Saving the Queen (25 page)

Blacky grinned with pleasure.

“You can tell 'em from me, it's worth it.”

They walked slowly to the tower building, where an assistant helped remove their G suits and auxiliary gear. They sauntered off to the officers' lounge, ordered a beer and a roast-beef sandwich, and Black took pleasure from his father's obvious pleasure, and he wished for the first time in many years that he might see him more often. On reaching Black's MG, they hugged each other with feeling, and Black sped off, pulling out the map he had already surveyed, to keep handy on the left-hand seat. He must go west, then a little bit south. He would see Windsor Castle well before he approached the town. He drove through Windsor slowly, past milling Eton boys, freshly returned from their vacation for the Lent term. He noted the obstinate antiquity of their uniforms, the single emancipation he could off-hand think of at Greyburn, where there were no Eton collars required, or top hats. He wondered whether as a schoolboy he had ever looked as young as the young men he passed, and vaguely reminded himself that in a few years, driving through the streets of New Haven, he would no doubt be having identical thoughts.

The moment had come. His car was stopped at Henry VIII's Gateway, at each side of which stood the flamboyantly dressed, immobile sentinels. A policeman approached him. “Visitors' parking is over there, sir,” he said, pointing down the cobblestoned hill.

“I am here,” Blackford fumbled for a nonpompous way to put it, “at the invitation of Her Majesty.”

“What is your name, sir?”

“Blackford Oakes.”

“May I see some identification?”

Blackford pulled his passport from his briefcase. The officer, who had memorized the names of all expected guests, handed Blackford his passport. “Go up the road, sir, through that farther arch”—he pointed—“around the tower, into the quadrangle, where you will be met.”

An equerry, introducing himself genially, supervised turning the car over to a chauffeur, and Blackford's luggage to a footman, whom Black followed, chatting with the equerry up the stone stairs of Chester Tower. At the third story, the footman unlatched a large door. It opened on a living room of exquisite dimensions, large enough for seven or eight people to sit about it and look out over a great aft-cabin window that followed the contours of the tower and looked over the East Terrace Garden, the sun streaming by it into Blackford's suite. To one side, a page footman opened a second door into a small but warm, heavily carpeted, snug bedroom. To the side, through another door, was a modern bathroom.

Without a word, the footman, who gave his name as Masterson, had begun to unpack Blackford's two suitcases. Blackford let him do so, and busied himself unpacking his briefcase and spreading the papers on the inlaid leather desk that stood by the wall opposite the fireplace.

“Perhaps you will care to look at this schedule, Mr. Oakes”—the equerry handed him a sheet of paper—“and if you have any questions I am at your service. You can ring for Masterson by pushing the bell over there, sir”—he pointed to the side of the fireplace.

While the footman finished with the unpacking, Blackford looked at the typed letter communication.

Windsor Castle

Wednesday, January 16, 1952

Mr. Blackford Oakes

5
P
.
M
. arrival. Mr. Oakes will occupy Suite 3B, Chester Tower.

5:30
P
.
M
. Mr. Claude Squireson, Keeper of the Archives, will escort Mr. Oakes to the library.

7
P
.
M
. Mr. Oakes will return to his suite.

7:45
P
.
M
. Mr. Oakes will be escorted to the King's Drawing Room, where he will be presented to Her Majesty.

8:15
P
.
M
. Dinner

The keeper was a little late, quite old, and extremely absent-minded, but good-natured, and what he did, really, was to show Blackford how, with the help of one of the keeper's assistants, he could arrange to bring together anything he wanted. He was assigned a large and comfortable cubicle with powerful overhead lighting, several magnifying glasses, and a stack of clips. “You need only attach a clip to anything you desire to have photocopied, and it will be done for you in just a few hours.”

Blackford perused the handwritten indexes and began to compile a long list of sketches, lithographs, instructions, and texts to which, without problem, he could devote several days, if he had to, in pursuit of a plausible purpose.

He returned to his room and rang for Masterson, who appeared instantly.

“Masterson, would you please bring me a whiskey and soda? With ice? And tell me, do I assume that dinner is black tie?” Masterson opened a cupboard where there was already whiskey, gin, sherry, bitters, soda water, and ice. Yes, he said, dinners were black tie.

At exactly 7:40 there was a knock on the door, and a dark-suited butler asked if Mr. Oakes was ready. He was, and followed the butler down the stone steps, across a cold stone corridor, past the chapel, through a massive wooden door opening into St. George's Hall, a room fit, thought Blackford, for W. R. Hearst's San Simeon. The decorations were Tudor, with iron chandeliers, frescoed walls, and flags jutting out over huge but warm brown velvet couches, and dark Flemish-tinted paintings of pallid monarchs of centuries gone by. Eventually they arrived in the ornate drawing room, suppurating with velvet and bric-a-brac.

Blackford was led to the corner of the room, where three couples stobd, drinks in hand. He was presented first to the Duchess of Ogilvie, whom he knew to be the younger sister of the Queen's mother. Sir Alfred Schuler had just brought out a biography of George V which had been widely admired, and in the preparation of which he had had the full co-operation of the royal family. Lady Schuler was a sculptress of some accomplishment who faintly scandalized the set in which she traveled by a heavy penchant for erotic art, which, however, was so abstractly rendered as to permit the proper viewer to see into it nothing more than an exercise in abstract, sinewy forms. “It would be fun to see Lady Schuler's Rorschach test,” the Queen had said that morning to Peregrine Kirk on horseback, as they discussed that night's guest list. Mr. Alex-Hiller was the headmaster of Eton College who had made a number of progressive statements about education which were widely discussed by Old Etonians and anyone who would listen to them, which was not very many people during that busy season. About Viscount Kirk, Blackford knew only that he would one day be Earl of Holly, that he had been an ace during the war and had gone on to try, unsuccessfully, to subdue the Zionist insurrection in 1946, that he had returned to horsemanship, in which he had excelled as a youth, and that he now was completing a protracted but altogether successful recuperation.

He was greeted cordially, and the conversation had most diplomatically turned to the reasons for Blackford's presence in England, when, unobstrusively, the Queen was suddenly there in their company; and, for a moment, everyone stopped talking.

Caroline was carrying a tiny poodle in her left hand, clothed in a gauzy light-blue dress, wearing a small but brilliant diamond-and-turquoise tiara that matched a broach on her belt and her bracelet. She wore no jewelry in front, but her breasts at the cleavage seemed the color of pearl, and there was no distinct line where the sun had etched a separation between bathing suit and skin. She approached first her aunt, who kissed her, then Lady Schuler, who curtsied, as did Mrs. Alex-Hiller. Then Mr. Alex-Hiller, who took her hand and bowed from the neck, then Blackford, who did the same thing. Then she put her arm around Peregrine's:

“How are you, darling?”

“Splendid, ma'am,” he replied formally. She then sat down, and the butler brought her a daiquiri, and her guests sat in a semicircle around her. “I think we'll have the fire,” she said, as if to no one at all. Instantly someone lit it, and she turned to Blackford and said, “How did you get on with the keeper, Mr. Oakes? If you succeed in understanding what he has to say, I should greatly appreciate your transcribing it for me one of these days. I know he is a wonderful keeper, because everyone tells me he is, and surely a conspiracy to deceive me on the subject would hardly be worth the time even of a frivolous generation of Englishmen? Speaking of a frivolous generation of Englishmen, how are your students, Mr. Alex-Hiller?”

“They are doing very well on the whole, ma'am, thank you. We have some very gifted boys, a good many of them on scholarships.”

“Tell me something, Mr. Alex-Hiller, something I have never understood. Why is it so generally accepted that the sons of rich and titled men will be dull, while the sons of working-class men will be keen? I mean, it is to them, isn't it, that all the scholarships go?”

“Ma'am, it doesn't quite work out that way. The collegers at Eton who are there on scholarships are selected from the poorer classes after very intensive competition. This is not to say that, as a percentage, there are brighter boys among the poor than among the rich.”

“No, that doesn't say it, but I warrant it's true. Probably something gets into us that makes our blood sort of etiolated—do you know that word, Perry? Very useful word, and if you are not aware of it, I am sure there are several members of this erudite company, beginning of course with the distinguished Sir Alfred, who will explain it to you. Do you, anywhere in your large book, which I must confess I have not yet read, use the word in connection with my grandfather's speeches?”

Sir Alfred laughed. “I am not sure, ma'am, that diligently though I approached my work, I ever ran into a speech I could confidently assume was written by your grandfather.”

“If there had been”—the Queen looked, saucily at Blackford—“no doubt it was suppressed, or else there'd have been yet another world war. Shall we go to dinner?”

Two tall vertical doors separated, and the Queen, escorted by Viscount Kirk, led the way. Blackford quickly took the hesitantly proffered arm of the Duchess of Ogilvie and found himself, sitting on the Queen's left, opposite Sir Alfred Schuler. Across the rectangular table from the Queen, Peregrine Kirk was seated, with Mrs. Alex-Hiller on his right. The conversation was desultory during the first course and for most of the second, when Peregrine suddenly addressed Blackford, in a tone that cut peremptorily across other conversations.

“I have been trying to place you, Oakes, and I do believe it all comes back to me. Were you briefly at Greyburn College about ten years ago?”

In the three months he had spent in London not once had this happened to Blackford which, considering the company he kept, he laid down to extraordinary luck. But now it had happened—and, he reckoned, under the most hazardous circumstances. He wondered whether the young Viscount, seeking to embarrass him before the Queen, would draw the last measure of blood from the incident. He replied casually, “Yes, for a brief period. My mother remarried, to an Englishman. But then there was the attack on Pearl Harbor and as I was an American, not yet useful to the war effort”—his innate sauciness would not permit him a declarative sentence without at least that one retaliatory inflection, intended to communicate to Viscount Kirk, in case he did not know it, that he, Blackford Oakes, American, fought in a war more clearly designed to safeguard the White Cliffs of Dover from Hitler's panzer divisions than the coast of Maine—“the American ambassador sent us packing off to the States.”

Peregrine, who had taken note of the Queen's undisguised attraction to the undeniably attractive young American, let it go, and relished the instant's sense of security Blackford was enjoying. But then he spoke again, and the attention of the enire table was given over to him, the normal slouch in his voice having been replaced by something cold and flinty.

“I was head boy when you left—a most remarkable exit. In fact, as no doubt you have forgotten, you shook my hand at the prefects' table on your way out.”

He turned to Mr. Alex-Hiller. “Our young American friend could not stand the rigors of a public school. He ran away in protest against a beating by Dr. Chase.”

Lady Schuler attempted a laugh of sorts, as did the Duchess of Ogilvie, Mr. Alex-Hiller's nervous chuckle was ho ho hearty, and Blackford thought, looking over at the headmaster's muscular grip on his knife and fork, he was probably reacting with bloody hands.

“Is that true?” Queen Caroline turned to Blackford, who knew that a great deal would depend on his answer.

“No, ma'am, it is not true. But there is no reason for Viscount Kirk to believe it to be anything other than the truth, inasmuch as I never communicated with him from that day until this afternoon, and I do not doubt that, as head boy, he communicated frequently with Dr. Chase, and is a faithful carrier of school legend, as head boys tend to be.”

It was an adroit blend, greatly admired by the Queen, of a consistent refusal to validate a historical distortion, a reduction of that distortion to the puerile level of schoolboy lore unfit for the exercise of adult curiosity, and a superbly consummated gesture of condescension toward Viscount Kirk, head boy emeritus. Kirk recognized his disadvantage and instantly retreated when the Queen, abruptly changing the subject, asked Blackford whether his work in England included any effort to compare English and American approaches to atomic research. Blackford knew that as providence had it, he was being tested in the same few minutes on the two subjects he needed, most acutely, to acquit himself well on.