The Uncommon Reader (3 page)

With two mentions of his name and one of New Zealand Sir Kevin retired hurt. Still, he had made a point and he would have been gratified to know that it left the Queen troubled, and wondering why it was that at this particular time in her life she had suddenly felt the pull of books. Where had this appetite come from?

Few people, after all, had seen more of the world than she had. There was scarcely a country she had not visited, a notability she had not met. Herself part of the panoply of the world, why now was she intrigued by books which, whatever else they might be, were just a reflection of the world or a version of it? Books? She had seen the real thing.

‘I read, I think,’ she said to Norman, ‘because one has a duty to find out what people are like,’ a trite enough remark of which Norman took not much notice, feeling himself under no such obligation and reading purely for pleasure, not enlightenment, though part of the pleasure was the enlightenment, he could see that. But duty did not come into it.

To someone with the background of the Queen, though, pleasure had always taken second place to duty. If she could feel she had a duty to read then she could set about it with a clear conscience, with the pleasure, if pleasure there was, incidental. But why did it take possession of her now? This she did not discuss with Norman, as she felt it had to do with who she was and the position she occupied.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something lofty about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Actually she had heard this phrase, the republic of letters, used before, at graduation ceremonies, honorary degrees and the like, though without knowing quite what it meant. At that time talk of a republic of any sort she had thought mildly insulting and in her actual presence tactless to say the least. It was only now she understood what it meant. Books did not defer. All readers were equal, and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night, when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.

These doubts and self-questionings, though, were just the beginning. Once she got into her stride it ceased to seem strange to her that she wanted to read, and books, to which she had taken so cautiously, gradually came to be her element.

O
NE OF THE
Queen’s recurrent royal responsibilities was to open Parliament, an obligation she had never previously found particularly burdensome and actually rather enjoyed: to be driven down the Mall on a bright autumn morning even after fifty years was something of a treat. But not any more. She was dreading the two hours the whole thing was due to take, though fortunately they were in the coach, not the open carriage, so she could take along her book. She’d got quite good at reading and waving, the trick being to keep the book below the level of the window and to keep focused on it and not on the crowds. The duke didn’t like it one bit, of course, but goodness it helped.

Which was all very well, except it was only when she was actually in the coach, with the procession drawn up in the palace forecourt and ready for the off, that, as she put on her glasses, she realised she’d forgotten the book. And while the duke fumes in the corner and the postillions fidget, the horses shift and the harness clinks, Norman is rung on the mobile. The Guardsmen stand at ease and the procession waits. The officer in charge looks at his watch. Two minutes late. Knowing nothing displeases Her Majesty more and knowing nothing of the book, he does not look forward to the repercussions that must inevitably follow. But here is Norman, skittering across the gravel with the book thoughtfully hidden in a shawl, and off they go.

Still, it is an ill-tempered royal couple that is driven down the Mall, the duke waving viciously from his side, the Queen listlessly from hers, and at some speed, too, as the procession tries to pick up the two minutes that have been lost.

At Westminster she popped the offending book behind a cushion in the carriage ready for the journey back, mindful as she sat on the throne and embarked on her speech of how tedious was the twaddle she was called on to deliver and that this was actually the only occasion when she got to read aloud to the nation. ‘My government will do this … my government will do that.’ It was so barbarously phrased and wholly devoid of style or interest that she felt it demeaned the very act of reading itself, with this year’s performance even more garbled than usual as she, too, tried to pick up the missing couple of minutes.

It was with some relief that she got back into the coach and reached behind the cushion for her book. It was not there. Steadfastly waving as they rumbled along, she surreptitiously felt behind the other cushions.

‘You’re not sitting on it?’

‘Sitting on what?’

‘My book.’

‘No, I am not. Some British Legion people here, and wheelchairs. Wave, for God’s sake.’

When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said that while ma’am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He thought it had probably been exploded.

‘Exploded?’ said the Queen. ‘But it was Anita Brookner.’

The young man, who seemed remarkably undeferential, said security may have thought it was a device.

The Queen said: ‘Yes. That is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination.’

The footman said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’

It was as if he was talking to his grandmother, and not for the first time the Queen was made unpleasantly aware of the hostility her reading seemed to arouse.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Then you should inform security that I shall expect to find another copy of the same book, vetted and explosive-free, waiting on my desk tomorrow morning. And another thing. The carriage cushions are filthy. Look at my gloves.’ Her Majesty departed.

‘Fuck,’ said the footman, fishing out the book from where he had been told to hide it down the front of his breeches. But of the lateness of the procession, to everyone’s surprise nothing was officially said.

This dislike of the Queen’s reading was not confined to the household. Whereas in the past walkies had meant a noisy and unrestrained romp in the grounds, these days, once she was out of sight of the house Her Majesty sank onto the nearest seat and took out her book. Occasionally she threw a bored biscuit in the direction of the dogs, but there was none of that ball-throwing, stick-fetching and orchestrated frenzy that used to enliven their perambulations. Indulged and bad-tempered though they were, the dogs were not unintelligent, so it was not surprising that in a short space of time they came to hate books as the spoilsports they were (and always have been).

Did Her Majesty ever let a book fall to the carpet it would straightaway be leaped on by any attendant dog, worried and slavered over and borne to the distant reaches of the palace or wherever so that it could be satisfyingly torn apart. The James Tait Black prize notwithstanding, Ian McEwan had ended up like this and even A. S. Byatt. Patron of the London Library though she was, Her Majesty regularly found herself on the phone apologising to the renewals clerk for the loss of yet another volume.

The dogs disliked Norman, too, and in so far as the young man could be blamed for some at least of the Queen’s literary enthusiasm, Sir Kevin didn’t care for him either. He was also irritated by his constant proximity because, while he was never actually in the room when the private secretary talked to the Queen, he was always within call.

They were discussing a royal visit to Wales due to take place in a fortnight’s time. In the middle of being taken through her programme (a ride on a super-tram, a ukulele concert and a tour round a cheese factory), Her Majesty suddenly got up and went to the door.

‘Norman.’

Sir Kevin heard a chair scrape as Norman got up.

‘We’re going to Wales in a few weeks’ time.’

‘Bad luck, ma’am.’

The Queen smiled back at the unsmiling Sir Kevin.

‘Norman is so cheeky. Now we’ve read Dylan Thomas, haven’t we, and some John Cowper Powys. And Jan Morris we’ve read. But who else is there?’

‘You could try Kilvert, ma’am,’ said Norman.

‘Who’s he?’

‘A vicar, ma’am. Nineteenth century. Lived on the Welsh borders and wrote a diary. Fond of little girls.’

‘Oh,’ said the Queen, ‘like Lewis Carroll.’

‘Worse, ma’am.’

‘Dear me. Can you get me the diaries?’

‘I’ll add them to our list, ma’am.’

Her Majesty closed the door and came back to her desk. ‘You see, you can’t say I don’t do my homework, Sir Kevin.’

Sir Kevin, who had never heard of Kilvert, was unimpressed. ‘The cheese factory is in a new business park, sited on reclaimed colliery land. It’s revitalised the whole area.’

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ said the Queen. ‘But you must admit that the literature is relevant.’

‘I don’t know that it is,’ said Sir Kevin. ‘The next-door factory where Your Majesty is opening the canteen makes computer components.’

‘Some singing, I suppose?’ said the Queen.

‘There will be a choir, ma’am.’

‘There generally is.’

Sir Kevin had a very muscular face, the Queen thought. He seemed to have muscles in his cheeks and when he frowned, they rippled. If she were a novelist, she thought, that might be worth writing down.

‘We must make sure, ma’am, that we’re singing from the same hymn sheet.’

‘In Wales, yes. Most certainly. Any news from home? Busy shearing away?’

‘Not at this time of year, ma’am.’

‘Oh. Out to grass.’

She smiled the wide smile that indicated that the interview was over and when he turned to bow his head at the door she was already back in her book and without looking up simply murmured ‘Sir Kevin’ and turned the page.

S
O IN DUE
course Her Majesty went to Wales and to Scotland and to Lancashire and the West Country in that unremitting round of nationwide perambulation that is the lot of the monarch. The Queen must meet her people, however awkward and tongue-tied such meetings might turn out to be. Though it was here that her staff could help.

To get round the occasional speechlessness of her subjects when confronted with their sovereign the equerries would sometimes proffer handy hints as to possible conversations.

‘Her Majesty may well ask you if you have had far to come. Have your answer ready and then possibly go on to say whether you came by train or by car. She may then ask you where you have left the car and whether the traffic was busier here than in – where did you say you came from? – Andover. The Queen, you see, is interested in all aspects of the nation’s life, so she will sometimes talk about how difficult it is to park in London these days, which could take you on to a discussion of any parking problems you might have in Basingstoke.’

‘Andover, actually, though Basingstoke’s a nightmare too.’

‘Quite so. But you get the idea? Small talk.’

Mundane though these conversations might be they had the merit of being predictable and above all brief, affording Her Majesty plenty of opportunities to cut the exchange short. The encounters ran smoothly and to a schedule, the Queen seemed interested and her subjects were seldom at a loss, and that perhaps the most eagerly anticipated conversation of their lives had only amounted to a discussion of the coned-off sections of the M6 hardly mattered. They had met the Queen and she had spoken to them and everyone got away on time.

So routine had such exchanges become that the equerries now scarcely bothered to invigilate them, hovering on the outskirts of the gathering always with a helpful if condescending smile. So it was only when it became plain that the tongue-tied quotient was increasing and that more and more of her subjects were at a loss when talking to Her Majesty that the staff began to eavesdrop on what was (or was not) being said.

It transpired that with no prior notification to her attendants the Queen had abandoned her longstanding lines of inquiry – length of service, distance travelled, place of origin – and had embarked on a new conversational gambit, namely, ‘What are you reading at the moment?’ To this very few of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects had a ready answer (though one did try: ‘The Bible?’). Hence the awkward pauses which the Queen tended to fill by saying, ‘I’m reading …’, sometimes even fishing in her handbag and giving them a glimpse of the lucky volume. Unsurprisingly the audiences got longer and more ragged, with a growing number of her loving subjects going away regretting that they had not performed well and feeling, too, that the monarch had somehow bowled them a googly.

Off duty, Piers, Tristram, Giles and Elspeth, all the Queen’s devoted servants, compare notes: ‘What are you reading? I mean, what sort of question is that? Most people, poor dears, aren’t reading anything. Except if they say that, madam roots in her handbag, fetches out some volume she’s just finished and makes them a present of it.’

‘Which they promptly sell on eBay.’

‘Quite. And have you been on a royal visit recently?’ one of the ladies-in-waiting chips in. ‘Because the word has got round. Whereas once upon a time the dear people would fetch along the odd daffodil or a bunch of mouldy old primroses which Her Majesty then passed back to us bringing up the rear, nowadays they fetch along books they’re reading, or, wait for it, even writing, and if you’re unlucky enough to be in attendance you practically need a trolley. If I’d wanted to cart books around I’d have got a job in Hatchards. I’m afraid Her Majesty is getting to be what is known as a handful.’

Still, the equerries accommodated, and disgruntled though they were at having to vary their routine, in the light of the Queen’s new predilection her attendants reluctantly changed tack and in their pre-presentation warm-up now suggested that while Her Majesty might, as of old, still inquire as to how far the presentee had come and by what means, these days she was more likely to ask what the person was currently reading.