The Autobiography of The Queen by Emma Tennant

Author:Emma Tennant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

A Cup of Tea

When morning finally came, the Queen woke from a dream of two of her corgis, Whisky and Sherry, jumping on her bed as in the morning they always did; and then, surfacing further from a patchy sleep, she could have sworn she heard the precise tones of her maid Ivy, bringing in tea, saying good morning before setting down the Tupperware box containing scones and fancy biscuits, which the sovereign and her dogs invariably shared.

But the heavy weight that descended on the Queen turned out to be a large, unappetising fruit in a cardboard box. A rusty knife lay beside it. Austin Ford had clearly thought of breakfast for his client; but the sight of the custard-yellow collapsed football (as in the perception of the Queen this tropical fruit resembled) brought an even stronger urge for tea and she rose resolutely and walked out of the small shack into bright sunlight. There was no Miss Struthers standing in the half-built village (she was the Queen’s private secretary at Balmoral) to discuss the day’s events; there was, the Queen knew perfectly well, no schedule set out for her for the rest of her days. But it was hard to do without one, and she determined to start the morning with a visit to the site of No. 5 Bananaquit Drive high in the Joli valley above the hotel and guest cottages. There would be a contractor waiting for her on site, surely; maybe even the architect of the Joli development would make a point of coming down from the capital, Castries, to discuss the construction of the home she had bought off-plan and to apologise for and explain the delay. Tea would be found at reception: the maid Jolene could provide it and she could unlock the door of the little shop in the foyer while she was about it. The Queen wanted clean clothes in a light material: she might even take a straw hat she had seen hanging on a hook behind the boutique door.

That she would be unable to pay for these items did not cross the Queen’s mind. She would make a telephone call from the lobby to Brno in Romania where he was buying property for himself as well as overseeing the Prince of Wales’s new house and eco-inspired land there – and Brno would telegraph the money to the monarch whose patronage had enabled him to prosper in a new environment without owing the Exchequer any payment at all. The Queen knew about wiring funds – the Duke of Windsor had been an ardent admirer of Western Union – and she imagined the funds would arrive when she had ordered her tea and selected summer wear at the shop.

The Queen walked barefoot to the far end of the beach: the court shoes were unwearable by now, due to a broken heel on one shoe and a snapped strap on the other; and she waited by a sign which again warned her to beware of falling coconuts, for the shuttle up to reception.

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