The Autobiography of The Queen (6 page)

Mrs Gloria Smith showed neither surprise nor gratitude at Austin Ford's rescue; nor, as the dark-suited brigade moved away, did she acknowledge the sudden restoration of her white handbag from Jolene. She took the bag, in fact, as if she had only temporarily set it down somewhere and was unsurprised to see it back on her arm.

Austin was stymied by this reaction. Surely, any normal person would thank him effusively, and then open the bag in eagerness, hoping to find they had not been robbed.

Nothing like that, however, from Mrs Smith.
What was he to do? Jolene, maybe, could refer to the fact that the hotel room had been left unlocked and therefore it was best to check if money, passport and valuables were still inside. But Jolene hung back too – while a cut-glass voice demanded to return to the Joli Hotel. Mrs Smith's precise and clear accents wafted in to where that same couple stood, drinks untouched in their hands, still staring out as if they'd both seen the same ghost.

‘Non Joli,' Austin said. How could he explain to Mrs Smith that without money – a deposit, again, came into it – there was no way reception would allow this luggage-less and empty-handbagged woman to spend the night.

‘Nonsense,' came the reply. ‘One would like one's dinner now and there seem to be no signs of it in the – in Windsor Village.'

There was nothing for it but to inform his client that dinner would be served in the Rum Shop, premises which belonged exclusively to Austin Ford. A bed could be made up for later and a curtain hung in the shack, for propriety.

‘I go and get you pizza,' Austin said. He had the ten dollars she had given Jolene, and that was it: September was a terrible month. ‘And a rum punch,' said Austin. He decided to throw this in for free: tomorrow at dawn he would go and find that couple who had been staring at Mrs Smith from the bar, and demand they take her to the Consul – or the airport – or the Police. He could
give no more time to a woman who couldn't even open her handbag and was like Auntie May, quite mad.

The Queen had to wait longer for her pizza than she had ever waited for a meal. There had been a delay in Rome and another at the Elysée Palace when the ortolans had had to be called off after a furious missive from the British Ambassador. The Queen, it was pointed out, would absolutely not be prepared to bury her head in a paper bag as she ate the prized – and illegal – bird; nor would she follow the habit of scoffing them down, bones and all, in one long mouthful, followed by a swig of Armagnac. There had been panic in the kitchens and thrushes were substituted – by then the Embassy was too fraught to complain and it was agreed that the menu should describe the course as ‘baby quails'. It had all taken ages and the disapproval on the royal features was only too evident. Coming after another unpleasant bulletin on the subject of Britain's lack of a written constitution,
this French insistence on forbidden (and probably disgusting) food had brought on a couple of tactless and bad-tempered remarks from the Duke, and a decision on the part of the Queen to refuse the European Union for as long as she could. She had stood out against hereditary titles and estates going to female children (in the case of the monarchy it was different; there were no male heirs at the time of her accession – this she knew, although a tiresome genealogist wrote his article about searching for a pretender every ten years or so but no one paid any attention) and now, after seeing the suppressed laughter on the faces of the footmen at the circulating story about Mitterand and his way of eating the banned little birds, the Queen had left all the fine wines set down in front of her, untouched: a veritable insult to France.

Here in St Lucia she was in a very different situation – but the pangs of hunger were reminiscent of that awful evening in Paris a few years back. She had never known real hunger, of course; but this wait for Austin to bring the promised fast food (they might be out of pizza and if so he'd return with a burger, he had said before setting off on an old bicycle kept for journeys after the shuttle up to the hotel had stopped running). The Queen hoped it would not be a burger – she hadn't tried a pizza, although she had heard an ex-daughter-in-law warning her girls to keep off them and this had made them sound appetising – but soon almost
anything would be welcome, as visions of Austin pedalling slowly up the hill and even into Soufrière to fetch her supper became increasingly frequent.

A moon had finally risen over the sea, and noting a large yacht with striped funnels like a children's book illustration as it came slowly gliding in to tie up at one of the buoys further down the beach, the Queen decided for the second time that evening to leave the dark and deserted Windsor Village and make her way back to company and civilization. Surely, the security personnel so efficiently despatched by Ford would not return – and the odious Bostocks must by now have decided to sit down to dinner. The Queen decided not to think about this. She had no idea what a Latin buffet could be, but she would be willing to try it. And soon, as she walked in the now-painful Charles Jourdain shoes across the crushed coral beach, the Queen realised that this was why she was making for the Rainforest Bar once more: for the first time in her life she was famished, and even if it meant sampling the ‘real seafood soup' she had seen an elderly inclusive tourist bringing to his wife's table (Heinz tomato, even the Queen could see this was what it was), all the failures and disappointments of the day would be forgotten and gone. She was grateful to Austin Ford for his efforts to bring her dinner down through the hot night on the handlebars of a bicycle, she could even feel that he was not so disastrous in his attempt to be her equerry as she had
at first imagined. But to rely on someone like that for bed and board: this was a ridiculous notion. Of course the Joli Hotel would see to it that she had her room back, once she had dined. There was no doubt in the Queen's mind that there was nothing to worry about and that everything would turn out all right.

It would be hard to say which now came first – the Queen seeing something bobbing about in the sea under a moon suddenly out and blazing silver-white down on a beach responding in brightness, or the figure in the water seeing her and ducking and diving, arms raised, to escape possible recognition or capture. The Queen had stumbled – this on emerging from the Rainforest Bar where security was still very much in force, and a slightly frosty (why were they taking so long?) demand for a table had been met by a grim insistence she open her white handbag and give proof both of her identity and evidence of travellers' cheques or US dollars. The Queen had suffered one further humiliation of being asked to hand over her bag; and on refusing to accede to this request she had had it confiscated, opened by Security (who was posing as a waiter) and the full extent of its emptiness was revealed.
Only an ancient tissue was pulled from the recesses of the Queen's shiny handbag: this provided by Lady Lettice Farquhar at the time of a Britannia cruise up past the Castle of Mey before joining the royal train to Balmoral. Now, on this far-distant shore, the ancient paper handkerchief fell limply to the floor of the Rainforest Bar; and the Queen, finding herself ejected by the management of the Joli Hotel, turned and walked down the beach, where a forgotten deck chair tripped her up and caused her almost – but not quite – to lose her balance and fall. It was then, righting herself and walking firmly on, that the Queen spotted the human or animal in the deep waters near the Piton: white, with an abundance of long white hair and a white hairiness over arms and chest which reminded the Queen of the Scottish fairy tales of an old man said to live in the hills. The Loch Ness Monster could scarcely equal the oddness of this apparition – but the Queen, who did not suffer from fear, and had seen it only on the faces of people brought to meet her, stood quite unmoved on the beach and stared until the creature dived down out of sight and swam away.

It was then that the Queen saw in the moonlight that Austin Ford also stood by the edge of the sea, about a hundred yards from where she was. He also stared out at the dark, calm water; and he held a white towelling robe in his arms

‘Who was that, Ford?' The icy accents of Mrs
Gloria Smith brought a mumbled apology from Austin; and as she grew nearer, she heard that the pizza place had been closed and he had stopped and bought her a bag of nuts.

Only when he had been asked two more times who or what this nocturnal visitor to the Joli Bay might be, did Austin, still ungracious to the client of his escort service, give his reply. He pulled a pale and tasteless cashew from the Queen's small plastic bag and thrust it into his mouth. The answer, therefore, was indistinct; and as no one had ever spoken to the Queen with their mouth full, a silence ensued.

‘The King,' Austin said, before setting off to his home in the half-finished village.

He looked behind him only once. The old lady could hardly be left out all night – she should not have set out again and Austin Ford resolved she must be dealt with as soon as day broke. On his surprising response to her question, his client made no comment at all.

The Queen spent an uncomfortable night on the camp bed in Austin Ford's shack – this concealed from curious eyes in the Rum Shop by a tired-looking floral curtain and a tottering pile of crates which had clearly been her new equerry's inspiration: his client deserved privacy and this was almost a wall.

Despite these attentions, the Queen could not get to sleep. Moonlight came in knife-shaped patterns through the outer planking of the hut. Mosquitoes danced maddeningly out of reach and always ready to return. And images of the amphibian snowy-haired man glimpsed earlier in the sea rose before her eyes in a mist as pervasively white and painful as the migraine the Queen had once suffered at a tribal display in South Africa. That this blinding headache came from the fact of having eaten the bag of nuts Ford had brought back from his trip to
Soufrière, the Queen was certain: the nuts had been salty in the extreme, and Her Majesty's diet had excluded salt on medical advice for many years. There was also – and this she could not admit, as the royal lips had sipped so cautiously over the span of her reign that it was said there was no one in the realm who could make a glass of wine last as long as the Queen – there was, too, the probability of the head and eye trouble being, quite simply, a hangover. But of course the monarch could not recognise the symptoms. All she knew was that the old man in the sea, the whine of the circling insects and the jagged slices of bright light on the floor and walls of the shack equalled nothing the Queen had ever experienced. So she made no objection when a couple of knuckles knocked against a crate in the makeshift room divider and Austin looked round to check on his guest

‘What is it, Ford?' The Queen sat bolt upright on the rickety truckle, the old ex-Army blanket with which she had been provided now tickling her chin and adding to the severe discomfort she already suffered. ‘What time is it? When will it be light? There appears to be no clock here and one would like one provided, please. And bring me a glass of water, if you would be so good. Thank you.'

Austin Ford said it would be night for a long time yet. He went behind the crates and pulled a plastic bottle labelled Piton Water – but actually filled at the standpipe used by the builders at
Windsor Village – and handed it to his eccentric client, Mrs Gloria Smith. He had to admire the way the old lady, who clearly had never swigged from a bottle before, raised it to her lips after looking round and silently noting the absence of a glass; and he wondered just where she had been incarcerated all these years. People wanted to emigrate to Britain from here and other islands, Austin knew, but when they came back to visit relatives they told dreadful tales of prisons and hospitals – and lunatic asylums too, where those who had not adapted to the British way of life found themselves consigned. The question remained, though: how and why did Mrs Smith come to St Lucia? Austin was determined to find out. She could be friendly, old Mrs Smith, if she wanted to be, and yesterday evening's rum punches, extra sweetened with the sickly pink grenadine to counter the effect of the nuts (there had been complaints about the salt content) had brought tales of her dogs, and Christmas in the snow in Scotland – and even a confession, almost lachrymose, that an adored governess had been badly treated once she was no longer needed by the family. ‘She sees us every day when we drive past her bungalow …' but here the sad story had ended. Austin wondered if the subject of this past governess would be a good way to get at the truth about the mysterious Mrs Smith. Pulling a crate to the centre of the makeshift room, he sat down, elbows on knees, and took on a friendly posture. After all,
Jolene had spoken of green stones and twinkling stones in Mrs Smith's empty handbag: if they were real, this must be urgently investigated. Had Mrs Smith run away from a mad people's home, counting on the jewels to fund her in her blind rush out of the UK? It was the wrong time of night to suggest more alcohol – and poor Mrs Smith, who now gasped in horror at the taste of the chemical-laden water in the plastic bottle, seemed quite unused to the modest amount with which he had plied her earlier. So what could loosen her tongue? Austin reached out and pulled a fly swatter from its hiding place in the hammered-together deadwood outer wall of the Rum Shop. Two mosquitoes fell dead on the floor when he swatted them and the Queen clapped her hands together in delight. ‘Well done, Ford,' came in high, crystalline tones. Austin thought of mad Auntie May and her ancient wireless, and for a second a picture of a plum pudding with a twig of frangipani poked in it came into his mind.

The Queen was also thinking hard about her next move. It had been a shock, discovering at the Rainforest Bar that her jewels had disappeared. Francis Teck may have been a bit of a bounder, but he'd been the brother-in-law of Queen Mary, the Queen's grandmother, after all, and it was a heinous crime to steal the Cambridge emeralds (the Queen was unsure whether the stones belonged to the State or to her: this was a common confusion
when it came to real estate, Old Masters, jewellery and the rest, and was one of the reasons for the demand that royal ownership of treasures and palaces be clarified).