And I am an old man, he thought.
“I am an old man,” he said.
“I’ve brought you a cup of tea. Is it true you were a soldier here, sir?”
It took him some time to remember where he was. Near Badminton.
“I was stationed at Badminton,” he said. “In the War.”
“My gran was at Badminton then. In the War. Queen Mary was here but we all kept it quiet. They said nobody would want to kidnap her but my gran said — she was parlour maid at the house — that she had three bags ready packed to take her to America. In the attics.”
“That was probably true. Though she might not have gone herself.”
“One was full of jewels.”
“Oh, I’m sure that was true. That would have gone into safety.”
“Did you know her, sir?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Is it true she was always cutting down trees?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Especially ivy. She hated ivy. She had half a platoon chopping down ivy. They say the first year she didn’t realise it would grow back again.
“I expect it was the way she’d been brought up,” said the girl. “My gran says she was kept in a band-box as a girl. Never opened her mouth — well, her mother never stopped talking — and what a bottom! Her mother’s, that is. Lovely woman. Real old England, her mother. Queen Mary was brought up in Teck, which is German, and she didn’t like Germans. My gran said she’d been brought up to gravel paths and never seen a field of hay. And my gran says it was all psychological, the ivy.”
“Your gran sounds a very perceptive woman.”
“She is. My mother sang for Queen Mary, you know.”
“Sang?”
“In the village school. Queen Mary used to turn up there unexpected and sit at the back. She had a turned-up nose.”
“Oh. I never noticed that.”
“Yes. Look at the stamps. She was embarrassed by it, my gran thinks. She had never been thought a beauty. But she was a beauty, my gran says. And all that about being a kleptomaniac was wicked lies. And she never forgot a birthday.”
“That’s true.”
“And she fancied some of the subalterns. She liked them with a stammer, did you know that? My uncle had a stammer. He was one of her four motorbike bodyguards and she chose him for his stammer. She said, ‘I have a son like you.’ She meant the King.”
“D’you know, I never knew that,” said Filth. “I didn’t make the connection.”
“Won’t you go out now and sit in the sun? I’ll help you. My gran has a terrible leg. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was gangrene. What’s the matter? Have I upset you? Now then, you know the doctor said yours is but a bad sprain. You’ll be fit in a week. Shall I ask my gran to come up here? She’d love a talk.”
“Do you want to talk with my gran?” the girl asked the next day, bringing him a breakfast tray and no refusals. “It’d be a breath of life to her. Maybe she’d remember you.”
“I hardly remember myself.”
“She said there was one always reading. Law books. She got them for him, Queen Mary. And chocolate. He used to hold her wool for her. He’d been through it, she said. Very good-looking. Oh yes, and he had a stammer, She found him — now what was it? — very personable. That’s what we heard her tell her lady-in-waiting. ‘The Captain’s very personable, isn’t he?’ She took up very close to him after her son got killed, the Duke of Kent. He was nearest to her, that one, they said. She never cried though. She and this soldier — he was a junior Platoon Commander — I asked gran when I got home last night — this soldier used to sit with her by the hour. She even used to pass through the library when he was reading in there, not looking up. Deep in his books. He was invited to stay in the house you know. Dine with them all. The Duke and Duchess — and my, there were some sparks flying there — them being kicked upstairs in their own home and all the best rooms taken over by Queen Mary and her fifty servants.”
“This all sounds very credible.”
“He refused though, the young Captain. He said he had to be with his men in the billets in the stables and Queen Mary couldn’t but say he was right. I believe now and then she was poking about the stables too, searching out ivy. And maybe—” she had his tie straight now and his socks on and his polished shoes ready for him. “He was very good-looking, my gran said.” She thoughtfully looked Filth over. “And very young and nice.”
“I was young but far from nice,” said Filth. “I don’t think I’d better meet your gran.”
“I’d like a look round the stables, though,” he said, the next day. “When I’m walking again.”
“I can get you a wheelchair.”
“No. No thanks.”
“Queen Mary used to go round in a horse and cart to save petrol. No side to her. They used to put a couple of basket chairs in the cart and hoist her and the lady’s maid up into it and one of the bike boys shouted up, ‘You look as if you’re in a tumbril, Ma’am,’ and she said, ‘Well, it might come to that.’ So she can’t have been altogether no fun.”
“I think she wasn’t much fun. She hadn’t had much fun,” said Filth.
“Oh that terrible King!” said the girl. “All those pheasants. All he ever thought about, my gran said. Where the children came from, we’ll never know, my gran said.”
“Yes, that’s often a puzzle,” said Filth.
He was in a private room. It might be a cabin of some sort. Outside the window there were trees but trees do not grow in the sea and the sea still moved beneath him, up and down, up and down, lift and drop. Seven months at sea. But the clouds above the window sailed along without the elf-light from the sea beneath them. And these tree tops? A woman ran by him and her hat was a plume of white starch. Her dress was navy blue but she, too, had nothing to do with ships. She had a face of wrath and across her broad front hung a watch and chain. She did not speak. He floated away.
Later he opened his eyes on a member of the Ku Klux Klan seated at the end of his bed playing cat’s cradle with some bedtape.
“Hello?” Eddie said and the dreadful figure looked up with surprise. It was Oils again.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello, Feathers. Well done. Awake?”
“What for, sir? Why well done?”
“Getting home.”
“Not in my hands, sir.”
Adrift again. He was remembering the image at the end of the bed when it was suddenly present again.
“Hello, sir. Why are you in those clothes?”
“They’re antiseptic, Feathers. You’re infectious.”
“What have I got?”
“A variety of things.”
“Will I recover?”
“Yes. Of course. In time. Then you can come back to school until it’s time to go to Oxford.”
Away he floated. Nurses came and went and put needles in different parts of him, and tubes. Did unspeakable things to him. They wore masks. An unpleasant one told him he’d no right to be there. “You should be in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases,” she said, “but it’s too far off. They’re doing tests on you there. We’re not equipped here. We’ve had to ask for volunteers.”
“What for?”
“To nurse you.”
“Thanks.”
Here was the Ku Klux Klan again, now back with the yo-yo. “The Headmaster sends his good wishes. He says you must convalesce at school.”
“Thanks. You mean in the San?”
“I suppose so, Feathers, but we’ve not planned anything yet.”
“I won’t go in the San.”
“The Headmaster has offered you a room in his house.”