Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (14 page)

Without so much as goodbye, or a further kind word, William was out the door.

A
lthough Rebecca was on fairly easy terms with The Queen, The Queen’s private office was another story. The Mews seldom dealt with the private secretaries except on arrangements for ceremonial occasions, and then they were certainly terrifying. The equerries were chosen by The Queen’s private office even though their name, “equerry,” pronounced “eh-KWHER-ry” went back to horses. It derived from the French
écurie
, for stable. Sometime in distant history the equerries were officers in charge of the stables. Nowadays they sometimes arranged for transportation in cars, on trains, and by airplane, almost never on horseback, so Rebecca in the Mews knew of them, but she had little to do with them. Their proximity to The Queen made them rather arrogant when she did have to deal with them, so the phone call from Luke calling her over to the palace made her nervous.

Luke had worked out that William had served her lunch in her study after one and that was the last anyone inside the palace had seen of her. He telephoned the Mews to see whether she had gone over there after lunch. Rebecca had picked up Luke’s call and confirmed that The Queen had been there earlier in the afternoon. He asked her whether she’d walk over to have a word with him in The Queen’s sitting room. He gave her instructions on how to find it. She’d never been in it before. She appeared after having run over from the Mews. She was out of breath. Her riding boots were splattered with mud.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” said Luke, standing up from The Queen’s desk. “How do you do?” He nodded her in the direction of the comfortable chair. He did not reach out to shake her hand. If Rebecca were breathing heavily from her run, he was thoroughly distracted by the enormity of what was before him. “Look,” he began right away without trying to smooth things over, as the upper levels of the Household usually did by asking her about what she was doing. It was their cover for being about to ask her to do some significant and time-consuming job. Luke, however, went straight to the point. “Her Majesty has disappeared. Before the police and the secret services are alerted, I’d like to try to find her quickly myself. The papers will make a fuss if they know she’s walked off
hors de routine
, as it were. It might injure her. I’d like to keep it quiet as long as we can. But that means we have to find her before anyone else does. So there’s not much time. She came to the Mews this afternoon, did she?”

“Yes,” she said and gave him an angry look.

“And?”

“And nothing. She often comes over. She had some cheddar for Elizabeth. She likes it.”

“Cheddar cheese?”

“Yes, Elizabeth likes it.”

After a split second of confusion, Luke gathered Rebecca was referring to a horse, rather than the sovereign. He would have been rather taken aback if she’d addressed The Queen by her Christian name. He also gathered that this young woman was as upset about something as he was, possibly the disappearance of The Queen, possibly something else. “Her Majesty make any peculiar remarks?”

“Well, she wasn’t dressed for the weather. Only a headscarf on. It was pelting down outside. I gave her my hoodie.”

“Your hoodie?”

“She had no coat. She needed something.”

Luke waved this away. “She say anything?”

“She asked if I thought horses were ever sad.”

“Oh Lord,” Luke groaned.

Rebecca put in defensively, “Well, they’re sometimes not as contented as they might be. And she likes talking about that. Is all.”

“Yes, I see. But don’t you think she might have been talking about herself too?”

Rebecca’s focus with The Queen was always on what they both cared about, the horses, not on each other. Whatever it was that had made Her Majesty turn up earlier that afternoon was far too personal to be sharing with this man in a grey suit. She just pursed her lips and made no response.

“Look, I don’t like asking these sorts of questions any more than you like answering them. Why is it so hard to get people in this bloody place to pull together? If you and I don’t make common cause and find out where she has gone to, they’ll be very rough with her. Don’t you see?” He paused to see if she would volunteer any more useful news.

She did not. She looked over his shoulder out the darkened window.

“William thinks she’s not herself. Has gone . . .” he couldn’t say “walkabout” to this unresponsive girl with high color and muddy boots, “to get ready to, um, die.” He’d blurted out the word before he’d had a chance to think.

“
Die?
” she said, momentarily shocked out of her determination not to share anything with him. “Die. She wasn’t dying. She was fine.”

“Yes, but perhaps was having some gloomy thoughts, and asked you whether horses had gloomy thoughts too?”

Now that he put it that way, it didn’t seem so odd. She had seemed somehow a little different than usual. “Well, she wasn’t what I would have called cheerful.”

“Said nothing to you about where she might be going after she left you?”

“No, just was going out into the weather, so she let me put my hoodie onto her.”

“Hoodie,” said Luke with a combination of incredulity and distaste. “Isn’t that what the boys wear on the street when they’re about to knife you? And you put one over Her Majesty’s head, did you?”

“Look,
I
wear one, and I don’t carry a knife.” This wasn’t strictly true. Rebecca did have a scout knife she kept in her pocket for small tasks. She didn’t carry it as a weapon. “Thank you. Is there anything else?”

God, she was difficult, Luke thought to himself. He left a pause to see whether it might allow her indignation to disperse a little. “And where might such a woman go, who was curious about whether horses were ever depressed, on a December afternoon?”

Rebecca saw that he would not allow her to go until she provided something more. She wished she knew what else she could tell him. The only thing she could really think of was that The Queen still found it funny that Elizabeth liked the cheddar. She’d told The Queen it came from Paxton & Whitfield, and that they’d run out of their supply at the Mews. Now, why wouldn’t she send someone out to get more if she wanted it? Or why not send Rebecca herself if it came to that, as she had done before? But if she were behaving oddly, which Rebecca could see for herself she was, mightn’t The Queen go to Jermyn Street to get the cheese herself? She was surprisingly unrecognizable in that hoodie. This thought flashed through her mind and she as quickly determined she wouldn’t tell the equerry. As a man, and as a member of the upper level of the Household, she simply didn’t trust him.

“I have no idea,” she said, separating the words so he could see she had determined to tell him nothing more.

“All right, then,” said Luke, defeated. “But here’s my mobile number in case you find out something. I am thinking of going to Scotland tonight. William too, possibly. Found a railway timetable on her computer screen.” He stopped a moment and caught her eye. “Please do let me know,” he said separating his words, imitating what she had just done, “will you, if you find out anything.”

“I will,” she said. It was the least brusque thing she’d said in the twenty minutes they were together. Something about the use of a Christian name in his sentence made her soften a little. She had no idea who “William” was, but he had now mentioned him twice. The equerry in his own way was as defiant as she’d been meeting his questions, and his breaking the usual spoken order of things had got her attention. Perhaps he wasn’t just a grey suit after all.

T
he Queen had an early engagement on Tuesday and those who would be attending her needed to be up early. Lady Anne, instead of spending the Monday night in Tite Street, was spending the night in the palace. She was across the corridor from a bedroom occupied by Shirley, who was up from Windsor to dress The Queen and do her hair before the day’s activities began. William had knocked on Shirley’s door and they’d had a quick but voluble conversation in the hall about what had happened. He reported that the equerry had discovered, and confirmed, that The Queen had left the palace sometime after luncheon and was now officially missing. He also told her about the Scottish railway timetable they’d found on The Queen’s computer, which made them guess that was where she was headed. William had asked whether Shirley knew anything about this. He’d received a blustery negative. She verbally boxed his ears for frightening her, and threatened him with physical punishment if this were a joke. “Dead serious, Shirley,” said William with all the light and play gone out of his eyes. In the midst of this, Lady Anne, hearing the commotion, had come out into the corridor and heard the story of The Queen’s disappearance repeated. As she knew nothing either, William told them that he and the equerry were trying to find out if anything could be learned from the Mews, but that they thought of going to Scotland themselves, maybe together, as soon as they were able. He’d then disappeared down the corridor, leaving the two women looking at one another in confusion.

Shirley and Anne had both served The Queen for a very long time, though in different capacities. Shirley stood behind her in the morning and brushed out her hair. Anne stood behind her in the afternoon and made small talk with the wives of factory owners during official visits. Shirley’s mother and grandmother had both been pensioned off by the Royal Household and retired to cottages near the Dee in Scotland. Anne’s brother had nearly married The Queen but had died young, and the present Marquess, Anne’s nephew, was unknown at the palace. He was never invited to anything. Shirley and Anne were accustomed to seeing one another in the corridors and on the backstairs, and though they were as polite and distantly friendly as palace manners required, they were frankly suspicious of one another. Shirley regarded Anne as just another version of Letitia d’Arlancourt, and as such, her bitter enemy. She thought there was little enough difference between the ladies-in-waiting.

For her part, Anne was rather jealous of The Queen’s evident affection for Shirley and the way she relied upon her for everything. The two of them would be in the backseat of the big palace Bentley, known as “the Beast,” going off to an afternoon event. The Queen would introduce many of her opinions with Shirley’s point of view. “Shirley says, and I agree, it will be hot when we go to Kentucky.” What does Shirley know about the weather in Kentucky, thought Anne. Or, “Shirley has found the most marvelous things for your lips. Peppermint with a tingle.” “Has she, Ma’am?” replied Anne flatly. Even, “Shirley thinks Labour will be out before long.” Anne thought she might just mention this to the Prime Minister the next time she was entertaining him with a drink, softening him up, as it were, in the ten minutes before The Queen was ready to give him his audience on a weekday evening. She imagined with satisfaction the surprise on his face. The Queen’s most trusted source of political information her Scottish dresser. How that would make him pale.

The two women were unprepared for much intimacy when they stood facing one another in the blue-carpeted hallway lined with white wainscoting. Both of them had planned on early nights, tea on a tray, some television, and lights out well before nine in the evening. They’d both got out of their street clothes and into their dressing gowns, though for different reasons. Anne had been having arthritic pains in her lower back and shoulders. She hadn’t the money to pay for a private nurse, and she couldn’t face leaving her flat to go live in sheltered housing paid for by the National Health Service. She wasn’t sure but she thought her condition might be degenerative and she would have to face something like that before too long. To bed early with a couple of pain pills and a hot water bottle was her remedy. Shirley, for her part, missed the all-female bedtime chitchats she’d had in her girlhood with her mother and grandmother. With no men about, and one or two women friends who were staying, everyone in flannel nightdresses or cotton pajamas, it was her fondest memory of belonging and being looked after. Getting early into her nightclothes was Shirley’s way of remembering those far-off days of sisterhood. Nevertheless, both Shirley and Anne were embarrassed to be seen in
déshabille
, especially by one another, when it was still early.

“This is very unlike Her Majesty, Mrs MacDonald,” said Anne, raising her chin and pretending as if she always met Shirley MacDonald while only dressed in bathrobe and slippers.

“It is, Lady Anne,” said Shirley, more abruptly, rather short-tempered with herself for not knowing more about what her mistress could be doing outside the palace walls.

“I hate to think what might happen to her, um, outside,” said Anne.

Both women knew that she was not talking about the weather. They both paused a moment to let the more horrible possibilities pass through their minds. An elderly woman falling off a curb she didn’t notice into the path of an oncoming taxi was the least of the horrible things they imagined.

Recovering herself, and shuddering slightly, Shirley offered, in a feeling of desperation, “She mentioned something about Leith.”

“Leith! What would she want in Leith?”

“
Britannia
, Lady Anne.”

“
Britannia
, Mrs MacDonald? Surely not. On her own? At this time of day? They all said goodbye to her years ago.” Anne was thinking as she said this of how they’d all blubbed in the most undignified way. Blubbing about a boat, indeed. Sometimes she wondered why she worked for this family. But then she recalled there had been some merry times, especially when they were in turquoise seas, away from the cold waters of this miserable little island. She knew too how The Queen was usually at her best on board ship, most natural, least shy, unbuttoned. Why shouldn’t she want a visit to her happy place, as she believed it was called now? Ministers had been unwilling to pay for a new vessel when
Britannia
was decommissioned. It was a slap in the face. There had been a royal yacht ever since Queen Victoria’s day, and The Queen set store by doing everything as Queen Victoria had once done it. Anne decided it wasn’t impossible that The Queen should want to revisit the old yacht. “What did she say about Leith, exactly?” She used a tone to convey that they were in this together, the two of them, almost as if to apologize, without actually saying so, for the tone of voice she’d used a moment earlier when she’d poured scorn on the idea of The Queen going by herself to Leith.