Chapter Four 2 January 2023
CHAPTER FOUR
Night had fallen by the time we pulled onto The Mall, which had been adorned with two rows of Union Jacks, slapping and rolling in the January winds.
“Why are there so many people?” I asked. The streets were packed, and I wondered if there was a festival underway at the park.
“They’re here for your brother and your father, ma’am,” the PM said. “They’ve been outside the palace for days now.”
The crowds saw the pulsing blue lights of our motorcade and stopped in unison to watch us pass. A few people waved, a few took pictures, and a handful broke out in awkward applause that quickly evaporated. They were mostly silent as they watched me make my return.
The palace’s old iron gates yawned open and then swallowed us whole with a metallic gulp.
The last time I’d been in London was for Louis and Amira’s wedding.
I’d caught glimpses of Granny throughout the day, but they’d deliberately arranged things so we’d never be alone.
After we all waved from the balcony, I had changed my clothes and slipped out of a side entrance, walking unrecognised through the dense crowds that lingered outside the palace.
When I’d looked behind me, the old building half hidden behind the plane trees, I knew I might never see it again.
Three years later, I was home. When Jenny and I pulled into the quadrangle, Stewart was waiting with a few other aides at the doors.
I had no idea how he’d managed to beat me to the palace when I had left the airport before him.
But here he was, pressed and cool in his black suit, ready to deliver me the last hundred steps of his 34,000-kilometre journey.
“Are you coming in, Prime Minister?” I asked.
Jenny Walsh shook her head. “This is where I’ll leave you.”
“I feel weird that the prime minister picked me up from the airport and doesn’t even get a cup of tea at the end of it,” I tried to joke.
She smiled. “You should probably get used to things like that.”
She bent forward to rummage through a black handbag at her feet. “Here’s my card—it’s got my private mobile on it and my email. No assistants gatekeeping those ones.”
I slipped it into my bra and thanked her.
“You call me any time now. None of this is going to be easy, but I’m happy to talk whenever you need, even if it’s just for a bit of a chat,” she said.
She had a way of staring into my eyes, unblinking and still and totally comfortable with the silence that opened up between us. She’d be a great therapist, I thought.
I wasn’t ready to get out of the car and go upstairs.
“How do I do this?” I asked.
She smiled again. “You go in there and you spend some time with your family. You mourn your brother and your father. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
I nodded. She squeezed my hand and indicated to Stewart that I was ready.
The palace never really changed, but it was looking more tired than I’d ever seen it.
With its marble busts and baroque gold frames, it was still grand.
But the carpets were worn. A lurid green FIRE EXIT sign in the hallway was pulsing and emitting a dull buzz.
Some of the stairs squeaked and groaned as we climbed them.
I knew it needed work. I’d read it was in desperate need of structural repairs.
But with a price tag of ￡369 million, the family was afraid of pulling at a public thread that could see the whole thing unravel.
And so the Queen had delayed bringing the matter before the prime minister again and again as the old palace sagged and aged.
Stewart took me the familiar route to the private apartment on the north side of the building. The halls were empty, though I knew staff were hiding in dark corners. Once we passed, they would emerge to resume their duties. We reached the narrow door to Granny’s apartment.
“One moment, ma’am,” Stewart whispered and slipped inside, closing the door behind him.
I heard the murmuring of voices and tried to calm my galloping heart.
Too soon, he was back, ushering me inside.
The private apartment always smelled different from the musty halls of the palace.
Granny’s chambermaids cleaned with lemon and eucalyptus.
The tortured floral arrangements that cascaded over tables in the halls gave way to vases of lily of the valley.
As I breathed in their soapy scent, I looped the roll of memories I’d forgotten I had.
Grandfather sitting forward and stabbing his cane at the ancient TV to change the channel.
The gold fringe of a heavy curtain tickling the tops of my feet during a game of hide and seek.
Louis’s dark eyes after Mum’s funeral. Granny, still in her black suit, putting down a bowl of sausage rolls we wouldn’t eat.
I turned the corner into the drawing room and saw her there, so much older and smaller than I remembered.
Her blonde curls were perfectly set, and she was dressed in a black cardigan and kilt.
But one look at her face and I could tell she had been annihilated by the news. I curtsied, wobbly and out of practice.
“Your Majesty.”
She looked up as if just noticing me. “You must be so tired, dear girl.”
I walked over to her armchair and kissed her papery cheeks, one by one.
Her eyes were shining, and she seemed to be searching for something to say.
It would have been nice if she were the type of grandmother who’d pull me into her lap and rock me while we both wept.
I hadn’t cried yet, but I was fairly certain that if she took me in her arms, I would start and never stop.
Instead, I pretended she was one of my patients and gently took her hand in mine.
“I’m so sorry, Granny—I can’t believe it.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. When she opened her mouth to speak, she seemed to change her mind, and suddenly, she was up off the couch and striding towards the kitchen.
“You must be hungry, dear girl—what a long journey you’ve just had.”
My grandmother was never meant to be queen.
When she was born, her uncle Albert was on the throne, but he died at the age of thirty-eight when he was bucked off his horse and trampled under its hooves.
Albert’s severed spinal cord and crushed chest saw his brother’s life of planned obsolescence upended, along with his niece’s destiny to be a pub trivia question no one ever got right.
When I went into the kitchen, she was looking into the open fridge, its buttery light casting a glow in the dark room.
“I’m not hungry, Granny—they fed me on the plane. But I can make us tea if you’d like?”
She turned around and nodded. “Yes, alright, I suppose.”
She sat at the kitchen table and watched as I briskly moved around the room, turning on lights, filling the kettle and laying out tea the way I had been taught by one of Granny’s ladies-in-waiting.
“I don’t take sugar anymore,” she said. I stopped, the gold-trimmed Sèvres sugar bowl in my hands. She managed a small smile. “Doctor’s orders.”
I put the sugar bowl back and sat in the chair opposite her.
“Why don’t we talk about everything tomorrow?” I said. “Tonight we just drink our tea and then go to bed.”
She gazed at me, and I couldn’t read her eyes. But then, I’d never been able to read her. I imagine the moment she saw the horse’s hooves on her uncle’s neck, everything inside her had been sealed off forever.
“Yes, alright, tomorrow.”
We were silent while we waited for the pot to steep.
It was strange to be in her presence again.
No matter how far I moved away, I still saw her face everywhere I went.
Her profile on coins, her slightly dispassionate wave on television, her smile on the cover of a magazine by a patient’s bedside.
But that woman was mostly a different person to my grandmother.
Granny complained about people leaving the heater on if they weren’t using it and insisted no Christmas present cost more than ￡20—and while the daily stack of papers on her desk received careful scrutiny, it was the health and breeding of her dogs and horses that consumed her.
The only time her two halves intersected was in her command of every room she entered, whether it was parliament or the dining room for family brunch.
I didn’t know how older women were really treated in this world until I went out and joined it.
I was aghast to see my friends’ grandmothers edged out, sat in the corner with a glass of wine and ignored.
Out of habit, I was always deferential to older women, the way deep reverence for a white man in a suit is ingrained in everyone else.
Needless to say, I was a hit when I did my geriatric medicine rotation.
I was never sure whether the crown turned her into a leader the moment it touched her head, or whether it just gave her the necessary armour to overcome her gender. She sat with her perfect posture, sipping her tea, unperturbed by the silence.
Finally I broke.
“Did no one come to stay with you, Granny?” I asked, for something to say.
“Amira is here. I think she might be asleep already.”
I started a little. “Oh, I didn’t know she was here. I thought she’d be with her parents.”
“The Shankars are in India. They’re coming in the next day or so, I believe.”
She finished her tea and got up to set the cup in the sink for her chambermaid to deal with in the morning.
I drained mine as well and propped it on top of hers.
She had never stacked a dishwasher in her life, but she required her family to put their crockery in tidy piles for her staff if they ate in her apartment.
A water glass on a sidetable would not be tolerated.
She smoothed the front of her kilt as she looked at me. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
“Of course, Granny.”
“I know you did not part on good terms with your father and your brother, but they cared for you, and I know you cared for them.”