by William Kuhn
For the first time that afternoon, The Queen felt stung. She knew she was struggling with some kind of indefinable grief, but she had been only half conscious of what she was doing up to now. She felt so unhappy that a bit of cheese and a visit to Britannia had seemed like good ideas. She’d not anticipated being at a table discussing a film that troubled her, no matter how sympathetic its portrayal of her had been. With three members of the public, no less. She now became vaguely aware that she had to tread lightly, that discovery of her little unofficial visit to Britannia might have consequences.
The Queen steeled herself to take part in it. She recalled the first time her yoga instructor had shown her how to do the plank position. It was really a sort of press-up that you held in place, and it was very hard to do, especially if you’d lost the strength in your upper arms, as The Queen seemed to have done. But the yoga instructor had been very patient with her. She’d counseled her to begin by taking the position on her knees, and that was much easier. Over a month or so The Queen had gradually built up to it where, now, for a few moments, she could actually do a proper plank with her knees off the floor. She thought to herself, if I can do that, I can also handle this.
The Queen also felt some sympathy for the woman in thick spectacles. She’d now been spoken to with scant respect by both men at the table. The Queen didn’t like being characterized as blind, but she saw that if she were to avoid speaking, she was going to have to draw out the others a bit more.
“How much Diana was loved,” repeated The Queen. “Yes, do go on.”
“Well,” said the woman in spectacles, happy to have been asked to speak a bit more, “the palace didn’t understand Diana or how much she meant to people, did they? That’s why they wouldn’t lower the flag. That’s why they wouldn’t bring the boys down for the funeral. That’s why they couldn’t believe all the flowers. But it didn’t surprise me one bit.”
“The boys had just lost their mother,” said the blind man. “Why should they come down to London and listen to Elton bloody John?”
“Right,” put in the man with piercings. “Elton bloody John! What a wanker.”
On some level The Queen agreed with the blind man and the pierced man, but she didn’t approve of the swearing. She thought it might be better to get the subject out of this contemptuous vein and into something the two men could speak of admiringly. “And what music would you have had in the Abbey?”
“Guns N’ Roses,” said the pierced man without hesitating.
“Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique,” said the blind man with equal conviction.
“So difficult to please so many different tastes, isn’t it?” The Queen asked the table. No one could possibly disagree with that. She didn’t expect to be disagreed with, but again the woman with spectacles joined in: “But you see, Elton John was Diana’s friend. That’s why it made sense for him to play.”
“We have a tradition of choral music in this country that is centuries old, my dear,” the blind man said with some condescension. “Choral music at the Abbey stretches back long before the Reformation.”
“Who wants your ancient history?” shot back the woman with spectacles, finally provoked into a display of impatience with her husband. “Diana didn’t read History Today or any of those dull magazines you like. She liked a bit of Tatler and Vanity Fair. Just like the rest of us. That’s why people loved her.”
“I didn’t love her,” said the young man with piercings. “She was just more bread and circuses to keep the proles quiet, weren’t she? Smoke and mirrors. Magic tricks so the rich stay rich and the rest of us work for a living.”
“I quite agree with you,” said the blind man. “She was just one of those images displayed on the wall of the cave for the imprisoned. It keeps the cave dwellers happy so they forget their chains. Plato wrote about it in the fifth century BCE.”
The Queen didn’t feel she could follow either of the men here. Nor was she entirely pleased with the tack the woman with spectacles had taken, either. The Queen reflected to herself that, in her own way, she had loved Diana as much as she had loved the other people her children had married. Mark Phillips, now, she loved him too. What she objected to in the Diana hysteria, for it was that and she had no doubt of it, was the way all the traditions she valued had been rejected. All the public mourning struck her as positively Neapolitan, certainly not British. Where was the stiff upper lip? Plenty of young men Diana’s age whom she’d known personally had died horribly in the war. It was a mark of respect and toughness and grit not to give in, to maintain emotional control in those conditions. It was important not to break down. But now, if one didn’t break down, one was considered cold.
She recalled sitting in the Abbey and hearing the crowd’s roared approval outside. It was when Spencer had referred to the palace treating Diana badly. She herself could remember holding Spencer in her arms when he was a baby with a fouled diaper. She was letting his parents their house on the estate at Sandringham, and at a reduced rental too. Now he’d inherited the earldom and was old enough to stand in the pulpit, he thought he could give her a lecture in how to behave. That was gratitude for you. Had she the power, she certainly would have thrown him in the Tower at that moment. But, no, she was quite powerless, she had to do as she was told. She had to sit there and listen to the impudent boy as the public cheered, rather as if they were at a football match or the Roman Colosseum, instead of a young woman’s funeral.
Moments later, after saying good-bye to the clergy at the west door of the Abbey, she stood there with her mother, waiting for the car to come around. The old lady had teased her. “A revolutionary moment, eh, Lilibet? I fancy they’ll be rolling out the gallows for you soon, my darling.” Very much like her mother, to choose a moment when she was feeling quite miserable and make it worse with a few slyly chosen words. The Duke of Edinburgh was no help either. He just raged and railed at Spencer’s effrontery. She preferred to sit by herself in a room, brooding over what had happened, silently asking what she had done wrong.
[Anwar Hussein/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images]
The Queen was unaware that she had drifted off into this reverie. The blind man, kindly thinking this elderly woman was embarrassed that she didn’t know what he was speaking of and needed a little instruction, put in helpfully, “The allegory of the cave, from Plato’s Republic, of course.”
“Of course,” said The Queen vaguely. What did Plato have to do with anything? But she also saw that if she didn’t reassert some control, the conversation might go anywhere. “And the stag? Was The Queen supposed to be the stag? In that film they killed the deer, and so they’d killed The Queen? Was that it?” This had been the part of the film to which The Queen objected the most. She hadn’t minded that actress, Miss Mirren. The Queen knew that Miss Mirren looked much better on the screen than she did. It was really rather flattering, but she did hate all that animal-rights sentimentality about the stag. It was as if the whole film had been shot by hunt saboteurs.
“Oh, well, I don’t think it was meant to be a one-to-one correspondence. The stag was a noble animal, captured by the hunters. They shot it. The Queen is noble too, no one doubts it, but the hunters didn’t get her. At the end of the film, she lives on. She’s still there,” added the woman with thick spectacles.
“But you see, this is why it doesn’t work. Those deer are pests. They eat all the roses. They eat the kitchen gardens. They’ll eat any variety of sapling if you don’t protect it with a wire cage. They have to be put down or the Highlands would be one bald hillside after another. Creates erosion too. No good for cultivating the pine forests. And a good deal of whatever income you can squeeze out of those granite hillsides comes from the pine, of course. The deer also multiply so quickly that they overpopulate. Not enough heather to go around. Watching deer starve is dreadful. That’s why they’re culled.”
The Queen’s three travelling companions were amaze
d that she knew so much about the economics of Scottish forestry and animal husbandry. It stopped the conversation, as none of them felt they could contribute anything on those subjects. Just then the chief steward made a crackling announcement on the train’s public address system. “The buffy car is open for snacks and light refreshments.” He added that those wishing to have supper should take a seat in the restaurant adjacent to the buffet. At this the blind man, feeling generous about a table that had been willing to listen to him on the subject of both Tchaikovsky and Plato, offered to stand his companions at the table a round of drinks before dinner, “if everyone would join me in the carozza ristorante.” This met with universal approval. Led by Hohenzollern the Seeing Eye dog, the blind man, the woman with thick spectacles, the man with piercings, and The Queen got up and paraded single file down the carriage’s central aisle. All eyes were fixed upon the dog. So the old woman in the hoodie and headscarf once again escaped recognition.
Rebecca was furious. “I didn’t say you could take my picture.”
“Well, let’s take a look at it first, shall we? And then we can just delete it.” Rajiv brought the screen of the phone up and displayed the picture of her he’d just taken. She was livid, it was clear from the photo. But there was something about her red hair in the passing glare of light from outside the train that made the picture surreal, otherworldly. The flush in her cheeks also made it undeniably an attractive image—even Rebecca, angry as she still was, could see that. “Oh, come on. We can’t delete that. It’s beautiful.” Rajiv looked up at her. “You’re beautiful.”
“That’s not me.”
“Oh yeah? Who is it, then?”
“Someone in your imagination.”
“Do you think I just pressed the ‘imagine’ button on the phone?”
“No, but you’re just making up some fantasy. You don’t even know me. ‘Girl with red hair.’ Or ‘Someone I just met.’ Or ‘I want to sleep with her.’ It’s all to do with your mixing up the picture with your own dream of what the woman in the photo is going to do for you. How she’s going to be a mirror for your great accomplishments. Or, how she’s going to do everything you want in bed. That sort of thing.”
“Hang on. Just because you walked in the shop and I thought you were hot, that doesn’t mean you can make me into some sort of ogre.”
“Okay. I’m not saying you’re an ogre.” She stopped a moment to think. “What is an ogre, anyway? Someone out of some sort of Paki fairy tale?”
“Oooh, darlin’,” Rajiv said, putting his arm around her. “You must like me if you’re calling me that. Because you know very well you’re not allowed to say it to a black man.”
“You’re not black. Sort of cappuccino colored. Anyway, people say ‘Paki’ all the time.”
“That they do. But it’s stupid, isn’t it? Why should a short form of ‘Pakistan’ apply to all the different varieties of South Asian ethnicity? And people don’t say ‘Paki’ to my face usually. Not unless they’re about to hit me. Or unless they’re my very good friends.” He gave her a sudden nudge of his shoulder. “Oh, sorry. The rails are so uneven up here.”
She giggled contentedly, having forgotten she was annoyed with him. An announcement on the train’s public address system that York was the next station stop and would be coming up shortly dispelled the moment of accord between them.
“Okay, stop it now. There will be people coming through soon, and we’ve got to make sure no one notices her in there. Or bothers her.”
“Nothing we can do to stop that. Anyway, she’s got her disguise on. I think you were in on this from the start, weren’t you? Helping her make her escape. Loaned her your jacket so no one would ever recognize her with that hood over her head?”
“I told you. I loaned it to her because when she walked in to speak to Elizabeth she hadn’t a coat on and it was sleeting outside.”
“Hmm. What else?”
“Well, we’re proceeding on a ‘need to know’ basis, aren’t we? If you find out too much from me, you’ll have some telephoto lens trained on the horse stalls, won’t you?”
“No, I like getting my shots spur of the moment. Just as you find them. You know, before people can make up a face to meet the camera.”
“And photos of The Queen when she isn’t expecting to be photographed, that’s your service to humanity, is it?”
“People want to see her. It gives them pleasure.”
“And her? What about her pleasure?”
“Well, I think in a long life, she must’ve got used to being photographed. And it must please her to give pleasure.”
“I’m not sure she feels that way about it.”
“Okay. How does she feel about it?”
Rebecca actually had no idea. “Well, I don’t know for certain, but I guess she prefers being photographed when she can actually anticipate the camera’s being there. And doesn’t like it when she’s taken by surprise. Who likes to be taken by surprise?”
“You didn’t mind it. A minute ago. After you saw the picture.”
Rebecca did not intend rising to this bait, and in fact, the train was slowing down for the platform at York, so she didn’t have to. People were beginning to appear in the vestibule to get ready to step over them on leaving the train, so they both struggled to their feet to make way. The station stop was brief and whatever intimacy they’d managed to establish had evaporated by the time the signal had sounded, the door had been electronically locked, and the train was again rolling out of the station.
They both settled back onto the floor, but an awkward silence descended. Rebecca was uncomfortable with it. “Okay, your turn to check that she’s still there.”
“Why? She didn’t get off at York.”
“No, not through this door she didn’t. But we’ve got to make sure she’s fine. She has no police with her. We’re all there is.”
Rajiv struggled to his feet. “Then I will go and do the bidding of the representative of the Master of the Horse.”
“God, we’re not under him anymore.”
“Well, what division of Her Majesty’s Household are you, then?”
“Just go and look, okay?”
Rajiv went up to the glass door next to several aluminum racks loaded with oversized cases and bags. He looked cautiously through it into the carriage. The seats were all practically full, with the exception of the table nearest to the partition on the left. There four seats were empty except for some newspapers and coats. What looked like an aluminum dish filled with water sat underneath the table. The small woman in the hoodie, the man with the piercings, and the blind couple were all gone.
“Houston, we have a problem,” said Rajiv sliding down the wall next to Rebecca.
“What?”
“Table’s empty. Rest of the carriage full. She’s not in there.”
“Christ! This is my fault. If I hadn’t listened to all your nonsense, I’d have kept better track of her. Come. On.” She was on her feet with a snap and striding off down the central aisle of the carriage. Rajiv had to run to keep up.
At the next vestibule, he cried out. “Hang on a minute.”
“Hurry. Up.” She was impatient. She wanted no conversation.
“Look. We’ve got to have a story. I’m not supposed to be on this train. She told me to get off. I can’t just turn up next to her wherever she’s sitting now. She was already a little annoyed with me that I left the shop to put her on the train.”
“All right. Go find the guard. See if a woman in a hoodie got off at York.”
“What would she want there?”
“You fool. There’s the Minster. She’ll know the Dean and all the canons. It’s the first place she’d go. And if she did get off there we’re stuck on the train until the next stop, Darlington, which is useless.”
“If she wanted to see friends, she’d hardly walk away
from the palace by herself, would she?”
“Look, I’m not arguing with you. Go and find the guard.” She was off. Rajiv could just see the soles of her riding boots, like the hooves of an antelope, disappearing into the vestibule of the next carriage.
He wasn’t sure what to do next. He was pretty certain The Queen hadn’t got off the train at York. Old ladies don’t walk longer distances than necessary, and it would have made more sense to get off using the door where he and Rebecca had been sitting than for her to walk all the way to the other end of the carriage. Further, he had an intuitive dislike of the lower levels of British officialdom. He was convinced that people with brown faces didn’t get the same treatment as others, so he wasn’t about to approach the guard with unusual questions. It was true that he’d been born in England to an educated father and rich grandparents, but in his experience, the elderly, some of the provincial working classes, and almost all of the unemployable underclass regarded him as “foreign.” He was on the alert for slights and hazards and racial prejudice of all varieties. Instead of seeking out the guard, he decided The Queen must have gone with the other passengers from her table to the carriage with the restaurant and buffet. He took his time walking there and sloped up behind Rebecca, whom he found leaning against the wall of the buffet portion of the carriage with a view down a short corridor into the dining part of the car.
“In there,” she hissed to him when she looked around behind her and found him standing there with a crooked smile.
“Thought so,” said Rajiv. “What do we do now?”
“We wait here and see where she goes.”
“Oh, well then, if she’s having her supper, it will be a little while, then. We might have a cup of coffee or something. What do you like? White or black?”
She looked around at him a little anxiously.
“Not me, love. The coffee. What kind of coffee do you like?”
William and Luke arrived at Victoria Coach Station after a fifteen-minute run. Luke had no difficulty whatsoever, but William, who exercised less and was ten years older, had to rely on adrenaline to keep up. They both jumped on a Scottish coach that was just about to leave. Before they knew it they were sitting together, shoulder to shoulder in the darkness, with only the light from the passing lamps on the motorway flashing greenly on their faces.
