Saving the Queen (28 page)

“From here you can see—over there, Blackford—if I may, I shall call you Blackford. After all, it is a rather formidable name, hardly the same thing as suddenly calling you Al, or Butch, or whatever else is a typically American name—Chuck?—over there, you can see the remains of the Windsor Lodge built out of wood by Henry VIII—the stone came later.…”

The experience was elating. The weather, by British standards tropical in hue and temperature on this January day, conspired to heighten the experience they were both feeling, a flash of recognition of what lies behind what is seen routinely: the great sinewy trees, the pine needles, the fresh-swept meadows, the modest but adamantly pointed spires, the communicable enthusiasm of the riders for Ike and Prissy, the unencumbered fascination with one another. The conversation was awesomely intimate, but without edge or strain, impulsiveness or opportunism. “I came here alone the afternoon after the funeral. You can imagine the combination of sensations. For
one
thing I actually
liked
her, though we would never have become friends, in a way that Peregrine and I are friends or, even, already, you and I. The journalists of the whole world were here. The press the next morning reported that there were over
five hundred
of them.
Five hundred
photographers and writers from over one hundred countries. I was alone; the Duke was at Buckingham Palace, receiving intensive training in his own new duties, which he learned at disconcerting speed. The guards did a wonderful job of keeping them away, but it required an entire regiment I was right over there”—she pointed to a small glade in the trees—“and I'd stopped for a minute when I heard a terrible crashing noise, and suddenly, six feet away from me, was a body. I dismounted, walked over and found a young Japanese, with his camera and all those fancy lenses, hugged to his bosom—as he fell, he had thought only to protect them. In a few minutes he came to, looked at me in a most fearful state, and started, in not the easiest English to understand, to apologize, and to confess that he had spent
twenty-four hours
on that tree, just on the chance that I might go from Westminster Abbey to St. George's to Windsor Park, and perhaps unbend a little on horseback. He now expected that my bodyguards would be along any second, to take him to the Tower of London for summary execution. I told him I was alone and asked him to show me how to work his camera. At first he was uncomprehending, but very quickly he forgot his oriental awe, and took great pride in showing me one of the first Nikons.” She laughed with intense pleasure. “Then I told him I would take a few pictures of
him
, provided he would co-operate by climbing up to the perch he had sat on all night, from which he had just now fallen, and that I in turn would trust him to write down his impressions of the incident. He did exactly as he was told, and then I submitted to an interview.”

She paused pensively, as their horses walked in perfect tandem along the sunny-wintery trail.

“Actually, it was my very first. All the questions were the obvious ones, and it gave me a chance to formulate some of those vapid responses that are indispensable to the success of a constitutional monarch.

“‘
I shall do everything to live up to the high standards set by my cousin.… I am here as the servant of the people
…'—that kind of thing. Of course I
believe
this, Blackford, but I know that if I
didn't
believe it, I would be saying exactly the same thing, and the public would be wanting to hear exactly the same thing. One can only imagine the reaction to a statement by a freshly anointed Queen to the effect, ‘This is a pretty good job, I have inherited a lot of money, and a lot of junk, and a lot of perquisites, but there is something in it for
everybody
because of the presumptive necessity, the people having lowered their idealistic sights during the past generations, to worship something—somebody—worldly; by biological accident, I am she. I shall see what personal uses I can put this personal veneration to.'”

She laughed in delight at herself.

“Oh dear, oh dear, I pray that the Lord will restrain me, as I am sure he will, but you know, the temptation to say such a thing to one of Lord Beaverbrook's reporters is very nearly overwhelming! Beaverbrook is a very smart man and a tough cookie, as they say in your movies, but he is the world's premier establishmentarian. Do you know the story of Nicholas Murray Butler?”

“All I know about him is that he was forever the president of Columbia University and the soul of propriety.”

“Exactly,” said Caroline, “and I read somewhere, in one of your uninhibited journals, that it was the ambition of Heywood Broun the journalist to become rich for the sake of indulging himself in only a single pleasure. He proposed to hire the whole of the Metropolitan Opera House and give a benefit concert sending out all the tickets gratis. But he would arrange to send tickets to prominent bald-headed New Yorkers seating them in the orchestra floor so as to describe, for the benefit of the balconies, one huge S H I T—with Nicholas Murray Butler dotting the
i!
” She roared with pleasure. “I am telling you, Blackford, if I had had the keys to the Tower of London I'd have sneaked off in the dead of night and yanked out a ruby or an emerald or something from one of my thrones, and dispatched it anonymously to Mr. Broun. I wish I were as knowledgeable as one day I propose to be about the workings of our own intelligence system.
That's
the way to use secret money.” She was combining fancy and fantasy and effortlessly moved from the ribald to the solemn: “Ten or fifteen thousand pounds going through MI-6—they wouldn't notice. Certainly it would not be missed from the money they are supposed to be spending in intelligence and counterintelligence to understand a defense system you Americans seem to confide to us on such an eccentric basis.”

They were loping back now, on the hardening trail—the cold pursued the setting sun—toward the castle, and the Queen observed that horses should never be allowed to race home—“it gives them very bad habits.”

“Just what do you mean by that business about American intelligence, ma'am?” Blackford would not be deterred.
“My
understanding, both as a reader of the public press and as an engineer with a special knowledge of the whole hydrogen bomb business, is that our orders are to give the stuff along to British scientists as fast as we develop it.”

“That is the official line, I know. But I also know, from the confused answers of my own Prime Minister, that there is something funny going on. Either the Americans are running into difficulties they hadn't anticipated and are afraid to let us know what those difficulties are, or some of those Anglophobes in Congress, or some of the people who are afraid of Senator McCarthy, are urging an unnecessary secretiveness, because we simply
aren't
getting consistent information. And I think there is nothing more important for England to know than the answer to the question:
How
reliable is America's nuclear umbrella? How reliable is the general assumption that America will be able to continue to protect Europe, leaving entirely aside whether America, ten years from now, will be disposed to do so?” Her thoughts on the matter were clearly well organized, and she obviously suffered from a shortage of appropriate audiences.

“How well do you know Peregrine? Did you talk to him at any length last night? Or were you put off by that rather silly business he brought up about your time at Greyburn?” Blackford told her, deceitfully, that he hadn't minded the Greyburn business at all—that was old stuff—that in fact he had had a good talk with Peregrine about the new jet fighter planes, and in fact they were going to try to facilitate an exchange in testing out their countries' new models.

The Queen brushed aside the airplane talk. “I wish you would get to know him better. In fact—unless you have some inscrutable, hormonal, male animosity to one another—I shall try to see that it comes about. Peregrine is
very
special to me. Of course, he is one of my oldest friends. But he is much more. He is my most useful friend in analyzing serious matters. A few years ago you could have as easily got him interested in hydrogen bombs as in hybrid corn. Now—no doubt it is the result of his awful accident, which gave him a new perspective on life and caused him to take a more serious view of the strategic problems of the British Isles—he is as highly informed as any man in the kingdom on the subject. Granted he doesn't write about it, or talk about it publicly, and he says that he is not even sure whether, when his father dies, he will take up the cudgels in the House of Lords. But Perry is not only a great sportsman and flyer, which is how he is known to the public; he is a man intensely interested in important things, and I try to help him in every way by giving him information that fills in the holes in his knowledge. But this means getting that information from the P.M., who is a very decent and a very bright chap, but who, if he were the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, would not be able to contribute enough scientific information to construct a sundial. You should hear C. P. Snow on the subject. Do you know C. P. Snow? He fancies that he bridges the two worlds of science and culture, and I fancy he is right, though I would fancy it more enthusiastically if he were to uncover more economical formulations for telling me about it.

“Anyway, here we are, the P.M. will be along in fifteen minutes, and I shall have to put on something a little more regal for him.” She dismounted, with the aid of her groom. “I shall send for you when he leaves, and we'll have dinner. A most pleasant ride. Thank you.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Blackford smiled. “I must confess I don't feel right now like another hour in the archives. I think I'll walk a bit—I haven't ridden for a long time—maybe to Windsor. I'll be back in an hour, and be ready anytime you send for me.”

Blackford, feeling only slightly conspicuous in riding breeches in a town in which little boys went about dressed like fathers of the bride, walked nonchalantly past the guard, exchanged a greeting and informed him he would be back within an hour, past St. George's Chapel, turning left into the commercial district. He inspected one tea room, but the public telephone lay too exposed. So he went to the Castle Inn and was shown into an encloseable cubicle where he secured an operator and gave her a number. He heard the voice of Singer Callaway.

“Singer? This is Black. Do you hear me all right?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“On that party you're going to give for me next month, would you mind adding a name?”

“Of course not.”

“A very attractive chap, I'd like to know him better. Besides, we both have an interest in aviation. Anyway, be sure to do something about it quickly, as I imagine he has a pretty busy social calendar. He is Peregrine Kirk, the, er, Viscount Kirk; has a flat in London, on Curzon Street.”

“I'll take care of it. Everything all right with you?”

“Just fine, but must get back to work.”

“Some work.”

“It has its moments. I'll call you again when I get back to London.”

The dinner, discreetly served in the Queen's Drawing Room, in the candlelight with the crystal boiserie-effect and, always, the family paintings; but also a single early Picasso, lit by a shaft of soft light, its Fauvist colors standing out in the mortuary of regal ancestors. The spell had not been broken by the Prime Minister's visit. Caroline's imitation of him was perfect. “At one point he got as nearly impatient as a Prime Minister is permitted to get with his sovereign, unless he intends to execute her. He said, ‘Er, ma'am, really if I knew that m-much about the hydrogen bomb, I do believe I would construct one myself.'”

She laughed, and discussed her usual vexations at failing to get from him exactly the nature and causes of the American delay, though the Prime Minister confided to her that the preceding week, Professor Teller had eliminated what he considered to be the last of the theoretical obstacles, so that the date set for the first explosion—she did not give Blackford this date—was something more than a mere hypothesis. “I do think it is all not only vital, but also exciting. One can imagine the frenzy with which the Soviet scientists are engaged in the similar race, but needless to say we know very little about their activities, although the Prime Minister told me that a week or two ago a defector had come over in Eastern Europe, and the Americans smuggled him away. Apparently he had a pretty accurate idea of the American timetable, though whether this is the result of the fruits of Soviet intelligence, or simply a means elected by Stalin to put on the heat, nobody appears to know.”

Caroline glowed as she spoke and elicited from Blackford his views, often disjointed, on the matters, often unrelated, she raised. “Tell me,” she said, suddenly, “do you know anything about Cardinal Mindszenty?”

“Oh, the usual things,” said Blackford. “And I also know that experts on the subject conclude that in making him perform as he did during the public trial, the Communists have done a good bit in advancing their knowledge of the show trial. Mindszenty is a hell of a tough character, and they had to use everything on him: torture, threats against his family, drugs, a phony defense attorney, and, even, at the end, a couple of scientists who worked out an unbeatable way of forging anyone's handwriting, to write out incriminating evidence.”

“Explain that,” the Queen said, intrigued.

“They defected only a few months ago,” Blackford said. “There was an article about it in an American magazine. This couple—he-she scientific types—developed a way of forging a person's handwriting through a photographic mechanism in a way so accurate, no expert can detect the imposture. They do this after a scientific study of material written by the target. All this they did in the spirit of science, but when the Rakosi people heard about them, they were brought in and forced to forge extensive confessions by Cardinal Mindszenty, his disavowal of which during the trial seemed halfhearted and unconvincing.”