Old Filth - Jane Gardam [88]
“The tree was still the issue when I arrived,” said Filth.
He had not seen Queen Mary his first month at Badminton, after a three-week OCTU course in another camp. Once he saw a silvery pillar above him on a terrace. Once again he seemed to see something moving slowly inside a long glass gallery. Then one day, reading in the vegetable garden—he had begun to order Law books from London—there she was, watching him from over the hedge. It was a hot day but she was dressed in full rig—a long coat and skirt, pearls and brooches, and a rucked hat like a turban with a sweep to it. He stood up at once and she gave a strange half-bow and turned away. There was an attendant nearby who was knitting on four-peg needles. Knitting steadily, she turned about and followed the Queen. The next week he was invited to the house to tea.
It was served in the large salon where new acquaintances were tried out. If they made the grade there would be a future invitation to Her Majesty’s private sitting-room upstairs. Big test. The Queen sat doing needlework, her lady-in-waiting sat picking over some scraps of cloth, and a fat noisy woman was shouting.
“Over my dead body,” she was saying, “will you cut down my tree. Cut down my spinneys, my ivy, my woodlands, my bramble bushes. Cut down my house, but not the tree.”
Queen Mary continued with her blanket stitch. The lady-in- waiting looked exhausted and the fat woman came up alongside Eddie Feathers as the twelve-foot high doors to the salon were being held open by footmen in scarlet.
“She’s impossible. I’m the Duchess of Beaufort. I know I look like somebody’s cook, but that’s who I am, and this is my house. She’s only an evacuee,” she spat as she blew past, the doors being silently closed behind her.
Queen Mary looked across at Eddie and smiled.
After the tray had been put down (margarine on the bread, pineapple jam but really made from turnips, a terrible seed cake and some oatcakes) Queen Mary passed him an almost transparent cup half-full of pale water.
“Cream?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
She nodded. There was no cream, anyway, and the milk looked blue.
The lady-in-waiting brought out a box of pills and dropped one in the Queen’s cup and one in her own. “Saccharine?” she said.
“Oh, no, thank you.”
“It is quite true. What my niece says is perfectly true. I am only an evacuee. A very unwilling evacuee.”
Eddie wondered what to say. “I was once an evacuee,” he said. “And very unwilling. And far too old.”
“I am far too old,” said the Queen. “How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Good gracious. How humiliating for you.”
“Yes. It was. My father sent for me to Malaya, to escape the War.”
“How disgraceful of him.”
“He had had a very bad time in 1914.”
“Yes. I see. But you escaped? To tell you the truth I don’t altogether feel ashamed to have escaped. It was the Govern- ment’s decision I should come here. They told me I would be much more trouble in London. In case of kidnap. Personally I think that a plane might come and bundle me off more easily from here. That of course is why you’re all here. A hundred and fifty of you. Quite ridiculous.”
“Yes, your Maj—”
“Call me Ma’am.”
“You must miss being at the heart of things—Ma’am?”
“I don’t, now. I’ll tell you more another time.”
She looked pointedly at the lady-in-waiting who gathered up a skein of mud-coloured wool and passed it to Eddie who was having trouble with the turnip jam. “Hold Her Majesty’s wool, please.”
Eddie held out his hands and the wool was arranged upon them in a figure of eight. The lady-in-waiting began to roll it up into a ball. He felt a ninny.
“Do you think you will enjoy soldiering?” asked the Queen, looking hard at him.
He blushed and began to stammer.
“Ah yes. I see. You’ll get over it. I know a boy like you.”
He walked in the park with her