A new reign
The English adore puddings, and what a pudding mixture chance has prepared: Lizzie and Charles and Kate and Camilla and William the plums, bound into the mix the footmen, the flunkies, the chiefs of staff, the spokespersons hurtling outwards the military the bemedalled, the ennobled, the Church, the judiciary, the bodyguards the adhesive thinning out but still effective, not a pyramid but a constellation, the meta-magic of the British monarchy.
The Prime Minister with her disco dip of a curtsey and black stocking’d ivory legs (which members of the Conservative Party hoping for a wardrobe malfunction have been beading the last six weeks) sat down in conclave with the King to his prompt, …well we have to try to keep the whole thing going… It is a break for the Prime Minister that the nation must cohere around a new Monarch, she will come out the other side woven in. But enough of politics…
In the old days, in order to keep the peace, the Monarch had to be on the move, to be seen to be true. The Monarch might cross your path at anytime. My view was in the 1980’s in the traffic outside the gates of the British Museum, a huge old black car with a lighted interior and there she was, a made-up oval under a crown. She was smiling.
But she may have seen me before, she may have seen me wave my tiny hands, along by Hyde Park for her Coronation for I was there my legs round my father’s neck. The same year I saw the Queen Mum when she opened Henry Dickens Court, just along from prefabs with neat gardens assembled after bombs fell on Treadgold Street during the Second World War. They built Grenfell Tower there.
While Charles and I grew up and wrestled with adolescents there was silence between us until I’d found my way to Hull. Another huge old black car and clergymen fussing around and Diana in radiant purple walking about and then a joke, the car wouldn’t go and out hops a spry black man, also a clergyman, Desmond Tutu and the homely crowd roars when he pretends to push the great black motor. They are gone and the flags droop back home.
I wrote to him (was it green ink?) a madman’s letter of consolation from my bed-sit in the Avenues when he got divorced. The equerry’s reply was kindly and helped me along. I found my way out of the Hull bed-sit into Norfolk. I was employed by Safeskys as a bird scarer at RAF Marham. When I took the job they asked me if I’d ever used a gun. I said no. They put a rifle into my hands and said have a go. I shot a hedge and knew the kick of power at a distance and why some men love guns.
In my Suzuki four by four I whizzed about the airfield scaring birds and picking up FOBS (foreign objects) from the tarmac. I had night shifts and day shifts and they talked of making me permanent. One day I spotted a helicopter landing and down the steps came a tall smooth dab of light chocolate cashmere coat whose face was a blob but whose carriage was familiar. My mind went — I told myself that I could get myself a lifetime of free breakfasts if I used the rifle. I hesitated, the moment passed and the Prince of Wales went on safely to Sandringham just down the road.
As an exile I am almost out of reach of regal gravitation. Almost, but not quite. When Le Monde has Queen Dies as number one two days running I pause and take account. It is not so easy to subtract yourself from your sovereign’s care and I am an exact contemporary of the King so I have read off my changing hair against his for many years. Look! He sits there at his lovely desk, grey hair with just a suggestion of bouffant, reading his address competently, a chequered handkerchief a reminder of his sartorial individualism.
In his speech the King underlined his title: head of the Church of England. This may give us a clue. John Lennon must have hovered overhead a moment since the King also pronounced the word LOVE as tho he meant it. Maybe, with his pantheist green streak he could dynamise the Church to act for the weak in Truss’s strongman world.
A member of her Cabinet famously remarked about food banks that they were rather a good thing as a sign of an active charitable spirit in the nation. Now that the Beveridge model has exploded (contributions couldn’t keep up with benefits) then the Church might go back into the streets and the dark parts of the kingdom under the Victorian banner of charity and with a priest-king’s sign off.
Evidently the Church has long ago lost its powerful ambitious prelates, there is an absence of executive talent but if the King acted savvy he could bring on board the “other” faiths. All those bustling neighbourhood people with executive talent would spot a channel for advancement into the inner regions of Regal favour, their chance to chew at the dense, now amusingly chocolate flavoured, British pudding.
