The Audience (2 page)

Equerry
Every Tuesday, at approximately 6.30 p.m., the Queen of the United Kingdom has a private audience with her Prime Minister. It is not an obligation. It is a courtesy extended by the Prime Minister, to bring Her Majesty up to speed. The meeting takes place in the Private Audience Room located on the first floor of Buckingham Palace.

The Equerry turns, indicating the darkened space.

A large, duck-egg blue room. High ceilings, a fireplace, a Chippendale bureau. Four gilt-framed paintings, two by Canaletto, two by Gainsborough. At the centre of the room, two chairs made by François Hervé, in 1826. Their original colour was burgundy, but Queen Mary had them re-upholstered in more optimistic yellow Dupioni silk. One drawback to the yellow is that it stains easily, and the chairs have needed several refreshments. According to household records, they were last re-upholstered in a yellow that almost matched the original on 13th January 1995.

The Equerry walks off.
   
As he goes, we reveal the audience room, with two yellow chairs. Freshly upholstered
.
    In one chair is the sixty-nine year old Queen
Elizabeth II. Opposite her is John Major, fifty-two. Her ninth Prime Minister.

Major
I only ever wanted to be ordinary.

A silence. The Queen stares.

Elizabeth
And in which way do you consider you’ve failed in that ambition?

Major
What’s going on in my political life at the moment is just so
extra
ordinary. My government is tearing itself apart. I withdrew the whip from eight of my backbenchers in an attempt to restore party discipline, but it’s achieved nothing. When they’re not out there on College Green briefing against me morning and night they seem to be engaged in a never-ending game of political hara-kiri. And the papers are being so vile …

Elizabeth
It’s a dangerous business, reading newspapers. Most of your predecessors claimed not to, and I can’t help thinking that’s wise.

Major
I know. I just can’t help myself. Can’t walk past one of the things without picking it up, hoping for a lift. And then I get crushed when they’re so … mean. Most of my political life it was fine because I was generously overlooked. I was barely mentioned as Foreign Secretary, nor as Chancellor. Did you know eighteen months before I became Prime Minister just two per cent of the country had even heard of me?

Elizabeth
Beware the quiet man!

Major
Beware the Invisible Man! When I walk into a room, heads fail to turn.

Elizabeth
(
sighs
) How lovely …

Major
I remember how my heart sank when I was asked to take the Foreign Office. And when Margaret told me she wanted me to be the ‘centrepiece’ of her reshuffle … I almost ran away. To be thrust like that. Into the spotlight.

Elizabeth
So why on earth did you run for Prime Minister?

Major
I did it reluctantly, I assure you. With a heavy heart. And never expected to win. And now with all these problems.

Elizabeth
What problems, Mr Major? We’re not at war. The people aren’t on the streets.

Major
No, but ten-per-cent interest rates, the fallout from Black Wednesday, an increasingly belligerent
anti-European
caucus – it’s hardly a happy ship, either. My polls ratings are at a historic low.

Elizabeth
There are summits and there are valleys. We’ve all been there.

Major
Twenty-four-per-cent approval, Ma’am?! You’ve never been anywhere close.

Elizabeth
I beg to differ. And you should remember better than anyone. That day … in December? Three years ago.

Major
You were unwell that day.

Elizabeth
It was just a cold…

Major
It was flu, Ma’am.

Elizabeth
Cold …

Major
You were running a fever. The Equerry was quite clear…

Elizabeth
IT WAS A COLD!

Major
Quite. And long forgotten now.

Elizabeth
It will
never
be forgotten. What you did. Nor the help you gave me. You proved yourself a loyal ally to m— (
Wants to say ‘me’, but checks herself
.) – this family. Which is why I am keen to help you in return.

She thinks.

You could always resign?

Major
Don’t think I hadn’t considered it. Resign at lunchtime, at Lord’s by the afternoon. I’d be happy as Bunter in a bakery.

Elizabeth
In order to stand again. For re-election?

Major
(
heart sinks
) Oh.

Elizabeth
Throw down a gauntlet. To all those nasty rebels.

Major
‘Sack me or back me.’

Elizabeth
Something like that.

Major
‘Put up or shut up.’

Elizabeth
Even better. A real show of strength.

For a moment Major’s face is re-energised. Then it falls again.

Major
But what if they
did
back me? We’d only be back here again in a month.

Elizabeth
Mr Major, I detect you’re a man who is uncomfortable in his own crisis – yet you were so good in mine. Which places you at a distinct disadvantage. Since from where I’ve been sitting all these years it seems crisis in your job is the natural setting. At some point
all
your predecessors have been hated, or rejected. By their own party. By the electorate.

Major
What an awful job.

Elizabeth
But they fight against it. Turn it around. To their own advantage.

Major
Perhaps because they’re more aggressive personality types. Better suited to be Prime Minister. Someone told me once inhumanity is a primary requirement of the top job.

Elizabeth
For the most part I’ve found my Prime Ministers to be very human. (
A beat
.) All
too
human. Complicated souls. Having suffered early parental bereavement. Or illness. Or depression. Or bullying in the corridors of Eton …

Major
Ah. Not me. Rutlish Grammar.

Elizabeth
Which part of the world is that?

Major
Merton Park.

From the Queen’s blank look:

Near Morden?

Another blank look.

Raynes Park? (
A beat
.) A suburb of south-west London, Ma’am. Near Mitcham?

A beat.

Elizabeth
Never been. Pity.

A beat, then:

At least you
had
a formal education. I wasn’t that lucky.

Major
You were at home? With a tutor?

Elizabeth
Yes.

Major
I’m curious. Was that because you were … female?

Elizabeth
You’re ahead of me, Prime Minister. I was banking on the idea that I still am.

Major
I meant the home education?

Elizabeth
You mean had we been boys would we have been sent to boarding school?

Major
Yes.

Elizabeth
Probably.

Major
So, you and your sister were victims of gender discrimination?

Elizabeth
I suppose we were. Do you think I should sue?

Major smiles.

We weren’t expected to excel. Just to be decorous, be able to dance, draw and speak French at mealtimes. Not what you’d call a progressive syllabus, but quite normal for the time.

Major
When I read about the home education, I didn’t know whether to envy or pity you.

Elizabeth
I suppose that depends on whether you have happy memories of your own time at school or not.

Major
Not so happy, I’m afraid. You may know, my father performed in a circus …

Elizabeth
(
brightening
) Yes. A trapeze artist, am I right?

Major
Yes.

Elizabeth
How wonderful.

Major
(
bemused
) Wonderful?

Elizabeth
Well, it’s just so … exotic.

Major
Your father was King of England, and Emperor of India. If I may say,
that’s
exotic.

The Queen smiles.

Anyway, when he left the circus my father embarked on a career producing garden ornaments.

Elizabeth
How lovely.

A beat. Her expression changes.

What exactly
are
garden ornaments?

Major
Decorative statuettes, Ma’am.

Elizabeth
Oh, statues. (
Understanding now.
) We have plenty of those.

Major
I doubt you have gnomes.

Elizabeth
We have a statue of George IV. Does that count? He was barely five foot.

Major
Anyway, my father’s actual surname was Ball, but when he joined the circus he decided to take the stage name ‘Major’. When I was accepted by Rutlish and catapulted into the high society of Merton Park, he insisted I fuse stage and birth names and call myself –

Can hardly bring himself to say it.

Elizabeth
Ball-Major?

Major
Regrettably the other way round. So schooldays were marked somewhat by bullying and ridicule.

Elizabeth
Oh, dear. How did you cope? You immersed yourself in studies, I expect?

Major
Cricket. It was what I was good at. Afraid academic work and I didn’t see eye to eye. I believe I have the dubious distinction of being the only Prime Minister to have – (
He looks up
.) Will what I’m about to tell you stay between us?

Elizabeth
Prime Minister, everything you say in this room stays between us.

Major
Three O-levels. A miserable failure that must have been quite devastating to my parents. Through sheer idleness and disinterest I let them down. And when I went home with those
dreadful
results, you could see the hurt on their faces … (
Becoming emotional
.) But there was no reproach. Ever.

Major’s eyes fill with tears as he relives a private trauma. The Queen stares. Aghast.

Elizabeth
Well, I have no O-levels at all. (
A beat.
) What fine hands the country is in. Now we have only a few minutes left, we really must get to the business in hand. You returned from the G7 last week and we haven’t even mentioned it, and you’re due in Cannes next week for a Heads of European Government meeting and I want to know all about that.

Major
Well, starting with the G7, we received a very warm welcome from our Canadian hosts – since if you remember we’d taken their side over a recent fishing dispute …

Elizabeth
Which fish?

Major
I believe the turbot, Ma’am.