Her Majesty (27 page)

Around the edges of the Ballroom, a formation of uniformed housekeeping assistants move backwards with light vacuum cleaners attached to their waists (reversing leaves no marks). The Palace Steward, Nigel McEvoy, is checking the service stations around the room. There will be nineteen of them, each with a team of four staff looking after nine people. Staff will carry hot plates with napkins rather than gloves, to avoid thumb marks. Everyone will be watching the discreet ‘traffic light’ system which McEvoy operates from tiny lights above the royal dais. The blue light means ‘action stations’ and the green light means ‘get serving’.

The guests will receive ‘butler service’ rather than ‘silver service’. This means the footman will offer them a large dish from which they may help themselves (with silver service, the server just gives you a predetermined portion). ‘It’s just the way the Queen prefers it,’ explains
McEvoy. ‘If they just want half, they can have half. They needn’t say, “I’ll have one of that and two of that” and they can still engage in their conversation while they’re helping themselves.’

In addition to a full turnout of forty footmen, his serving staff will also include a dozen housekeeping assistants who will put away their vacuum cleaners and put on their new state livery for the night. Several former staff will come out of retirement for the evening to serve the wine, a duty which also involves serving the sauce. Everyone knows that the banquet will take an hour and fifteen minutes and the old hands know that the slowest eaters will be those at the far end where it is harder to observe the brisk pace favoured by the Queen. For that reason, the Master of the Household and the Comptroller are always seated down there at the two ends of the U-shaped table.

McEvoy will use his senior footmen to chivvy, very gently, any guests who are ‘coffee-housing’, Palace slang for talking too much. Tonight’s 171 guests will include several members of the Royal Household. If any of them slow things down, they will be treated less kindly. A new Palace executive, attending his first state banquet, was mortified when a footman whispered in his ear: ‘Her Majesty has noticed you’re the last to eat.’ He later discovered it was a joke but, by then, he had lost his appetite completely.

A glorious scent is emanating from the Ballroom Annexe where the Queen’s florist, Sharon Gaddes, and her team are almost invisible behind twenty-five huge dustbins full of flowers. These are gradually becoming a hundred separate flower arrangements. There will be twenty-one of them – including more than a thousand roses – on the table alone. Gaddes has gone for a peach/red/gold theme to suit the rich decor of the Ballroom and has been here since the previous weekend sorting out deliveries of freesias, orchids (from Singapore), euphorbias, carnations (‘you’ve got to have carnations’), lisianthus … It is March but all the foliage for the arrangements has come from Windsor Great Park, including forsythia, which is just in bloom. Even here, things have changed in recent years. Photographs of earlier state banquets show much smaller table arrangements embellished with the occasional palm tree. Today, the emphasis is on colour and impact. Gaddes likes to make a statement. When asked to produce a set of flower arrangements for a reception in honour of Arsenal Football Club, everyone assumed she would replicate the club’s red and white colours. As a devoted fan of (blue and white) rivals Chelsea, she did nothing of the sort and decked out the state apartments in shades of blue. Today, she concedes that she may have gone too far with two riotously effusive floral fountains streaming down from giant urns behind the Queen’s chair. If she doesn’t trim them back a bit, the television
cameras won’t actually be able to see the Queen and her guests coming in to dinner.

A forty-one-gun salute in Green Park signals the moment when President Zuma finally arrives to meet the Queen and Prince Philip on Horse Guards. She introduces him to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chiefs of the Services and half a dozen hats and chains before anthems and the inspection of the Guard of Honour. It’s the Grenadier Guards today. Their Colonel, Prince Philip, escorts the President down the ranks.

Time for carriages and the Queen, dressed in a violet coat, and her guest, wearing sunglasses and thick gloves, step into the two-ton Australian State Coach, the only one in the fleet with an on-board generator to provide central heating and electric windows. It’s the colder, older Scottish State Coach for the Duke and Thobeka Madiba-Zuma. The most recent of the three current Mrs Zumas (the President has married five times), she has only been a First Lady for three months. The Royal Mews team are in their state liveries with wigs tucked beneath their hats. It is already apparent that the South African suite (as a delegation is called) have a livery of their own. They are all wearing scarves in their national colours to celebrate their country’s staging of football’s World Cup. Given the Arctic temperature, it’s a wise move. This is one of the largest suites in years – a seven-coach affair (most visits have five). The sixth carriage, a semi-state landau, includes Mr Ohm Collins Chabane whose title dwarfs anything the Royal Household can muster: Minister of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation and Administration of the Presidency.

As they are all cheered down the Mall at jogging speed, the nonmounted staff speed ahead in cars to receive them at the other end – among them, in smart scarlet overcoats, the chockmen with blocks for the wheels and dustpans for horse exhaust. The carriages sweep across the Palace forecourt, through the arch and into the Quadrangle where the Band of the Welsh Guards strikes up with ‘Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika’, the South African national anthem. The Household Cavalry troopers guarding the Grand Entrance instantly and noisily clatter to attention, causing some of the assembled media to jump out of their skins. Dust billows above the rich, timeless sounds of hoof and wheel on gravel and cobble. Before the carriages have even drawn to a halt, the travelling footmen and outriders have gracefully hopped off their perches to hold horses and open doors.

Top hat in hand, the Duke assists Mrs Zuma out of their carriage. This is not an ideal moment for high heels. The rest of the entourage must wait in the cold while the Queen, the Duke and the Zumas pose for
the official photograph on the steps. In the Grand Hall, the heads of all the Royal Household departments are lined up to greet the visitors. After all this Field of Cloth of Gold treatment comes a light lunch in the Bow Room. There are no speeches, no toasts and everyone sits at round tables of ten. It invariably works as an ice-breaker and everyone is far more relaxed by the time they emerge to swap gifts and look around the Palace. The Queen presents Mr Zuma with a mounted bronze stag and a book about deer stalking as well as the regalia of a GCB, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In return, Mr Zuma gives the Queen the modern South African equivalent – the Order of the Companions of Oliver Tambo Gold Class – and a chess set featuring Zulu and Xhosa warriors. Up in the Picture Gallery, the media have assembled to watch the host and her guest inspect the Royal Collection’s exhibition of AngloSouth African memorabilia. The exhibits have been chosen carefully. This is not the occasion to bring out souvenirs of the Zulu or Boer Wars. Instead, the emphasis is on royal visits of modern times, including the Queen’s great South African tour with her parents in 1947. On one table sits the artificial flower she took from her twenty-first-birthday cake in Cape Town and kept as a present for ‘Darling Grannie’. There is a letter from Princess Elizabeth to Queen Mary, too: ‘Darling Grannie, when I caught my first glimpse of Table Mountain I could hardly believe that anything could be so beautiful…’ Fast-forward half a century and there is some fascinating correspondence between the Queen and Nelson Mandela, starting with his letter inviting her to pay her first state visit in 1995. He addresses her as ‘Madam’ and concludes: ‘You will be most welcome. NR Mandela.’ Her handwritten thank-you letter after that trip begins ‘Dear Mr President’ but finishes ‘Your sincere friend, Elizabeth R’. This is certainly warmer than her usual sign-off to other Commonwealth heads of state – ‘Your good friend, Elizabeth R’. By 1999, Mandela is actually starting his letters ‘Dear Elizabeth’ and signing them, ‘Please accept, Your Majesty, the assurances of our highest esteem, Nelson’. No other president has called the Queen plain ‘Elizabeth’ for a very long time. Even if the visit of President Zuma is a soaraway diplomatic triumph, it is highly unlikely that he will be on first-name terms by the end.

Despite the presence of the press and her guests, the Queen is still captivated by all this evocative memorabilia of 1947, one of the most important years in her life: her first trip abroad, her twenty-first birthday, her engagement and her wedding. ‘It’s quite intriguing,’ she says, studying a photograph of the White Train, the famous express which was supposed to speed the Royal Family across South Africa but had to stop in every town so that the King and Queen could be greeted by the waiting crowds.
‘That was the fastest transport,’ murmurs Mr Zuma. ‘It wasn’t as far as we were concerned,’ the Queen recalls with a smile.

They stop to look at the original text of her famous twenty-first-birthday radio broadcast to the Empire. ‘That’s the speech I made,’ says the Queen. ‘I did it outdoors. You can’t nowadays because there are too many aeroplanes.’

Mr Zuma looks on politely. That was the South Africa of another age, a tour during which the (white) South African government of the day prevented George VI from pinning medals on black servicemen. The visitors are much more interested as the exhibition progresses to the recent past. They look at souvenirs from the presidential inauguration of Nelson Mandela and the silk scarf which Mandela gave the Queen. The rest of the South African suite have now made their way into the exhibition, too. Many are still wearing their own World Cup scarves, having kept them on throughout lunch – a case of national pride rather than necessity as the Palace is perfectly warm. The Household team are not remotely bothered. If guests want to wear football scarves, so be it. Every delegation has its eccentricities. During the last Chinese state visit, one guest had to be asked, very politely, not to take his laptop into the state banquet. When the President of Mexico visited in 2009, some members of the Royal Household had to spend much of the evening guiding Mexican guests to and from the Palace smoking area.

Suddenly, there is an awkward moment. The exhibition includes the gift which Mr Mandela gave Prince Philip during his 1996 state visit to London. It’s a chess set of African warriors. And Mr Zuma has just given the Queen … a chess set of African warriors. The President looks faintly embarrassed, as if to say: ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me that Mandela gave them a chess set?’ The Queen deftly smoothes over any discomfort as she turns to Prince Philip and says clearly, ‘That’s yours,’ thus making it quite clear that she is delighted to have one of her own.

Mr Zuma has an afternoon of homage ahead. He must pay his respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey and to the memory of ANC hero Oliver Tambo whose house and memorial in north London are now shrines for modern South Africans. The Queen, meanwhile, has a banquet to give. No living head of state can have hosted more banquets but she always likes to check the arrangements every time. The staff know that it will be a very thorough inspection. Everything is ready, right down to the pineapples decorating the table, each of which opens up to reveal perfectly sliced rings within. All the grapes have been pre-cut into clusters of four. The Queen has noticed a problem as soon as she walks in with the Master and his deputies. There is a draught
blowing at ankle level through the entrance to the Ballroom. ‘I hope we can sort that out,’ she tells Air Vice-Marshal David Walker. ‘Our guests are coming from summer.’ Standing at one end of the table, she casts a keen eye down the line of table settings. One of them seems very slightly off centre. ‘I think the dressing is wrong. Down there …’ The Master of the Household walks down the table as the Queen guides him along. ‘No … not that one … no … there!’ The Master stops and looks closely at the setting. It is fractionally out because it is on a join in the table. ‘I could move all the others,’ he says mischievously. ‘No, don’t do that!’ the Queen laughs.

She checks her own place. President Zuma will sit on her right. Both will be making speeches and their microphones have been disguised in the foliage of the flower arrangement in front. ‘Can you hear these?’ she asks the sound man. He can. The Queen’s attention is caught by Sharon Gaddes’s towering vases (she could hardly miss them). ‘Who did these?’ she asks, clearly impressed. Gaddes steps forward and bobs. ‘Where did you find all these roses?’

Gaddes explains that it’s a mix of flowers from as far afield as Ecuador, Israel and Windsor. The absence of African exotica meets with the Queen’s approval: ‘There’s no point showing them their own flowers.’

She notices that some of the candles are not vertical. ‘They look skewwhiff. Will someone put them up straight?’ The Yeoman of the Silver Pantry assures her that they have yet to be put in properly. ‘I’m just worried about them falling out,’ she remarks. ‘Where was it they fell out?’ Edward Griffiths reminds her that it was during a banquet given by President Ciampi of Italy and they reminisce fondly about the evening when loose candles set fire to the flower arrangements. As the Queen heads for the door, she feels that breeze by her ankles again. ‘Who’s in charge of the draught?’ The Master has got the message.

Down in the kitchens, Mark Flanagan’s team are already preparing the
Pavé de Saumon Glamis, Noisettes d’Agneau Narbonnaise
and
Sablé aux Pommes de
Sandringham. He must also prepare a vegetarian banquet for those with special requirements – and the surprisingly large number of guests who always ‘remember’ that they are vegetarian on the night. Tonight’s alternative menu is Tomato Tart Tatin, Pan-Fried Polenta with Ratatouille and Lentil Salsa and Sandringham Apple Shortbread (unlike the main menu, the vegetarian menu remains in English). Upstairs, on the balcony, the chairs are laid out for one of the most extraordinary – though invisible – rituals of a Palace banquet. In a tradition harking back to the medieval custom of royal meals as public entertainment, two dozen people will have tickets to sit behind the
Band of the Grenadier Guards and simply watch the banquet. In the days of Charles II, the public would watch the Monarch and his guests wade through 145 dishes. Tonight’s banquet involves just three – plus ‘dessert’, as fruit is known around here (coffee and petits fours will be served back in the drawing rooms). The ‘audience’ will be made up of members of staff, each of whom can bring a guest, and it’s always extremely popular as the ‘audience’ have dinner thrown in. However, once seated no one is allowed to budge for the best part of two hours.