by Sue Townsend
Charles said, “Affray and assaulting a police officer.”
“Yeah? Bit posh for that, ain’t yer?”
Charles diverted this uncomfortable line of questioning and asked, “You are er…in for?”
“I stole a knob.”
“Stole a knob?” Charles pondered on this. Was it a piece of arcane criminal jargon? Had Mr Christmas committed some unsavoury type of sexual offence? If so, it was disgraceful that he, Charlie, was being forced to share a cell with him. Charles pressed against the cell door. He kept his eye on the buzzer.
“There was this car, right? Bin in our street over free months; tyres an’ stereo went first night. Then everythin’ went, ‘cludin’ engine. ‘S a shell, right?”
Charles nodded, he could see the wreck in his mind’s eye. There was one just like it in Hell Close. William and Harry played in it. “Any road up,” continued Lee. “It’s a Renault, right? An’ I got one the same. More or less the same year so, I’m walkin’ by, right? An’ there’s kids playin’ in this wreck ‘tendin’ to be Cinderella on their way to the wassa place?”
“Ball?” offered Charles.
“Dance, disco,” corrected Lee. “Any road, I tell ‘em to fuck off an’ I get in the front seats are gone an’ I’m jus’ pullin’ this knob off the top of the gear lever, right? ‘Cos the knob’s missin’ off mine, see? So I want it, OK?” Charles grasped the point Lee was making.
“When ‘oo d’ ya think grabs me arm through the winder?” Lee waited. Charles stammered, “Without knowing your circumstances, Mr Christmas, your family, friends or acquaintances, it’s frightfully difficult to guess who may have…”
“The bogus beasts” shouted Lee indignantly. “Two coppers in plain clothes,” he explained, looking at Charles’s baffled expression. “An’ I’m arrested for thieving from this piece of shrapnel. A knob, a bleedin’ knob. Worth thirty-seven cowin’ pee.”
Charles was appalled, “But that’s simply appalling,” he said.
“Worse thing ‘s ever ‘appened to me,” said Lee. “‘Cludin the dog gettin’ run over. I’m a joke in our family. When I get out of ‘ere I’ll ‘ave ter do summat big. Post Office or summat like that. ‘Less I do, I’ll never be able to ‘old me ‘ead up in the Close again.”
“Where do you live?” asked Charles.
“Hell Close,” said Lee Christmas. “Your sister’s gonna be our nex’ door neighbour. We ‘ad a letter tellin’ us not to curtsey ‘n’ stuff.”
“No, no, you mustn’t,” insisted Charles. “We’re ordinary citizens now.”
“All the same, our mam’s ‘avin’ a perm at the hairdressers, an’ she’s goin’ mad, cleanin’ an’ stuff. She’s a lazy cow, normal. She’s like your mum never does no ‘ousework.”
There was a jangle of keys and the cell door opened and a policeman came in with a tray. He handed Lee a plate of sandwiches covered in clingfilm, saying, “‘Ere Christmas, get that down your neck.”
To Charles he said, “Tricky stuff that clingfilm, sir, allow me to remove it.”
Before he left the cell he had addressed Charles as ‘sir’ six times and had also wished him ‘a good night’s sleep’ and had slipped him a mini pack of Jaffa cakes.
Lee Christmas said, “‘S true then?”
“What’s true?” asked Charles, his mouth full of bread, cheese and pickle.
“‘S one law for the cowin’ rich and one for the cowin’ poor.”
“Sorry,” said Charles, and he gave Lee a Jaffa cake.
At eleven o’clock, Radio Two burst into the cell and filled the small space. Charles and Lee covered their ears against the earsplitting volume. Charles pressed the buzzer repeatedly, but nobody came, not even the deferential policeman for the tray.
Lee bellowed, “Turn it down!” through the slot in the door. They could hear other prisoners shouting for mercy. “This is torture,” shouted Charles over ‘Shrimp Boats Are A Comin’. But there was worse to come. Some unseen person adjusted the tuning knob and the radio blared out, ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ even louder, complete with piercing static, and in the background what sounded like a Serbo-Croatian phone-in.
Charles had often wondered how he would stand up to torture. Now he knew. Given five minutes of such audio hell, he would crack and turn his own sons over to the authorities. He tried mind over matter and went through the Kings and Queens of England since the year 802: Egbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, Alfred the Great, Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmund I, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, Edward II the Martyr but he gave up on the Saxons and Danes, unable to remember whether Harold Harefoot ruled alone or jointly with Hardicanute in 1037. When he reached the House of Plantagenet Edward I, Longshanks he drifted off to sleep wondering how tall exactly Longshanks was. But Shirley Bassey woke him with ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, and he continued his list: House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha: Edward VII, then sped through the House of Windsor George V; Edward VIII; George VI; Elizabeth II until he came to an empty space. At some time in the future, after his mother’s death, it would have been him: captive in quite a different prison.
Meanwhile Lee Christmas slept, clutching his shoulders with his thin hands, his knees drawn up to his concave belly, his humiliation forgotten. His Renault car on the road, pristine, gleaming, a girl at his side, his hand on the fatal knob, about to change gear.
The Queen lay awake, worrying about her son. She had once inadvertently watched a BBC2 Bristol documentary about hooliganism (she had expected it to be about wild animals). A famous vet had drawn a connection between maternal deprivation and violence. Was that why Charles had started fighting in the street? Was it her fault? She hadn’t wanted to go on those world tours and leave Charles behind, but in those days she had believed her advisers when they assured her that the British export trade would collapse without her support. Well, it had collapsed anyway, she thought bitterly. She might just as well have stayed at home with the dogs and seen Charles for a couple of hours a day.
Another problem was keeping the Queen awake: she was running out of money. Somebody from the Department of Social Security was supposed to call and bring her some more, but hadn’t turned up. How was she supposed to get to the Magistrates’ Court in the morning without a car or taxi fare?
After searching Philip’s trouser pockets and finding nothing, she had called on her relatives and asked for a loan of ten pounds. But the Queen Mother couldn’t find her purse. Princess Margaret pretended not to be in, though the Queen distinctly saw her shadow behind the frosted glass of the front door, and Diana had spent her initial emergency payment on paint and a video machine apparently.
The Queen couldn’t understand where her own money had all gone. How did one manage? She turned the bedside light on and, using paper and a pencil, tried to tot up her expenses since moving into Hell Close. She got as far as: ‘Mr Spiggy £50’ before the light went out. The electricity meter needed feeding, but having nothing to feed it with, the Queen settled for darkness.
Crawfie spoke to her. “C’mon now, Lilibet, hat and coat and gloves on, we’re going to ride on the Underground.” She and Margaret and Crawfie had once travelled from Piccadilly Circus to Tottenham Court Road, changing at Leicester Square. Thrillingly, the lights in the carriage had gone out several times during the journey. She had reported this to her parents as being the most exciting part of the excursion, but her parents had not shared her pleasure. To them, darkness represented danger and Crawfie was forbidden to repeat the experiment of taking the young princesses into the real world of imperfect people, who wore drab clothes and spoke another language.
∨ The Queen and I ∧
12
PORKY PIES
The Queen looked at her son in the dock and remembered the last time she had seen him behind bars. He’d been in his playpen in the nursery wing at Buckingham Palace. Diana sat next to her, clutching a wet handkerchief. Her eyes and nose were pink. Why had she forgotten to ask a solicitor to go and see Charles at
the police station? How could such an important thing have slipped her mind? It was entirely her fault that Charles was now being represented by the court Duty Solicitor, Oliver Meredith Lebutt, a red-haired, disreputable-looking man with nicotined fingers and a speech impediment. The Queen had taken an instant dislike to him. Charles waved and smiled at his wife and mother in the public gallery and was rebuked by the Chief Magistrate, a stern Trade Unionist called Tony Wrigglesworth.
“This is not a carnival, Mr Teck.”
The Queen pricked her ears. “Teck?” Why was Charles using his great-grandmother’s maiden name? Thank God Philip had refused to get out of bed and come to the Magistrates’ Court. It could, quite possibly, have killed him.
Diana smiled back at her husband, he looked great. Two days’ stubble gave him the fabulous raunchy look of the street fightin’ man. She winked at her husband and he winked back, provoking another rebuke from Tony Wrigglesworth. “Mr Teck, you are not the comedian Rowan Atkinson, so please refrain from indulging in facial contortions.”
Sycophantic laughter rippled around the court. However, it did not ripple along the press bench, because the press were absent. The streets around the court were closed to traffic and pedestrians and, in particular, media personnel.
There was a sudden commotion and Beverley Threadgold came up the stairs from the cells below and joined Charles in the dock. Beverley was handcuffed to a policewoman. Charles, who was still standing, turned to Beverley and offered her a chair. Tony Wrigglesworth thumped the bench in rage and shouted, “Teck, you are not a furniture salesman! Remain standing, Mrs Threadgold.”
Charles helped Beverley to her feet. Seeing their hands touch gave Diana a pang of jealousy. Beverley did look fabulous in the dock, curvy and womanly in a knitted two-piece. Diana resolved to put on at least a stone in weight.
The third prisoner was brought up Violet Toby, looking pale and old without her make-up. Tony Threadgold and Wilf Toby nodded their heads towards their wives, too afraid of Tony Wrigglesworth for anything more friendly.
The case began. The Crown Prosecutor, a dumpy head-girl type of woman called Susan Bell, gave the facts to the court. The Queen, who had been a witness to the events described in such dramatic terms by Ms Bell, was horrified. It simply wasn’t true. PC Ludlow was called and told lies, claiming he was savagely assaulted by Charles, Beverley and Violet.
No, he couldn’t explain the reason for this assault. Perhaps it was the influence of television. Inspector Holyland backed PC Ludlow’s story, calling the so-called attack on Ludlow ‘an orgy of violence, led by the man, Teck, who had been heard to shout, “Kill the pig’.”
Tony Wrigglesworth intervened, “And there was not a pig in the immediate vicinity, a four-legged pig?”
“No sir, I believed Teck’s phrase, ‘Kill the pig’, to mean that he was urging his accomplices to murder PC Ludlow.”
The Queen said very loudly, “Nonsense.” Wrigglesworth was on to her immediately.
“Madam, this is not a fringe theatre. We do not encourage audience participation.”
Oliver Meredith Lebutt stopped exploring the wax in his ears and put a waxy finger to his lips, indicating to the Queen that she must remain silent. The Queen was overwhelmed with feelings of rage and hatred, but she kept her silence and merely scowled at the bench where Tony Wrigglesworth was conferring with his fellow magistrates, one a tweedy box of a woman, the other a nervous man in an ill-fitting Next suit.
The hearing continued, the sun came out and the trio in the dock were illuminated from behind, which gave them the look of angels descending from heaven.
Oliver Meredith Lebutt lumbered to his feet, dropped his papers and, in his high, lisping voice, proceeded to address his clients by the wrong names, mix up their evidence and generally antagonise the court. It was a surprise to everyone when, after a short adjournment, Tony Wrigglesworth announced that all three defendants would go to trial at the Crown Court, but would be granted bail, providing certain conditions could be met.
Oliver Meredith Lebutt punched the air in triumph as though he had won a major victory at the Old Bailey. He looked around expecting congratulations, but when nobody came forward he shuffled his papers together and lurched out of the courtroom to flirt with Susan Bell, the Crown Prosecutor, with whom he was falling in love.
Charles insisted on staying in court to hear the next case. Lee Christmas was sent to prison for two months for the theft of a black plastic knob. Before he went down to begin his sentence he shouted, “Tell our mam not to worry, Charlie,” which prompted Tony Wrigglesworth to declare that the court was not a message service.
As they left the Court and walked along the abnormally quiet street outside, Tony Threadgold suggested that they should have a celebratory cup of tea at the British Home Stores before catching the bus back to Hell Close. The Queen felt quite lonely as she watched the three couples enter the café in front of her. Wilf had his hand on Violet’s shoulder. Tony and Beverley were hand in hand and Diana had snuggled her head into Charles’s shoulder. All the Queen had for comfort was her black patent handbag.
She had expected that the public appearance of three members of the ex-Royal Family would cause a sensation in the crowded café but, apart from a few curious glances at Charles’s dishevelled appearance and Diana’s Ray Bans worn in April, nobody took particular notice. There were many women of the Queen’s age seated at the formica tables, most of them headscarfed and wearing brooches pinned to their coats. The Queen said: “I’m afraid I have no money to pay for the tea.”
Tony said, “No sweat,” and, after urging the rest of the group to find a table, went to queue at the self-service counter. He came back with seven cups of tea and seven doughnuts. Beverley said, “Tone, you’re lovely, you really are.”
The Queen agreed. She was ravenous. She bit hungrily into the doughnut and jam dripped out and trickled down the front of her cashmere coat.
Violet handed her a paper napkin and said, “‘Ere, ‘ave a serviette, Liz.” And the Queen, instead of taking offence at the over-familiarity, thanked Violet, took the napkin and wiped her coat.
∨ The Queen and I ∧
13
GRID MARKS
When Charles got back to Hell Close he went to see Mrs Christmas to relay the message from her son. He found the house in uproar. Mr and Mrs Christmas were in the middle of a violent row with the six teenage sons something about missing rent money. Mrs Christmas had one son in a judo hold, round his neck. Mr Christmas was brandishing a potato masher towards the others. The son who had let Charles into the house leapt back into the argument, as though he had never left, proclaiming his innocence at full volume. “Well, it weren’t me!”
“Well, all I know is I left that rent money under the clock an’ now it’s gone,” said Mrs Christmas.
Mr Christmas jabbed the potato masher towards his sons and said, “An’ one of you bastards ‘as ‘ad it.”
The sons became quiet. Two of them already had grid marks on their foreheads. Even Charles’s heart beat loudly in his breast and he certainly hadn’t had the rent money.
Mr Christmas began to prowl around the living room and spoke, as though he were giving a lecture to particularly dim university students. “Now I know I ain’t an angel. Fact is, I’m a tea leaf, no sense in ‘idin’ it. And ‘til recent I’ve kep’ you all in food and clothes and shoes, ain’t I?”
“They’ve gone without nothink,” said Mrs Christmas loyally. “They’ve ‘ad everythink they’ve ever wanted, father.” She released her hold on her son’s neck and he fell away from her, retching.
Mr Christmas continued his address. “OK, so I’ve broke the law of the land, but I ain’t never broke a more important law, which is you never shit on your own patch. You don’t thieve off your neighbours and you never thieve off your own family.” Mr Christmas looked around at his sons, profoundly moved by his own oratory, his eyes misted over. “I know things ‘ve been ‘ard since I done me back in.”
Charles began to feel sorry for Mr Christmas, a fellow back sufferer deprived of his livelihood. He cleared his throat. The Christmas family turned towards him, expecting him to speak. Charles stammered, “So, Mr Christmas, what do you blame for this deterioration of the morality of the criminal classes?”
Mr Christmas hadn’t understood the question so he waved the potato masher vaguely towards the living room window and the street beyond.
Charles said excitedly, “Society! Yes, I totally agree with you. The breakdown of educational standards and er…the disparity between rich and poor…”
A large pantechnicon drove slowly by the Christmas’s window, blocking the light. It parked next door. Charles looked out and saw that his sister was at the wheel. Mrs Christmas rushed to the mantelpiece and began to titivate her tight blue curls. She threw her apron into a corner and changed out of her slippers and into white wedge-heeled sandals. She turned to her six sons and her husband and said, “So, what do you say when you meet ‘er?”
Seven sonorous voices said as one: “‘Ello your Royal ‘Ighness. Welcome to ‘Ell Close.”
“Yes,” breathed Mrs Christmas. “I’m proud on yer.”
Charles said, “Oh Mrs Christmas, I’ve bad news, I’m afraid. Lee got sent down for two months.”
Mrs Christmas sighed and said to her husband, “You’ll have to eat his chop, then. Can you manage three?”
Mr Christmas assured his wife that Lee’s chop wouldn’t be wasted. Then they all trooped outside and stood at their paint-blistered gate to watch Charles welcome his sister to Hell Close.
“Wotcha,” said Anne. “This is a bloody hole. You look awful. Who’re the dorks at the gate?”
“Your neighbours.”
“Christ! They look like the Munsters.”
“They’re not monsters, Anne, they’re…”
