Two Weeks with the Queen (7 page)

Three days of questions about Australia.

‘Have you really ridden a trail bike,' asked Alistair, ‘or were you just pulling my leg?'

‘Yamaha 250,' said Colin, ‘twin exhaust, cross-country gear ratios.'

Alistair's eyes shone as he chewed his bacon.

‘Must have been brilliant.'

‘It was OK till the brakes failed and I went off a cliff.'

‘A cliff?' Alistair stared at him in admiration.

Colin pulled himself together. This was what it had been like for three days, him exaggerating and Alistair wide-eyed with admiration and him exaggerating even more.

It had gone on long enough.

He looked at Alistair.

‘Wanna help me save Luke's life?'

Alistair stared back, suddenly alarmed.

‘What do you mean?' he stammered. ‘I'm not allowed to give blood, Mum won't let me.'

Colin told him about the Queen and how he'd been trying to get to see her.

Alistair's eyes bulged.

Then Colin told him what he'd decided to do now.

If Aunty Iris had been there she would have told Alistair to put his eyes back into his head.

‘What's all this got to do with me?' croaked Alistair.

‘Simple,' said Colin.' I need someone to give me a leg up.'

Buying the rope was simple enough once Colin had persuaded Alistair that it was OK to go to the shops.

‘Mum doesn't like me going,' said Alistair, hanging around the front gate.

‘What?' said Colin. ‘Does she think a bus is going to mount the kerb, weave through all the other shoppers, carefully avoiding rubbish bins and brick walls, and flatten you?'

‘Well, one could do, couldn't it?'

‘OK,' said Colin, ‘you stay here.'

‘I'll come,' said Alistair.

The alarm went off under Colin's pillow and for a moment he thought Luke had borrowed Dad's electric drill again. His heart leaped. It had been bad enough the first time, Luke trying to repair the loose drawer in Colin's room and drilling through six pairs of underpants.

Colin opened his eyes and remembered where he was.

Then he remembered why he'd set the alarm.

He pulled the dock from under the pillow and peered at it in the darkness.

Three-thirty.

He got out of bed and got dressed as quickly as he could, which wasn't that quickly because his body was shivering all over and his fingers were going numb with the cold.

He felt under the bed and slid out his footy bag. He peered inside. The rope was still there. He pulled his two jumpers up under his armpits, wound the rope round and round his middle, tied a knot, and pulled the jumpers back down over the rope.

Then he crept into Alistair's room and shook Alistair awake.

‘I took the pills,' mumbled Alistair, ‘honest, Mum.'

‘It's time to go,' whispered Colin.

Alistair opened his eyes and blinked at Colin.

‘I'm scared,' he said.

‘Get dressed,' said Colin, ‘or we'll miss the bus.'

‘Mum doesn't let me go into town by myself,' said Alistair.

‘You won't be by yourself,' said Colin. ‘I'll be with you.'

‘What if you get shot?'

‘OK,' said Colin, ‘you stay here.'

‘I'll come,' said Alistair.

***

The driver of the night bus gave them a suspicious look as they got on and paid their fares.

Colin held his breath.

It was probably just that not many kids caught the 3.50am bus into town.

‘It's a real pain having to start work at 4.30,' Colin said to Alistair. ‘Still, that's the price we have to pay for owning our own milk: bar.'

‘Eh?' said Alistair.

The driver handed over the tickets and they hurried upstairs and sat at the back.

They travelled in silence for a few minutes, then Alistair turned to Colin.

‘What if they've got dogs?' he said.

‘They haven't got dogs,' said Colin.

‘How do you know?'

‘It was in our local paper at home,' said Colin. ‘A couple of years ago a bloke got into Buckingham Palace at night and the next morning when the Queen woke up he was sitting on the end of her bed looking at her. He didn't have a single dog bite on him.'

‘I remember that,' said Alistair.

‘If he can do it, I can,' said Colin.

‘They put him in a loony bin,' said Alistair.

Colin began to wish Alistair hadn't come.

They got off the bus in the middle of the freezing, empty city and Colin looked at his map under a streetlamp.

‘What if we get lost?' said Alistair.

‘We won't,' said Colin.

‘It could take them days to find us,' said Alistair. ‘We could starve. If we don't die from the pollution.'

‘You don't have to come,' said Colin, crossing the road towards the park.

‘I'll come,' said Alistair.

The park was black. They walked next to the railings for a long time.

‘What if she wakes up and sees you sitting there and gets such a fright she wets the bed?' said Alistair suddenly. ‘Do you know how many years in jail you'd get for making the Queen wet the bed?'

Colin sighed.

‘I'm not gunna break into her bedroom, Dumbo,' he said. ‘I'll wait in one of the toilets. When she's got up and had her breakfast I'll pop in the dining-room and have a word with her then.'

They turned a corner and there was the Palace.

Instead of the roaring traffic and milling tourists of three days ago, the huge space in front of the Palace was silent and empty.

Except for two policemen standing by the gate.

Alistair gave a little whimper.

Colin grabbed him and moved him along the railings, keeping out of the light from the streetlamps.

The policemen didn't look over.

Colin steered Alistair round a bend and there in front of them, stretching away as far as Colin could see, was the back wall of the Palace.

They crossed the road and stood at the base of the wall. It was three times as high as Colin and on the top were sharp black metal spikes.

‘Don't let those spikes touch you,' said Alistair, trembling.

‘I've got four jumpers on,' said Colin, lifting .the top two and unwinding the rope from round his middle.

He tied a lasso knot in one end and while he was doing it, he suddenly remembered all the lasso knots he'd tied with Doug Beale those afternoons they'd spent lassoing Doug's younger sister Gaylene.

He looked up and down the road.

No cars.

No people.

He threw the lasso high up the wall. It hit a spike, slipped off and tumbled down.

‘Hurry up,' hissed Alistair, trembling even more. ‘Pretend it's one of those crocodiles you're always roping.'

Colin threw the lasso again and missed again. He wished he'd had more practice with Gaylene.

He threw again.

The lasso flopped over a spike.

And stayed there.

Colin yanked it tight and hauled on the rope.

‘OK,' he said to Alistair, ‘give me a leg up.'

Alistair obviously hadn't given anybody a leg up before. It took him a while to grasp the concept. Then he started pushing Colin up the wall.

Colin could feel him trembling.

‘Oh my God,' said Alistair.

Here we go, thought Colin, this is where he panics and we're history.

‘Oh my God,' said Alistair again.

Colin glanced down at him, expecting to see a face white with panic. Instead he saw a face beaming with excitement.

‘We're breaking into Buckingham Palace,' squeaked Alistair. ‘Brilliant.'

He gave Colin an extra big heave and Colin started to climb upwards, hand over hand on the rope, soles of his feet flat against the wall.

‘Sodding brill,' piped up Alistair from below.

Colin didn't feel brill.

Fears started ballooning up inside him.

What if after the bloke had broken into her bedroom they'd got dogs?

Or mines?

Or a moat with sharks?

Or run electricity through the spikes?

The rope was cutting his hands and his back was nearly breaking. But he didn't stop. Because stronger than all the fear was the vision of him getting off the plane in Sydney with the world's best doctor, and the look on Mum and Dad's faces.

He climbed on, practising in his mind what he was going to say to the Queen. (‘Sorry to barge in like this Your Majesty . . . ‘)

He climbed on and on.

Until he was dazzled by a white and searing light.

Colin knew Uncle Bob and Aunty Iris would chuck a mental and they did.

They controlled themselves while the police lectured them on the sins of letting kids out at 3.30 at night and pointed out repeatedly to them how lucky everyone was that no one was being charged. This time.

But when the police had gone they really let rip.

‘This is the thanks we get,' yelled Aunty Iris, ‘for taking you into our home to give your mother and father a chance to cope with . . . things. Alistair, stop snivelling.'

‘We're in the computer now,' roared Uncle Bob, ‘this whole family, in the police computer. Alistair, use your hanky.'

‘You could both have been killed,' yelled Aunty Iris. ‘Specially you, Alistair. Well, that's it.

You're both staying in the house from now on. I'll be locking the doors when I go to work and they'll stay locked till I get back.'

‘That won't stop me,' yelled Colin. ‘The Queen'll get to my letter eventually, then she'll come round here with a tank and hash the door down.'

‘No she flippin' won't,' roared Uncle Bob.

You're right, thought Colin, she won't.

Afterwards, when the shouting had stopped and Colin was lying on his bed, he was surprised to see Uncle Bob's face appear round the door.

‘Forget the Queen,' said Uncle Bob. ‘The likes of her hasn't got time for the likes of us. In this world ordinary people have to solve their own problems.'

‘I was just thinking that,' said Colin.

Chapter Nine

Colin started with the local doctor's surgery. He got the number from Alistair and dialled.

‘G'day, could you tell me which is the best cancer hospital in London?'

‘How old are you?' said a woman with a posh accent, which Colin could tell a mile off she was bunging on.

He told her.

‘Sorry, we haven't got time for school projects,' she said and hung up.

Colin put another 10p into Aunty Iris's phone money tin and thought who to ring next.

The City of London Information Centre? The Houses of Parliament?
The Times?

He rang the Royale Fish Bar in Peckham.

‘Cancer 'ospital?' said the fish bar man, concerned. ‘You poorly are you, son?'

‘It's my brother,' said Colin.

‘Poor bleeder,' said the man. ‘'Ang on, I'll ask the missus.'

He came back after a bit and said that the customers in the shop all agreed that the best cancer hospital in London was the one that had cured Ernie Stringfellow's prostate trouble. He told Colin the name and the address.

‘Hope it does the trick for 'im, son, God love 'im,'

Colin thanked the man, put the phone down and went out to the kitchen, where Alistair was trying to tie a lasso knot in his pyjama cord.

This was going to be the tricky bit.

Aunty Iris and Uncle Bob had locked both the front door and the back door and taken the keys to work with them. Ten seconds after they'd gone, Colin had checked all the downstairs windows and found that they'd got locks on them too.

He was a prisoner.

‘Is there a screwdriver around?' asked Colin.

‘Dad keeps all his tools out in the garage,' replied Alistair.

Colin had feared that.

‘What do you want a screwdriver for?' asked Alistair.

‘To take the lock off the back door.'

Alistair's eyes widened with horror.

‘You can't do that. They'll go bananas. They'll kill us. You don't know my mum. She'll . . . they'll . . .'

Alistair was panicking.

Colin had feared that too.

‘Listen,' he said, ‘it's OK. I'll be back before they are and I'll put the lock back on and they'll never know.'

Alistair had stopped yelling and was just breathing heavily.

‘Anyway,' he said, ‘you can't take it off if you haven't got a screwdriver, can you?'

Colin went to the kitchen drawer and took out a knife.

‘No,' yelled Alistair, ‘that's one of Mum's dinner knives. She'll kill us.'

Colin knelt at the back door. He looked closely at the lock. No signs of rust. In fact the whole thing looked pretty new. Must have been a recent purchase from the Biggest Do-It-Yourself Hardware Centre In Greater London.

He put the blade of the knife into the groove in one of the screws and started turning.

‘You can't do that,' yelled Alistair.

Colin could and he did.

The hospital looked exactly like Colin had hoped it would. It was big, almost as big as Buckingham Palace, and built out of great stone blocks.

Colin looked up at it, standing massive and calm while all around it the roaring London traffic tried to choke it with carbon monoxide and above it the pigeons bombarded it with ribbons of poo.

It didn't look worried at all.

Few exhaust fumes and a bit of pigeon poo doesn't worry me, it seemed to be saying. I've got the best doctor in the world in here.

Colin felt a weight being lifted off him.

He walked towards the main entrance, through a car-park filled with the newest and shiniest Jags he'd ever seen.

Inside it was even better.

The ceiling was at least twice as high as the hospital in Sydney, and on the corridor walls were real oil paintings of important-looking men with beards and stethoscopes.