Sue Townsend - Queen Camilla

SUE TOWNSEND

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Michael Joseph 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007

Copyright Sue Townsend, 2006
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

EISBN: 9780141900834

To Colin Broadway, with my love

And also

To Brian Hall of Parliament Square

There is no scientific evidence that dogs can understand human speech or that they can communicate with other dogs.

Dog owners who insist that their dogs can understand every word I say are misguided.

However, as an old Irish setter said to me recently, Dogs understand human speech only too well and find most of what we have to say to them banal, tedious and patronizing.

(Camilla to Charles)

Darling, do you think a dog knows its a dog? asked Camilla.

It depends what you mean by know, said Charles.

Freddie snapped, Of course I know Im a bloody dog. I eat from a bowl on the floor, I shit in the street

If you throw live frogs into a pan of boiling water, they will sensibly jump out and save themselves. If you put them in a pan of cold water and gently apply heat until the water boils, they will lie in the pan and boil to death.

Shami Chakrabarti, Liberty

Queen Camilla is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used entirely fictitiously.

Without the loving support and practical help of Colin Broadway this book could not have been written.

I thank Louise Moore, my editor, who has more confidence in me than I have in myself.

I also thank the editorial and production teams at Michael Joseph and Penguin, who I took to the wire again.

I am grateful for the invaluable help of Shn Morley Jones, who read the final manuscript and saved me from several embarrassments.

Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, stood smoking a cheap cigarette on the back doorstep of Number Sixteen Hell Close. It was a cold afternoon in late summer. Occasionally she turned to watch her husband, Charles, the Prince of Wales, clattering the luncheon pots in the red washing-up bowl hed bought on impulse that morning from the Everything A Pound shop. He had borne the bowl home and presented it to her as though it were a precious religious artefact plundered from a sacked city.

As she watched him scrubbing at a Doulton gravy boat, she thought, how little it takes to make him happy, and said, Happy, darling? Her voice was husky from years of cigarette smoking and also from sitting up half the night laughing and talking with the next-door neighbours, Beverley and Vince Threadgold.

Vince, a 55-year-old Elvis lookalike, had entertained Camilla and Charles with his terribly amusing stories about Wormwood Scrubs. Charles had said, Prison sounds rather agreeable compared to Gordonstoun School, where I often woke in the night to find my narrow iron bed and rough blankets covered in a light sprinkling of snow from the open dormitory windows.

Beverley, a big boned woman with hair the colour and texture of straw, had said, You were bleedin lucky to ave a blanket. I slept under me dads army greatcoat.

Charles had looked so mournful that the laughter had died down, until Camilla had said, Lighten up, darling, and pour us another glass of your delicious turnip wine.

After a few more glasses, Charles had recovered his spirits and had slipped into his party piece, an extended Goon routine in which he became Fred and forced Camilla into being Gladys. The Threadgolds watched their guests improvised performance with stony faces, and were glad when their royal neighbours had staggered next door to their bed.

Camilla asked, Hows the bowl performing, darling?

The bowl is performing absolutely splendidly, said Charles.

Clever old you for spotting it.

It was on the pavement with a stack of others. One was dazzled by the choice of colours.

You did well, my darling. Red is terribly jolly.

Yes, thats what I thought. One hovered over the green.

Mmm, green is good, but terribly worthy and a bit reminiscent of Jonathon Porritt, one imagines he has a green washing-up bowl, bought in some dreadful National Trust shop in the Cotswolds. Her laugh quickly turned into a cough.

Had she been any other person Charles would have defended his old friend Jonathon Porritt, the National Trust and the Cotswolds, but Camilla was licensed to say exactly what she thought.

She was still coughing; Charles turned worried eyes on her, Are you all right, darling?

She nodded that she was.

Somehow, the fact that he had chosen a red washing-up bowl felt significant to him. Perhaps, as Laurens Van der Post had urged, he was finally getting in touch with the pagan inside. He and the long-dead guru had trekked across the Kalahari and sat by a campfire under a vast star-filled sky and talked of what a man needed in order to feel complete in himself. A man must have a passion, they had concluded. Charles remembered the crimson ball of the sun as it sank behind the dunes. Perhaps this metaphysical experience had influenced his choice of washing-up bowl.

Camilla asked, How much was your lovely red bowl, darling?

Charles said a little tetchily, I did say, I bought it from the Everything A Pound shop, darling. He blushed, remembering the scene when he had asked the morbidly obese shopowner, Mr Anwar, the same question.

Mr Anwar, irritable after a row with his wife about the Kit Kat wrappers she had found under his bed, said in his public school accent, Tell me, sir. What is the name of my shop?