Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (24 page)

“But there are policemen with her then. Ladies-in-waiting. Secretaries. Plainclothes officers in the crowd. People are looking out for her.”

“Well, she has me, her Indian secretary. And she has Miss Rebecca, of the Royal Mews, her mounted maid of honor, temporarily without her mount,” said Rajiv, smiling. “We are going to look after her.”

She smiled at him once again, in spite of herself.

Rajiv saw his opportunity and he took it. Putting his hand on her hair, he leaned in and kissed her on the mouth.

Rebecca kissed back for only an instant before she pushed Rajiv away. “Look here, I didn’t say you could do that. We barely know each other.”

“We know each other well enough,” said Rajiv. “And we’re going to Scotland together, aren’t we?”

She didn’t like the way he took liberties with her. He wanted some cold water thrown on him. “You have to realize something.”

“Okay,” said Rajiv equably.

“I like this man I met.”

He understood immediately what she was telling him, but pretended to make light of it, as if he hadn’t entirely grasped her meaning. “Well, that’s all right. I like you too.”

“No, not you. And I don’t know what to think about it. And there was a cab driver who brought me to the station. He was leering at me in his mirror. It made me feel awful.”

Rebecca was a woman whose emotions and whose confessions rose quickly to the surface, like the color rushing to her face with exercise. She had a way of getting angry quickly, of having a temper as molten as the color of her hair. Rajiv had observed all this. As they were together for some time, it seemed as good a time as any to try and make her talk, even if it let him and his romantic feelings out of the picture. “We may as well be mates, no matter what,” he told her then. Her temperature did seem to decrease a bit. “Who is he, then?”

“The taxi driver? He gave me his card.”

“No, not the taxi driver,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And if you don’t want to encourage them, don’t take their cards. The other one.”

She stopped for a moment to gather some strength. “I went to a demo. Trafalgar Square. Maybe three years ago? I can’t remember. Against cruelty to animals. Different groups there. Opposed to hunting. No drug testing on animals. Lots of different speakers. One man had the most amazing passion. Told about how they stopped up badgers’ dens. You know, rich people? Just to prevent the badgers interfering with foxes. So there are foxes left to hunt. I’m not sure. Anyway, the badgers suffocate when they stop up the holes to their dens. And he had a little badger with him, held it up for us to see. Tame. It was, well, it was adorable. He came down off the stand, away from the microphones, and I was standing right there. He saw me looking at him. Asked me if I wanted to hold the badger. Handed him to me. I could feel his heart beating! His claws were quite sharp. His fur almost oily smooth. I could have held him for hours.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Rajiv, frankly a little bored with how women had paroxysms of joy over small animals, but he wanted to encourage her to carry on. She wasn’t thinking of him now. She was in some sort of trance. Their shoulders occasionally touched one another as the train rocked over points or level crossings.

“Then he said we had to go find him something to eat. He wanted me to come along. So I did. He let me carry the badger. And we got on the Bakerloo Line and went right to the end of it, Elephant and Castle. His flat was nearby. So we fed the badger some vegan cheese.”

“Ugh,” said Rajiv.

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Yes, carry on.”

“Well, we had some of the cheese ourselves. And then he had some lentils, and we had that and some wine. After that, it was getting late, so he said to me . . .”

Just at that moment they both heard the guard in the carriage behind them calling out what sounded like “Tickets! Animal fares, please!” but which was probably “Any more fares, please?”

In a moment he was towering over them in the vestibule. “Tickets, please! Sir? Madam?”

Rebecca panicked. She’d given the last of her money to the taxi driver. “I haven’t got a ticket,” she said simply.

“Second one today. It will be £276.70 including the penalty,” replied the guard cheerfully. “And you, young gentleman? Ticket please.”

“I haven’t got a ticket either,” Rajiv answered truthfully.

“That makes three!” said the guard as if he were keeping a private count that might help him win a bet later on.

“Look, I haven’t got the money,” said Rebecca.

“Then you will have to give me your address and fill out an Unpaid Fare Notice. If you don’t pay the railway in ten days, there is an additional fine.” He stayed upbeat as he handed down this sentence.

Rebecca hadn’t much money of her own, and didn’t know how she would tell her parents about this. Nor, in her experience, was this an expense which she could submit to the Mews. She looked bewildered.

Rajiv pulled out his credit card. “Both our fares on there, if you can, please.”

“Rajiv, no! I cannot let you do this. I will not.” She was not going to become obligated to him in this way. She’d never get rid of him then, and she fully intended to give him the slip when they got to Edinburgh.

“Relax. The bill goes to my parents. I don’t pay it. I’ll tell them I went to visit someone from school with a chum and we had to jump on the train without our tickets. They won’t mind.”

“Well, I will repay it when we get back to London. I’ll get the money.”

“Of course you will. No worries. We’re in this together, you and me?”

Rebecca didn’t answer. She looked down into her lap.

The guard slid Rajiv’s card through his machine, issued their tickets, and observed, “There’s more seats up front. Why don’t you move up there?”

“Oh, we’re fine here, aren’t we?” he said, turning to look at Rebecca.

She continued staring into her lap, but the edges of her ears turned a dark shade of plum.

T
he Marquess, Anne’s nephew, had turned down his aunt’s request to use the company plane. His priority was preservation of capital, and he regarded his aunt’s demand as a waste of money. He did give her the use of the family flat in Charlotte Square, but he didn’t much like the peremptory way she had asked for it. She had a way of regarding all the family’s possessions as hers, only on loan to him, when, as she well knew, everything had passed to him with the death of his father. All she had now was a courtesy title, “Lady Anne,” and he meant to keep it that way. She’d had a generous dowry, a considerable charge on the family fortune in the previous generation, and he didn’t see why she should drain the reserves now. He did sit on the board of British Airways, however, and one of the perks was a relatively free allowance of flights. He knew it wouldn’t cost the company much to put two old ladies on the last flight on a weeknight from Heathrow to Edinburgh. Practically no one on that flight, ever. He knew this because he often used it to fly up and visit his mistress. So he provided his aunt and Shirley with a car from the palace to Heathrow, two seats on the plane, and sent a text message to the porter in Charlotte Square to open the door for them when they got there. He thought he’d done enough. He didn’t ask his Aunt Anne why she had to go to Edinburgh at such short notice. He thought that would only lead to his becoming more deeply involved in her affairs, and he wanted as little to do with her as possible. She could expect an annual invitation to Shropshire at Christmas, but that was about it.

Meanwhile, it was just as the Marquess had expected. The two women had found their seats side by side in an aircraft that was thinly populated. The plane took off shortly after nine in the evening. The stewardesses pushed their trolley with unseemly haste down the aisle as soon as the
FASTEN SEAT BELTS
light was turned off. Shirley asked for whiskey, Anne for red wine. The stewardess gave them two sandwiches wrapped in see-through packages, as well as half a dozen mini bottles. This was her way of not having to return to give them more if they wanted it. She intended to spend the rest of the flight with her girlfriend in the back with a new
Hello!
magazine.

Faced forward, with only a black night outside the window, the two women, aided by their drinks in plastic cups, felt a little more at ease with one another. Shirley was not in the least put out by not having a private plane. She marveled at the way Anne had produced a car to Heathrow, on top of tickets, and a place to stay once they got to Scotland. This brittle, porcelain cup did have some know-how, it turned out, and Shirley grew to respect her a little more.

Anne, for her part, knew that Shirley was probably on to something in recalling The Queen’s odd mentioning of Leith. For all her sometime resentment of The Queen’s asking her to do menial tasks, for all her amused contempt that The Queen should be on more intimate and friendlier terms with the dressers than the ladies-in-waiting, Anne thought of herself as mainly a servant of the Crown. It was her position to serve, and she regarded the proximity she enjoyed with The Queen as the job’s chief honor and emolument. No, she did not regard The Queen as a remarkable woman. She did regard her, however, as the living embodiment of something else, higher, more meaningful, and more historical than the mere woman herself. She didn’t like to put what she represented into words, but it had to do with art and legend and myth. Anne was a servant of that history, told and retold around many campfires on long winters’ evenings. Shirley was too. That was the basis on which Anne’s respect for both The Queen and Shirley rested.

“Do you think those boys had any leads? You know, any they hadn’t mentioned to us?” said Anne, swirling the airline wine in the plastic cup to warm it up and coax a little flavor out of it. She recalled the moment she’d witnessed between Luke and William.

“Boys? What boys?” said Shirley, scoffing.

“Well, I had the impression Luke and William were joining forces.”

“Luke? Who is Luke?”

“Oh, you know, the equerry. Major Thomason.”

“Oh, him. I don’t know if that young man’s any use. Is always staring off into space when I’ve seen him.”

“He was in Iraq, you know,” said Anne defensively.

“Well, I had two uncles in the last war. The real war. In Germany. They never seemed any the worse for it after they came home.”

“That was a long time ago. They’re not prepared for it now. So few of them join. They haven’t anyone to share it with. And then the people at home don’t support the war. It’s not like the war with Germany. Everyone was behind that. No one cares about Iraq now, but men are still going and fighting and seeing dreadful things when they’re there. Makes it hard for them when they come home. They try to draw a line under it, put it behind them, and they can’t.”

“I suppose,” Shirley allowed. “How do you know all this?”

“Sat next to him once at luncheon. Have talked to him a few times since. He’s not like the others. Not so confident. Is a bit of a sparrow with a broken wing, I think, but I’m not sure he’s prepared to admit that.”

Shirley could see very well that Anne was a little in love with the young major. She thought the possibility that his going to war had caused him some damage that he wouldn’t admit to was also real. Her intimacy with the older woman was too new for her to feel comfortable teasing her. Because they were not exactly friends, she couldn’t sympathize either. So she kept quiet.

Anne understood Shirley’s quietness as a mark of her delicacy and liked her more for it. She also left a pause purposely unfilled before she asked, “Do you think William knows anything?”

Shirley cleared her throat. Her friendship with William was something that had grown up over years between equals. She wasn’t about to disclose anything she knew of William to Anne, even though she was beginning to find her just about all right. “He just said she was gone. They were sure of it. And that he and Major Thomason, um, Luke did you say he’s called? They were going off to look for her. Leaving for Scotland after us and would try and meet up with us once we were there. Something which the equerry had found on her computer. I don’t understand computers. I didn’t follow what he said.”

“Seems an unlikely alliance.”

“William and that equerry? No more than you and me, Lady Anne.” Shirley said the “Lady” with an ironic inflection.

“Both unmarried, I believe.”

“Is that what you think they’re up to?”

“I hope they’re up to nothing more than we are, finding Her Majesty, before the papers and the secret services and God knows who else is out there get to her.” A pause. Then Anne continued a little more softly, “I see nothing wrong with two young men who like each other joining forces.”

“In my experience the upper and lower members of staff don’t often take their tea together.”

“You sometimes breed strong stock from strange crosses.”

“We’re not talking about
that
, are we?”

“No, we’re not. We are not.” Another pause. “I do think Luke needs a little companionship, though, and soon, or his wound will fester.”

“They had soldier servants in the last war. ‘Batmen.’ But William won’t be his batman. I doubt that now.”