Free The Autobiography of The Queen by Emma Tennant Page B

mistake on the part of the organisers (for the Queen assumed every event to be meticulously organised and did not realise that the tourists would have received merely an email ticket and a brief print-out of places to eat and drink in St Lucia) – would anyone she knew show the patience and good humour of these people?
    The probable answer was that the sole member of the Windsor family capable of forbearance in trying circumstances was the Queen. She did not like the way her trip and new home had turned out – but, in all the previous catastrophes, she had shown she could put up with anything, or almost anything. It just seemed unfair that retirement appeared to herald another
annus horribilis
, this time in a most uncomfortable heat. But this wasnot on a par with worrying about her grandson William and the break-up of his romance, or Harry, with his resolve to get himself shot at by a sniper in the Middle East. No, the Queen would put up with it here. If she had a desire to go home, it was only because the dogs must miss her so much. But she was not of a sentimental nature. Now she must serve a man in his thirties or forties who had just arrived at the half-finished Windsor Village on foot. This was a more prosperous-looking tourist than the rest: he had an expensive camera slung round his neck and wore shorts that were distinctly a cut above the gear worn by the others. The Queen, hot and weary as she was, went back to the Rum Shop and stood by the counter. This was her duty: it would be helpful to Ford.
    â€˜A banana daiquiri?’ the Queen asked, her precise tones causing heads to turn at the long refectory tables by the sea. The new visitor did not reply to this and the Queen went on, but with a trace of uncertainty this time in her voice: ‘A Crack Baby cocktail? A rum punch?’
    But the camera had been taken from round the just-arrived customer’s neck and the lens, the round black void of glass which was all the Queen had known of intimate relations with the outside world, was now trained on her, unfaltering, speeding its images for the world to see.
    â€˜Just stand there and smile, little lady,’ the mansaid, laughing. (He was an American, definitely not a subject, the Queen decided). ‘That’s a great shot, honey. I’ll go for a beer.’

The Bar
    It had been a long, hot day and by the time the sun was sinking with its usual speed over the great flat blank of the sea, the Queen decided to close the Rum Shop and lie down at the back of the hut on the truckle bed. The Canadian tourists had gone some hours before, to be replaced by a contingent of American female professors and a couple of English women who demanded gin and tonics and became petulant when it was explained to them that this was a rum shop.
    â€˜Or just neat gin,’ insisted the younger of the pair of superannuated ex-debutantes (the Queen recognised them for what they were: possibly the elder was Boofy’s girl, and had enjoyed drinking gin in the Royal Beach Hut at Sandringham years ago). ‘What kind of a bar
is
this, for God’s sake?’ And, turning to her companion, she wondered aloud whether the ‘King’ in his secret estatebehind the Petit Piton, would welcome a visit at this hour.
    â€˜Too early,’ the younger agreed. The Queen saw that a Hermès headscarf circa 1961 fluttered from a shorts’ pocket. Heavens! Was this … Fiona … that girl Charles had almost married, before it was clear she could never get up for early service at Crathie? Now who on earth
was
Fiona? It was one of those big Anglo-Irish families … She looked half asleep now, if you came to think of it.
    â€˜I’ll settle for a fruit punch, no point in visiting the King and being so drunk you forget to ask to see the emeralds,’ Boofy’s girl announced. ‘It’d pay off the mortgage, the ring he slipped on my finger a couple of years ago.’
    â€˜Well, he slipped it