The Autobiography of The Queen (7 page)

The Queen wondered how she could persuade Austin Ford to search for the missing stones. It did not occur to her that her new escort would need little persuading. But now he was talking – telling her about his family, it seemed, with words of a wife and a former wife and their children up in the village, and the trip they planned to take in a private plane to Mustique (when he had found the emeralds, Austin did not add).

The Queen was an expert listener. Of all the hundreds and thousands of family confidences she had received in her long years on the throne she remembered in particular one point: there was always a moment when the teller, over-emotional at being granted a royal audience, mentioned the one grudge – or crime – or stain of illegitimacy, which continued to haunt them and would do so for the rest of their days. Obviously, Ford couldn't know that his client Mrs Smith was the Queen of England – but she had perfected the art of listening to a stage where not coming out with some kind of confession seemed to the teller to be a crime in itself. ‘So the rest of your family went to live in Australia,' the Queen said, and an image of cheering crowds came to her so she smiled gently. ‘And I suppose you must miss them terribly, Ford?'

But Ford as well was proficient in the art of extracting information from unwary speakers.
‘You
tell me,' he said. ‘I don't know where you from, Gloria!' And he felt for some reason ashamed of his sudden familiarity with the old lady.

But the Queen knew the mechanics of the snub as well as encouragement and apparent interest. ‘One has come a long way and one has had a tiring day,' came the answer. ‘But one
is
rather intrigued by that, that man in the sea this evening. An expatriate, one imagines. How long has he lived here? You said, if I remember correctly, that he is a Mr King …'

‘No,' said Ford, who saw now that intimacies would not be forthcoming. ‘He the King, that what I say.' These were Austin's last words, for he saw his guest, on hearing this, shake her head and smile. Then her eyes closed and she sank down on to the hard bed.

When morning finally came, the Queen woke from a dream of two of her corgis, Whisky and Sherry, jumping on her bed as in the morning they always did; and then, surfacing further from a patchy sleep, she could have sworn she heard the precise tones of her maid Ivy, bringing in tea, saying good morning before setting down the Tupperware box containing scones and fancy biscuits, which the sovereign and her dogs invariably shared.

But the heavy weight that descended on the Queen turned out to be a large, unappetising fruit in a cardboard box. A rusty knife lay beside it. Austin Ford had clearly thought of breakfast for his client; but the sight of the custard-yellow collapsed football (as in the perception of the Queen this tropical fruit resembled) brought an even stronger urge for tea and she rose resolutely and walked out of the small shack into bright sunlight. There was
no Miss Struthers standing in the half-built village (she was the Queen's private secretary at Balmoral) to discuss the day's events; there was, the Queen knew perfectly well, no schedule set out for her for the rest of her days. But it was hard to do without one, and she determined to start the morning with a visit to the site of No. 5 Bananaquit Drive high in the Joli valley above the hotel and guest cottages. There would be a contractor waiting for her on site, surely; maybe even the architect of the Joli development would make a point of coming down from the capital, Castries, to discuss the construction of the home she had bought off-plan and to apologise for and explain the delay. Tea would be found at reception: the maid Jolene could provide it and she could unlock the door of the little shop in the foyer while she was about it. The Queen wanted clean clothes in a light material: she might even take a straw hat she had seen hanging on a hook behind the boutique door.

That she would be unable to pay for these items did not cross the Queen's mind. She would make a telephone call from the lobby to Brno in Romania where he was buying property for himself as well as overseeing the Prince of Wales's new house and eco-inspired land there – and Brno would telegraph the money to the monarch whose patronage had enabled him to prosper in a new environment without owing the Exchequer any payment at all. The Queen knew about wiring funds – the Duke of
Windsor had been an ardent admirer of Western Union – and she imagined the funds would arrive when she had ordered her tea and selected summer wear at the shop.

The Queen walked barefoot to the far end of the beach: the court shoes were unwearable by now, due to a broken heel on one shoe and a snapped strap on the other; and she waited by a sign which again warned her to beware of falling coconuts, for the shuttle up to reception. Sure enough, as if Miss Struthers had indeed organised the transport for the first lady of the realm (and daughter of the head of the British Empire in its last days), a bus appeared almost at once, carrying staff down from a high-up village to prepare food and clean the Rainforest Bar and pool. The Queen, espying Jolene amongst them, gave a regal wave, and found herself asked to wait for a guests' shuttle to take her up the hill; but – as she gave the impression no one had ever refused her anything before – there was no stopping the indomitable Mrs Smith from boarding the bus and taking the front seat. With the mysterious visitor as its solitary passenger, the shuttle groaned slowly up under the palms to reception.

The scene there was quite unexpected, for it was still early morning in the Caribbean. The first thing the Queen noticed was the large number of people in the foyer – it was impossible to get to the desk or, as they were all apparently English or American and therefore taller than she, to see over or round
them to find the concierge. An outing had been arranged for the Joli guests, the Queen supposed; but she feared that ordering tea would be out of the question for a long time. Then it occurred to her that they might be all going back – home – as she still must consider England to be. Would a coach come for them soon and make it possible to get on with her day?

But now the Queen saw that all these residents – or tourists – or guests – at the Joli Hotel were staring in one direction, and a silence had fallen as an announcer's voice boomed out from the sitting area on the far side of reception. The TV was positioned there; and as she picked her way through the crowd, the Queen saw Sir Martyn and Lady Bostock standing close up by the desk, their faces purple with excitement, and the concierge plucking at their sleeves and mouthing questions. The Queen pressed on until a hugely tall man, a tennis coach with JOLI printed in towering letters on his T-shirt, almost crushed the old lady determinedly sidling through the crowd.

‘I beg your pardon, ma'am.' The coach was American: the Queen understood this, while registering that the correct way of addressing a female royal personage had been used for the first time since her arrival on the island. ‘Let me assist you, ma'am.' The coach had seen that the dignified-looking woman was barefoot, of all things … Who and what could she be?

The Queen reached the TV at last, and if it had not been for nearly three quarters of a century's practice in her role as Head of State she would, like the crowd gathered in reception of the Joli Hotel in St Lucia, have cried out in astonishment at what she saw.

Hyde Park – it obviously
was
Hyde Park – and then, unmistakably, came the gates of Buckingham Palace, camera panning out to take in the length of the Mall – everywhere showed blown-up posters of the Queen, pictured against a vast array of floral tributes and these tied to railings and laid reverentially on every spare inch of grass. The image of Her Majesty dominated the screen. A newsreader repeated endlessly the unbelievable truth that the monarch of the realm had departed from her palace and her throne. Stifled sobs could be heard in the crowded foyer of the hotel, while shouts and weeping fits attracted cameramen at the scene.

The Queen slipped out of the glass door and into the circular driveway; and, grateful for the palms standing on a triangle of over-sprinkled grass there, she escaped unseen down a side path to the distant sea.

The Queen missed the way from reception at the Joli Hotel down to the lots for sale, and after circling the middle and lower reaches of the lush estate where her house at Bananaquit Drive must surely be, she gave up the idea of meeting the builders – as she had hoped – on site, and decided to make for the Rainforest Bar. Here, despite the bad manners shown by management last night, she would surely be able to order tea (Earl Grey if possible) and make a plan involving Austin Ford and a car to take her to buy clothes and shoes in Soufrière. As she had never arranged transport or shopping herself, it was not possible to foresee difficulty; and although she was aware she had been robbed and her handbag was as empty as even the most arduous lady-in-waiting would have liked, the Queen assured herself that Brno would be on the other end of the line when she called – for she had
never in all her fifty-five years on the throne been asked to ‘hang on' or – worse – been offered several ‘options' to determine the nature of her inquiry.

It would be hard to say that even a royal personage trained to exhibit no feelings, and to react to even the most outrageous situations (war, divorce of children, abdication of uncle, accession to the throne) with calm and a total absence of emotion, could go for long without betraying their inner thoughts on the TV news footage just ingested by the Queen. Her people loved her! She was, presumably, considered dead and mourned for having retained precisely that monumental calm in the face of a usurper (as she considered the late Princess of Wales to have been) or terrorist attacks – or even at Diana's death the demand she lower the flag at Buckingham Palace – and this after having to agree to pay tax for the first time in the recent history of the monarchy! She was now proved, in her absence, to be the people's Queen. The people might have refused to pay for the restoration of Windsor Castle after the fire, but they admired and loved their monarch and wanted her safely back where she belonged, on the throne.

Despite the self-control instilled throughout her childhood, the Queen was unable to prevent herself from giving a shy smile when the realisation of her popularity began to sink in. But, as she had so often been taught when young, thinking of yourself leads to muddle and to vanity: and it was thus,
pleasantly confused, that she missed the road where the shuttles drove, and, taking a footpath that soon petered out in thick rainforest, was soon totally lost

The sea glittered below; trees, bearing a pink blossom that appeared to fall and then renew itself as she walked under them, arched below giant creepers. Little bursts of rain lasted no more than a minute before a hot sun struggled once more to penetrate the undergrowth. Twice, the Queen stumbled on the root of an unrecognisable tree. But the vision of the sea, postcard blue and capped with tiny white waves, drew her on and down. This must be the coast below: here she would find the Rainforest Bar – or, if she arrived at Windsor Village, there she would find Ford and he would bring her tea. For the Queen, like all who have employed servants, saw all those inferior to her in class and status as potential doers of the royal bidding.

‘Madam.' The voice was gruff and appeared to issue from behind a large boulder on the forest path. ‘You are mistaking your way, madam,' the voice continued, as its owner came heavily up through a cleared area: behind him, as the Queen could now see, the land dropped away steeply and what appeared to be a monastery or abbey sat further down, its colonnades pointing out to sea.

‘Where is one?' said the Queen. She had recognised the old man with flowing white hair as the creature glimpsed in the sea off Joli Beach, Ford in attendance with a towel.

‘Ravissant Estate,' replied the old man.

The Queen waited. There would surely be an invitation to go down to the religious-looking building below, which, as she now saw, had a gold roof. Possessor of unlimited amounts of art treasures, castles and palaces, the Queen felt no particular interest in the building – although thoughts of a boring film about Tibet shown her by Prince Charles did come to mind. ‘May one follow you down?' the Queen asked the old man.

But no invitation was forthcoming. Despite his age, the King (as the Queen had heard him called by Ford, and for that reason she felt she would like to know more about him) descended with agility to his demesne overlooking the sea.

The Queen had never not been invited by anyone before. Her subjects were warned months in advance of the royal arrival and departure dates, and were presumed to be grateful for the information. No, the present Queen had never been rejected in this way before. Surprised at this rebuff from the white-haired recluse, she decided she must find Ford urgently, and a path that would lead away from the forested kingdom of the old man.

The sea grew nearer as she walked and half slithered down the side of the Piton where she had lost her way. Then the Queen found herself almost at once just above the half-finished village which bore her name.

‘So that's two banana daiquiris, three Piton lagers and a Coke,' said the tourist to the woman behind the bar of the Rum Shop – this newly opened with wooden sill extended to provide a counter-cum-bar, and on the floor a nest of stools for those too old, tired or drunk to stay on their feet.

That this was frequently the case for the customers of Austin Ford's ‘internationally famous' establishment (announced on the reverse of the Escort Service card along with a line drawing of a cocktail glass topped with a cherry) was confirmed by today's batch of drinkers in the half-finished village. With a combined age of at least three centuries, the white-haired or egg-bald Canadian gentlemen, their wives in long caftans and dangling earrings hanging by the sides of their faces in an attempt to conceal jowls or wrinkles, the customers at the Rum Shop – with the exception of a solitary American male – were all
Commonwealth born and reared. That their monarch, the Queen of Canada's snowy wastes, the sovereign of high-rise cities and pine-clad mountains, leader of all those banished from a cruel homeland ruled over by kings uncaring of the Clearances and bored at the thought of this distant offshoot of Scotland far away – that this historic personage was the one who served the drinks here today, would have been surprising in the extreme to them. A tour of ‘Wild St Lucia', comprising a brief walk in the botanical gardens and a goggle down at the sulphur springs which gave Soufrière its name, followed by a handiwork shop in the town and the purchase of miniature wooden boats, further dangly earrings and postcards of the Pitons, meant that no one had seen TV all day; and thus the news of the disappearance (or possible demise) of the Queen was unknown to the group. The Rum Shop had no television; it had been billed as a more ‘authentic' visit to a St Lucian village than the Rainforest Bar or the Joli Hotel could provide.