Mrs. Queen Takes the Train

by William Kuhn

  “Make sure he doesn’t get up and leave with the ladies when the port is passed,” said another.

  “Oh, tell him not to douse the flame on the plum pudding with his water glass. Yanks aren’t so keen about fires at the dinner table,” said the first one, giggling.

  As Andy was the only officer among the Americans, he had no equals who could tease him about his friendship with Luke, but the American men observed the friendship and muttered darkly about it. They were more worried about the sexual angle. “I hate fags,” began to be scrawled on the plywood walls in the men’s latrines.

  The week after the musical performance a small detachment made up of both British and American soldiers, commanded by the American sergeant, was going out on a routine patrol in two armored vehicles.

  “I think we’d better go too,” said Andy to Luke as the day’s orders were being reviewed early in the morning.

  “No. We have other things to do here. Leave this to the staff sergeant. We’d only be in his way.”

  “Look, if the men are going out, and might be shot at, we have to go too.”

  “It’s a routine patrol, Andrew,” said Luke, using the long version of Andy’s name to emphasize the fact that he thought his friend was being childish. “They don’t need us.”

  “If the men have to do it, we have to show we can do it too.”

  “We’ve both been out on patrols before. We don’t need to go every time.”

  “If you don’t lead from the front, you get left behind. I’m going.”

  “Show-off.”

  “What?”

  “That performance Saturday has gone to your head. You’re showing off.”

  Andy looked at Luke and glared at him. He was a soldier before he was a friend. He was a can-do young man from the Midwest before he was an international diplomat. To be told that going out to do his job was actually just being cocky, well, that was about as low a blow as he’d ever been dealt. It briefly occurred to him to say, “You fucking take that back,” but he knew that would make them both laugh. They’d be friends again. The men would go out without him. That seemed like cowardice, so he looked at Luke and said nothing. Then he strode out of the tent and toward the waiting armored vehicles.

  Before he walked out, Luke saw the line cross Andy’s mind. He willed him to say it. Say it, please just say it. Standing by himself, watching Andy go, Luke murmured, under his breath, “Goodness me, calm down, my dear.”

  Part V

  Plank

  The Queen was sitting at a table in the last carriage of the 1700 from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley. It was already occupied by a blind man and his Seeing Eye dog, a German shepherd lying underneath the table, the blind man’s companion, who, by the look of her thick spectacles might have been nearly blind herself, and a young man with several piercings through his nose, as well as large disks that stretched out his earlobes. After Rajiv left, the young man took a can of lager from a plastic bag and put it in front of him on the table.

  The Queen looked at him with interest. He was unlike anyone she’d met before. She wondered if he were a football hooligan. Before she could think what to say to him, he gave her a friendly wink and said, “Like the skull and crossbones.” He could tell she was an old lady with an unusual sense of style, but the scarf under her hood created a shadow that effectively obscured much of her face.

  The Queen had no idea what he was talking about and looked confused.

  “On the back of your hoodie. Seriously piratical,” said he, lifting his can of lager and toasting her.

  Though The Queen still did not understand what he was talking about, she smiled back as she understood he was paying her a compliment. “And what are those rings through the nose for?” she said to him as a way of sustaining the conversation. She’d only seen them before as a way of leading oxen, but she thought it tactful not to say so.

  “Not for anything, love. Just decoration.”

  “Ah, rather like me,” The Queen instantly replied. Seized as she was by unusual melancholy, his not making a fuss about her lulled her into a sense of complacency about what she was doing. She rather thought that, like the young man from Paxton & Whitfield, he must know who she was, and would appreciate a little self-deprecation on her part. People generally did. It was one of her little tricks to make them more comfortable with her.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said The Queen, “only a bit of a joke really.”

  “Sorry it’s so crowded here with my dog,” began the blind man.

  “Nonsense,” said The Queen. “Plenty of room. Isn’t there, darling?” she said as she offered her hand to the dog, who licked it.

  “The fact is, the dog belongs to both of us,” the blind man’s companion, a shapeless matron in an old tweed coat, put in. “I’m legally blind myself, though I can catch some light and some shapes through these spectacles.”

  “How brave you both are,” said The Queen. She’d found that it was better to address people’s disabilities straightforwardly, rather than to avoid speaking of them, or to make light of them. “And have you both been blind for a long time?” It was a slight variation on her standard “Have you lived here a long time?” She had no trouble making the adjustment as the circumstances required.

  “Well,” began the man, assuming the question was addressed to him, “since I was born. So I’m quite used to it.”

  The lady in the tweed coat was used to the blind man going first in whatever they did. Some sort of male prerogative. After he finished, she added, “My vision’s always been poor, but it’s been getting worse and worse. Soon I’ll be just as bad as him,” she said, nodding her head at the man on the other side of the table, and she gave a little laugh.

  The Queen looked at her steadily as she said this, even though the words of the couple were addressed only vaguely in her direction. She allowed a small interval in the conversation to let them know she’d heard them, and that they’d told her something solemn. Then she said, “And the name of this very intelligent dog, who helps you both?”

  “Hohenzollern,” answered the blind man. “But born in England, and eats British beef.”

  “Of course you do, darling,” said The Queen, rubbing the dog’s ear. “Like British beef, don’t you, Hohenzollern?” Her pronunciation of the dog’s name was somewhat different from the blind man’s. She took every syllable and said it separately, though quickly. Her diction suggested she’d met a few of them in her lifetime and heard the way they actually said it. “Of course, the Hohenzollerns themselves used to come here often a hundred years ago, didn’t they? Queen Victoria was always complaining about the cost of entertaining Kaiser Wilhelm. Said he could come to Windsor for a cup of tea, and that was all!” said The Queen with a gay laugh. “But then he’d go to the Isle of Wight and race his boat with the Prince of Wales. The dinners afterwards cost a good deal, I’m sure of it.”

  “Sounds as if we’re on the way to Scotland with someone who knows history,” said the blind man, relishing the prospect of showing her how much he knew on the same subject. “You must have seen that documentary on the Kaiser. BBC 2. Someone pointed it out to me in Radio Times, but we missed it.”

  “Oh, was there a documentary? Just recently?” said The Queen with some disappointment. “I must have missed it too. No, no, I didn’t see it. Would have liked to.”

  “I hated history in school. So boring. Memorizing names and dates. Who cares when Agincourt was?” This was the first the man with the piercings had said to the table.

  “1415, wasn’t it?” said the blind man to The Queen, attempting to be courtly to this stranger who might allow him to display his knowledge.

  “Why, yes, I think it was,” said The Queen, who wasn’t entirely sure of the date herself. She liked Victorian history and Victorian medievalism, yes, loved all the imitation battlements at Balmoral. The real
Middle Ages left her a bit cold, though she seemed to recall some of the grandchildren going through a Dungeons & Dragons phase, and had bought them some games for their computers at Christmastime.

  The Queen turned to the young man. “I suppose to like history you must have a good teacher, mustn’t you?” As the blind wished to talk about their blindness, she sensed that the young man’s disability had something to do with not being noticed by his teachers.

  “I had crap teachers.”

  “Tell me,” said The Queen, looking into his eyes.

  “Well, they never had much time for me, did they? I suppose I wasn’t the brightest in the bunch. But they usually didn’t learn my name until the third week. Didn’t even notice I was there. They saw my marks and decided, ‘Well, what’s the use?’ so they didn’t bother. They were always droning on about Winston bloody Churchill, or the Industrial Revolution, or imperialism. You know, oppressing the nonwhite races?”

  He looked over at The Queen for her reaction and saw her dismay. “Oh, sorry, that was a Paki bloke who put you on the train, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, a very nice young man. Perhaps about your age. ‘Paki’ isn’t what he’d like to be called. An insult, you know? He’s quite English. Born here, and parents born here too. Winston, now, you would have liked him.”

  The young man with the piercings looked back at her as if she were crazy. She was an old lady. It was true that the lager in front of him was not his first, so he wasn’t seeing entirely clearly. But there was no way in the wide world that she had known Winston Churchill. She was barmy. The old often were.

  She could see by watching his eyes that he had no interest in Winston Churchill, so she changed tack. “But perhaps you had Dungeons & Dragons when you were a boy?”

  “I loved Dungeons & Dragons!” he said, warming up with real enthusiasm.

  “I thought you might.”

  “Monsters that would eat you up if you weren’t careful. Wizards. Magic. Scary castles. It was a game too, that made it fun.”

  “I suppose more history teaching should be like that, shouldn’t it?” said The Queen smoothly, playing to the passion that the young man had just revealed.

  “If we’d played that in school, well, I would’ve come top.”

  “I’m sure you would.” She then turned to the dog so he wouldn’t feel left out of the conversation. “He would, Hohenzollern, wouldn’t he? Have come top?”

  The dog was already her firm friend and gave a brief yelp as his affirmative.

  “Now, Hohenzollern,” said the blind man, looking under the table, “we’ve a long way to go. And no barking, please.”

  The dog whined as if to protest that he’d been spoken to and it was polite to reply.

  Having looked at her carefully now that they’d talked, the young man said to The Queen, “You look familiar.”

  For the first time, The Queen felt a little alarm. No one had recognized her walking to Paxton & Whitfield. As the shop had a royal warrant, they were nearly family. The young man there had spoken to her so respectfully, and gone out of his way to look after her, that she’d forgotten that she’d boarded something other than the royal train. It suddenly occurred to her that the people on the train might start making trouble, wanting to know what she was going to do in Edinburgh if they knew that she was outside the palace cordon. She’d done it so few times before. How could she possibly tell them about the Prime Minister wanting to abolish the royal train?

  “Tell me about your earrings,” said The Queen, firmly changing the subject.

  He had large skull-and-crossbones insignia in the lobes underneath his ears. “It’s not an earring,” he said crossly. “It’s a plug. You get it pierced first. Then you gradually stretch it out. Then you get a plug fitted. It stretches out the earlobe and then you can wear all sorts of things.”

  “Sounds painful,” said the matron in the thick glasses, turning her head to try and see the young man’s ears from the only oblique angle she could see anything at all.

  “No, it doesn’t hurt.”

  “You see, mine are stretched out too,” said The Queen, fingering her earlobe beneath her scarf. She untied the scarf so the young man could see her ears. Seven decades of heavy jewels had stretched out The Queen’s earlobes, though her ears hadn’t the same sort of tribal look his had. Still, the deformation was noticeable.

  The young man looked at the pearls in her ears and said, “That’s it! I’ve got it. Helen Mirren, that’s who you are!”

  “Oh, wasn’t she lovely in The Queen? We liked that one!” said the woman in thick spectacles.

  “What would Helen Mirren be doing travelling second class to Scotland?” said the blind man with a dismissive snort.

  “Helen Mirren, now, she’s a beauty. Much more svelte than me,” said The Queen, patting her tummy.

  “Well, you do look like her,” said the young man defensively.

  “Tickets, please! Tickets, ladies and gentlemen.” Suddenly the guard was upon them. The blind man handed over two tickets for himself and his wife. The young man took a crumpled document from his jeans pocket. The guard inspected them briefly and then wordlessly validated them. Then he turned to The Queen. “And your ticket, young lady?” he said cheerfully.

  This caused The Queen some momentary confusion. But she reached into the pocket of her hoodie and came out with a £20 banknote. “There you are,” she said, handing the banknote to the guard, and making a mental note that she must reimburse Rebecca from the Mews.

  The guard laughed. “That’ll cover part of the penalty for paying on board, my love, but it won’t cover the fare.”

  “It won’t?” said The Queen, shocked. “Fares have gone up.”

  “That they have, milady.”

  “Well, how much, then?

  “Where to?”

  “Edinburgh Waverley,” said The Queen precisely so he’d know she didn’t want to get down at any of the suburban stations.

  He punched some codes into his electronic machine before he answered briefly, “£276.70.”

  The Queen gasped. “That much? It’s highway robbery. I haven’t got it. Is that what you paid?” she asked the blind man, turning to him incredulously.

  “Well, no. We have railcards. So should you. And we paid in advance. That saves you some too.”

  “I see,” said The Queen. “Well, what’s the first stop?”

  “York!” said the guard.

  The Queen briefly considered getting off at York. She had made a considerable contribution to the roof’s reconstruction at York Minster after the fire there in 1984. Perhaps the Dean would house her for an evening. No doubt he would, but her showing up at his door would worry him. She knew the man. No, it was not possible. She must carry on to Scotland.

  “Perhaps I could advance you a small loan, Miss Mirren?” said the blind man sotto voce. “Would that help?”

  “No, no I couldn’t let you pay so vast a sum,” said The Queen. “Let me see what I have here.” The Queen pulled her black patent handbag up onto the table from the seat, where it had been sitting beside her. As the guard and the man with piercings watched with amazement, item by item she slowly emptied its contents onto the table. A starched handkerchief. A lipstick. A pair of white kid gloves. A fountain pen. A small box of wooden safety matches. A compact mirror. A laminated miniature calendar from the Racing Post listing the year’s Bank Holidays. A small bottle of perfume. And a rabbit’s foot. At length, she unzipped one of the side pockets and counted six crisp £50 notes onto the table. “There you are,” she said to the guard triumphantly, though still in a bad humor. The guard took her bills, produced a ticket from his machine, and handed her the change.

  “Ah, Miss Mirren has some resources after all. I thought so,” said the blind man, a deft hand at flirting with people he couldn’t see. Had he been able to see them, he would have be
en terrified.

  “He’s quite a tease, isn’t he, Hohenzollern?” said The Queen to the dog and she silently fed him a bit of cheese she worked off the lump inside the parcel Rajiv had handed her. The dog took the cheese and lifted his snout in the air as he chomped on it with relish.

  The Queen addressed the guard just as he was turning to go. “Would it be possible to have a timetable, please? I would like to check our progress.”

  The guard disappeared to the end of the carriage for a moment, and returned with a timetable he took off a plastic holder on the wall. “Here you are, love.”

  “And a pencil, please.”

  The guard was somewhat taken aback, but he was used to difficult old ladies, and since the railway had been privatized under John Major, they were under strict instructions to cater to all passenger whims. This was called “customer service,” and it was difficult to keep a smiling face in the midst of the most unreasonable demands. However, he dipped into his jacket pocket, brought out a stub of a pencil, and handed it to the elderly woman in the hoodie.

  The Queen thanked the guard, took the timetable, and consulted it. “I see. York at 1850.”

  “That’s the one,” replied the guard.

  “That’s only one hour and ten minutes from now,” said The Queen, pointing at the figures with the pencil stub. “Tell the driver. I shall be attending. Let him know, please.”

  This was a bit too much, as far as the guard was concerned, but he gave her a nod of his head and relished what he’d tell the driver on the intercom when he got back to his post. “Old lady in the last carriage keeping tabs on you. Gave her a timetable. Try and keep it on time tonight, will you?” The driver answered down the crackling telephone line with a series of spluttering, laughing, four-letter words as the train reached 125 miles per hour within sight of Alexandra Palace.