said the man. ‘’Ang on, I’ll ask the missus.’

  He came back after a bit and said that the customers in the shop all agreed that the best cancer hospital in London was the one that had cured Ernie Stringfellow’s prostate trouble. He told Colin the name and the address.

  ‘Hope it does the trick for ’im, son, God love ’im,’

  Colin thanked the man, put the phone down and went out to the kitchen, where Alistair was trying to tie a lasso knot in his pyjama cord.

  This was going to be the tricky bit.

  Aunty Iris and Uncle Bob had locked both the front door and the back door and taken the keys to work with them. Ten seconds after they’d gone, Colin had checked all the downstairs windows and found that they’d got locks on them too.

  He was a prisoner.

  ‘Is there a screwdriver around?’ asked Colin.

  ‘Dad keeps all his tools out in the garage,’ replied Alistair.

  Colin had feared that.

  ‘What do you want a screwdriver for?’ asked Alistair.

  ‘To take the lock off the back door.’

  Alistair’s eyes widened with horror.

  ‘You can’t do that. They’ll go bananas. They’ll kill us. You don’t know my mum. She’ll . . . they’ll . . .’

  Alistair was panicking.

  Colin had feared that too.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘it’s OK. I’ll be back before they are and I’ll put the lock back on and they’ll never know.’

  Alistair had stopped yelling and was just breathing heavily.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you can’t take it off if you haven’t got a screwdriver, can you?’

  Colin went to the kitchen drawer and took out a knife.

  ‘No,’ yelled Alistair, ‘that’s one of Mum’s dinner knives. She’ll kill us.’

  Colin knelt at the back door. He looked closely at the lock. No signs of rust. In fact the whole thing looked pretty new. Must have been a recent purchase from the Biggest Do-It-Yourself Hardware Centre In Greater London.

  He put the blade of the knife into the groove in one of the screws and started turning.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ yelled Alistair.

  Colin could and he did.

  The hospital looked exactly like Colin had hoped it would. It was big, almost as big as Buckingham Palace, and built out of great stone blocks.

  Colin looked up at it, standing massive and calm while all around it the roaring London traffic tried to choke it with carbon monoxide and above it the pigeons bombarded it with ribbons of poo.

  It didn’t look worried at all.

  Few exhaust fumes and a bit of pigeon poo doesn’t worry me, it seemed to be saying. I’ve got the best doctor in the world in here.

  Colin felt a weight being lifted off him.

  He walked towards the main entrance, through a car-park filled with the newest and shiniest Jags he’d ever seen.

  Inside it was even better.

  The ceiling was at least twice as high as the hospital in Sydney, and on the corridor walls were real oil paintings of important-looking men with beards and stethoscopes.

  Famous doctors, thought Colin. The geniuses who gave us Modern Medicine and all its wondrous technology. The operating theatre and the X-ray machine and the Band-aid that doesn’t leave a sticky black outline when you pull it off.

  He moved down the corridor, peeking into rooms. Most of them had big dark wooden desks in them and ancient leather armcha
irs. Others were full of gleaming, modern equipment.

  Colin was impressed. You didn’t often come across blokes with those sorts of desks and those sorts of armchairs who knew how to operate that sort of equipment.

  ‘You lost?’

  Colin spun round. Looking at him was a nurse, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘No, I’m right, thanks,’ said Colin.

  She nodded and gave him a kind smile.

  ‘Looked as though you were lost.’

  ‘I was just checking that this is the best cancer hospital in London,’ said Colin.

  The nurse grinned and leant towards him.

  ‘Best in London?’ she said. ‘It’s the best in the world. People come in here, their relatives have already started squabbling over their furniture. When they leave, some of them, they go round to their Aunty Maud’s, get their sideboard back and carry it home by themselves.’

  She grinned again and walked off.

  Colin grinned too. He had a vision of Luke, cured and laughing, staggering home from Bayliss’s Department Store carrying the bunk bed with the built-in cubby house that had been number two on his Chrissie list.

  Colin hurried along the corridor. At the end he turned left and found himself in a huge ward full of bustling nurses and rows of beds with patients in them.

  Then he saw him, standing next to a bed, surrounded by student doctors.

  The Best Doctor In The World.

  He looked exactly like Colin had imagined he would. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a wise, important face and thick grey hair just like the Dad in Dynasty.

  ‘Accessibility is paramount,’ he said to the student doctors.

  Colin’s chest thumped with excitement.

  He even spoke important.

  ‘In other words,’ said the doctor, ‘the patient must always feel that he can speak to you, that you’ve got time for him.’

  The student doctors scribbled furiously on their notepads, then went back to staring at the doctor in awe.

  The doctor picked up the hand of the patient in the bed, patted it, put it back down and moved on to the next bed.

  Now’s my chance, thought Colin, blood pounding in his ears.

  He pushed through the student doctors, got a stethoscope hooked round his arm, pulled himself free, and found himself in front of the doctor.

  The doctor stared down at him.

  Words rushed around in Colin’s head. He opened his mouth and let them out.

  ‘I know you’re real busy here and everything but you’ve got to come to Australia and fix up Luke. They reckon he’s gunna die but I just reckon they’re being slack and you can do it, I know you can.’

  The doctor frowned.

  ‘Who is this?’ he boomed.

  ‘Luke,’ said Colin, ‘my brother.’

  The doctor pointed to Colin.

  ‘I mean who is this boy?’ he thundered.

  The student doctors looked at each other in alarm. A couple looked at their notepads.

  ‘We’ll pay your fare,’ said Colin, ‘or if you’ve got a Lear jet we’ll pay the petrol.’

  A couple of the student doctors tittered. Several patients grinned.

  ‘Matron,’ roared the doctor, and turned and swept along to the next bed.

  Colin tried to follow, but a large matron hurried across and grabbed his arm.

  He stamped on her foot, pulled himself free and went after the doctor.

  ‘Please,’ yelled Colin, ‘you’ve got to do it, it’ll only take a few days, you’ve got to.’

  The doctor turned and glared at the nurses who were standing all around, frozen.

  ‘I am trying to do my rounds,’ he roared, his face flushing red. with anger. ‘Will somebody please remove this child.’

  Colin felt panic stabbing him in the guts.

  It wasn’t working.

  The Best Doctor In The World hadn’t put his hand on his shoulder and smiled down and said, ‘Leave it to me, son.’

  ‘He’s got cancer,’ pleaded Colin. ‘He could die.’

  ‘Everyone here has got cancer,’ thundered the doctor, sweeping his arm around the ward. ‘They could all die.’

  Suddenly none of the patients were grinning.

  ‘If your brother needs treatment, there are proper channels. I will not have my ward round disrupted like this.’

  ‘Please,’ said Colin.

  The Worst Doctor In The World thumped his hand onto Colin’s shoulder and glared down and roared, ‘Go away!’

  ‘No!’ screamed Colin, throwing himself at the doctor. But before he could land a punch he was grabbed from behind by several pairs of hands and suddenly he was upside down and the doctor, also upside down, was getting smaller and smaller and then was gone.

  Colin saw the corridor walls blurring past him. He kicked and struggled, but the two male nurses and the uniformed attendant had him in a bone-crusher grip.

  They took him into an office and held him down in a chair while a supervisor gave him some forms that the patient’s parent or guardian could fill out if the patient’s doctor and/or senior medical administrator agreed.

  Then the uniformed attendant marched Colin out of the hospital.

  Chapter Ten

  Colin sat on the kerb and felt a hot pricking in his eyes that meant either Arnie Strachan had just blown cigarette smoke in his face or he was going to cry.

  Arnie Strachan was twelve thousand miles away, so it must be that he was going to cry.

  Colin decided he wasn’t going to cry.

  He closed his eyes and thought of Dad. Dad never cried, not even the time Colin bowled a Malcolm Marshall special off an extra long run-up and it bounced crooked off a cow-pat and slammed Dad in the privates.

  It’s not a disaster, thought Colin.

  He’d gone for the wrong doctor, that’s all. He’d gone for the doctor who looked like The World’s Best Doctor. He’d been fooled by a Dynasty haircut. The real World’s Best Doctor was probably bald with glasses.

  All Colin had to do was go back into the Best Cancer Hospital In London (avoiding the uniformed attendant) and find him.

  He was wondering how best to avoid the uniformed attendant (should he smuggle himself in with the clean sheets or go in through the drains?) when he noticed something across the street.

  A bloke sitting on the kerb.

  Crying.

  Not sniffing and blinking back prickles in his eyes, but really crying, his whole body shaking with massive sobs.

  Colin realised he’d never seen a bloke really blub. Kids, yes, but not an adult bloke. Adults put on Brave Faces and said, ‘Mmmm, I’m starving.’

  Colin wondered why this one wasn’t.

  He went over.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  The bloke looked up at him, startled.

  ‘No, I’m not, I’m crying,’ he said and looked away and sniffed and blinked a few times. When he looked back up at Colin he’d stopped crying. ‘But ta for asking,’ he said and grinned.

  He was much younger than Dad. He looked to Colin about the same age as Mr Blair at school, 25, except that Mr Blair didn’t wear a leather jacket and didn’t grin.

  The bloke sniffed and wiped his eyes.

  ‘I needed that,’ he said.

  Colin had only ever heard a bloke say that after a beer.

  ‘Why did you need it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got a friend in there who’s very sick,’ said the bloke, pointing to the hospital across the road. ‘Normally I’m OK, but once a week I treat myself to a bit of a cry.’

  Colin could tell from the way he swallowed after saying ‘very sick’ that the friend wasn’t just a workmate or someone he played pool with.

  Must be his girlfriend.

  ‘Cancer?’ asked Colin. He felt like booting himself in the bum. Course it was cancer.

  The bloke opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and nodded. He looked closely at Colin.

  ‘You’re the one who was making all the commoti
on in the ward, right?’

  ‘Colin Mudford,’ said Colin,. holding out his hand.

  ‘Ted Caldicot,’ replied the bloke, shaking it. ‘What were you doing, pinching grapes?’

  ‘No,’ said Colin, ‘trying to find a doctor for my brother.’

  Ted looked down at the road and his soft voice, with its accent Colin couldn’t quite place, became even softer.

  ‘I’m sorry. Has your brother got cancer?’

  At last. An adult who wasn’t a doctor had actually said the word.

  Colin sat down on the kerb next to Ted and told him about Luke and the Queen and the Best Doctor In The World.

  By the time he’d finished, Ted was grinning again.

  ‘Incredible,’ he said, ‘You, Colin, are an inspiration to us all. Come and have a cup of tea.’

  The hospital cafeteria was full of people who looked exactly like they’d just been visiting other people with cancer. Long faces, round shoulders, bowed heads.

  That was the first thing Colin noticed as he stood in the queue with Ted.

  The second was Ted’s tattoo.

  It was a small one on the back of his hand. Leaves and flowers around a word Colin couldn’t read properly. A foreign word.

  ‘What does that say?’ asked Colin, pointing to it.

  ‘It’s Welsh,’ said Ted. ‘Means “Forever".”

  Colin was impressed. The only other tattoo he’d seen up dose was Doug Beale’s uncle’s and that had said ‘Death Before Disco’. ‘Forever’ was much better.

  ‘Where I come from in Wales,’ said Ted, ‘people get them done when they’re in love.’

  ‘Has your friend got one?’ asked Colin.

  Ted nodded and turned away.

  Colin felt like booting himself in the bum again.

  But Ted had only turned away because they were at the front of the queue and a brawny woman in a white apron was waiting to serve them.

  ‘Two teas love, ta,’ said Ted, ‘and thirty chocolate frogs.’

  Thirty?

  Colin thought he’d heard wrong, but there was the woman, grumpily counting out thirty of the little chocolate frogs in silver paper that you were supposed to buy while you waited for your change.

  There were thirty-four in the box and Ted took the lot.

  They found an empty table and put their teas on it. Then Ted handed the box of frogs to Colin and climbed on to the table himself