The Uncommon Reader: A Novella Read online

  Back in Buckingham Palace the Queen waited a moment or two, then switched off the light, and under the catalpa tree in the grounds the policeman saw the light go out and turned off his mobile.

  In the darkness it came to the Queen that, dead, she would exist only in the memories of people. She who had never been subject to anyone would now be on a par with everybody else. Reading could not change that – though writing might.

  Had she been asked if reading had enriched her life she would have had to say yes, undoubtedly, though adding with equal certainty that it had at the same time drained her life of all purpose. Once she had been a self-assured single-minded woman knowing where her duty lay and intent on doing it for as long as she was able. Now all too often she was in two minds. Reading was not doing, that had always been the trouble. And old though she was, she was still a doer.

  She switched the light on again and reached for her notebook and wrote: ‘You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there.’

  Then she went to sleep.

  In the weeks that followed it was noticeable that the Queen was reading less, if at all. She was pensive and abstracted, even, but not because her mind was on what she was reading. She no longer carried a book with her wherever she went and the piles of volumes that had accumulated on her desk were shelved, sent back to the libraries or otherwise dispersed.

  But, reading or not, she still spent long hours at her desk, sometimes looking at her notebooks and occasionally writing in them, though she knew, without quite spelling it out to herself, that her writing would be even less popular than her reading, and did anyone knock at the door she immediately swept them into her desk drawer before saying, ‘Come in.’

  She found, though, that when she had written something down, even if it was just an entry in her notebook, she was happy as once she would have been happy after doing some reading. And it came to her again that she did not want simply to be a reader. A reader was next door to being a spectator, whereas when she was writing she was doing, and doing was her duty.

  Meanwhile she was often in the library, particularly at Windsor, looking through her old desk diaries, the albums of her innumerable visits, her archive, in fact.

  ‘Is there anything specific that Your Majesty is looking for?’ said the librarian after he had brought her yet another pile of material.

  ‘No,’ said the Queen. ‘One is just trying to remember what it was like. Though what “it” is one isn’t sure either.’

  ‘Well if Your Majesty does remember, then I hope you will tell me. Or better still, ma’am, write it down. Your Majesty is a living archive.’

  Though she felt he could have expressed this more tactfully, she knew what he meant and reflected, too, that here was someone else who was urging her to write. It was almost becoming a duty, and she had always been very good at duty, until, that is, she started to read. Still, to be urged to write and to be urged to publish are two different things and nobody so far was urging her to do the latter.

  Seeing the books disappear from her desk and having once more something approaching Her Majesty’s whole attention was welcome to Sir Kevin and indeed to the household in general. Time-keeping did not improve, it’s true, and the Queen’s wardrobe still tended to be a little wayward (‘I’d outlaw that cardigan,’ said her maid). But Sir Kevin shared in the general impression that for all these persistent shortcomings Her Majesty had seen off her infatuation with books and was pretty much herself again.

  She stayed that autumn for a few days at Sandringham, as she was scheduled to make a royal visit to the city of Norwich. There was a service in the cathedral, a walkabout in the pedestrian precinct and before she had luncheon at the university she opened a new fire station.

  Seated between the vice-chancellor and the professor of creative writing she was mildly surprised when over her shoulder came a bony wrist and red hand that were very familiar, proffering a prawn cocktail.

  ‘Hello, Norman,’ she said.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said Norman correctly, and smoothly presented the lord lieutenant with his prawn cocktail, before going on down the table.

  ‘Your Majesty knows Seakins then, ma’am?’ said the professor of creative writing.

  ‘One did,’ said the Queen, saddened a little that Norman seemed to have made no progress in the world at all and was seemingly back in a kitchen, even if it was not hers.

  ‘We thought,’ said the vice-chancellor, ‘that it would be rather a treat for the students if they were to serve the meal. They will be paid, of course, and it’s all experience.’

  ‘Seakins,’ said the professor, ‘is very promising. He has just graduated and is one of our success stories.’

  The Queen was a little put out that, despite her bright smile, serving the boeuf en croûte Norman seemed determined not to catch her eye, and the same went for the poire belle-Hélène. And it came to her that for some reason Norman was sulking, behaviour she had seldom come across except in children and the occasional cabinet minister. Subjects seldom sulked to the Queen, as they were not entitled to, and once upon a time it would have taken them to the Tower.

  A few years ago she would never have noticed what Norman was doing or anybody else, either, and if she took note of it now it was because she knew more of people’s feelings than she used to and could put herself in someone else’s place. Though it still didn’t explain why he was so put out.

  ‘Books are wonderful, aren’t they?’ she said to the vice-chancellor, who concurred.

  ‘At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,’ she said, ‘they tenderise one.’

  He concurred again, though with no notion of what she was on about.

  ‘I wonder,’ she turned to her other neighbour, ‘whether as professor of creative writing you would agree that if reading softens one up, writing does the reverse. To write you have to be tough, do you not?’ Surprised to find himself discussing his own subject, the professor was momentarily at a loss. The Queen waited. ‘Tell me,’ she wanted to say, ‘tell me I am right.’ But the lord lieutenant was rising to wait upon her and the room shuffled to its feet. No one was going to tell her, she thought. Writing, like reading, was something she was going to have to do on her own.

  Though not quite, and afterwards Norman is sent for, and the Queen, her lateness now proverbial but catered for in the schedule, spends half an hour being updated on his university career, including the circumstances that brought him to East Anglia in the first place. It is arranged that he will come to Sandringham the following day, where the Queen feels that now he has begun to write he may be in a position to assist her once again.

  Between one day and the next, though, she sacked somebody else, and Sir Kevin came into his office the next morning to find his desk cleared. Though Norman’s stint at the university had been advantageous, Her Majesty did not like being deceived, and though the real culprit was the prime minister’s special adviser, Sir Kevin carried the can. Once it would have brought him to the block; these days it brought him a ticket back to New Zealand and an appointment as high commissioner. It was the block but it took longer.

  Slightly to her own surprise that year the Queen turned eighty. It was not a birthday that went unmarked and various celebrations were organized, some more to Her Majesty’s liking than others, with her advisers tending to regard the birthday as just another opportunity to ingratiate the monarchy with the always fickle public.

  It was not surprising, then, that the Queen decided to throw a party of her own and to assemble all those who had had the privilege of advising her over the years. This was in effect a party for the Privy Council, appointment to which is for life, thus making it a large and unwieldy body that in its entirety meets seldom and then only on occasions of some gravity. But there was nothing, thought the Queen, that would preclude her having them all to tea, and a serious tea at that, ham, tongue, mustard and cress, scones, cakes and even trifle. Much preferable to dinner, she thought, and cosier altogether.


  Nobody was told to dress up, though Her Majesty was as groomed and immaculate as she had been in the old days. But what a lot of advice she had had over the years, she thought, as she surveyed the crowded assembly; there were so many who had tendered it that they could only be accommodated in one of the grandest rooms in the palace, with the sumptuous tea laid out in two adjoining saloons. She moved happily among her guests, unsupported by any other member of the royal family, who, though many of them were privy councillors, had not been invited. ‘I see quite enough of them as it is,’ she said, ‘whereas I never see all of you and short of my dying, there’s no occasion when you’re all likely to see each other. Do try the trifle. It’s wicked.’ Seldom had she been in such good spirits.

  The prospect of a proper tea had fetched the privy councillors out in greater numbers than had been anticipated: dinner would have been a chore whereas tea was a treat. There was such a crowd that chairs were in short supply, and there was a lot of running to and fro by the staff in order to get everybody seated, though this turned out to be part of the fun. Some were seated on the usual gilt party chairs, but others found themselves ensconced on a priceless Louis XV bergère or a monogrammed hall chair brought in from the vestibule, with one former lord chancellor ending up perched on a little cork-topped stool brought down from a bathroom.

  The Queen placidly surveyed all these goings on, not quite on a throne but certainly on a chair larger than anyone else’s. She had brought her tea in with her and sipped and chatted until at last everyone had made themselves comfortable.

  ‘I know that I’ve been well advised over the years but I hadn’t realised quite how numerously. What a crowd!’

  ‘Perhaps, ma’am, we should all sing “Happy Birthday”!’ said the prime minister, who was naturally sitting in the front row.

  ‘Don’t let’s get carried away,’ said Her Majesty. ‘Though it is true one is eighty and this is a sort of birthday party. But quite what there is to celebrate I’m not sure. I suppose one of the few things to be said for it is that one has at least achieved an age at which one can die without people being shocked.’

  There was polite laughter at this and the Queen herself smiled. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that more shouts of “No, No” might be appropriate.’

  So somebody obliged and there was more complacent laughter as the nation’s most distinguished tasted the joys of being teased by the nation’s most eminent.

  ‘One has had, as you all know, a long reign. In fifty years and more I have gone through, I do not say seen off [laughter], ten prime ministers, six archbishops of Canterbury, eight speakers and, though you may not consider this a comparable statistic, fifty-three corgis – a life, as Lady Bracknell says, crowded with incident.’

  The audience smiled comfortably, chuckling now and again. This was a bit like school, primary school anyway.

  ‘And of course,’ said the Queen, ‘it goes on, not a week passing without something of interest, a scandal, a cover-up or even a war. And since this is one’s birthday you must not even think of looking peeved’ – the prime minister was studying the ceiling and the home secretary the carpet – ‘for one has a long perspective and it was ever thus. At eighty things do not occur; they recur.

  ‘However, as some of you may know, I have always disliked waste. One not wholly mythical version of my character has me going round Buckingham Palace switching off the lights, the implication being that one is mean, though these days it could better be put down to an awareness of global warming. But disliking waste as I do puts me in mind of all the experiences I have had, many of them unique to me, the fruit of a lifetime in which one has been, if only as a spectator, very close to events. Most of that experience,’ and Her Majesty tapped her immaculately coiffed head, ‘most of it up here. And one wouldn’t want it to go to waste. So the question is, what happens to it?’

  The prime minister opened his mouth as if to speak and indeed half rose from his chair.

  ‘The question,’ said the Queen, ‘was rhetorical.’

  He sank back.

  ‘As some of you may know, over the last few years I have become an avid reader. Books have enriched my life in a way that one could never have expected. But books can only take one so far and now I think it is time that from being a reader I become, or try to become, a writer.’

  The prime minister was bobbing again and the Queen, reflecting that this was what generally happened to her with prime ministers, graciously yielded the floor.

  ‘A book, Your Majesty. Oh, yes, yes. Reminiscences of your childhood, ma’am, and the war, the bombing of the palace, your time in the WAAF.’

  ‘The ATS,’ corrected the Queen.

  ‘The armed forces, whatever,’ the prime minister galloped on. ‘Then your marriage, the dramatic circumstances in which you learned you were Queen. It will be sensational. And,’ he chortled, ‘there’s not much doubt that it will be a bestseller.’

  ‘The bestseller,’ trumped the home secretary. ‘All over the world.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said the Queen, ‘only’ – and she relished the moment – ‘that isn’t quite the kind of book one had in mind. That is a book, after all, that anyone can write and several people have – all of them, to my mind, tedious in the extreme. No, I was envisaging a book of a different sort.’

  The prime minister, unsquashed, raised his eyebrows in polite interest. Maybe the old girl meant a travel book. They always sold well.

  The Queen settled herself down. ‘I was thinking of something more radical. More . . . challenging.’

  ‘Radical’ and ‘challenging’ both being words that often tripped off the prime minister’s tongue, he still felt no alarm.

  ‘Have any of you read Proust?’ asked the Queen of the room.

  Somebody deaf whispered, ‘Who?’ and a few hands went up, the prime minister’s not among them, and seeing this, one young member of the cabinet who had read Proust and was about to put his hand up didn’t, because he thought it would do him no good at all to say so.

  The Queen counted. ‘Eight, nine – ten,’ most of them, she noted, relics of much older cabinets. ‘Well, that’s something, though I’m hardly surprised. Had I asked Mr Macmillan’s cabinet that question I’m sure a dozen hands would have gone up, including his own. However, that’s hardly fair, as I hadn’t read Proust at that time either.’

  ‘I’ve read Trollope,’ said a former foreign secretary.

  ‘One is glad to hear it,’ said the Queen, ‘but Trollope is not Proust.’ The home secretary, who had read neither, nodded sagely.

  ‘Proust’s is a long book, though, water-skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess. At the end of the novel Marcel, who narrates it, looks back on a life that hasn’t really amounted to much and resolves to redeem it by writing the novel, which we have just in fact read, in the process unlocking some of the secrets of memory and remembrance.

  ‘Now one’s life, though one says it oneself, has, unlike Marcel’s, amounted to a great deal, but like him I feel nevertheless that it needs redeeming by analysis and reflection.’

  ‘Analysis?’ said the prime minister.

  ‘And reflection,’ said the Queen.

  Having thought of a joke that he knew would go down well in the House of Commons, the home secretary ventured on it here. ‘Are we to assume that Your Majesty has decided to write this account because of something you read in a book, and a French book at that? Haw haw.’

  There were one or two answering sniggers, but the Queen did not appear to notice that a joke had actually been made (as indeed it scarcely had). ‘No, home secretary. But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.’

  Some of the councillors, long since out of government, were thinking that this was not the woman they remembered serving and were fascinated acc
ordingly. But for the most part the gathering sat in uneasy silence, few of them having any idea what she was talking about. And the Queen knew it. ‘You’re puzzled,’ she said, unperturbed, ‘but I promise you, you do know this in your own sphere.’

  Once again they were in school and she was their teacher. ‘To inquire into the evidence for something on which you have already decided is the unacknowledged premise of every public inquiry, surely?’

  The youngest minister laughed, then wished he hadn’t. The prime minister wasn’t laughing. If this was to be the tone of what the Queen was planning to write, there was no telling what she was going to say. ‘I still think you would do better just to tell your story, ma’am,’ he said weakly.

  ‘No,’ said the Queen. ‘I am not interested in facile reminiscence. It will, I hope, be something more thoughtful. Though when I say thoughtful I don’t mean considerate. Joke.’

  Nobody laughed and the smile on the prime minister’s face had become a ghastly grin.

  ‘Who knows,’ said the Queen cheerfully, ‘it might stray into literature.’

  ‘I would have thought,’ said the prime minister, ‘that Your Majesty was above literature.’

  ‘Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity. But, as I say, my purpose is not primarily literary: analysis and reflection. What about those ten prime ministers?’ She smiled brightly. ‘There is much to reflect on there. One has seen the country go to war more times than I like to recall. That, too, bears thinking about.’

  Still she smiled, though if anyone followed suit, it was the oldest ones who had the least to worry about.

  ‘One has met and indeed entertained many visiting heads of state, some of them unspeakable crooks and blackguards and their wives not much better.’ This at least raised some rueful nods.

  ‘One has given one’s white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore; to be Queen, I have often thought, the one essential item of equipment a pair of thigh-length boots.